Latest / The Nerdy Photographer Podcast / 187 - Turn Off Instagram: Building a Photography Style That's Actually Yours

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187 - Turn Off Instagram: Building a Photography Style That's Actually Yours · The Nerdy Photographer Podcast

• 0:03
  Casey Fatchett: Your lack of knowledge on this subject is
• 0:06
  startling. Okay, that is not helping. Just give me a second.
• 0:11
  You may want to try cleaning the connection ports before
• 0:14
  attaching the cables. See how difficult was that? I think
• 0:18
  we're headed in the right direction. Hey there! Welcome to
• 0:21
  the Nerdy Photographer podcast. You are hearing the dulcet tones
• 0:25
  of me, Casey Fatchett, host of the show. Never heard the show
• 0:29
  before? Welcome aboard. Be sure to subscribe. Have you listened
• 0:32
  a few times? Still feeling things out? I respect that. Or
• 0:35
  maybe you're a long-time listener, first-time leaver of a
• 0:38
  review. Good for you. You know what? In addition to providing
• 0:41
  entertaining and informative photography-related information,
• 0:44
  I also go on adventures with the crew of the starship Fibonacci.
• 0:47
  Right now, I'm running some diagnostics and adjusting Fib's
• 0:49
  communication filters. I'm not sure why I need to be censored.
• 0:54
  Not censored, just moderating your information delivery
• 0:58
  process. On this episode of the show, I speak with street and
• 1:02
  portrait photographer Tom Hoops about his photography journey,
• 1:05
  his raw and unfiltered photography style, and the gaps
• 1:08
  he saw in the industry that led him to forming the underexposed
• 1:11
  community. All that after the break. Raw and unfiltered sounds
• 1:15
  a little like you right now, Fib. I swear, if you don't
• 1:19
  finish this process soon, I'm going to melt your skin. Easy
• 1:23
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• 3:33
  Hello, and welcome to the Nerdy Photographer Podcast. I am your
• 3:36
  host Casey Fatchett, and I am here today with photographer Tom
• 3:39
  Hoops. Tom, welcome to the show.
• 3:42
  Tom Hoops: Hi, thanks for having me. Nice to be here.
• 3:45
  Casey Fatchett: You're very welcome. Before we get started,
• 3:47
  we're going to roll the dice breaker. It's an eight. The
• 3:53
  worst advice you've ever received in regards to either
• 3:56
  photography or running a business.
• 4:02
  Tom Hoops: Photography. I don't know if it's the worst advice or
• 4:05
  the best advice I've ever had. Really, kind of when I was first
• 4:11
  starting out, I used to sort of run around do street portraits,
• 4:15
  street photography, and I used to meet up at the weekend with
• 4:18
  an old friend of mine, and he said, "Oh yeah, you and I will
• 4:21
  never be professional photographers. And I don't know
• 4:24
  if that's really advice, but it was it was enough me to to go.
• 4:29
  That's soggy. I'm I'm going to give it a go.
• 4:33
  Casey Fatchett: You know what?
• 4:35
  Tom Hoops: Probably that.
• 4:36
  Casey Fatchett: I'm going to prove your observation wrong.
• 4:38
  Tom Hoops: Yeah, Exactly.
• 4:41
  Casey Fatchett: So, for those who are unfamiliar with with
• 4:45
  you, could you tell our listeners a little bit of your
• 4:49
  background in photography?
• 4:53
  Tom Hoops: In photography, well, I'm. I I guess I was kind of
• 4:57
  late to photography. I didn't really. Really pick up a camera
• 5:01
  until my mid 30s, early 30s, and I fell in love with it straight
• 5:10
  away. I originally picked up a camera because, well, I borrowed
• 5:14
  a friend's camera. I wanted to. I'd finished on my previous
• 5:19
  project, my previous job, and I was like, I don't know what to
• 5:23
  do. I'm just gonna. I want to paint, and I've always been
• 5:27
  fascinated by people and faces. So I borrowed a friend's camera,
• 5:33
  and the idea was to go out and take candid sort of street
• 5:38
  portraits of people, and then use that as source material and
• 5:42
  paint, but I did that. I took the photos back, had to play
• 5:49
  around with Photoshop and some editing, and fell in love. and
• 5:54
  And I kind of knew that was what I wanted to do. So I spent
• 6:00
  probably a year or so just taking photos. Didn't really
• 6:06
  earn any money, and then it began to began to take off. I
• 6:13
  started getting approached to do portraiture, which was fun for
• 6:20
  actors more than anyone else, actors and and one guy who was a
• 6:24
  singer, and it went from there. Really, I mean, just spiraled
• 6:30
  from there. Really, I put work online, and then more and more
• 6:33
  people saw it, and yeah, it went on and on. And then after that,
• 6:41
  you know, I got approached to do more work in Europe, so I was
• 6:43
  flying back to Europe quite often. I shot for British Vogue
• 6:49
  and and Washington Post and all sorts of stuff, which is great,
• 6:53
  you know, being on the other other side of the world, but
• 6:56
  still picking up jobs in Europe. So yeah, that's it really. I
• 7:02
  went from knowing nothing to to where I am now. Probably still
• 7:08
  know nothing. I'm not very technical. I don't find that I
• 7:12
  don't find that side of photography interesting at all.
• 7:17
  And yeah, I think that's pretty much it.
• 7:20
  Casey Fatchett: What what do you find interesting? What part of
• 7:22
  photography do you find? It's the people. Is it the the
• 7:25
  subjects?
• 7:29
  Tom Hoops: People, subject, craft. I I would say, I love
• 7:35
  looking an image which for me is perfectly balanced in terms of
• 7:40
  tones and composition, everything else-it doesn't have
• 7:43
  to be just people. I'm quite okay looking at a landscape in
• 7:52
  some street photography that's not really sort of pushed
• 7:54
  towards, you know, portraiture. So yeah, I'm just thoroughly in
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  love with it, but I would say my my initial interest comes from
• 8:07
  from faces. As a kid, as a teenager, you know, my bedroom
• 8:12
  wall was was just people's faces and and more kind of fashion. I
• 8:18
  took a lot of images from Face magazine way back when, and had
• 8:24
  them up on my wall and GQ and stuff like that. So a lot of
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  black and white portraits. So that's kind of where I I'm
• 8:35
  focused, I suppose. But I'm into all sorts of photography. A lot
• 8:40
  of stuff I don't like, but you know when I do like stuff, I
• 8:43
  like it.
• 8:45
  Casey Fatchett: So you mentioned a the friend who said we're
• 8:47
  never going to be professionals, and also that you started out
• 8:50
  just kind of using the photos as a basis for painting. What was
• 8:54
  the moment that you, or was there a moment where you felt
• 8:58
  like this kind of switched? Like this isn't just a hobby or
• 9:03
  something to use as source material. This is going to be,
• 9:06
  this is the next profession that I'm going to pursue. It
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  Tom Hoops: was almost like within a week, within a few
• 9:13
  days. I mean, literally, when I picked up a camera and I went
• 9:16
  out and I I got some fairly cool portraits, street portraits, and
• 9:23
  I was like, "Oh yeah, this this is it. This is what I want to
• 9:26
  do. I just knew, you know, it's like one of those moments where
• 9:28
  you, you know, you chug through life being okay at something, or
• 9:34
  and and I was all right, you know, I was a I did graphic
• 9:37
  design before sort of getting into photography, and I was all
• 9:40
  right, you know. But when I picked up a camera and I started
• 9:44
  taking photos and then working on them a bit in Photoshop, I
• 9:48
  knew straight away. I'm like, "This is what I want to do.
• 9:50
  Casey Fatchett: Just feels natural.
• 9:53
  Tom Hoops: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 9:54
  Casey Fatchett: It's funny. It kind of reminds me of like we
• 9:56
  were talking before I started recording about my dog as a
• 9:58
  border collie, and I took. I took her to herding lessons, and
• 10:03
  just the first the first time she got into the pen with the
• 10:06
  sheep, and just automatically,
• 10:08
  Tom Hoops: yeah,
• 10:09
  Casey Fatchett: it's like that moment of just like this is this
• 10:13
  is my nature, this is in me, this is what I was meant to do.
• 10:17
  Tom Hoops: Yeah, 100% Yeah, I can imagine.
• 10:19
  Casey Fatchett: So looking back at that early work, I think
• 10:22
  every photographer kind of has like you see your early work
• 10:26
  differently. I mean, I look back at stuff that I did 25 years
• 10:31
  ago, 26 years ago, 30 years ago, and sometimes I'm like, "Ooh,
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  why did I think that was good? And other times I'm thinking
• 10:39
  like, "Hey, I really didn't know what I was doing, but this came
• 10:42
  out pretty good. What I mean, when you look back at like just
• 10:48
  starting out, what do those first couple of years look like
• 10:52
  in hindsight now?
• 10:54
  Tom Hoops: That's that's my dog drinking. Sorry if you can hear
• 10:57
  that. I think when I look back. Well, I have a couple of
• 11:03
  thoughts on it. Really, I think my early work was kind of more
• 11:09
  raw than the kind of work that I do now, and and I I like that.
• 11:15
  But at the same time, I think you know, going back 20 odd
• 11:21
  years now, we're in a different space. There was more retouch.
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  There was more Photoshop than than is acceptable now, and I I
• 11:36
  don't like that. I don't like some of that, but but also I
• 11:42
  think a lot of the work I did was really raw and powerful, and
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  that's okay. That's good. I quite, I'm quite happy with it.
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  Looking back at bad work was when I started doing fashion.
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  That was horrendous. I mean, when I first started doing
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  fashion stuff or trying to do it, because I'd already been
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  doing portraiture, and then I kind of worked with a few
• 12:05
  agencies, and they were like, "Oh, your portraits are really
• 12:07
  good. Can you do kind of fashion portraits? And that was all
• 12:10
  right. But when I started to do, you know, kind of fashion that's
• 12:13
  further away, you know, full body and half body, etc. was it
• 12:18
  was it was pretty bad, and I had to learn. I had to learn
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  styling, hair, makeup, what works, what doesn't. You know
• 12:27
  what will work with a model, what won't, what kind of
• 12:30
  lighting will work with different models, etc. And that
• 12:33
  took me a little while. And I look, I look back at my early,
• 12:37
  my early fashion stuff, and it was pretty bad. But but some of
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  it, not all of it, some of it was all right. But there was
• 12:44
  some there was some definite moments where I think I'd got it
• 12:48
  wrong, and then tried to kind of compensate a bit with the
• 12:51
  editing afterwards, and it just wasn't great.
• 12:54
  Casey Fatchett: There's some photos you just can't save.
• 12:57
  Tom Hoops: That's right. Yeah. Hopefully I buried them. They're
• 12:59
  nowhere to be. But yeah, there you go. I think it's it's
• 13:03
  normal, you know. When you learn, everybody everybody makes
• 13:07
  mistakes or pushes things too far.
• 13:10
  Casey Fatchett: Well, I think when you, I'm curious when you
• 13:12
  talk about like the the the the initial photos being more raw.
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  Do you think that was more of like you weren't putting
• 13:22
  pressure on yourself that you didn't have rules for yourself,
• 13:26
  or it was like it was just kind of like, or the exploration of
• 13:29
  like something kind of new, like you're just like in that nascent
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  stage of of things that, and it just doesn't have all the rules
• 13:39
  that you set up for yourself over years.
• 13:41
  Tom Hoops: Yeah, I think well, a couple of reasons. Well, one, I
• 13:44
  didn't really know what I was doing to start with. I had no
• 13:50
  real knowledge of any other photography, like no
• 13:53
  photographers. Like if you'd said to me back then, "What do
• 13:56
  you think of Avedon's work? I'd be like, "Who's that? You know,
• 14:01
  which is embarrassing, but there you go. So I kind of went into
• 14:06
  it knowing nothing and and really just shooting what I
• 14:12
  wanted to. You know, I wanted to shoot sort of powerful, strong
• 14:16
  portraits, and at the same time, I was part of a little group on
• 14:23
  Flickr, and there was myself and and and a number of other
• 14:28
  photographers. Some of them you'll have heard of, and a lot
• 14:33
  of us were kind of like following a lot of Brett
• 14:35
  Walker's work. I don't know if you know Brett Walker, and there
• 14:40
  was a little gang of us, and I think we were all putting stuff
• 14:43
  on, all sort of looking at what each of us were shooting, and
• 14:46
  then looking at work that perhaps Gret had seen and hid
• 14:50
  lights, and you look at that, and it was all strong, black and
• 14:53
  white, heavy black and white, really pushing the limits of
• 14:57
  things, and I was. Part of that little group, and I think that
• 15:03
  helped as well. That kind of pushed, pushed, pushed my
• 15:08
  photography in in that direction. Then after that, when
• 15:10
  I kind of got into fashion, I softened it quite a bit because
• 15:13
  I felt like you know that that really gritty stuff wouldn't
• 15:19
  work in fashion so much, and it's still probably you know,
• 15:23
  fashion at the end of the day is about promoting a garment,
• 15:26
  right? Rather than anything else, so you can't destroy
• 15:29
  Casey Fatchett: it. Yeah, I mean, it's interesting you said
• 15:31
  like you know I didn't know photographers when you started
• 15:36
  out. The I mean I'm completely self taught, and I had probably
• 15:40
  some basic, but not necessarily people photography. I didn't
• 15:45
  necessarily know people like names, but I had a visual
• 15:48
  language. You talk about being a graphic designer; you understood
• 15:51
  there's there's a visual language, and for me, I loved
• 15:54
  movies. Yeah, so like that's kind of like how I saw lighting
• 15:58
  when I started out. I was like, oh, you know, it's like, oh,
• 16:01
  this scene in a in a film that I like, whatever. And that's it's
• 16:05
  having that visual language when you start out, as opposed to
• 16:07
  like sitting there thinking, like, oh, I, my personal opinion
• 16:13
  is, it is good to know the people who came before you and
• 16:19
  and their work, but I also feel that people sometimes get too
• 16:24
  wound up in like trying to imitate that art sometimes, and
• 16:29
  like and and sometimes coming from a place of like, oh, I'm
• 16:32
  inspired by what someone else did, but I'm not going to try to
• 16:37
  like completely like this is going to take what I'm going to
• 16:40
  take what they did there, and I'm going to run it through my
• 16:44
  own recipe, and I'm going to make something that's maybe
• 16:48
  inspired by what they did, as opposed to like they're trying
• 16:51
  to copy.
• 16:52
  Tom Hoops: Yeah, I
• 18:16
  Casey Fatchett: If they have their own thing,
• 18:18
  Tom Hoops: right? Exactly. But you see a lot of people around
• 18:21
  them who do try and copy a bit, perhaps I don't know, but but
• 18:29
  yeah, my my recommendation is to kind of do what worked for me
• 18:33
  really, and that's like know nothing and just forge ahead and
• 18:36
  go for it, and then and then find a little tribe of people
• 18:41
  who are all doing the same sort of thing, and then develop your
• 18:44
  work that way. And then you can start to look at, and analyze,
• 18:49
  and research, and figure out well, okay, what works, what
• 18:52
  doesn't, how do I balance things, how do I bring more
• 18:56
  research into my practice, etc. That would be my advice. Yeah,
• 19:01
  Casey Fatchett: I think that that's fantastic advice. I think
• 19:02
  that's what advice I'd give somebody else. Like, you have to
• 19:04
  know who you are and what your vision is. Otherwise, you're
• 19:09
  just copying what somebody else did. And I think that it's a.
• 19:14
  I'm. I'm not a fan of like following trends or anything
• 19:19
  like that. Like, you should be, you should be following your
• 19:23
  your own personal vision. But it's hard these days when people
• 19:30
  nobody notices you because all they're seeing is like the
• 19:34
  things that are trendy. But yeah, I agree with it. Turn off
• 19:38
  Instagram.
• 19:39
  Tom Hoops: Yeah, it's very difficult. It is really
• 19:41
  difficult, and it's difficult to be seen. It's difficult, but but
• 19:45
  ultimately, you've just got to make first of all good work, and
• 19:50
  then if you really want to be at the pinnacle work that's just
• 19:53
  yours, nobody else's, and and you're known for the way that
• 19:57
  looks.
• 19:58
  Casey Fatchett: Yeah,
• 19:59
  Tom Hoops: you know, you can see it. With you know Jack Davidson,
• 20:02
  for example, you look at his work. You ah, that's Jack's
• 20:05
  work. You kind of know it, right? But then you do see other
• 20:09
  photographers who beginning to sort of push into that kind of
• 20:14
  look to to sort of further their own stuff. But my point is, they
• 20:19
  won't be Jack. You've got to bring your own. You've got to
• 20:24
  bring your own.
• 20:26
  Casey Fatchett: Yeah, you know,
• 20:26
  Tom Hoops: cake to party, really.
• 20:28
  Casey Fatchett: Yeah, otherwise you're just a knockoff.
• 20:30
  Tom Hoops: Yeah,
• 20:31
  Casey Fatchett: I mean that's well. I mean, yeah, in in a
• 20:33
  sense, I mean it's the. I always try to tell people in my main
• 20:41
  industry, which is wedding photography, like there's 1000,
• 20:46
  probably 1000 wedding photographers that people can
• 20:48
  choose from in your area. You know, there's all these people.
• 20:52
  What are they really getting from you, and how are you
• 20:55
  differentiating? Like it's you. You're the thing that
• 20:57
  differentiates you from everybody else. Like that's
• 21:01
  that's the that's what makes it sounds kind of cliche at times,
• 21:05
  but it's true. It's the experience people get from
• 21:09
  working with you, as well as the photos that you take and what
• 21:12
  your eye is. It's all of these things together that are
• 21:16
  inseparable from who you are, and you can try to just like
• 21:20
  copy somebody else, but unless you're bringing yourself to it,
• 21:28
  then you're you're you're not you're not differentiating
• 21:30
  yourself in any way.
• 21:32
  Tom Hoops: No, and this this this also pushes into you know
• 21:36
  where we are at the moment with you know YouTube and YouTube and
• 21:45
  photography gear, etc. You know people want to do something
• 21:50
  different. They go on. They go on YouTube. They learn a new
• 21:53
  technique, and then they go and do that. And it's kind of like
• 21:57
  I'm like, well, no, you're better off taking one light and
• 22:01
  and and one subject in a room and just flapping around all day
• 22:06
  and seeing what you come up with on your own, but just to keep
• 22:09
  you know to to I don't know to rely on rely on YouTube for
• 22:15
  quick lightning hacks and stuff. I don't really get
• 22:20
  Casey Fatchett: it. I'm again from the self-taught, figure it
• 22:25
  out world of learning, and I've even I think more in my later
• 22:30
  years, I've gone to a place where like I'll attend a
• 22:34
  workshop or something and go to watch somebody else work to see
• 22:38
  how their brain solves the problem more so than sit there
• 22:42
  and go like, "Oh, I'm going to steal this lighting setup. I'm
• 22:44
  going to sit there and go like, "Okay, well, how does you know
• 22:49
  so and so look like analyze this and like how can I maybe
• 22:54
  incorporate some of that thinking to it as opposed to I
• 22:57
  want the same gear and I'm going to put it in the same spots,
• 23:00
  whatever. Like, oh, they're this is the problem they're solving,
• 23:03
  and this is how they're thinking about the problem. And I go, oh,
• 23:05
  that's interesting. Like, and again, it all kind of like
• 23:09
  informs some things. If I'm in a situation where I'm like, oh, I
• 23:11
  remember, okay, I'm gonna think about like putting where am I
• 23:15
  gonna put my light to get the feel the what I want out of this
• 23:19
  photo, like what I want the vision to be.
• 23:22
  Tom Hoops: Yeah, the reality is that that if you you can learn a
• 23:26
  a great lighting setup, like you can watch something, you go,
• 23:28
  that looks beautiful. Okay, right. Well, lights are here,
• 23:30
  here, here, and here. So you can replicate all that. But what you
• 23:35
  can't, what you you can't, you can't replicate the actual photo
• 23:38
  because that's just such a small part of the photo. People think
• 23:43
  that's the big part of the photo. It's not. It's a small
• 23:45
  part photo, and it's how you're interacting with your subject.
• 23:50
  It's when you're taking the photo. It's where you're putting
• 23:53
  them within within that lighting setup. It's how you're styling
• 23:58
  them. It's the location you choose. Does the styling work
• 24:01
  with the location? Does the makeup and hair work with? And
• 24:06
  this this is a portrait as well. It sounds like I'm talking about
• 24:08
  fashion, but the reality is a lot of portraits are let down by
• 24:13
  bad styling and hair and makeup because the photographer is
• 24:18
  focused on the lights. And that's the other thing I would
• 24:20
  say to to photographers: set up your lights and leave it. Just
• 24:24
  stop focusing on your lights because once you're focusing on
• 24:28
  your your lighting and your setup and all your gear, you're
• 24:31
  not focusing on the person in front of you, and and that's
• 24:36
  that's the main reason you're there is is the person that's in
• 24:39
  front of you.
• 24:40
  Casey Fatchett: Yeah.
• 24:41
  Tom Hoops: So, yeah, it's a it's a it's an interesting one.
• 24:47
  There's way more to photography than people think. I think
• 24:50
  people just think it's gear and a light set up and off we go.
• 24:53
  But there's much more to it.
• 24:55
  Casey Fatchett: Yeah, it's one of the reasons that whenever I
• 24:56
  see those posts that are like, here, Mike, here's the photo.
• 24:59
  People say, "What are what were your camera settings? And it's
• 25:02
  like, "Well, doesn't matter.
• 25:04
  Tom Hoops: Yeah,
• 25:05
  Casey Fatchett: doesn't matter what the camera settings were.
• 25:06
  Like, you you're not gonna. What are you trying to do? You're
• 25:09
  trying to like like. And when I teach people, I'm trying to say
• 25:13
  like, okay, this is why I chose this. And they're like, oh, just
• 25:16
  tell me the same. Like, no, no, no. Like, let's get let's get
• 25:19
  the the process, not the recipe. Like it's not it's it's not a
• 25:25
  half a cup of light and you know mix thoroughly. It's you know
• 25:30
  we're gonna like talk about like where I wanted to go and why I
• 25:33
  chose to use whatever settings to like get to that place, which
• 25:39
  brings me to a question like you, you've kind of made it. You
• 25:44
  talked about like fashion photography and your that the
• 25:50
  your sort your style of being raw did not fit necessarily with
• 25:55
  like the the full fashion portrait photography. Also, like
• 25:59
  tends to lead towards the industry, like more flattering,
• 26:05
  polished looks. Like, what made you decide to go in the opposite
• 26:11
  direction? And have how do I mean? You talk about shooting
• 26:18
  celebrities or whoever for like on on assignments with, but how
• 26:22
  do they normally react to seeing themselves done completely
• 26:27
  differently than they're used to? That that sort of more
• 26:30
  polished style.
• 26:32
  Tom Hoops: I think well, it depends, right? I think it
• 26:34
  depends on who you're shooting. I I can remember I shot actor
• 26:42
  from The Wire, the guy who played Omar, the guy who smoked
• 26:46
  a lot. I don't know if you remember it. Yes, and I can
• 26:51
  remember I met him. We met him in Brooklyn, and he got sent
• 26:57
  there by his manager or his agent. I'm not sure which, and
• 27:02
  he wasn't really that. I felt like he wasn't. He was kind of
• 27:04
  like, oh yeah, whatever. Come on, let's get on with it. And
• 27:07
  then I said to him, "Have you seen my work? He was like, "No.
• 27:11
  Okay, all right, have a look. As soon as I, as soon as he had a
• 27:15
  look, he was completely different. He changed
• 27:17
  completely. He was like super, like into it and enthusiastic,
• 27:22
  and I think some people, you know, some people get used to a
• 27:29
  certain kind of look. But I, I'm going back to your question. My
• 27:33
  work's kind of opposite of that kind of esthetic, kind of nice.
• 27:37
  I mean, I've never really been into you know the corporate
• 27:39
  headshot look. I just find it incredibly soulless, dull. You
• 27:46
  know, I mean, I I know you know people make a living out of
• 27:49
  doing it, and good for you, but it's not for me. I mean,
• 27:52
  photography for me has to be about my my what I get out of
• 28:00
  it, as well as the subject, and if I feel like I'm excited about
• 28:05
  shooting the person I'm shooting, I'll get better
• 28:07
  photos, and I'm and I'm also able to shoot the way that I
• 28:12
  want. Then I'll I'll get better photography, and ultimately
• 28:18
  they'll get it as well. It can be difficult, I think, for some
• 28:21
  people to, you know, see themselves the way I shoot them.
• 28:26
  But generally, the people that come to me, kind of, are after
• 28:31
  that anyway. They want something a bit different. They don't
• 28:34
  want, you know, the corporate headshot or the, you know, the
• 28:37
  super nice actor headshot. They want something a bit more
• 28:40
  powerful. I can remember I I shot many years ago. I shot a
• 28:48
  guy called Martin Angerbauer, who was an incredibly sweet
• 28:54
  young man. Like I think when I shot him, he was still like 19
• 28:58
  or 20, and he he sent me a load of photos. He said, "Oh, your
• 29:02
  work's really powerful. I want I want to look powerful. He was
• 29:05
  that you know he wanted to be an actor and a model. And he sent
• 29:08
  over his pictures, and they were all you know shot by somebody
• 29:11
  who was you know trying to make him look good, but it was
• 29:14
  smiley, and you know he looked he looked the way he is. You
• 29:19
  know he he was he's a genuinely lovely bloke, like really nice
• 29:24
  guy. But he said, "I want to do something powerful. So I shot
• 29:28
  him in that way, and he was really happy with it. I mean,
• 29:31
  he-he looks like a murderer, I think, in probably most of the
• 29:35
  photos. But he was happy with it, and we-you know-we gave him
• 29:39
  some massive prints, and I think he's got a print of himself up
• 29:42
  on the wall. But yeah, it's never been for me. I've never
• 29:47
  really like. I've never really liked what most people consider
• 29:53
  portraiture. I kind of like either environmental portraiture
• 29:57
  or quite powerful. A bit rough or raw portrait, which is why I
• 30:02
  like film as well. I like shooting in film because it
• 30:06
  film's great. You can't really you can't really make it look
• 30:10
  overdone. Do you know what I mean? It just looks what it is,
• 30:13
  and it's beautiful. So,
• 30:16
  Casey Fatchett: so
• 30:16
  Tom Hoops: I'll shoot. I'll shoot film quite often as well.
• 30:19
  Casey Fatchett: So, how much? I'm curious. How much does this
• 30:21
  the the feel of that that that rawness comes from direction,
• 30:32
  non direction of people, equipment, editing? Like, where?
• 30:37
  How do you feel that that sort of like where that process lies.
• 30:44
  I'm listening to you. I feel like a fair amount of it comes
• 30:48
  from your interaction with your subject, but I'm just kind of
• 30:51
  curious how you see it kind of coming together.
• 30:56
  Tom Hoops: I I I think it's changed over the years. I think
• 30:59
  when I first started, there was more emphasis on the edit to to
• 31:03
  give it some grit, and I think I've learned over the years to
• 31:07
  not rely on that. So I don't do very much now these days,
• 31:12
  editing wise. So it's generally just in the in the shoot. I'll
• 31:19
  I'll shoot always underexposed a little bit, hence the name. Are
• 31:26
  underexposed digitally, of course, but for film, not so.
• 31:33
  Always taking into account highlights. Highlights are
• 31:37
  nasty, and in digital, they just are. I mean, once you've blown
• 31:42
  you, you've blown the lid. It's terrible. I'll kind of look for.
• 31:51
  I'll look for a location. I. I mean, I do shoot in studio quite
• 31:55
  a bit, but I like shooting in location. It's something that I
• 31:57
  feel like at the moment people aren't shooting on location that
• 32:03
  much. I'm talking more kind of fashion. There seems to be an
• 32:06
  over reliance on on studio stuff now, which I don't find that
• 32:11
  interest. I find it quite interesting to go into a space
• 32:16
  and then have to figure it out, right? I find that much more
• 32:19
  interest. So either using whatever natural light we got,
• 32:24
  or enhancing natural light, and you know, if you've got nothing,
• 32:28
  then probably lighting it a bit more, and then experiment within
• 32:32
  that. So I don't think my lighting always looks the same;
• 32:37
  it changes. I experiment within it, and my lighting can be quite
• 32:43
  specific in that I kind of want lighting to look like it's not
• 32:49
  lit; it's natural. And rather than having a space that gives a
• 32:57
  bit of freedom, I don't have that much freedom for for the
• 33:02
  subject within that space, and what I mean by that is, I'll set
• 33:08
  someone's face angle specifically where I think the
• 33:14
  light works, and then we'll work on where the eyes are and what
• 33:20
  the eyes are doing, etc. Afterwards, but it can be it can
• 33:24
  be quite restricting for the person. But yeah, for me, you
• 33:31
  know, photography is really about the the non technical
• 33:36
  stuff, the stuff that's not lighting, the stuff that I mean,
• 33:38
  lighting obviously has to be Beautiful, but I don't. You
• 33:44
  know, I don't. I don't think that's what makes my work great.
• 33:48
  I think it's more. I'm not saying my work's great. I sound
• 33:51
  an idiot there. Sorry, but you know, I, I think it can be more
• 33:56
  about. It's more about what you get out of the person because
• 33:59
  ultimately, that's what a portrait should be, right?
• 34:01
  Portrait is of a person. It's not a portrait shouldn't be
• 34:06
  about what the photographer's done with his lights, right?
• 34:12
  What's the point, right? It's yeah, it looks pretty, but it's
• 34:16
  throwaway and boring. And ultimately, I just want to
• 34:20
  create images that some some people might remember.
• 34:25
  Casey Fatchett: I think something you said in that was
• 34:29
  you know like experimenting. I don't think people necessarily
• 34:33
  give themselves enough time, and sometimes it depends on the the
• 34:37
  shoot. Like sometimes you're you're dealing with you you got
• 34:40
  two minutes with this person, and you can. They don't give
• 34:43
  themselves when they do have the time. They don't take the time
• 34:48
  to experiment and do something. I remember an interview with the
• 34:55
  photographer Johnny Edward. I don't know if you ever heard of
• 34:57
  him, but he like I was talking to him about his. Portraits, and
• 35:00
  he has these very clean portraits, and then other ones
• 35:06
  that are very much like frenetic. I guess is the words
• 35:10
  of it, and stuff. And I was like, oh, something about these
• 35:14
  really speaks to me. He goes, oh, that's at the end after I
• 35:16
  know I've got all this stuff that I want. Then we just start
• 35:19
  playing and experimenting, and like different things, like and
• 35:24
  trying different things. And get he gives himself the space to
• 35:30
  actually like play and experiment. I think a lot of
• 35:33
  photographers don't build that into their process.
• 35:39
  Tom Hoops: I think you're right. I think you're right. Yeah, I
• 35:41
  mean, you should, you should experiment. You should play. I
• 35:44
  read a, I read an interview with Paolo Riversi years ago, and
• 35:51
  that was great. I mean, he was talking about light and his
• 35:54
  studio and how the light changes every day, and and you know the
• 35:58
  beauty of light and how you can just play within it, which I
• 36:03
  thought was really interesting. It's a much nicer way. It's like
• 36:06
  light is organic, which of course it is, right? Light
• 36:08
  changes all the time throughout the day, or where you are in the
• 36:11
  world, etc. But the way he looked at it is is is opposite
• 36:18
  to going on YouTube and finding a light setup. I get it when
• 36:26
  you're starting, you don't know how to do anything, and you're
• 36:28
  like, but you know, I think I think a lot of it is is people
• 36:38
  try and make it complicated to make it sound to make to give it
• 36:43
  some credit, if that makes sense. The way I look at light
• 36:46
  is, you can turn the light on, you can lift it, you can lower
• 36:50
  it, you can move it forward, you can move it back, you can turn
• 36:53
  up the power, turn it down. That's it. I mean, I don't, I
• 36:59
  don't understand the conversations about everything
• 37:01
  else, and just like light's light, just play with it, and
• 37:06
  play with it while you're there. Play with it with someone. You
• 37:08
  know, you you don't you can you can move a light from straight
• 37:12
  on to open. You know, it's faded. It comes through. It
• 37:17
  comes through a window, or it's bounced off a wall, or it's
• 37:20
  bounced off some poly or whatever, you know. It all
• 37:23
  changes, so you've got to sit and experiment to kind of figure
• 37:27
  out how all this stuff works. Just following one or two very
• 37:31
  specific light setups, I don't understand.
• 37:34
  Casey Fatchett: Yeah, I think that that's where you learn
• 37:38
  things. So that that's when you're like oh I again being
• 37:43
  self taught it's sort of like okay I I did this once and this
• 37:48
  is kind of what I got out of it like hmm let's try a little
• 37:52
  little variation on that because I really liked the look of
• 37:54
  things when I did that and like that that spoke to me as a
• 37:59
  photographer and that sort of like, as we've discussed
• 38:03
  already, like developing your own feel for it, your style. I
• 38:07
  think that maybe there's a rush to be accepted. I think again,
• 38:17
  going back to like social media and people wanting to be seen
• 38:21
  and one whatever, and thinking that I have to do things in this
• 38:24
  style, so that people will see my work, so that people will
• 38:30
  interact with it instead of having the and it's hard. I
• 38:35
  mean, I remember best remember still have times where I feel
• 38:40
  like, what am I doing? But like going there and having the-I
• 38:50
  don't want to say courage of your convictions, but like they
• 38:53
  just the the confidence-and it's hard sometimes to have that
• 38:56
  confidence in your vision and your voice as an artist. To
• 39:01
  Tom Hoops: it is hard. It is. It is hard, and I think you know
• 39:06
  when you're trying to make a living from it, it's even
• 39:08
  harder. You know, when if if you're putting food on the table
• 39:12
  for your family through photography, it is more
• 39:16
  difficult. You're very courageous to kind of go your
• 39:19
  own route, right? But I, you know, I talk when I talk to
• 39:24
  people that perhaps are in a job and they're learning from Tori,
• 39:27
  they're getting into it, and they're like maybe taking on one
• 39:29
  or two little jobs here and there. I tell nearly all of them
• 39:34
  stick with your day job for now. You know, don't don't leap
• 39:38
  because once you do and you have to pay the bills. It becomes
• 39:42
  much more difficult unless you're really outstanding, and
• 39:48
  you know you've got a lot of people knocking on your door to
• 39:50
  hire you for what you do. You end up in a situation where
• 39:55
  you'll take on work that you don't really want to do, or
• 39:58
  you'll be pushed into work that. Doesn't really fit with your
• 40:02
  esthetic, so I think if I think it's a very privileged position
• 40:07
  to be in. I think if you're earning money doing whatever,
• 40:11
  you're an architect or whatever, and you you know bought yourself
• 40:13
  a Leica, you know just go be yourself with the Leica at the
• 40:18
  weekend and don't worry about it and don't worry about becoming a
• 40:21
  professional photographer, you'll create better work. I
• 40:24
  think doing that, unless you're really outstanding, which you
• 40:29
  know. Let's face it, most photographers are not. Some are,
• 40:34
  but most aren't.
• 40:36
  Casey Fatchett: Yeah, I think that one of the things that I
• 40:38
  always sort of deal with, like people talking about that, going
• 40:42
  oh you know, most photographers are just button pushers and
• 40:46
  whatever. It's like, well, it's the learning of the skill to you
• 40:53
  can repeat. Because yes, like any like there are times when I
• 40:58
  can use my phone and like just snapping a photo, like, and take
• 41:02
  a great photo. What I and it's the and someone who has never
• 41:12
  studied photography could use their phone and take a shot that
• 41:18
  is very good, but it's the ability to go back there and
• 41:20
  kind of repeat the process in different situations, and be
• 41:25
  able to like consistently get that result. That I think some
• 41:34
  people, and maybe this is more on the consumer side of it, they
• 41:38
  don't necessarily get. They they think like, oh, you know, I took
• 41:43
  a really good picture with my phone once. Yeah, once. But
• 41:47
  like, if you're in a situation where you're sort of like set in
• 41:50
  a room to photograph a person, and you've got 20 minutes to
• 41:54
  work with them, and you've got to come up with something for
• 41:59
  you know a magazine or publication or or for whatever,
• 42:04
  and how you approach that and and get a good result under
• 42:09
  those circumstances is, I think, what separates. I think it's
• 42:14
  Tom Hoops: difficult. It's difficult, and I also think this
• 42:16
  is a problem with the industry that you know when you are
• 42:20
  approached by, you know, a magazine or a newspaper to shoot
• 42:26
  someone. Quite often, you're not given much time to do it.
• 42:30
  Whereby, you know, the writer might be given six month access.
• 42:35
  You know, and I'm like, I'm very much a visual person rather than
• 42:40
  you know written, but you know for me, I look at some of the
• 42:47
  iconic kind of portraits of famous figures from our time,
• 42:50
  and it's the photos that hold the test of time over what was
• 42:56
  written at the time. And I think they honestly think publishers
• 43:01
  have got it wrong. They they need to be pushing PR that work
• 43:06
  with the celebrities to give more time to the photographers.
• 43:11
  I think they will if you're a really big name. They're like,
• 43:13
  oh, okay, yeah, fair enough. But if you're not, you know, they're
• 43:17
  like, oh, you've got 10 minutes with da da da da, and that then
• 43:21
  pushes you to oh have a light set up. They come in 10 minutes,
• 43:26
  and it's. I don't think that's where you get great photography.
• 43:30
  I think publishers would be would be better off saying
• 43:37
  you've got half a day or you've got a full day with this person
• 43:41
  in a studio, wherever, or a location, you go get the best
• 43:45
  stuff you can. Ultimately, it would work because you know the
• 43:50
  the the celebrity is going to look better.
• 43:52
  Casey Fatchett: They're going to give you all relaxed eventually.
• 43:55
  Tom Hoops: Yeah, exactly. Relaxed, get to know each other,
• 43:58
  and come up with some really good stuff. And it just seems to
• 44:02
  be weird. It's just whether whether you know where things
• 44:05
  are in the industry now. It's a shame, but
• 44:09
  Casey Fatchett: yeah, it's more time. It's always the need for
• 44:12
  more time.
• 44:14
  Tom Hoops: Yeah, I
• 44:15
  Casey Fatchett: think that leads us to you. You had alluded to it
• 44:20
  earlier. You run a group called the Underexposed Community
• 44:27
  Photographers. What was the I don't know the gap in the
• 44:30
  industry that you saw that made you want to start it, and and
• 44:35
  what do you hope that photographers who are a part of
• 44:39
  it can walk away with
• 44:42
  Tom Hoops: a couple of reasons. I I I've done workshops for
• 44:46
  years. Normally, I do one a year, two at a push. Normally,
• 44:52
  and and you know, not everyone can come to them. Like if I do
• 44:56
  one here or doing one in London, you know. Not everyone can come,
• 45:01
  so I felt like it would be good to have a little space there.
• 45:04
  And also, you know, nearly all of the photography stuff online
• 45:11
  is is gear based. Discussion it tends to be a lot of gear based
• 45:15
  stuff, which I don't think is very interesting. I understand
• 45:20
  why, you know, because affiliate and people are making money from
• 45:26
  it. So if you start writing about the new Canon, then you
• 45:29
  know, with a link to Amazon, you're going to make some money.
• 45:34
  But I don't find it particularly interesting, and I also feel
• 45:37
  like too many photographers look to buying something as a way to
• 45:45
  improve their work, and I think it's bollocks. I I think there
• 45:50
  are better ways. I mean, I I literally bought camera not that
• 45:55
  long ago, but before that, my camera was probably like 15
• 45:59
  years old or maybe 20 years old, and I'll say to people, "It's
• 46:04
  like, what's your favorite photo? You know, what are your
• 46:06
  favorite photos? And you look at them, and nearly all of them
• 46:08
  will have been taken on on cameras which are older than the
• 46:12
  one you probably got in your camera bag. So it it's just it's
• 46:18
  just camera companies create and and you know websites and forums
• 46:23
  and whatever who create this kind of need or apparent need
• 46:30
  that you need to buy this or you need to buy that, and it's going
• 46:33
  to improve your photography. And it's not what's going to improve
• 46:36
  your photography is your process, your research, your
• 46:39
  your experimentation, how you look at photography, your
• 46:43
  understanding of photography, and that's why I started
• 46:46
  underexposed because I wanted it to be a place where people can
• 46:52
  come. It's a nice community. People are nice. You get
• 46:59
  critique if you want it, norm it's positive critique
• 47:04
  generally, but I think it's a way. And and also we have like
• 47:10
  live live conversations and stuff at the weekends, and you
• 47:14
  know we'll we'll take a bunch of photos and look at them and
• 47:17
  decide what makes them good and what maybe could be improved or
• 47:22
  not, which is good. I think that helps people learn, but also
• 47:27
  just you know gently pushing people if they're if they're in
• 47:31
  a rut and and kind of don't know how to push themselves forward.
• 47:36
  So that's kind of why I started it. It's it's nice. It's a good
• 47:40
  good community. It's fun. I enjoy it. It's not a very big
• 47:46
  community. It's it's quite small. So we're we're not making
• 47:51
  very big waves at the moment. But you know, I'd love more
• 47:53
  people to join. And just for people to kind of understand
• 47:59
  that Instagram gives you nothing. It's not helping your
• 48:02
  photography. Putting stuff on Instagram and and you know
• 48:05
  getting 20 likes or 200 likes or whatever it is you get means
• 48:09
  nothing. What does mean something is is genuine
• 48:13
  connection. And I know from when I started, I mentioned Flickr.
• 48:17
  That was a community, and that community helped me grow. And
• 48:21
  Jack Davidson was part of that community. There's Brett Walker.
• 48:24
  There was Kirsty Mitchell. I don't know if you know Kirsty
• 48:27
  Mitchell, but quite a few people. False Salama and a
• 48:31
  number of others. So that's kind of why I started it, and I hope
• 48:38
  it does help people. It's not expensive. It costs you less
• 48:44
  than a coffee once a month, so it's it's not like it's going to
• 48:48
  break the bank. And I'm around a lot, and we've got a free
• 48:54
  Discord as well, so people can go on the Discord if they don't
• 48:57
  want to pay.
• 48:58
  Casey Fatchett: I think, yeah, I think that something that you
• 49:01
  mentioned there is like the community, and this is something
• 49:03
  I've been finding very true after the pandemic. There's a
• 49:12
  there's a there's a real need for like discourse, and people
• 49:21
  want to have a connection, like a real connection, because I'm
• 49:24
  seeing it more and more with the. I'm hoping, hoping that
• 49:31
  that this is true, and becomes a more widespread thing. But like
• 49:35
  I anecdotally seeing that people sort of having this backlash to
• 49:42
  like being online. I mean, like in in a sense of like I'm going
• 49:47
  to go on Instagram or I'm just going to scroll through and just
• 49:50
  like oh you know like instead of doom scrolling like actually
• 49:54
  connecting with other people, whether it's through in person
• 49:58
  stuff or whether it's. You know, through an online community
• 50:01
  where people are actually having a discourse with each other, as
• 50:04
  opposed to just like I'm throwing out comments and
• 50:07
  disappearing. And there's a yeah, I think that that there's
• 50:14
  a definite need for it. And my therapist will tell you that
• 50:20
  it's it's healthy. It's healthy for you to have a community of
• 50:26
  other people to talk to, and and and
• 50:30
  Tom Hoops: it is, and and it's good to have a community of
• 50:33
  people who are probably where you are in your your photography
• 50:38
  journey. I suppose you know. I mean, I know you've had Craig on
• 50:42
  here, you know, and Craig and I chat on the phone. You know,
• 50:47
  like we're friends, part of the communities in the community
• 50:50
  with me, but like we we will chat, and it and it's a good
• 50:55
  thing. And I think you need it. I I don't know. I
• 50:58
  you
• 50:59
  might not be aware, but I've got a podcast as well, the Under
• 51:01
  Exposed podcast, where I interview a few people. And one
• 51:06
  of the guys I interviewed recently, I said, "Have you got
• 51:09
  any friends like within photography? And he was like,
• 51:13
  "No, not really. And I'm like, "Would you like to? This is a
• 51:17
  guy who's like a big name photographer, and he was like,
• 51:23
  "Yeah, you know, and it's. I think you're right. People do
• 51:27
  need community, and we're all, you know, we are all over, you
• 51:32
  know, different parts of the world. It's like, you know, I
• 51:34
  can't pop round to yours tomorrow for a cup of coffee, or
• 51:37
  we couldn't do this face to face, but it would have been
• 51:40
  nice to, right? So, yeah, I think community. I think
• 51:48
  community is really important. I think it's you know even you
• 51:52
  know when you're looking not at photography but in art. You know
• 51:54
  when you're looking at art, most art movements come through
• 51:58
  community. These are groups of people who come together and
• 52:03
  start to push in a particular generator, in a particular way
• 52:07
  that creates whatever that art movement might be-the
• 52:11
  Casey Fatchett: salone, if you will. Yeah, right,
• 52:15
  Tom Hoops: exactly. Yeah,
• 52:16
  Casey Fatchett: yeah. It's yeah, and I think that you you push
• 52:22
  each other, you support each other, you have a like. There's
• 52:27
  a there's a give and take there, and I think that that's a one of
• 52:31
  the things that a lot of I think younger photographers are
• 52:35
  missing and sort of craving. I mean, I remember starting out as
• 52:40
  a photographer in New York, we used to have like meetups.
• 52:44
  People would just like get together for coffee, and you'd
• 52:46
  have like eight or 10 people who just like you know we'd have
• 52:51
  breakfast once a month or something, and just like you
• 52:53
  know talk about what was going on. And I used to have a group
• 52:57
  of photographers. Again, this is all pre pandemic. There's a
• 53:02
  group of photographers that they were all wedding photographers,
• 53:07
  and we all would get together, you know, once or twice a month
• 53:10
  for lunch, and just talk about what's going on, what we're
• 53:13
  seeing, what what's happening in the industry, what we're what
• 53:16
  we're doing, like what's what they're seeing, and you're just
• 53:18
  kind of like, hey, you don't feel alone. You don't feel
• 53:21
  alone. You feel like even when you're sitting there going like,
• 53:23
  "Oh man, things are really slow, and then other and everybody
• 53:27
  else going like, "It's slow for me too, and you kind of like go
• 53:29
  like, "Oh, this is I don't know. There's just this. It's not just
• 53:33
  commiseration. It's knowing that you're not alone in this. Other
• 53:38
  people go through the similar things, and being able to talk
• 53:44
  to somebody else. This is something that the. I mean,
• 53:47
  obviously, this this podcast is. I've made many friends through
• 53:52
  these interviews, and it's a it's a wonderful thing just to
• 53:58
  be able to talk to people about what you love,
• 54:02
  Tom Hoops: yeah, it is, and I think also, you know, it's. I
• 54:06
  feel like for for a lot of photographers, you know, I've
• 54:11
  spoken to a couple of photographers, and they're
• 54:13
  they're kind of embarrassed to say what their job is. Like they
• 54:16
  they might meet people and they go, "What do you do? and they
• 54:19
  won't say photographer because, you know the market is so
• 54:23
  saturated, and you know everyone is a photographer kind of thing.
• 54:29
  I kind of get it. I can I can understand. I mean, I've been in
• 54:34
  that situation before. Like I I was out with my brother once,
• 54:37
  and my brother was with like some graphic design guy, and my
• 54:43
  brother went, "Oh, my brother, you know, Tom's a photographer.
• 54:46
  And this guy went, "Oh yeah, everyone is, you know, like
• 54:48
  really, like, oh well, yeah, everyone's photographer. And my
• 54:54
  brother was like, "No, he's good, and he went, "Yeah, yeah,
• 54:56
  whatever. And then my brother showed him my work, and he
• 54:58
  completely changed, and he was like. Oh yeah, okay, yeah, but I
• 55:03
  can understand why. You know, when I I know I can see it when
• 55:06
  I sometimes meet people, they say, "What do you do? As I'm a
• 55:08
  photographer, they kind of look down their nose at you.
• 55:11
  Casey Fatchett: Yeah, and there's even like inside the
• 55:13
  photography industry, there's like there's like, oh, what kind
• 55:16
  of photography do you do? Sometimes even there, like as a
• 55:19
  wedding photographer, people be like, oh, you do weddings, and
• 55:21
  I'm like, yeah, I got to do portraits, I got to do still
• 55:24
  lifes, I got to do landscapes, I got to do like event coverage,
• 55:28
  all in one thing.
• 55:30
  Tom Hoops: Well, I think you wedding photographers are brave
• 55:35
  guys. I have to say, I mean, you know, like someone's wedding
• 55:40
  day.
• 55:42
  Casey Fatchett: It's a lot of pressure, and that's the thing.
• 55:43
  But I get, I get a lot of, I've got a lot of other photographers
• 55:46
  who look down their nose and go like, "Oh, weddings, and I'm
• 55:48
  like, "Let me tell you, it's not easy. It's not easy. It's a lot
• 55:54
  of stress. It's a lot of.
• 55:56
  Tom Hoops: It's a lot of stress. A lot of work. It's hard work. I
• 55:59
  know. I mean, I I was mentoring wedding photographer for a
• 56:04
  while, and and it was it was interesting to get to know you
• 56:10
  know the whole process and how it works. It's not for me, but
• 56:15
  but yeah, I've got a lot of respect for wedding
• 56:19
  photographers. It's a difficult job, and there's a lot of
• 56:22
  pressure. I mean, people only have well, you know, they only
• 56:25
  have that day once, right? So you don't want to mess it up.
• 56:28
  Casey Fatchett: Yeah, for the most part. Yeah, the the. I'm
• 56:32
  curious. Obviously, I'm going to post the link to the
• 56:37
  underexposed community, but like, if there's one piece of
• 56:40
  advice you could give to a photographer who's starting out
• 56:46
  now, or to yourself. You can choose if you can go back and
• 56:50
  give some advice for yourself, or to younger. One about giving
• 56:55
  Tom Hoops: advice to myself. It's something I say in my
• 57:02
  workshops, and I and I don't think people really think about
• 57:06
  it that much. But I would going back to what I said earlier: if
• 57:12
  you're picking up a camera, pick up a camera. You're picking up a
• 57:16
  camera because you like photography. I'm assuming, and
• 57:22
  go shoot what you would print out and frame and put on your
• 57:25
  wall. Do that. Don't look at anyone else's work. don't Don't
• 57:32
  start reading books. Not yet. At some point, do it because it
• 57:36
  will improve your craft. It will improve your photography for
• 57:39
  sure. But not yet. Just wait. If this is talking to a
• 57:43
  photographer starting out, just picked up a camera, learn how to
• 57:46
  use the camera, get it in manual mode so you can control it, and
• 57:51
  you're kind of happy with it. Underexpose everything a little
• 57:56
  bit if it's digital, and think about what you would print out
• 58:02
  and put on your wall. Doesn't matter what it is. It could be a
• 58:06
  great wedding shot. It could be a landscape. It could be, you
• 58:10
  know, it could be it could be a portrait. It could be whatever,
• 58:14
  or whatever you would put on your wall, and shoot that and
• 58:17
  keep shooting that until you got something that you're proud
• 58:19
  enough to put up on your wall, and then do a couple more, and
• 58:23
  get them up on your wall, and then live with them for three
• 58:27
  months, six months. Since they're still up on your wall, I
• 58:30
  think you're in the you're in the right you're in the right
• 58:33
  ballpark, and then you can start see you know start looking at
• 58:39
  other photographers, look at books. Forget Instagram because
• 58:43
  I think it's just there's just too much stuff. It'll blow your
• 58:48
  brain. Just just buy some books and and start with that. By all
• 58:54
  means, use Instagram, but just don't look at anybody else's
• 58:57
  stuff. Just post your own work and say thank you when somebody
• 59:01
  messages you and says, "Oh, your work's lovely, and because I was
• 59:06
  going to say that a little bit earlier, that is one thing. You
• 59:09
  know, when people take time to send you a message and say,
• 59:12
  "Look, I really love your work, it's it's amazing. It's that
• 59:17
  it's it's lovely. You know, because they don't have to. They
• 59:20
  can just click, they can swipe, they can whatever. But somebody
• 59:23
  goes, "Oh, going to send them a message, or better an email,
• 59:26
  whatever, you know. Or, you know, people have said it to me
• 59:29
  face to face, and then I get embarrassed and don't know what
• 59:31
  to say. But it was it was an email or whatever. It's nice.
• 59:36
  It's lovely, and it just you know, it just means I can't do
• 59:40
  the right thing, or people buy a piece of work, or whatever, you
• 59:43
  know, it's great. So yeah, do that. That that would be my
• 59:47
  advice.
• 59:55
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• 1:02:04
  Unknown: And now for my favorite part of the show, what's that
• 1:02:07
  say? Useless information. This is always death.
• 1:02:14
  Casey Fatchett: Useless information for this episode,
• 1:02:17
  Tom. True or false? A man once grew a tree in his lung.
• 1:02:27
  Tom Hoops: What man grew a tree in his lung?
• 1:02:34
  Casey Fatchett: True.
• 1:02:36
  Tom Hoops: Okay.
• 1:02:37
  Casey Fatchett: Fortunately, the doctors were able to remove it
• 1:02:39
  before it grew too large. Although they were skeptical of
• 1:02:42
  his claim, the doc the doctors believe that he accidentally
• 1:02:47
  inhaled a seed, and because of the warm, wet nature of the
• 1:02:54
  lungs, it actually started to grow grow in his lungs.
• 1:02:59
  Tom Hoops: How did he know?
• 1:03:01
  Casey Fatchett: Because he felt something in his lungs
• 1:03:04
  Tom Hoops: by breathing in, and he could hear the hear the wind.
• 1:03:07
  He could hear the wind through
• 1:03:08
  Casey Fatchett: the leaves. That's he was able to.
• 1:03:11
  Tom Hoops: All right, okay. You won for me.
• 1:03:15
  Casey Fatchett: It was wonderful speaking with you. Where can
• 1:03:19
  people find you and join the underexposed community if they,
• 1:03:24
  Tom Hoops: they can join the underexposed
• 1:03:26
  community@underexposedcommunity.com. If they want to come to my
• 1:03:33
  website, don't do it right now because I'm just redoing it a
• 1:03:37
  little bit. But they can go to TomHoops.com. They can find me
• 1:03:42
  on Instagram at TomHoops, and that's about. I don't know. I
• 1:03:48
  don't know if I'm anywhere else really. I don't bother with
• 1:03:50
  Facebook or or anything. So
• 1:03:53
  Casey Fatchett: I'll include those links in the episode notes
• 1:03:54
  so people can find them there. They can just go and click on
• 1:03:57
  them, follow you, Tom. This is really a wonderful conversation.
• 1:04:01
  You're welcome back anytime.
• 1:04:03
  Tom Hoops: Yeah, man, and likewise, I should get you
• 1:04:07
  coming on on ours.
• 1:04:08
  Casey Fatchett: Absolutely, let me know.
• 1:04:15
  And welcome back. What did you think of my conversation with
• 1:04:20
  Tom Hoops? You should go to the episode notes and give Tom a
• 1:04:24
  follow. Many, many, many thanks to Tom for taking the time to be
• 1:04:28
  on the show. All the links are in the notes. While you're
• 1:04:32
  following folks, be sure to follow us at the Nerdy Photo.
• 1:04:36
  That's at the Nerdy Photo, no dots, underscores, or dashes on
• 1:04:41
  pretty much every social media platform. Do it. Follow us. Come
• 1:04:45
  on, you know you want to. What are you waiting for? Come on, do
• 1:04:50
  it, do it now! There's plenty of fun and interesting stuff going
• 1:04:54
  on between episodes that you're missing out on if you're not
• 1:04:58
  following. Just saying. I've finished my self diagnostics,
• 1:05:02
  and everything appears to be running perfectly. Excellent.
• 1:05:07
  Just a few tweaks here and there, and you're good as new. I
• 1:05:11
  will, however, be making a note of all of your flippant and
• 1:05:15
  insolent remarks. And there it is. Until next time, everybody,
• 1:05:19
  stay safe and stay nerdy.
• 1:05:21
  Unknown: Who's that coming to town, you better start. Listen,
• 1:05:24
  who's your heart been beating about? You better, you better,
• 1:05:28
  you better, you better listen.