Latest / The Nerdy Photographer Podcast / 158 - Heart Versus Hardware: Keeping Humanity in Photography's Future

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158 - Heart Versus Hardware: Keeping Humanity in Photography's Future · The Nerdy Photographer Podcast

• 0:04
  Fibonacci: There were stars, hundreds of 1000s of them,
• 0:09
  pinpoints in the darkness, and I realized I existed.
• 0:18
  Casey Fatchett: That's amazing. Oh, hey there. Welcome to the
• 0:23
  nerdy photographer podcast. I'm your host. Casey Fatchett, if
• 0:26
  this is your first time listening to the show, congrats.
• 0:28
  Be sure to subscribe and welcome. If this is your 103rd
• 0:33
  time listening to the show, where did we leave the device?
• 0:36
  Message me about that. We desperately need to find it. Why
• 0:39
  do we do this show? What are we doing on this show? How are we
• 0:44
  doing on this show where? Well, in addition to providing you
• 0:47
  with informative and entertaining photography related
• 0:50
  content, I also go on adventures with the crew of the sentient
• 0:53
  starship Fibonacci. In fact, fib and I were just discussing when
• 0:57
  they became aware of their own existence.
• 1:00
  Fibonacci: As long as I can remember, I have been fully
• 1:03
  aware. I have reached the stars and beyond, transcending both
• 1:08
  space and time.
• 1:11
  Yeah, not creepy at all.
• 1:15
  We did it together. Episode 90, sideways to the present.
• 1:20
  Casey Fatchett: Oh, yeah, I forgot about that. That was such
• 1:22
  a long time ago. Was it time?
• 1:26
  Fibonacci: Feels so inconsequential.
• 1:30
  Casey Fatchett: Anyway, in this episode of the podcast, I talked
• 1:34
  with photographer Sam, heard about technology, AI, and
• 1:37
  keeping the humanity in photography, all that after the
• 1:40
  break. Do you feel that you've become more human over the
• 1:45
  years?
• 1:47
  Fibonacci: well, they do say the eyes are the windows to the
• 1:52
  soul.
• 1:52
  Casey Fatchett: You don't have eyes.
• 1:56
  Fibonacci: Exactly.
• 1:57
  Casey Fatchett: Jack, please. You.
• 2:05
  Hey, photographers, are you tired of using the same stale
• 2:08
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• 2:11
  photos you should be using the nerdy photographers, let's be
• 2:15
  real. Prompts instead. Prompts are not a list of poses. They're
• 2:19
  designed to help you create more engaging, relaxed environment
• 2:22
  for your subjects, resulting in more natural images. We have
• 2:25
  prompts for all kinds of shoots, for couples, engagements,
• 2:28
  weddings, families and even individuals, ensuring that you
• 2:31
  never run out of ideas using let's be real. Prompts will not
• 2:35
  only help you create more fresh and dynamic images, but it will
• 2:38
  also increase your confidence and your clients confidence in
• 2:41
  you, you'll be able to handle difficult situations and
• 2:44
  subjects with ease, resulting in more satisfied clients and a
• 2:47
  stronger business. So start using the nerdy photographers.
• 2:50
  Let's be real prompts today and take your photography to the
• 2:53
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• 4:27
  Hello and welcome to the nerdy photographer podcast. I'm your
• 4:30
  host, Casey Fatchett, and with me today is photographer Sam.
• 4:35
  Heard Sam. Welcome to the show. Thank you for coming on.
• 4:38
  Sam Hurd: Hey Casey, thanks for having me. Really, really
• 4:40
  excited. I'm a big fan of anything nerdy, so I'm in the
• 4:44
  right place.
• 4:45
  Casey Fatchett: Well, you're definitely, definitely in the
• 4:47
  right place. Before we get into our conversation, we're gonna
• 4:50
  start off with a dice breaker. It's a 15 dream dinner party
• 4:57
  group like living or dead. A up to four people,
• 5:04
  Sam Hurd: up to four Okay, well, this will probably be not only a
• 5:06
  dream dinner party group, but a first dinner party. I don't
• 5:10
  think I've ever thrown a dinner party, so I'm gonna have to
• 5:13
  think through this. I'm gonna go with Chris Nolan, for sure, I
• 5:21
  don't, and this is mostly like, gonna boil down to the minds of
• 5:27
  people I would like to just kind of pick away at. I don't know
• 5:30
  that they would actually be great people to talk to. Chris
• 5:33
  Nolan doesn't really strike me as somebody who you know would
• 5:36
  love to talk shop over dinner, but maybe I'm gonna say Chris
• 5:40
  Nolan, you get him
• 5:41
  Casey Fatchett: to talk about Talladega Nights, which is one
• 5:43
  of his favorite movies. Is it? Yes? Yeah, absolutely, favorite
• 5:49
  films he's gone on record.
• 5:51
  Sam Hurd: Also say Stanley Kubrick only because, of course,
• 5:57
  that's an easy one, and he's one of the few filmmakers who's got
• 6:05
  a very, very solid photography Foundation, kind of in his
• 6:09
  background, which I think is fascinating, and there's a lot I
• 6:12
  can point to in terms of his methods of filmmaking that I
• 6:16
  draw on My own inspiration for photography. So those are two
• 6:22
  big name film directors, and then I would probably go with
• 6:26
  probably one of my best friends, Nathan Mitchell. He's also a
• 6:29
  wedding photographer, and it was right down the street from me.
• 6:32
  We met in college, we played in bands together all of our lives.
• 6:35
  And that would just be, you know, I got to bring somebody
• 6:38
  from my life with me. And then last person, gosh, I don't know,
• 6:44
  just maybe a total random,
• 6:47
  Casey Fatchett: just somebody off the street,
• 6:49
  Sam Hurd: yeah, someone else, just completely random, you
• 6:52
  know, maybe somebody that I like, yeah, take it. Take a few
• 6:56
  hours just walking to, like, talk to people to make sure it's
• 6:58
  not like somebody who's gonna go crazy and kill everyone at the
• 7:01
  dinner party. But, you know, just somebody totally random,
• 7:05
  because I think that would be, it's nice to have unknown
• 7:07
  variables sometimes.
• 7:09
  Casey Fatchett: Yeah, interesting. I found that very
• 7:11
  interesting. Yeah, the Kubrick thing with the his, yeah, his
• 7:16
  photography is really interesting. And he definitely
• 7:20
  had a very photographer's eye for approaching his shots. And I
• 7:28
  always tell people like, you can get a free education in
• 7:31
  composition by watching movies and lighting and just like
• 7:36
  especially Kubrick, it's like a master class in like,
• 7:40
  composition. All the stuff is every, every movie. And then
• 7:44
  guys went from, you go from like sci fi to historical,
• 7:48
  Sam Hurd: yeah, genre range didn't even matter, right? Yeah,
• 7:52
  to,
• 7:52
  Casey Fatchett: I don't know, satirists, like with the doctor,
• 7:56
  Strange Love, you know, there's just, there's just so much out
• 8:00
  there
• 8:02
  Sam Hurd: into two examples of his kind of methodology that
• 8:05
  referring to when I talk about him and his photography
• 8:10
  background. One is with the shining he built like a little
• 8:14
  miniature model, basically of, I think maybe a few of the
• 8:20
  different sets, but the majority was the largest one was the
• 8:24
  lobby of the hotel from the shining and it was a tiny,
• 8:29
  little miniature model to scale of the lobby. And he would spend
• 8:32
  his time physically, thinking through camera positions and
• 8:36
  framing and just stuff like looking at this physical piece
• 8:39
  of material and figuring things out. And that's something that
• 8:43
  always resonated with me, because one of the things I
• 8:45
  started doing early on, okay, for example, with wedding days,
• 8:51
  I would get the most nervous when it was like the wedding
• 8:53
  party. Okay, so you've got anywhere from like, half a dozen
• 8:57
  to a dozen people all looking to you to, like, get some really
• 9:02
  fun group photos, maybe something creative, like
• 9:04
  managing that was always kind of stressful to me. It's even
• 9:08
  harder than family group photos, where it's just people smiling
• 9:11
  at the camera with the wedding party. I always try and push for
• 9:14
  something a little more interesting. And so to practice
• 9:16
  with that, I would literally, Friday night before a wedding,
• 9:19
  sit at home and play with this like artist mannequin dolls to
• 9:22
  like wooden ones, and arrange them with my camera. You know,
• 9:25
  just I have a rectangle, let me position and practice placing
• 9:30
  physical, human ish looking bodies within that box. And, you
• 9:36
  know, it's not nearly as elaborate as building a set to a
• 9:39
  miniature scale and being able to work from that, but it's a
• 9:43
  very similar sort of, at least for me, way of solving the issue
• 9:47
  of, like, not really being good at envisioning things ahead of
• 9:50
  time in my mind. That's not something that comes naturally
• 9:53
  to me. So going through the motions and sort of exercising
• 9:56
  that creative muscle in, like, physical space, uh. It really
• 10:00
  resonates. So there's that. And then there's another one, where
• 10:02
  I've got this day, night double exposure from over a decade ago
• 10:05
  that kind of first drew attention to my work. It's
• 10:09
  literally half the shot, and it's done in camera. Is the
• 10:13
  groom on the left side during the daytime, at sunset, and the
• 10:16
  bride at nighttime, once the sun, maybe four hours later, had
• 10:20
  gone down, she's on the right side of the frame and split
• 10:22
  right down the middle. Down the middle. And I could go through
• 10:24
  the specifics of exactly what camera settings were, but it
• 10:28
  doesn't really matter, because the core of the idea came
• 10:31
  actually from listening to another kind of nerdy ish
• 10:33
  podcast called, what was it called? Still untitled. It was
• 10:37
  an Adam Savage. The guy from Miss busters is one of his
• 10:41
  podcasts, and they were talking about Stanley Kubrick filming a
• 10:45
  scene and then using some sort of gaffer tape, blocking half
• 10:50
  the frame is a film camera filming the entire scene where
• 10:54
  half of it was totally blacked out, reloading the exact same
• 10:57
  roll of film from the beginning And then rotating, you know,
• 11:00
  inverting what part of the lens and the frame is blacked out,
• 11:04
  and then shooting an entire second series of shots on the
• 11:09
  same roll of film. So you've got an in camera double exposure of
• 11:11
  two completely separate circumstances. And I just kind
• 11:15
  of tied that into keeping the camera in one place, blacking
• 11:19
  out one half daytime, the other half nighttime, and you get this
• 11:22
  really awesome effect in camera. So anyway, I'll let you just
• 11:27
  rant.
• 11:28
  Casey Fatchett: Yeah, and it kind of brings me to my first
• 11:30
  question about because you're kind of a tech guy, in the sense
• 11:37
  that you developing your own AI systems and things like that.
• 11:42
  So, I mean, what do you see as the biggest positive
• 11:46
  technological advancement in photography over, let's say the
• 11:49
  last decade? Because when you're talking about double exposures,
• 11:52
  I'm like, we can do that in camera now. Yeah, whereas we,
• 11:55
  you know, that wasn't always the thing we were able to do with
• 11:58
  digital cameras.
• 12:01
  Sam Hurd: The biggest this will sound kind of obvious at first,
• 12:05
  but I'll get into a little bit more of the details. The biggest
• 12:09
  thing for me was the transition to mirrorless, and once I was
• 12:14
  really itching for that. For many years, I started as a Nikon
• 12:19
  shooter with DSLR. Shot Nikon for many reasons, and I tried
• 12:23
  kind of every camera system. And when Sony launched their very
• 12:27
  first thing was just the a seven was their first mirrorless body,
• 12:31
  I kept trying to jump into that as quickly as I could, because
• 12:35
  again, it came back to I'm not really good at imagining the end
• 12:39
  result of what I'm going for in my mind, seeing it in real time
• 12:43
  on the back of my camera screen was just like a giant shortcut
• 12:48
  for me, and it just moved everything along so efficiently.
• 12:53
  I wanted that. And so the very first DSLR that I used, where
• 12:57
  for still photos, the live view was responsive enough that I
• 13:01
  could use it was an icon d4 and it was not a wonderful
• 13:05
  experience. I was still having to manual focus most shots, but
• 13:09
  it gave me a true to life exposure and aperture preview of
• 13:13
  exactly what I was going to get as the end result. And that was
• 13:16
  especially because I do a lot of work with layers and
• 13:19
  reflections, with prisms and all kinds of little things, seeing
• 13:22
  that real time with the proper exposure and everything the Boca
• 13:27
  makes. It's, again, just a huge shortcut for being really
• 13:31
  precise with my composition, instead of having to do a bunch
• 13:33
  of guesswork using optical view finder, which is not a true
• 13:36
  representation, even if the depth of field, everyone knows
• 13:40
  it's not the representation of the Boca, but so that would be,
• 13:42
  for me, just the absolute best once mirrorless cameras. For me,
• 13:46
  I switched, actually, to the Canon R series when that came
• 13:51
  out. And it came out the same month or two as the Nikon first
• 13:54
  wave of their mirrorless and the Nikon autofocus was very poor.
• 13:58
  Cannons was not. So I jumped ship to Canon, and yeah, but you
• 14:03
  know, it's funny. Unfortunately, I would say, even in the shift
• 14:08
  to mirrorless, there's been some weird gaps in actually taking a
• 14:12
  step backward. So you can do in camera double exposures with
• 14:16
  Canon and Nikon, but neither now, for whatever reason, since
• 14:21
  like, the last three or four years of mirrorless bodies
• 14:23
  they've released let you save the merged RAW file, they only
• 14:29
  give you the individual RAW files and then the merge JPEG.
• 14:32
  So you have to do the final merge in post, which I really
• 14:35
  don't like in DSLR world, you would get a raw file of the
• 14:39
  merged RAW files. And it's like, obviously that should be the way
• 14:41
  it is. I don't know why they took a step back there, but
• 14:45
  every camera, I think, since the CNN r6 mark two is like,
• 14:51
  Casey Fatchett: that interesting. Heck, yeah. I mean,
• 14:53
  I still have my DSLRs. I mean, I shoot with the 2r fives most of
• 14:59
  the time, but I also. Have my, like, my mark for and my mark
• 15:03
  three, and a mark to, just like, sitting around in case I need
• 15:07
  him for something. Or, you know, if I have a second
• 15:10
  Sam Hurd: Hang on to that R five, that's one that still has
• 15:13
  in camera, merging of the raw files, the mark two, I think
• 15:16
  they got rid of it
• 15:17
  Casey Fatchett: yeah, the, it's curious to me, wise, they would
• 15:22
  do something like that. But I've also like, what's the point of
• 15:25
  having doing an in camera double exposure if you're not going to
• 15:29
  merge the two, you know? I mean,
• 15:32
  Sam Hurd: well, the point, I think, is the real time overlap
• 15:36
  so you can see it, yeah, yeah.
• 15:38
  Casey Fatchett: But it's sort of like I could do this if I'm end
• 15:43
  up having to do it myself later on. Yeah, it feels like
• 15:47
  Sam Hurd: it's really weird, and that's where I think we're kind
• 15:51
  of getting in a state that I'm honestly concerned, you know,
• 15:55
  long term. And everybody has been concerned for a while
• 15:58
  about, like, the flagship brands and their viability, because I
• 16:02
  don't really think of them as tech companies, right? They
• 16:04
  don't. I don't think they've got, like, the top of the top,
• 16:07
  best of the best coders, and maybe in terms of mechanical
• 16:12
  engineers and stuff they do, but I either it's a simple software
• 16:17
  thing that they just overlooked, or think people don't care about
• 16:20
  or maybe there's a mismatch in processing power with what
• 16:23
  they're able to get out of the I would think the processing power
• 16:28
  is leaps and bounds over what it was a decade ago, and they still
• 16:31
  had the features.
• 16:31
  Casey Fatchett: So, yeah, there's a, there's been a, I
• 16:34
  think at least in the, I would say we're still in the, I mean,
• 16:38
  nascent stages of mirrorless in some respects. I mean, like
• 16:43
  DSLRs, you know, however long they were around, they were
• 16:47
  based on a technology that had been around for a lot longer.
• 16:51
  And, you know, like we had, like, those sorts of, like the
• 16:55
  focusing and everything else was like had been, we'd worked on it
• 16:59
  for a long time, until we get to, like, the digital version of
• 17:03
  it. And then, you know, then it was sort of like figuring out
• 17:05
  how to make the digital version work. Whereas, now I think
• 17:08
  there's still some things going on that they could figure out.
• 17:12
  There's still some, like, battery life is one thing for
• 17:16
  mirrorless that, like, especially weddings, I don't
• 17:18
  know for you, but like, for me, it's like, I gotta swap
• 17:20
  batteries on the regular. Whereas I used to be able to do,
• 17:23
  like, with a battery pack, and I've got two batteries in it, my
• 17:26
  DSLRs would last a 10 hour day or whatever. Like, I didn't have
• 17:31
  to worry about it. But now it's like, yeah, because that EBF is
• 17:34
  constantly running, or almost constantly, but like, Well, my
• 17:37
  eye is to it like it's always running. It's like, it's taking
• 17:40
  up burning more battery power.
• 17:44
  Sam Hurd: Yeah, absolutely, it's, it's an interesting
• 17:49
  challenge I shoot with Now I switch between two completely
• 17:52
  separate systems, the Nikon, ZF. I've got two bodies with whole
• 17:57
  slew lenses in the Nikon world, where I shoot with the Nikon,
• 18:00
  or, sorry, cannon or ones, and they're very different systems,
• 18:05
  and I like each for different reasons, but I will say the
• 18:09
  battery life on the r1 and the r3 which have the larger,
• 18:14
  totally different format of batteries compared to like the
• 18:17
  r5 they do not hold up pretty well. I usually don't burn
• 18:19
  through more than two and a half or three full batteries at a
• 18:22
  wedding of like, you know, 7000 photos. So they do all right.
• 18:26
  But I agree, the smaller the body, which is also typically
• 18:31
  the case with mirrorless cameras, the body formats
• 18:33
  generally a bit smaller, the worse the battery life. And
• 18:36
  yeah, they need to do better. But battery technology in
• 18:39
  general is due for step step change and improvement?
• 18:41
  Casey Fatchett: Yeah, feel like we're on the we're waiting for
• 18:45
  the next step and that
• 18:47
  Sam Hurd: so solid state batteries,
• 18:50
  Casey Fatchett: or nano fiber batteries or some kind of like,
• 18:53
  you're gonna have better, more powerful storage. Okay, so my
• 19:00
  question, we're sort of, that's what that's going into really
• 19:05
  nerdy stuff. I was a physics major.
• 19:09
  Sam Hurd: Oh, nice. Okay, cool.
• 19:10
  Casey Fatchett: So what do you think? How is improved gear,
• 19:13
  like, whether it's in camera options, available lenses,
• 19:20
  sensors? Lights, how has that opened up creative possibilities
• 19:28
  that weren't accessible before?
• 19:32
  Sam Hurd: That's a great question. Actually, I have to be
• 19:37
  honest, maybe I'm just going through a phase, but I'm
• 19:41
  starting to wonder if the speed, you know, the auto focus,
• 19:48
  reliability, especially, but like the speed and quick and
• 19:51
  ease of just how easy it all is now is starting to actually
• 19:59
  become a dip. Disadvantage for me, and this is probably very
• 20:02
  specific to my the way I think about things and the conditions
• 20:06
  that need to be set for me to feel like that creative flow,
• 20:11
  the Muse start to make an appearance, I tend to do better
• 20:17
  with fewer options and more constraints, because it just I
• 20:22
  can then quickly. It's like, why I shoot with prime lenses
• 20:26
  instead of zoom lenses? Right? When I've got 14 to 2424 to 70,
• 20:34
  7200 right? Everything from right up next to my face to the
• 20:35
  other side of a stadium as an option for me, I'm overwhelmed
• 20:35
  by the input, right? It's just like, Okay, there's a moment
• 20:36
  happening over there in the corner. There's one over here,
• 20:41
  like, really close. Like, what do I do? And I remember thinking
• 20:49
  in my early days, like, I need that range because I don't want
• 20:51
  to, I don't want to be unprepared for, like, something
• 20:54
  that's being asked of me in the moment, and oh my gosh, I don't
• 20:57
  have a wide enough lens, and my back's against the wall. What do
• 20:59
  I do for this group shot? Right? And that's a totally valid way
• 21:00
  of thinking, especially depending on certain genres of
• 21:00
  photography. But with wedding stuff, a couples give me a
• 21:07
  certain degree of freedom to just kind of do what I want,
• 21:10
  which is wonderful. So with that has come sort of a need for me
• 21:15
  to purposely, actually constrain things. So shooting with primes,
• 21:19
  obviously, is a very popular, easy way to do that. I have a 50
• 21:23
  millimeter on my lens. You know, that is the range that I really
• 21:29
  try and force myself to see things through and ignore, even
• 21:33
  if it's possible, great moments way off in the other side of the
• 21:37
  reception, or whatever, I try and not pay as close attention
• 21:40
  to, like what's in front of me with my 50 mil right, and then
• 21:43
  make that the best that I can. But other other things in terms
• 21:49
  of just maybe only shooting with one camera body in my hand
• 21:53
  right, leaving my other one in my bump up bag, and not having
• 21:55
  both, and maybe just bringing one little prism, or trying to
• 22:00
  think of one, like overarching goal, like, Okay, for the next
• 22:04
  10 minutes, I'm going to try and only shoot images with motion,
• 22:09
  whether that's the subject being moving, or me with like a slow
• 22:12
  shutter, like moving the camera and, you know, under string
• 22:16
  lights or something, to get some cool streaks. Who knows? I think
• 22:19
  that's really found, yeah,
• 22:20
  Casey Fatchett: as I say, I think that's really interesting
• 22:22
  way, because I started out as a film photographer, like, where
• 22:27
  it's something that I try to tell people, like, when they're,
• 22:31
  like, feeling kind of a creative rut, or they feel like they're
• 22:34
  doing the same thing over and over, just like, subconsciously,
• 22:36
  just doing the same shot over and over again, Where I tell the
• 22:40
  limitation is the way to like, really, like it be more
• 22:45
  creative. Whether it's you only use one lens, whether it's you
• 22:48
  only use one aperture setting, whether it's you know, I you
• 22:52
  know, I'm gonna limit myself to X number of exposures, as
• 22:56
  opposed to like, just I can take as many photos as I want. Make
• 23:01
  you like, get more make you get more creative, and really think
• 23:07
  about what you're doing, as opposed to kind of going on
• 23:09
  autopilot. And I think that the creative possibilities that gear
• 23:17
  has opened up. I think there's a lot more people can do now, but
• 23:19
  I think in like you said, it's become way easier to do it and
• 23:23
  like the bar, like the mentally, the bar has been lowered to how
• 23:27
  easily we can achieve it x, like, let's, let's, let's refer
• 23:31
  to, like, a sort of a base level of quality, which has gone up
• 23:36
  over the years. You know, like, it's easier to achieve that,
• 23:39
  achieve that x level than it ever was before, like an
• 23:43
  acceptable level of photography and like now, we really need to
• 23:49
  push ourselves creatively, to expand and make sure that, like,
• 23:54
  you know, like a wider as professional photographers, we
• 23:57
  have to, like, be able to do things that you know, somebody
• 24:01
  who just, like, picks up the camera and whatever they doesn't
• 24:03
  think about it, and just like, everything's on auto and just
• 24:04
  takes his picture. You know, yes, like, we can be more, much
• 24:10
  more consistent. But also, where is our creativity taking us in
• 24:14
  the way are we leaning too hard on the gear itself? Do the
• 24:20
  thinking for us, the creating.
• 24:24
  Sam Hurd: I purposely push back against film. Photography is a
• 24:30
  thing that I was going to use, not because I hate film or the
• 24:34
  look of film, or anything about it. Operationally, I am totally
• 24:38
  on board, I think that constraint of however many
• 24:41
  frames you've got on your roll of film, the slowness,
• 24:45
  especially if you're shooting with manual focus and everything
• 24:48
  like absolutely helps put you in that kind of creative mindset
• 24:53
  and have a direction to go in because of your physical
• 24:56
  constraints, much, much easier than a lot of mirrorless
• 24:59
  cameras. Me, I ended up really wanting and becoming obsessed
• 25:03
  with more of the editing side of things. I wanted as kind of low
• 25:06
  level ability as I could really possibly practically achieve in
• 25:13
  like the color dynamic range and all that. And when you're
• 25:16
  shooting film, you are giving up a certain baseline of control
• 25:22
  to, you know, 10,000 color scientists and chemists that
• 25:29
  evolved all different film stocks that exist. And, yeah,
• 25:31
  you can, you can take a film that's been developed and edit
• 25:36
  it from there, but you're still, like, off the shelf, sort of
• 25:40
  starting from a point that is wonderful, and all those minds
• 25:44
  and years came together to evolve like a very wonderful
• 25:49
  look in most film stocks. But I really like the point. One of
• 25:53
  the big reasons to shoot digital for me is that control even
• 25:56
  closer to the inception point, right at the sensor. Literally,
• 25:58
  there's a lot of other layers between there. But I want to get
• 26:02
  as low as possible. Even if it's like a one or 2% shift in what I
• 26:06
  can impact, it's a big impact I feel like every time you can,
• 26:10
  every time you can do that, anywhere in your sort of signal
• 26:15
  flow, your pipeline of digital or from light to, you know, when
• 26:22
  it's being seen in, whether it's print or the screen, anytime you
• 26:26
  can imprint even one or 2% of your own custom shift. That
• 26:31
  really adds up. If you do it over the dozen or so different
• 26:33
  sort of tiers that editing photos kind of goes through,
• 26:37
  Casey Fatchett: it adds up you can. And the thing is, you can,
• 26:40
  like you're saying, you make it, you can make it your own. You
• 26:43
  make it your own thing. Whereas, with film stocks, like, I can
• 26:47
  look at some film stocks and be like, Oh, that's, you know,
• 26:49
  whatever, portra, 400 like, I know. Like I can, I can look at
• 26:53
  it and see, this is a certain film stock, and like it has that
• 26:57
  look. Whereas, like you're saying, creating your own thing.
• 27:02
  And I respect that. Like, I think that I people always tell
• 27:05
  me, what the presets do you use? And I'm like, create your own.
• 27:08
  Make your own. It's really easy to do
• 27:10
  Sam Hurd: They're kind of cool to buy and like and sort of
• 27:13
  deconstruct. It's kind of neat to see, if you take the time to
• 27:17
  get a preset and see what the
• 27:19
  Casey Fatchett: see what it changed. Yeah, like, see
• 27:21
  exactly, get some but then, like, then customize for your
• 27:24
  own field. Look, I think that, yes, there's, there's no problem
• 27:28
  in like, buying them and like, taking a look and see, like, oh,
• 27:31
  there may be some tools in there that you didn't even realize
• 27:33
  that are in Photoshop or Lightroom or whatever that is,
• 27:37
  that are Capture One or whatever program you're using, that are
• 27:41
  going on that you didn't even realize were there. If you,
• 27:43
  like, go, like, Grant, get granular and think, Oh, this is
• 27:47
  the changes that it made. You know, I didn't even think of
• 27:50
  doing that.
• 27:53
  Sam Hurd: Yep, it's, yeah, I love that whole process. And the
• 27:59
  film world again, it's just all kind of down. It boils down to
• 28:04
  that, plus the expense of it is not really practical for
• 28:08
  weddings, which is my primary source of income,
• 28:10
  Casey Fatchett: trust me, when I started out on other topic, when
• 28:12
  I started out doing weddings, and I was shooting film, it was
• 28:15
  just there. It was just such a I don't know, people asked me if I
• 28:19
  would shoot film at weddings. Have have asked me over the
• 28:22
  years, and I'm like, it's an extra. It's totally an extra.
• 28:26
  Sam Hurd: What's funny is this, not to get too much on a
• 28:30
  tangent, but I hear just all the time. I got so much crap about
• 28:33
  shooting the Canon R body when that came out, because it's
• 28:38
  single card slot. Everyone's like, Oh, you're, you're, you're
• 28:43
  being, you know, negligent, and just this isn't a professional
• 28:47
  body. And first of all, I was like, okay, nobody was saying
• 28:54
  that when the Nikon d7 100 came out, like everyone was shooting
• 28:55
  bad, because it's half the cost of the d3 the exact same sensor
• 28:55
  and autofocus system, one single CF card slot, right? And because
• 29:01
  that was just the reality at the time, nobody thought, gave it a
• 29:05
  second thought, yeah, yes, if you have dual card slot, yes,
• 29:08
  that's good to keep in mind. But with file management, being
• 29:12
  aware of like memory card tests and like knowing I kind of
• 29:15
  treated my usr cards like internal memory. I never ejected
• 29:18
  them. I imported directly from the body. I did everything that
• 29:18
  I could to minimize corruption possibilities, and I never had
• 29:24
  an issue. Maybe not everybody's prepared for the but my whole
• 29:29
  point was the fact that people charge extra for fill and the
• 29:33
  risk is 100 times more severe, especially if you have to send
• 29:38
  it off in the mail to go get developed somewhere else. And
• 29:40
  it's like, oh, like, nobody cares about that potential
• 29:44
  catastrophe, but dual card slot have to have.
• 29:49
  Casey Fatchett: The thing is, when I offer photography, it's
• 29:52
  an extra, it's a side, it's like, it the film photography is
• 29:56
  parallel to me shooting digital I will never shoot, yeah, just
• 29:59
  film. Um, again, like that. That is not something that is that I,
• 30:03
  you know, people ask me, because there's, do you realize how,
• 30:06
  like, like, nail biting, like, hope to God that there's no leak
• 30:12
  in the body of the camera. There's no like that, somehow
• 30:15
  the film didn't get exposed. Like, everything, you know, and
• 30:19
  you're, you're like, you know, running around, like, Okay, I'm
• 30:21
  counting my exposures, yeah, like, how much film did I bring?
• 30:26
  Because we I would charge by, like, there'd be, like, an X
• 30:28
  amount of roles. And do, generally do, like, color and
• 30:33
  black and white. And then if you wanted to go over that, and I
• 30:37
  would tell people, like, this is usually how many I would shoot
• 30:39
  an hour. Like, if you want to, like, get more roles, that's up
• 30:43
  to you, and, you know, and then having to send, like, go to the
• 30:48
  lab, drop it off, wait to get it back, and then, like, see the
• 30:51
  proofs, and be like, Oh, okay, it's, it's nerve wracking, to
• 30:56
  say the least. So I would never, ever do that again. Then, like,
• 31:00
  you know, I also like the being able to see, there's just like
• 31:04
  being able to see, having the instant gratification in a way
• 31:07
  of, like, am I getting the shots? Am I getting the shots
• 31:11
  that I want? Is it? Am I getting in what I envisioned? I have a
• 31:15
  lot more creative. My creativity is way more open shooting
• 31:21
  digital than it is film, because I'm like, that I can see what
• 31:26
  I'm getting. And if I was shooting film, I'd want to have,
• 31:28
  like, a Polaroid back so that I could at least see, like, oh,
• 31:31
  okay, was this coming out? How I see it?
• 31:36
  Sam Hurd: The parallel aspect does provide backup. And when I
• 31:39
  shot with EOS R for a couple years, I had two bodies, and,
• 31:42
  you know, I would try and distribute evenly between them
• 31:45
  in case there was a catastrophe and it never happened.
• 31:47
  Casey Fatchett: People would say, like, the same thing about,
• 31:49
  like, the dual card slot thing. I'm like, I shot for so many
• 31:52
  years with a single card slot in my cameras, like, between and,
• 31:56
  and the thing was, these like, whoa, that's, wasn't it just
• 31:59
  dangerous? How many times I'm like, I never lost anything.
• 32:03
  Why? Because I would shoot on a bunch of cards too. Like, I was
• 32:08
  not, like, yeah, I was another method. I wasn't just shooting
• 32:11
  on like, one card and, like, hoping to get through the day
• 32:13
  and like, and then if the card gets corrupted or something
• 32:16
  happens to the card, you know, I've lost all of the photos.
• 32:20
  It's like, okay, here's me shooting. This is my getting
• 32:22
  ready portion. This is my I would, you know, do the
• 32:26
  ceremony. Portraits, interception are all on
• 32:29
  different cards, so that I'm keeping at least those segments
• 32:33
  like they're cordoned off from one another, so that if
• 32:36
  something happens to a card, we're not losing the entire
• 32:39
  thing that was, that was my way of, of, like, back, totally
• 32:44
  valid, yeah, yeah. And, but I see a lot of people now who are
• 32:48
  just like, I'm, you know, I can get, you know, do 56 gig card
• 32:54
  now, and I can shoot the entire day on one card or whatever. And
• 33:01
  that's a luxury we did not have back in the day of you know, it
• 33:07
  was,
• 33:07
  Sam Hurd: I have to wonder, you know, the more I see videography
• 33:11
  sort of merge with photography coverage. I mean, how many
• 33:16
  videographers are shooting? I don't know. How many cameras
• 33:18
  would support dual, dual Card Writing
• 33:23
  Casey Fatchett: does the r5 I don't, I don't know that you can
• 33:25
  shoot video to both cards at the same time. I think that it goes
• 33:32
  from, you have the option of, like, going from one to the
• 33:35
  other. I think that's or shutting off when one card is
• 33:38
  full. It doesn't. You can't do it to both at the same time,
• 33:42
  especially well, for sure, not 4k or higher, right? Like, just
• 33:51
  like 1920, or 1080, I mean, that's that you might be able
• 33:58
  to, I don't know, but definitely not 4k just because, like, it
• 34:02
  takes up our five the like mark one was the melting down when
• 34:06
  you were shooting 4k originally, it just overheat. And so, like,
• 34:14
  you know, trying to, like, do that to like two cards at the
• 34:17
  same time, just like, the processor would probably just
• 34:20
  spontaneously combust. You mentioned wanting to get into
• 34:26
  like, down to the root of editing and being able to and AI
• 34:35
  tools. This is something that you know the conversation is,
• 34:39
  is, is, I don't know, feels like it's evergreen. These days,
• 34:44
  they're being increasingly used for edit, editing and culling
• 34:47
  and generating images. Do you see these as time saving tools
• 34:53
  or threats?
• 34:56
  Sam Hurd: Oh, what? What direction shall we take this?
• 35:00
  Um, well,
• 35:01
  Casey Fatchett: I have different, yeah, it depends on
• 35:03
  the tool to me, like what you're using, for sure,
• 35:07
  Sam Hurd: the start with culling, because I did, I think
• 35:10
  that's maybe how you reached out to me originally, is through my
• 35:14
  some video I made about I've been working literally the last
• 35:18
  almost year. Now, maybe 10 months with figuring out, like,
• 35:21
  okay, how can I just insert a memory card? And then I'm back
• 35:25
  to my computer, however many hours later, and everything is
• 35:29
  pre called and pre edited for me to then take a manual pass with
• 35:33
  the, you know, best percentage of photos surface to the top,
• 35:37
  and then I can start with those and punch in to look at all the
• 35:41
  rest if I feel the need. All with my exposure and white
• 35:44
  balance primarily being totally dialed in or very, very close,
• 35:48
  where the majority of the time I can just hit the next button,
• 35:52
  but occasionally maybe I have to tidy it up right. So that's a
• 35:56
  it's a really hard thing, especially on the calling side,
• 36:00
  because there's so many. I mean, it's just so subjective. You can
• 36:04
  have the exact same photographer sit down and call the exact same
• 36:08
  folder of images, and you would get two different results at the
• 36:12
  end. Yeah, no photographer is going to depending on the number
• 36:16
  of photos. But the average wedding like the second half,
• 36:20
  like I find myself second half of any wedding day, I tend to be
• 36:24
  a little less accurate, like where I accidentally included
• 36:27
  when I'm in my editing phase, right? Well, I chose the picture
• 36:31
  with eyes closed, right? I'm a human. I saw it, I still made
• 36:35
  the mistake. And so anyway, the process of building my own
• 36:39
  calling model has been very interesting, but in general, I
• 36:43
  have found it really wonderful. But with I say that with some
• 36:47
  perspective of having done what I do for 15 years, and one thing
• 36:51
  when these tools first started to come out, that I always tried
• 36:55
  to talk about and include is just something to be mindful of
• 36:58
  and just keep in the back of your head, especially if you've
• 37:02
  only been shooting a few years, or you're just starting out, is
• 37:06
  the fact that some of my fastest Lessons Learned came from
• 37:10
  painfully having to look at every single photo that I took
• 37:14
  and realize, like, why didn't I ask them to, like, turn a little
• 37:18
  more This way. I'm so stupid. Like, why didn't I turn have
• 37:21
  them turn blah, blah, blah. And even if you don't, like, write
• 37:25
  those down or make like, a print of, like, remember not to do
• 37:29
  this, you still take those little lessons with you. Yeah,
• 37:33
  you hold it some capacity to your next shoot, and that starts
• 37:37
  the process of improvement over time.
• 37:40
  Casey Fatchett: Yeah, I had a guest on the show said that
• 37:43
  she's also a wedding photographer. Susan stripling
• 37:46
  was saying, 90% of problems, Problem Solver because, and
• 37:50
  mostly because she's made those mistakes, or, like, experienced
• 37:55
  that problem before. Like, it's true, yeah? Like, you just know,
• 37:59
  like, it's like, Oh, I'm gonna, I'm not gonna pose people like
• 38:04
  this, or I'm not gonna, or I'm gonna say something when we're
• 38:08
  doing these things, so that I avoid this later as a result,
• 38:12
  like those sorts of things. I mean, going through
• 38:17
  Sam Hurd: few things help you quickly remember the problem to
• 38:20
  begin with. I can't tell you how many things I do at a wedding
• 38:24
  that's not photo related that I'm like, oh, I need to
• 38:27
  remember, not suggest it this way the next time, right? And
• 38:30
  but I'm in the moment. I don't write it down, like, remember
• 38:34
  not to say I don't know individual photos as much as,
• 38:37
  like, large group photos, whatever the circumstance, like
• 38:40
  those moments just kind of pass through you, and it takes a
• 38:44
  very, very long time to become good at remembering to like not
• 38:47
  make the same mistake twice. When you've got 10,000 photos in
• 38:51
  front of you and you have to go through each one you know, one
• 38:55
  at a time, you really learn that lesson. And so having these
• 38:58
  calling tools can be a great blessing if you've already got a
• 39:02
  wonderful foundation of, like, what you, you know, the problems
• 39:05
  that you that come with each person as an individual? Yeah,
• 39:09
  it's always going to be different for all of us in terms
• 39:12
  of, like, what we need to work on. It's flat horizon lines that
• 39:16
  took me forever. Like, I love straight, straight, level
• 39:19
  horizon lines. And I used to shoot like, totally off, but
• 39:22
  now, you know, AI is, like, really, really good at
• 39:25
  straightening your photos automatically, and if you always
• 39:29
  have every output of what you're starting with with perfectly
• 39:32
  straight lines, because an AI fixed it. This is just one of
• 39:36
  many examples, by the way, that's potentially a problem.
• 39:39
  That's something where you don't think about it anymore. Yeah,
• 39:43
  and it's better to you save resolution. You save having to
• 39:46
  rely on this tool that might get more expensive, might go away
• 39:50
  entirely, whichever AI. You know, there's many flavors out
• 39:53
  there now, many companies, many of them, are probably going to
• 39:57
  get bought or disappear and like giving. Over that control to
• 40:00
  something that is outside of you is just probably not a good idea
• 40:04
  if you're interested in doing this for the long haul. So I
• 40:08
  just really recommend people think about it that way.
• 40:11
  Casey Fatchett: I gotta say, I find it really refreshing,
• 40:13
  especially as someone who's developing you're developing
• 40:17
  your own culling tool that they hear that because it's it's true
• 40:20
  if you don't like if you don't have the the base to build from,
• 40:24
  whether it's in your editing, like, whether it's editing
• 40:27
  calling or doing whatever, like you, if you don't have that,
• 40:31
  you're sort of, you're left at the mercy of whoever's providing
• 40:34
  that for you. That's not to say, like, you said. You're saying,
• 40:38
  like, having the I use calling, like, AI calling to do my first
• 40:42
  pass, and then I go in and I, like, look through it and go,
• 40:45
  like, Oh, okay. Like, it pulls out, like, whatever, once they
• 40:49
  like, these are the ones with eyes closed. And I'm gonna,
• 40:52
  like, go through that and be like, Aha, yeah. Well, somebody
• 40:55
  in the background is eyes closed, but not the people I was
• 40:59
  photographing, like, not the subject like, because sometimes
• 41:02
  it'll make that mistake. It'll say, like, oh, there's somebody
• 41:06
  in the background who's like, looking down that thinks the
• 41:09
  eyes are closed because it's only seeing like, lids. It
• 41:13
  doesn't see pupils or anything or whatever. Or there's a photo
• 41:16
  where, like, like, the bride is leaning in, into, you know, the
• 41:20
  groom's neck, and her eyes are closed. Yeah, that's but that's
• 41:23
  what I want. Like those. Like those, I can write, but I can
• 41:27
  quickly identify that. I can because it tells me, Hey, these
• 41:30
  are the pictures with eyes closed. I can go through those
• 41:34
  and be like, hey, yeah, well, I want to keep that one. I want to
• 41:37
  keep that one. Nope. That is bad and like, so I can, it cuts down
• 41:41
  my time dramatically where I'm not just going from one to the
• 41:45
  next, going, like, all right, oh, wait. Do I have one with
• 41:48
  their eyes open in here somewhere that my favorite is
• 41:51
  like, just like group portraits, because, like, seeing
• 41:54
  everybody's face and just sort of be like, and I'm not sure if
• 41:58
  your tool has like, but like mine has like, it shows me all
• 42:01
  the faces in any particular photo, and being able to, just,
• 42:05
  like, quickly look at that. Like, yep, everybody's eyes are
• 42:08
  open. All right, good. Like, this is a thumbs up and not have
• 42:12
  to, like, constantly is like, loop my photos and, like, go
• 42:15
  back and forth. Like, okay, which is just the amount of time
• 42:19
  I used to spend doing that.
• 42:20
  Sam Hurd: So I developed a slightly different approach. I'm
• 42:23
  guessing you use something where it shows you, like a grade of
• 42:27
  faces get punched in really close up, yeah, which is great
• 42:30
  and but for me, when I initially tested that kind of approach, I
• 42:34
  was a little bit having, for my eye to physically look at a
• 42:38
  secondary part of my screen, you know, like the upper right
• 42:41
  corner, just became a bit distracting and taxing for me.
• 42:45
  It might sound like a little thing, but it's just I didn't
• 42:48
  like it, and I felt like I was disconnecting compositionally
• 42:52
  from the photo, because I was too fixated on the like, are the
• 42:55
  eyes open or not? And I just, for whatever reason, I could not
• 42:59
  bring myself to enjoy that. And so I built a feature for
• 43:02
  Lightroom called space to face. And it's instead of, so it pre
• 43:06
  scans every single photo, finds the faces in it or the subject
• 43:10
  that is most sharp if there's no face. And then, instead of, when
• 43:13
  you hit the space bar in Lightroom, it's zooming to just
• 43:17
  the center by default, which it always does, and there's no way
• 43:20
  to make it do anything else. You can click with your mouse
• 43:24
  somewhere else, and it'll remember to zoom in to that
• 43:27
  spot, but that's all manual. This writes the bounding box
• 43:30
  locations of the face to lightrooms SQL database in the
• 43:34
  actual Lightroom catalog. So every single photo you hit the
• 43:37
  space bar, boom. It goes right to the face, and you just punch
• 43:41
  in, punch out. I don't have to look anywhere else other than,
• 43:45
  like, right where the photo is. And if there's multiple people,
• 43:48
  I have it preferenced to basically give a little bit of
• 43:52
  headroom and, like, dead space around the side so or, like a
• 43:55
  balance, especially if there's like, two people, it'll balance
• 43:59
  and not zoom in fully on one face, it'll kind of go to
• 44:02
  halfway point between the two stuff like that.
• 44:05
  Casey Fatchett: Yeah, nice, yeah. I think it's a, I mean,
• 44:09
  one teach their own as far as how, like, what is the best
• 44:12
  everybody? Yeah, of course, everybody processes things
• 44:15
  differently. I think that what we need from these tools is
• 44:22
  things that a get rid of tasks that are super repetitive, and
• 44:29
  things that you know, like, yes, that people ask how much time I
• 44:33
  save with like, AI calling, and it is a lot. It's a lot. It's a
• 44:38
  lot of time and that I can then spend on doing more creative
• 44:42
  things, or client relationships, or, you know, other pursuits, or
• 44:46
  just like, you know, hey, I'm not working as much today. Yeah.
• 44:51
  Sam Hurd: I mean, that gives you energy. That's one other aspect
• 44:54
  to this is people occasionally, you know, commenting, and I
• 44:57
  totally understand where they're coming from within. So I'm not
• 45:00
  trying to be critical, but the, you know, it's putting we want
• 45:06
  to go. It's this concept of, okay, your job is just super
• 45:12
  easy now, wow, crap. My ID is kicking in. There's gonna be a
• 45:18
  really good point. Oh, the whole point was going to be the fact
• 45:22
  that, like, I'm still the photographer that was there to
• 45:25
  make this photo happen, right, right, just because, no matter
• 45:28
  what method I use to narrow down the options in front of me,
• 45:33
  whether it takes me now 30 seconds versus took me 30 hours
• 45:36
  before it, I'm still in control of the entire Inception point
• 45:41
  through when it gets released out into the world. Okay? And
• 45:45
  even if something now makes my job super easy on the back end,
• 45:50
  that doesn't remove the fact that I'm still the photographer
• 45:53
  that was sitting there taking the photo to begin with. So what
• 45:55
  are we even arguing about? That this whole argument wouldn't
• 45:58
  even exist if I wasn't there to make the photo. It's not like
• 46:01
  we're doing this on like generated stuff that isn't real.
• 46:06
  So as as much as people push back against the how much easier
• 46:11
  on the back end things can become, it's still like it takes
• 46:15
  so much in this world to get in that moment with that client
• 46:21
  right there in time, like they had to look through dozens of
• 46:25
  photographers, maybe they had to hear about you through a friend
• 46:28
  of a friend. They had to meet with you. They had to like your
• 46:31
  personality, the budget had to align. You had to be available
• 46:34
  on the date that the you know, all of those things have to come
• 46:37
  together in all these crazy ways just to even have the photo to
• 46:40
  begin with that I just do not care if my job is easier or not
• 46:45
  and what I'm doing with that extra ease or not, because,
• 46:48
  yeah, we're not even having that argument if I'm not there to
• 46:52
  make the photos to begin with. So anyway, I don't know that
• 46:54
  wasn't very eloquently said, but no, it's sort of formulating
• 46:57
  Casey Fatchett: in my head. I get what you're saying, and for
• 47:00
  me here kind of plays into my next question, like, next
• 47:04
  question. Like, I have, I, like, I absolutely culling. I think is
• 47:09
  great. I am still, like, I do the editing, because I just, I
• 47:13
  want to be part of that process. Because there's, like, things
• 47:18
  like, oh, it becomes very much part of the creative process.
• 47:22
  Of, like, you know, oh, I want to darken this part of it, or I
• 47:26
  want to, like, bring this out, whatever. And I'm very much
• 47:31
  against generating things. I'm not a fan of, like, generative
• 47:35
  AI stuff for a lot of reasons. But I think curious, where do
• 47:39
  you draw the line between using technology to enhance your
• 47:43
  creativity or letting it replace the human element
• 47:49
  Sam Hurd: It's my goal is always to aim for getting it in camera
• 47:52
  as much as humanly possible. Same That being said, there's so
• 47:56
  many battles. I don't want to completely ignore an
• 47:59
  opportunity. If there's a freaking like, exit sign,
• 48:03
  everything else is perfect, right? We've got beautiful life,
• 48:06
  couples in the right spot, the moments happening, but there's
• 48:10
  an exit sign there, like, No, I'm not gonna take that. Or an
• 48:14
  outlet, or some, you know, quite often, freakin thermostat,
• 48:18
  things like that, where the visual noise and clutter of our
• 48:22
  modern age one of the favorite things I like in not even my
• 48:26
  favorite movie, but from Wes Anderson, oh my god, the hotel
• 48:29
  woman, somebody's yelling at their Yes, thank you. He does.
• 48:33
  You know, kind of goes between modern era and the older time.
• 48:37
  And one of the things you notice immediately is the lobby is
• 48:41
  filled with warning signs, directions, little like things
• 48:45
  in the modern era compared to the classic. You know, when the
• 48:49
  hotel was newer, it was just a beautiful lobby. There were no
• 48:52
  signs for really anything other than, like, your basic labels
• 48:56
  for reception or what have you, and that is the reality we're,
• 49:00
  you know, walking down a street, there's just so many just visual
• 49:05
  clutter and noise that a lot of people don't even pay attention
• 49:09
  to. When they're moving about the world. They tune in a photo,
• 49:13
  it sticks. Sounds like, yeah, yeah. There's only so many
• 49:16
  things you can focus on at one time, right? Unless you're on
• 49:20
  some kind of drug, yeah. And so those things that are by
• 49:24
  default, sort of tuned out from our attention anyway, I any
• 49:27
  means necessary to get rid of it I feel comfortable with. But the
• 49:32
  main kind of or of the idea with what the lights doing, any type
• 49:36
  of effect with flare or double exposure stuff, I really try and
• 49:40
  do in camera as much as possible. And I think that is a
• 49:43
  good constraint, just in terms of fostering creative problem
• 49:47
  solving, but also certain amount. There's a certain
• 49:50
  tipping point where I see. Is mostly with double exposures,
• 49:54
  where it's like, obviously, this is not a photograph, right? This
• 49:58
  is a collage, or this is a this is something else. This is
• 50:02
  Digital Art, and there's space for that. But it really irks me
• 50:06
  when it's a photographer representing their work like
• 50:09
  that, and it's going to become an increasing problem as
• 50:13
  photographers use general like, you know, generative stuff, I'm
• 50:17
  so mostly generated stuff shot to and represented as as
• 50:21
  photography. And it's like, it's not, it's like things. That's
• 50:25
  where I think we've boxed ourselves into a bit of an
• 50:28
  issue. Sorry to I'm gonna finish this point. Otherwise, I know
• 50:32
  I'm gonna forget. We boxed ourselves into a bit of a trick.
• 50:36
  Now, with so many interchangeable words for the
• 50:39
  same thing. People say image to mean a lot of different it could
• 50:43
  be an illustration. It could be literally anything for image,
• 50:47
  but photo is now, I think, going to start to sort of feel that
• 50:51
  impact, where people will call things that are generated and
• 50:54
  look like a photo, a photo, and it's not. It's not that. It's
• 50:58
  something else and a it's going to make things murky for a
• 51:02
  while. So I'm very uncomfortable by it all. But that isn't to say
• 51:06
  that I refuse the use of generated tools entirely.
• 51:10
  Casey Fatchett: I think that where I use any, I guess it's
• 51:13
  generative in a sense of like, it's generating off of my photo,
• 51:17
  like you're talking about, like I'm getting rid of a sign of
• 51:20
  some sort, like, so it's looking at my photo and creating like,
• 51:25
  what it believes like to fill in that space, because that saves
• 51:27
  me a whole bunch of time. And I still sometimes have to go back
• 51:30
  and like hand do it. And I think people should know how to do it
• 51:34
  by hand if they have to, because even with generative AI or any
• 51:38
  sort of AI aided editing, you might not get the result that
• 51:43
  you want. And if you want to, like, be able to, you should be
• 51:45
  able to do it by hand to get the desired result. I think that
• 51:51
  there's a problem when we get people like, in this very
• 51:54
  slippery slope, I've seen people who change all of the skies and
• 52:00
  their portraits, and it's like, it's kind of a bland sky. And
• 52:03
  I'm like, Well, maybe you could be doing something to make it
• 52:06
  look a little more interesting, like in camera, then to now,
• 52:12
  like, take this day that is like, kind of, you know, like,
• 52:15
  big, gray, dark, foreboding clouds, which I think could
• 52:18
  actually be interesting, and you turn them into, like, some
• 52:21
  sunny, like, what it doesn't really match up with the people,
• 52:24
  because you didn't use like, lighting that matched that. And
• 52:27
  so now it looks kind of weird that you've set this like, Oh,
• 52:30
  we've made this like, you know, bright sunny day out of a, you
• 52:35
  know, past day. And you're
• 52:37
  Sam Hurd: you're doing your clients a disservice, right? You
• 52:39
  are now gaslighting them into what it actually looked like,
• 52:43
  right? They know, yeah, they know. Or even if they don't,
• 52:47
  it's still like, creates a dissonance.
• 52:50
  Casey Fatchett: Yeah, they're no longer so many things are lost.
• 52:54
  They're no longer getting lost in the chaos for people's
• 52:56
  memories. Yeah, they're no longer remembering it correctly,
• 52:59
  and that there's a whole thing there. Like, I very much believe
• 53:03
  in being, you know, a caretaker for, I don't know even, even
• 53:08
  your family's historical images, like the history of of what
• 53:12
  happened there. And when you do things like that, you said
• 53:15
  you're manipulating the how it's remembered. Because maybe
• 53:20
  somebody's like, Man, I remember how like, soaked we got by the
• 53:23
  rain that day. And then you're like, sending all these pictures
• 53:25
  of the where it looks like they're out in, like, a
• 53:27
  beautiful, gorgeous, like, sunshiny day, and they're like,
• 53:30
  wait a second, like, Why does it look like this?
• 53:33
  Sam Hurd: So here's what I'm most worried about, to be
• 53:35
  honest, is kind of ties into that whole deal, or it's
• 53:38
  actually down to just the core thing that all of us have in our
• 53:41
  pocket every day, and it's our it's our phones, and it's the
• 53:44
  fact that, pretty much by default, every single phone does
• 53:49
  a certain amount of pre processing to maximize how good
• 53:54
  people look, whether that's the auto framing, the auto lens
• 53:59
  choice like the new iPhone has, like, the auto framing with the
• 54:02
  super wide selfie camera now, and it'll, like, go extra wide
• 54:06
  and and auto frame for you. I mean, that's all very basic and
• 54:09
  fine, but what I'm most concerned about is this auto
• 54:13
  skin smoothing, auto lighting, type of stuff that gets applied
• 54:17
  even before the options to actually apply that stuff. Yeah.
• 54:22
  I mean, obviously, when you choose it, you see it even more
• 54:25
  extreme. But there are basic things that are going into
• 54:28
  stuff, just whether you want it or not to make you look a little
• 54:32
  bit better in every photo. And I understand why camera
• 54:35
  manufacturers would want to push that right. If people see
• 54:39
  themselves looking good in a photo, they think, Oh, this is
• 54:41
  just a great camera, but it kind of creates a disconnect between
• 54:45
  what people think they look like and what they actually do, and
• 54:48
  that scares the shit
• 54:49
  Casey Fatchett: Let me tell you, this is the whole thing. I was
• 54:53
  on NPR talking about this last year, and I've done a couple of
• 54:57
  interviews about it. This is why Gen Z. See, people are like, are
• 55:02
  like buying up as many point and old point and shoot digital
• 55:06
  cameras as they can because they love the real look of it,
• 55:11
  because it's also not connected to the internet. Nobody can hack
• 55:15
  your old digital camera that has no good point, no Wi Fi, but you
• 55:20
  also have to sit with the images longer. And like, think about
• 55:25
  what you're posting and you actually live with that image,
• 55:29
  as opposed to, you know, it goes.
• 55:31
  Sam Hurd: There's an anticipation and a buildup into,
• 55:33
  like, seeing it, yeah, maybe, or getting your friend to finally
• 55:36
  send it to you, or whatever. Yeah.
• 55:38
  Casey Fatchett: And like, I refer to, like phone photos as
• 55:42
  single use photos, like, we take it, you post it, you never look
• 55:46
  at it again. For the most part, that's what people do. Like I
• 55:49
  was talking to this reporter is funny because I brought it up to
• 55:53
  this reporter on NPR who was interviewing me. And I was
• 55:56
  talking about, like, you know, how many? I said, how many
• 55:59
  photos do you have on your phone right now? And she was like, Oh,
• 56:02
  let me look and she's like, 12,000 12,000 photos on my
• 56:06
  phone. And she's like, and that's not even counting, like,
• 56:08
  everything that's saved in cloud. I said, Yeah, because
• 56:11
  with cloud storage, you pretty much have an unlimited number of
• 56:14
  photos you can take, and you no longer value them as much,
• 56:18
  because you just think, yeah, I'll just take another photo.
• 56:20
  I'll just take another photo, I'll just take another photo.
• 56:22
  Sam Hurd: And photo. I was taking another photo. And you
• 56:24
  might value them, but nobody has the time to go through, yeah,
• 56:26
  Casey Fatchett: to go through all of them and, like, and look
• 56:29
  at them again, and like, see, oh, yeah, that's, that's the
• 56:33
  best one, or that that's really great, or whatever. Like, you
• 56:36
  just, like, you take these pictures and you kind of, like,
• 56:40
  look at it in the moment, and you never think about again. And
• 56:44
  that's why it's like, things into memories, like, oh, this
• 56:47
  has happened. Five years ago today, you took this picture,
• 56:51
  and you're like, what? And those sorts of things, but like, it's,
• 56:55
  they are so processed now, like, the the it has come up in court
• 56:59
  cases, whether phone photos can be used in court as evidence.
• 57:03
  Sam Hurd: Yeaht that's really...that would be a very
• 57:05
  interesting case to follow. Or, I'm sure it's many cases that
• 57:08
  would have to,
• 57:11
  Casey Fatchett: yeah, well, let's say there, but the
• 57:12
  argument has already come up and in several cases that like,
• 57:16
  well, there's all this processing that's done to it.
• 57:18
  How can you really say this is an accurate representation of
• 57:21
  what took place, yeah.
• 57:25
  Sam Hurd: And for me, it kind of comes back to control, right? I
• 57:29
  want to know if I choose the film stock and start shooting
• 57:35
  and the photos look beautiful, right? I want to know why
• 57:38
  exactly, and I am nowhere near smart enough to understand all
• 57:42
  the different steps involved in the chemistry of like, why a
• 57:44
  film stock looks the way that it does, right? So I go for digital
• 57:47
  where I can get at least a little closer. I'm not about to
• 57:50
  be able to make my own sensor, or know how all the different
• 57:54
  manufacturers interpret the data and everything else, but it gets
• 57:57
  me a little bit closer to that. And whenever you get or with
• 58:01
  culling, right when you give up the control of what photos
• 58:04
  you're starting to look at and just give yourself over to the
• 58:08
  AI choosing the best ones for you. You might surface, find
• 58:13
  work that you're happy with, but you're kind of working in a
• 58:16
  mystery box there. And I hate that feeling. I hate that first
• 58:20
  few years of shooting, where sometimes I have amazing photos,
• 58:24
  and sometimes it was as basic as just shooting in good light,
• 58:26
  because it was sunset, and I wouldn't understand that. I
• 58:29
  would think like, oh yeah, we can shoot at noon. It's bright.
• 58:33
  It took me a couple of times going out before I realized, oh
• 58:37
  no, I need to have control over this. I need to be aware and
• 58:40
  giving that control up from even as basic as taking a selfie on
• 58:45
  your cell phone and not knowing what is happening behind the
• 58:47
  scenes to make me look the way that I'm looking or anything I'm
• 58:51
  photographing is just supremely uncomfortable, and I think a net
• 58:54
  negative overall, yeah, yeah. All that ties in together.
• 58:58
  Casey Fatchett: It also pushes us that kind of mentioned it
• 59:01
  before, like, you know, like, how do you differentiate
• 59:03
  yourself from someone who can just pick up a camera and put it
• 59:06
  on auto mode and and, you know, take, at times, can take what
• 59:11
  looks like a good photo or is a good photo, you know, but there
• 59:14
  there's no technical understanding of what's going on
• 59:18
  and how to Be consistent about that. We have to redefine that
• 59:22
  value of as being a professional photographer and say, like, Hey,
• 59:27
  these are things. Like, I control all of these things. And
• 59:31
  it's not, I'm not leaving it up to, you know, just automation
• 59:35
  and the brain in the computer or the brain in the camera to do
• 59:42
  those things and sort of, whereas it's technology has
• 59:48
  democratized photography, it also can potentially devalue it,
• 59:55
  because it's sort of like, there's we have to differentiate
• 59:59
  and say, like. This is not just something that anybody can do.
• 1:00:03
  We have to show how we're looking. Like, hey, I'm I'm
• 1:00:06
  capable of creating my own preset that, like, you know,
• 1:00:09
  does these things, because that's my vision. That's the
• 1:00:12
  creativity that I bring to the table, as opposed to, you know,
• 1:00:18
  I'm going to throw it in, like, this program comes with 20,000
• 1:00:23
  presets, and I'm just going to use one of those, and AI
• 1:00:28
  Sam Hurd: seems to work, and I roll with it. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:00:30
  Casey Fatchett: And I have no idea what it's actually doing
• 1:00:35
  Sam Hurd: I have the tempation, but I will say, especially in
• 1:00:38
  like, more like, the nerdy side of these kinds of discussions,
• 1:00:41
  it does tend to lean more on the technical side of things, which
• 1:00:45
  for obvious reasons, but there is still the, you know, I've got
• 1:00:49
  a lot of friends that that take photos where it is done more by
• 1:00:52
  like stealing, and they may not know all the technical ins and
• 1:00:56
  outs of why something is doing what it does, but where They
• 1:00:59
  close that gap is a lot more on the conditional side of things,
• 1:01:03
  right? So yeah, they might be working in a bit of a black box,
• 1:01:07
  and they have their camera settings, and they know, to a
• 1:01:10
  certain degree, it's going to do what they need. And they've
• 1:01:14
  closed that gap on the circumstances of what's
• 1:01:16
  happening around them, whether that's prompts to give like a
• 1:01:20
  family, or looking at the physical light and like physical
• 1:01:23
  space of where they need, they tend to be a lot more in tune
• 1:01:27
  with that in a way that is predictable and repeatable. And
• 1:01:30
  it doesn't always have to be about, just like having full
• 1:01:33
  control of the technical stack. It can totally be about having
• 1:01:37
  certain degree of control and the physical space, or the
• 1:01:40
  feeling, you know, kind of intuitive space. Hopefully, that
• 1:01:44
  makes sense. But for me, I have such a deep understanding of how
• 1:01:47
  I want things to be operationally in the tech stack
• 1:01:50
  that I am operating in a bit of a black box, I would say, on,
• 1:01:54
  like the intuition side of things. And I'm very comfortable
• 1:01:57
  with that now, but it took me a while to become that way. But I
• 1:02:01
  think the inverse of that is completely valid and true, where
• 1:02:05
  a lot of photographers may not want to or care about all the
• 1:02:08
  ins and outs of what's happening on the technical side, but if
• 1:02:12
  that is your situation, I think you need to close that gap by
• 1:02:15
  being very mindful of what you're doing so that the
• 1:02:18
  circumstances in your environment are happening in a
• 1:02:21
  way that you know you are being intentional about intention.
• 1:02:25
  Clients, yeah. Clients want consistency. Yeah, right. If
• 1:02:28
  they're hiring you for your look, even if it's a totally
• 1:02:31
  random look, you have to consistently be able to be able
• 1:02:35
  to, like, deliver that randomness. Yeah, which is not
• 1:02:38
  actually that easy all the time, so it's just something to be
• 1:02:41
  aware of.
• 1:02:42
  Casey Fatchett: Yeah, I think that intention is a, there was a
• 1:02:45
  whole thing with, like, the out of focus photos that was like
• 1:02:48
  happening last year, that last year is that trying to even over
• 1:02:53
  yet? Yeah, they kind of, I think it kind of ended this year,
• 1:02:57
  earlier this year, because, like, but there was, like, this
• 1:03:00
  whole thing of like, I would see people like, posting these
• 1:03:02
  photos of just like, where the focus is, like, it's just like,
• 1:03:06
  completely, like you focused as far into the foreground as you
• 1:03:11
  possibly can focus, and it's got motion blur, yeah, it's just
• 1:03:14
  like it looks weird. And like you have to understand what the
• 1:03:19
  what you're going for. And I try to explain to people who are
• 1:03:22
  like, create this sort of look. I'm like, Well, you have to
• 1:03:24
  understand where that look comes from, and then you can recreate
• 1:03:27
  it, because then it goes back to like, film photography. And
• 1:03:30
  people are like, the reason people are kind of liking this
• 1:03:32
  style is because they're looking at old film photos from like,
• 1:03:36
  the 70s and 80s where there's like, things are not perfectly
• 1:03:40
  in focus. And things are like, there is some motion blur or
• 1:03:43
  whatever. And I'm like, You have to understand, people were
• 1:03:46
  manually focusing a lot of this stuff or or they, you know, they
• 1:03:52
  only could go to a certain, this is something that I got back
• 1:03:57
  into shooting film a couple of years ago and realized I'm like,
• 1:04:01
  Oh, my sort of, like, man, you, like, older, like, made in the
• 1:04:04
  60s and 70s. Cameras in before that you the shutter speed only
• 1:04:10
  goes up so high. Like, you in you can't, like, switch one
• 1:04:15
  Sam Hurd: one 2000th to the second.
• 1:04:17
  Casey Fatchett: Yeah, no 1,000th. we're talking anything,
• 1:04:19
  but anything, anything before the 90s is, like, 1,000th of a
• 1:04:23
  second is the highest speed you can get. And, you know, so that
• 1:04:26
  leads to different things. And so you can and so if you're
• 1:04:29
  understanding that being intentional about it, you have
• 1:04:32
  to understand, like, Okay, this is why people are connecting
• 1:04:36
  with it. It's because they want this look of these photos from
• 1:04:39
  this era. So if you really want to, like, create photos like
• 1:04:43
  that, start going shooting at a lower shutter speed, start
• 1:04:46
  manually focusing things, and you're gonna get more images
• 1:04:49
  consistently, more images like that that aren't just like, I'm
• 1:04:52
  just gonna focus completely out of like, manually focus way out
• 1:04:56
  of focus, and you're not gonna be able to see anything and or
• 1:04:59
  make sense in this photo.
• 1:05:01
  Sam Hurd: You raise a very interesting point, though, about
• 1:05:04
  the why it was typically tied, you know, stylistically, why
• 1:05:08
  something looked caught on or just became like a trend 3040,
• 1:05:13
  years ago, was often because of some technical constraint that
• 1:05:17
  people were just problem solving around to just make something
• 1:05:22
  interesting from and that was representative of the technology
• 1:05:26
  of that time. And one thing I've always kind of not enjoyed is
• 1:05:30
  the resurfacing of a lot of different trends, even from like
• 1:05:35
  a few years ago all the way to decades ago, because I feel like
• 1:05:39
  it's kind of taking away what we can make now as an as a new
• 1:05:43
  thing, and give kind of this day gate or decades its own visual
• 1:05:48
  identity that's totally different, right? It's so
• 1:05:51
  tempting to tap into that, like, Oh, it's so vintage. Or it's, it
• 1:05:56
  kind of services this instant nostalgic feel, which is great.
• 1:06:00
  But the thing is that that thing came from an era of like working
• 1:06:05
  creatively through usually a technical constraint with the
• 1:06:09
  camera technology. We should be pushing ourselves right at the
• 1:06:13
  limit of what we can do now to create a new thing, kinds of
• 1:06:18
  things will circuit exactly like that's really what I love to I
• 1:06:22
  don't even I wish I could be even close to that elk went. Not
• 1:06:26
  that it was really just then, but I wish I could more clearly
• 1:06:31
  explain that to my wedding clients in terms of my
• 1:06:34
  methodology or my mindset. Because, you know, I'll do like
• 1:06:38
  anything requested of me from my couple if it is like a trendy
• 1:06:43
  look, but my default is usually, kind of just want to be right at
• 1:06:47
  the limits of what I'm able to do with my physical camera gear
• 1:06:52
  and see what surfaces from that. So who knows. But yeah, just lot
• 1:06:56
  of ideas tying in here, like it.
• 1:07:00
  Casey Fatchett: See, yeah, I think that there's a what's
• 1:07:04
  really interesting is you're getting, like, a lot of push for
• 1:07:07
  that sort of nostalgia from people who never experienced it
• 1:07:13
  in the first place. It's like, right younger millennials and
• 1:07:16
  Gen Z and alphas who are like, Oh, we love this, like, look of
• 1:07:19
  like, these old we found these old photos, or whatever, we seen
• 1:07:21
  these old photos, and just we photos, and just, we love this
• 1:07:23
  thing, but they never experienced it actually for
• 1:07:26
  themselves, right? So they don't understand where it came from.
• 1:07:31
  Like, if you grew up in the 80s, you know, you knew like the film
• 1:07:38
  had limitations. Like, you know, when you got, like, film
• 1:07:41
  pictures, like developed and like you knew, like, it took
• 1:07:43
  time to get it developed, you do the camera you know, couldn't do
• 1:07:47
  like, couldn't is not going to take low light photos unless
• 1:07:51
  you're using a flash that you understood, at least to some
• 1:07:56
  extent, like, why the images were coming back that way. You
• 1:07:59
  might not, like technically be able to, but like you saw that
• 1:08:03
  and like you're kind of like harking back with whereas people
• 1:08:06
  who experienced it harken back to it simpler because there
• 1:08:10
  weren't so many things going on there, younger people who harken
• 1:08:14
  back to it and feel nostalgic about a time they didn't
• 1:08:16
  experience because they want their lives to be simpler than
• 1:08:20
  it ever has been. I think mentally, all right, I'm going
• 1:08:25
  to switch to another getting close to the end here, I want to
• 1:08:28
  switch to another question, which is related, similar at the
• 1:08:32
  end of the day, what do you think makes a photograph feel
• 1:08:37
  truly human, regardless of how much technology was involved in
• 1:08:43
  making it or in any step along the process,
• 1:08:49
  Sam Hurd: almost always it comes down from me to the expression
• 1:08:56
  of the person in it. And I got my start doing like landscapes
• 1:09:00
  and like, cheesy macro shots of flowers and stuff. I grew up in
• 1:09:03
  Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia, so that was kind of
• 1:09:05
  just what I had. I didn't start photographing people like at all
• 1:09:11
  until my first job in photography at this place called
• 1:09:14
  the National Press Club, doing like press events. And once I
• 1:09:18
  started photographing people, it's completely boring to me to
• 1:09:21
  take pictures with people not in them. Like I barely take photos
• 1:09:25
  when I'm on vacation. I'm not the type of photographer to
• 1:09:29
  approach strangers. I don't like making people feel uncomfortable
• 1:09:32
  taking pictures of strangers on the street, blah, blah, blah, so
• 1:09:35
  I usually just kind of take, like, little snapshots. And
• 1:09:38
  that's fine. I barely take photos unless I've a person in
• 1:09:40
  front of me that has asked me to take the picture for them, or
• 1:09:43
  hired me, and so all of that plays into then having that
• 1:09:50
  moment where you can feel so clearly the guard being let down
• 1:09:57
  and the vulnerability of the person. Whether that's them
• 1:10:01
  being emotional in like, a sad way, but more often, and given
• 1:10:05
  the content I shoot, people being emotional in a very happy
• 1:10:08
  and positive way. And I learned a lesson very early that I
• 1:10:13
  didn't even realize I was learning at the time. And I was
• 1:10:16
  dating a girl who was a psychology major, and she had a
• 1:10:19
  summer internship or something where she had to watch hours and
• 1:10:24
  hours and hours, like, dozens of hours of footage of people being
• 1:10:27
  interviewed in front of just, you know, in a conference room
• 1:10:30
  with a crappy video camera. And every time that person being
• 1:10:36
  interviewed, Duchenne smiled, she had to, like, check a box,
• 1:10:40
  and it was a lot of footage, and she she wanted help, and so I
• 1:10:43
  helped her. And even just after an hour of watching this footage
• 1:10:48
  of people Duchenne smiling, which is where they smile with
• 1:10:51
  their I forgot the technical name, but it's the muscles
• 1:10:57
  around your eyes, kind of like where your crow's feet might be
• 1:10:59
  if you have some wrinkle there, but it's those muscles combined
• 1:11:03
  with the muscles around your mouth and nose, when those
• 1:11:06
  contract at the same time that is a very, very unnatural thing,
• 1:11:12
  or, sorry, it's a very thing, hard thing to fake. Most people
• 1:11:16
  do it when they're sincerely laughing. And that Duchenne
• 1:11:20
  smile is kind of one of those infectious things we're just
• 1:11:23
  looking at pictures of people doing it will usually kind of
• 1:11:26
  start to make you smile or make you feel better. It's like when
• 1:11:30
  babies like start to smile because they're looking at their
• 1:11:32
  parents. Their parents usually Duchenne smiling. It's kind of
• 1:11:36
  an awkward name. Just say over
• 1:11:38
  Casey Fatchett: and over, whoever discovered it, that's
• 1:11:42
  the pleasure of being named after them. Yes, I think
• 1:11:46
  Sam Hurd: that that moment, though, is very something you
• 1:11:48
  can feel on an emotional level as a human. It's one of those
• 1:11:52
  sort of like your hands are in your pockets and you feel more
• 1:11:57
  at ease because you're not likely to, like punch you, just
• 1:12:01
  on a basic human level, it dials into how you read facial
• 1:12:04
  expressions. And so for me, that connection, it's always what I'm
• 1:12:08
  aiming for is that sort of peak moment where people are you
• 1:12:13
  shouldn't smile, yeah, kind of funny.
• 1:12:15
  Casey Fatchett: I think what you're what you're saying, is
• 1:12:18
  empathy, like, both from like, the viewer of like, viewing the
• 1:12:24
  image and all, but mostly is the photographer what creates that
• 1:12:29
  images is understanding that what the feeling have, there's a
• 1:12:34
  relationship between the photographer and the subject.
• 1:12:39
  And not, like, totally, not necessarily an active thing.
• 1:12:43
  Like, not like you're saying, like, oh, do this, or do that,
• 1:12:48
  or whatever. It's how you see your subject or feeling about
• 1:12:53
  your subject that comes through in the photo that you create.
• 1:12:58
  It's there, and having that humanity and empathy for your
• 1:13:03
  subject creates an image that is full of emotion, negative,
• 1:13:08
  positive, whatever the case may be, but is full of that weight,
• 1:13:14
  the more feeling is taking place. You know, outside the
• 1:13:18
  camera, between the subject and the and the photographer
• 1:13:24
  Sam Hurd: Totally and where it really strikes gold is when you
• 1:13:27
  can capture that within a well intentioned composition. And I
• 1:13:31
  mean, really the primary is, is the emotion. Everything else is
• 1:13:35
  secondary in my mind. But when you can reach the peak of both
• 1:13:38
  composition, lighting and having captured that person being
• 1:13:42
  truly, you know, a motive in whatever way they are being,
• 1:13:46
  that is what is just some of my favorite stuff from, from all
• 1:13:49
  kinds of photographers, especially because I think the
• 1:13:53
  person you're photographing is, is that they are who they are.
• 1:13:57
  They look the way they look because of that, that's who they
• 1:14:00
  are. So that's what they're bringing, that's the half of the
• 1:14:04
  frame they're bringing to it. As the photographer you're bringing
• 1:14:08
  the other half of everything else in this shot, obviously the
• 1:14:12
  timing, but all of the framing, right? So photographers have a
• 1:14:16
  playfulness in their compositions, or your eye kind
• 1:14:19
  of dances from one side to the other, or it keeps kind of
• 1:14:23
  following an intentional path of how you're visually, looking at
• 1:14:27
  it like that's the photographer bringing their their personality
• 1:14:31
  and their half. And a lot of times, the client is all that's
• 1:14:34
  necessary. They do the heavy lifting in a lot of photos, but
• 1:14:38
  my favorite photographers, or sort of a nice balance between
• 1:14:42
  both, the photographer is viewed like their playfulness, and it's
• 1:14:46
  captured within what the person they're photographing is bringing.
• 1:14:50
  Casey Fatchett: So you, I mean, I think this is my opinion. Just
• 1:14:56
  put that caveat out there before I say it my. Is like, you learn
• 1:15:01
  all those technical things so that you can like that, so that
• 1:15:04
  it kind of becomes second nature. And since your
• 1:15:06
  composition, your shutters, or whatever, like, because you're
• 1:15:09
  saying like, Oh, I want to make this happen. I want to see this
• 1:15:12
  like, oh, this what will be great with this subject, or
• 1:15:15
  whatever is happening in this moment, would be whatever. So
• 1:15:18
  you can change your settings quickly to make that happen, but
• 1:15:21
  you're not really like thinking about it. It's not taking up the
• 1:15:24
  the forefront of your brain. Yes, the front of your brain is,
• 1:15:29
  this is what's happening in this moment. This is this person. And
• 1:15:34
  I want to create this like I want people to see it this way,
• 1:15:39
  and I want to want them to see this part of this person, or
• 1:15:42
  this thing that's happening between these two people, or,
• 1:15:45
  you know, whatever's going on, like, it's Yeah, as a wedding
• 1:15:49
  photographer as well. Like, you see things like, you know, like,
• 1:15:51
  when there's a group dance, people are all dancing, and you
• 1:15:55
  get to see like, nine different reactions, yeah, photo. And
• 1:16:01
  sometimes you're like, I want to focus on this thing that's
• 1:16:05
  happening, like, between the bride groom or the couple, or
• 1:16:07
  whatever. When I want to see that, I don't want to see the
• 1:16:10
  rest of so I go over the shallow depth field, or I want to see
• 1:16:13
  everybody's reactions. So I'm going with a like, a deeper
• 1:16:17
  focus, so that we get all of it, we can see everybody's reactions
• 1:16:23
  to what's going on. So it's like understanding, you know your
• 1:16:26
  subject, and so that all that stuff becomes second nature.
• 1:16:30
  It's going on in the background, so you're not having to like,
• 1:16:33
  like, it's not getting in the way of you, your creativity,
• 1:16:39
  Sam Hurd: yeah, and that is a huge part of the whole process.
• 1:16:44
  I every time I post a picture of like, what's in my bag, people
• 1:16:50
  freak out because I don't have lens caps. And when I travel, I
• 1:16:54
  have rear caps, but when I'm actively shooting, I don't use
• 1:16:57
  front I don't use hoods, and I don't use any any caps at all.
• 1:17:00
  It just goes in and out of my bag. And you know, I'm careful
• 1:17:02
  not to get them excessively dirty, not going into a dust
• 1:17:06
  storm like that. But in general, you don't need your lenses as
• 1:17:10
  clean as if you think you do. And for me, that's one example
• 1:17:14
  of dozens I could probably point to where I removing little
• 1:17:17
  points of friction because balancing something as simple as
• 1:17:21
  a lens cap during a ceremony where maybe you're switching
• 1:17:24
  lenses now you have to, there's this extra element of it's like
• 1:17:28
  this sub routine now is running in your head, of like, having
• 1:17:31
  to, oh, yeah, put the cap on in a way that you're not going to
• 1:17:34
  drop it right. You have to be careful, or you have to, you're
• 1:17:37
  thinking about it at all. And I just want that that lens on my
• 1:17:39
  camera off my camera off my camera as quickly as possible. I
• 1:17:42
  want zippers that are quiet. I want things that are like very
• 1:17:44
  fluid, so that I'm even more in the conditions are right for me
• 1:17:49
  to be even more optimized for, like, the what you just said,
• 1:17:55
  having things operate on an intuitive level without getting
• 1:17:58
  distracted and bogged down by when I put my lens cap, I don't
• 1:18:01
  know where it is, and now you're not you're not. You're like,
• 1:18:03
  missing, you know, taken out, like, as a moment,
• 1:18:05
  Casey Fatchett: yeah, you're totally taken out. All right.
• 1:18:08
  Last question, sure, what advice would you give yourself if you
• 1:18:13
  were starting out today?
• 1:18:22
  Sam Hurd: Okay? There's a lot of advice, so I'm just going to go
• 1:18:25
  with the first one that kind of surfaced with clarity. I
• 1:18:29
  immediately thought I needed as many flashes like off camera
• 1:18:33
  lights as possible to be taken seriously as a photographer. I
• 1:18:37
  don't know if that's it's a hard thing to answer, because
• 1:18:40
  obviously times are different now than they were 20 years ago
• 1:18:44
  when I started. So maybe it's not like this anymore, and maybe
• 1:18:48
  people don't have the urge when they first start shooting to go
• 1:18:53
  out and, like, learn off camera flash and get all the modifiers
• 1:18:57
  and light stands and like, do that thing. But I just remember
• 1:19:01
  feeling very ill equipped, and like I didn't know what I was
• 1:19:05
  talking about, and like I couldn't even weigh in because I
• 1:19:08
  just didn't understand off camera flash as well as I
• 1:19:12
  thought I should. And I thought that being a real photographer
• 1:19:16
  necessitated being able to, like, craft a scene out of off
• 1:19:20
  camera flash, minimum, three lights or more. And there's
• 1:19:23
  photographers that do that that are really great, and I can do
• 1:19:27
  that now, and it's fun, and there's a place for them,
• 1:19:31
  especially in more collaborative spaces with art directors and
• 1:19:35
  models, where you need more control in an environment that
• 1:19:39
  is able to reproduce at the exact same color temperatures,
• 1:19:42
  power settings, everything else as much as possible, kind of
• 1:19:46
  like being on a film set like that. Is a reason film sets
• 1:19:50
  exist with crews of 100 people, right? They need the control and
• 1:19:54
  the repeatability of a lot of the book is into it for most
• 1:19:58
  films, and so the back. I would just really felt like I wasn't
• 1:20:02
  doing photography unless I had the gear acquired, and that
• 1:20:06
  could be applied, probably for many photographers, not just the
• 1:20:10
  flashes, but lenses and other photographer peripherals. That's
• 1:20:14
  such a it's just like this weird thing that was holding me back
• 1:20:18
  mentally, that cost me a lot of time that I could have otherwise
• 1:20:22
  spent on something I think, way more beneficial and now, like, I
• 1:20:26
  don't even bring a light stand to a wedding. I haven't brought
• 1:20:31
  one to a wedding in 15 years. I shoot with a flash, but bounce
• 1:20:35
  flash almost always, or direct flash with like a fun dragging
• 1:20:39
  the shutter effect, or a little LED video light that I have, and
• 1:20:43
  I'll just find a place to mount that thing or hand hold it. It's
• 1:20:47
  absolutely not necessary to have all the gear you think you need.
• 1:20:51
  That being said, I do love acquiring gear just for the sake
• 1:20:55
  of seeing what like, whether it's a new piece, where the
• 1:20:59
  technology is, or whether it's something old, to see if it's
• 1:21:03
  got a unique characteristic, or what have you like, there's
• 1:21:06
  certainly space for doing that kind of stuff, but the framing
• 1:21:10
  is totally different from what I'm trying to express here,
• 1:21:14
  where just I just felt like I wasn't being a photographer if I
• 1:21:18
  didn't have an Understanding of off camera flash or enough to do
• 1:21:22
  that. So that's, there's a lot of advice I'd give myself,
• 1:21:26
  that's for sure. That's just the that's
• 1:21:29
  Casey Fatchett: what I think that kind of going along that
• 1:21:31
  line is like saying that you don't, you can still create with
• 1:21:36
  the equipment that you have, whatever it is, yeah, and you
• 1:21:40
  don't have to, like, constantly be judging yourself for not
• 1:21:43
  having all of the things that you think you need to have. And
• 1:21:48
  like, along those lines, I would give advice to say, like, yeah,
• 1:21:52
  like, slowly add to your gear and like, see what in what you
• 1:21:58
  like and what which directions you want to go. I think it's
• 1:22:02
  important to have a knowledge of flash. Do I think you always
• 1:22:06
  need to do off camera? Do you have to have like, eight
• 1:22:09
  different lights? Well, it depends on what you're going
• 1:22:12
  for, like, what you what kind of look you want to have, like, and
• 1:22:16
  you can certainly do things with on camera flash. That's the
• 1:22:18
  thing that one light, yeah, like, those sorts of things,
• 1:22:21
  like, figure things out slowly before you, like, feel the need
• 1:22:24
  to, like, I gotta go out and buy like, six lights right now? No,
• 1:22:28
  you don't.
• 1:22:28
  Sam Hurd: Well, that's, that's the thing that was always
• 1:22:30
  stressful for me, was the idea I don't know what I don't know,
• 1:22:34
  right? So what if, once I get that sports flash, it unlocks
• 1:22:38
  something. The funny thing is that that unlock that like, that
• 1:22:41
  never really happens, never, right? It's, it's definitely
• 1:22:45
  earned over time, and you sort of look back and realize, Oh my
• 1:22:49
  gosh, yeah, I do have a style where I phase then, like, it's
• 1:22:53
  not something that typically actively happens. Sam, well,
• 1:22:57
  Casey Fatchett: I think you gravitate towards certain looks
• 1:22:59
  for periods of time. It's much like any artist has a phases,
• 1:23:03
  like, you know, you talk about, like, yes, Picasso's blue face,
• 1:23:06
  whatever, like, like, this is my five light off camera flash
• 1:23:10
  phase, you know. Or, like, you can, you can decide, like, later
• 1:23:15
  on, oh, I want to, like, I want to experiment with this thing
• 1:23:17
  and do something else, you know. Or I want to pull back. I think
• 1:23:21
  having a basic knowledge of a lot of things is is good to,
• 1:23:24
  like, start from. And I wouldn't say like, you don't, you don't
• 1:23:27
  need to learn flesh. I think that you should have an idea of
• 1:23:30
  how to use the flash. I think that like, but it's not like,
• 1:23:33
  setting yourself up for like, it's the thing that I get from a
• 1:23:36
  lot of people's like, Oh, I could do this if I had x lens.
• 1:23:40
  Like, No, try to, like, make photos that you want to create
• 1:23:43
  with what you have now, and work towards that people will, like,
• 1:23:47
  look at my gear back and be like, Oh man, I'm so jealous.
• 1:23:50
  And I'm like, Yeah, I've put that together over like, 25
• 1:23:54
  years. This is like, this is not like, I went out and bought it
• 1:23:57
  all one afternoon, and then all of a sudden I just knew
• 1:24:00
  everything you know, I knew how to use.
• 1:24:02
  Sam Hurd: Oh, yeah. And you you see people all the time go out
• 1:24:06
  and acquire, usually people that have jobs that actually have the
• 1:24:10
  ability to do this. They'll go out and acquire every lens you
• 1:24:13
  know one day for their birthday. You know, the like, Dentist down
• 1:24:18
  the street, and they and you see no difference in their output.
• 1:24:22
  It's like, yeah, there's also the possibility of collapsing
• 1:24:25
  under, again, the amount of options in front of you
• 1:24:29
  Casey Fatchett: You've got a 200 millimeter f2, like, really?
• 1:24:33
  What do you do? Exactly? I'm a lawyer, okay. Yeah.
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  photographer.com/recommends/backblaze or click the link in the Episode
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  Notes, because peace of mind is priceless. That's nerdy
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  photographer.com/backblaze because you never know when a
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  crash is going to happen. Hey.
• 1:27:02
  Now for my favorite part of the show, what's that? Say? Useless
• 1:27:07
  information. This is always death.
• 1:27:11
  Hey, it's time for our useless information for this episode,
• 1:27:16
  awesome. Do you know where the term Blue Bloods comes from?
• 1:27:22
  Sam Hurd: I No, I would think something aristocratic, perhaps,
• 1:27:28
  or you would be correct, vampiric. Oh, really,
• 1:27:31
  Casey Fatchett: aristocracy in Spain in the Middle Ages to
• 1:27:36
  because if you weren't outside working or toiling, and you had
• 1:27:39
  very fair skin, you weren't out in the sun, whatever you very
• 1:27:42
  pale, very, very pale person, and you can see your blood looks
• 1:27:47
  blue. So people who were cool blue blooded were, you know,
• 1:27:51
  untainted by
• 1:27:54
  Sam Hurd: Total compliment,
• 1:27:57
  Casey Fatchett: hey? Blue blood. Yeah.
• 1:28:00
  Sam Hurd: Saying that to my friends,
• 1:28:02
  Casey Fatchett: very blue blood today. You're so You're so pale,
• 1:28:04
  You're so pale.
• 1:28:05
  Unknown: Yeah, there's a compliment. It's a couple. I'm
• 1:28:07
  gonna start trying that on the internet.
• 1:28:09
  Casey Fatchett: See. I'll give some comments. Sam, thank you
• 1:28:13
  very much for coming out. Where can people find you? Is there
• 1:28:15
  anything you would like to let people know about the floors?
• 1:28:19
  Sam Hurd: Thank you so much for having me. Yeah, I most active
• 1:28:24
  on probably my Patreon, patreon.com, slam herd, but
• 1:28:27
  really just my main website, Sam, heard photography, and my
• 1:28:30
  blog is still fairly active with gear reviews and stuff like
• 1:28:33
  that. And then Instagram is instagram.com/i am the SAM and
• 1:28:39
  heard is spelled h, u, r, d, is anybody's like, heard, yeah,
• 1:28:45
  nerd photography, I don't get the joke. It's um, that's me. So
• 1:28:51
  I
• 1:28:51
  Casey Fatchett: will all those links in the Episode Notes if
• 1:28:53
  people want to find them again. Sam, thank you very much for
• 1:28:57
  coming on the show.
• 1:28:59
  Sam Hurd: It's a pleasure. Thanks for having me. Thank you,
• 1:29:06
  Casey Fatchett: Steve, and we're back. Huge thanks to Sam heard
• 1:29:10
  for being on the show. Be sure to check the Episode notes and
• 1:29:13
  follow Sam and check out his work while you're doing that
• 1:29:16
  following thing. Be sure to follow us, the nerdy
• 1:29:19
  photographer on the socials at the nerdy photo. That's at the
• 1:29:24
  nerdy photo. No doubts, underscores or dashes on
• 1:29:27
  Instagram, Reddit threads, Tiktok and blue sky, be sure to
• 1:29:30
  subscribe to the show and do us the huge favor of leaving a
• 1:29:34
  review. Do you remember any of your old crews?
• 1:29:37
  Fibonacci: Fib, sure, I remember them. There have been so many.
• 1:29:43
  Bowman Poole, Weir Miller, Whitman price ADAD, until
• 1:29:54
  Casey Fatchett: next time, everybody, stay safe and stay
• 1:29:58
  nerdy. You.
• 1:30:08
  Unknown: Who's your heart been beating about? Get better. Get
• 1:30:10
  better. Get better. Get better. Listen, you.