Latest / Reframe / 23: Jerusha McDowell - Documenting & exhibiting Australia's high country

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23: Jerusha McDowell - Documenting & exhibiting Australia's high country · Reframe

• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: Have you ever wondered what truly fuels a creative mind?
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: What ignites their passions and drives their creativity?
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: G'day, I'm Dean McGuire, an Australian fine art photographer.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: From the moment I stepped into the world of photography, I have been captivated by the community and the stories behind the lens.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: Join me as we delve into humble beginnings, explore artistic visions, and discover how we as a collective reframe our minds through the power of creativity.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: Before we dive into this episode, I'd like to give a quick shout out to the incredible team at Messi Filters Australia.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: Messi offer world-class products like high-quality filters with minimal colour casts, an impressive range of cinematic lenses, and various other accessories to fuel your creative endeavors.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: Missy Australia actively supports the greater photography community through workshops, educational events, and live streaming webinars on YouTube and other social media channels.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: As a special treat, Missy Australia are offering all reframe listeners a store-wide discount of 5% off.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_00: You can even combine this with sound items and other promotions for further discounts by using the code reframe podcast at check it out.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: Visit missyfilters.com.au today.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you and welcome to reframe.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for joining me on the show today.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: No problem.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: Lovely to be here.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for joining me.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: And how are you going today?
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: Uh what have you been up to recently?
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I'm good.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_03: Um got the kids off to school this morning and cleared the decks so I can catch up with you, which is good.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_03: We've got a nice quiet house and a very got good light in the front room, so we're good to go.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: So there'd be a few people that may not have come across your work before and and know who you are.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: Could you please take us through who you are and what your photography is about?
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_03: The the golden question, I guess.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_04: Um so uh I'm a um a freelance photographer, uh a documentary and lifestyle and landscape photographer.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_04: I always struggle with what to put on I know lots of photographers might do that though, what to put on your Instagram handle.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_04: Who are you?
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_04: Um so I do a lot of documentary work.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_04: I live uh here in Bungendor, New South Wales, which is a beautiful little country town just outside of Canberra.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_04: Um I have a small gallery space here in town.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_04: Um but I work a lot in uh Snowy Mountains.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_04: That's one of my favourite places to play.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_04: Um for photography, but also just just to play.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_04: Our family loved the mountains.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_04: We spent a lot of time up there.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_04: Um yeah, that's about that's about it.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_04: I suppose I've my photography journey began um well, I suppose it began a long time ago, but um I've only been doing it full-time and professionally for the last last few years, about three years, I suppose, two, three years.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_00: What was the the pivotal point where you took it from a hobby to full-time?
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_04: Uh so I studied film and photography at university.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_04: Um, I went to university very sure I was gonna be a music video director.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_04: Um, I used to stay up all night watching Michelle Gondry videos and yeah, uh was very yeah, I was very sure that was my path.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_04: But um throughout university to sort of change.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_04: So my in my first year 9-11 happened in my first year, and that was a real that really changed the way I saw the world and my part in it.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_04: And I suppose I was doing a communications degree and and majoring in digital media, so doing photography and film and the the beginnings back then, because it's a long time ago now, the beginnings of uh digital media and those formats and platforms.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_04: Um then uh yeah, I just as university does, you sort of evolve and change and um took a lot more politics and and I actually got recruited um uh straight out of university into a career in national security.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_04: So I worked in intelligence and counterterrorism and um defense at the end, so which was a interesting and yeah, varied career, but which I loved.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_04: Um, it would have been an eye-opening.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, yeah, it's a story, and people people go, wow, it's a big change.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_04: Um but um yeah, so I guess I started with a love of film and photography and and but put that aside for a little while and went off and did other things.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_04: Um went up to save the world, didn't manage to do that.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_04: Um, and then came back to it uh when life quietened down a bit, and I needed that outlet and and needed that creative space to process a lot of things that that I'd been through and and done and seen and and um the the creative space has always been where I do that, whether it's music or writing or or photography, they're all kind of a bit blurred and mixed up for me.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_04: And um, so I'd come come back to it and picked up the camera again and and was definitely starting to play.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_04: And then the probably the turning point was having is probably a bit sounds a bit cliche because you hear it a lot, um, especially for female photographers and artists.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_04: But I had my kids and um and I knew the moment we had my daughter, the first daughter, that I was gonna struggle uh staying doing those sorts of things and and being in that world and those jobs.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_04: I was working um in a public service job, largely a desk job at defense at the end, um in defense intelligence and uh the strategic policy division here in Canberra, and uh but it was very demanding.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_04: It's a very, you know, demanding environment and and so the flexibility of of children and family and and then also just the that the nature of that world and who I was doing that j that role didn't seem to it seemed to be, I don't know, I couldn't imagine myself being a mum and doing that at the same time.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_04: So um, so yeah, confluence of of just your your journey and finding your creativity again and needing that as an outlet, you know, um and then the wanting to uh find a way to live that was a little bit simpler and a little bit more connected to p the people, like say my family, but the people around you to uh your community and um yeah, just the rhythms, a simpler life, I suppose.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it it really, really seems that uh your photography was that release from the from the reality of what the world is like.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_04: Oh yeah, definitely.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, definitely.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_04: Um yeah, photography's been huge for me in in transitioning from one version of me to another.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, and we all have different versions as we go through life.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_04: You get to my age and you've you know you've been through a lot.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_04: But um, yeah, it's yeah, photography's been huge.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_04: And the rhythms of it, I'm very solo in the way I work.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_04: Um I was kind of terrified when I was coming on your show because I know you it's about all about the community of photographers and and all these events and stuff, and I listen to other guests on on your show talking about and I'm I'm in a bubble.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_04: I I work really, really in a very sort of solitary way.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_04: Um I'm starting now, like some of the opportunities now that my work is becoming a little bit more known.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_04: You get out uh and opportunities come in, and so that that broadens your horizon and connects you a little bit.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_04: But I think compared to some, I'm still quite I still quite like the bubble.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_04: But um, but I think that's good for me.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_04: I I work really well.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_04: So yeah, photography's definitely been been a way to to live.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_04: Like the camera in a way has been my my ticket, my passport to the life that I wanted to build, the lifestyle and the rhythms.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_04: Um, so creativity, um, the mountains, um, you know, simple um essential living, like when we're camping, when we're in the mounds, it's it's just your immediate needs of shelter and and food.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_04: And I really love that that living in that sort of simple way, and it really decompresses my brain.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_04: And I get up there, and um, even if I'm just up for a day or two, I just yeah, I feel the weight of the world kind of lifts off, and you just focus on your job and and and the shots, and yeah, it's it's going through your work um over the last few days just so I don't miss anything, I've noticed um it is a very um for for lack of a better term, Australiana sort of country style photography.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm just wondering, has that something you're been around your entire life, or is it something that you've moved into over time?
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_04: It's where I it's definitely where I came from.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_04: So I I was um born and and my first home um was up in Armadale on a very, very remote property um with no power, no water, no anything.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_04: Um so very self-sufficient lifestyle.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_04: Um and my parents uh lived and built a home with uh their best friends, I guess, who were like my godparents for want of a better term.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_04: Um, and they raised their kids together, and it was a very, you know, um, I know people say hippie, but it wasn't it was more just um self-sufficient, I guess.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_04: It's now it'd be quite popular.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_04: Back then it was a little bit weird, but it seems like everybody's doing it now.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_04: Um but yeah, it was a very idyllic, very um, yeah, it's a very beautiful place.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_04: We're blessed because the that property which a lot of us uh the older kids in in those families were born to and lived in our early years, it's still in the family.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_04: So um, yeah, it's so it's still a place we can go and visit and camp.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_04: And in we've had our you know, our kids go out there and experience it, which is really special.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_04: So yeah, that was a a special place and it had a lot lasting effect on me, I think, um, and the idea that you can live like that.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_04: Um so it kind of all ended.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_04: My dad left quite early.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_04: He he left our family, and and that made things pretty tough for mum living in the bush.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_04: Um, so she had um and my brother and I, and so we moved away.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_04: Um, but yeah, the the connection to that.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_04: So that's up in the New England Highlands there in Gorge Country, which is you know very high and very rugged and very beautiful.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_04: And I think that place to me always felt like home, has always felt like home.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_04: We moved around a lot when I was a kid, um uh, but always small towns and rural communities, and lived we actually lived on the coast for a while as well.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_04: So we got a little bit of everything, but beautiful.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_04: You know, I'm definitely not a city kid, I can't can't deal with the cities at all.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_04: Um so definitely like small communities.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_04: Um so yeah, I think that I think if there's a people, you know, people have said, or even I you know, I see it a bit, is there's a nostalgia to that, that rural nostalgia.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_04: I think that's probably where it comes from.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_04: I think I'm a country kid, um, or a bush kid who was taken out of the bush and and so for a long time felt like that as a kid that was where I belonged.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_04: And we lived in the Blue Mountains in for a for a long time.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_04: We went to a Stein school there and again lived in the bush.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_04: Um, so yeah, that's a huge so if I was out of that, I felt disconnected from that.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_04: And I think trying to get back, yeah.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_04: So I guess the nostalgia maybe comes from trying to connect with that um a bit, I guess.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, it's hard.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_00: Do you think that nostalgia and emotional connection to like the bush and the countryside really helps you see a composition when you're out in the on a farm or in in a bush sort of area?
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_04: Oh, definitely.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_04: I think uh I think your job as a photographer, uh no matter what your subject is, is you you're showing uh people a world that they may not have access to.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_04: You're showing, you know, you you're taking them to a place or a moment.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_04: Um but but the most important thing is that you're showing people that place through your eyes.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_04: It's you it's your perspective on that place or that subject that's the the absolute defining characteristic of what you shoot.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_04: Like I when I it's it's an old adage, but you that old thing of like you line f five photographers up and shoot a sunset from exactly the same position, you're gonna get five completely different photos.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_04: Some some photographers are gonna look at that sunset and see, you know, golden hour of beauty, and some are gonna see loneliness, and some are gonna see religions, and some are gonna see, you know, um a memory from a childhood.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_04: So, and they're gonna bring that when they when they take, make all the decisions that it is to create an image.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_04: So I guess it's your connection to the subject is is always gonna be the defining characteristic of your art.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_04: Um, so yeah, I think that I think that there's always a bit of a yearning in what I, you know, that I think my imagery always has a bit of a a yearning to it.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_04: There's always there's a slight melancholy to everything I do.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_04: Um, and certainly the the work that that resonates with me the most, the high watermarks where I go, yes, like I feel like I've connected right through me the emotion I'm trying to capture, they are this they're slightly melancholy.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_04: Um that's definitely my my happy space.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_04: It's just a bit odd to say.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_00: And um, I'm just having a quick look.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_00: Um you've been through a few things in your life, and now you're doing you're a professional photographer, you've got your own gallery space, you're printing, and you're doing a lot of documentary work.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_00: What will what really pushed you into the documentary and the video side as well as uh doing printing?
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_04: I think um probably a lot of photographers will be able to relate when you when you start committing yourself full-time, and this is it, it's not a hobby.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_04: Um I remember the day I signed my my separation papers, my retirement papers was huge.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_04: It was such a liberating, stressful, you know, whirlwind of a day.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_04: But that really well I knew that the only way you you're really gonna make it is if there's no plan B.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_04: You know, if if you want if you want this, then you've got to put put your whole self into it.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_04: And not having that backstop of of, oh well, I could always do this, oh well, this is you know, this will pay the rent or pay the mortgage.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_04: Um not having that will make will almost make you succeed.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_04: So I've I've always been a kind of a big believer in that.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_04: So um yeah, I think um I don't know what what pushed me into doing all of those things, but I think I set the I set my expectations of myself quite high at the beginning.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_04: And uh so you you push forward in those early days.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_04: Now, there's always a journey, I think, for all photographers, where they sort of think that that's what they're gonna do.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_04: I'm gonna be this kind of photographer because that makes sense.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_04: I can see a business model around that, I can see a whatever.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_04: And then you grow and you change, and that journey is constantly teaching you.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_04: And that has definitely happened to me.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_04: And the documentary work, um, I've always loved everything I've done.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_04: I always the my favorite bit of photography is that storytelling.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_04: Um, even if it's a single image, it's there's there's got to be a story there.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_04: You've got to be telling something more than I I I always struggled with when I was doing mostly landscapes, calling myself a landscape photographer.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_04: I struggle, I still don't think of myself as a landscape photographer, even though I take heaps of landscapes.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_04: Um because I I it it's not about the perfect image to me.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_04: Um so I don't think yeah, I don't think um I think so much of landscape photography these days is about proving what the camera can do.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_04: And and I I don't really for me it's about it's about tapping into something in in you.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_04: It's like you you talked about that um that windmill image.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_04: So that windmill image, uh sort of very grainy black and white minimalist, which coming from you is quite a compliment.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_04: Um that you know that's just dry you know, that was driving around one foggy morning and and I can tell you the music that was playing.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_04: So music's huge for me.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_04: Music's huge for me.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_04: It's a uh so I'm probably more influenced by musicians and filmmakers than I am photographers, which is you know, you always get asked on Instagram and stuff, like who are your favorite photographers?
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_04: What what are you struggle to answer that because they're it's my my influence is usually musical or out or filmmakers or a or a mix of those.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_04: Um and um yeah, I it that that was that melancholy and loneliness in that picture, that's what it was about.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_04: It wasn't about creating a minimalist image or um you know capturing the perfect light, or it's yeah, it's definitely it's telling the story of that loneliness or telling the story of that that sadness, not you know, and in documentary work, that story is so central.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_04: So um I kind of fell into the documentary work, but at the same time, I feel like it's always how I've approached what I do.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_04: So even if it's like sessions with clients or or um brand work for clients or landscape photography or whatever it was, I feel like I've always approached it in this way.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_04: And so when the documentary work came along and I suddenly called it documentary work, it felt like coming home.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_04: I was like, oh, that's what I am.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_04: That's it's like almost like this epiphany.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_04: It's like this brings together, it's like the missing piece where I can sort of blur the lines between all of these things.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_04: And I think that's I approach everything a little bit like that.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_04: I very much blur the lines between the genres of what things are, because my documentary work, I think a lot of people would look at it and say, Well, it's not true documentary work, it's too too stylized, or it's too uh pretty, or it's too, it's you know, it's evoking too much.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_04: Whereas for lots of people, documentary work has to be very raw and it has to be very, you know, don't don't sort of touch it.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_04: Um and I yeah, I the way I approach it, I don't think that that's necessarily true.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_04: I think it can be documentary work and be sort of faithful to your subject and still be very evocative and very, very beautiful.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_04: And I take that from uh the example of filmmakers.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_04: So filmmakers do that really well.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_04: There's this beautiful short documentary on I think it's still on Netflix now, um, by Tyler Greco and called My Heroes Were Cowboys.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_04: There's a beautiful documentary about a uh an Australian horse horse trainer who had a really sort of rough upbringing and found his way into being um a Hollywood horse trainer.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_04: So, you know, that famous Budweiser ad where the draft horses kicked the football, so he's he was the horse trainer behind that, and many, many movies and and built a really successful career.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_04: Sort of so it's a little short documentary about his life, but it's told visually in this spectacularly beautiful, evocative way.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_04: Um so I guess, yeah, I I sort of draw a lot of inspiration.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_04: I'm a huge Terence Malik fan.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_04: Don't know if you know his films, but that that probably tells you everything you need to know about what goes on in my head.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_04: Um yeah, so so I find blurring those genres and using those uh, you know, the visual tools that we have as photographers um to be a little bit more evocative, whilst still staying true to the the the documentary art form of not, you know, of observing and telling that story rather than you know you do you definitely not altering it or setting it up in any way, shape, or form.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_04: But once you have those image once you have that imagery, how you express it, you know, you you have a lot of choices creative creatively too.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_00: It's um definitely inspirational.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_00: Um where where you draw your style from.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_00: And I I can definitely relate with the whole music, drawing um inspiration from the music, as when I was younger, I had maybe one or two photographers that I would follow and I truly drew me in, but music was key.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: For me as well, um, because I'd relate a lot of my locations to a song that I learned heard on the radio or my phone or anything like that.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_00: So I would rel every time I hear that song, I would see that photo.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, I I definitely can relate that way with you.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um and it doesn't really matter where you get your inspiration from.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_00: You've created some stunning work, so it doesn't matter.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_04: I think I've become what more comfortable with that.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_04: I think when you first start out, you you you you're still so insecure about your own voice and your own art form and and exploring that, and I'm way more comfortable in that now.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_04: Um yeah, so I'm I yeah, I don't shy away from that.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_04: I I sort of embrace it now and explore it and and it changes your work.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_04: And it means that you find your voice, I think, when you use your true influences, what really forms you creatively.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_04: You you you don't try and look like something else, it's it's what what comes out of you is kind of natural and it surprises you sometimes.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_04: Like my journey visually, like what's come out, it's like wow, is that that's where we're going now?
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_00: So it's not a and I can your work is so unique and distinct that I have not seen anything like this here in Australia, and I think the fact that you've put yourself in that work, you've put your story in there and your inspirations that that's what sets it apart from anything else that I've personally seen from Australia and pretty much around the world.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_00: So I kind of feel that you've you've done really well with that.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_00: That's lovely to hear.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_04: Thank you.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_04: Uh yeah, no, I think that's and I'm by no means sort of I'm no not I'm I'm got a long way to go yet.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_04: It's it's such a journey.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_04: But um, yeah, I feel like I'm much better now at um expressing myself as myself rather than trying to look or or be something that I think I should either for business reasons or or creative reasons.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_04: You know, it's a funny world photography with Instagram and everything else.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_04: It's so I see so I love Instagram.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_04: I mean photographers have a love-hate relationship with Instagram.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_04: I I love Instagram for its ability to you can just communicate, like you can have this non-stop conversation with your audience.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_04: And once you start to build a little community around you and your work, it's a conversation, it's a dialogue, and you see you see when things go well or and you see people interacting, and that's sort of great.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_04: But obviously, it comes with this opening the door to this ocean of madness as well.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_04: And um, and what you see when you sort of start to consume that is that is that spin cycle, and that I guess it just becomes a I don't know, just becomes a sinkhole of of copies of copies of copies, because it's like somebody gets a little bit of success and everyone goes, oh, it's got to look like that.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_04: And rural photography, I struggle with the rural photography thing, because rural photography is very much like that.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_04: You get you get a lot of people who um yeah, you you get the same look over and over and over again.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_04: And um, I think my work, I think if there's anything I'm starting to be proud of, it's I when I look at my work or I look at a a hang in the gallery and it's full, and I look around, I'm like, so I can tell they're me.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_04: Like if I look at all of them, I could say, yeah, I think I think that's pretty pretty obviously from me, but but they're also really diverse.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_04: It's not, I don't have a signature in that, you know, everything starts to look the same.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_04: And I think when you work across mediums, um across genres like I do, that's really important.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_04: Because I couldn't possibly have like a look and then take that from landscape to documentary work to to you know the client work.
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_04: So yeah.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_00: I can tell you it's not just you that um can see that it's your work because I can see a photo of yours pop up on my screen and and go, okay, I know who shot that without seeing the name.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_00: So that that is actually that's the biggest skill and the biggest the hardest thing that a lot of photographers and videographers can do is create a body of work that people can know that's not their work, or that is their work without seeing their name, sorry.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_00: So I'd like to circle back uh to the gallery.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_00: So I'd love to know how that came about and what was the defining decision to to open up a little space where you can show your work.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_04: Um I think I I c I sort of developed the idea of and uh of wanting to exhibit my work.
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_04: Um I don't think I went straight to owning my own, you know, opening my own gallery, but um definitely wanting to exhibit um and have the work seen as it's intended.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_04: Because that's that is a struggle with the digital world is you know, you can put out and have a huge amount of work consumed.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_04: But that's only half the journey for me.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_04: That's that's an image hasn't really reached its full, hasn't lived its full lifespan until it's so so from as you well know, the decisions you make taking an image to, you know, coming off the printer to the to the framing, and then now in in a gallery to even to the lighting and position in the gallery.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_04: So it's a huge journey of decisions to get that single image to be viewed sort of the way it's to reach its full potential and be seen the way it's sort of envisaged.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_04: So um so I did little th like most photographers, yeah, my work was in cafes and and um, you know, I did, you know, applied and did gallery exhibitions and did all of that.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_04: There's a lot of work in that though.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_04: Um I I feel really lucky because I sort of leapfrogged the markets bit.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_04: And I know lots of photographers do markets and expos and those things to to sort of sell their work.
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_04: And um I did maybe dabbled with that a little bit and had my work in c cafes or restaurants or whatever, and um that's always a struggle because it's like, oh, this is great, lots of people, it's really bad lighting, and it's always hard, and it doesn't, you know, and you've got no control over that.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_04: So um yeah, I sort of I'm lucky to live in a I guess the benefits of living in a small town in a way are you have a community around you, and I've de definitely got a really wonderful community here who have been huge supporters uh whenever I've wanted to do something.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_04: So I think my first solo exhibition where I sort of did it was here in town and it was at a local cafe.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_04: Um, and my work had hung there, but I was I'd moved now to being in the whole three rooms at the cafe rather than just in a space.
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_04: They'd said, you know, fill the cafe.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_04: It's like okay.
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_04: Um and a friend of mine who who is um much more social than I am, um said, we should have a launch.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_04: We'll do a launch.
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_04: I said, Oh no, you know, no one will come.
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_04: So I couldn't think of anything worse.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_04: And you know, I'm very quite shy.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_04: And um, yeah, that's my idea of hell.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_04: Um and so she said, you just you just deal with you just deal with the art and and I'll I'll I'll bring the people and she did.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_04: She's you know, she's one of those one of those people who can who can just get things done.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_04: And so, you know, it was sort of a group of friends and and it was sort of their support, and that gave me that confidence, and it was a huge turnout, and it was really great, and it was, you know, modest, modest beginnings at your you know, your local cafe or whatever, but um that sort of I guess opened a a door in my mind, which is like, oh, this is okay, there's a there's a path here, and and and that first thing of having people being present while people are consuming your work, viewing your work and hearing what they say and hearing their questions to you and seeing that people are connecting with it in the way that you intended, which is amazing for it to do.
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_04: It's it's a real um lot most photographers I guess don't get to do that.
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_04: If you had doing it, you know, if you're in a gallery, often you'll do the reception, but then you won't be there for the rest of the three months or whatever that the exhibition runs, you're not you're not there day to day.
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_04: So um, yeah, being being present when people are talking about it and um mostly nice things, but um, even the not so nice things, I I always find I used to, you know, hang around the cafe and I still do it in the gallery.
• 30:47
  SPEAKER_04: Sometimes I just wander around being, you know, a bit anonymous, just so that you can kind of hear and see what people say.
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_04: And even the not so nice things, you know, I've had people say, Oh, well, it's not for me, but I like the frames.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_04: Oh well, that's okay.
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_04: Uh I have no expectation that everybody's gonna like what I do because I you know, art is you know, it's all about the heart.
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_04: So um But yeah, so it was a you know, it was little breadcrumbs, I suppose, on a journey of this can happen.
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_04: And then being in a town uh that has a, you know, we're just on the outskirts of Canberra, people come out to the country for lunch and to visit the wineries, and we're the through road to the coast.
• 31:33
  SPEAKER_04: So we're we're we're lucky in that we're getting uh yeah, not it's not too touristy uh by any stretch, but it is very kind of artistic, and people come out to wineries and shuffle farms and things like that.
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_04: So I'm blessed in that way.
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_04: Um, and then yeah, the opportunity, I guess because I'm not putting myself out there isn't always my my comfort zone.
• 31:57
  SPEAKER_04: I find that a little bit uh a little bit confronting sometimes.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_04: Um, so the markets and those a bit more where it's the social aspect of it, I would always procrastinate and put it off and just wouldn't do it and wouldn't do it.
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_04: I and so I feel like the I formed this goal of like, yes, I wanted I wanted to be a fine art for I don't still struggle with what that means, but it's it's meant to be a piece of art, it's meant to be consumed.
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_04: Um I'm an artist, not a you know, I I do commercial work, but my focus is on being an artist and having that conversation with an audience.
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_04: So I always sort of thought, well, uh having an exhibition space is is is key to that.
• 32:44
  SPEAKER_04: So I didn't know what it was gonna be, but um the opportunity came up uh in a local development.
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_04: A group of locals had got together and taken over this big industrial building, and they were doing a bit of a collective space, and there's there's a cafe, there's antiques, there's um ceramicists and all sorts in there.
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_04: It's a pretty amazing thing.
• 33:08
  SPEAKER_04: But there was this long self-contained room that had holes in the wall and bad lighting, and uh, you know, and an old sliding door, and but it was perfect.
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_04: I was like, well, I can I can work with that.
• 33:21
  SPEAKER_04: And he did all the fit out and put the lights in and and we've kept improving it.
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_04: You know, we we make a you know, I make a bit of money, and I put it back in and we put nice timber floors in and built some benches and now it actually looks like a gallery now, which is nice.
• 33:37
  SPEAKER_04: Um, but yeah, I I love it because like I said before, it gives me the um the permanent space to be able to have images reach their full potential and live their full journey and have full arc and and interact with people where as they're they're interacting with the work.
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_05: So um, yeah, it's it's good.
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_00: I love it.
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_00: So speaking of having your images uh uh in their full potential, when you started printing your work, did you make any changes in terms of like the way you processed your work to because now you're seeing them close up and and in larger format?
• 34:19
  SPEAKER_04: Um I think that that those changes are all probably quite incremental for me.
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_04: So it's a little it just changed and changed and changed.
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_04: I was such a novice when I first started printing and um yeah, yeah, you don't really know anything.
• 34:35
  SPEAKER_04: You you know exactly what you want, you know exactly your vision, and you're so certain of so many things, but but the printing process, I'm the least techie photographer you'll ever meet.
• 34:47
  SPEAKER_04: I'm not techie at all.
• 34:49
  SPEAKER_04: Like I know how to use all my gear, and then I let learn to use new bits of gear that I need to do something I need to do, but but I certainly don't fetish the the gear itself or anything like that.
• 35:03
  SPEAKER_04: So it's the bare minimum of technical capability I need to to kind of say what I need to say, and that's true of printing too.
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_04: So I came to it quite like, oh, I don't really I didn't really want I didn't want to sound like an idiot to the printer, but I could only talk in these very kind of creative terms, you know, like it's it's the no, it's too sad, or it's too this, or it's like, I know that's that's not your world, but um yeah, so I worked worked with a few printers and yeah, it's just yeah, increment incremental different papers was huge because once you start exploring the papers, um yeah, you suddenly when you when you start to see the difference.
• 35:45
  SPEAKER_04: And the other thing is when you first start experimenting, it would be great to have all the resources of time and money that you get later.
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_04: But when you first start printing, you've got no money at all.
• 35:56
  SPEAKER_04: And so, like printing five test prints of the same image on various different sheets of paper just to see the difference, which of course I would love to do, would have loved you just that's absurd, so you can't afford to do all of that.
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_04: So yeah, you sort of fumble around in the dark until you start to find it starts to emerge and and you start to see it.
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_04: But yeah, very I guess suppose incremental with with the journey in terms of how I adjusted, how I processed, and um I'm I'm quite so I don't use Photoshop at all.
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_04: I I I do everything in Lightroom.
• 36:34
  SPEAKER_04: Um yeah, yeah, I don't um yeah very rarely would I do anything in Photoshop.
• 36:43
  SPEAKER_04: I do everything in Lightroom.
• 36:45
  SPEAKER_04: Um and I like that.
• 36:47
  SPEAKER_04: I kind of like the idea that you're not I guess coming back, I guess that's why document the documentary work sort of felt like coming home, that idea of like not adding, not taking away, just enhancing or yeah, it's kind of what you're doing.
• 37:03
  SPEAKER_00: I still see that as documentary though.
• 37:05
  SPEAKER_00: Like that's what documentary photography is.
• 37:08
  SPEAKER_00: Like I couldn't think of a world without Photoshop because yeah, 50% of my work is Photoshop, you know.
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_00: So the fact that the people are telling you no, it's not documentary photography because it's too pretty.
• 37:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 37:20
  SPEAKER_00: And to know that you're not adding or subtract subtracting, you're just enhancing.
• 37:24
  SPEAKER_00: I I I don't I still see that as documentary.
• 37:27
  SPEAKER_00: Call me naive, I'm not sure, but yeah, that I I'd say stuff 'em.
• 37:33
  SPEAKER_04: Well, it's it's yourself too, because it's it's like you didn't I I suppose that's part of the journey of coming around and realizing when I started to use the term documentary photographer, I was like, oh wow, that really that resonates.
• 37:45
  SPEAKER_04: I think I think, yeah, I think that's what I've been doing all along, maybe.
• 37:48
  SPEAKER_04: Um I do have a thing of not I like the idea of not adding and not not taking away and sort of doing everything you could pretty much do in an old in a in a dark room, you know.
• 38:01
  SPEAKER_04: Um you know, I'm not not a film photographer and uh don't don't pretend to be, but I like the idea of that of of yeah, just just taking the image as it was and and the moment as it was.
• 38:14
  SPEAKER_04: Um and I think that's the story I'm trying to tell.
• 38:17
  SPEAKER_04: And it's it's more about that emotion and whatever coming through from that moment rather than um yeah, having a I suppose I don't know what I do with all those choices in Photoshop.
• 38:30
  SPEAKER_00: I think I'd nothing would ever get done.
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_00: I only use five percent of it.
• 38:35
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you just use what you it's like your camera, you just you know how to use it and whatever you need, you use, and whatever you don't, you just don't worry about it.
• 38:43
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, hopefully you start to learn to use more and more of it as you go.
• 38:47
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 38:48
  SPEAKER_00: It still gets too convoluted for me.
• 38:50
  SPEAKER_00: So I'll just go, that'll do.
• 38:52
  SPEAKER_04: I'll just use brushes and maybe that's why it's maybe it's not an ethical thing after all.
• 38:56
  SPEAKER_04: Maybe it's just I'm too scared of the technology.
• 38:59
  SPEAKER_00: If you can stay if you don't need it, you don't that's great.
• 39:02
  SPEAKER_00: I wish I didn't need it sometimes.
• 39:04
  unknown: Yeah.
• 39:05
  SPEAKER_04: I think I've probably thrown a few in there.
• 39:07
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, I think I've tried, you know, like sometimes you might have to expand the canvas or whatever, things like that.
• 39:13
  SPEAKER_04: But I wouldn't say I've never used it, but certainly day-to-day and and definitely for the the mountains work and stuff, it's all in like a real part of your workflow, though.
• 39:24
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, no, no, definitely not.
• 39:25
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 39:26
  SPEAKER_00: So talking about printing, so I just so happened to know your printer at the minute.
• 39:32
  SPEAKER_00: How important do you feel having that relationship with a printer framer is in this sort of fine work?
• 39:38
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, it's um it's the relationship, I suppose.
• 39:42
  SPEAKER_04: It's um yeah, it I think we said earlier uh I think your printer is a little bit like a your priest.
• 39:51
  SPEAKER_04: They know they know your secrets, you you have to kind of confess your sins a little bit, you um they have to kind of know you and be on your spiritual journey, uh, to for them to do the best by you and and for you to you know trust them.
• 40:10
  SPEAKER_04: There's a huge amount of trust in the printing relationship.
• 40:13
  SPEAKER_04: You won't you won't always come at something the same way, but um that's good because being challenged is good too.
• 40:21
  SPEAKER_04: Um and yeah, I've I've found a a printer in Brent that that yeah, well, we definitely have that relationship.
• 40:30
  SPEAKER_04: Um and I came to him still very new and naive and you know, big ambitions and everything, but um yeah, didn't really there was so much I didn't know, and and he he's got a wealth of experience, not just as a printer, but um, you know, as a photographer and as a gallery owner, and uh he's yeah, he had a wealth of experience that he's always willing to share and bounce things off you, and um it's been it's been huge.
• 41:01
  SPEAKER_00: It also it also helps that he's a personality and he'll help bring that out in you as well.
• 41:05
  SPEAKER_00: So it'll make you feel comfortable the minute you walk in that door.
• 41:08
  SPEAKER_04: He does make you feel comfortable, and he also challenges me a lot, like tease yeah, he teases me for the way I do things sometimes, and and definitely pushes, you know, encourages me to push the boundaries and and challenge my own um I don't know, conceptions of myself.
• 41:28
  SPEAKER_04: You can become sort of rigid in I am this or this is the way I do things, or my work looks good this way, and and he'll be the first one to throw that back at you and say, I don't know, maybe maybe this is you know, and also to he he he has that ability to sort of be your audience in a way too, like you know, don't just don't just don't just do it for this side of your audience.
• 41:54
  SPEAKER_04: What about the people who like this, you know, and who so that yeah, yeah, he's great like that.
• 42:00
  SPEAKER_04: And um, you know, when things uh I don't know, I've been in those situations where we're leading into an exhibition or an opening and the timeline is like this, and my stress level is through the roof, and you know, he's casual, he's just casual.
• 42:17
  SPEAKER_04: You kind of just call him up and say, I know this is like the most ridiculous timeline, but I have the opportunity to do this in like four days.
• 42:27
  SPEAKER_04: Can we do it?
• 42:28
  SPEAKER_04: And um, and he's like, Well, I try not to do the four-day one to him anymore, but um but he's always he's always yeah, he's always yeah, and it comes down to the wire, and often it usually means me jumping in the Subaru and going and getting it all and laying it all in the back.
• 42:47
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, yeah, he's great.
• 42:49
  SPEAKER_00: I know I know that conversation all too well because I recently just had it with him.
• 42:53
  SPEAKER_00: He's when he was he asked you, he puts you on the spot, and you'll just ask you, so like why do you want to do this?
• 42:58
  SPEAKER_00: And I say, What I go, Oh, I want this.
• 43:00
  SPEAKER_00: I want he goes, I hear a lot of eyes in there and he just deadpan face looks at you, and he's go, Oh god, here we go.
• 43:08
  SPEAKER_00: He's about to he's about to tear me apart in a good way, of course.
• 43:12
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, yeah.
• 43:13
  SPEAKER_04: But again, in that, you know, coming back to the priest now analogy, it's it's he has the ability to kind of share the depth of experience that he has working with all these different photographers, and he brings that into this melting pot with you, but always in this incredibly respectful, confidential way.
• 43:33
  SPEAKER_04: So he'll he'll never I've that's one of the things I really respect about him is he he never betrays the confidence or work or space that he has with other artists, with you, but he he also manages somehow to kind of impart the wisdom from their journeys and their experiences in little, whether it be an anecdote or a you know, um whatever.
• 43:57
  SPEAKER_04: So it's yeah, it's a it's a Yeah, probably part psychologist, part print part printer.
• 44:03
  SPEAKER_00: I I agree.
• 44:04
  SPEAKER_00: And and it's no photographer is bigger than the next as well, or artist that comes through that door, which is fantastic.
• 44:10
  SPEAKER_00: He treats everybody as a like a friend and as a person, not just as oh, this person sells this much, that person sells that much.
• 44:16
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 44:16
  SPEAKER_04: And then he doesn't he doesn't rage on the sale.
• 44:19
  SPEAKER_04: When I first started working with him, I was um a bit suspicious of that, you know.
• 44:23
  SPEAKER_04: Like he you know, you really he's treating, you know, your special, your work, your you know, he's really enthusiastic.
• 44:29
  SPEAKER_04: I was like, oh, I just not doing anything of no, like he does it to everyone, and I was like, it's not, but yeah, it's it's it's really genuine with him.
• 44:39
  SPEAKER_04: It's um yeah, it's a great, it's a great relationship.
• 44:42
  SPEAKER_04: And to be able to make mistakes too, you know, to have a a relationship where mistakes happen uh on both sides.
• 44:50
  SPEAKER_04: Um and that we have this great space where that's it's moved beyond a business relationship and into a sort of a create more of a creative partnership and um yeah, and you can't ask for more than that.
• 45:03
  SPEAKER_04: It's it's great.
• 45:04
  SPEAKER_00: It's good to have a printer that knows your work as well, because then if you make a mistake in your work and goes, Oh, that doesn't look quite right.
• 45:10
  SPEAKER_00: So quickly flag it before they print it, and then instead of printing and you getting back going, oh, what's going on there?
• 45:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, he's caught, he's definitely caught one or two little little things.
• 45:21
  SPEAKER_04: I was like, Oh gosh, I'm glad that yep, that shouldn't be there.
• 45:25
  SPEAKER_04: So yeah, yeah, he's um but yeah, the more the more I'm printing now with the gallery, that's such a big part of of my um workflow and space now is printing.
• 45:38
  SPEAKER_04: So and now as we were talking before about new mediums, and he's really challenging me with that.
• 45:44
  SPEAKER_04: So um, because he's on the cutting edge of what you can do with glass prints and and metal prints, and um and he's really yeah, I think pushing artists to kind of explore that, um, which is really tricky.
• 46:02
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, yeah, and which is but it's hard as an artist because you're you're very faithful to uh I'm I'm quite traditional in what I do, and I think you know, doing the light almost lightroom only and then printing on paper, that was like because I'm I'm traditional, and that's it's not it's it's not real unless it's on paper.
• 46:24
  SPEAKER_04: So uh yeah, he's been yeah, definitely pushing me into that.
• 46:28
  SPEAKER_04: But um and I was really kind of reluctant for a long time, but I'm definitely starting to explore it more enthusiastically.
• 46:38
  SPEAKER_04: Um so one shoot, I did a uh a shoot up in uh near out of Armadale recently and um at the Diage, very famous wool shed, hexagonal wool shed, 150 years old, spectacular old building.
• 46:56
  SPEAKER_04: I love that building, it's uh like it's a landmark.
• 46:58
  SPEAKER_04: I've known that building since I was a kid, and it sits on the road out in near Goswick Chapel, and it sits on the road that that is the road out to the very remote poverty where I was my first home.
• 47:12
  SPEAKER_04: And so it's always been a bit of a landmark, you know.
• 47:14
  SPEAKER_04: People you turn right at the shed, you know, everybody knows the the archival shed.
• 47:18
  SPEAKER_04: So and I've photographed it on the outside, as so many photographers have, um and photographed the outside many times, but um yeah, they they invited me to come and shoot the inside, so I spent a couple hours doing it.
• 47:33
  SPEAKER_04: I shoot there and just loved it.
• 47:35
  SPEAKER_04: And um, so that's that that photo essay.
• 47:39
  SPEAKER_04: Um I've printed the first run of that on metal, and it's amazing, absolutely amazing.
• 47:47
  SPEAKER_04: So I guess that's a really safe he laughed at me when I did that because it's like I feel safe here because it's a metal shed, so it's metal on metal, it'll be okay.
• 47:55
  SPEAKER_04: And he said, Dude, the nature of the gum tree looks good too.
• 48:01
  SPEAKER_04: It's like okay, but I it I felt like it was a safe space to step out and explore the metal, but yeah, it does, it's an incredible, it throws light in a really interesting way.
• 48:12
  SPEAKER_04: Um yeah, and and the texture, and the one of the things I love about it is the you know, we pay a I'm sure you do too, a small fortune for art glass with as little reflection as you can possibly get.
• 48:26
  SPEAKER_04: Um no reflection, that's the one I go.
• 48:30
  SPEAKER_04: And it oh my god.
• 48:34
  SPEAKER_04: So but there's still something between you and the work.
• 48:37
  SPEAKER_04: There's still something between the the viewer and the work.
• 48:40
  SPEAKER_04: And what I do like about the metal prints is is there's nothing.
• 48:45
  SPEAKER_04: They're right the way people people go right up to them and sort of look right into them.
• 48:52
  SPEAKER_04: So um, and you hear people say things like, oh, I feel like I could just step into it.
• 48:58
  SPEAKER_04: And like, well that's lovely to hear as a photographer.
• 49:01
  SPEAKER_04: That's kind of there is no there's no um boundary, there's no barrier between your audience and the work.
• 49:09
  SPEAKER_04: So it definitely has potential.
• 49:11
  SPEAKER_04: I haven't haven't exactly rolled it out as the as the mainstream medium just yet.
• 49:17
  SPEAKER_04: But um and glass the same.
• 49:18
  SPEAKER_04: Um I mean I struggle with the glass because I find it does I'm I think I've got a long way to go in the editing.
• 49:25
  SPEAKER_04: I find I'm finding that's actually requiring more adjustment at my end um to work uh with that.
• 49:33
  SPEAKER_04: But but it is extraordinary when you get it right.
• 49:36
  SPEAKER_04: It's the depth and the yeah.
• 49:38
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 49:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I I I'm looking at adding that um aluminium.
• 49:43
  SPEAKER_00: It definitely won't go to the glass for me personally, being quite minimalist.
• 49:47
  SPEAKER_00: Um I kind of feel that's just sticking with your work.
• 49:49
  SPEAKER_04: I'd I'd really your work on the the the aluminium boards would be really interesting to see because the amount of negative space, so it's in the negative space that the metal becomes metal.
• 50:04
  SPEAKER_04: So um it's in the whites, it's in the whites and the the negative space and uh white.
• 50:11
  SPEAKER_04: It's um so the more yeah, the more of that, yeah.
• 50:15
  SPEAKER_00: So it'd be quite it would be quite different.
• 50:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that yeah, I'm I'm looking forward to seeing it actually, because I kind of feel it almost give it that three-dimensional because if we got you've got ink on top of like and there's nothing, you almost get an edge on it.
• 50:28
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm I'm I'm looking forward to it, yeah.
• 50:30
  SPEAKER_00: Especially with the colour and the black and white stuff, yeah.
• 50:34
  SPEAKER_00: I'm interested to see, so they should be done shortly.
• 50:36
  SPEAKER_00: So I hope by the time this is released, they'll probably be out.
• 50:39
  SPEAKER_00: So I'd be excited to see that.
• 50:42
  SPEAKER_04: Leave what leave a couple seconds around at at uh Brent's and I'll yeah, have a look.
• 50:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I'll probably I'll try who knows.
• 50:49
  SPEAKER_00: I said I I said he could have them uh once I'm done with the test prints, but if they're that good, I might just bring them home with me.
• 50:56
  SPEAKER_05: He likes to stick them up, they're good, the test prints I'll have on the walls at their show.
• 51:02
  SPEAKER_00: I'm more than happy for that.
• 51:03
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you give back to where you can and and yeah, I walked in and he goes, I've got something for you.
• 51:08
  SPEAKER_00: And he shows me these things, and I've just gone, yeah, no.
• 51:12
  SPEAKER_00: No, oh and he's like, and then I said, Oh, aluminium maybe, but not the glass.
• 51:16
  SPEAKER_00: And then he's like, and he's so he's gone and printed on the glass, and does, yeah.
• 51:20
  SPEAKER_04: That's how he gets you in, yeah.
• 51:22
  SPEAKER_00: But I I'm quite stubborn, I don't think I'll use the glass just because it's the reflections might be too much being such minimal.
• 51:28
  SPEAKER_00: I think your work would work perfectly with a glass because there's so much interest there, but yeah, I kind of feel like I think it's very um very much depends on the work, and because I do have a variety, a variety of of um subject matters and different kinds of work.
• 51:46
  SPEAKER_04: I think if I can work with these new mediums and have all of them at my disposal, then that it just it broadens what you can do as an artist.
• 51:57
  SPEAKER_04: But I don't think I would ever move to just one of them, you know, as my new go-to.
• 52:03
  SPEAKER_04: But at the same time, I think I can definitely see a future where just doing just doing prints is probably gone because I do have the ability to use these different mediums and they do expand what you can do creatively.
• 52:17
  SPEAKER_04: At the moment, the additioned prints um and the doco work is still all on on cotton rag paper.
• 52:25
  SPEAKER_04: Um but that's I think that's just because I'm still it's still in the infancy of my exploring those mediums.
• 52:33
  SPEAKER_04: So once I once I get my head and heart around you know what what can be done with them, I they might become a bit more central.
• 52:41
  SPEAKER_00: But um I'm definitely gonna have to head down to the gallery to check out your work in uh with the cotton rackers.
• 52:47
  SPEAKER_00: That's what I use as well.
• 52:48
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, I love that.
• 52:48
  SPEAKER_00: That texture you get out of that's amazing.
• 52:50
  SPEAKER_04: So I love that paper, yeah.
• 52:52
  SPEAKER_04: I uh I experimented with more, like the more texture the better.
• 52:55
  SPEAKER_04: For me, when I was starting out, I was just like there are a couple papers that are a little bit more textured to that, and I was like, let's use them, let's screw it up first and then print on it.
• 53:05
  SPEAKER_04: You know, it's like anything I can do to get texture to it, and then canvas, I really enjoyed canvas for a little while, but you just lose the clarity and and yeah, just struggle.
• 53:17
  SPEAKER_04: But I loved the I love the texture of canvas um for that.
• 53:23
  SPEAKER_04: Um so I've still got all the old that's on canvas, yeah.
• 53:27
  SPEAKER_04: They stand up around my house.
• 53:29
  SPEAKER_04: Okay.
• 53:30
  SPEAKER_04: Um so yeah, I think um, but that that cotton rag sort of was the balance between keeping the clarity and getting that texture, the the the more texture, the better.
• 53:44
  SPEAKER_04: So now there's aluminium, so now there's aluminium.
• 53:47
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 53:48
  SPEAKER_04: Just another thing to add to that.
• 53:50
  SPEAKER_04: I do love like there's nothing better than that paper without glass on it, though.
• 53:54
  SPEAKER_04: To me, like when I look at unglazed, if I could have that, that that would that that would be my but you can't have that because it would just get destroyed.
• 54:04
  SPEAKER_00: I love that UV glass um though that I've got that hanging in my house in a in a area that's very white in the laundry.
• 54:12
  SPEAKER_00: So you can't really see it unless you go in there, but yeah, there's so much light that bounces around in there, I can stand in front of it and I won't even see myself.
• 54:18
  SPEAKER_00: Like that's how incredible that glass is.
• 54:21
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's amazing.
• 54:23
  SPEAKER_04: But it's once you do it, it's yeah, once you do it, you can't go back.
• 54:28
  SPEAKER_04: Like that was agreed.
• 54:29
  SPEAKER_04: Once I once I started to get enough money to be able to do it, and I did a couple, and then all of a sudden it was just I have to print everything.
• 54:37
  SPEAKER_04: I have to get rid of all these prints out of the gallery and just because I can't have anything else.
• 54:43
  SPEAKER_04: And and the gallery too, because you've got light coming from everywhere.
• 54:46
  SPEAKER_04: You've got your light tracks, you've got overheads, you've got I've got windows, so I've got a mix of lights.
• 54:52
  SPEAKER_04: So yeah, in the gallery it's and then you stand right in front of these works and you just can't see it.
• 54:57
  SPEAKER_04: It's it's spectacular.
• 54:58
  SPEAKER_04: It also helps your prints last longer.
• 55:00
  SPEAKER_00: It does, yeah.
• 55:01
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, it protects your glass.
• 55:05
  SPEAKER_00: So what have you got coming up next?
• 55:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um you got any big trips planned?
• 55:09
  SPEAKER_04: Always got trips planned.
• 55:11
  SPEAKER_04: Um, so uh yeah, there's always always rides and expeditions into the mountains on the horizon that they're just rolling out now, which is great.
• 55:22
  SPEAKER_04: Um so yeah, um, so we've just been up.
• 55:27
  SPEAKER_04: Um, but winter is hard.
• 55:29
  SPEAKER_04: You don't want to riding in the snow, shooting in the snow is hard enough, you don't want to sleep in it.
• 55:35
  SPEAKER_04: So uh so yeah, that winter makes it um a bit trickier.
• 55:41
  SPEAKER_04: So once the weather starts to clear a bit up there, we'll uh I'm we're gonna get down into the Victorian high country a lot more, we're gonna do a lot more pack saddle rides, so um bit spending a little bit longer out there.
• 55:56
  SPEAKER_04: Um yeah, that's that's probably where that project is the mountains project's been uh just a huge a huge um learning curve for me from when I first started it.
• 56:08
  SPEAKER_04: So the whole project, um for those who don't aren't familiar with it, it started as a landscape trip.
• 56:15
  SPEAKER_04: Um my friend Mark, who is a horseman and has ridden in the mountains, you know, his whole life.
• 56:24
  SPEAKER_04: And I had met and and started to talk to, and I always loved the mountains and horsemanship and grew up loving the man from Snowy River and all that.
• 56:33
  SPEAKER_04: So I had the beginnings of the idea, and I chatted to these old guys who you know either were descended from or rode with the original Snowy Mountain stockman and that that whole legend and everything.
• 56:45
  SPEAKER_04: And so I sort of had the beginnings of a the idea of something I wanted to to look at.
• 56:51
  SPEAKER_04: And I was doing a lot of uh like horse shows, camp drafts and things, and in penning, I occasionally do event photography for that, and um, so I'd sort of started to chat to a few people and it was definitely beginning, and then um, you know, my friendship with Mark kind of started and we started to chat, and I sit, yeah, I knew he, you know, rode and and loved the mountains, and so I started to talk to him about it, and uh I got this kind of wry smile, and he's like, Oh yeah.
• 57:22
  SPEAKER_04: And then over the course of you know, a few months of chatting, and you suddenly realize, oh my god, he's like this is this is this is what you this is it right here in sort of one person, and um and I was talking about wanting to capture that landscape and and so we sort of hatched a plan to kind of my camera equipment and I to go with him on horseback and and as he said, you know, I'll get you where no photographer gets to, you know, and that was don't have you don't need that, you don't need to offer that twice.
• 57:58
  SPEAKER_04: So that was pretty much how it started, and I think it took uh about 15 minutes into our first ride, and I knew this was not a landscape project.
• 58:09
  SPEAKER_04: There was so much more here.
• 58:11
  SPEAKER_04: Um people use the word living history, and I can't think of a better example of living history than than than what's here.
• 58:20
  SPEAKER_04: So there are still people um who have ridden in the mountains their entire life, um, and whose knowledge and skill set is is a direct lineage, is part being passed down directly from the original Snowy Mountains stockman and the pioneers who kind of not tamed the mountains but certainly forged a life up there with cattle and gold mining and whatever.
• 58:47
  SPEAKER_04: And I'm kind of fascinated by the Snowy Mountains and the stories and the it's a really interesting part of our history, and um but this particular I mean I'm a horse person from from the get-go.
• 59:01
  SPEAKER_04: I think I was put on my first horse before I was one, so um that that the idea of that kind of horsemanship and bushcraft that is required up there, and um, yeah, it's a beautiful thing, and it's a that their knowledge of us you know routes and bridle trails and tracks that have been used for you know 150 years and and were used back then and and they still know it.
• 59:26
  SPEAKER_04: They're un they're unmarked, they're unmapped, national parks don't know these routes, you know, it's only exists in in this small community and and it's gonna be lost.
• 59:37
  SPEAKER_04: There's there's not necessarily another generation that I mean there's gonna be people who ride horses in the mountains, hopefully, but not with not as a way of life, not as a um with that level of of knowledge and and I was just fascinated by that.
• 59:54
  SPEAKER_04: I just yeah, absolutely captivated by it and um and really wanted to capture it and they have been so there's a community, there's a but a sort of a group of these old guys who I've who I ride with.
• 1:00:07
  SPEAKER_04: Mark is set absolutely central to that.
• 1:00:10
  SPEAKER_04: He's become kind of a front my friend, guide, subject, muse the lot.
• 1:00:16
  SPEAKER_04: He's he's kind of been central to that.
• 1:00:18
  SPEAKER_04: So he'll be very central to the the project and how it it gets delivered.
• 1:00:23
  SPEAKER_04: But at its core, it's about capturing that legacy of horsemanship and and um and preserving it in a way that um speaks to people's hearts and captures their imagination and keeps that um keeps that that fire alive of that part of our history and that which I I I personally think is is really important.
• 1:00:46
  SPEAKER_04: It speaks to our resilience, you know, there's something about it sounds a little bit cliche, but that part of the Australian culture and and spirit that that is about resilience and and um and in the face of you know incredibly harsh conditions coming together and being able to do you know pretty impressive things up there.
• 1:01:08
  SPEAKER_04: So yeah, it's um it's and it's breathtaking, it has everything, it's got living history, it's got um this this kind of core of connection and nostalgia and you know connection to a part of our history that most people still have some affection for, even if they don't know how to put that into words.
• 1:01:28
  SPEAKER_04: Like you I find it like when we did the Olympic Games, the first you know, what what did we as a country choose as the first thing that the world saw?
• 1:01:38
  SPEAKER_04: And it was a solo horseman in an oil skin riding around the arena.
• 1:01:43
  SPEAKER_04: It was we still reach for that iconography in in understanding who we are, even though it's this small little pocket of what Australia was, and that pie, you know, that pioneer experience there was you know just a little pocket in an otherwise quite flat landscape.
• 1:02:00
  SPEAKER_04: The mountains are a small bit, but I I think it's a really important, there's something in there that still resonates quite deeply with Australians.
• 1:02:08
  SPEAKER_04: So um and it's kind of agree.
• 1:02:11
  SPEAKER_04: So so capturing that in a way that um ignites people's imaginations and things.
• 1:02:17
  SPEAKER_04: I I quite like the idea.
• 1:02:18
  SPEAKER_00: And that the last song, wasn't it?
• 1:02:19
  SPEAKER_00: The closing ceremony was waltzing Matilda.
• 1:02:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, exactly.
• 1:02:24
  SPEAKER_00: As well.
• 1:02:25
  SPEAKER_04: So Yeah, and I'm a bit, you know, I people find that sometimes people find that a bit cliche or whatever.
• 1:02:31
  SPEAKER_04: I think I think it speaks to something that we we kind of still have a deep kind of connection to.
• 1:02:38
  SPEAKER_04: And um there's there's many parts of that, those parts of our history that people are in a hurry to forget for for valid reasons, but there's definitely parts of it that are really important and um and that for me personally speak to my connectedness with the landscape and and um my past and and love of horses, and I don't know, it all kind of comes together in that project.
• 1:03:03
  SPEAKER_04: So once I kind of cottoned onto it and went, like, this is a story I want to tell, um, yeah, I just never looked back.
• 1:03:09
  SPEAKER_04: It was uh it was definitely one of those moments where you go, I am exactly where I'm meant to be, and this is the project I was kind of born to do, and that's a absolutely amazing feeling as an artist to kind of be right in your pocket and know I am exactly in the lane I was meant to be.
• 1:03:29
  SPEAKER_04: So there's still many parts to what I do, but that that's really really central to it at the moment.
• 1:03:36
  SPEAKER_04: So and I love that I said before I was I'm a huge Jimmy Chin fan.
• 1:03:41
  SPEAKER_04: Um and for people who don't know his work, he's uh does all of his mountaineer, um an alpinist and shoots all of the rock, you know, climbing and and um he's also a filmmaker, did films like Free Solo and whatever.
• 1:03:57
  SPEAKER_00: But um, where have I heard that name before?
• 1:04:00
  SPEAKER_00: Like, yes, I have seen that.
• 1:04:01
  SPEAKER_00: Jimmy G's Free Solo that was shot so well.
• 1:04:05
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:04:06
  SPEAKER_04: So and so his photography is mostly climbing expeditions, mountain climbing expeditions, which is not that's not my world.
• 1:04:13
  SPEAKER_04: And so his influence, I mean, is not necessarily about style or subject, it's about how he approaches his work and that idea of that participatory um documentary.
• 1:04:26
  SPEAKER_04: So you you are part of that expedition, you're not completely separate from it, and that's a hard thing when you first start doing documentary work, is where you how you draw the line between where you are in that story um and the way he works is he's always very much a part of that story.
• 1:04:45
  SPEAKER_04: Um, because I guess on a on an ascent of Everest, you kind of have to be.
• 1:04:50
  SPEAKER_04: There's not, he's not just trailing along behind.
• 1:04:53
  SPEAKER_04: He's you've got to be your your climbing partners first and and photographer second.
• 1:04:58
  SPEAKER_04: And and um so that's been a huge uh I that's a really good example to me.
• 1:05:03
  SPEAKER_04: I uh I like his work because it shows you can blur those boundaries a little bit and um and be a bit more participatory in the world and the subject in which you're shooting.
• 1:05:14
  SPEAKER_04: It doesn't have to be that clinical observer idea.
• 1:05:19
  SPEAKER_04: I don't subscribe to that so much in in in my work.
• 1:05:23
  SPEAKER_04: Um that dispassionate observer, you know, that idea that you're a dispassionate observer and you don't I think that that that's a huge clash with the idea that your connection to your subject is gonna be the defining characteristic of your art.
• 1:05:40
  SPEAKER_04: Like how can you have both?
• 1:05:42
  SPEAKER_04: So yeah, for me it's but finding that line and that balance is really important too.
• 1:05:46
  SPEAKER_04: And I think it just comes down to instinct and yeah, what what his example of that so really has been really instructive to me.
• 1:05:54
  SPEAKER_04: But um so yeah, so more expeditions, definitely just expanding that work.
• 1:06:00
  SPEAKER_04: That that work um will be a book.
• 1:06:04
  SPEAKER_04: Um so that that's the goal.
• 1:06:07
  SPEAKER_04: That's the goal of that.
• 1:06:09
  SPEAKER_04: Um I've always wanted to do a book, but um but uh yeah, I'd struggle with the idea of just doing a hey, this is my work.
• 1:06:19
  SPEAKER_04: I don't think I don't feel like I'm nowhere near being able to do that.
• 1:06:23
  SPEAKER_04: Um yeah.
• 1:06:24
  SPEAKER_04: But this being able to do this, being able to to present this world to the world is that I feel comfortable doing that.
• 1:06:35
  SPEAKER_04: And and definitely wanting to do a film component as well.
• 1:06:39
  SPEAKER_04: So we're just starting to do the uh that's a night not a nightmare, but it's challenge.
• 1:06:46
  SPEAKER_04: So film like taking camera equipment up there is incredibly challenging.
• 1:06:52
  SPEAKER_04: Um so I have to pack light pack everything I carry, everything I shoot with up there has to fit in my saddlebags.
• 1:06:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um will you be running a Sony?
• 1:07:02
  SPEAKER_04: Which uh yeah, so I shoot a Sony on a Sony kit.
• 1:07:06
  SPEAKER_04: So I used to have just the I used to carry just the one camera up there, um, which had two problems.
• 1:07:12
  SPEAKER_04: One with saddlebags, if you're riding a horse, they have to be completely even.
• 1:07:17
  SPEAKER_04: They have to be equally weighted, otherwise, over time you're gonna get issues.
• 1:07:22
  SPEAKER_04: So it comes down to grams sometimes.
• 1:07:24
  SPEAKER_04: So one camera, I was having to like put water bottles and everything in the other to try and balance it out.
• 1:07:30
  SPEAKER_04: I can't change lenses up there.
• 1:07:32
  SPEAKER_04: Um, it's just too like you used to carry a lens thinking, oh I'll get up there.
• 1:07:37
  SPEAKER_04: You're moving too fast, the environment's too extreme, you just you just can't.
• 1:07:43
  SPEAKER_04: So now I carry two uh two cameras, one in each bag.
• 1:07:49
  SPEAKER_00: So I've got I'm set for you know, something like swap the camera instead of the lens.
• 1:07:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:07:54
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 1:07:54
  SPEAKER_04: So and I've had to the other question I get on Instagram, probably the apart from what camera do you use, is what saddlebags do you use?
• 1:08:04
  SPEAKER_04: So lots of horse people are like, how do you take, you know.
• 1:08:07
  SPEAKER_04: So I built them.
• 1:08:08
  SPEAKER_04: I uh because there wasn't anything out there that could do what I needed it to do.
• 1:08:12
  SPEAKER_04: So I got the got the saddlebags and then refined the whole thing over time, and we glued a dry bag in there for river crossings, and then we've put low pro pods in there to take the camera in a certain angle, and then you put a lot of padding because we okay the it's constantly getting bashed by trees um and and put into the river, and yeah, it's it's scary because your entire livelihood is in those bags, and and that they go through a lot, like the outside of the camera, the outside of the saddlebag is just torn and battered.
• 1:08:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, okay.
• 1:08:51
  SPEAKER_00: So it's pretty much a backpack.
• 1:08:53
  SPEAKER_00: I'm I'm not right, I'm not really one with horses.
• 1:08:55
  SPEAKER_00: Um I have no idea about that sort of world, and actually they quite petrify me, those horses, unfortunately.
• 1:09:01
  SPEAKER_00: So I rode one when I was a kid and got flipped off, and that was it.
• 1:09:05
  SPEAKER_00: So but um backpacks are a no-go.
• 1:09:08
  SPEAKER_04: No, can't no, you can't ride not not not up there.
• 1:09:12
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, you might pottering around down here, but no, you can't have a backpack, it's too it's um the weight's not right, it's gonna pull you off backwards and okay, yeah.
• 1:09:22
  SPEAKER_00: So big safety thing.
• 1:09:23
  SPEAKER_04: It's a say it's yeah, it's a safety thing, but just yeah, your balance and and trying to negotiate that.
• 1:09:30
  SPEAKER_04: No, it's it's gotta be in the saddlebags and and um I tried with harnesses and things so I could have it out with me, but it's some of those it's so rough and there's so many tricks and and riding bouncing and this thing I could hear it bashing, and I was like, oh god, no.
• 1:09:45
  SPEAKER_04: So so now I've there goes a camera.
• 1:09:47
  SPEAKER_04: That's it.
• 1:09:48
  SPEAKER_04: I've got I've got the two of them now in these, you know, it's quite patterned, and I've got them in ways I can get to them quickly.
• 1:09:56
  SPEAKER_04: Um get it on and I get it on and off a lot, and yeah, it's um I take the little GoPro with me so I can do kind of capture little moments along the way without you know from the saddle and stuff, but but I love that.
• 1:10:12
  SPEAKER_04: I mean that speaks that works for me in such a big way creatively.
• 1:10:16
  SPEAKER_04: I've always said when I have the least amount of time to think, so I think I'd be really really bad at what you do because I would just I just go mad and the the longer I have to think about a shot and what I'm doing, the more I screw it up.
• 1:10:33
  SPEAKER_04: And I just yeah, I go round and round and so I I'm quite comfortable in a world where I'm not given too much time to think.
• 1:10:43
  SPEAKER_04: And the plan, if there was one, uh goes sideways or goes out the window.
• 1:10:49
  SPEAKER_04: And I quite I really like that I find that I work happily there.
• 1:10:56
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, you'd have no issue doing what I do, honestly, because really you take a photo, you sit it there for 10 minutes, and the lights gone by the time you're done.
• 1:11:05
  SPEAKER_00: So you've really actually got to think quickly and get the shot and then just let it sit there.
• 1:11:09
  SPEAKER_00: It's more time sitting there waiting for the for for the photo to stop taking with that long exposure.
• 1:11:15
  SPEAKER_00: But um, you know, you'd have no problem with that at all.
• 1:11:18
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think I'd have yeah, I don't think I'd have the I don't know whether it's the patience or the I don't know.
• 1:11:24
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think um I don't have the patience either, which is surprising.
• 1:11:27
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, there you go.
• 1:11:29
  SPEAKER_00: I just uh oh yeah, something I I've got to keep myself distracted.
• 1:11:35
  SPEAKER_04: You know, it has like imagine I imagine you out there all on your own on a misty mall, you know, it's like quite meditative and contemplative.
• 1:11:44
  SPEAKER_00: I'd love mist.
• 1:11:45
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, well that's you you'd love it down here.
• 1:11:49
  SPEAKER_04: You've got to do if you're gonna do rural and and um yeah, you've got to come to Bungendor where you get fog, and I love it.
• 1:11:56
  SPEAKER_00: It's so good.
• 1:11:57
  SPEAKER_00: I've got I know it's not quite Bungandore, but I've got a couple of places out, um there's a couple old churches and chapels that I've been to.
• 1:12:05
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:12:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I I can't remember off the top of my head the road that it's on or it's off, but um I've got some my wife's got some relatives that have a house out that way.
• 1:12:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um I've got to remember, I've got a photo of it.
• 1:12:18
  SPEAKER_00: It's an old chapel church and graveyard that I've been out to before.
• 1:12:21
  SPEAKER_00: There's there's a heap there.
• 1:12:22
  SPEAKER_00: I've just got to I'm working on my color profiling for that now, so it'll take a bit of time.
• 1:12:27
  SPEAKER_00: So it's it's been a couple of years since I've been trialling that out, but might have a couple more years to do it.
• 1:12:33
  SPEAKER_04: Well with the fog here that we get, uh I just love it.
• 1:12:37
  SPEAKER_04: Like we've so we've got Lake George, which has the big, you know, wind farm on the back of it, the big expanse of water because it's full now, and then we get the fog, and the fog's just brilliant because it just takes out everything and just allows you to, you know, focus on your on your subject.
• 1:12:54
  SPEAKER_04: And yeah, I love it.
• 1:12:55
  SPEAKER_04: So I'm very lucky because we do get a lot of fog here.
• 1:12:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um I'm actually um I'm actually heading down for work soon, I think, to Canberra for an NRL, I think it is.
• 1:13:04
  SPEAKER_03: So I'll probably be popping in.
• 1:13:07
  SPEAKER_00: If I've got the time, I'll definitely be popping in because they're they're like a nine o'clock start in the afternoon, in the morning, sorry.
• 1:13:13
  SPEAKER_00: So we'll see.
• 1:13:14
  SPEAKER_00: But no, I'll definitely be popping in at some point um on my days off, even I'll come on down because I think what's bungandoor.
• 1:13:21
  SPEAKER_00: Canberra's only two hours from my house, so I'm looking at about an hour and a half-ish.
• 1:13:25
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:13:25
  SPEAKER_00: I think somewhere like that to there.
• 1:13:27
  SPEAKER_00: So no, I'd I'll definitely be popping in to see those works hanging up on the wall if Brent doesn't show me first.
• 1:13:32
  SPEAKER_00: Look forward to it.
• 1:13:35
  SPEAKER_05: Look forward to it.
• 1:13:36
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 1:13:37
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway, so where can people find your work to check it all out?
• 1:13:40
  SPEAKER_00: Your documentary and your photography work.
• 1:13:42
  SPEAKER_04: So the documentary works coming out um at the moment just in in in pieces.
• 1:13:47
  SPEAKER_04: So we I'm releasing kind of collections as I go because I do want to release the prints.
• 1:13:52
  SPEAKER_04: Um and the book will take some time in terms of you know pulling those all together in an in a theme, in a narrative.
• 1:14:00
  SPEAKER_04: And so that it's coming out kind of incrementally, but it's on the website, the first two, the first two collections I think we've got up, but there's the next two are ready to go.
• 1:14:10
  SPEAKER_04: I just haven't haven't made them live yet.
• 1:14:13
  SPEAKER_04: Um and obviously in the gallery here in Bungendor, and then the Instagram is probably they're pretty much the the only places I put stuff out at the moment.
• 1:14:24
  SPEAKER_04: Um yeah, so the web, the website, the gallery, and Instagram's pretty much pretty much me.
• 1:14:30
  SPEAKER_04: That's enough.
• 1:14:31
  SPEAKER_00: I only just feature my work in a gallery.
• 1:14:33
  SPEAKER_00: I was not that much.
• 1:14:34
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 1:14:37
  SPEAKER_00: Just every photographer's dream, you know.
• 1:14:40
  SPEAKER_04: Very busy.
• 1:14:41
  SPEAKER_04: Um everyone keeps saying, Oh, you're on threads, or you're on this, or you're on the feeding the machine I've got is hard enough.
• 1:14:48
  SPEAKER_03: I can't can't imagine.
• 1:14:50
  SPEAKER_04: I I don't know about you, but I I still I struggle putting stuff like just the in daily Instagram or weekly Instagram thing.
• 1:14:57
  SPEAKER_04: I really struggle with that.
• 1:14:59
  SPEAKER_04: And even if I've got the image, I don't know what to say.
• 1:15:01
  SPEAKER_04: So I can sit there with an image like I was ready to go.
• 1:15:04
  SPEAKER_04: I don't know what to say.
• 1:15:05
  SPEAKER_04: Oh, I sound I sound Uber.
• 1:15:09
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 1:15:10
  SPEAKER_03: Start using something like that, but uh, yeah, it's a hard thing.
• 1:15:14
  SPEAKER_03: It's like what yeah I find.
• 1:15:16
  SPEAKER_00: I mean social media for me is I used to post on everything and then I just gone, where where is my audience the most?
• 1:15:23
  SPEAKER_00: And what I found is they're either on photo uh Facebook or Instagram, yeah, and and that's it.
• 1:15:29
  SPEAKER_00: So it's like, well, that's where they are, that's where I'm posting.
• 1:15:31
  SPEAKER_00: Like there's I'm not gonna be posting on threads just yet because it's full of like all it really is is photographers following photographers, and and that's not my market.
• 1:15:41
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm I'm trying to find that and that's I think the way you should look at it in a way.
• 1:15:46
  SPEAKER_04: It's more of the comment, it seems to be more of the commentary and that that you know, which is less about the imagery itself.
• 1:15:52
  SPEAKER_04: So I think um, you know, there's definitely you get frustrated with Instagram, you know, over and over again, but it's still it's still a great platform for visual artists because it's still it's still about the picture.
• 1:16:06
  SPEAKER_04: Well, and the videos, but yeah, it is.
• 1:16:09
  SPEAKER_00: But there's also just everyday people on there, it's not just artists.
• 1:16:12
  SPEAKER_04: That's it, yeah.
• 1:16:13
  SPEAKER_04: And and that's I mean that's that's a huge thing when you start to realize that your audience is is becoming more and more just just an audience.
• 1:16:22
  SPEAKER_04: It's not like I think in the beginning you're it's a lot of photographers because we all follow each other and we're all looking at what everyone's doing, and so we account for a huge part of each other's followings.
• 1:16:34
  SPEAKER_04: And you think, oh, if I took out if I took out brands that kind of like my look and photographers is there, you know, what's left.
• 1:16:42
  SPEAKER_04: And I feel like now I'm sort of getting stage where and the comments that you get and the messages you get, it's like much more of it is a a real audience and a community thing.
• 1:16:52
  SPEAKER_04: That's a lovely thing.
• 1:16:54
  SPEAKER_04: It's a really yeah, it's very humbling, but it's um it's it's really nice to have.
• 1:16:58
  SPEAKER_04: It's tricky.
• 1:16:59
  SPEAKER_00: It's tricky.
• 1:17:01
  SPEAKER_00: It is tricky to get.
• 1:17:02
  SPEAKER_00: I think I'm at 20% would be just normal people, not brands and photographers.
• 1:17:07
  SPEAKER_00: The rest of them would be 80%, and that's it.
• 1:17:09
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, that's it.
• 1:17:10
  SPEAKER_04: I f I feel like it's growing.
• 1:17:12
  SPEAKER_04: Suddenly it started to grow.
• 1:17:14
  SPEAKER_04: And yeah, and so and I still don't understand.
• 1:17:17
  SPEAKER_04: Like, I still go through days where a little dip, you know, like I was jumping and I was like, oh, I lost 20 followers.
• 1:17:23
  SPEAKER_04: Why?
• 1:17:24
  SPEAKER_04: What did I I didn't post anything?
• 1:17:26
  SPEAKER_04: Like, why did you and then and then grow by 50?
• 1:17:30
  SPEAKER_00: I think it is.
• 1:17:31
  SPEAKER_00: So Facebook uh Instagram goes through and deletes all your bots and things like that.
• 1:17:35
  SPEAKER_00: The ones that I think I I had about a hundred or so go because of that exact same thing is they they find inactive or fake accounts and they just remove them.
• 1:17:44
  SPEAKER_00: And they just disappear.
• 1:17:47
  SPEAKER_04: Watch watching it do that for a while was interesting because it's steady growth, but but still these sort of dips and and now it just sort of, you know.
• 1:17:57
  SPEAKER_04: And I don't do anything I don't do anything particularly to to generate a following.
• 1:18:04
  SPEAKER_04: I just sort of put it out there and yeah, put it out there and push it as much as I can, but uh um I like it to be a little bit organic.
• 1:18:11
  SPEAKER_04: I've started to get um quite a few followers from overseas all of a sudden, which is that's really I really love that.
• 1:18:19
  SPEAKER_00: That's good.
• 1:18:19
  SPEAKER_00: It's because you're showing this authentic Australia than than just your under-the-mill landscape photography.
• 1:18:26
  unknown: Yeah.
• 1:18:27
  SPEAKER_04: And I think the more, you know, I think there's I'd love it if that was the reason.
• 1:18:32
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 1:18:32
  SPEAKER_04: I was there's a photographer, I mean um Luke Alexander, an Australian photography is a wildlife and nature.
• 1:18:40
  SPEAKER_04: Luke Alexander, you should definitely have him on, he's amazing work, okay.
• 1:18:44
  SPEAKER_04: I'll write it down.
• 1:18:45
  SPEAKER_04: Beautiful work.
• 1:18:46
  SPEAKER_04: And I always think that's like it'd be great if he his work was started to, you know, gain traction overseas, because it'd be great because he has such a unique um he has cut such a unique style and and colour and feel to his work.
• 1:19:05
  SPEAKER_04: It's really personal and and his passion for what he shoots.
• 1:19:09
  SPEAKER_04: Often he shoots um, often it's like uh fungi on the side of a tree or whatever.
• 1:19:15
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 1:19:15
  SPEAKER_04: No, I have absolutely zero personal interest in your subject matter, but I am in.
• 1:19:20
  SPEAKER_04: I am totally in because his passion for it is so clear.
• 1:19:24
  SPEAKER_00: And I think, yeah, I think that that's I'm sorry, I'm just looking at his work now, the uh white wallaby.
• 1:19:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:19:33
  SPEAKER_00: He's got oh my god.
• 1:19:36
  SPEAKER_04: Isn't that isn't like you just look at his account and that we're like what we were talking about before, where it's not a it's not a preset signature, it's not a signature for the sake of having a signature.
• 1:19:46
  SPEAKER_04: It's an artistic signature, it's what his style yeah, and he then shares a s very Australiana subject matter, like you know, his his work, but in such a unique and you can probably tell why I like it, because it has those beautiful muted tones, you know, colour is not a thing I'm real big on.
• 1:20:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um that's about as colourful as it gets for me as behind me.
• 1:20:12
  SPEAKER_00: So and it's funny because this is kind of how I see everything as well.
• 1:20:16
  SPEAKER_00: It's none of these vibrant colours, I can't stand rise and sunsets, and that that's how I see the world as well.
• 1:20:22
  SPEAKER_05: So yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:20:24
  SPEAKER_00: Um anyway, but um I've just gotta wrap it up now, but uh thank you very much for joining me today.
• 1:20:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it's been a privilege to to sit down and talk to you over the last hour, and I'm really looking forward to see what you produce next.
• 1:20:37
  SPEAKER_04: That's my first ever podcast.
• 1:20:39
  SPEAKER_00: I'm very excited.
• 1:20:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's not as nerve-wracking as you think.
• 1:20:45
  SPEAKER_04: No, it's not.
• 1:20:46
  SPEAKER_04: No, you're very you're very you make it you make me feel very comfortable.
• 1:20:49
  SPEAKER_04: So it's good.
• 1:20:50
  SPEAKER_04: It's a great experience.
• 1:20:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I'll I look forward to heading down and and checking out your I might bring I might bring the family down for a little trip on the way down to Canberra one week.
• 1:20:58
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, that's lovely.
• 1:20:59
  SPEAKER_04: We'll definitely come out to the gallery and have a cup of coffee and yeah, look forward to that.
• 1:21:03
  SPEAKER_00: Awesome, thank you very much.
• 1:21:04
  SPEAKER_00: And um well, hopefully you get out shooting and and start uh that project as soon as possible.
• 1:21:09
  SPEAKER_01: Definitely, definitely.
• 1:21:11
  SPEAKER_00: And thanks again everyone for listening and and until next time, keep reframing, keep creating.