Latest / The MOOD Podcast / Balancing Artistry and Commercial Success in Photography, Elliot Simpson, E053

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Balancing Artistry and Commercial Success in Photography, Elliot Simpson, E053 · The MOOD Podcast

• 0:00
  Elliott: I decided to quit my job.
• 0:01
  Elliott: Can you work for free, though?
• 0:02
  Elliott: Remember waking up multiple days being like oh, have I got paid yet?
• 0:06
  Matt Jacob: What lessons did you learn from that that you could maybe pass on to those that are looking to do what you do?
• 0:11
  Elliott: The barriers to entry is lower.
• 0:12
  Elliott: Cameras are much better now.
• 0:15
  Elliott: If you call them a content creator, sometimes they get annoyed.
• 0:17
  Elliott: And you, if I called you a content creator, would you get annoyed?
• 0:19
  Elliott: Come on, you've always just got to be a content machine.
• 0:23
  Matt Jacob: Right.
• 0:24
  Matt Jacob: So what are we doing to society?
• 0:25
  Matt Jacob: And this is the rat race we're all in and it's so damaging.
• 0:29
  Elliott: It went from being fun and maybe educational or something like that, to just how can we keep someone on this for as long as possible?
• 0:36
  Matt Jacob: When did you think you became a photographer?
• 0:40
  Elliott: You weren't a photographer until you were a working commercial photographer.
• 0:44
  Matt Jacob: What, then, is the key to getting better?
• 0:46
  Elliott: I would say elliot simpson.
• 0:59
  Matt Jacob: Welcome to the movie podcast yeah, thanks for having me.
• 1:01
  Elliott: Great to have you yeah, cheers.
• 1:03
  Matt Jacob: I thought we'd start by a way to introduce yourself and your work, but you know, for those people clicking on this podcast now, watching us sat here, I want to know what you want them to know about you and what you want them to know about your artistry, right?
• 1:20
  Elliott: Interesting, I guess just more of an understanding about the person behind the camera and a bit about my journey into photography, how that went, and then more into filmmaking as well.
• 1:32
  Elliott: Um, so yeah, just a better understanding of the person behind the camera why do you?
• 1:38
  Elliott: Think that matters.
• 1:38
  Elliott: I feel like it helps people sometimes to connect with your, your work and yourself a bit better so, rather than being a faceless, faceless account.
• 1:49
  Matt Jacob: So yeah, which I'm not, but tell us a little bit about your, your background, then tell us about the person behind the camera so I'm from england originally.
• 2:00
  Elliott: I tell people I'm from london because it's easier than saying where I'm actually from is from a little county next to London called Essex.
• 2:07
  Elliott: People know about Essex, yeah, yeah.
• 2:10
  Matt Jacob: For the wrong reason.
• 2:11
  Matt Jacob: Yeah, yeah.
• 2:12
  Elliott: People know about Essex from the show called Towie which aired years ago.
• 2:16
  Elliott: I mean, probably shows our age as well.
• 2:19
  Elliott: Is it not going anymore?
• 2:20
  Elliott: I think so.
• 2:21
  Matt Jacob: The only way is Essex.
• 2:23
  Elliott: Yeah, so yeah, I grew anymore, I think.
• 2:29
  Elliott: So the only way is essex.
• 2:29
  Elliott: Yeah, yeah, um.
• 2:30
  Elliott: So yeah, I grew up there and then didn't get into photography until quite late after university.
• 2:32
  Elliott: I was bored, looking for a hobby, actually had some money for once, so my first job out of uni I studied as a designer, so it was working as a product designer and, yeah, had some money.
• 2:45
  Elliott: Was interested in photography for my brother actually, so he was the photographer in the family and this was just around the time when the a7 was about to come out.
• 2:56
  Elliott: So the original a7 and that was like sound old yeah, so this was 2014, I think that came out, so the first mirrorless camera, I think it was, and I bought one of those second hand for like 600 pounds and then got some monolta lenses from the 80s because you could buy an adapter for it because it was mirrorless and just put on any lens, which is great.
• 3:19
  Elliott: So my first setup was like full frame and it costs like 700 pounds and I had like 24, 50 and 35 all from the 80s, like F1.4.
• 3:31
  Elliott: It was cool, a good introduction into photography.
• 3:34
  Elliott: I think my actual initial inspiration for getting into photography was, I remember 500 pics yeah, that's also showing how long I've been doing it for.
• 3:46
  Elliott: So I was on that and like flicker a little bit, but pinterest as well, and seeing all of these astrophotography pictures.
• 3:54
  Elliott: So never seeing like picture the milky way before.
• 3:58
  Elliott: I think like camera technology was good enough that you could do it well, so that really piqued my interest.
• 4:03
  Elliott: At the time I was like wow, I can't believe someone took a picture of that with a camera.
• 4:07
  Elliott: Like I've never seen that.
• 4:09
  Elliott: You can't see that with your naked eye that well, so I tried doing that.
• 4:13
  Elliott: My first astro photography shots were really bad in the like england's pretty light polluted, yeah, as you'd know and I went to this reservoir after work, tried to take these pictures and it was just so orange along the horizon that the sky was like purple, but there was a few stars in it and I was stoked on that at the time.
• 4:32
  Elliott: And then, from then, I just, yeah, started traveling a bit more with the money that I'd made from working and it kind of snowballed from there.
• 4:41
  Elliott: But I left myself in a bit of a weird situation where I studied design at uni, like I said, and my final year project was a bicycle light for the city.
• 4:52
  Elliott: So I decided to quit my job and pursue developing this product, which was a big task and bigger than I thought at the time.
• 5:01
  Elliott: I think, like trying to launch a product with tech in it is a pretty huge undertaking.
• 5:07
  Elliott: You need a lot of money from crowdfunding and about a year in I didn't believe in the idea enough and I'm the founder, so kind of need to believe in your own ideas.
• 5:16
  Elliott: So I basically was left a fork in the road where I'd had a year out of work as a designer, was doing photography like for fun on the side and some weddings here and there like as second shooters and editing weddings for people.
• 5:32
  Elliott: But yeah, was left at a point where I couldn't do this thing anymore.
• 5:35
  Elliott: It was either go back into design after a year out or try and do photography because I really enjoyed it.
• 5:40
  Elliott: So I just went for photography and I was so, so unprepared.
• 5:45
  Elliott: I don't think I'd worked as a second shooter on weddings, like I said, but I'd never worked really commercially or anything like that or was drawing in much money.
• 5:57
  Elliott: Didn't really have a plan for it.
• 5:58
  Elliott: I think this was 2018.
• 6:00
  Elliott: So Instagram was kind of.
• 6:03
  Elliott: People were getting quite big on Instagram, like the ogs who'd done it from like 2016 or something like those days where you could just post a photo and it would absolutely blow up or someone would share, um, you know those repost pages like feature pages.
• 6:21
  Elliott: Someone would share one of those on the big account and you'd wake up to thousands of new followers, whereas that just doesn't work these days.
• 6:28
  Elliott: Um, so it's around that time and, yeah, I mean pre-pandemic as well it was cheaper to travel and I was in a group of friends in the uk.
• 6:40
  Elliott: Everyone was in the same kind of boat, so we were traveling, just running around with our cameras, shooting like landscapes and stuff like that, and having loads of fun.
• 6:48
  Elliott: So was doing that for a while, started getting more jobs and then, yeah, it kind of progressed from there and is most of your stuff for brands and and commercial stuff, then I'd say it was yeah, yeah, that was.
• 7:04
  Elliott: My main income was commercial stuff.
• 7:06
  Elliott: Um, so for like clothing brands and automotive and things like that, and weddings as well, um, still second shot weddings for quite a while, because it was just consistent.
• 7:16
  Elliott: And yeah, there's a lot of weddings, you know there's a lot of demand you talked about being very unprepared with, and I think we've all been there, we think oh, we've got this, now we can do it yeah, let's go let's.
• 7:29
  Matt Jacob: Let's just go and see what happens right, but can't be that bad.
• 7:32
  Matt Jacob: And then you get into the real world and you know it's a bit of a clusterfuck.
• 7:36
  Matt Jacob: Yeah, definitely what.
• 7:37
  Matt Jacob: What?
• 7:37
  Matt Jacob: What lessons did you learn from that that you could maybe pass on to?
• 7:41
  Matt Jacob: To those that are looking to to do what you do?
• 7:43
  Elliott: I would say if you're working um which you probably are, before you go and do something like that, it would be to work part-time if you can, and then build a portfolio or work um, because at the time I wasn't really getting consistent work, so for me it was.
• 8:01
  Elliott: I had some money saved up for my job, though, so it's either saving up enough money to be able to give yourself time where you won't have work or to slowly taper off the work until you can move over into photography for, like, full time, so rather than just diving straight into it, which adds a lot of stress, remember waking up multiple days being like oh, I got paid yet.
• 8:25
  Elliott: Oh, how much money do I have?
• 8:26
  Elliott: And yeah, and I was living in london, which is not cheap.
• 8:31
  Matt Jacob: So not cheap.
• 8:31
  Matt Jacob: Yeah, fast forward to today, then.
• 8:33
  Matt Jacob: And and what type of content?
• 8:36
  Matt Jacob: Art, photography, videography, whatever you want to label these things.
• 8:41
  Matt Jacob: Tell us kind of what your, your business portfolio looks like today business portfolio well in terms of the model what do you?
• 8:47
  Matt Jacob: How do you market yourself?
• 8:48
  Elliott: so I've, over the years I've progressed more into video and as of last year, I set up my own production company.
• 8:57
  Elliott: So to take that further and kind of work with more of a team of people and work on bigger projects in the future so I set that up towards the end of last year, which is going to be more of a team of people and work on bigger projects in the future so I set that up towards the end of last year, which is going to be more of the commercial side of what I do.
• 9:09
  Elliott: Um, that's called ferro film, because photography for me was like my hobby first and like many people, you get good at your hobby and you try and turn it into a job and while that's great, it kind of kills the reason why you did it in the first place.
• 9:23
  Elliott: Um, so I definitely lost touch of that a little bit.
• 9:27
  Elliott: So to retain that and keep it as a passion that I want to do for god knows how long, I wanted to keep, keep the stuff I shot for me and then build more of a personal brand around that.
• 9:37
  Elliott: I kind of maybe do less of a commercial photography and keep it as my like art form, you know well, you laugh when you say art form, but it seems to be a dirty word these days I don't know, because everyone labels themselves.
• 9:51
  Elliott: I don't know.
• 9:51
  Elliott: Artists shouldn't have a bad.
• 9:53
  Elliott: I shouldn't.
• 9:53
  Elliott: Being an artist shouldn't have a bad rap, though should it?
• 9:56
  Matt Jacob: really but I feel like people throw, throw it around um because everyone has a camera and everyone can learn it and everyone can put themselves out there yeah, everyone can be a content creator.
• 10:10
  Elliott: I think that's the one that people some people don't want to be labeled as.
• 10:13
  Elliott: If you're a photographer that takes maybe pride in conceptual work or a lot of time into your shoots, if you call them a content creator, sometimes they get annoyed and you if I called you a content creator.
• 10:25
  Matt Jacob: sometimes they get annoyed, and you if I called you a content creator would you get annoyed?
• 10:28
  Elliott: No, probably not.
• 10:28
  Elliott: I mean, I'd like to think I'm not just creating content, because I don't know when you say that it feels like it devalues the amount of effort you put into it.
• 10:37
  Elliott: I don't know, because content can just be content online these days can be so easy and simple and throw away, so I guess that's where people get maybe a bit offended.
• 10:48
  Matt Jacob: Where do you see that going?
• 10:51
  Matt Jacob: I mean, we could probably talk for the rest of the podcast about this, because in the photography world specifically, a tiny little niche of just general life yeah, it seems to be the way I perceive it, the way many photographers perceive it is highly saturated.
• 11:08
  Matt Jacob: Right, it's more competitive, there are more people coming into the industry and more people throwing stuff around for free and for cheap and collabs and all this kind of stuff right for good or bad, whatever you believe in in terms of that method and that methodology.
• 11:21
  Matt Jacob: But where do you see, where do you see it continuing?
• 11:24
  Matt Jacob: Do you think that's, that's going to be a little bit of a bubble?
• 11:27
  Matt Jacob: Do you think like the true artist and the true, like quality will always shine through?
• 11:32
  Elliott: um, I guess, seeing where content goes for, like, someone who's wanting to do more of the artistic or the commercial one, or both, both, both.
• 11:41
  Elliott: Um, I feel like for the commercial one, like you said said people doing stuff for free I've seen that happen more and more and brands do more like gifted campaigns and things like that, whereas that was less of a thing when I first started.
• 11:52
  Elliott: So I feel like there's also much more people doing it and more people kind of bring.
• 11:58
  Elliott: I feel like sometimes it's a race to the bottom for people getting into it because it is easier now to.
• 12:05
  Elliott: The barrier to entry is lower.
• 12:07
  Elliott: Cameras are much better now.
• 12:09
  Elliott: There's like so so many creators out there, so I'm not sure where that's gonna go, especially with the rise of ai for, like, product photography and things like that, where you could replicate it probably quite soon, which is pretty scary.
• 12:22
  Elliott: Yep, in terms of the artistry, I feel like that will probably always have its place.
• 12:28
  Elliott: Um, people always like with you know, film died and came back and I feel like people still enjoy it.
• 12:35
  Elliott: So I feel like there's always a place for all formats of photography and people build obviously their brand around it and their identity from their work.
• 12:44
  Elliott: I feel like that probably has more longevity, but we'll see.
• 12:50
  Elliott: I mean, things are changing quite quickly.
• 12:52
  Elliott: Things are changing very, very quickly.
• 12:55
  Matt Jacob: And that's the way I look at it these days, it's not necessarily one or the other, it's not necessarily good or bad.
• 13:06
  Matt Jacob: I mean, I fight my instinct to not think it's bad.
• 13:07
  Matt Jacob: Know the way we get homogenized and what used to be such a, such a true art form, but it's just the just the way it is.
• 13:13
  Matt Jacob: I mean, most a lot of people argue that, well, you're giving more opportunities to people that may not have been able to get into it before because of maybe expense or the yeah, you know, going to classes and actually you know learning, not just watching a couple of youtube channels, but the technology these days, even just with an iphone, right you could, you can get some you can learn the basis of photography, or you, at least you can call yourself the creator, um, but a lot, of, a lot of people argue that that's a good thing.
• 13:40
  Elliott: Right, you're lowering the barriers to entry, and therefore, giving more opportunities to people and more I feel like that is a good thing to, especially for filmmaking.
• 13:49
  Elliott: Like when I first got into filmmaking like there wasn't fx freeze and things like that, where really, yeah, you can have cine cameras that are that small and that capable just weren't a thing, especially when I was like growing up and looking at like things on.
• 14:04
  Elliott: Also, that there wasn't a social media like there is today.
• 14:07
  Elliott: It wasn't video focused, it was all pictures, like, yeah, instagram in 2014 was just pictures of your mates doing random crap.
• 14:15
  Elliott: So, yeah, I mean, yeah, technology has allowed that, hasn't it, with lower barriers to entry and more people getting into it.
• 14:22
  Elliott: But I feel like that's a good thing because it doesn't take away from the creation of the image, it's just the capturing of it.
• 14:31
  Matt Jacob: You're still working with people and still planning and everything's the same in that sense yeah, I think it can only be a good thing that more people can do those types of jobs.
• 14:43
  Matt Jacob: If they're they're able to do something that they love doing from the comfort of, let's say, a YouTube vlogger, right, if that's something they can do and earn a comfortable salary from it, then hey, that means more people are going to be happy, I guess, in the world and more creative, maybe.
• 14:57
  Matt Jacob: But it's difficult to not kind of put up your barriers to that, because the only real byproduct of that is that we become diluted, right, yeah, you know our work and it's harder to be, to be seen and if we think we're good or we think we have this ego like, oh yeah, we're proper artists yeah, yeah well, maybe not, but maybe we are, and no one's gonna see it yeah, no one's gonna see it.
• 15:24
  Matt Jacob: I mean, are you an artist if no one sees?
• 15:25
  Elliott: it some of the bigger artists of the past.
• 15:28
  Elliott: You know, you hear about photographers where they find all their film after they've died and then they become famous after their past.
• 15:35
  Matt Jacob: I don't want to be like that, yeah I want to be famous now I think that's um I.
• 15:41
  Matt Jacob: I know we joke, we joke about that, but that is the society we live in, right?
• 15:47
  Matt Jacob: You know we had the pop idol days or, in America, american idol.
• 15:51
  Matt Jacob: You know we had those kind of early two thousands where people would go onto those shows.
• 15:56
  Matt Jacob: They didn't want to be a singer, they just want to be famous you know, surrounded by all the reality TV shows and big brother and I'm celebrity and all this kind of stuff, right?
• 16:10
  Elliott: The goal was to be famous for doing nothing.
• 16:11
  Elliott: Well, I guess people who are singers had a talent, but some of the reality tv shows it's like why are you famous?
• 16:14
  Elliott: Famous for what they famous for what?
• 16:15
  Matt Jacob: for just being on tv?
• 16:17
  Matt Jacob: Yeah, but I feel like that that is actually a bigger problem.
• 16:20
  Matt Jacob: It's not so much the because if that's the intent of of the majority of the population, and not majority, but a large proportion of the creator community.
• 16:29
  Matt Jacob: Right, that is a lot of people's goal.
• 16:32
  Elliott: If that's the goal oh yeah, to have a big following, yeah, just have a big following and that drives the, the famous word that we all talk about.
• 16:40
  Matt Jacob: That drives the algorithms.
• 16:42
  Matt Jacob: Yeah, because people's it's just a demand supply, that's all it is.
• 16:45
  Matt Jacob: It's basic digital economics.
• 16:47
  Matt Jacob: So more people want to be famous, more the algorithms are going to be, you know, be adjusted according to that demand.
• 16:53
  Elliott: And so we create all this, we create this shit, we create this homogenization, we create this dumbing down everything's yeah, people just end up doing the same thing or what's popular and just that, which is kind of sad to see when I mean, personally, I can't really deal with some of most of the content on instagram.
• 17:11
  Elliott: You know, I feel like, well, not just instagram, but just I feel like sometimes people are putting a lot of effort into something and it gets based on like views and engagement and stuff like that, where someone could just upload something and that's an iphone video of basically nothing, someone walking along just panning up to something and that gets so much more views viral yeah, viral compared to like a project that multiple people have been involved in and they just don't get the same views, which is, I think, a shame, especially being in the industry myself and being inspired by other people who are good at their craft and I feel like that's a great thing about about social media platforms is being inspired by people.
• 17:54
  Elliott: Absolutely.
• 17:55
  Elliott: I feel that's one of the greatest things about social media really is that feeling of being inspired to get out and create.
• 18:02
  Elliott: It is amazing and I feel I just don't get that from social media as much I think we get it more than a lot of you know if you if I was to look up your instagram, be probably very similar to mine.
• 18:12
  Matt Jacob: You know, follow, just most of your following is photographers.
• 18:16
  Matt Jacob: Most, yeah, most of people who follow are photographers or filmmakers.
• 18:21
  Matt Jacob: Right, so you see a lot of cool content.
• 18:23
  Matt Jacob: But yeah, I've talked about this previously on other episodes.
• 18:26
  Matt Jacob: I did a test a couple of years ago where I just opened up a dummy account.
• 18:30
  Matt Jacob: I'm sure many people have done this no followers, no following and just gone to home page on instagram just see what instagram's gonna throw at me, god, and that made me realize what a tiny niche oh yeah, we're in like tiny, tiny, tiny tiny.
• 18:44
  Elliott: I think that's part of why, you know, people complain about Instagram and reach and engagement and everything.
• 18:49
  Elliott: But it's such a bigger platform now.
• 18:50
  Elliott: It's not just.
• 18:51
  Elliott: It started with photos, so inevitably it's going to be quite focused around the photography community in that sense, Whereas now it's just a global platform for God knows what.
• 19:00
  Elliott: Like someone like cat videos?
• 19:02
  Elliott: They do so well.
• 19:03
  Elliott: God knows what.
• 19:04
  Elliott: Like someone like cat videos?
• 19:06
  Elliott: They do so well.
• 19:07
  Elliott: I know people that have a cat account that out.
• 19:09
  Elliott: They're really talented at what they do, but the cat account just blows up.
• 19:11
  Matt Jacob: I think that's the big difference.
• 19:12
  Matt Jacob: Is that's the sad thing?
• 19:14
  Matt Jacob: I mean, you look at on the other side of the fence, people go.
• 19:17
  Matt Jacob: Well, you know, it's almost like the freedom of speech, arguments, freedom of opportunity, equal opportunities.
• 19:22
  Matt Jacob: We get to upload this because we think it's fun and entertaining.
• 19:26
  Matt Jacob: It might be fun and entertaining for other people, yeah, but when we start to strategize that and we strategize you know I'm a big people.
• 19:33
  Matt Jacob: People sometimes call me a snob because I just like standards and so that's why, I look on instagrams like this, like why, why, why are we not pursuing education, why are we not pursuing inspiration?
• 19:45
  Matt Jacob: Why are we not pursuing awareness and good causes?
• 19:47
  Matt Jacob: And yeah, they have their place in instagram, but most of the shit that people doom scroll on is not that, oh no.
• 19:53
  Matt Jacob: So what are we doing to society any value?
• 19:56
  Elliott: nothing.
• 19:56
  Elliott: It's yeah, I feel like it's.
• 19:58
  Elliott: I mean the way it's set up as well.
• 20:01
  Elliott: It went from being fun and maybe like educational or something like that, to just how can we keep someone on this for as long as possible?
• 20:09
  Elliott: Yeah, which is?
• 20:10
  Elliott: It can't be a good.
• 20:11
  Elliott: No, it can't.
• 20:12
  Matt Jacob: Business model well, it can be good for them, for them and that our revenue and everything from the but yeah, do you feel like you have a responsibility as a, as an artist with a decent, very good following and a good audience and experience behind you and clearly a lot of skill and great portfolio and just just a, you know, good artist?
• 20:33
  Matt Jacob: Do you feel like you have a responsibility to try and make an impact for the better in in that sense?
• 20:39
  Elliott: I, I would like to yeah, whether it's just figuring out what that is.
• 20:43
  Elliott: I guess you know the thing people say to do well on social media, or things that you can do to like build a following or things like that is to like educate, inspire and entertain, right, and sometimes it's quite hard to do all of those, yeah, especially if you're just posting a picture.
• 21:00
  Elliott: So I feel like that's where people will record themselves and talk and share information and their personality as well, which, um, which I think is good, but it I feel like I haven't got to the stage yet where I'm like this is because I didn't start instagram to do that, I didn't take pictures to do that, I didn't start taking videos to do that.
• 21:24
  Elliott: I feel like, in some cases, it is a bit of a natural progression, though.
• 21:27
  Elliott: You get good at something and then you can share your skills with other people and help other people, which is something I'd like to do more of in the future is to share my wisdom, I guess in a course, yeah, in a course, um, yeah, like a, probably start with like an editing course, um, and then I would like to do some in-person workshops as well.
• 21:51
  Elliott: It's just, um, overcoming a bit of the imposter syndrome, I think, sometimes which we all live and die by yeah yeah, it's uh.
• 22:01
  Matt Jacob: I think the in-person stuff is something so much more powerful than I mean.
• 22:05
  Matt Jacob: We all want to live online and we want an area of relatively passive income.
• 22:09
  Matt Jacob: It's not passive, but you know what I mean.
• 22:11
  Matt Jacob: Yeah, um, which is kind of amazing, but there's nothing like and I'm sure you've done it even just giving someone advice in person, right, there's nothing like a bit of fulfillment oh a lot of fulfillment from that passing it forward or giving it back, and you know I fucked up so many ways.
• 22:27
  Matt Jacob: Here's why you shouldn't try not to do this right.
• 22:31
  Elliott: Um, I think that's quite I think that's really good in person because, especially with youtube, there's hundreds and hundreds of people just like bombarding you with, like you're doing this wrong, like do this instead, and I feel like all of that stuff I I look at it and I'm just like I'm just going to close that I feel like, yeah, sometimes it's a bit overwhelming, but yeah, in person I mean as well as having a group of people.
• 22:56
  Elliott: I've never done it myself and I would like to.
• 22:58
  Elliott: Yeah, so just show a group of people how you operate, because I think if you've been doing it for a long time, you don't realize what you know and how, how things are very easy to you and, true, come naturally to you after the years of experience that someone might be completely stuck on something that you completely overlooked.
• 23:17
  Elliott: Yeah, and that is, like you said, the beauty of being around people and showing them a skill and passing that knowledge on.
• 23:23
  Elliott: It feels good as well, obviously, helping your friends out, helping people out.
• 23:28
  Matt Jacob: So yeah, um, what do you think is like the most common myth?
• 23:32
  Matt Jacob: I think most guests I speak to.
• 23:34
  Matt Jacob: They have kind of one question that keeps coming up in their dms and emails and stuff like for me, it's always the camera right, what camera do you use?
• 23:42
  Matt Jacob: Or they see a, a video.
• 23:44
  Matt Jacob: Oh, what lens is that?
• 23:45
  Matt Jacob: Well, you're asking the wrong question, but I'll answer it anyway.
• 23:48
  Elliott: Yeah, yeah.
• 23:49
  Matt Jacob: What's the most common myth that you found in the video world or the photography world that you've seen out there?
• 23:56
  Elliott: I mean, gear is obviously a big one that people always ask about.
• 23:59
  Elliott: It's probably that or maybe how did you edit it actually, which has more merit, I think, than what gear did you use, because, yeah, one's just capturing something, the other is how you process that.
• 24:12
  Elliott: So I feel like there's a lot more to learn on the editing front.
• 24:16
  Matt Jacob: What do you think that people don't understand, though, about?
• 24:19
  Matt Jacob: You know the fact that it's gear isn't maybe important, or the edit isn't as important as in camera, or is it?
• 24:26
  Matt Jacob: Or do you think there's a lot of confusion?
• 24:28
  Elliott: I'd say pre-production is the most important thing and sometimes, depending on what you're, doing Pre-production.
• 24:33
  Elliott: Yeah, if you have an idea of what you want, sometimes things just happen.
• 24:36
  Elliott: But sometimes they happen because you've got this plan in place and you're in this location and you have experience on the light and how it looks and the people you're with.
• 24:45
  Elliott: And so for me, I think that was the biggest learning curve was how you set up shoots, especially ones that have more creation behind them, more of an idea, and they're more involved, with more people and moving parts.
• 24:59
  Elliott: Um, I feel like I wish there was more information about that actually when I was getting into it, like how you set up a sheet with all these people and how do you navigate that.
• 25:10
  Elliott: It's quite tricky, to be honest.
• 25:12
  Elliott: Where do you start?
• 25:13
  Matt Jacob: if you've got, you've been given a project.
• 25:14
  Matt Jacob: Obviously it depends on specifics, yeah, subjectivity and everything, but where do you you know what's your basic process?
• 25:21
  Elliott: pre-production okay, so I did a spec film recently about a.
• 25:26
  Elliott: This is quite relevant to what we were talking about as well.
• 25:29
  Elliott: Basically, a person who's like depressed, doom scrolling, that kind of that jazz, just yeah, basically most people these days, yeah that avatar, that's common everywhere.
• 25:42
  Elliott: So the idea was around was the book.
• 25:46
  Elliott: So that was the beginning of it.
• 25:48
  Elliott: So I read this book.
• 25:49
  Elliott: I was going to say what book it's, by Johan Hari, and it's about being distracted, or something like that.
• 25:59
  Elliott: I can't remember the name.
• 26:00
  Elliott: Maybe you can just add that We'll put it up on screen after a bit of Googling.
• 26:05
  Elliott: Yeah, but I finished that and that actually came when I finished it.
• 26:10
  Elliott: Fred's came out the next day, I think, and it was in the book it talks a lot about.
• 26:14
  Elliott: Had the guy from the Social Dilemma, tristan, I think it was.
• 26:19
  Matt Jacob: Yeah, Tristan Harris.
• 26:22
  Elliott: Yeah, I think that's it.
• 26:23
  Elliott: He was an ex-Google employee working on Gmail, I think, at the time, so he was in it and it talks a lot about how social media has changed and how it's just like hunting for your attention and how people were taking like a detox from social media.
• 26:39
  Elliott: And see, I lived in a time where I remember what it was like before social media and obviously I lived in a time where I remember what it was like before social media.
• 26:44
  Elliott: And for me, I was what like 27 before.
• 26:51
  Elliott: Social media is the way it is today, which is most of my life really.
• 26:55
  Elliott: So, yeah, having that that was the initial idea for the film and then from there it was, was storyboarding like having sketches of stuff how I think the story could go.
• 27:08
  Elliott: How do you learn that?
• 27:11
  Matt Jacob: how do you learn how to story?
• 27:11
  Matt Jacob: I mean, this can't just be sit down and write right there's.
• 27:15
  Matt Jacob: There's got to be a.
• 27:16
  Matt Jacob: I've never done the story boarding, but there's got to be a process to it um, or is it just?
• 27:23
  Elliott: I mean I started with, I guess, a narrative of how I want it to go, like the beginning, middle of the end, um, and there's obviously a bunch of um narrative arts that films take on as well.
• 27:36
  Elliott: So I looked at some of those and some of the like common ones and the kind of one that I wanted to portray, so I went for.
• 27:46
  Elliott: People might have heard this.
• 27:48
  Elliott: It's like the rags to riches, basically, where you start with a character that's not having a great time and you'll see the rags being poor and then to rich, so they progressively have a better time throughout the film and overcome whatever hurdle they had in their beginning.
• 28:03
  Elliott: So I think I went for that and then built a narrative around that, just with tets initially.
• 28:09
  Elliott: I mean, this is my way as well.
• 28:11
  Elliott: It could be completely wrong, whatever works for you, I guess, right yeah, so, and then from that it was how I guess the location or what this person's doing, like now they're overcoming this thing, like how's it look?
• 28:26
  Elliott: Is it in the film?
• 28:28
  Elliott: It's them.
• 28:28
  Elliott: It's them finding flow, state again from driving a car through the mountains and ending up on the beach, which I know how to do and film, and I knew the locations in my head already, so I kind of knew what I wanted to shoot already, which helped from this experience.
• 28:44
  Elliott: And then it was drawing really bad drawings of how I would like each scene to go and location-wise.
• 28:52
  Elliott: So, starting inside and getting reference from things online, from films I'd seen and poses of people that were distressed.
• 29:00
  Elliott: So one of them is like a library of places which has um, it's not an ad either, but it's a cool shot deck which I referenced a bunch of images from films so you can type in like the color of it, what the actor's doing or the camera or the location, and it will give you a bunch of frames from films so you can kind of storyboard around that.
• 29:24
  Elliott: So I've done that a couple of times and that does help, and then I guess, refining it and to find exactly what you have in your head online, which is why I wish I was a slightly better drawer.
• 29:38
  Elliott: Or especially when you're doing it yourself.
• 29:42
  Elliott: Um, yeah, when it's a spec project, some people might collaborate that are good at drawing and can do that thing.
• 29:48
  Elliott: Um, I know some people use ai for storyboarding ai just use ai yeah, just don't do any of this.
• 29:57
  Elliott: So after storyboarding it's a matter of I mean, you already know the locations and then it's getting people yeah, um, so for this one it was because it was a spec project and no one's paying for it.
• 30:10
  Elliott: It's not funded by anyone.
• 30:12
  Elliott: It's sponsored by anyone.
• 30:13
  Elliott: So at the time it was people who are willing to work for a portfolio piece and to elevate whatever they're doing.
• 30:20
  Elliott: So that's what instagram's great for the community is is people.
• 30:24
  Elliott: I put out story and had loads of people who were keen.
• 30:27
  Elliott: So within within a day I had like dozens of people who were keen to be in that.
• 30:32
  Elliott: So that was really cool.
• 30:34
  Elliott: So I went with someone I know called tate and, yeah, from there it's doing all the production side of it, which for me, was probably the hardest thing, because there's so many moving parts, especially when you're shooting a car and you're dealing with locations and people who, like, own these buildings.
• 30:52
  Elliott: So we shot in this guy's kitchen and then we shot in his living room and then we shot in his friend's studio in dulcet and then it was to wales and shooting on the roads there and on the beach.
• 31:05
  Elliott: So quite involved, but fun.
• 31:07
  Elliott: Fun, yeah, I mean especially shooting cars is always really fun, like rolling shots is why you and finn get well, get on well yeah exactly what do so when you've got the finished product?
• 31:19
  Matt Jacob: I mean, we could probably talk about editing for hours, but let's say you've got the finished product.
• 31:22
  Matt Jacob: What's your goal and what you want to do with those finished product?
• 31:26
  Matt Jacob: You send them off to festivals or you just post them see what their action is, or just keep them for yourselves.
• 31:31
  Matt Jacob: What do you do currently and what do you what?
• 31:33
  Matt Jacob: Where?
• 31:34
  Elliott: do you?
• 31:34
  Matt Jacob: want it to hope.
• 31:34
  Matt Jacob: Where do you want to hope to get it?
• 31:36
  Elliott: so for me, this type of bigger film, especially like a narrative piece that has like a story behind it, is pretty new to me, um something I want to do more of in the future, but I'd say within the last year I've only just started doing that kind of stuff.
• 31:51
  Elliott: So my plan for this is to have it on the website, post it on social media, do the longer film, which will get no views because it's too long and too much work goes into it, so no one's gonna bother so I'll just do a real saying like location versus shot, and then that'll probably get more views.
• 32:10
  Elliott: We laugh, but it's true, it's probably true yeah.
• 32:13
  Elliott: So, yeah, post a film, do cut downs of it and maybe just share some more of the process which might help people out.
• 32:20
  Elliott: Um, even though sometimes, especially when you're quite new to something, you feel like, oh, am I in the right place to tell people.
• 32:28
  Elliott: But I guess it's subjective and there's lots of different ways to achieve something, so it's just doing it and then after that it'd be having it yeah, it's part of the portfolio and approaching brands of it, to say like we can do this sort of work and we can do narrative pieces and yeah, so that was the idea behind it.
• 32:49
  Matt Jacob: As the production company, yeah, yeah, people forget that.
• 32:52
  Matt Jacob: Actually, you know, a lot of the work people currently do or do in the present moment is not just for their enjoyment and for you know, a nice product, essentially yeah it's a tool to send to to use as a pitch right to go and get jobs like it's yeah, it's such um.
• 33:10
  Matt Jacob: You know.
• 33:11
  Matt Jacob: The intent behind it is often, I'm sure, when you're creating these films, like oh you know, do I want to create something as a hundred percent original to me and my concept, or do I want to factor in what I know about what companies like and what brands?
• 33:24
  Matt Jacob: Like yeah yeah, do you battle with that?
• 33:26
  Elliott: a lot.
• 33:26
  Elliott: I feel like, yeah, I do, because for a lot of my work from photography I've just made it what I like doing basically, and I definitely lent into that recently and that gives me the most enjoyment.
• 33:41
  Elliott: But sometimes it's not the most commercial.
• 33:44
  Elliott: So it's especially with the filmmaking stuff, the production stuff, I want it to be commercial and people to, especially for a spec project.
• 33:52
  Elliott: It's, I guess, a balance of your creative input to not make it too commercial, I guess, but it still needs to show that you can do that kind of thing.
• 34:01
  Elliott: So it's a bit of a balance and we're still finding it to be honest.
• 34:05
  Elliott: So, yeah, but definitely something to bear in mind when you're creating something like that.
• 34:09
  Elliott: If it's going to be for a pitch for a commercial project, then it needs to have some merit.
• 34:14
  Elliott: In that sense, do you have?
• 34:16
  Matt Jacob: a overarching goal of where you want to get to with all of this?
• 34:20
  Matt Jacob: Um, why?
• 34:21
  Elliott: are you laughing?
• 34:24
  Elliott: That's just funny.
• 34:25
  Elliott: Um, yeah, I mean, I it's.
• 34:29
  Elliott: I'm still figuring it out.
• 34:30
  Elliott: To be honest, I think I'd like to go more into direction with it and have okay work on projects of a team that I've like created, whether they work for, for the company or content creators yeah, just just working for free, you know you'll be wanting them at that point, yeah anyone, though anyone can work on this free project.
• 34:54
  Elliott: Yeah, can you work for free though?
• 34:56
  Elliott: Budgets budgets 100 pounds for like five days work, done, done, done.
• 35:01
  Elliott: So, yes, um, I think, getting more into a direction and just taking on more projects really and building from there.
• 35:11
  Matt Jacob: So do you think I mean having a goal is that important, or having multiple goals?
• 35:15
  Matt Jacob: Do you think that's important, or is it just a journey that you kind of?
• 35:19
  Elliott: I feel like it's useful to have a goal.
• 35:21
  Elliott: Sometimes it will give you inspiration to keep going.
• 35:23
  Elliott: Motivation yeah, I think having a goal is useful.
• 35:29
  Matt Jacob: It gives you some direction.
• 35:31
  Matt Jacob: I think having some structure is one of the most popular ways to gain traction and to gain some level of success.
• 35:38
  Matt Jacob: You see, some of the most successful artists, filmmakers, whatever and it wasn't just by happenstance, right, it was, it was by hard work, but hard work around yeah where they want to get to, or at least you know some I feel like with with artists.
• 35:52
  Elliott: Sometimes it can be quite unstructured though how you create.
• 35:54
  Elliott: I guess you can have a business around that.
• 35:58
  Elliott: That is quite structured, but the actual creation process can be quite scattered.
• 36:02
  Elliott: I found, anyway, you just, oh, I have an idea, you know I want to do it, and then you go and do it.
• 36:07
  Elliott: Um, totally agree.
• 36:10
  Elliott: Which yeah ideas can come?
• 36:12
  Matt Jacob: I struggle with that well, my mind is, you know, it's brought up very differently, in non, in a kind of non creative household, I guess, and went into flying, became part of you know, very logical, very rational.
• 36:26
  Matt Jacob: Oh yeah, I'm that too, though, and it was like when you, okay, I have an idea, like I go now I just want to do it, and but I've got other things I need to do, like I push everything aside and then it's just all a mess yeah, right I, I definitely, I definitely need a bit of structure, but then I think, well, and then you know it's not a maths problem, right?
• 36:48
  Matt Jacob: creativity and idea generation and acting on ideas is not like a maths equation, where you need to put this there and then you need to put this but actually a lot of it is a lot of it is we romanticize a lot, but a lot of it is certainly pre-production.
• 37:00
  Elliott: It's like it's fucking organized.
• 37:01
  Elliott: It's just problem solving.
• 37:03
  Elliott: Yeah, like most of it is problem solving and the end result can be really pretty, but it's pretty much it's problem solving, especially when you're working with nature and all that can go wrong with that and working with people and everything like that.
• 37:16
  Elliott: It's just yeah, actually some of my favorite shots have been I've been self-portraits um, yeah, have they?
• 37:26
  Matt Jacob: I haven't seen him, fuck him yeah, okay, I haven't seen any of yourself.
• 37:31
  Matt Jacob: Oh, I seen one in a car.
• 37:32
  Matt Jacob: That wasn't a self-portrait that was maybe finned to that one of.
• 37:35
  Matt Jacob: Maybe it was in it I saw a photo of you um very kind of side lit in a in a car or oh, yeah, that was in la.
• 37:43
  Elliott: Yeah, okay, that was, that was finn.
• 37:45
  Elliott: He was like sup, sup, sup, sup.
• 37:47
  Elliott: Like I want to take a picture of you.
• 37:48
  Elliott: I'm like okay, I'm like yeah, more more yeah, please still yeah, please.
• 37:52
  Elliott: Um, no, it's just been.
• 37:54
  Elliott: Some of them aren't like portraits per se, it's just a self-timer of me, um, in a location.
• 38:00
  Elliott: That's one one I took in in finland when I was ski touring to this cabin and it's just in lapland in winter, so just snow everywhere, really cold, like minus 25 or something, and there was like a bit of a drift coming across the cabin.
• 38:16
  Elliott: I knew as soon as I got there in the day that I wanted to shoot something there and I love shooting silhouettes and backlit stuff.
• 38:23
  Elliott: So I kind of knew what I was going to do and the other people there but they weren't like my friends.
• 38:28
  Elliott: I was on a photo tour and they were all inside the dinner and I'm outside on my own in the cold just trying to get this shot of me stood in front of the light with like all the snow drift behind.
• 38:38
  Elliott: I love that shot.
• 38:39
  Elliott: I think it's one of my favorites um that I've taken of myself.
• 38:43
  Elliott: But that was again, I guess, a bit of problem solving I had no one to shoot with, I'd shoot myself.
• 38:49
  Elliott: Had to figure out how to do the focusing exposure when you have to keep going back and forth to the camera in the cold and the led panel ended up dying and it's like dealing with the cold in your hands and operating the cameras yeah first world problems, but problems problems.
• 39:04
  Matt Jacob: Yeah, yeah, as you kind of build a bigger body of work, is that something you think about?
• 39:09
  Matt Jacob: You know what I want that body of work to be like and what I kind of want to leave behind me as I keep journeying through.
• 39:16
  Elliott: Yeah, the legacy, so to speak.
• 39:18
  Elliott: So, yeah, I haven't really thought about it too much for photography.
• 39:23
  Elliott: For me, photography was just because I enjoyed it and I want to continue shooting what I enjoy, and that will obviously change in the future.
• 39:32
  Elliott: I do want to inspire people to get out there and enjoy the outdoors which is still true because most of my work is outdoors.
• 39:42
  Elliott: But I think with filmmaking I take a bit of a different approach to filmmaking, where I like to have more of a narrative behind it.
• 39:49
  Elliott: I just feel like to me that is how I've kind of always approached it.
• 39:55
  Elliott: I don't know why I thought about with video that I think when I first got into it I was like what's the point if it doesn't have a story, which I think it could be true for a lot of people.
• 40:06
  Elliott: But that's just my approach that I take with it.
• 40:08
  Elliott: But I think with that I'd like to eventually just, I guess, create something people remember and makes them feel something you know.
• 40:16
  Elliott: Yeah, whether that be like make them happy or sad, just like evoke some emotion and again like inspire people to create themselves.
• 40:25
  Elliott: I feel like for me, that's what I get the most enjoyment from when I watch people's videos, whether it be like a film or a series or something, something where you're really taken back by and you remember for a long time and it makes you want to create yourself, like when I saw oppenheimer last year.
• 40:42
  Elliott: That really drove me to make more films.
• 40:45
  Elliott: I was already wanting to make films, but just the way that shot and his lack of special effects as well was quite funny.
• 40:55
  Elliott: In an age where we're just increasingly going towards digitally manipulated stuff, it's nice to see.
• 41:02
  Elliott: Obviously it's a huge budget it's not going to be able to be for most people but just being inspired in that way, just to think after, after you've seen a film, when you're in that state of awe and you just want to create something yourself.
• 41:14
  Matt Jacob: So I want people to get that from my work at some point yeah, I think um well up in high, but what I mean, christopher nolan is just um we're genius.
• 41:26
  Elliott: We watched um interstellar actually the other day oh my god, it's top 10 movies of all time for a reason, yeah, just unbelievable plus the soundtrack oh yeah, I think, yeah, when you've got, when you've got a soundtrack, that good as well, I mean yeah I agree with everything you said.
• 41:43
  Matt Jacob: Uh, I think, coming back to the storytelling thing, um it, it works.
• 41:48
  Matt Jacob: For a reason.
• 41:49
  Matt Jacob: We're stuck with story beings.
• 41:51
  Matt Jacob: We we we resonate with story want to see ourselves in in another story, or we want to, like you said, to feel something, and I think that's so important in today's short-form content world.
• 42:03
  Matt Jacob: Ai driven worlddriven world, algorithm-driven world is just, you know, they call it doom-scrolling for a reason because you don't get any joy, you don't.
• 42:10
  Matt Jacob: You don't get Rarely, do you go?
• 42:12
  Matt Jacob: You know?
• 42:13
  Matt Jacob: Oh, you feel something like that as well.
• 42:15
  Matt Jacob: How can you do that in fucking 30 seconds?
• 42:17
  Elliott: Yeah, that's what's so annoying about things that have more of a story.
• 42:21
  Matt Jacob: They take time to develop, but you're not gonna yeah, but I think they always rise to the top.
• 42:26
  Matt Jacob: I think they always come through in the end.
• 42:28
  Matt Jacob: You know, we just talked about legacy.
• 42:29
  Matt Jacob: If you, if we look back in 10, 20 years, we're not gonna go.
• 42:33
  Matt Jacob: I look at my fucking instagram reels.
• 42:34
  Matt Jacob: They were epic, right.
• 42:37
  Matt Jacob: You might look at the five films that you created, or even five short film films yeah, yeah they actually moved some people and, like you said, it doesn't have to be happy, it doesn't have to be sad, it can be confusion, like I've watched stuff go fuck I.
• 42:49
  Matt Jacob: Some of the best things I've ever watched, whether on tv or youtube, whatever, yeah, have made me feel something without me even knowing about.
• 42:57
  Matt Jacob: Do you know?
• 42:57
  Matt Jacob: What I mean is like a lot of the time, us as photographers, filmmakers, and my wife gets so fed up with, so I watch them, I look at this cinematography the cinematography.
• 43:04
  Elliott: I look at the lighting.
• 43:05
  Matt Jacob: I look at the script as well, or the acting as well.
• 43:07
  Matt Jacob: You know, you kind of break it down technically, but sometimes, just if I find myself immersed in something and I'm either crying or I'm laughing or I'm like just filling up with emotion, I know it's like I don't know how they've done it, I don't know how they've done it, but it's fucking amazing.
• 43:23
  Elliott: Yeah, that's when it's good.
• 43:24
  Elliott: Like he says, filmmakers, photographers, you do analyze what's on screen.
• 43:29
  Elliott: Sometimes that does remove you from the story and the characters because you're thinking, wow, that shot really nice.
• 43:35
  Elliott: And wow, what lens was that?
• 43:36
  Elliott: That's definitely anamorphic and all those kind of things.
• 43:38
  Elliott: So that, yeah, when it can take you past that and make you feel something, yeah, it's really special and I think for the longest time, I didn't you remember when people used to go to the cinema.
• 43:52
  Elliott: Oh, I love it.
• 43:53
  Elliott: That was the way you watched the film.
• 43:55
  Elliott: Right, you went to the cinema and I remember doing that when I was 17 with our friends, we'd drive to the cinema to watch a film and that'd be the main way we digested films.
• 44:04
  Elliott: And again, like often time, I saw that in the cinema, I think that was in the cinema for so long, wasn't it?
• 44:09
  Matt Jacob: and it wasn't anywhere else until that finished yeah, I was like when is it coming out?
• 44:12
  Elliott: yeah, it didn't come out for ages because he wanted people to view it and it's great.
• 44:17
  Elliott: I think ticket prices are very expensive, but it's uh.
• 44:20
  Elliott: I remember when it was like two for it was like four pounds and then you got like buy one, get one free.
• 44:25
  Matt Jacob: I don't care, I don't.
• 44:26
  Matt Jacob: I'd rather like if I'm feeding into that ecosystem for cinema rather than Netflix.
• 44:32
  Matt Jacob: I mean, I love Netflix.
• 44:34
  Matt Jacob: Obviously we all love a bit of Netflix, but it's kind of like.
• 44:37
  Matt Jacob: Again it's that the more you have it, the less of an effect it has on you.
• 44:41
  Matt Jacob: Right, it has on you right whereas you if you go to the cinema.
• 44:43
  Elliott: If you went to cinema every day, the less of an effect it would have on you oh yeah, it was like and it's more of an occasion as well you go to your friends, it's the environment it's yeah we went to see uh, we were in dubai a couple months ago and we saw june 2, um, which is fucking epic yeah it's, it's such a visual, um, it's just such a visual journey.
• 45:04
  Matt Jacob: I mean, the story is is because it's written on it from a book and it's just a weird story that you kind of very abstract, right, but yeah, visually it's just, you know all the time, oh my god, what's next?
• 45:16
  Matt Jacob: It's just gorgeous, absolutely gorgeous we watched it in imax and we we were.
• 45:20
  Matt Jacob: We could have bought normal tickets like 20 bucks, but they had an option the cinema had not, you know, to buy.
• 45:26
  Elliott: They do everything yeah, on a huge scale it's like I can't remember what they called.
• 45:30
  Matt Jacob: I think they called it premier tickets and it was.
• 45:32
  Matt Jacob: It was like a booth each you know business class seat that went like a sofa?
• 45:37
  Matt Jacob: Yeah, and they delivered food to you and you had you know, it was just always you had a massage thing in the chair.
• 45:41
  Matt Jacob: It was, and that I think it would have been amazing.
• 45:45
  Matt Jacob: Anyway, it's an amazing film, but just going with your friends or going with your partner, whatever it is, and just enjoying the experience as much as the film yeah, I feel like we missed that.
• 45:53
  Elliott: We do miss that like having the occasion with people in real life.
• 45:58
  Elliott: You know, going to rather than just watching netflix, it's just too easy and it's I feel like you don't get those two main distractions as well.
• 46:08
  Elliott: You know, in the cinema you used to be like turning your phone off before phones went into silent mode and things like that, where people don't get their phones out do they really in the cinema, because you'll see it light up as well.
• 46:18
  Elliott: I mean, maybe I haven't been to the cinema enough, but recently, but I feel like people do.
• 46:28
  Matt Jacob: Their attention spans will be slightly longer now that I mean you buy a ticket for the purpose of you can't pause it, you can't pause it.
• 46:35
  Elliott: You can't pause it and scroll on TikTok for an hour.
• 46:38
  Elliott: You know you have to sit there and watch it.
• 46:41
  Elliott: So I want cinema to come back more.
• 46:43
  Elliott: Actually, yeah, I mean, that'll be a dream one day maybe would to be make a feature lent film well, in between now and then, do you have any kind of definition of success that you think about?
• 46:56
  Elliott: That I think about.
• 46:57
  Elliott: Yeah, I don't really think about that very often actually nice yeah, of what success is?
• 47:02
  Elliott: Probably because I never think I'll get there.
• 47:04
  Elliott: Oh Nah, I dig it.
• 47:09
  Matt Jacob: We forget many people.
• 47:09
  Matt Jacob: You mentioned it earlier.
• 47:10
  Matt Jacob: You don't know what did you say.
• 47:13
  Matt Jacob: You don't know what you know, or you don't know how you do what you know.
• 47:17
  Matt Jacob: Right, you just do it.
• 47:18
  Matt Jacob: Yeah, but you've learned that over the years.
• 47:20
  Matt Jacob: So my point is like people five years behind you'd be looking at you going.
• 47:30
  Elliott: Yeah, you're fucking.
• 47:30
  Elliott: Yeah, I think that's the thing we we touched on very briefly about imposter syndrome is that I feel like for some people, you need that drive that keeps you going, and sometimes that drive is, it's not good enough and I feel like a lot of people I don't want to say, suffer with that habit, but sometimes it is a bit of suffering.
• 47:42
  Elliott: But, yeah, I feel like I don't know what that is in particular, but I think I definitely have that.
• 47:48
  Elliott: Where you're, you're not dissatisfied with what you've done.
• 47:51
  Elliott: Yeah, you feel like it could be better, you know, or you want to do more of it.
• 47:56
  Elliott: I think I've got to a point where it could be better, especially for filmmaking, because I'm much newer in that, but I just want to do do more of it and build on it and keep getting better.
• 48:08
  Matt Jacob: So, um, we do like.
• 48:09
  Matt Jacob: I love the answer.
• 48:10
  Matt Jacob: You don't think about it that?
• 48:11
  Matt Jacob: Means yeah, yeah you know, whether you care about it or not I think too many people do care.
• 48:15
  Matt Jacob: But you know, gotta get there and I've got to get there, and then you get there, I feel like you'll never get.
• 48:19
  Elliott: I don't know if it's one of those things where you're I guess you've got to be happy with what you're doing, otherwise you're never going to achieve this.
• 48:26
  Elliott: You're always going to be slightly dissatisfied and you just keep going.
• 48:29
  Elliott: You know, when there's people who, um, make a certain amount of money and they're like I'll be happy when x, and that's kind of a downfall really, because you're praying the happiness in the future.
• 48:39
  Elliott: So if you're like, oh, I've got 100 grand now, but I really need 200 grand to get this life I want, and then I'll be happy, and then you get that, and then there'll be something else and like, kind of always chasing something that's in the future I guess is never going to make you fulfilled long term.
• 48:55
  Elliott: So I've been trying to practice more gratitude, I guess, for, like, how far I've come and, like you said, people that will look up to you and be like wow, I think, like he's made it at this point, or I'd love to be like that, because I remember that feeling when I first got into photography, and now I've been into it for a while.
• 49:13
  Elliott: It kind of still feels the same, though, like that's good, yeah that's good, but it keeps you going it does keep you going, yeah pursuing the next thing.
• 49:23
  Matt Jacob: But also it means you're humble.
• 49:25
  Elliott: Yeah.
• 49:25
  Matt Jacob: If it still feels the same, it means you haven't changed as a person.
• 49:29
  Elliott: It does still feel the same, like I love some of my previous work and that's why I like to print them out and have them on the wall to remember what I've done in the past, like the memories I've created with people and kind of the hard work I've put into it.
• 49:42
  Elliott: But yeah, it feels pretty much the same to me as when I started to be honest.
• 49:47
  Matt Jacob: So what, then, is the key to getting better, keeps getting better?
• 49:52
  Matt Jacob: A lot of people just say you got to work hard.
• 49:54
  Matt Jacob: Well, if you don't work smart, you could just be working hard at something that's not going to get you to get better.
• 50:00
  Elliott: I would say being around people who are like-minded in similar crafts is really helpful, and to like bounce ideas off each other and to just learn from each other in person.
• 50:13
  Elliott: Like we said earlier, that's the quickest way to learn.
• 50:15
  Elliott: I think you know, sometimes that might be quite hard to achieve, though, when people, when people always say I'm sure everyone's heard this where they're saying just surround yourself with people that you want to be like or who are better than you and sometimes that's not very easy with your circumstance in your life or you don't know these people and it can seem quite daunting to try and do that.
• 50:34
  Elliott: So I feel like it is important, but at the same time, I've definitely been in stages in my life where I wasn't around people who were really inspiring me and I created work just from like reading books and getting like inspiration from like Pinterest and things like that, and just trying to work on it myself, really in my own time, and eventually that enabled me to find people who were into the same craft, but initially, starting off, I didn't know any photographers like yeah, I wasn't one.
• 51:05
  Elliott: So you've got to get better somehow.
• 51:07
  Elliott: You've got to lift yourself off the ground.
• 51:09
  Elliott: For me that was reading books and just trying it.
• 51:12
  Elliott: Watching podcasts yeah, I don't think there were video podcasts back then in 2015 or whenever it was yeah, I think there
• 51:20
  Matt Jacob: were I think you know I still listen to the ricky gervais um podcasts with uh, steven, merchant, carl building back on 2005, 2006.
• 51:31
  Matt Jacob: They were like going by the original and they didn't.
• 51:34
  Matt Jacob: They didn't even call it podcasts, they did audio books yeah, I was like it's not a book, like don't call it.
• 51:39
  Elliott: But we didn't know back then yeah, so I still that format of just people chatting, people chatting yeah over a microphone.
• 51:45
  Matt Jacob: Yeah, yeah, um, you mentioned earlier and this is really interesting for me because, um the word photographer or the word artist, or you know, we like to label things as all social constructs like yeah, put people in boxes and yeah, helps us identify people absolutely.
• 52:01
  Matt Jacob: Yeah, I mean, you mentioned earlier like at that time when you started you weren't a photographer, right, but when did you think you became a photographer and kind of, what triggers did you I?
• 52:12
  Elliott: guess it's um, it might be different for people now, but at the time, I guess, when I started photography, I I thought I had this idea in my head anyway when I started that you weren't a photographer until you were like a working commercial photographer, for instance, or you were getting paid for your craft, which I don't think that's true anymore, necessarily, I guess it depends on the definition people want to go by.
• 52:34
  Elliott: But I didn't call myself a photographer until I was working as it so not for a few years.
• 52:41
  Elliott: And people say like you're a photographer and I'd say no, I'm not, because I felt like I wasn't good enough.
• 52:46
  Elliott: Yeah, so I don't.
• 52:52
  Elliott: I don't know whether that's a healthy way.
• 52:55
  Matt Jacob: That's what I did yeah, people like the audience be the judges I guess, I mean you've got?
• 52:59
  Matt Jacob: You've got enough people that love your work.
• 53:01
  Matt Jacob: I mean, that should speak speak for itself.
• 53:03
  Elliott: Yeah, maybe some people feel the same way, you know.
• 53:05
  Elliott: Yeah, like I'm sure there are for sure yeah, for sure, loads of people doubt their own ability for things, and I've definitely been one of those people for as long as I can remember.
• 53:15
  Matt Jacob: So yeah, yeah, something what would be your advice to those people?
• 53:19
  Matt Jacob: Uh, general advice to people.
• 53:21
  Matt Jacob: Get it, and we're going to kind of get on to the future of photography in a minute.
• 53:24
  Matt Jacob: But, yeah, what would be your advice to people now picking up a camera, going, I want to be a filmmaker or I want to be a photographer, can you, can you think of any like big, overarching things that they need to be aware of or remember?
• 53:37
  Elliott: I don't know whether this response is gonna not be it's come on, it's gonna, it's probably's probably going to be expensive.
• 53:44
  Elliott: You know, I especially.
• 53:48
  Elliott: I guess gear is cheaper now to obtain the same level that you could have, like well, like eight years ago or something like you can do a lot on your phone, especially with like the 15, like the iPhone 15,.
• 53:59
  Elliott: She's raw and log, so that's pretty good.
• 54:02
  Elliott: I I shot photo in here earlier and edited that on lightroom mobile and it was yeah, you saw it, it was shit, oh great.
• 54:10
  Elliott: Well, it's fine, it's definitely enough to work and I've shot like astrophotography of phones for phone companies and like who knew you could capture the milky way of a phone.
• 54:20
  Elliott: You know, captain, the northern lights with the phone.
• 54:22
  Matt Jacob: Yeah, I mean especially the incredible.
• 54:25
  Elliott: Yeah it it's going to.
• 54:25
  Elliott: It's going to be expensive, but I guess it doesn't have to be as expensive as some others make it.
• 54:30
  Elliott: I think for me it was quite expensive because I had a lot of travel involved and that adds cost.
• 54:36
  Matt Jacob: Expensive with your time as well.
• 54:38
  Elliott: Yeah, it'll take up a lot of your time.
• 54:46
  Elliott: Going to be born, yeah, I mean, I think for five years, that's all I want to do.
• 54:48
  Elliott: That's all I did.
• 54:48
  Elliott: All I thought about really was photography, and how am I going to make it in photography or how am I going to get better?
• 54:52
  Elliott: I need to get better and better and better.
• 54:55
  Elliott: I didn't take a holiday for like five years because I don't think I still can really take a proper holiday, always shooting, yeah, well, I'm always thinking, if I go to somewhere, how can I, yeah, get something out of it for photography?
• 55:08
  Elliott: Because, one, I love doing it and two, if you're working as it, you're thinking I kind of need to always create something.
• 55:15
  Elliott: I feel like that's where social media might put pressure on people as well, especially if you're posting.
• 55:20
  Elliott: A lot is to you've always just got to be a content like machine basically, which I don't think is very conducive to creating good.
• 55:30
  Elliott: Some people take time to figure out ideas and concepts and to, yeah, take it takes time, and it's not just people don't work like that unfortunately, society laps up but yeah, I mean, I totally agree yeah and time.
• 55:45
  Matt Jacob: You know my.
• 55:47
  Matt Jacob: That's what I say to to beginners all the time like, try your best to be patient, don't be like me when I first started.
• 55:53
  Elliott: I want it.
• 55:53
  Elliott: Now I do this, oh yeah like just it's.
• 55:56
  Matt Jacob: It doesn't work like that.
• 55:57
  Matt Jacob: Most of the the difference you get to not to one, to really easily, but one to a hundred.
• 56:02
  Matt Jacob: It really just take some time and to be patient with that and consistently patient and patience with consistency it's, it just comes with life.
• 56:12
  Elliott: I guess it is enjoying the stage you're at at the time.
• 56:15
  Elliott: Yeah, like I remember getting stoked on the images like back in, like 2018, and I remember just being so happy with what I'd taken that time.
• 56:23
  Elliott: I look back on some of them now and I'm still like.
• 56:25
  Elliott: Some of them are the best, but I still like some of my old ones, but you were happy with them at the time.
• 56:34
  Elliott: Yeah, at the time, I remember being absolutely elated.
• 56:36
  Elliott: That's the beauty of photography.
• 56:38
  Matt Jacob: It captures a moment in time, not just the stuff that's in the image, but of the photographer or the team.
• 56:45
  Elliott: I feel like that's lost, stuff that's in the image, but of the, the photographer, yeah, the team or the, I feel like that's lost a bit quickly.
• 56:49
  Elliott: We are to just throw away, I guess, content so disposable.
• 56:51
  Elliott: It feels like these all, like content that could be a photo or anything just feels like no one gets to really take it in.
• 56:59
  Elliott: You know, like like you have a print on the wall, like you go to a gallery and you try and soak it in and feel, maybe, what it was like to be there or how the photographer wanted to portray feeling in the image, like people don't think about that when they're viewing stuff.
• 57:14
  Elliott: Yeah, having time, it does take a long time, does take a long time, but enjoy it, I guess, along the journey, because it is a journey so we have yeah, it's a journey.
• 57:25
  Elliott: The journey is probably the most fun part, really, actually, it is fun, obviously, when you take a nice photo and you love it and everything but the especially.
• 57:33
  Elliott: That's why I thought about getting more into, like digital, like rendering and stuff like that.
• 57:40
  Elliott: Because, like you know, 3d art, because I used to do that um, as a designer, I used to model things and render them before I got into photography, so something like blender.
• 57:50
  Elliott: I feel like I'd pick up pretty fast, but, yeah, I love being out there and creating something with people.
• 57:56
  Elliott: You know, like some of the stuff we made last year in la, I remember all of us screaming our heads off like because we're just so excited about what we're guessing, and it's like that's just honestly.
• 58:07
  Elliott: For me it's the best feeling.
• 58:09
  Elliott: Yeah, it's the best feeling.
• 58:10
  Elliott: Me too, that is a rush, yeah.
• 58:13
  Matt Jacob: Yeah, I was talking about this with another photographer.
• 58:15
  Matt Jacob: He does similar stuff to me and just in he shoots large format.
• 58:19
  Matt Jacob: Jimmy nelson, he shoots large format, 10 by 8, yeah, and he basically has just one go and he's taking photos of like 10 tribesmen, all arranged in a certain way and lying, just fucking everything, and he's got one, probably three second exposure just to hopefully nail it.
• 58:36
  Matt Jacob: And when he knows he's nailed it, it's just elation, right on film no, wow, yeah, it's insane.
• 58:43
  Elliott: His work isn't how does he know he's nailed it, though he doesn't?
• 58:46
  Matt Jacob: it takes him.
• 58:47
  Matt Jacob: He said, from that moment to the, to the point he gets it on his screen, is a month and a half.
• 58:52
  Matt Jacob: So he's got a month and a half of.
• 58:53
  Matt Jacob: He knows him, he's experienced enough to know this shit.
• 58:56
  Matt Jacob: Yeah, I got 99 chance.
• 58:57
  Matt Jacob: I'm pretty sure I got that.
• 58:58
  Matt Jacob: Yeah, um, but you know, obviously you never know, especially when you're traveling with all this stuff.
• 59:02
  Matt Jacob: But but, yeah, that is.
• 59:03
  Matt Jacob: I think that is the biggest.
• 59:05
  Matt Jacob: Yeah, I think that is the most enjoyable thing about all of this and people lose that right it's.
• 59:11
  Matt Jacob: And I've been there.
• 59:12
  Matt Jacob: I got caught up in like I fucking I just need to get, I need to get some photos, and you have to kind of step back and, yeah, once you build up a following it could be a thousand or 10,000 or a hundred thousand you feel like then I've got to keep them Right.
• 59:28
  Elliott: And I'm only going to keep them if I keep.
• 59:29
  Matt Jacob: you know the algorithm is going to push my stuff if I keep and this is the rat race we're all in and it's so damaging.
• 59:34
  Matt Jacob: On the flip side, it can.
• 59:36
  Matt Jacob: It can give you a little nudge.
• 59:39
  Matt Jacob: Yeah, okay, I've got to go.
• 59:41
  Matt Jacob: I don't have to, but I feel like I need to go and give my audience something, or I need to go and create something, because it's been a while.
• 59:49
  Elliott: Yeah, I feel like that's where I want to do when I'm not creating all this stuff because, realistically, if it's for personal work, it costs money, time got to prepare it and it doesn't happen.
• 1:00:01
  Elliott: Especially, I feel like the forever I've gone into this journey, the more involved shoots are, harder they are to pull off, more time, money they cost.
• 1:00:10
  Elliott: So it's kind of harder to make content if it's just just the photos it's making things around that, or just the videos making these around that.
• 1:00:19
  Elliott: To, yeah, give back to your audience and give them, give them something, rather than because I've definitely gone through phases where I'm sure people have too well, they just feel burnt out by it, like the pressure, and feel like, why am I even doing this in the first place and you just don't post, yeah, and I've done that quite a lot recently.
• 1:00:40
  Matt Jacob: I can hear your audience accepting your apologies just unfollowing all right, let's well, while we wrap up, I want to I'm keen to hear your opinion on you know where you think photography is going over the next.
• 1:00:54
  Matt Jacob: I think we've talked a lot about where it is at the moment.
• 1:00:56
  Matt Jacob: Yeah, um, photography, filmmaking, maybe a little bit different.
• 1:00:58
  Matt Jacob: I think that's that has much more, I don't know.
• 1:01:01
  Matt Jacob: I'm gonna hear from you, but maybe it has more movement to adapt, but photography and 2d images and still images.
• 1:01:08
  Matt Jacob: Where do you think that the future of it goes in the next two, five, ten years?
• 1:01:14
  Elliott: oh, I feel like commercially it's going to be less prevalent because of ai.
• 1:01:21
  Elliott: Um, just because of how good this I mean I've used mid journey, I've made, I've made stuff on my journey and it's all all getting fed from all the photos we've ever taken, which is ironic yeah, like you get really good at something and it gets better.
• 1:01:36
  Elliott: Yeah, I know we take inspiration from each other and copy each other, but it's literally copying everything.
• 1:01:43
  Elliott: So I feel like commercially, it's probably gonna be taken over by more, more and more ai um for certain things in particular, like products, things like that.
• 1:01:54
  Elliott: Hopefully they keep people in it because there's something unique about, especially when it's more of a documentary type style of photography where it's a story about a real person.
• 1:02:04
  Elliott: I feel like people are going to be more drawn to that in the future because at some point everything will just be generated and people will be craving real life stories, people, whether or not it's a story about how someone created something, the story of that photographer and what happened, or the story of a person the other side of the lens.
• 1:02:24
  Elliott: So I feel like that's always going to stick around.
• 1:02:26
  Elliott: But yeah, commercially, for maybe still life and things like that I don't feel like it's going to be the best for them.
• 1:02:36
  Elliott: So, yeah, it's going to be interesting, um, and people say sometimes it's similar to how analog and digital came around, when people were reluctant to shift over to digital.
• 1:02:49
  Elliott: Well, I don't think it is the same as that, really, because they were just both means of capturing what was in front of you.
• 1:02:57
  Elliott: Right, they were just a tool.
• 1:02:58
  Elliott: But AI is more than a tool because it replaces it.
• 1:03:03
  Elliott: Right, it's not a tool for capturing real life, it's not real life.
• 1:03:07
  Elliott: So, analogy I don't think it's the best analogy, to be honest.
• 1:03:11
  Elliott: So, yeah, we'll see it's interesting times, um, but we've just, we can't do anything about it, really, can we?
• 1:03:20
  Matt Jacob: and I don't.
• 1:03:20
  Matt Jacob: I mean I'm not sure I believe that ai has to be replacing anything or conflated with photography.
• 1:03:26
  Matt Jacob: I see them as completely separate mechanisms.
• 1:03:31
  Matt Jacob: Yes, ai will.
• 1:03:34
  Matt Jacob: I definitely agree with you will replace certain forms of photography.
• 1:03:37
  Matt Jacob: Yeah, but it's not going to replace photography.
• 1:03:40
  Matt Jacob: No, it won't completely replace photography and I don't see it as a big danger to photography.
• 1:03:44
  Matt Jacob: It's just photography will just adjust a little bit.
• 1:03:46
  Elliott: Yeah, I mean I feel like we'll move on together.
• 1:03:48
  Elliott: People are always going to enjoy capturing the real life in front of them with a camera, and that will arguably become more valuable.
• 1:03:55
  Elliott: Yeah, because no one's doing it, or like maybe there'll be.
• 1:04:00
  Elliott: So the knowledge is more valuable.
• 1:04:03
  Matt Jacob: People will probably value an authentic, real image over an artificial one.
• 1:04:06
  Matt Jacob: They both will have their places.
• 1:04:08
  Matt Jacob: Yeah, so be it.
• 1:04:10
  Elliott: I hope so, because I want to continue doing this.
• 1:04:13
  Matt Jacob: Well, I hope you do, and please do, please keep it up.
• 1:04:16
  Matt Jacob: I love your work and I know a lot of my audience will love your work, so best of luck.
• 1:04:20
  Matt Jacob: I hope you stay in Bali for a while as well.
• 1:04:22
  Elliott: I hope you stay in Bali for a while as well.
• 1:04:23
  Matt Jacob: Yeah, we'll see, and thanks for joining us today.
• 1:04:24
  Matt Jacob: It's been an absolute pleasure to talk to you.
• 1:04:26
  Matt Jacob: Where can we find you?
• 1:04:27
  Matt Jacob: Where can we see your work?
• 1:04:29
  Elliott: So I guess the easiest way is probably Instagram at Elliot J Simpson, and then from there you can probably find everything else Instagram's still the hub yeah, the main one.
• 1:04:42
  Elliott: Yeah, put the most time into that, to be honest.
• 1:04:45
  Matt Jacob: so, yeah, yeah, imagine if it just went away overnight I still have my work, though, so yeah, that's a good lesson.
• 1:04:52
  Matt Jacob: Yeah, make sure you've diversified enough so you don't lose all your shit if one of them goes under oh yeah, if you just post your work to what like, you'd lose all your work.
• 1:05:02
  Matt Jacob: Well, no, if let's say, your account got deleted or.
• 1:05:04
  Matt Jacob: Instagram.
• 1:05:05
  Matt Jacob: Fucking, I don't know.
• 1:05:06
  Matt Jacob: There's an arm again on Instagram.
• 1:05:09
  Elliott: Well, TikTok got bound in America.
• 1:05:10
  Elliott: They did, Didn't it?
• 1:05:11
  Elliott: Well, it's going to right.
• 1:05:12
  Matt Jacob: Going to not yet, but yeah, it was ruled to be banned.
• 1:05:15
  Elliott: Yeah, oh, you'd be sweating.
• 1:05:16
  Matt Jacob: That's brilliant.
• 1:05:17
  Matt Jacob: Fucking TikTok is shite.
• 1:05:21
  Elliott: All right, cheers Thanks so much Thanks, man, yeah Cheers.