10 KILLER Photography questions!

We asked ChatGPT for 10 controversial photography questions - we got some suprising results! Nick and Steve debate some interesting and thought provoking topics around street photography, weddings, analogue photography and sharpness in lenses. 

Resources:

Nick Church Creative Academy - https://nickchurchcreativeacademy.com/
Fujifilm Instax Camera - https://instax.com/mini_evo_cinema/en/
Joel Merowitz Exhibition - https://www.joelmeyerowitz.com/new-events
Peter Dench Photography - https://peterdench.com/
The Photography Show - https://thephotographyshow.com/
Digital Camera Magazine - https://digitalcameramagazine.com/

Transcript

Steve Vaughan (00:01.292)
Nick, now when the camera manufacturers come out with new firmware like Sony and Fujifilm like to do on a regular basis, do you normally update the firmware straight away or do you hang on a bit?

Nick Church (00:11.79)
I hang on a bit normally for a few years because I think you'd have to be an idiot to do it just before a pressing need or anything like that. Why? Why'd you ask?

Steve Vaughan (00:14.606)
few years.

Steve Vaughan (00:18.796)
Well, you're talking to the idiot in the room there really. That's exactly what I did before we started recording this podcast, not camera. So I have a Rodecaster 2, which I use for podcasting and it said the firmware is due for updating. So I said, yeah, why not? And then I've just spent the last half hour trying to make it work again. It wouldn't come on. We kept saying power supply is the wrong power supply. So if you're listening to the road, sort it out. Yeah, not a good idea. Sorry for adding a bit of stress.

Nick Church (00:23.568)
All right.

Nick Church (00:41.764)
Does road compensate me for my time of just sitting here waiting for you to keep rebooting and that kind of thing.

Steve Vaughan (00:46.926)
I look forward to your claim on that. Yeah, good luck on that one. Yeah, yeah. Multinationalist Australian company. So we're only kidding Rode. We love your products. We both use Rode bikes and Rode headphones and everything else. If you want to sponsor us, we're very open to doing so as well. So how things? Yeah, good.

Nick Church (00:49.392)
Yeah, we do.

Nick Church (01:03.268)
Yeah, very good. Yeah. Back refreshed from a holiday. Although we did end up buying, trying to buy and sell a house whilst we were away. so that was fun, but it was, but it is easier when you do all that with, some cock, the free cocktails in your hand on a beach. Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (01:13.238)
as you do when you're on holiday.

Steve Vaughan (01:19.118)
Even better. Yeah. Yeah. I think I could cope with that as well. Shall we start the show?

Nick Church (01:23.023)
Let's do it.

Steve Vaughan (01:24.952)
So again, welcome to the photography vlog with me, Steve Vaughan.

Nick Church (01:28.432)
I'm me Nick Church.

Steve Vaughan (01:30.058)
So we were, we've both been traveling a lot in the last couple of weeks. So you've been away on holiday. Where did you go?

Nick Church (01:35.662)
Went to Antigua, which was beautiful. Yeah. Dawn's family or her family's from there. Her brother still lives over there. So we caught up with him and yeah, it nice. It really, really beautiful place. Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (01:45.038)
Wow. I'm pretending not to be jealous right now. Yeah. Yeah. I'm pretending not to be jealous.

Nick Church (01:50.544)
Well, worst bit, I'll you the worst bit was the flight coming back, you the jet lag direction and the per, do you know what flights should, I think if I run a flight company or airline company, the first thing I take off is the reclining seat option. Cause it's just, there's no, there's no, it's just impacting someone's life behind you. So this girl in front of me came right back and it was quite small anyways, a Virgin Atlantic. Um, I don't want to say my Virgin cause I don't think they're going to sponsor a podcast.

Steve Vaughan (01:55.03)
Yeah, yeah, it's horrible into

Steve Vaughan (02:20.056)
Funny enough though.

Nick Church (02:20.812)
And it was pretty small anyway. So I got, seem to have long legs from hip to knee. I'm not, you know, I'm six foot, but, just, it always seems to be in that thing. So my knees were already jammed against the seat in front. And then this girl kept pushing back. So I was pushing forwards and we ended up in about a two hour battle of kind of me pushing forward, so pushing back there, then her family, then her mom and, you know, I say girl, she was about sort of 20, but her mom, then they both started having a go at me. So it's, not quite an air rage incident, but it wouldn't have been far off.

Steve Vaughan (02:25.602)
Yeah, me too.

Yeah, me too.

Steve Vaughan (02:49.774)
You know, I do the same thing. It's nearly I can always guarantee because I'm assuming we're in economy class here I'm nearly always the first person has that rammed in front of me and you say we're tall, know You're trying to eat your dinner in about sort of a three millimeter space aren't you or whatever and then it's right in front of you and you try and and go to the loo and you You can't maneuver it. I yeah, I agree come the revolution. What will do that?

Nick Church (03:03.994)
Yeah.

Nick Church (03:09.776)
You can't even you can't even get sometimes get the champagne flute to your mouth. You know, it's terrible. I don't know, you know.

Steve Vaughan (03:13.678)
Oh yeah, mean that's the ultimate, ultimate insult really, isn't it? So I've been on my travels as well. So I've been in the last couple of weeks to both Paris and Amsterdam with my sales training business that I increasingly focus on these days. And that was nice. It was on the Eurostar actually, I have to say. And then it wasn't business class, but it was like the one up from the standard class. So you do get like a little meal and a drink. It was nice. Yeah. mean, Amsterdam on the Eurostar is four and a half hours.

Nick Church (03:37.166)
The cattle class. nice.

Nick Church (03:42.597)
Mm-hmm.

Steve Vaughan (03:43.279)
When you think to fly there is only like an hour, but then you've got to drive to the airport, mess about the airport for a couple of hours, pay a fortune to park the car. It was actually really quite nice because I could sit and work and do stuff on the way. and I'm off to Singapore on Sunday, assuming the war doesn't get worse in the Middle East. I know it's my last one though.

Nick Church (03:49.306)
Yeah.

Nick Church (04:00.538)
What a jet setter. We're privileged to be in company of effectively an Elon Musk type character.

Steve Vaughan (04:08.672)
I don't know about that. Yeah. don't know about that. It's nice when the customer's paying for it. I do have a couple of days to hang out in Chinatown and do a bit of photography as well. yeah, looking forward to that. That's a really good question. We could do the whole show on that really. Probably a seven C two, I think. And the 40 mil and I might go questions. No, that one's mine. Well, it's the businesses. Yeah. The Sam's is the X 100. Yeah.

Nick Church (04:17.134)
What camera are you taking for that?

Nick Church (04:24.122)
Yeah.

Nick Church (04:29.946)
Do mean Sam's A7C, that's yours, is it? hers is the Fuji family, yeah.

Steve Vaughan (04:36.878)
Yeah, I just fancy taking the Sony but probably just the 40 mil.

Nick Church (04:41.38)
Yeah, right. Yes. Decent focal length. Yeah, interesting.

Steve Vaughan (04:43.438)
Yeah, it's a nice lens, a little stubby G lens. We've spoken about those before. They're really nice lenses. yeah, I think I'll probably go with that. And of course, next time we do the pod, I'll tell you, I probably took a rucksack full of gear, but there we go. So because we've been so busy, dear listener, we were kind of struggling what to do for the show today in terms of how to entertain your ear holes and your eyes if you're watching this as well. So we do... So cue Nick on the guitar.

Nick Church (04:47.44)
Mm.

Nick Church (04:54.039)
you

Nick Church (05:04.526)
I'm going to do a collection of songs. So that'll be nice for everybody. Requests. Yeah. Bring your request in.

Steve Vaughan (05:14.017)
Yeah, special request. Yeah. Uh, no, we're not doing that. You're pleased to know. Um, what we do is what, what a lot of people increasingly do these days when they don't know what to do about something on the media and idea. asked chat GPT. So, um, yeah, no, no, no shame about that. We said, uh, I said to chat GPT, we host the photography pod. Uh, we're looking for a good sort of spiky theme for the podcast. And it came up with 10.

controversial photography takes. So that's what we're to talk about for the next next 45 minutes or so. And some of the

Nick Church (05:49.392)
And we don't mind the environmental impact for using ChatGPT for this because it is constructive and creative and it isn't us creating caricatures of ourselves and other dimwitted things. Although I have done that.

Steve Vaughan (05:52.694)
No, absolutely. Absolutely.

Steve Vaughan (06:00.566)
No. God, I've been a caracassure all my life, I think. I am a walking caracassure. Do you think I really have a mouth this big? No. So, yes, so we bear no responsibility for these topics, but I think they are interesting topics, I have to say.

Nick Church (06:08.848)
I have done the caricature, I must admit.

Nick Church (06:20.09)
They're good set of topics. think they they're wide ranging. And I think if we had completely lied about it and said we'd thought for a few hours about, let's get some really good questions together. I it wouldn't have been far different.

Steve Vaughan (06:31.502)
It probably would today. so let's get going. So the first one is, and I really like this one, Controversial photography take number one. Most photographers would improve more by studying art than buying gear. Disgust, Mr. Nick Church.

Nick Church (06:43.984)
Hmm. Yes, that's a good one. I think I would agree with that. think there's, because I suppose if you consider an artist, then it's equivalent to saying once you've got your paints and your brushes, that you're pretty much all the way there. In effect, that's not the bit at all, is it? You could use anything to do art with. It's, it's, it's the thought.

Steve Vaughan (07:05.326)
I'm sure if you're listening and you're an accomplished artist that use a high quality grade of brushes and paints, you might differ on that.

Nick Church (07:11.684)
Well, what, but what I mean is you can use your fingers, you can use any form of medium to do your art. And so I don't think it is the most important thing. think having thinking about light and form and structure and composition, all those things, which you can do even without a camera in your hand. You'd just be looking as you're walking around thinking, well, that looks really cool. And those skills then really build up. And that's the thing that when you do get your iPhone out, it's an iPhone you've got on you, you do start to get much better photos than if you

Steve Vaughan (07:14.486)
Okay, you could. Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (07:29.965)
Yeah.

Nick Church (07:39.414)
know, if you hadn't thought about that and just get your iPhone out and look around to see what to take is going to be a bit disappointing.

Steve Vaughan (07:44.272)
Yeah, interesting. I'm so I was crap at art at school. I still am. I couldn't draw a stick man probably. I'm a scientist. My background, got into photography for the technical aspect. My wife Samantha, the old half of Sam and Steve photography is an artist. She draws very well. She paints animals and things, not actually paints the animal means she paints pictures of animals. It is really holding dash on there where I paint over it. Yeah.

Nick Church (08:05.262)
Yeah, because that's frowned upon these days, isn't it, to go into zoos and spray paints.

Steve Vaughan (08:12.623)
But she's got far better eye for things than I will ever have. She'll compositionally see things at weddings I would never see. Sometimes she might get the exposure wrong, but that's fixable. one of the prompts... Yeah, gone.

Nick Church (08:22.99)
Yeah. It's something that the, the, sorry to interrupt, the photographer unleashed online courses has this as it's one of its underpinning elements really that the thing that makes great photography is all those things. It isn't just kit and getting your exposure settings correct. Cause those things are really easily fixed because it's, just learning stuff and, seeing things and thinking like a photographer and artist is something that's a bit harder to, to

Steve Vaughan (08:41.625)
Yeah, it should be.

Nick Church (08:50.522)
to teach. so that with that course, I do try and do both of those. So you end up with all those technical skills, but also some of the tips and tricks that all this professional photographers use to capture those scenes that in photos.

Steve Vaughan (09:00.867)
Yeah. And if you're new to the podcast, by the way, Nick's talking about his academy, which we will say more about during this podcast. It says here's an idea, Francis, you should go to more museums in YouTube. Now I'm a YouTube addict, I spend way too much time on YouTube, but I think that's a great point actually. Joel Merowitz has got an exhibition coming up in London, which we both said we fancy going to if we can, but that's a photography museum. Would you ever go to an art museum, Nick? Is that something you'd ever do?

Nick Church (09:21.7)
Yeah.

Nick Church (09:25.934)
Yeah, do. Yeah, often. Yep. I don't runs the RWA in Bristol, the Royal West England Academy. So yeah, we go there quite, you know, go there often. If we went to London last time we went to see Don, the Tom O'Cullen exhibition. So we always do one photography thing and then one art thing. So that's, that's how we kind of make sure that we're going, we're going away to the same place because otherwise we'd be in different directions all the time. So

Steve Vaughan (09:28.013)
Steve Vaughan (09:32.093)
well, good reason then, yeah.

Steve Vaughan (09:43.639)
See you.

Steve Vaughan (09:50.115)
What a great idea, yeah.

Nick Church (09:55.04)
yeah. And there's a really interesting, excuse me. pod, not podcast. What's the other thing? Instagram account. That's it. where it's called and I would have to put in the show notes what it's called, but it's something like understanding paintings and it shows a very, you know, famous, it's typically fine art paintings, sort of Italian sort of Renaissance sort of painters. you know, so that, that realism genre.

Steve Vaughan (10:24.42)
Yep.

Nick Church (10:24.6)
And it's, it zooms into various different bits as you scroll through the carousel on Instagram and explains what each bit means. And you can really see there's what looks like a nicely painted picture has got real strong story elements behind it, really quite emotionally pulling story elements that, it's a really good way to sort of look at painting and understand a bit more about what's actually going on in it, which is something that I probably need to improve on. It makes you think when you look at paintings after seeing this, this channel, I'm going to start looking for those themes a bit more often, you know, and it's,

Steve Vaughan (10:54.031)
That's a great idea. I was frantically Googling while you were talking there because there was a TV or another TV series on BBC two, BBC four perhaps about art history. And I can't remember his name. And again, I put in the show notes, but he was a, he's a professor of art history in the UK. He's got a Hungarian name like Valdemar, Valdemar, think something like that. And he's quite a sort of short sort of stout guy, shall we say, to put it that way. And kind of waddles around, but he, he, the way he presents it, I got absolutely hooked on, you know,

Nick Church (11:03.216)
Mm.

Nick Church (11:12.781)
Okay.

Steve Vaughan (11:24.894)
the Renaissance or if you're American, the Renaissance and him explaining those kind of things. And as I I know nothing about art, but having somebody who took the time to explain, you know, what was going on in this painting, the background to it, what was going on at the time. So I found it fascinating. And I think I could get into art from art history, if that kind of makes sense.

Nick Church (11:27.535)
Yep.

Nick Church (11:42.384)
Yeah, absolutely. Because it is a bit of a, it's quite hard to get into, it? It's something that can be a bit impenetrable sometimes, especially more abstract forms of art, where it just, it's hard to see what even you're looking at sometimes and, and having a bit of direction, especially when it's from someone on Instagram, so you're not having to sort of be patronised by somebody about your... Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (11:55.801)
Yeah. Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (12:03.427)
And that thing worries me sometimes. I'd feel a little bit sort of, I'm not worthy kind of thing. Yeah.

Nick Church (12:08.708)
Yeah, totally. Yeah, totally get that. And it really goes through the scene and what's happening and what's led up to this painting being created. there's loads more than I considered, you know, I knew they were painting real scenes, but there's elements like someone in a doorway and it's, you know, it consumes it on their face and shows that that person's really disappointed about what's happening. And then this story builds up around it. Yeah, fascinating. So it will definitely revitalize my...

Steve Vaughan (12:32.259)
Yeah, great point.

Nick Church (12:37.976)
view on going to see art and try and look at it in that way without me having to ask Dawn about it, which, she would have gone through detail about those things, but this, this, could, I could pretend that come up with it myself. I seem a bit smarter.

Steve Vaughan (12:40.077)
Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (12:47.353)
sure.

Steve Vaughan (12:50.799)
As I said, I was in Amsterdam last week and the hotel I stayed in, right, central Amsterdam, the decor was sort of wallpaper and it was as if somebody had peeled away some of the wallpaper and there was wallpaper behind it, which there wasn't, it was it was made to look. But the wallpaper behind was of pictures of the Dutch masters, know, the great artists. Again, I couldn't name all for them really, but I thought it was kind of cool the way it was done really. I think that's a...

Nick Church (13:10.742)
Okay. Yeah.

Nick Church (13:17.2)
But I think that that was my, my way into art and photography really was going to Amsterdam in the digital TV industry, because there's a big show out there called IBC, um, at the REI, you know, a photography show sized exhibition, but all of digital TV stuff and mics and cameras and platforms, software, codecs, all kinds of things. And so I would always go to somewhere like the Rijksmuseum to see the Rembrandt pictures and

Steve Vaughan (13:25.999)
Yeah. OK.

Steve Vaughan (13:37.711)
Sounds great.

Steve Vaughan (13:42.649)
Yeah.

Nick Church (13:44.848)
that has definitely, you that was the first time I'd been to a gallery on my own and I just thought, let me go to a gallery and actually look at what, you know, look at some paintings. And I found it a really emotional thing. And, you know, I was sort of, you know, tearing up and looking at some of these Rembrandt paintings, which I still do now. And that has definitely informed when I, and this was before I started photography. This is, that definitely has informed my style of photography, which is quite dark, lots of chiaroscuro, which is the, you know, using sort of little pockets of light.

Steve Vaughan (13:58.723)
Wow.

Steve Vaughan (14:13.069)
Yes, yeah, definitely the same. Yeah.

Nick Church (14:13.506)
in shots and things like that, know, the Rembrandt lighting being a good example of that. And yeah, so it's definitely informed that and that's without that, I would almost certainly have a very different style, I think, if I'd not had that before I started doing photography. So there's definite benefits to, you know, looking at art and, and, you know, art history. don't know whether the actual I think that might put if I was told that to get into photography and be good at photography, need to understand art history, I think I might have been more put off by that. Because it feels a bit more

Steve Vaughan (14:17.026)
Exactly. Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (14:41.111)
Yeah, perhaps. Yeah, I think I'd commit it that way because I like history. I've always liked history. So the history of what was going on at the time would inspire the art really. Okay, well, interesting. Let me know what you think about that one, dear listener. But that's got us off to an interesting start. Number two, again, this is definitely going to be controversial and I'm not sure either of us are really qualified to answer this one, but we'll it a go. Street photography has become repetitive.

Nick Church (14:44.463)
Yeah.

Nick Church (14:51.632)
Hmm

Nick Church (15:05.699)
Well, I'm certainly not qualified to do it because other than understanding and even teaching some extent, the theories behind street photography and how you can start to it, it's not something that I practice often on my own. So I'm far from an expert. So what are they talking about? Somebody walking through out of a shadow with an umbrella and it, yeah.

Steve Vaughan (15:26.777)
think there's a lot of that, isn't there really? Yeah. So I follow lots of street photographers. I don't claim to be a great one. I enjoy it. But you do get a lot of, here's a picture of a random person walking through a pool of light under a bridge in London kind of thing. yeah, it's nice, but is it original? Is it different?

Nick Church (15:40.592)
Mm.

Nick Church (15:46.382)
And like anything with photography, just like we've on the previous question that chat GPT served us up about art, then there has to be some sort of story. There has to be some mood or message being communicated through that. And that's absolutely, if not more so the case with street photography, that it should be creating humor or irony or pattern or geometric shapes or something like that. And I've done this with classes before, so I've gone to Bristol and done the classic shot of somebody walk with a red jacket.

Steve Vaughan (15:58.382)
Yeah.

Nick Church (16:16.432)
walking past a blue bit of background like Croggett map background about to go into a red bit, you know, just those contrasting colors. But is there much of a story being told there? Possibly not, but it's, you know, it's on the way towards that kind of street photography idea. just doing that alone, I don't think makes a street photography image particularly engaging.

Steve Vaughan (16:18.957)
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (16:36.655)
I put one on my personal Instagram this week, which I think you liked from a photography in London a couple of years ago, and the murals on the wall, it was in Hanford, I think in a store, and it was a couple of larger than life faces looking out, and there was somebody walking in front of them, and looks like they were looking at the person walking by. Yeah, which was, yeah, but it's not original. It's not, there's nothing about that. It's remotely original at all, really. I think there's two sort of approaches to street photography, really. The one is,

Nick Church (16:53.816)
Yeah, yeah, I like that one.

Steve Vaughan (17:05.507)
You walk around a lot, take lots of photos or look for things and you just get lucky. Something amazing happens in front of you there and then, and you just get the photo. But that's obviously completely out of your control really, isn't it? that's just, know, I've spent days walking around London and nothing at all remotely interesting has happened in front of me. Or you see a pool of light or you see something that's of interest and you say, right, I'm going to stand here for an hour or whatever and wait for somebody to walk into that light or wait for somebody.

Nick Church (17:10.032)
Mm.

Nick Church (17:16.91)
Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (17:34.607)
So that magazine is directly above their body. So looks like their head of the magazine is actually their body, that kind of thing really. And that's probably easier to do in that you can actually set that up. But that's probably the bit that's a bit cliched.

Nick Church (17:47.502)
Yeah, because it's more precise, isn't it? It's a bit more precise and it is easy. It's easier to do because if you rattle through a hundred photos as a person, you're going to get one where the timing was just right. But the other type that I find very engaging is that almost confrontational style where there's that photographer that I think is New York that just goes right up into people's faces before they've even had chance to be aware.

Steve Vaughan (18:11.914)
Bruce Gildan. Yeah.

Nick Church (18:13.794)
And, and there, sometimes they're completely out of focus or someone's out of focus right in the foreground and there's, they're really engaging and it, it's not telling a single story as such, but you can really feel life because it's life being captured before anyone in that scene has a chance to react in any other way.

Steve Vaughan (18:19.823)
Hmm.

Steve Vaughan (18:30.063)
Yeah, there is an exhibition on at the Martin Palm Museum, which we all to both go to a foundation sorry, in Bristol, obviously Martin passed away a couple of weeks ago, but he wasn't, I don't think you'd you call him a street photographer. was a social observational photographer rather than just a street photographer, but his pictures always had a story. There was always a reason for the photo. It wasn't just, here's a cool scene with nice light or whatever. think also, and forgive me, I have my dear friends at Fujifilm for saying this, but I think there's also a trend that says,

Nick Church (18:35.856)
Mm.

Nick Church (18:46.65)
Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (19:00.079)
Street photography is a Fujifilm camera with a cool film simulation loaded. That isn't street photography to me. That's just using camera profiles to make pictures look interesting or look nice colors, shall we say. And I think we can easily fall into that.

Nick Church (19:14.159)
Yeah.

I think, I think that, that, that method of taking street photography to show life and almost document history, which is a bit more like Martin Pahl's work, isn't it? It's, it is showing a thing. And another person that's brilliant at this is Peter Dench. And, and like, so photographing, if listeners not familiar with Peter Dench's work, go and see it. There's a whole series he's done on Brits, the Brits abroad type, type shots. He, and, and, and

Steve Vaughan (19:28.479)
Exactly that, yeah.

Steve Vaughan (19:32.942)
Agreed.

Steve Vaughan (19:44.303)
That's right, yeah.

Nick Church (19:46.512)
know, resorts like Blackpool and things in the UK and showing a particular portion of British culture. And it just does it brilliantly. it's, you know, the colours are quite almost slightly faded so that it feels very nostalgic. And for a lot of us that have been to those places when we younger, you feel like the photo could have been taken when you were there then. So yeah, I really love his work as well.

Steve Vaughan (20:00.078)
Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (20:08.535)
Agreed. Yeah. And I think I mentioned before on this podcast, one of my favorite photography books of all time is the Dougie Wallace, Hens and Stags in Blackpool, where he spent probably a couple of years hanging around in Blackpool photographing hen nights and stag doos or bachelor parties for the Americans, which if you want to see the low points of British culture, that's the book to buy. So yeah, mean, don't, you know, who are we to say what street photography should be or shouldn't be?

Nick Church (20:25.424)
Yeah. Welcome to the UK.

Steve Vaughan (20:37.665)
and to me street photography, spending a day walking around and getting some exercise. And if it has some nice pictures, then so be it really. But I can see the reason why that would be. It's the process. Yeah, agreed.

Nick Church (20:41.072)
Yeah. Yeah. It's the process. It is the process. And if you're like, it's like fishing, isn't it? People enjoy fishing without catching anything because you're being more mindful. You're spending time thinking about, know, you're not scrolling and things and street photography. Even if you don't get lucky with any, any scenes, particularly you've spent a few hours looking at light, looking at different angles and scenes and what might happen. so even without capturing any photos, you're

Steve Vaughan (21:03.769)
Yeah.

Nick Church (21:11.02)
skills in those areas have improved throughout that time.

Steve Vaughan (21:12.879)
Super point, super point. All right, number three. I'm not sure if I understand this actually, here we go. The best camera might actually be the one you don't think about. In other words, do small cameras often produce better work? Do simple cameras don't? I see what it means. So basically ones where you don't have to spend half an hour trying to work it out and switch it on and what menus to press and so forth.

Nick Church (21:32.406)
Yeah, I guess. And you're not fumbling around with lenses, maybe. I mean, the, the extension of that is, is presumably an iPhone, you know, is it saying that an iPhone, if you're not spending any time thinking about it, you can just get out and not think about how to take the picture. Is there benefits to that? I don't know. I think I don't, I certainly don't think there's any harm in taking photos with an iPhone. And if you're doing street photography and you're, and you're finding these moments, then as I street photography,

Steve Vaughan (21:36.025)
Possibly.

Steve Vaughan (21:41.028)
Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (21:47.481)
Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (21:55.043)
No, of course not man.

Nick Church (22:00.656)
with all the grain, sometimes slightly out of focus, it lends itself to actually not necessarily having the best kit and two grams worth of lenses on the end of it, you know,

Steve Vaughan (22:09.146)
And also not just faffing about really. When I was walking around, I had a bit of time in Amsterdam for a couple of hours to kill. I did have a walk around. I hadn't got a camera with me, but I did get my phone out. And for once, I mean it's a lovely day today now as well, I should say, but for once the sun was shining and there was some nice light and shadow and I was playing around with the iPhone, playing around with the exposure slider. But the whole experience is just terrible really. I just don't enjoy it. I don't know about you. mean, if I want to take a picture of the grandson quickly, the phone, great.

to go out and take some photos on a phone. It's just a horrible experience, really.

Nick Church (22:39.928)
Yeah, I think it would like went in Antigua. I did you, I took some photos of XT five. I also took plenty on the iPhone, but the iPhone ones were very much. Well, this is a lovely scene. I've got the camera with me. I just want to remember it. like, like I've said, I said before, nice use the wide angle lens on the, on the, on the phone. It is pretty dramatic and it does show, you know, it does show that and they are quite serviceable pictures. If I was doing anything more intentional, like going out.

Steve Vaughan (22:53.591)
Hmm. Yeah. And what's wrong with that? Yeah. Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (23:06.157)
Yeah.

Nick Church (23:09.4)
specifically to take some photos, I definitely wouldn't do that just with a phone because I know that if I did find something, I'd be a bit disappointed that I didn't have my camera with me.

Steve Vaughan (23:17.133)
Yeah, I think that's right. Yeah. I don't know. You see these things on, you know, social media and I guess on Amazon, these sort of grips that make the phone a bit more like a camera. Have you ever used one of those? They give you like a Bluetooth handle and a shutter button. I can't see the point really. Leica made one now, haven't they? Leica and they're selling one. Yeah. But I just don't get the point really.

Nick Church (23:28.559)
No.

No, I couldn't be bothered with it.

Nick Church (23:38.732)
And they do lens, you know, extra snap on lenses that will give you a wide angle. And, you know, I think they all look pretty terrible. Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (23:42.509)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, get a camera. yeah, okay. Number four, and I definitely agree with this one, social media has made photographers less patient.

Nick Church (23:56.226)
It's certainly, yeah, I would say so as well. I would agree with that. I think the social media has become very immediate and the quality of an image that you post on social media seems to be less important than it was maybe five years ago. And certainly, you know, we're seeing a lot of reduced traction for just posting photos on social media full stops that you do need to have.

Steve Vaughan (24:00.237)
In what way?

Steve Vaughan (24:14.393)
Yeah. Yeah.

Nick Church (24:24.432)
Um, reels and video ideally, and it doesn't really matter what, whether it's a phone you see, you know, hundreds of thousands of likes on a real, that might be really entertaining, but it's just shot on a phone. can see it's poorly lit. It's they've not considered any, anything to do lighting. They're using the iPhone, uh, microphone, even though it was at a distance away. So it's not really clear, but that doesn't seem to matter in terms of whether people are gonna like it. And ultimately the people are liking it because Instagram are feeding it to them. it.

Steve Vaughan (24:42.851)
Yep. Absolutely.

Steve Vaughan (24:48.847)
Hmm.

Nick Church (24:51.706)
clearly doesn't make any difference to Instagram's algorithm about who's going to see that post or that reel. Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (24:55.407)
Who knows how that works of course. Instagram has long since ceased to be a photography social media. It's social media and the photography is incidental really. was thinking about this this morning actually when I was thinking about what we're going to do today really. Where do you put your photos? Where do people who want to show their photos to other people, where do you put them these days? Because Instagram isn't the place anymore.

Nick Church (25:17.808)
No, mean, it's, and I see a lot of people using Facebook. Some people still use Flickr, don't they? I Flickr was designed for that. And, and, you know, even had extra features. They started adding extra features, like comments and, know, conversation that could happen around a photo. Um, but I don't know people that, and many people that use it regularly, but then I don't know many landscape photographers. You know, we're not in that, I'm not in that kind of community. Maybe that is more popular with those, but it's a good, it's a good question.

Steve Vaughan (25:24.441)
That's right, yeah.

Steve Vaughan (25:41.103)
True, yeah. Not that you have to share your photos. I, you know, I don't very often don't post any pictures of mine that I take anywhere when I'm pictures. The act of taking photos and the fact I like the photo is good enough for me. I don't need to get the dead of me hit from somebody I'd never met before liking my picture on social media. But I know a lot of people do. Yeah, I can see why that would be, you know, as an issue. We're all...

Nick Church (26:00.271)
Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (26:06.511)
So many people are looking for that instant here to looking for that extra validation. I've done something right. It's a very spiky when they get some negative comments, of course, as well.

Nick Church (26:08.772)
Yeah.

Nick Church (26:14.574)
And in fairness to Instagram, that is a bit more of a return to type, isn't it? That's how the platform started. can remember when I first started using Instagram, which would have been 2015 or something like that. When I started taking photos, it was much more tricky to upload decent quality images from my DSLR than it is that it was designed really to just be a, you know, taking shots with your phone camera, putting a filter on there and sending it.

Steve Vaughan (26:40.259)
The clues and the name, Insta.

Nick Church (26:41.616)
Yeah, you had to go through, I mean, nowadays you can just select your, your, um, you know, your, your camera roll, but you still have to upload it to their first, try and find the damn photo and then, and then post it that way. It was much harder than that originally. And I think they, did resist people making it really easy to do that for quite a while before, you know, before being, you know, coming to that and they, maybe they're going back to it. Perhaps they're realizing that maybe people should be using Facebook for that. Maybe, maybe they want people to use Facebook for that.

Steve Vaughan (26:53.059)
Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (26:59.343)
Interesting.

Nick Church (27:10.328)
and use Instagram for more immediate, like, you know, authentic, real moments and footage rather than curated stuff. don't know.

Steve Vaughan (27:12.865)
on those.

Steve Vaughan (27:19.135)
Don't ask me about TikTok because I'm way too old to think about TikTok. don't understand TikTok. Are you on TikTok?

Nick Church (27:25.872)
I have got an account but yeah, I don't ever use it.

Steve Vaughan (27:28.655)
I came off Twitter quite a while ago because it's a cesspool of people shouting at each other it seems.

Nick Church (27:35.152)
Oh, agreed. Yeah. Yeah. I used to, I used to Twitter for the same way. Yeah. I used to use it for publishing photos and things like that. And no, I can't, you know, I think if I, the problem with something like Twitter, if you just do that and don't engage anywhere else, no one's going to see your pictures. But as soon you start to look around for it, for other places to engage, you're in a cesspool again. So it was definitely improvement for my mental health to get rid of, to just delete the app.

Steve Vaughan (27:43.298)
Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (27:49.711)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (27:59.343)
I wish to make though I do have threads the the sort of meta version of a sort of Twitter as bridge and I do occasionally go in there and I have to smile at a person that was in there today. So it was a post of I won't say his name but let's say quite a young chap who's obviously made a lot of money I think in property in Leeds and it him and his sidekick had basically paid 150k to rent a private plane to get out of Dubai. And basically the post was saying

Nick Church (28:18.105)
Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (28:26.115)
This is what money gets you. know, when you've got money, you can do all these things. And the comments below were just fantastic, have to say. None of them repeatable on this podcast. Lots of four letter words, but basically, you know. Go check it out.

Nick Church (28:31.864)
Yeah.

Nick Church (28:38.288)
Well, I had that thing. Did you see Steve? I do similar thing on Facebook and look through it. And if there is really horrendous racism or homophobia, can't just, I can't not say anything. I feel it's my, you know, I call it, and I think people should stand, if you're going to say something vile, then you should, know, if, if somebody like me saying, what's your data for this point you're making. And if then they,

Steve Vaughan (28:52.473)
same here. Yeah, I'll call it out.

Steve Vaughan (29:05.06)
Yeah.

Nick Church (29:06.356)
that's a reasonable, it's not just slinging, you know, band, I'm not just being offensive and calling them names. I was asking, asking for some data. That person then went into my business page and gave me a really foul review saying that I'd something. Yes. And they'd gone down the line of the classic trope of something to do with Nick Church was look at horrible man looking at young girls at the wedding all day through the wedding. they just made up some nonsense thing. And I'm curious why.

Steve Vaughan (29:08.953)
Yeah, where's the evidence, yeah?

Steve Vaughan (29:17.718)
No way.

Steve Vaughan (29:31.471)
What's wrong with people?

Nick Church (29:32.622)
Why is it that they always go to that? That should be more worrying, that that's their first thought about, how can I insult this person I know? I'll make some kind of really horrible comment about children.

Steve Vaughan (29:43.652)
Have you got it off, have you it deleted? Have Facebook taken it off?

Nick Church (29:45.456)
No, Facebook won't ever do that. No. I've reported it. I reported it on the plus side. I did put it as a real on Instagram as well. And it was my best performing post by about 1000%. So like 37,000 views views on it.

Steve Vaughan (29:58.927)
you

Steve Vaughan (30:03.779)
You're right though, I got called a nonce on a Facebook post the other day when it was at Aston Villa, sadly my football team, was a Villa group and somebody posted this horrendously racist England shirt with Villa badges all over it. I said, you know, I think it's very offensive and I got called a nonce. So I left the group. Yeah, it's a vile place, social media. It's a necessary evil unfortunately in our line of work, but it really is a vile place.

Nick Church (30:19.216)
Yeah.

Nick Church (30:24.432)
this.

Nick Church (30:29.84)
I mean, this is off topic a bit anyway, but the, I remember one that my kids used to use a few years ago. don't even know if it's the thing always is be real. Have you heard of that? It's a social media. It's like Instagram as far as I can tell. I didn't ever get an account. The idea is that you post on this. You have to post the same time every day. So you get like a two minute window and it's, so it's all about not creating, you know, it's just, have to take a photo and you can only use your camera and it's take a photo about what you're doing today. So where are you? And if you're just.

Steve Vaughan (30:39.63)
No.

Nick Church (30:59.544)
sitting having a coffee in front of TV, I should take a picture of and it's, it's about showing your real life rather. So it's trying to counter this idea of influencers creating and curating their own life to make it act to be something completely different. Yeah. So that was quite interesting, but I don't know if, I don't know if people carry on using it.

Steve Vaughan (31:03.607)
Interesting. Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (31:09.967)
Dubai life, yeah. That's a good idea, My life would be very, very boring if I did that. There'd lots of very boring photos of me doing very boring things, but that's the story.

Nick Church (31:21.296)
But I thought it might be quite good if, if, if it made, you know, I was thinking if I did use that and the last four days I'd posted me just sitting in front Excel or Lightroom working, it might make me think, do you know what? I'm going to go for a walk today and do something a bit different. So I've got something to do in it. And it would actually promote something, promote us doing something a bit, a bit different rather than trying to artificially create this different life that we have, that we don't have.

Steve Vaughan (31:35.459)
Yeah, there is that. Yeah, there is that.

Steve Vaughan (31:43.203)
Yeah, absolutely. A life that doesn't exist. All right, number five. We've had this kind of one similar before, but still a different and good point. Most photography YouTube channels are about gear because creativity is harder to teach. Mr. Nick Church, Photography Academy owner, discuss.

Nick Church (31:46.031)
Yeah.

Nick Church (31:55.79)
Yeah, that's it.

Yeah, well, that is basically the reason the raison d'etre for the Nick Church Creative Academy is that trying to learn photography via YouTube is tough because it's unstructured. You're learning about settings and random things and you can, that's not the most important thing. It is important, but not as important as all those things I mentioned earlier, like, you know, finding light and how to find a mood and what's the purpose in that photo and those things are really hard to teach.

And it's hard to teach that when you've got a sea of content anyway, because whose opinion do you listen to? Cause it's really hard to know who to listen to. that's, so that's why that photographer unleashed course that I've launched is basically combining the technical side of photography and camera selection and lens selection. And also the secrets that we use to create meaningful communicative photography, which is two separate things. So yeah, so I hope that continues to be a really crap way for people to learn photography because then I can keep selling courses.

Steve Vaughan (32:53.248)
Hahaha

I guess they're the ones that people watch the most. Our best performing podcast ones are the ones where we've got something geary like lenses or cameras in the title. They're the ones that people go to the most because unfortunately that's what people tend to look for, isn't it?

Nick Church (33:04.708)
Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think that's, that's certainly if I need, I had on my motorcycle helmets over there, I had a friend over yesterday. We were trying to work out how to get the comm system connected for three riders. And that's a classic, just go to YouTube and just find a video where it does it. You know, that's, and that's a perfect, I think it's a perfect platform for that. And if it was to find the best lens in this budget or the best 85 mil lens, like I watched a great one.

Steve Vaughan (33:18.959)
All right.

Nick Church (33:34.608)
few years ago about the best, you know, it, it, a review of, think they had like 10 or 11, 85 mil lenses for Sony and they were sort of, you know, doing pros and cons of all of them. And it was fascinating. It was a really good input, but if it was, if it was taken 85 mil lens and try and communicate how you use that to do, to create the best photos, that's much more difficult to do. And no, yeah, ironically, it wouldn't be, it wouldn't be as popular.

Steve Vaughan (33:48.473)
Seriously?

Steve Vaughan (33:56.643)
Yeah, and it probably wouldn't be as popular as a video either would it? Yeah. You're right about it being great for finding how to do things. I fixed my dishwasher the other day with the YouTube channel. So it is great for that really. probably I'm fun being honest. I I follow lots of photographers on YouTube and we are on YouTube by the way, dear listeners as well. Although we are somewhat behind with some of the episodes, we will catch up. But the ones I tend to watch things, know, like DP Review as it was and...

Nick Church (34:06.818)
Yeah.

Nick Church (34:18.852)
Yes.

Steve Vaughan (34:25.647)
whatever they call, Peter pixel guys. They're about gear really, the ones I tend to watch and they're probably the most popular, but probably not the best place to learn. Go to Nick Church Creative Academy and that's

Nick Church (34:28.645)
Yeah.

Nick Church (34:34.276)
NickchurchCreativeAcademy.com. Yeah, exactly. There's a, I noticed today that I had a, because the photography show is coming up in a week's time. Are you going, or will you be away during that?

Steve Vaughan (34:43.535)
Yeah, I I don't think we thought about it. I'll that super busy. Yeah. Uh, are you going?

Nick Church (34:50.192)
I'm doing a couple of talks there. yeah, that's, yeah, I'm definitely going 14th and 15th, 14th 15th of March.

Steve Vaughan (34:52.292)
in that case you probably are. What days are you there going? Just so can make sure I avoid them.

Steve Vaughan (35:02.079)
I get back from Singapore on the 15th unfortunately mate, But 16th and 17th I could do. It goes on to Monday Tuesday doesn't it? Okay, I might go with a Monday.

Nick Church (35:10.872)
Yes, it does. Yeah. My, two talks are about. Beginnery type things. It one's about the histogram, but more of a sort of tongue in cheek view of the idea of this is what your histogram should look like. So that's pretty entertaining. And one on my process for using manual mode for people that have either, you know, stuck in at auto or aperture priority and just find all a bit of a mystery. So it's a process for that. So, but if any, any listeners are there, then please do come up and say, hello, I'd love to, I'd love to meet you. Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (35:25.795)
Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (35:30.031)
That'd be good as well.

Steve Vaughan (35:38.895)
Yeah, absolutely. Unfortunately, I won't be there, mate. I'll be in the air. But I'll try and go along with them and not to buy anything because we're not buying gear anymore, honest.

Nick Church (35:42.32)
let down

Nick Church (35:47.29)
There's a rather nice, sorry, blowing trumpet a here. There's a rather nice article in...

Digital camera magazine about Nick Church, Creative Academy. Yeah. Yeah, well, yeah. it's like a double page article. it's in the version that's out now, which will be going through the show as well. think they're handing it out at the show. So they're basically sort of featuring a few people that are doing talks at the show. So yeah, that was fun. Yeah, yeah, it took me long enough.

Steve Vaughan (35:56.015)
All right.

Steve Vaughan (35:59.439)
I think you put the link in the show notes. Okay, send me the link, I'll put it in the show notes.

Steve Vaughan (36:06.933)
Well done.

Steve Vaughan (36:13.065)
Good stuff mate. Well done. Famous at last. Can I get an autograph? Right let's crack on with a few more of these. Number six and I agree with this one. Perfectly sharp photos are often boring. I think photographers obsess way too much about sharpness. Way too much.

Nick Church (36:23.357)
Number six, number six.

Nick Church (36:31.61)
Are we talking about lens optics sharpness or focus?

Steve Vaughan (36:34.479)
Whatever way you want really. think in perfect photos out of focus could be.

Nick Church (36:41.008)
I mean, intentionally out of focus, mean, focus problems with lenses is not good, is it? Full stop. So if you've got a DSLR that is back focusing on something, it's not ideal. intentionally making things out of focus can be pretty powerful, but quite interesting.

Steve Vaughan (36:47.16)
I thought.

Steve Vaughan (36:55.607)
Yeah, like intentional camera movement, things like that, perhaps as well. Yeah.

Nick Church (36:57.86)
Yeah, yeah. And you said, is that trend still going on in wedding photography? Would you say the the out of focus shots? mean, it certainly was a couple of years ago. Yeah, that's off your your feet. I think if it's that focus shot of your feet, it doesn't count.

Steve Vaughan (37:06.382)
I do it all the time, I'm not on purpose. The best, the first I'm best known for, you know the one that's behind me on the wall, the three older people at a wedding, two grandparents and an aunt just looking bored at a wedding. That's not in focus, it's actually out of focus, but it's the moment that matters.

Nick Church (37:24.357)
Yeah.

Nick Church (37:30.128)
Yeah. Yeah, no, of course. Yeah. From that side of thing, think focusing on sharpness, it's important that it looks intentional. So if it looks like they're supposed to be sharp, I think it's fine. You know, if it didn't quite hit, it's, you know, it's fine. Um, if it's things we intentionally out of focus, like, and it's not just focusing on one thing and letting other things blur, blur out. There's this, this, this, genre of the whole thing's out of focus. It's intentionally.

Steve Vaughan (37:55.439)
Yeah.

Nick Church (37:59.278)
really soft like an old manual SLR camera that just hasn't been used properly. And that was popular a few years ago, certainly.

Steve Vaughan (38:07.983)
That's true. think sharpness is overplayed and I think people obsess about lens sharpness when they're buying lenses. But actually when you actually come to use it, know, unless you're going to bloat up the size of a house.

Nick Church (38:18.48)
It is that and the fact that a lot of the lens, the sharpest lens are actually sharper than the sensors going to be able to resolve anyway. So it's a bit like the idea that we all buy TVs and platforms that will support 4k delivery of content. And then we sit six meters away from the TV and you might as well be an HD because the resolution in our eyes is at that distance is lower than the TV. So it doesn't make any difference.

Steve Vaughan (38:26.435)
That's a good point, actually.

Nick Church (38:44.848)
which is why when they get you into bio TV, they send you right next to it. Cause you can see the blades of grass and all that. And then doesn't matter after that.

Steve Vaughan (38:51.567)
Yeah, I just mentioned Joel Mervitz earlier, and we do need to go and see that, but his famous photo of the fallen man in Paris, think the man having an epileptic seizure, I think in Paris, I just googled it. And if you look at that, actually, the focusing point actually isn't on the man, it's on the railings in front of the man who's fallen. But so what? It was a moment, you know, and it's a very famous photo and a very important photo as well.

Nick Church (39:13.669)
Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (39:20.749)
I think moment to me is the most important thing in the kind of photography we do, the moment and the composition that trumps, mean, it's kind of, he's going to be remotely in focus, but it's not, you know.

Nick Church (39:28.912)
Yeah, I think I think there's a there's a point where if it's out of focus enough that it's just not a viable photo. It was just an error and you've just got to dust yourself off and try again next time, you know, but

Steve Vaughan (39:34.796)
No true.

Steve Vaughan (39:39.03)
Yeah, yeah. seems like I've ever tried to photograph motor racing. Yeah, I mean, if you focus, you put on the pun, you focus too much on, you know, getting things sharp, it just looks like a car park. It looks like the cars are stationary.

Nick Church (39:42.949)
Yeah.

Nick Church (39:52.336)
Yeah, that's right. Yeah. So the, um, yeah, that, that technique of moving your camera, trying to pan at the same time, that can be really good, but you know, that's, that's going to give you like 8 % shots that completely out of focus or certainly with motion blur in which, you get that one that's just right. then that then it makes it all worthwhile.

Steve Vaughan (39:57.967)
Pun again, yeah.

Steve Vaughan (40:10.831)
and then you're a famous photographer. okay. Three left, four left. And I can definitely relate to this one. Photographers often travel too far to take unoriginal photos.

Nick Church (40:20.912)
So this is like the Instagram versus reality type posts that you see on Instagram.

Steve Vaughan (40:25.099)
A little bit, it's like, you know, I'm in India, so I'm going to take a photo of the Taj Mahal, the same photo everybody else is taking because I'm in India.

Nick Church (40:30.382)
Yeah. Yeah. And there's only certain, you know, there's a clear vantage point to take it at and every photo is going to look basically exactly the same. Yeah. I do. Yeah. I do agree with that. I there's, there's definitely a case for, you can just wander around your local. We've talked about this before, just wander into a local park or woods or your garden. And you can, you can just find some lovely shots to take. You know, you don't have to travel far at all. there's, there's also a case though, where I do feel some people.

Steve Vaughan (40:40.751)
I've done it, yeah.

Nick Church (41:00.688)
would be possibly better and it sort of leads into the sharpness. know, if you are investing thousands into the sharpest possible lens, you may be better off spending a bit of that on a travel budget to go somewhere. If you really are not inspired by the scenes around you, a plane to Iceland is like 60 quid. Do know what I mean?

Steve Vaughan (41:11.843)
Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (41:17.955)
Funny enough, mentions Icelandia, Iceland Waterfall Syndrome it talks about on the notes here. I know what it means by that. How many photos have you seen of that famous waterfall in Iceland? Yeah. But I suppose there is that sort of, I'm going on holiday, I'm going to go and take some photos that get you sort of up for your game kind of thing, really. Today I'm taking photos. think the same, having said about gear earlier in this pod, think getting a new bit of gear sometimes can give you a creative boost as well.

Nick Church (41:22.116)
Yeah.

Nick Church (41:26.541)
Yeah.

Nick Church (41:36.431)
Yeah.

Nick Church (41:47.536)
Hmm.

Steve Vaughan (41:47.769)
just the fact, we need to try, I'll do something a bit different and I'll go out and make an effort with it.

Nick Church (41:52.932)
But think those, those waterfall photos, I mean, yeah, they are the same. The Taj Mahal, another example, I think Taj Mahal to go to India specifically, go to Delhi to get that would be probably not worth it. Yeah. In Bista, the Taj Mahal in Bista, High Street. But I guess if you did that and then also went around, you know, Delhi or another village and took some street photography or some shots of people and got just a real variety of things, and that's a really valuable trip to do.

Steve Vaughan (42:02.799)
great curry house. Oh not that one, no, I'll to the thought.

Nick Church (42:21.776)
Um, and if you are doing that, if that, they would probably be the most, the more engaging shots, those, those other ones of people and life going on. But if you're there, you probably would be mad not to get to touch my hole and take a picture of it as well. And everyone has, you know, everyone has taken loads. People have taken those photos of waterfalls, including myself, but I've only taken one of it. So I, I wouldn't go back again and take the same photo, but I really wanted to get those shots when I was starting out, it was sort of almost bit of a rite of passage to go and take a photo.

Steve Vaughan (42:27.203)
Yep. That's what I want to do.

Steve Vaughan (42:48.365)
I guess so. Yeah, I guess. And who are we to criticize what people do anyway, but I can see the point there. This one is a controversial one. Editing has become more important than shooting. I frankly always have hated editing and still hate editing. But it's necessary part of job.

Nick Church (43:05.806)
Yep.

Yeah, I quite, it's very different, I think, from event type photographers than it is for other genres. And I think, well, actually, let's broaden that. Every genre has got its own answer to this question. So something like a landscape photographer is going to be a lot of time editing because every, every, every of that image is really important. So it's a lot of manual brushing. And that is a very crazy thing. It's like painting when you do a photo like that, when you're taking portraits in studio to get

Steve Vaughan (43:25.143)
Of course. Of course.

Yeah, of course.

Nick Church (43:37.006)
you know, the background, looking right. If you're, if you are creating shadows, then the editing process is really important for that as well. When you're doing events and weddings, then it is more of a necessary thing to do to get, to get those images to be how you want them to look, to look like your style. And I think any, any wedding photographer would probably be lying if they said they really love to sit down and edit 700, 800 wedding photos from start to finish.

Steve Vaughan (43:42.329)
course.

Steve Vaughan (43:50.327)
Exactly.

Steve Vaughan (44:00.207)
There's a lot of repetition, isn't there, even with some of the automation and stuff in Lightroom and even using things like Aftershoot or Imogen or Evo2, these kind of guys, there is still some degree of repetition in it really, which is what makes it tedious, I think, really. Yeah.

Nick Church (44:03.374)
Yeah.

Nick Church (44:06.992)
Mm.

Nick Church (44:14.382)
Yeah. Yeah. And that's, that's when you, you know, you are, you're working in a way that you, know, you have a quality that your clients were expecting. So you want to get it to that point. but it's not, you know, it's not always, you're not spending loads of time on them to get on one particular image. There's only a handful, isn't there? I'm sure everyone's are saying there's a handful of images you do spend a bit longer on to edit because they're, yeah, they're either the killer ones or ones that just about crept into the set that aren't the best ones. And they might need a bit more room.

Steve Vaughan (44:23.703)
Of course.

Steve Vaughan (44:35.255)
Yeah, yeah, they're the killer ones. Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (44:40.847)
That you give up halfway through and think, why have I only did this one, it's shite.

Nick Church (44:44.304)
a bit more of a polish. And you're thinking if I just remove this from the set, is anyone going to notice? Probably not, in which case it probably is worth removing. But

Steve Vaughan (44:52.367)
Yeah, just just the one of them exchanging rings and things like that. Nothing important.

Nick Church (44:57.146)
But I think it is for a lot of genres, it is the other half of the coin of taking a photo is the editing side of it, what your style is.

Steve Vaughan (45:04.143)
Yeah, and I a lot of people love it and I can get into it if I need to. Like you say, 700 wedding photos to do. It's like, okay, I've got to get them done rather than thinking, woo hoo, I've got editing to do. Yeah, but it is part of job, of course.

Nick Church (45:17.038)
I wonder how long a, you know, one of the best, so the best landscape photographers that I've met is Gianfranco Gola that we had on the pod. And I'll be interested, we should have asked him how long would, would he spend editing one of those images? You know, it'd be really interesting to see whether it's five, 10 minutes or whether it is, you know, a few hours, a few hours gone into it.

Steve Vaughan (45:27.053)
Yeah, I have a book photographer.

Steve Vaughan (45:33.967)
That's a good question.

Steve Vaughan (45:39.663)
Yeah. If you're a landscape photographer listening and you'd like to tell us about your editing process, we'd love to hear from you. Yeah. Yeah. If you are taking eight hours per photo, they don't expect to do a live demo on the podcast though. Not quite that long. Play it at 10 times speed.

Nick Church (45:44.622)
Yeah, I'd really keen to hear what the balance is between how long you're spending on each photo.

Nick Church (45:53.657)
Yeah, we'll pre-record it and speed it up 100 times. Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (46:01.601)
Right, two left. This is one I know you're going to not necessarily have an opinion on because I you don't do it. Film photography is sometimes nostalgia rather than better photography. You've never talked film photography.

Nick Church (46:12.578)
Not since I was a child with a compact camera, yeah. So no, that doesn't count. Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (46:15.023)
Okay, I still do, yeah, from time to time. Do you know Simon Atkins, the wedding photographer? Yeah, I know he's definitely offering a film package as part of his option. We've got one couple this year actually got a wedding at the Bodleian Library in Oxford and they've asked for some film photography. I'm not sure why, I'll be honest, but they've asked for it and obviously we'll happily oblige.

Nick Church (46:22.756)
Mm-hmm. Yep.

Nick Church (46:34.308)
Okay.

Nick Church (46:39.726)
I mean, I definitely see it. mean, I see a couple of people that been on the pod, know, friends of the pod, Geraint, so Geraint Roberts takes film at weddings, as does Jan at Creative Depiction Studio. They do film as well. And I've always got the question you just asked is I get it and I can get how it's fun from the photography aspect, but I wonder why couples want it.

Steve Vaughan (46:44.845)
Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (46:52.333)
Yeah.

Nick Church (47:04.388)
But maybe they do, maybe there's a reason. And maybe the reason is the same reason that I don't do it, because I don't see part of that process as being particularly interesting to me right now. I would like to try it because I hate to like, bore anything out that I've never actually tried and I haven't ever tried to take a film. So I would sort of prep.

Steve Vaughan (47:14.539)
Mm. Mm.

Steve Vaughan (47:19.68)
Mm. Mm.

Steve Vaughan (47:23.609)
think a lot of stuff of film photography is the same feel as to why people like me play records still, because it's the experience of putting a record on the turntable, moving the arm across, lowering the cartridge, blowing the dust off, listening to the whopper, whatever. It's the process more than the output, really.

Nick Church (47:30.746)
Yeah.

Nick Church (47:44.048)
But that's a introspective thing, isn't it? Isn't it the fact that we like to play vinyl records because we like that process of getting out the sleeve and putting it on and getting the needle across. If somebody was, let me play you a song, which is more equivalent to what film photographers are doing if they're shooting film for a wedding, does that person that just wants to hear the song, do they care about whether it's an MP3 or an Apple Music Stream or a vinyl?

I know they do in some cases because there's loads of fantastic DJs that I've worked with at weddings that do vinyl, you know, and they've been selected specifically for that. So there are people that do want that.

Steve Vaughan (48:15.417)
Yeah. They do, yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I think let's perhaps differentiate the thing between people who are taking photos for fun and enjoy the process of film photography. The perhaps slowing them down a little bit, knowing you've only got 36 rolls on the film, so you can't spray and pray. you know, let's be honest, film photography now ain't cheap. know, the cost of a roll of film, cost of DMPs, you know, you're looking at probably 30 quid minimum for the two things.

Nick Church (48:33.924)
Yeah.

Nick Church (48:46.522)
Right.

Steve Vaughan (48:48.149)
Then as opposed to sort of couples who are at or when or the clients who are looking for film photography, what is it about film photography that they're asking for? Do they think that the output will look significantly different? I'm not sure it will really, you know.

Nick Church (49:02.882)
No, that's the thing that I'd love to hear, you know, if anyone does have an opinion on that, we'd love to hear it, you know, get into the Facebook group photography pod and let's hear it because it would be, I'd be genuinely interested about what someone that has either hired a photographer for an event or something and would like some film photography, what is it that they're looking to get? Are they looking to get more, I don't know, like Polaroid style photos? Is that what they mean by film photography? You know,

Steve Vaughan (49:11.927)
Mm.

Steve Vaughan (49:31.759)
what that sort of in stacks Polaroid type look. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Nick Church (49:33.55)
Yeah, yeah. So faded vintage style, you know, things which could of course be applied to any photo in Lightroom. could create a filter to do that quite easily or a preset to do that.

Steve Vaughan (49:42.369)
Exactly. Yeah. Have you seen that thing at Fujifilm of launch that looks like a Super 8 cine camera? Have you not seen it? So it's a, it looks, basically a box on a handle and you can put in it or you do put in it a Instax paper. So it'll print Instax prints and you can actually dial the decade.

Nick Church (49:49.977)
I haven't seen that one.

Nick Church (49:56.356)
Yeah.

Nick Church (50:04.88)
See you next week.

Steve Vaughan (50:12.399)
that you want the picture to represent. you can say, this picture to look like it was taken in the 1960s. So there's a dial on the side that says, you know, what decade do I want? But it'll also produce video, looks like Super 8 film. I mean, it's wacky as hell. I'm sure it'll be a great success, particularly in Asia.

Nick Church (50:26.062)
boy.

Nick Church (50:30.842)
Well, yeah, I they've and they've done their market research. They'll know that there's you know, just like they did for the Fuji half X or whatever it's called. Is it a half X? Yeah, you know, they've done research on it. And so they know there are markets for these more niche, more sort of getting back to basics a little bit.

Steve Vaughan (50:34.575)
They will. Yeah.

Yeah. X-HALF. Yeah. Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (50:43.844)
Yeah.

Don't think I'm going to buy one, put it that way. Unless somebody from Fujifilm wants to donate one of course. Right, our final question, and one again you'll definitely relate to as the impresario of the Creative Academy. The most important skill in photography is not technical.

Nick Church (51:04.26)
Yes. Hard agree. Hard agree with that. think the, it depends on, so I think the, is important. I feel it's important for all photographers to have an understanding of manual mode, their exposure. the three elements of exposure. And I think that's the case for beginners all the way through to professionals. think that's really important. That doesn't mean that you don't then use aperture priority, shutter priority, manual with ISO, with auto ISO when, when it helps you because

Steve Vaughan (51:06.508)
me more.

Nick Church (51:34.352)
you know, if you, if you would rather the camera just did, did, did something for you, but not knowing when it's going to help you, when it's going to bite you, which is a problem and and after priority will bite you in low light. So if you don't understand manual mode, you're never going to get, you're never going to understand the points where you do need to switch to manual mode or, know, to do something different in your settings, at least. So there are some technical things that I think are important, but, um, but the great photos.

Steve Vaughan (51:55.385)
course.

Nick Church (52:01.456)
that we see from all photographers over the world of all genres, those, it's not really important. So the idea of, this is a great photo, what settings were taken for that is the wrong question to ask, isn't it? And you see that very often in beginner photography Facebook groups, when there's a nice photo being posted, everyone's desperate to know what settings are so that they can go and reproduce it, but you can't, the settings didn't create that photo, it was the vision, it was the light, and it was what was happening in it in the moment. And that's all the other...

Steve Vaughan (52:23.097)
That's right.

Nick Church (52:29.978)
things that make that different. And I think as we've said, actually, if it's a little bit overexposed, underexposed can be easily fixed. Even if it's not quite sharp, that at times doesn't matter as much, as we think.

Steve Vaughan (52:40.687)
Yeah, I guess it depends what kind of photography you're doing really. So if you're a street photographer, patience probably, particularly if you're sort of the type of photographer who likes to stand in the way for something to happen. know, the wedding photographer, empathy, I think is important. You know, being able to have some kind of empathy with the people you're photographing. You know, even, and know documentary wedding photographers wish I didn't pod right now saying, oh, I know, I just take pictures, but you've got to have so many people skills.

Nick Church (52:51.6)
Mm.

Nick Church (52:56.197)
Yep.

Nick Church (53:10.117)
Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (53:10.219)
Clearly, nobody wants to be a complete plonker at the wedding. If it's a macro type photography, then again, perhaps patience might be important. Ability to understand timing, when to arrive, those kinds of things are super important.

Nick Church (53:28.228)
That's a good point. are, there are loads of areas, even non-related to photography that are important. So like you said, understanding wildlife when they're going to be in, you know, best shoot. If you're a landscape photographer, how do you research? How do you use the tools available to you to research the light and the angle of the weather? Sun's going to be, cause if it's not just down the road, you may be booking flights and things to go and get that shot. there's those things at weddings. You've got empathy as you said.

Steve Vaughan (53:38.22)
Exactly.

Nick Church (53:57.072)
looking for moments, having that sixth sense for knowing when, when something's going to happen. It hasn't happened yet. And if you just wait for it's absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There's that. And, and any kind of documentary photography, including street photography, of being, keeping yourself out of the way and making other people a bit unaware that you're there is, is a skill that again comes with practice. and, you know, certainly that's something that I tend to do when I'm, I'm shooting events is try and

Steve Vaughan (53:59.479)
Yeah, absolutely. That's also experience as well, though, I think, isn't it? You've been in that situation 10 times, 100 times before. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Nick Church (54:27.162)
keep out the way where it's important to do so. and it's definitely a lot of feedback I get through reviews and things is all about, we didn't, didn't see Nick take off these pictures. And as far as I'm concerned, that's a pretty good thing because yeah. Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (54:29.144)
Yeah, absolutely.

Steve Vaughan (54:36.665)
Yeah, that's a result, isn't it? Yeah, we want people to forget we're even there. know, don't want people to think, if people say those photographers were nice at the wedding, that's nice, but rather people say we don't remember the photographers, frankly, yeah.

Nick Church (54:48.304)
Yeah, I mean, there's some reviews that I've had where they said, oh, Nick, Nick was fantastic. Really great fun. We had a right laugh, you know, and I tend not to lean into those reviews because it makes it sound like I'm with a twirly bow tie, you know, like a stand up comic or a one man band.

Steve Vaughan (55:04.343)
Or more like you've got a Jägerbob on the dance floor, partying away. Not that I've ever done that, course, dear listener.

Nick Church (55:07.864)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. But there are photographers that do all those things as well. And they're, they're equally valid. And that's that they're attractive to a complete different sector of the market to someone like you or I, know, and, that's why I think wedding photography, like all genres has got a market for everybody. That's why it's, it doesn't ever get too crowded because all we can do is just markets one particular group of people.

Steve Vaughan (55:15.82)
Absolutely.

Steve Vaughan (55:21.091)
Yeah, yeah, definitely not me. Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (55:33.327)
your ideal customer, your concept of the ideal customer. I quite enjoy that. Well, thank you to a certain well-known AI app and apologies for any green ass emissions that did cause for us doing that. It's an important point in all seriousness. But yeah, I quite enjoyed those discussion points. So what are you up to in the next couple of weeks?

Nick Church (55:35.054)
Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Nick Church (55:44.72)
You

Nick Church (55:53.262)
I've got a few well weddings are starting again, of course. I've got some talks coming up at the photography show and I'm doing some lectures at Boomsatsuma, which is a higher education university and college in Bristol on photography and film. So I've got that coming up. then if you have on shoot wise, I've got a few commercial shoots up in Anglesey that I'm in the planning stages of. And yeah, like I said, weddings coming in.

Steve Vaughan (55:55.469)
Yes, they are.

Nick Church (56:21.593)
pretty thick and fast at the back end of March.

Steve Vaughan (56:23.757)
Yeah, same here. We started getting really busy towards the end of March as well with our weddings. Obviously, we've got the trip to Singapore coming up, as I say, this week. And a few personal family events things are sort out as well. So, yeah, we're nice to get back into the Sadler Dean weddings again. We've only done one so far this year, but we have another 24 to do.

Nick Church (56:38.552)
I suspect the swords law being as it is, that all of those weddings will come in just as we're about to move house. imagine. Cause I think that's the way it will probably go. And then of course I've got no studio. So I'll be without, without a proper office space for the foreseeable because that isn't something that our budget can stretch to straight away. So we'll have to save up to if I can build somewhere. Yeah. I might be in a little shop I shed. I'll get a little shed from being Q.

Steve Vaughan (56:59.823)
I'm sure you'll get there. I'm sure you get there.

If you see a bloke editing photos in the back of a car, that'll be Nick.

Nick Church (57:09.785)
Yeah, your little shed with a generator outside. Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (57:13.465)
Ha

So if you've enjoyed this nonsense today, dear Lister, then thanks for listening. We appreciate you taking the time to listen to us. Don't forget if you listen to us on Apple or Spotify, we would love to give you some five-star review. Just help us in lots of and wonderful ways. As Nick mentioned, we do have a podcast photography Facebook group. Just called the Photography Pod, surprisingly. So we would love to hear you there. It's a little bit neglected at the moment. Need to a bit of work into it, both of us.

Nick Church (57:40.56)
Yes. Yeah. But then, you know, that's, it's a community, isn't it? It's a community. So we, we can't take full responsibility. We need everyone to sort of get stuck in as well. I'm being facetious because yeah, we haven't, we haven't had much time, but do use that. It's the best way to get in touch with us and just because it starts conversations, you can get in touch with email as well. But we do really like those things on the Facebook group because then we can have a bit of discussion about it.

Steve Vaughan (57:45.153)
It is a community.

No, no, absolutely. Good point. No, you're absolutely right.

Steve Vaughan (58:02.703)
Absolutely. We can, we can indeed. We'll be back again in a couple of weeks time with another show. In the meantime, happy shooting out there and we'll talk to you soon. Goodbye now.

Nick Church (58:10.66)
See you later.