Latest / The Nerdy Photographer Podcast / 123 - The Reality of Going Pro: Skills, Sacrifices, and Success in Photography

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123 - The Reality of Going Pro: Skills, Sacrifices, and Success in Photography · The Nerdy Photographer Podcast

• 0:05
  f2: It's electric Boogie Woogie. Woogie. Woo
• 0:08
  Casey Fatchett: I'm aware of that F 2.0 be sure you don't
• 0:11
  shock yourself. Oh, hey there. Welcome to the nerdy
• 0:14
  photographer podcast. I'm your host, Casey Fatchett. If you've
• 0:18
  never listened to the show before, welcome, in addition to
• 0:21
  providing entertaining and informative photography related
• 0:23
  info, I also go on adventures with the crew of the starship
• 0:26
  Fibonacci. I like to call them the hashtag nerdy photo crew
• 0:31
  right now, F 2.0 and I are standing guard over a
• 0:33
  malfunctioning power supply while the rest of the crew helps
• 0:36
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• 0:40
  this particular power station. Some like it hot. Some like when
• 0:45
  the heat is on. Brilliant, brilliant reference there F 2.0
• 0:49
  really appreciate it. We are definitely keeping the spark
• 0:52
  alive. And speaking of poorly connected segues, our guest for
• 0:56
  this episode is the legendary Scott Bourne. Scott joins us to
• 0:59
  talk about his 50 plus year photographic journey and keeping
• 1:03
  his passion for photography alive. We talk gear, we talk
• 1:06
  photo licensing. This talk is rich with advice for all the
• 1:09
  working photographers out there, all that after the break. Hey, F
• 1:14
  2.0 what exactly is generating all of this power again? Turn me
• 1:18
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• 3:46
  Hello and welcome to the nerdy photographer podcast. I'm your
• 3:49
  host. Casey Fatchett, I'm here today with Scott Bourne, Scott,
• 3:53
  welcome to the show. I'm very happy you could make it with
• 3:56
  here today.
• 3:57
  Scott Bourne: Happy to be here. Happy to join you.
• 3:59
  Casey Fatchett: Before we get into things, we're going to
• 4:01
  start out with the dice breaker. It's a five. What's the worst
• 4:06
  piece of either photography or business advice you've ever
• 4:11
  received?
• 4:14
  Scott Bourne: Oh, I think the worst piece of photography
• 4:20
  advice I ever received was from a guy who said, Only losers use
• 4:26
  tripods. And since I was frequently working with 800
• 4:33
  millimeter lenses in my career, I got to tell you, unless you're
• 4:38
  Hercules, you ain't hand holding that puppy very long No, so I
• 4:42
  decided to go ahead and be a loser and use a tripod
• 4:45
  Casey Fatchett: that, you know, I find that anybody who speaks
• 4:48
  in those sort of like absolutes, like, never use a tripod, or
• 4:52
  always do this or never do that. Like, those are the people who
• 4:55
  tend to like, maybe not give the best advice. I.
• 4:59
  Scott Bourne: Oh, well, you know, maybe he was trying to be
• 5:03
  helpful. Maybe he really believed what he said. He
• 5:05
  probably read it in camera form, or even more likely, he learned
• 5:08
  it on YouTube. Since today, photographers are trained on
• 5:11
  YouTube. In my day, we went to these things called photography
• 5:15
  school, but not nearly as apparently efficient as pro
• 5:19
  knows photos.
• 5:22
  Casey Fatchett: Oh yes. And actually, you know what that
• 5:23
  kind of leads me into, like, where I was gonna go with this?
• 5:25
  I mean, you've, you have an extensive career in photography.
• 5:33
  You were kind of like, helped found some of the first, the
• 5:37
  major photography blogs. First, like, real big photography
• 5:41
  podcast, and the sort of like, where people learn now is far
• 5:47
  different than what mean when I started out. I'm younger than
• 5:50
  you are. I've not been at it as long as you have, but I've been
• 5:52
  in it for quite a while. Like, how we learned is vastly
• 5:56
  different than how people learn today. I mean, I don't know if
• 6:03
  you want to like Sure. How did you get started? How did you
• 6:06
  start learning about photography?
• 6:08
  Scott Bourne: Well, I mean, you know, my first foray into
• 6:12
  photography is simple. My girlfriend in high school had a
• 6:16
  father who was a photojournalist at the Indianapolis Star
• 6:19
  newspaper, and he had seen me muck around with my old Brownie
• 6:24
  camera, and said, Hey, you want a real camera? And he gave me a
• 6:27
  Nikon FTN to play with. Little did he know I was going to use
• 6:31
  that to photograph his daughter nude. But that's okay. He never
• 6:34
  found out that was really my only interest in photography
• 6:39
  until I found out that you could photograph race cars. I grew up
• 6:43
  in Indianapolis around the 500 and long story short, my brother
• 6:48
  in law, I had a half sister who was much older and married a
• 6:53
  guy. He was the sports editor at the Bloomington Herald Tribune
• 6:56
  in Bloomington, Indiana. He had a photo pass for the race.
• 6:59
  Didn't have a budget to send a photographer. Asked me if I
• 7:02
  wanted to go. I said, Sure. I took the one roll of tri x I
• 7:07
  owned because I was so broke back then I couldn't afford to
• 7:10
  pay attention. And I took my 50 millimeter lens and my FTN and
• 7:15
  walked out to the track thinking, Yeah, I'll get some
• 7:17
  good stuff through a series of crazy events where I just said
• 7:22
  yes to stuff I shouldn't have. I got sponsored by Nikon to shoot
• 7:26
  for the day with a brand new f1 with a motor drive, and the
• 7:29
  first motor drives that ever came out. And I got lucky Tom
• 7:32
  sneva crash in front of me. I got a picture in every newspaper
• 7:35
  in the country. I made $3,200 which is enough to buy a Camaro,
• 7:39
  back then, a brand new Camaro. And I said, I'm going to be a
• 7:41
  professional photographer. And then that led to six years of
• 7:45
  working for Hemings motorsports news, traveling around
• 7:48
  racetracks, all the way around the world. And I learned from
• 7:51
  just the old guys who were already on the circuit. And then
• 7:55
  after that, I went did some photography school, but I always
• 7:58
  learned in the field myself. That was the way you did it back
• 8:02
  then. I wanted to learn portraiture, so I went and
• 8:05
  assisted a guy in Fort Smith, Arkansas for six months that had
• 8:08
  a big portrait studio. Taught me how to use my first Hasselblad,
• 8:12
  taught me how to make portraits, how to do split lighting, broad
• 8:15
  lighting, short lighting, butterfly lighting, Rembrandt
• 8:18
  lighting, stuff that kids don't learn these days. They just
• 8:21
  learn how to do cool lighting on YouTube. But I learned all the
• 8:25
  basics. People would argue that you don't need to learn those
• 8:28
  things these days. Maybe they're right, but I think it helps to
• 8:32
  know the rules before you break them. So my opinion is I learned
• 8:35
  the best way. I learned from actual teachers in the field,
• 8:39
  practitioners. People are holding a camera, I will say
• 8:43
  there is a time for change, always. And so I did have the
• 8:47
  idea well into my career, to start the first photography
• 8:51
  blog, although it wasn't a blog technically, because really
• 8:54
  simple syndication didn't even exist back then RSS. It was
• 8:59
  called a photo magazine, photo focus, calm. We started it
• 9:03
  November 2, 1998 and it still publishes today, and has not
• 9:08
  missed a week since. And then we started the twit podcast. A lot
• 9:15
  of people think Frederick Van Johnson started it, or owns it.
• 9:18
  He just inherited it. Was me, Alex Lindsay, and a couple of
• 9:23
  other guys, Ron Brinkman. We really were the three founders
• 9:27
  of the show. Ron Brinkman was a technical guy at Apple. Alex is
• 9:33
  just he's the professor on Gilligan's Island. He knows
• 9:36
  everything. He is a super video guy, and Alex and I later got
• 9:45
  involved with my friend Leo Laporte, and we did Mac break
• 9:47
  weekly for three years together on the twit network. Twit was
• 9:51
  the photo podcast on the twit network. I did it for a year,
• 9:55
  and then I stepped away to build a podcast for photo focus. Gave
• 9:59
  it to Alex. Because Alex, in turn, gave it to Frederick. It's
• 10:02
  still in publication. Photo focus. Podcast is still in
• 10:06
  publication. I've started several podcasts since, but the
• 10:09
  podcasting thing has gone the way of everything else now. Now
• 10:14
  it's got to be on YouTube or nobody cares, and I got a face
• 10:17
  built for radio. So that was when I decided it's time to let
• 10:21
  the youngins take over and step away and I have no influence.
• 10:26
  Now, I'm a nobody, and it's kind of cool
• 10:29
  Casey Fatchett: enjoying semi retirement.
• 10:32
  Scott Bourne: Yeah, I'm anonymous now nobody cares what
• 10:35
  I think, and there's some freedom in that.
• 10:38
  Casey Fatchett: Yeah, I think that. I mean, for me, when I
• 10:40
  started out, I My mother bought me, like, interesting in
• 10:46
  photography. My mom bought me a bunch of equipment at a estate
• 10:52
  sale. Actually, this is one of the cameras, Minolta, the mind
• 10:56
  of Minolta, yeah, and I didn't know how good I had it. I had
• 11:00
  these, like two cameras at a 50 171 35 2.8 and a 28 2.8 and I
• 11:10
  was like, it's pretty good to start out with. And I was just
• 11:15
  out there, you know, shooting, knowing nothing whatsoever. And
• 11:20
  then when I got into college, I took one class which didn't
• 11:25
  really teach me much, but the same thing that you're talking
• 11:28
  about, when I moved to New York, I just started like going and
• 11:32
  hanging out with other photographers and learning from
• 11:35
  them and asking them questions. And I read a lot. I read a lot
• 11:38
  of books. I read a lot of books, and to see how things have
• 11:41
  changed now, where there seems to be an emphasis on just like
• 11:48
  learning, like, I just want to know how to copy your photo as
• 11:51
  quickly as possible. Yeah, I suppose you're saying, like
• 11:54
  learning the basics.
• 11:55
  Scott Bourne: Everyone goes on YouTube to learn how to do a
• 11:58
  certain thing they think they need to do. Unfortunately, they
• 12:01
  don't have the structure underneath that to understand
• 12:05
  why they need to do that. And this leads to, you know, partial
• 12:09
  success sometimes. But my opinion, and I've talked about
• 12:14
  this for years, you know, I've made my living as a
• 12:17
  photographer, but that's not why I call myself a professional
• 12:20
  photographer. I call myself a professional photographer
• 12:23
  because I'm proficient. In other words, I can deliver the results
• 12:27
  that you see in my work time after time. I can replicate it
• 12:31
  absolutely guaranteed every time. I don't have to guess how
• 12:35
  the picture is going to come out. I know exactly what's going
• 12:38
  to happen. I'm proficient, and that's the missing link in the
• 12:42
  YouTube photographers. They're proficient at a thing, and most
• 12:46
  of the teachers are proficient at getting subscribers, not
• 12:50
  necessarily at photography. Now, I'm not picking on any one guy,
• 12:53
  and I'm not gonna there are a couple of them that are actually
• 12:56
  quite talented as photographers, but you know, they're better at
• 13:01
  getting YouTube clicks, and unfortunately, the camera
• 13:06
  manufacturers have fallen into the trap of thinking, well,
• 13:09
  those guys have the big audiences, so they're the
• 13:11
  influencers, and now they're relying on those guys and gals
• 13:15
  exclusively, and I think it's hurt them. I think that there's
• 13:19
  a whole lot of of disconnect between what needs to happen and
• 13:24
  what is happening, and I don't know if if it will change for
• 13:28
  the better or the worse. If people find it helpful, I'm glad
• 13:31
  for them, but I would prefer to see people do the old fashioned
• 13:35
  thing, like read a book, take a class, go out with a pro, an
• 13:39
  actual practitioner, see what they do, figure out what's
• 13:42
  working for them, and then a couple of other steps, look at
• 13:46
  lots of pictures, read your dang manual, and learn how to use
• 13:49
  your camera. Don't worry about anybody else's, and take lots of
• 13:53
  pictures every day. That's the that's the recipe for success
• 13:57
  and it you know, I'm a nobody, I'm not talented, I have no
• 14:00
  visual gifts. I'm not an artist. I suck at all that stuff. I had
• 14:04
  to just work 52 times harder than everybody else to get my
• 14:08
  stuff out there, and by working hard, I was able to overcome my
• 14:12
  lack of artistic vision. There are some people with great
• 14:15
  vision that don't know any of the type of stuff, and they make
• 14:19
  good money and they have good success. So everybody can come
• 14:22
  at it from different ways, but I do, I do think, you know, I
• 14:26
  watch some of these YouTube videos and I just shake my head.
• 14:28
  I'm like, I don't understand. I just don't understand how these
• 14:33
  things are popular, because the information they're giving is,
• 14:36
  at best, often incomplete.
• 14:39
  Casey Fatchett: It's nebulous at times, like, there's the and I
• 14:42
  feel like it's designed in I understand we're saying there's
• 14:45
  some people out there who are very good. I try to be someone
• 14:49
  who's like, teaches people things that are, you know,
• 14:52
  helpful, that they're actually going to and I don't let people
• 14:55
  fall for the trick of just saying, like, what were your
• 14:57
  camera settings? I'm like, because that's not going to
• 14:59
  teach anything.
• 14:59
  Scott Bourne: I. Yeah, that's, that's the number one question I
• 15:01
  get. And
• 15:04
  Casey Fatchett: I think that part of it is to keep people
• 15:07
  coming back to them, because they're still gonna have
• 15:10
  questions. They're not actually, like, solving the problem that
• 15:12
  you had originally. I think that that for those people who are
• 15:15
  just, who are very like, successful in getting people to
• 15:18
  be their YouTube subscriber or whatever, and stick around just
• 15:21
  for the fact of, like, Oh, I didn't quite get what they, you
• 15:26
  know, what I was hoping for. Maybe I'll go back for another
• 15:28
  video and just keeping them watching for longer, because
• 15:32
  that means, you know, more minutes racked up on YouTube,
• 15:36
  which increases their, you know, viability for advertising?
• 15:41
  Scott Bourne: Well, I just like to put it like this, could you
• 15:44
  learn how to drive a big rig on YouTube?
• 15:48
  Casey Fatchett: Funny story I actually used to test video
• 15:53
  games, and one of them was a big rig simulator, simulator. It was
• 15:59
  the most boring thing in the world.
• 16:02
  Scott Bourne: You can get the concepts. You can learn a few
• 16:05
  things about what needs to happen, but you can't learn to
• 16:08
  fly an airplane or drive a big rig on YouTube. You have to
• 16:12
  actually spend time in the seat, unless, and I'll put it like
• 16:16
  this, if I'm going to let you on my road, you're going to have to
• 16:19
  spend actual time in the seat before I'm going to give you a
• 16:22
  license, exactly, and I'm going to fly in your plane. I want to
• 16:25
  make sure you've actually got some training and done this and
• 16:28
  you YouTube for photography. To me, it's just the same. I mean,
• 16:33
  there are people who argue with me about going to bolsco del
• 16:38
  Apache, for instance, which I've gone to now 38 years, I've been
• 16:42
  going to Bosque del Apache to photograph birds 38 years, and
• 16:46
  I've led, you know, sometimes three or four workshops a year.
• 16:50
  I've led more than 50 workshops there. I've spoken at the cranes
• 16:53
  festival multiple times. And then people will say, I saw this
• 16:57
  YouTube video, and they said, to do it like this and like, Have
• 17:00
  you ever been to Bosque Hill Apache? Well, no. Have you ever
• 17:04
  photographed sandhill cranes? Well, no, but so and so said,
• 17:08
  and I'm like, Okay, I just give up. I just completely give up
• 17:12
  because, you know, I'm doing pretty well financially based on
• 17:16
  what I've shot there. And I license that stuff. I have 4444
• 17:21
  images under license as we speak. And I'm arguing with a
• 17:25
  guy who's an expert because he watched a YouTube video. And
• 17:28
  this is the point at which the movie Idiocracy seems to have
• 17:32
  been misdirected as a comedy. It should have been a documentary.
• 17:37
  Yeah.
• 17:38
  Casey Fatchett: I mean, I feel like, I mean, there's a, I don't
• 17:43
  know there's a, definitely a disconnect. Because in the same
• 17:47
  way, I get lots of questions from people like, oh, how do I,
• 17:50
  you know, do this now? Like, okay, well, do we get into the
• 17:53
  concept of, like, you know, the lighting, or, you know, choosing
• 17:57
  to decide whether it's, you know, your shutter speed or your
• 18:00
  aperture, or whatever, or and they're like, no, just tell me,
• 18:03
  like, how to set up the lights, whatever. And I'm like, that is
• 18:06
  doing you a disservice. And I get and then I usually get
• 18:10
  called a gatekeeper at that point, yeah, I'm withholding
• 18:13
  knowledge by not just giving you the settings.
• 18:15
  Scott Bourne: You can't you can't win. You can't win. Give
• 18:18
  me your sharpening recipe,
• 18:20
  Casey Fatchett: yeah, just give me your presets and exactly how
• 18:24
  you do it.
• 18:25
  Scott Bourne: Oh, my God, that is the worst thing in the world.
• 18:27
  I mean, it's people say, Well, what? What were your settings
• 18:31
  for that picture? I'm like, unless you're going to be there
• 18:34
  on the same exact day, in the same exact wind, in the same
• 18:38
  exact weather, and the same exact sunrise and the same exact
• 18:41
  clouds and the same exact everything. My Settings are
• 18:44
  utterly irrelevant to you, right? Yeah, yeah. I can tell
• 18:48
  you the concept of maybe I want to shoot wide open and use a
• 18:53
  high shutter speed, if I want to freeze the wings on a bird, or
• 18:55
  maybe not too high, if I want a little movement. That's all you
• 18:58
  need to know about my settings. My exact settings are utterly
• 19:01
  worthless to you, because you will never be there at the same
• 19:05
  exact time and moment and day and circumstances as I was,
• 19:10
  because that day's past, right? And the next day and moment
• 19:13
  circumstance will be different. And this notion that you, you
• 19:18
  know, it all goes to, you know, I want to play golf. I'm gonna
• 19:21
  buy the same golf clubs Tiger Woods uses. And by golly, by
• 19:24
  next Wednesday, I'm hitting 300 yard drives, baby. You know,
• 19:28
  it's just not, it's just there's no makes no sense at all, but
• 19:32
  it's how this entire industry now works. It's like such and
• 19:36
  such a camera influencer has convinced you you need this
• 19:40
  camera. Six months from now, he gets a different sponsor, and
• 19:43
  he's going to tell you you need this camera instead. So you go
• 19:46
  tell your wife you need that, and pretty soon, you've got a
• 19:51
  bunch of people with a bunch of cool equipment in their cases,
• 19:54
  in their house, who never go take pictures, right? And I just
• 19:59
  find it. Very frustrating, and I apologize for being so blunt and
• 20:03
  direct. If I'm offending anybody, I certainly don't mean
• 20:05
  to. But, you know, I'm an old guy. I'm allowed to rant. Get
• 20:09
  off my lawn. It's, it's, I'm 70 years old. I've been at this
• 20:14
  since I was before I was, I say I've done it for 50 years. I
• 20:17
  actually started when I was 16. So 54 years I've been doing
• 20:21
  this, and I think, you know, I think I got some idea how it's
• 20:25
  supposed to work.
• 20:26
  Casey Fatchett: Yeah, I think that. And there's a if people
• 20:32
  really, truly want to learn. And I think that this is where we
• 20:35
  there's sort of a tipping point here. Is it somebody who's
• 20:40
  willing to put in the work. And it's something I talk about a
• 20:44
  lot. Do you want to have staying power in this? Do you want to
• 20:48
  continue doing this for a long time? Are you just looking to,
• 20:50
  like, short term and you just like, I want to, you know, start
• 20:55
  making money as soon as possible? Because I see it a lot
• 20:58
  in my industry, Mayor the industry, like weddings, I see a
• 21:01
  lot of people who do this for five years, and then all of and
• 21:02
  then all of a sudden they're a marketing expert, and they're
• 21:06
  going to teach all these marketing courses on how to,
• 21:09
  like, you know, how you can be completely booked every year
• 21:12
  and, you know, make six figures every year or whatever. And I'm
• 21:15
  like, Well, you know, if, why are you teaching so many
• 21:17
  courses? If you're so busy, as you know
• 21:21
  Scott Bourne: I did weddings for five years. I think that's about
• 21:23
  the average everyone's knees last but I will tell people, if
• 21:29
  you want to make a lot of money, that's where you make it.
• 21:31
  Because people aren't going to stop getting married and they
• 21:34
  want wedding pictures, and the bride's always going to show up.
• 21:36
  It's a lot easier than wildlife photography, because I can't
• 21:39
  email a bird and say, Would you please stand on this post while
• 21:42
  I make your picture? But you can tell the bride to be there and
• 21:45
  she'll show up. Now, the groom may not show up, but the bride
• 21:47
  will absolutely show up. I think weddings are I actually love
• 21:51
  shooting weddings when everything goes well and you
• 21:54
  know, everyone's in a good mood. You don't have three ex wives.
• 21:58
  Is the mother, and you don't have 15 you know, cousins who
• 22:02
  are not allowed to be anywhere near the bride, because they're
• 22:06
  all if he I mean, the stuff that I had to deal with, man, it
• 22:10
  just, it just made the money, not worth it. And you're, you're
• 22:13
  kind of describing the next thing that bugs me in the
• 22:15
  industry. It's like, it's like all these people that say how to
• 22:19
  get rich on YouTube, and how to get rich on YouTube is to create
• 22:22
  videos about how to get rich on YouTube. Exactly that old Ponzi
• 22:27
  scheme is what we're seeing. A lot of that in the industry.
• 22:30
  I'll teach you how to be a wedding photographer.
• 22:32
  Casey Fatchett: I'll teach you how to do this and like, why
• 22:34
  aren't you doing it exactly?
• 22:37
  Scott Bourne: Well, this is a very interesting point. The guys
• 22:39
  in the wedding industry that are really successful. I know most
• 22:43
  of them, for the bulk of their career, they did not teach
• 22:47
  because they were often simply too booked. And then as they get
• 22:51
  to the edge of their career, they do start to teach because
• 22:56
  they actually have a legitimate desire to help and give back,
• 23:00
  and they've made their money, and they don't want to do 50
• 23:02
  weddings anymore, right? They'd rather do 10 or 20, and they
• 23:06
  don't mind going out on the circuit. And if you do want to
• 23:08
  learn weddings, learn from Jerry giones, learn from Roberto
• 23:13
  Valenzuela, learn from these guys who who have done it. I've
• 23:17
  been to Jerry's house the he's got a room full of WPPI awards,
• 23:25
  and it looks like, you know, the Golden Globes office there are
• 23:29
  literally, there's, there's walls of them, and they're there
• 23:32
  for a reason. The guy's a genius, so learn from but, but
• 23:35
  you know what? You can take a video class from Jerry. But my
• 23:39
  strongest recommendation is he offers these one week boot
• 23:43
  camps. If you go take that class, in one week, you will
• 23:47
  learn enough to do a passable job at a wedding, and you will
• 23:52
  start yourself on a career that works. I do not believe you can
• 23:56
  learn how to be a wedding photographer on YouTube. I do
• 23:58
  believe you can get some tips, but you've got to go study with
• 24:02
  one of these people that does this every week and has for a
• 24:06
  long time, and who's been lauded as one of the greats, and who
• 24:10
  charges 25 grand for a wedding and gets it, because that's
• 24:14
  where you'll learn
• 24:15
  Casey Fatchett: yeah, because they know what they're doing.
• 24:16
  And there's, there's a they've I think that that's the reminds me
• 24:22
  of, I have a friend who I've known for like, 15 years now,
• 24:28
  maybe longer, who used to be a second shooter for me whenever
• 24:32
  it was trying to break into the New York wedding market on their
• 24:36
  own. And he said to me, he's like, I don't know, understand
• 24:38
  what's going on, you know, like, why I'm not getting any gigs?
• 24:42
  And I was like, Well, how many weddings have you actually shot?
• 24:44
  He was like, Well, I've done about five or 10, like, on my
• 24:47
  own. And I was like, Okay, I mean, that's not bad. And I'm
• 24:51
  like, let me take a look at your website. And then immediately I
• 24:53
  went to his website, and he was already at that point, charging,
• 24:55
  like, what I would consider high end money. You. In New York. And
• 25:00
  I said, Why did you choose this price point? I'm like, is that
• 25:03
  what you need to, you know, make ends meet? Is this like, cost of
• 25:07
  doing business? He's like, No, I just saw that. Like a bunch of
• 25:08
  the people that I saw in New York. And I was like, Well,
• 25:12
  you're not there yet. Like you, you haven't reached that level
• 25:17
  where you can, you know, like in all the people that you were
• 25:19
  looking at are, like, very high end. You know, good people to,
• 25:24
  like, take a look at what their market is and like, what they're
• 25:27
  putting out there for, for that, but like, also, you have not
• 25:30
  reached that. You know people who've been here for, you know,
• 25:33
  1520, years, and they've been at the top of the game for a very
• 25:37
  long time. What they're charging is not what you should be
• 25:39
  charging after having done five weddings. Yeah? It's sort of
• 25:45
  like people who want to jump in and be at the top.
• 25:50
  Scott Bourne: Listen, my dad had a saying, everybody wants to be
• 25:52
  a rock star. Nobody wants to take music lessons, yeah,
• 25:55
  practice. That's that's where we're at in the whole world
• 25:58
  right now. You know, YouTube makes people stars. Instagram
• 26:02
  makes people stars. They're 20 years old, have no real
• 26:05
  experience in anything, but they're pretty or they're smart,
• 26:08
  or they have a great man bun, and away they go. You know,
• 26:13
  Casey Fatchett: I mean, what advice do you have for
• 26:16
  photographers who are who, let's say, you know, even for me,
• 26:20
  yeah, I'm out here. I'm trying to, yeah, I've been doing this
• 26:23
  podcast for little over, like almost five years now. We've
• 26:28
  got, I've got a good following of people creating things for
• 26:33
  people that that are genuinely helpful, they or like, for
• 26:38
  people who are out there looking for someone. I mean, I noticed
• 26:40
  you mentioned Jerry and like going to to someone who's at the
• 26:44
  top of their game to learn from there. But what's your advice
• 26:49
  for our listeners? You know, they might not be looking for to
• 26:54
  get into wedding photography. What should they be looking for
• 26:58
  in the people that they are paying attention to, either on
• 27:01
  YouTube, on podcasts, somebody who's teaching a workshop.
• 27:09
  Scott Bourne: Well, my first advice is to look for people
• 27:16
  whose work you truly admire. If somebody takes pictures like I'm
• 27:23
  a bird photographer, if you like my bald eagle photos and you
• 27:26
  think that's the bomb, then I'm probably the guy to teach you
• 27:30
  how to do that. But if you think my bald eagle photos suck, don't
• 27:33
  listen to me, no matter how successful I am. Pick the kind
• 27:37
  of photographer that you want to be, look at the work that you
• 27:40
  see, that you want to do, and then, you know, investigate the
• 27:45
  opportunities to work with them and have them mentor you. Many
• 27:51
  people will mentor you. If you ask, I mentor people all the
• 27:54
  time. You have to pay a little bit, but there are people I've
• 27:56
  mentored for many years, and some of them have gone on to do
• 27:59
  great things because they listened to me. And you know,
• 28:02
  that's the other thing. If you ask for advice, be willing to
• 28:04
  accept it. But really, man, the biggest thing you can do, I'll
• 28:09
  tell you the secret to becoming great at photography in one
• 28:12
  year. Nobody wants to do this, but I've taught this for 30
• 28:17
  years, and the people who do do it all come to me and say, oh my
• 28:21
  god, I just I 10x to my game in 12 months. I can't believe it,
• 28:25
  and it doesn't involve spending a dime, not 110 not 110 cent
• 28:29
  piece. Look at lots of published pictures every day. The kind of
• 28:35
  pictures you want to take if you're a wedding photographer,
• 28:38
  look at bride magazine. Look at, you know, look at those kinds of
• 28:41
  things. If you're a pet photographer, look at Pet fancy.
• 28:44
  Look at cat and dog magazines. Look at books of that. Look at
• 28:48
  the pictures that are published in the ads for dog food of dogs.
• 28:53
  Because those were sold by a commercial photographer, they
• 28:56
  were licensed, and they might have made a lot more money off
• 28:59
  that one image, then you will sell in 100 prints. The money in
• 29:03
  this business is in licensing, by the way, it's not making
• 29:06
  prints the you know, just look at lots of published pictures.
• 29:11
  Because Stephen King, the great author, has a phrase he said, If
• 29:16
  you want to become a better writer, read that. Same thing
• 29:21
  applies in photography. If you want to become a better
• 29:23
  photographer, look at lots of published pictures. Now, when I
• 29:27
  say published, I don't mean on YouTube. I mean walk around
• 29:32
  downtown in any big city, get a notepad out and walk a four
• 29:36
  block area and count how many pictures you see on on bus
• 29:39
  stops, signs on in windows at stores, for displays, on
• 29:45
  billboards, you know, on on flat board signs, every one of those
• 29:50
  pictures was sold by somebody, yeah, and I started doing this
• 29:54
  when I was young, and I'd walk around go, Somebody sold that.
• 29:57
  Why wasn't it me? And, you know, I used. That to fuel my thing
• 30:01
  and also to get a sense of this is the standard doesn't matter
• 30:04
  what your opinion of the standard is. It matters what the
• 30:08
  buyer's opinion of the standard is. There's an old saying in
• 30:11
  this business beauty is in the eye of the checkbook holder, you
• 30:14
  know? So I don't, I don't really care what your buddies on
• 30:18
  youtube or twitter think of your photos. I care what the editor
• 30:22
  of the magazines you're trying to get into think, and that's
• 30:25
  all you should care about. And how can you know what they're
• 30:27
  looking for unless you're looking at the pictures they've
• 30:30
  published. So that's number one. Yeah. Comment on that.
• 30:33
  Casey Fatchett: I think that that's something I try to tell
• 30:36
  people all the time. And there's a reason I separate this, the
• 30:40
  nerdy photographer stuff completely from my photography
• 30:43
  work. I don't because they're two different audiences, like
• 30:46
  I'm you're not. There are too many people out there who are
• 30:49
  posting work or trying to impress other photographers
• 30:54
  instead of they're never gonna buy your pictures, right? The
• 30:57
  people who are gonna pay you money like your potential
• 31:01
  clients, people who are going to license your images, those are
• 31:05
  not the people like other photographers, are not the ones
• 31:07
  who are going to like give you a career.
• 31:10
  Scott Bourne: Yeah, I took this step further. I actually went to
• 31:15
  many different industry events to talk with photo editors, to
• 31:20
  sit down with them and say, you know, how many submissions do
• 31:23
  you get? A week? 50,000 okay, what helps images rise to the
• 31:27
  top? How many do you publish? 20. Okay, now we start to see
• 31:31
  what we're up against. How can I get my images? No, I just asked
• 31:35
  these questions. Okay, but it all starts with, you've got to
• 31:38
  look at and identify what success. The second thing I tell
• 31:42
  people to do is, I know it sounds boring, crazy and lame,
• 31:47
  but it absolutely works. Read your camera manual every day,
• 31:53
  without exception. I don't care if you're in the hospital, if
• 31:56
  you can read read a page in your camera manual every day, and
• 32:01
  handle your camera every day, pick it up and whatever the page
• 32:05
  you're on, if it says, Here's how to use rear real sync, rear
• 32:10
  curtain flash, and you say, I'll never need that. Bs, you may
• 32:15
  need it. Do what it says, go through the motions and do this
• 32:19
  every day, I recommend people change lenses, often not camera
• 32:23
  bodies. Keep the camera body for three or four or five years.
• 32:27
  They're anything made after 2016 is good enough to work
• 32:31
  commercially. I actually just picked up this little this
• 32:35
  little gym. This is a five or something year old Lumix GX
• 32:40
  nine. It's a spectacular camera. It was state of the art when it
• 32:45
  came out. It was flagship. This camera is good enough to produce
• 32:48
  commercial work, and it cost me 700 bucks.
• 32:52
  Casey Fatchett: There's amazing there's a lot of great cameras.
• 32:55
  Scott Bourne: So pick a camera you like. Read the manual every
• 32:58
  single day. Once you get through it, go back and start. And you
• 33:01
  don't even have to start on page one, pick a random page, just
• 33:04
  start on read from there, catch up, and then do it again. If you
• 33:08
  do that every day, what will happen is your camera will
• 33:11
  become an extension of your fingertips, and you will no
• 33:14
  longer think about it at all. And that's what we want, right?
• 33:17
  Because the real business is all up here, not down here, so you
• 33:22
  got to get your eyes working. And you don't have time to get
• 33:25
  your eyes working if you're worrying about how to set your
• 33:27
  aperture. So get that to where it's just secondhand. And by the
• 33:31
  way, this makes people mad when I say this, but have all your
• 33:34
  backup bodies be the same as your main body. Yeah, your
• 33:37
  muscle memory is going to have to be the same if you have to
• 33:40
  pick one up, and you're going to be totally screwed if you've
• 33:42
  never used that camera. So you need two of whatever you're
• 33:46
  using, minimum.
• 33:48
  Casey Fatchett: I recently, not recently, so recent, over a
• 33:55
  year, switched to mirrorless. First of all, there's so many
• 34:00
  people who will like, oh, you're a dinosaur if you're still using
• 34:05
  a DSLR and I'm like, I have film cameras that produce amazing
• 34:09
  images, like DSLRs can, you know, still produce great
• 34:13
  photos. But I bought my first mirrorless camera at a time when
• 34:20
  I knew that I wasn't going to be working as much because I was
• 34:22
  like, I really want to take the time to familiarize myself with
• 34:27
  all of the this is a new layout, like, of buttons and everything,
• 34:31
  and I want to take the time to be able to like, so that when I
• 34:33
  do go to a wedding, I'm going to pick that thing up and I'm going
• 34:36
  to be able to like. It's going to be second nature again, you
• 34:39
  know, because the button layout was completely different. Even
• 34:43
  though it's the same manufacturer, Canon, I was just
• 34:46
  like, wow, you moved the things around enough that it my fingers
• 34:51
  did not we're not in the same places, so I had to, it took me
• 34:55
  about a month to get back up to speed,
• 34:59
  Scott Bourne: unless your photographing Mountains that
• 35:01
  don't ever move muscle. Memory is a big deal in photography,
• 35:04
  and if you're a wedding photographer, and you tell the
• 35:08
  bride and the groom to walk out on this grassy knoll by a pond
• 35:11
  so you can get a nice moment with them. And then you're
• 35:14
  taking shots, and then you you can't remember you want to. You
• 35:18
  decide you want more depth of field. You look down, and you do
• 35:22
  this. And that's the precise moment at which he bends over
• 35:25
  and strains her garter for and then he stands up, and you look
• 35:29
  up and you missed it, because you were messing with your
• 35:32
  aperture, right? This kind of thing drives me nuts. If you
• 35:35
  just know the camera you should be able when I was in the army,
• 35:39
  they taught us how to field strip our weapons in the dark.
• 35:42
  And at the moment, I thought it was stupid, until I got into a
• 35:46
  situation when I needed to know how to field strip my weapon in
• 35:49
  the dark. So I like to treat my cameras like they're an M 16.
• 35:53
  And I want to make sure that I can operate that puppy in the
• 35:57
  dark. I know where everything is, so I practice with it. And
• 36:00
  that gets me to my third and final thing. Remember, none of
• 36:03
  these things has cost you any money so far. You can look at
• 36:07
  images for free. You can look at your camera manual on the camera
• 36:11
  that you own today is just fine for free. The last thing is,
• 36:14
  take at least one photograph every day, without exception.
• 36:18
  Take that camera out of the bag, take the lens cap off, turn it
• 36:21
  on, make sure the memory card the battery in there and make a
• 36:25
  photograph. I don't care if it's of a beer can on the back porch.
• 36:29
  Make a photograph at least one every day. I don't care if it's
• 36:32
  raining. I don't care if you're in a hurricane. I don't care if
• 36:36
  you're sick. I don't care if you're busy. I don't care if
• 36:39
  your kids got to play. You got time to make one photograph.
• 36:43
  Now, if you do this every day, that means you'll have made at
• 36:46
  least 365, photographs in the year. You don't want to be what
• 36:50
  I call a workshop photographer. I meet these people all the
• 36:53
  time. They come on my workshops. They got a brand new camera.
• 36:57
  They haven't used it in three months, and they're asking me
• 37:00
  question, now, how do I put the battery in again? These issues
• 37:04
  should be solved long ago, and so they only handle their their
• 37:07
  camera when they're out on a workshop or on vacation, and
• 37:11
  they're never good with it because of that. If you handle
• 37:14
  it every day, if you're using that read a page in the manual
• 37:17
  every day, and if you're looking at published pictures every day,
• 37:21
  wherever you are today, when you start this process one year from
• 37:25
  now, you will be a monster. You will be 10x the photographer you
• 37:29
  are today. And you'll you can easily go up what I call the 10
• 37:32
  ring ladder. There's there's 1010, rungs to the ladder ring
• 37:36
  to be a master photographer, the first nine are attainable in one
• 37:39
  to three years. To get from nine to 10 takes 50 years, but the
• 37:43
  first nine can be learned very quickly, and if you do the
• 37:46
  things I just told you to do religiously, without exception,
• 37:50
  without excuse, and you really apply yourself, and you say, I'm
• 37:54
  going to allow myself 15 stinking minutes a day no matter
• 37:57
  what, to look at pictures, read a page in my manual, do the
• 38:00
  thing it talks about, and take a photo. I swear I will, I will on
• 38:04
  my, my mother's grave. You will be 10x the photographer you are
• 38:08
  today in just one year. And a very small percentage of my
• 38:11
  students actually take me up on this, but the ones who have have
• 38:15
  all universally told me, and I mean, I've probably taught
• 38:18
  30,000 people how to make pictures. So you know, probably
• 38:21
  3% 4% 5% that have actually done this have all told me, Oh my
• 38:25
  God, it's the best thing I've ever learned, and it doesn't
• 38:28
  cost any money, and you don't have to subscribe to my YouTube
• 38:32
  channel, and you don't have to click on any advertiser
• 38:35
  sponsored links or click the bell to make me happy, all you
• 38:39
  have to do is just take my advice.
• 38:41
  Casey Fatchett: Yeah I think that the the all like the, I
• 38:43
  mean, looking at pictures, understanding the market that
• 38:47
  you're in, where you what the people who are buying photos and
• 38:50
  licensing photos, understanding that that's like when you're
• 38:54
  talking about making money in this industry, you need to know
• 38:58
  what people are interested in you figuring out your market is,
• 39:02
  like, you know, one of the most important things to do second
• 39:05
  like, you're talking about, like, understanding your
• 39:09
  equipment. I think, I mean, I always joke. My grandfather used
• 39:13
  to say, you know, instruction manuals are for people who don't
• 39:16
  know what they're doing. He just, see, just toss them
• 39:20
  wherever. Like, I mean, as soon as he got one, he just, like,
• 39:23
  throw it away. Like, throw it away. Like, yeah, I know what
• 39:27
  I'm doing, but you, like you said, you learn things. You
• 39:31
  understand your camera better to like what it's capable of.
• 39:34
  Because there was a while, like, I was afraid of flash when I was
• 39:38
  starting out, and just didn't quite get how to, how, what, how
• 39:42
  to use a flash, and what I was doing it. But then I, like, sat
• 39:46
  down, and I'm like, Okay, I'm gonna figure this out. I'm gonna
• 39:50
  and I did that exact thing every day. I was learning something
• 39:54
  new about my flash. And I learned, like, stroboscopic
• 39:57
  flash, which is kind of difficult I was in. I was taking
• 40:00
  fencing classes of the time. Time, and I was just like, I had
• 40:04
  my friends and fencing class. I'm like, I'm just gonna test
• 40:08
  this out and try it to see if I can, like, make this work so
• 40:11
  that. But, like, I have never used it since, but I know how to
• 40:15
  do it. I figured out how to how to do it. And just like, the in
• 40:19
  taking pictures, taking pictures, it's just, it's
• 40:22
  especially with digital, doesn't cost you anything. You don't,
• 40:26
  you don't have to do anything. You just like, take pictures
• 40:30
  like, that's, that's, it's so simple. And you become you just
• 40:33
  the like, you look at your stuff. I look back at like, I
• 40:37
  went to a Vivian Mayer exhibition earlier in the year
• 40:40
  and thinking like that. She never really looked at a lot of
• 40:44
  those photos that she took blows my mind, because I learned so
• 40:48
  much from seeing, you know, my images, and going like, oh,
• 40:51
  okay, I remember what I did there and what I don't want to
• 40:55
  do next time going out and taking the pictures like you
• 40:58
  said, it's just, it's so Simple and helps you, like, volumes
• 41:02
  just the amount of of knowledge that you get just from going out
• 41:06
  and taking a picture a day and being intentional about it,
• 41:10
  Scott Bourne: yeah, you hit the nail on the head. Like I hear a
• 41:14
  lot of people say, Well, I'm a natural light photographer, but
• 41:17
  what I hear back is, I'm afraid to learn flash. And there that
• 41:22
  now flash is something, frankly, that you probably can learn a
• 41:25
  lot about on YouTube, because if you've got all this other stuff,
• 41:29
  is your core knowledge. You're just learning some techniques.
• 41:32
  But there's some you know, David hobby, Joe McNally, Bobby Lane,
• 41:37
  the mistress of light, Tony Korbel, Clay Blackmore, go find
• 41:43
  any of these five people's things on YouTube. They all know
• 41:47
  more about light than you know about anything in your life.
• 41:51
  These people have mastered like Tony Korbel can show you how to
• 41:55
  make 24 different portraits with one light. And you know, he's a
• 42:00
  master. He's photographed every head of state in the world. You
• 42:03
  know, Clay Blackmore worked with the great Monty Zucker when he
• 42:07
  was young, and has got a wedding and portrait business that makes
• 42:11
  him big dinero. He's, he's this. Can explore of light. He knows
• 42:16
  everything. Bobby lane, she's the mistress of like she works
• 42:19
  with Fuji. She's, she's done that. She's done it all. All of
• 42:22
  these people can teach you, like crazy stuff about light that can
• 42:27
  give you some ideas that you can then in your one photo a day,
• 42:31
  practice if you master light, if you do understand the difference
• 42:35
  between broad lighting, short lighting, butterfly lighting,
• 42:39
  Rembrandt lighting, split lighting, etc. You know more
• 42:42
  about that than probably 95% of the photographers in your
• 42:46
  market. And you'll be able to smoke them when it comes to
• 42:50
  results, because they, at best, are pretending. And you know
• 42:53
  what you're doing if you follow my, my advice this. This game is
• 42:57
  simple. It involves putting a camera in your hand, taking
• 43:00
  pictures, not talking about it, dreaming about it, thinking
• 43:03
  about it, wishing about it, just doing it. That'll make you the
• 43:06
  best photographer you can be. And every day that you sit on
• 43:09
  your couch and say, but what about but? What about this? But,
• 43:14
  well, I don't have the right lens or but, but I don't have
• 43:17
  the right market. That's all just a crutch you've created for
• 43:21
  yourself to give you an excuse to sit on the couch, which is
• 43:24
  much easier than getting up and trying something. But the
• 43:27
  problem for everybody who's listening today is that, you
• 43:31
  know, I'm 70 years old. I swear to God, I was 25 years old 15
• 43:35
  minutes ago. The time flies, dude, it flies fast. You're
• 43:39
  going to turn around in 15 minutes and be an old man like
• 43:42
  me and go, Where did all that time go? And then you're going
• 43:45
  to be out of time. So do it now, while you have the chance, if
• 43:49
  you're passionate enough about photography to listen to this
• 43:51
  show, well, get off the couch. Just get off the couch. You
• 43:55
  know, I'll help you any way I can, and I'm sure, I'm sure that
• 43:59
  everyone that's listening, needs help, will help you, but it
• 44:03
  involves you doing something right, and not staring at
• 44:07
  YouTube.
• 44:07
  Casey Fatchett: It involves like, putting in the effort. I
• 44:11
  think
• 44:11
  Scott Bourne: you said that early on in the show, effort is
• 44:14
  a big deal.
• 44:15
  Casey Fatchett: Yeah, you don't just get to like, like you, you
• 44:18
  had mentioned like, you know, oh, I've got the latest and
• 44:19
  greatest camera, and now that's going to do everything. That's
• 44:22
  going to be the magic bullet that makes my photography Well,
• 44:25
  none you don't know how to use it, and if you don't know how to
• 44:31
  understand it and create your vision for things. And I think
• 44:35
  that that's one of the things that I find a lot of people
• 44:41
  recently. Last 10 years, whatever, there's been more and
• 44:44
  more people are just like, I just want to create a photo that
• 44:47
  looks like that, like, well, find your voice. It might be
• 44:52
  similar. It might sound it might be an echo of something you saw
• 44:55
  somewhere else, or, you know, like, but like finding your own
• 44:58
  thing and like deciding yourself. If, instead of like,
• 45:00
  going out like, I'm just gonna recreate these images that I saw
• 45:03
  somebody else do, and that involves getting up, getting out
• 45:07
  there, and being like, okay with like, the pictures that you
• 45:11
  take. And you know, it's like, this is my this is my vision of
• 45:17
  this. You brought up something that in mentioning all of those
• 45:22
  people, they're ambassadors for various camera companies or
• 45:30
  lighting companies. You've been an ambassador
• 45:34
  Scott Bourne: I was an ambassador for Olympus for
• 45:36
  nearly five years, until J IP bought the company and Olympus
• 45:40
  sold out. Then, then then at that point in time, I resigned. What?
• 45:45
  Casey Fatchett: What is that experience like? I'm curious.
• 45:47
  I've never been a an ambassador.
• 45:52
  Scott Bourne: First of all, it's just, it's the greatest honor in
• 45:54
  the world. I mean, there's a handful of photographers who are
• 45:58
  asked to be spoke people, mainline spokespeople for a
• 46:02
  camera brand. So, you know, when, when that happened to me?
• 46:04
  I thought, wow, this is, you know, I've made a lot of money
• 46:07
  in this business, but this might be bigger because it's, it's
• 46:10
  important recognition. So I was grateful. And it was really
• 46:14
  fantastic, you know, until it wasn't it just, it was great,
• 46:18
  until Olympus decided to sell the company, and had they not
• 46:22
  sold it, I'd probably still be there. But, you know, I got to
• 46:25
  have I got to hang out. I figured I was always the least
• 46:28
  talented of the ambassadors. I got to hang out with two
• 46:31
  Pulitzer Prize winners on that team. I got to travel the world
• 46:36
  on Olympus dime. That wasn't bad, people. I was shooting
• 46:41
  cannon before I switched. I had five canon one DX Mark twos. In
• 46:45
  fact, I had an 800 600 500 400 300 millimeter lens paired to
• 46:50
  each of those. And problem was, I've had a bunch of shoulder
• 46:54
  surgeries because I've spent my career trucking around with
• 46:57
  these big, giant lenses. Long before they were carbon fiber
• 47:01
  tripods carrying 3040, 50 pounds on my shoulder, up and down
• 47:05
  mountains, looking for birds. And I've had 11 shoulder
• 47:09
  surgeries. In the 11th one, my doc said, you know, I can't fix
• 47:13
  this anymore. He said you may go paralyzed on your entire right
• 47:17
  side of your body if it breaks again. So try to keep what you
• 47:21
  lift to 10 pounds. I was like, oh, man, I'm done. And then I
• 47:24
  found Olympus, and I bought, with my own money, a full
• 47:28
  Olympus kit. Took it to Alaska, photographed all the Eagles. I
• 47:32
  was able to get great stuff. I said, boom, this is it. Sold all
• 47:35
  the cannon gear. Luckily, two of my lenses bought me everything
• 47:39
  Olympus made because it's so much more expensive. And then
• 47:44
  Olympus called me and made me ambassador. And all these people
• 47:46
  were saying, Oh, you just switch because they paid you. I'm like,
• 47:48
  I wish that were true. I spent $25,000 of my own money to get
• 47:52
  this gear, and then they hired me. But it pays pretty well if
• 47:56
  you do. I mean, the way people each camera company does it
• 48:00
  differently, but people get compensated for a variety of
• 48:02
  things, how many speeches they give, and most importantly,
• 48:06
  Olympus paid me to license my images. So they don't get them
• 48:10
  for free just because I'm a visionary, right? They give you
• 48:13
  a stipend every year, which is, you know, some little money. And
• 48:16
  then if the additional money comes, if they use your images,
• 48:20
  so they will say, hey, we want to use your image in AD. We're
• 48:24
  in this magazine. You got paid, right? And the best thing they
• 48:28
  did was they asked me to write a book on bird photography tips,
• 48:32
  and they gave a copy of that book. They gave copies of that
• 48:36
  book away in every camera store in North America and eventually
• 48:39
  the world. And I got paid pretty good on that one. But more
• 48:41
  importantly, I got to hang out with the engineers at Olympus,
• 48:44
  give them advice. I got to have a lot of input into the
• 48:47
  development of the 150 to 400 lens, which I'm pretty proud of,
• 48:50
  because it's the most expensive micro 4/3 lens ever built, and
• 48:53
  it was three years back ordered, so popular. I got to, I got to
• 48:58
  go places, see people, meet people. I got to go to, you
• 49:01
  know, Hong Kong, all kinds of cool places. So, yeah, it's,
• 49:05
  it's a pretty sweet gig. And everybody asks me, well, how do
• 49:07
  you get to become an ambassador? And it's bad news is, well,
• 49:11
  there's nothing you can do. They'll call you if they're
• 49:13
  interested,
• 49:14
  Casey Fatchett: right there. People will contact you if they
• 49:16
  want to.
• 49:17
  Scott Bourne: There's nothing you can do to make yourself an
• 49:19
  ambassador. They'll, they'll find you and say, Hey, you but
• 49:24
  you know the sad truth of that is, I'd say if you have a
• 49:29
  million YouTube followers, it's likely you'll get that call. It
• 49:32
  doesn't matter if you're any good at photography at all. It
• 49:36
  matters if you have a million YouTube followers and if you're
• 49:39
  young. Because frankly, and I'm not saying this about Olympus.
• 49:41
  I'm not going to say anything about any specific company, but
• 49:44
  a lot of the camera companies are firing their older
• 49:47
  ambassadors because they figure, well, they're not as relevant as
• 49:50
  they used to be, and we want young people. And I'm thinking,
• 49:53
  Well, you know, it's old guys that got the money to buy 800
• 49:56
  millimeter lenses, not 20 year olds, but okay, it's. It's, you
• 50:00
  know, it's, it's changing, but it's, it's it, you actually were
• 50:05
  starting to see a couple of the companies have done away with
• 50:09
  official ambassadors. I believe Fuji and Sony both are at least
• 50:15
  modified. They have some that are still on the list, but they
• 50:18
  aren't really. They're changing how those programs work. It's
• 50:23
  not the way it used to be. Nikon and Canon still have basically
• 50:28
  the same programs that they've always had, but they're thinning
• 50:31
  them down a little bit. Om systems, the new Olympus has a
• 50:35
  few young ambassadors. I don't think they have anybody older
• 50:39
  than 25 you know, it's, it's a great gig, if you can get it.
• 50:45
  I'll put it like this, but it's like, it's like being an NFL
• 50:48
  quarterback. There's very few of them in the world, right?
• 50:51
  Casey Fatchett: There's a very few people who compete at that
• 50:54
  level. Shall we say?
• 50:55
  Scott Bourne: Yeah, my advice is, don't aspire to be one of
• 50:57
  those. Just aspire to be a working professional that you
• 51:00
  can support your family with the money you make. Yeah, that,
• 51:03
  right, there is a big win, because it means you get to do
• 51:05
  job that you're fulfilled and happy in.
• 51:08
  Casey Fatchett: That's, I mean, I always laugh, because I'll
• 51:10
  have people who, like, I said, I don't this whole channel of
• 51:16
  things from the nerdy photographer is more designed to
• 51:20
  help other people out and, like, laugh at, you know, silly stuff
• 51:23
  in our industry. And I'll sometimes a lot of people are
• 51:25
  going, Oh, you're not a real photographer. And I'm like,
• 51:27
  Well, I've been doing this for 25 years, and I've supported
• 51:30
  myself and my family through it. I'd consider that real.
• 51:34
  Scott Bourne: You know, first rule of this is, now everybody's
• 51:38
  a troll, so I just block them. Yeah.
• 51:40
  Casey Fatchett: I mean, it was funny because I was fairly self
• 51:46
  conscious about myself, and like you said before, I have a face
• 51:49
  for radio, I just didn't, I don't like being in front of the
• 51:53
  camera that much, but it actually made me more interested
• 51:58
  in like I'm gonna do, I'm gonna be in front of the camera more,
• 52:01
  because it pushed me in that sense of like, yeah, to hell
• 52:04
  with those guys. It's the people who are just out there to speak
• 52:08
  negatively and whatever, get mad at somebody else who's trying to
• 52:13
  help people.
• 52:14
  Scott Bourne: Trust me, I before Twitter got sold to Elon Musk
• 52:17
  and became a haven for Nazis, I had 250,000 Twitter followers,
• 52:22
  which ain't bad if you're a fat, ugly old man. I mean, you know,
• 52:26
  if you're a pretty young woman, that's easier to attain, but if
• 52:29
  you're me, it was tough, but I walked away from it, but, but
• 52:32
  during that time, probably 2000 of those people were full time
• 52:36
  trolls. And, I mean, they spent all day attacking me, making up
• 52:40
  stories about me, spreading lies about me, and I learned to just
• 52:44
  I just blocked them and ignored it. And you can't control
• 52:47
  anything outside your own sphere, what you do. And those
• 52:52
  people are unhappy, and I feel sad for them, but it doesn't
• 52:54
  change the fact that every night, when I'm done, I feel
• 52:59
  good about what I've accomplished, and I've been able
• 53:04
  to amass fair amount of money and travel the world and meet
• 53:09
  princes and kings and rock stars and race car drivers and movie
• 53:13
  stars and and do anything I want with this job. And I've been
• 53:18
  able to impact people, and people have told me how my
• 53:22
  images have impacted them, and I hear stories about them. My most
• 53:26
  famous picture cranes in the fire mist. I still get email
• 53:29
  about that every day, and I made that picture many years ago.
• 53:34
  Hey,
• 53:38
  Casey Fatchett: you made me think about something that
• 53:40
  you've had a very extensive career. What like motivates you
• 53:45
  to continue pursuing new projects at this point?
• 53:49
  Scott Bourne: Well, I'm not pursuing much in the way of new
• 53:51
  projects. I, I'm I'm just sharing knowledge. Yeah, I, I
• 53:56
  don't mind sharing knowledge because I, I sort of feel like
• 53:59
  this. You know, Steve Jobs gave a speech towards the end of his
• 54:02
  life where he talked about the gift of mortality, and it was
• 54:08
  very poignant, because he knew he was dying, and he said Being
• 54:12
  Mortal was a real gift, and I'll tell you why. If we were
• 54:15
  immortal, we would never have any incentive to do anything
• 54:21
  right now, we'd say, Oh, I'll learn to play guitar in 50,000
• 54:25
  years. Because, you know, I've got all the time in the world. I
• 54:28
  don't need to learn that now. And we'd put everything off.
• 54:31
  There'd be no urgency. The fact that we have a finite period
• 54:34
  here for men in the United States. It's around 73 years. I
• 54:39
  don't have on to go. So I'm the tall tree in the forest. The way
• 54:44
  it works, tall trees in the forest need to fall so the
• 54:47
  shorter trees in the forest can get some sunlight. So I sort of
• 54:51
  see my role now is trying to empower others so that they can
• 54:55
  grow up and get their sunlight and then try to keep my name
• 54:59
  alive after. I'm dead, there's a Mexican saying is, you don't
• 55:02
  really die until nobody says your name. So I'm trying to keep
• 55:06
  myself alive that way. I don't have any kids. So I spent my
• 55:10
  whole career on the road, 300 days a year shooting no time for
• 55:14
  children in that situation. So my progeny is my work and my
• 55:17
  teaching. The 14 books I've done, the 1200 workshops I've
• 55:23
  led, the 4000 podcasts I've been on, the 5000 how to articles
• 55:29
  I've written. That's my progeny. And I do that once in a while,
• 55:33
  if I feel like I can help someone. But to be honest, I
• 55:36
  don't do a lot of it because I just don't, I don't think I have
• 55:39
  the influence or the audience that I used to and people would
• 55:42
  rather hear something from someone young, and I understand
• 55:44
  that. So I I help when I'm asked and and, you know, I'm writing a
• 55:49
  couple of books for fun, and not because I want to make any
• 55:53
  money, and I'm just trying to, I just, my whole life has been
• 55:57
  working. I've been working since I was 14 years old. So it's
• 56:00
  actually being retired is very tough because I don't quite know
• 56:04
  what to do with myself. I have this great TV room I built in my
• 56:07
  house with, like, state of the art sound systems. I mean, it
• 56:11
  cost me six figures. It's a bunch of money, and I turned it
• 56:14
  on maybe a couple times a month to watch Seahawks football. And
• 56:17
  now that I'm retired, I'm like, Oh, I get to watch Game of
• 56:20
  Thrones, and I I start to, like, be able to participate in normal
• 56:24
  conversations with people, because I know what their life
• 56:27
  is, what they're talking about. Before this, I had no idea I was
• 56:30
  just working. So it's kind of fun.
• 56:33
  Casey Fatchett: So I think this is, like, a good question to
• 56:36
  sort of like, start wrapping things up. You've seen a lot of
• 56:42
  trends come and go over your time as a photographer. What is
• 56:48
  your advice? I also want to say, like, Listen, I'm getting to be
• 56:54
  the old man as well. And there's, there's still lots to
• 56:57
  learn from, from you, from from people out there who have a lot
• 57:02
  of experience. Hopefully I can help people along the way. What
• 57:11
  is your advice to people who want to try to stay true to
• 57:14
  themselves in an industry that's constantly changing and you're
• 57:21
  the, oh, you got to do video now. You gotta be a content
• 57:24
  creator as well as a photographer. All these other
• 57:26
  things going on. What is your advice?
• 57:30
  Scott Bourne: It depends a lot on on a couple of things. It
• 57:33
  depends on your goals, depends on your audience in the business
• 57:37
  side of of of this, the number one success point starts with
• 57:42
  knowing who your audience is. If you're selling dog pictures,
• 57:46
  you're not going to get any of them published in Cat Fancy
• 57:49
  magazine. That's the wrong audience. So you got to know
• 57:53
  your audience, and you got to know your goals. Not everybody
• 57:56
  wants to make a living in photography. They just want to
• 57:58
  be good at it, or maybe their goal is to win a single contest
• 58:02
  or be published just once. And you know, I'd say, if those are
• 58:06
  your goals, then do whatever you have to achieve them. If you
• 58:10
  have long term goals about I think, I mean, the reason I'm in
• 58:14
  photography is I want to speak for my subjects, because they
• 58:18
  usually can't speak for themselves, their wildlife, and
• 58:22
  I want to protect them and do things to help people conserve
• 58:24
  them. So I have this that is my ultimate goal. I don't care what
• 58:29
  trends are at all, because they don't impact my goal. And I
• 58:33
  think people that follow trends get sucked into something that
• 58:36
  eats them up, because soon as that trend goes away, and
• 58:39
  believe me, at will. Now that's what you're known for, and
• 58:43
  there's a new trend, and you're not going to get known for that.
• 58:46
  No one's going to believe you, because they're going to see
• 58:49
  what you've done. And that's your Trend, if you conversely,
• 58:53
  if you just go with your heart, this is all very ethereal and
• 58:57
  difficult for newbies, especially to get but if you can
• 59:01
  feel your way to a photograph, as opposed to trying to copy,
• 59:05
  duplicate, replicate, but actually just your what is it
• 59:10
  that you feel standing at that spot with that subject? Share
• 59:14
  that with us. If you can do that, then you can have a long
• 59:17
  career at whatever your goal is. I think trends will mess you up
• 59:22
  most the time, unless your goal is strictly I want to make as
• 59:25
  much money in a short period of time as I can. So the current
• 59:28
  trend might be lots of lens flare or lots of bouquet or then
• 59:33
  go with that, because that'll get you paid. But you know, it
• 59:37
  doesn't really mean anything today. Everybody's big thing is,
• 59:41
  oh, I want a 1.0 lens, because I want that beautiful bouquet. And
• 59:46
  I looked at life and look magazines. These are two
• 59:48
  magazines that no longer exist most your audience had never
• 59:51
  heard of but they were the pinnacle of photo publication
• 59:54
  for a couple of decades, and the photographs that were published
• 59:58
  in them were all shot at f8 right? Or, and there was no
• 1:00:01
  bouquet, yeah, and, and, and, you know, the whole background
• 1:00:04
  was in focus. And these were the both. These are the best. These
• 1:00:07
  are the pictures hanging in in museums right now. Not the
• 1:00:10
  beautiful bouquet, and not how well, how round are the bokeh
• 1:00:14
  ball? Yes, and that kind of crap. It was all in focus, yeah.
• 1:00:19
  So, you know, Vivian Meyer wasn't shooting for bocage. He
• 1:00:22
  was shooting to tell stories. So I think trends can blow you up
• 1:00:27
  and and, and they're fun and cool, but if you feel like you
• 1:00:30
  need a project, but I think you're much better off. This is,
• 1:00:34
  this is the greatest thing about photography, is it's a single
• 1:00:37
  pursuit. I used to work with, do some work with Leonard Nimoy,
• 1:00:40
  the guy that played Spock in Star Trek. I helped him build
• 1:00:43
  his first ever website. Turns out, he was a spectacular
• 1:00:46
  photographer. He did fine art nudes, and he was Jewish, so he
• 1:00:50
  used this. He did this with this stuff called Jewish mysticism.
• 1:00:55
  And the pictures were all of beautiful women, but their faces
• 1:00:59
  were always covered. It's very elaborate, very detailed work.
• 1:01:03
  And I asked him what it was that drew him to photography, versus
• 1:01:06
  his work on like motion pictures. And he said, When I'm
• 1:01:10
  on a motion picture, there may be 300 people involved in making
• 1:01:13
  that final product. I'm but a tiny cog in that big wheel, but
• 1:01:18
  when I'm behind a camera, it's just me, and this is I own all
• 1:01:22
  that real estate, right? And I tell people this all the time.
• 1:01:26
  You know whatever format you're shooting, if it's 24 by 36
• 1:01:29
  millimeters, every one of those belongs to you. Nobody can tell
• 1:01:32
  you what to put there. Nobody can tell you what not to put
• 1:01:35
  there. It's all you baby. So show us something. This is your
• 1:01:39
  chance to show us who you are. Speak to us. It's the difference
• 1:01:43
  between a musician who simply plays all the notes in a
• 1:01:47
  composition with no no kind of inflection point. They just play
• 1:01:50
  them all the same length, the same volume, the same
• 1:01:54
  tonalities. That versus music is the space between the notes and
• 1:02:03
  real photography is the space where you tell us how you feel,
• 1:02:08
  not duplicating some trend. I know that's a very heady answer,
• 1:02:12
  but I can't help it. It's the only one I got.
• 1:02:14
  Casey Fatchett: Well, I am 100% there with you.
• 1:02:24
  Hey, photographers, are you tired of using the same stale
• 1:02:27
  poses with your clients, resulting in stiff and unnatural
• 1:02:30
  photos? Consider using, let's be real prompts instead. Prompts
• 1:02:34
  are not just a list of poses. They're designed to help you
• 1:02:37
  create a more engaging, fun environment for your photo
• 1:02:39
  subjects, resulting in more natural and authentic images
• 1:02:42
  with nerdy photographers, let's be real. Prompts, you'll have a
• 1:02:45
  unique set of prompts for couples, weddings, families and
• 1:02:48
  individuals, ensuring that you never run out of ideas. Prompts
• 1:02:51
  are particularly helpful for clients who are nervous or self
• 1:02:55
  conscious about having their picture taken. By giving them
• 1:02:57
  something else to focus on, they can become more relaxed, and
• 1:03:00
  their reactions will be more authentic and less guarded.
• 1:03:03
  Using let's be real prompts will not only help you create more
• 1:03:06
  fresh and dynamic images, but it will also increase your
• 1:03:09
  confidence and your clients confidence in you. You'll be
• 1:03:12
  able to handle difficult situations and subjects with
• 1:03:15
  ease, resulting in more satisfied clients and a stronger
• 1:03:18
  photography business. So start using, let's be real, prompts
• 1:03:22
  from the nerdy photographer today, and elevate your
• 1:03:25
  photography to the next level. Go to nerdy photographer.com and
• 1:03:28
  go to our store, or click the link in the Episode Notes, and
• 1:03:30
  get started creating authentic, engaging images today.
• 1:03:41
  Unknown: Hey, now for my favorite part of the show,
• 1:03:46
  what's that? Say? Useless information.
• 1:03:50
  Casey Fatchett: This is always death. I think that we're ready
• 1:03:55
  for our useless information for this episode, Scott, do you
• 1:04:01
  remember the Alamo I do. Do you know who the biggest supporter
• 1:04:07
  of the Alamo Museum is?
• 1:04:09
  Scott Bourne: I have no clue.
• 1:04:10
  Casey Fatchett: Phil Collins. Phil Collins. Phil Collins has
• 1:04:14
  given millions of dollars over the years. And
• 1:04:17
  Scott Bourne: the British musician,
• 1:04:18
  Casey Fatchett: yes, yes. Phil Collins.
• 1:04:21
  Scott Bourne: Phil Collins of gentle giant fame, of Genesis
• 1:04:24
  Casey Fatchett: and yeah, Phil Collins has bought numerous
• 1:04:29
  antiquities related to the Alamo over the years and donated them
• 1:04:35
  to the Alamo Museum. He does the voiceover at the Alamein museum
• 1:04:41
  for like, the walking like the tour, that's crazy.
• 1:04:48
  Scott Bourne: I don't think that's useless. I think that
• 1:04:49
  might be useful. I could be on Jeopardy, and someone would ask
• 1:04:52
  me that question. It might make me some money.
• 1:04:54
  Casey Fatchett: See, that's what I tell my wife. She says it's
• 1:04:56
  all this trivial knowledge that I have. I should be on a game
• 1:04:58
  show of some kind. But, like. It's these are the things that
• 1:05:01
  the things we learned. Scott, thank you so much for being on
• 1:05:04
  the show. I really, really, truly appreciate it. Where can
• 1:05:08
  people find you? If they want to find you?
• 1:05:11
  Scott Bourne: I'm on threads. I'm no longer on Twitter, and
• 1:05:15
  threads has an incredibly thriving photo community, not as
• 1:05:20
  big as Twitter, but it's much more impactful, much higher
• 1:05:23
  engagement. It's threads.net if you don't have a count there,
• 1:05:27
  it's free. And I am born dot Scott on threads. And then I
• 1:05:32
  have a website, scottborn.com My email address is
• 1:05:34
  scott@scottborn.com send me an email. I answer my own email. If
• 1:05:37
  I can help you, I will. And that's it. I got nothing to
• 1:05:41
  sell, no no workshops to fill, no no presets to sell, no
• 1:05:45
  presets, nothing. I'm just, I'm just a guy who wants to help.
• 1:05:50
  Awesome.
• 1:05:51
  Casey Fatchett: Thank you again for being on the show. Happy to
• 1:05:53
  be here
• 1:06:01
  and welcome back. Looks like we are getting this power situation
• 1:06:06
  under control, and I haven't grown any extra appendages, so
• 1:06:11
  I've got that going for me, which is nice. Many thanks to
• 1:06:15
  Scott Bourne for coming on the show. You can find Scott's links
• 1:06:20
  in the Episode Notes. While you are there, you should go and
• 1:06:25
  follow along with the nerdy photographer you know on the
• 1:06:29
  various social medias, Instagram, Tiktok, threads,
• 1:06:33
  Reddit, what have you at the nerdy photo. That's all one
• 1:06:37
  word, no underscores, dots or dashes, at the nerdy photo. And
• 1:06:42
  you know, feel free to tell us what you think about this or any
• 1:06:47
  of the other episodes that we have out there. Leave your
• 1:06:51
  photography related questions or tell us what topics you'd like
• 1:06:56
  to hear covered, or who you would like to hear me interview
• 1:07:00
  on future episodes of the podcast. If you enjoyed this
• 1:07:04
  episode, be sure to tell a friend about the show. We also
• 1:07:09
  appreciate your reviews, so go leave a review on Apple
• 1:07:13
  podcasts, pod chaser, good pods on those last two you can leave
• 1:07:18
  reviews for individual episodes. How about that? Hey, F 2.0 Are
• 1:07:23
  we a go to restart this thing? You've got the touch, you've got
• 1:07:28
  the power, good to know until next time, everybody stay safe
• 1:07:32
  and stay nerdy.