Courtney Victoria - Outdoor and Landscape Photographer and YouTuber

Nick is flying solo on this latest episode of The Photography pod, as Steve is away. Nick's guest is Courtney Victoria,   a British Landscape and Outdoor Photographer currently based in South West England. They explore Courtney's journey into photography, the impact of COVID-19 on her career, her preferred camera equipment, and her approach to both landscape and macro photography. The conversation also touches on the importance of stability in macro photography, the challenges of gear acquisition syndrome, and the joy of discovering nature through photography.  Courtney also discusses her journey as a photographer and YouTuber, sharing insights on her gear, the evolution of her YouTube channel, the realities of monetizing content, and her passion for teaching through photography tours. She also offers valuable tips for aspiring macro photographers, emphasizing the importance of patience and observation in nature.

Courtney Victoria Website https://www.courtneyvictoriaphotography.com/

Courtney Victoria's YouTube Channel https://www.youtube.com/@CourtneyVictoria

Nick Church and Steve Vaughan are professional wedding photographers based in the UK. They both use Sony Alpha cameras and lenses.

Video version of the Podcast including slide shows of images https://www.youtube.com/@thephotographypod

Nick's website : https://www.nickchurchphotography.co.uk/
Nick's Instagram : https://www.instagram.com/nickchurchphotography/

Nick Church Creative Academy https://www.nickchurchphotography.co.uk/news/introducing-nick-church-creative-academy

Steve's website : https://www.samandstevephotography.com/
Steve's Wedding Instagram : https://www.instagram.com/samandstevephotography/
Steve's personal Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/stevevaughanphotography

Any technical information given by the presenters is based on their understanding and opinion at the time of recording

Transcript

Nick Church (00:01)
Hello and welcome to the photography pod, the podcast for enthusiasts and professional photographers everywhere. So today we have just me cause Steve is gallivanting in the U S now he's doing some sales training for some very important medical types, I believe. ⁓ but there was a bit of a crisis. Unfortunately, Steve is not a fan of McDonald's and Krispy Kreme and macaroni cheese. So he brought with him some delicacies from home and he brought with him some Midlands

based curries, which he loves so much. He took with him a selection of these. Now, unfortunately, the monkfish curry in particular didn't fare very well in his luggage. And it was so spicy that on arrival, it was actually declared a dangerous substance. And he just didn't have the paperwork for it. So he's been stuck in a holding cell until his return next week. But he does promise me that he will be back for the next episode.

And in that one, we will be going through his camera bag, which hopefully he is fully cleaned of all spicy curries by then. ⁓ but it's been a bit less glamorous, but very busy week for me as well. So I'm building the Nick Church creative Academy platform. ⁓ the Nick Church creative Academy is going to, ⁓ aiming it to be the best place to get online training for photographers from beginners through to editing business, right through to professionals as well. ⁓

The launch date is 31st of May, which is racing towards me at a frightening pace. ⁓ but it does mean that because we're not there yet, you can still sign up and get some pre-launch benefits. If you head to nick, www.nickchurchcreativeacademy.com, there's all the information about the platform and you can sign up there and you'll have some benefits of the platform, some free membership upon its launch, ⁓ at the end of May. ⁓ I was also running a photography tour.

this week, ⁓ to a little seaside town near me called Clevedon. And so it was working with, ⁓ clients of mine, capturing seascapes and that kind of thing. And that brings me to our guest today, a fantastic photography, ⁓ sorry, landscape photographer and macro photographer. And it's a woman with two first names. It's Courtney Victoria. So Courtney is an incredible landscape macro photographer from the Southwest, in

Gloucester She's multi-talented, creative, also doing writing and art as well. Her work is around nature, and wildlife, and just some stunning macro photography as well. You probably know her best from her YouTube channel, is ⁓ just Courtney at Courtney Victoria on YouTube, which is an absolute masterclass of photography education. Really great videos where she's talking about

how she's finding the locations, the settings that she's going to use and the whole process from start to finish. So absolutely a strong recommend to go and check that out. So Courtney, welcome to the photography pod.

Courtney (03:01)
Hello, thank you for having me and thank you for your kind words as well.

Nick Church (03:05)
More than welcome. I'll give you my PayPal address offline or in fact I'll do it online. don't know if that will breach Ofcom rules if I do that. Anyway, it'd be great if we can just hear a little bit about your journey in photography, sort of how you've got to where you are today.

Courtney (03:08)
haha ⁓

my gosh, it started quite a while ago. So I didn't get into photography until I was at university. So I went to university to study sonography, theatre design and fine art. And I originally wanted to be either a costume or set designer, sort of work on theatre or TV sets. And as part of my fine art degree, my first semester of my first year, all of a sudden a camera was a film camera was

Nick Church (03:41)
wow.

Courtney (03:49)
thrust into my hand and I was told, go take some photos and you're going to learn how to develop them in a darkroom. And I remember thinking, I don't know what to do with this. all these little dials and numbers. And I thought, Christ, okay, here we go. Took a bunch of random photos, learned how to develop the negatives and create prints. And half of them were overexposed. A couple of them were okay.

Nick Church (04:14)
Just half, that's pretty good. That's pretty good.

Courtney (04:15)
Yeah, it wasn't too bad. mean,

when they were overexposed, you couldn't see what I was trying to photograph. So they were very overexposed. But I remember just falling in love with the process of creating an image. And so I just kept it photography. I ended up majoring in photography in the end and dropping the costume design, which when I think back on that was a very questionable choice because I had a lot of knowledge and skill and experience in that field. And I just sort of pushed it away.

to something that I had no skill or knowledge in at all. So I was a hobbyist photographer for a long time. I taught myself how to use a digital camera and just photographed anything and everything that I wanted to. And I took my camera out to South Korea. I moved to South Korea in 2016 to teach English as a second language. So my camera naturally followed with me.

Nick Church (05:06)
wow.

Courtney (05:12)
And as I explored the country, I just started taking photos and I naturally found myself gravitating specifically towards landscape photography. And South Korea has some beautiful landscapes. It's made up of so many mountains and national parks and lots of sort of historical sites. And yeah, the landscape photography passion just grew and then followed me home to the UK in 2020. And it's been...

Just a rollercoaster since. ⁓

Nick Church (05:44)
I guess Korea is a less well-known in terms of scenes than somewhere like Japan, is a lot more of gets headlines. looking through your portfolio, I'm going to show some images shortly that there is some beautiful, incredible scenes in South Korea. So you say 2020 was that COVID related that you had to come back?

Courtney (06:06)
Yes, that was pandemic related. Unfortunately, I would have stayed out there probably for a few years longer. But it was one of those the borders of the country were going to close and my contract as a teacher was running out and I could have renewed it. But there was this potential that I would lose my job not long afterwards. And so I had to make a decision.

out the country now or risk it and end up jobless in a country that I'm not allowed to stay in but also not allowed to leave. So it was a...

Nick Church (06:39)
There was such uncertainty

around that time. it was at the time we kind of just rolled with the punches a bit. But when you look back, it was pretty traumatic about, even people working in the UK didn't know what was going to happen to their businesses. Are we ever going to go back to a normal workplace environment?

Courtney (06:42)
Yes.

Absolutely. was a lot of pressure and stress for everybody across the globe. For some people it turned into, or led to good things. So, you know, everyone's got their own story, haven't they?

Nick Church (07:13)
indeed. Yeah, totally. So you just going back a bit to your your degree then, you you was a theater, the thing that you always wanted to be in. And that just got tainted by photography midway through.

Courtney (07:27)
Yes, yes. I've always been a creative person, so I've always enjoyed art or writing, that sort of thing. And think I was always trying to find the medium that spoke to me and that I could just really put myself into and just sort of live and breathe it. And I thought that was sort of textiles and costume design, sort of fabrics, that sort of thing. And then I just stumbled across photography.

Nick Church (07:44)
Hmm.

Courtney (07:55)
and it absolutely just railroaded it and I thought no this is it, this is what I'm supposed to be focusing on.

Nick Church (08:02)
I think photography is

so immediate, isn't it? And I had a background in IT and software engineering, but art was always something that I did in my spare time. I used to do sort of pen and ink drawings. And I ended up going to Malaysia for work and I thought, I'm to have to get a camera because I really want to capture a picture of something like Petronas Towers or something like that. So I can then come back and then do an ink drawing from it.

And was just so immediate. never bothered doing the second bit. just, thought, wow, this is, this is amazing. No, it took some 200 the second rather than a year to create. Um, it's talking about that. So that, that in those days, that was a, I had a micro four thirds Olympus system, and that was the first, uh, camera system that, you know, proper camera system I had. What's your preferred kit right now?

Courtney (08:31)
Yeah.

⁓ I still have my Nikon DSLR setup. So I have a Nikon D850 at the moment and I just can't let it go. ⁓ I absolutely love it. I get questions so often, you know, why have you not gone to mirrorless? What about this? What about that? And I've tried the OM system. The OM system is fantastic. And I'm considering investing into it as a sort of a smaller, lighter setup for sort of traveling and that kind of thing.

Nick Church (09:01)
You

Mm.

Courtney (09:22)
But no matter what I try, I just love my DA50. And I just can't let it go. The weight and the bulk of it, yeah.

Nick Church (09:27)
You love, love the weight and the bulk. I

had a D750, which I used for the first part of my wedding photography career. And it is something I still, whenever a student comes to me with a decent Nick on DSLR, like a 7200 or 850, I otherwise. I love that. I really get nostalgic about it. It is just such an organic feeling thing that you just feel so connected to the camera, which

is something I think you don't have so much with mirrorless systems. I don't know that's completely psychological or whether it's the fraction of a delay between basically you're driving a computer inside a camera body rather than it being a bit more of a connected experience. But you know, it's whatever works for you. And we do find on the photography pod that landscape photographers use a whole range of kit. OM system, as you say, is pretty popular because it's so small. You can carry a more variety of lenses.

Courtney (10:02)
Mm-hmm.

Nick Church (10:27)
There's some that use ⁓ the last, ⁓ Sophie spoke to Francesca, ⁓ Gola that uses medium format. So that's, that's probably the thing. And everything in between. I don't think there's any right or wrong way. It's quite hard though, isn't it? To justify having multiple camera systems. Do you find that?

Courtney (10:45)
Yes.

Yes. I personally try not to hoard camera equipment if I can help it. I've developed a rule of if something is introduced I have to then get rid of something ⁓ so I don't just have a house full of kit. But yeah, if I ever feel as though I want something and I don't really have sort of they call it gas isn't it syndrome. ⁓

Nick Church (11:13)
Yeah.

Courtney (11:14)
Yeah. I know that all too well. Right.

Nick Church (11:15)
Yeah. So I have the first bit of that, of what you said, but I don't have that system of getting rid of stuff that I don't have the one in one out policy, which I probably should do.

Courtney (11:26)
Yeah, yeah, the gear acquisition syndrome. I don't have that until it comes to macro kit. And now I want every single macro lens that there is to offer. I don't know why, but I do. But if I don't need it, if, again, another rule is if I'm thinking about it, I'm doing some research, if in two to three weeks time I still feel as though I need it, then I can buy it.

Nick Church (11:53)
Hmm.

Courtney (11:54)
because

otherwise it's just this passing sort of, I don't know, sort of intrusive buy that book, you know, go and spend your money, when I really need to.

Nick Church (12:04)
Yeah, because that because it is interesting, isn't it?

If you love photography, and we all love photography, and we love cameras and systems and lenses, then buying a lens is fascinating and researching it and looking at reviews and looking at YouTube. It's really exciting. And it comes and it arrives and you think that's just amazing. And it goes in the cupboard and then you think actually that's been there a year. I haven't used it. I haven't used it once. Let me share while we're chatting some of your photos so that people on the YouTube channel can see as well.

Courtney (12:15)
Exciting, yeah.

Yes. Yep.

Nick Church (12:34)
So they should be, so we've got some fungi there and you're lucky that Steve's not here because there'll be a fun guy joke. I'm sure. I say, ⁓ well, in terms of lenses, you mentioned about your, your macro lens. That's something that I use all the time, actually, my macro lens for macro stuff and portraits as well. Cause it's just such a fantastically sharp lens that the Sony, ⁓ 2.8 macro lens. What's your range of lenses for your work? Cause we've got some.

Courtney (12:41)
Yeah.

Mmm.

Nick Church (13:03)
that what's it can you talk us through these? are these while we're talking through? is this is? ⁓ Wow, that's on my bucket list as well.

Courtney (13:07)
This image is Antarctica. Which was...

yeah, was an insane trip. It's really hard to describe. When somebody asks, you know, what was the trip like, or it described Antarctica, you can't really describe it. ⁓ It's just one of those things I think if you're lucky enough to be able to experience, then do it.

Nick Church (13:31)
Yeah, it's something that I really want to do it before I get too old to be able to cope with the cold and that kind of thing. But so we've got Antarctica and where's this one? Okay.

Courtney (13:40)
This is Japan. So this is

in Hokkaido up north. Beautiful in the snow. So much snow, but beautiful. And this was while I was in South Korea during sort of my holidays as school term broke up, I was able to do a tiny bit of traveling. So I traveled around Japan for three weeks, just using buses and trains. And ⁓ yeah, it was fun.

Nick Church (13:44)
Right.

Yeah.

Oh, what a great idea. Yeah.

So when you, when you're doing this, we've got, we've got shots here. I know this is, um, is that the Brecken beacons in the background there? And then we've got some mushrooms. want to come onto mushrooms and fungi and stuff in a moment. What's your process for when you say you, you, go out just to, you um, travel around taking photos. Do you have a plan in mind of, of, you obviously got a plan where you're going, but do know what shots you're looking to get, or is it very much a, let's see what looks good on that particular day?

Courtney (14:10)
Yes.

It's generally just, let's see what I can find today. ⁓ I try and keep very open-minded and curious because you never know what you're going to find in nature. Nature does its own thing.

Nick Church (14:42)
Mm.

Courtney (14:45)
And I find that if I go into a trip or a location shoot with a very specific idea, I need to find this, I want to photograph this, I'm probably not going to find it. And in the process of sort of tunnel visioning towards that one thing, I'm then going to miss a whole hundred other opportunities instead. So I try and keep it very flexible.

Nick Church (15:06)
And it's got the, that approach has the huge advantage of, ⁓ this problem that I see with, a lot of beginners is that they're often be comments like, well, unfortunately I don't live anywhere nice. So there's nothing to capture, but it's about kind of thinking outside the box and looking much smaller, isn't it? Where macro, macro work is a fantastic opportunity for people that maybe haven't got any epic landscapes near them because every, every, everywhere has got.

bits of woodland and those sorts of things, but you can just really sort of go much smaller and get some beautiful photos.

Courtney (15:40)
absolutely, you can point a macro lens pretty much anywhere and find something interesting and macro photography you can do in any kind of weather or season as well. at least I find there's just no limitations to when and where you can do it. So as I said, when you start looking at the tiny world it's amazing what you do find.

Nick Church (15:50)
Hmm.

Courtney (16:03)
And now I can't walk past a tree or a fence post without having to have a good look at it to see, is there something on it? Is there something growing from it? What textures can I see? And the whole world, a whole new world just opens up and then you're completely obsessed.

Nick Church (16:16)
So it's ruined what

is otherwise a good, nice walk for you because you can't stop looking at the same way that anyone that does kind of film lighting and things can never watch another movie again because it's like, well, that wouldn't look like that because that light's not strong, you know, and all the rest of it. We've got some, we've just flipped past them. There's loads of photos of beautiful fungi in really delicate light and there's a variety of light so I can see that you're not just aiming at one type of...

Courtney (16:21)
Yes. Yes. No.

Yeah.

Nick Church (16:45)
one type of nicely backlit, you know, there's some way it's more overcast. Have you become real expert in finding where these types of fungi are likely to be growing?

Courtney (16:56)
Yes, ⁓ to begin with when I went into it I didn't really know a lot about fungi and so I would just kind of keep walking and walking until I found some and ⁓ learning and knowing where they grow, how they grow, what helps them grow ⁓ became very very useful.

And so now I have developed over the past sort of year and a half, two years, locations locally where I know, okay, there is growth happens here. Growth is likely to happen. This tree here is rotting. And so if I keep going back to this tree, then I'm going to find something throughout the year. And so I have now developed sort of a database of places where I can just hop to. If there's been enough rain and you know, everything's wet enough, there's a bit of humidity in the air and...

Yeah, it's useful because it means that I don't have to wander around feeling a bit lost quite so much, but it also has ruined my life slightly as I spend a good few days a week just wandering around, just checking, just in case there's some growth.

Nick Church (18:04)
In your camera bag, you've got your, let's say you've got your D850 macro lens and smothers. Have you got, what's, what other kit you typically sort of touting around with you, or does it depend on the type of shoot I suppose to some extent?

Courtney (18:22)
Yes, it depends. It depends on the type of shoot that I want to do. I have a general sort of scouting lens that if I don't really know what I want to photograph then I have a 24 to 120mm lens that just goes in the bag and I can go wide, can zoom in a bit. There are other days where I'll choose a specific focal length, like a telephoto lens, and say, okay, this is what I'm going to use today. And it's sort of a seeing exercise really.

sort of get to know my areas in a different way to how I may usually photograph it without the lenses. So yeah, it depends. It's just, it's almost a sort of intuitive thing. Just my brain goes, okay, take this today. And I'll go, okay, I'll trust myself, I guess. And let's see what I can do with this today.

Nick Church (19:15)
Are you carrying a tripod for any of these areas that might be quite dark?

Courtney (19:20)
Yes, in the forest you do need a tripod. This is a question I get fairly often. Why am I using a tripod in a forest? Even if it sort of looks in a video vaguely well lit, why are using a tripod? Why are you using a slow shutter speed, especially with non-moving subjects? And...

When it comes to macro photography, stability is very important and it's not necessarily the subject that's moving, it's making sure that I don't get any sort of vibrations within the camera, the lens or the tripod. But it's darker in the forest than you think it is, even on a sunny day in the shadowy sort of areas, it's quite dark.

Nick Church (19:55)
Yeah.

It's always, it's always really deceptive. find when you, when you go, if I go into what's near here, it looks quite light. You take a photo and I'm thinking, I'm going to, I say 1600 here just to get, you know, just to get something. ⁓ and with a macro, I suppose you've got the problem of just breathing is going to be enough that you're, that focus plane is just changing all the time and you're not going to be able to be as precise.

Courtney (20:13)
Yeah.

Yes.

So a tripod tends to help with the, if I could just pop it on a tripod, then I'm not going to unintentionally move the camera or the lens. And that's sort of that problem solved. I'm getting more into insect photography at the moment, which I'm doing handheld, which is quite a challenge for me, trying to remain vaguely sort of still enough to get an insect's sort of eyes or face within focus. And of course, we were working with such a ⁓ small sort of plane of focus as well.

and it's incredibly challenging trying to remain stable. I always say to people, know, if you don't understand how vibration and movement really affects your focusing in macro photography, just sort of...

you know, just hold your lens as still as you can and take a look through the viewfinder or the LCD screen and notice how much shake you are actually getting within your scene. And it's more than you think it is, of course, because your subject is magnified through a macro lens and therefore everything else is magnified as well, your vibrations, your movement. And it's tricky at first.

Nick Church (21:37)
I think that's why I don't, I mean, you're on your D850, you're probably the same. I use the viewfinder almost all the time. just, you know, just, there's so many distractions from using the rear LCD that there's no way I can tell if I've got a shot frame properly or not. So, that definitely helps with that as well. Your tripods, what kind of tripod have you got? What brand?

Courtney (21:45)
Yes.

I use Vanguard tripods. So I've been using Vanguard tripods since I was in South Korea. And I became an ambassador for them probably about two to three years ago as well when they realized, oh, you've got YouTube channel and you use our tripods. Hey, do you want to join us? And I was like, okay. Yeah, so I currently have a, I think they're both classed as travel tripods. So they're lightweight. Cause if I'm filming YouTube videos, I tend to have two tripods.

Nick Church (22:05)
Okay.

You

Mm-hmm.

Courtney (22:32)
So if

I can reduce my weight slightly, it kind of helps. One of them is a travel tripod, carbon fibre, and it has a reversible column so that I can get that low angle for macro photography for stability. And the other one is just, it's a bit taller. It's a tiny bit heavier. I think it's an aluminium tripod. And that tends to be sort of my landscape photography tripod.

Nick Church (22:44)
show

Okay. And you're, what are you filming your YouTube videos on then? When there's pictures of you using your Nikon system, what cameras are you doing the filming?

Courtney (23:05)
Yes, I have

a Nikon Z30 for filming and a lot less... well, more of my B-roll is now being shot on my 850 as well these days. I really like how this the B-roll looks on... with the Z30 I've only got a 24mm ⁓ prime lens and I have a 16-50 as well. It's not a very good lens though, it's like the little kit lens that came with it and I keep breaking them.

Nick Church (23:09)
Okay.

Mm-hmm.

Right, yeah.

Courtney (23:35)
It's just easy to break. So I have a 24mm prime lens for it. So when I'm filming B-roll, I'm finding that, if I want to zoom in to show this, for example, mushroom, a mushroom's on the screen, I just can't get close enough with that. So I've started to use my 850 to film B-roll as well.

Nick Church (23:55)
which I guess for your YouTube videos to be able to see, because then it's looking much more like the resulting photo, isn't it? So if you're then showing the photo you've taken with it with a similar lens. Although, you know, there can't be many people using Nikon DSLR for video. So must be fairly unusual.

Courtney (24:11)
No, no, it's not

something I'd recommend to somebody getting into videography. But I have it and the video capability on it is decent enough for me to show what I'm doing to my audience. So at the moment it works.

Nick Church (24:30)
So your YouTube channel, what made you start doing that? How long has it been going first? Is it sort of two or three years or longer?

Courtney (24:37)
gosh,

it's been going longer. So I initially started it in South Korea and I was making videos about living in South Korea because I lived in the most rural province that there is without living on an island off the mainland. So when I first sort of, when you apply to teach in South Korea, you kind of just randomly allocated a place to live and teach.

Nick Church (24:51)
All right.

Courtney (25:04)
And I did not know where I was going to be living until I was physically in South Korea doing some training before I started working. And I remember just being given this random town name in the middle of nowhere and thinking, ⁓ my God, where is this? And sort of starting to Google it and look on Google maps. And there was no information about it at all. And I had no idea what I was going into. I went in completely blind.

So eventually after I had a few years experience of living in South Korea and ⁓ teaching contracts tend to be yearly, so yearly you get sort of an influx of people coming in, then people leaving. I thought, okay, I'm going to put some information via YouTube on the internet so that people have something to look at when they start panicking about where they're living, like I did. And ⁓ so yeah, I making videos about South Korea.

Nick Church (25:54)
Like you did. Yeah.

Courtney (26:00)
and I really enjoyed the process of creating videos and the storytelling side of it and when the pandemic hit I realised god I'm having to leave and I can't make these videos anymore so I thought well I have this passion of photography and passion of video let's just pop them together and around that time I was also watching other photographers on YouTube like Thomas Heaton I think everybody is... a lot of people were inspired by Thomas Heaton

Nick Church (26:23)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Courtney (26:29)
to pop themselves on YouTube and I thought, you know what, I'll give this a go and see.

Nick Church (26:33)
Well, you've done

really well. But, but as a, think that's a Testament. So you've got 50, know, 50 plus subscribers, get a case of scribers. I should add. Um, but that's not at all surprising when you look at the quality of the content and you must put a really good amount of time in that. It's not just, you know, bits of snatched bit of content and you know, it's, it's well thought through about what each video is going to teach you and what the, what the purpose of each video is, is very clear. Um,

Is that something that's now generating an income, the YouTube channel?

Courtney (27:07)
It is, yes. And in brutal honesty, it's the YouTube ad revenue is not so great unless you have the numbers behind it. It's, as I said, to be honest, it's the sponsorship. If you can land a sponsorship, then it is pretty much just a viable income. ⁓ I mean, anybody who's doing this professionally, sort of a photographer on YouTube, we tend to have other sources of income as well, affiliate links, workshops.

product sales, but the main income at the moment is coming from YouTube. As say, it's just full time. There seems to be occasionally somebody come to me and sort of, you must be making so much money off YouTube. And I think, no, no, I'm terrified every month.

Nick Church (28:00)
Well, that's life as a photographer, isn't it? In a nutshell, whatever you're doing, it's so, God, I this month's better than last month.

Courtney (28:03)
Yeah.

Yeah, but it's,

whether it's sustainable, I don't know. It probably will just lead onto something else at some point and that's fine. But as, you know, the income started to come in, I thought, okay, let's give this a go.

Nick Church (28:21)
Yeah. Well, and so to the listeners do check out calling Victoria, um, on YouTube, we've got to check out a channel and subscribe to that because there is some exceptional, um, bits of content on there. Um, especially if you're into landscape or macro photography and want to learn some of these techniques you mentioned then about your sort of photography tours that you do, the workshops was that partly to fulfill this, the ability to travel that you, that you couldn't do once you're back in the UK.

Courtney (28:51)
Yes, so at the moment I'm just doing local fungi workshops to sort of teach the technical skills of that and sort of share my passion with that. And then I'm doing tours, landscape photography tours in Iceland. And yeah, I think that is really my excuse to go and travel to Iceland as much as I can.

Nick Church (29:12)
It's on

my list to go back twice. And I went probably well way before COVID, I think probably 2018 or something, ⁓ in midsummer. And I, I really want to go back in, in maybe not the depths of winter, but, but somewhere where it's a bit more dramatic, but yeah, absolutely beautiful country. you you could, you being on a tour there with, with someone that knows is really skilled, it showed me what to do. They could have come, come away with some great, great photos.

Courtney (29:22)
⁓ yeah.

Nick Church (29:40)
So how many tours a year are you doing, Courtney?

Courtney (29:44)
We have, well, one this year. So we had, I'm a part of the company's called Siren Tours, and they were doing multiple trips a year, then they sort of brought me into it, and we sort of had a bit of a company change and we had to sort of take a step back for a bit. So we've got nothing going until September and then next year. Ideally, we will have multiple trips going out throughout the year. So we've got...

something booked in February I believe which I'm pretty excited about so yeah.

Nick Church (30:19)
Well,

and so with the tour company, so that they take on the, ⁓ the marketing aspects of that for you. Is that something that they, do? that it's so difficult, isn't it? get having tried to run tours myself, it is so hard to get people, know, it's almost a full-time job.

Courtney (30:36)
It's a lot of time and effort,

yeah. Yeah, it is. It's a lot of work, even just getting websites up running. Yes, so they is a group of three of us, Darren and John. have other professions of photography related and non-photography related, and then we have Siren Tours. And so yeah, they take care of sort of website aspects of things. And I'm kind of naturally the social media sort of an elite photographer.

coming in. So the next trip that we've got going, sort of my job is as well as to sort of instruct and help the people on our workshop is also to film for the company, for the website and for social media. So.

Nick Church (31:21)
Okay. ⁓

That's always the thing that it'd be so useful to have. I always think about it in the wrong way that I'm, you know what it's like trying to get content. You're always looking for content to promote your business or your brand. And I always forget to grab content, really important bits. And it's just such a good mindset to have thinking, right, we're doing this thing that's photography related. Let's also grab some content around that, which we can then use to promote it and promote the next one.

There was a wedding that I was at a couple of weeks ago and the, the bribe was feeling a little bit self-conscious. got an absolutely beautiful photo of her and her new husband. So I showed her the back of the camera and she just burst into tears. And I thought, man, I should have, I should have been filming that. That would have been such, that would have been gold. But too late. And I thought if I asked her to do it again, it's not going to be very authentic. No. So your tours are on your website. So that's www.

Courtney (32:06)
Aww. You should be different. Yeah.

It's not going to be the same, No.

Nick Church (32:21)
Courtney Victoria photography.com. Is that correct? Yeah. So people can check out that now in terms of anyone that's that's interested in getting into this sort of photography of macro and woodland and that kind of area. If you've got any kind of like three tips you could give somebody.

Courtney (32:24)
Yes.

my goodness. ⁓ The first tip that comes to mind, yeah. gosh, it's hard. The first tip is to slow down. If you just run, race through a forest, a woodland, anywhere really, you're going to miss so much. ⁓ That kind of photography, it takes a lot of patience.

Nick Church (32:43)
So boil down all of your knowledge into three, into three, three statements.

Courtney (33:05)
and you're in it for the long run. It's not a race, it's a long, long marathon. And yeah, you'll find yourself going back to locations again and again, not only just to get the perfect image, you perhaps you've found a tree and it's not quite the right conditions, but also just to see how the scene changes, because nature is always changing. So it's worth going back to places again and again to see how the landscape changes.

and to create a set of images, I guess, that showcases that. So yeah, a slow approach, slow down, and I suppose my second tip would be forget about the camera to begin with. Forget that you need to be or want to be taking photos and just observe what's around you. Just take a look. It's like a curious childlike sort of attitude, you know, what's this over here? what's that over there? And...

Nick Church (34:00)
But it does feel

very mindful, doesn't it? It's a very kind of healthy way just to be, um, and my partner and I, when, when she goes for a walk, that's part of the purpose for her is look, looking and smelling and just being within the environment. Whereas I'm marching on looking at my feet or listening to a podcast and then checking my Strava's recording it, which is completely the wrong, the wrong way. So that's a really, I reckon that's a brilliant idea of, have you got your camera, but you're just looking in.

Courtney (34:03)
Yes, it's like a mindfulness. Yeah.

Yeah.

Ha ha ha.

Nick Church (34:29)
Yeah, I suppose you could almost imagine go to a place where, looks quite varied and just being there for some time and just looking around in more detail.

Courtney (34:37)
Yes, if you just stay in one little spot, one area and just take a moment to look around, the more you look, the more you find. And you become surprised like, I didn't expect to see that. Or you start seeing stories and things that perhaps you once would have overlooked. So it's sort of just taking the pressure off of getting an image because you know what we're all like these days with social media. I must post on Instagram. I must, you know, make a YouTube video, whatever it is. And

you then just lose sight of, I'm actually here to enjoy nature, the outdoors.

Nick Church (35:12)
Oh, absolutely. the, um, the, the shot that you mentioned there about telling a story and it may be easy for some to think, well, how'd you tell a story when you're looking at, know, just a single thing, you know, but you've just got to see that shot of yours of the very young Fern sort of cold, tightly curled up this. And you can see that it's a point where it's going to sort of expand in the, you know, in, in, the sun and

so you can really see that. And we've all seen that countless times, probably every day, exactly that scene and just never thought about, well, let's, let's get down and actually spend a bit of time trying to capture that.

Courtney (35:51)
Absolutely. I mean, if you walk into woodlands now, there are curled up ferns absolutely everywhere. ⁓ There's no shortage of them. But yeah, it's just, it's letting your imagination run wild. And I mean, a story in an image or a subject, doesn't have to be deep. It can just be that you felt something when you looked at a subject, you know, I looked at that fern and I thought, it looks kind of shy, which maybe most people wouldn't think that way. It's probably a bit weird.

Nick Church (36:16)
Hmm.

Courtney (36:20)
but somebody else will think something else. Story can just be contrast, colour, you know, it doesn't have to be insanely deep and weird and wacky.

Nick Church (36:31)
But the right photography just like art gives a different message to every, every viewer, doesn't it? There's no, it's why I think artists often hate that question. What does it mean and all that? Because that's different to everybody. And it often plays on what you're feeling yourself about what you see in an image, just like it is with art as well. ⁓ There was a tip from a, another ⁓ macro photographer that did a lot of work with insects. And she had decided that I'd never thought about it of just, she said, well, I always shoot early in the morning because

Courtney (36:40)
Yeah.

Nick Church (37:00)
The animals, insects are much slower. So just on a practical level, they're much easier to photograph than later on when they're full of energy and flapping about. So never really thought about that one. Right. So we've got those two, those two tips that in term for the, for your third, ⁓ tip to our listeners, what about with something to do with kit? Because macro lenses are often. If we're, if it's an enthusiast photography, can be hard to justify that expensive. They all tend to be pretty expensive.

Courtney (37:07)
Yeah

Nick Church (37:26)
⁓ Is there anything they can do with lenses that they may already have or with extension tubes or something like that?

Courtney (37:32)
Absolutely. There are multiple options out there. Some lenses will have a macro sort of option. They tend to be sort of these 70 to 300 mil zoom lenses or similar focal lengths that they will have a sort of a macro or attempted macro option that works fine. I have taken photos of mushrooms, rather large mushrooms, mind you, from afar with a telephoto lens. So you can take intimate close up images with something like a telephoto lens because the working distance

Nick Church (37:57)
Okay.

Courtney (38:02)
is just much larger. Otherwise yes, if you have extension tubes, or if you can get extension tubes, they're not too expensive these days, depends if you get one that will work with the autofocus of your camera. Extension tubes, reverse rings, you can get macro filters that screw onto the end of the lens, and that will just allow you to get a bit closer.

Nick Church (38:15)
Yeah, yeah, of course. ⁓

Courtney (38:27)
to subjects and experiment with it and then decide, okay, do I want to go into this further? macro, dedicated macro lens is going to give you that one times true macro magnification, which is why we all sort of macro photographers have those lenses. But yeah, if you're dipping your toes.

Nick Church (38:45)
So one times one being

the size on the center is basically real size, real size.

Courtney (38:49)
Yes, yes,

yeah. But if you're just dipping your toes and you don't know if it's something you're going to enjoy, then all of those tools work perfectly fine as well.

Nick Church (38:59)
It's going to get you close enough, isn't it? It's going to get you close enough

to know if it's something that, I absolutely really love doing this. I really loved editing them. And then it's like everything else we talked about gas earlier. It's right. Have I got a problem with this current setup? And if that person decides that actually I do that there's aberrations, the image be due to the screw and filter. That's not a problem that can be fixed by buying a dedicated macro lens, but just going out to the shop and buying a grand's worth of macro lens isn't necessarily the right thing to do.

Although I do always say that I think the great thing about lenses is that cash aside, if you buy on the used market, you can pretty much shift it for the same, know, six months later for the same price. So, but you do need to have the cash available to do that. So, yeah, things like macro tubes and things are a great idea.

Courtney (39:46)
Nice inexpensive

option, yeah.

Nick Church (39:49)
Well, Courtney, that's been really great listening to your, your journey and your tips. And again, to all of the listeners, do check out Courtney Victoria photography.com and Courtney Victoria on YouTube as subscribed to that channel. I definitely will be because there's some stuff that I really want to go and shoot because every time I look, I walk through the woods, I think there are lovely things to capture. So I'm going to be doing just that. So thank you for downloading this episode.

Courtney (40:07)
Yeah.

Nick Church (40:18)
The photography pod is back next time with Steve. And as I said, we'll be going through his camera bag. looked at my camera bag last week. So we'll be going through Steve's bag about what he takes to a wedding and why, and what would be on his list if he could ⁓ add to it. Again, check out the Facebook group, the photography pod. There's lots of chatter in there about the show and we'd love your suggestions on that as well. Subscribe to the YouTube channel as well. That's something we really want to get people. ⁓

on board with. So Courtney here is going to definitely subscribe with that because I said I subscribe to her channel. yeah, so do that because it just really helps other people find the channel. And yes, we would like creating YouTube content as well. Email any suggestions if you've got a guest that you'd love us to interview, ⁓ us at studio at the photography pod.co.uk. Check out the photography pod.

Courtney (40:54)
you

Nick Church (41:16)
Co.uk website as well. that's got all of the ⁓ episodes with links to YouTube and links to subscribe ⁓ and get from your podcast player as well. All right. That's it for this week. ⁓ Thanks again for downloading and we look forward to seeing you soon.

Lovely, thank you Courtney.

Courtney (41:38)
Thank you.