Challenges of Commercial Photography with Renée Robyn

Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Welcome to the Focused Professional Podcast, sponsored by the Society of Photographers.
I'm your host, Joe Lenton, and this is Episode 12.
Music.

(00:33):
Welcome to the Focus Professional Podcast. And today we've got an artist that
I've admired for a long time, whose work I've enjoyed seeing,
always enjoy seeing when that comes up on social media.
Somebody whose tutorials I've
enjoyed, but never really quite managed to get the hang of doing that.
So I'll leave that to her. But this is Renée Robin. Hello, Renée.

(00:55):
Hey, nice to meet you. Thanks for having me on the show. I appreciate it.
It thank you very much for taking the time out to be
on the show it's always a pleasure
seeing your work when that comes out and how much of it of what we see on on
social there is like your kind of commissioned work how much of it is your your
own projects because i know that quite often when you're working commercially

(01:17):
certainly with my work you can end up with these horrible things called ndas
where you're not actually allowed to show people things yeah that's a thing.
That's definitely a thing it depends year to year how often i would say this
last year i would say it's about 50 50 like paid versus personal some years
it's like 60 30 some years it's 90 10,

(01:42):
wow it really varies wildly year to year it's kind of crazy.
Yeah, that is that is quite some variation for me.
I normally tend to find it's the interesting ones that you're not allowed to
put an embargo on it for like six months, by which time you've forgotten you've done it.
A hundred percent. Yeah, no, that was that was very, very common for me back in like 2015, 2016.

(02:03):
It's like so much work I would do. I was just like, I'm doing tons of cool and
I can't like tell anybody about it.
Yeah yeah absolutely yeah and then
uh you six months later you're thinking oh yeah there
was something i was gonna stick on social media now where
was it what was it yeah which hard drive is it on
which which city was that i don't actually remember well

(02:26):
because you travel for work quite a lot as well don't you yeah yeah i
did a lot quite a bit yeah for a long time yeah so
you know you probably then sort of once it's
coming off an embargo you're in a different countries don't necessarily even
got your hard drive with you 100 yeah so i
did i did start storing huge amounts
of projects and like the finished work anyways on like

(02:47):
different online places just so that i could be like okay when the embargo lifts
i can at least access it yeah started started doing that just for my own sanity
so speaking of different countries i've read somewhere that you actually like
learning languages i do actually yeah i'm terrible at a bunch of them.
I kind of suspect that you've probably learned lots of phrases to do with cats. Is that right?

(03:12):
That is true. Yeah. There was once upon a time when I was traveling a lot,
I could say cat and order chicken in nine languages.
Excellent. I'm sure that's very useful.
Well, yeah, not so much. The ordering chicken part, yes.
But the being able to say cat, I mean, because I just, whenever I see a cat
somewhere, I'm just like,

(03:33):
cat like it's always just like seeing a cat out in the
wild that's like a friendly cat it's like hey what's up it's just like seeing
just like seeing the first cat for the first time every time you're just
like there's that kitty and it likes me
please don't hold it there's that there is that yeah sometimes the friendly
ones you can't be too sure yeah it's one of those things a lot of people tend

(03:56):
to shy away from you know learning different languages certainly the brits have
this This kind of reputation for their version of speaking French is actually
just to talk English louder.
That's fair. So it's quite an unusual thing for somebody to take an interest in languages.
Is that something you've always had, like through school and so on?

(04:16):
Or is that something that's developed later?
Well, I mean, being in Canada, we have to do French and English all through school.
And so I did that and kind of fought my way through it because I don't like
anybody telling me what I have to do.
But I have like a decent foundation
for French not so much to communicate back but at least
to kind of understand what's being said to me and then I started traveling a

(04:38):
lot for work and you know I was spending a lot of time in the Netherlands and
in Germany and stuff like that and so I was just like well I guess I should
get at least you know to a similar point of being able to sort of understand
what's being said to me and then communicating back in English and then I was It's just like, well,
it'd be better if I could communicate back in those languages.
But yeah, I use it mostly for stress reduction.

(05:01):
So at the end of the night, every single night, I'll spend about half an hour
working on one language or another.
So right now I'm working on Spanish, French, Dutch, German.
And then I'm learning the Arabic and Russian alphabet. That's tricky.
Yeah. Yeah, that is tricky. tricky
i did once you start getting into different alphabets it's a

(05:22):
whole new ball game and when you start getting into stuff that's
not read from like left to right instead goes from right to left or something
it's like whoa messing with my brain well arabic actually reminds me a little
bit of learning shorthand when i was younger my mom taught me some shorthand
i mean shorthand basically works in vowel like you know sound shapes right so
it can translate i can transfer to any language,

(05:44):
but yeah Arabic reminds me a little bit of learning
shorthand even though you know I learned how
to spell teddy bear I don't know how to say it yet but interesting what's what
I think is really fun and what makes Arabic so difficult is that the the letters
on them on their own make one shape but then you put it into a word and the

(06:07):
whole shape changes and I was just like,
I was like, oh, man, this is going to be a long road.
Does that have extra little dots and marks and things for vowels?
Because I think Hebrew does, doesn't it? Yeah, it does a little bit of that.
I don't know much about Hebrew, but yeah, it's yeah, it's Hebrew was also also on list. So I don't know.

(06:30):
I've got enough going on right now these days, so I can.
It sounds like it with all those languages. is i mean as long
as you can order a beer and something to eat wherever you are and find out where
the bathroom is yeah yeah yeah basically something to eat something to drink
thank you and where's the bathroom those are like the four phrases you should

(06:51):
learn in any language wherever you're traveling to that sounds like you were brought up very well.
Very polite canadian we say thank you and sorry for everything thing.
Yeah. Brits apologize an awful lot too. It's like, you know,
somebody bumps into you and spills your pint.
You say sorry for some reason. Oh, I apologized to a stool the other day.

(07:15):
I knocked it over and I was like, oh my God, I'm sorry. And I was like,
it doesn't care it's not even anybody on it it's exactly there was nobody home.
Yeah i mean my my background is sort of a university initially
was was with languages is how i how i met my wife and
so you know i've got quite an interest in in languages

(07:37):
myself so hearing somebody else learning them and doing
it for fun because most people when you say you've done more than one
language they just go oh no way yeah
not gonna touch that and you think and and
that you do it to de-stress not because actually
you really feel like putting your brain through the ringer you somehow
find it de-stressing yeah yeah i know i

(07:59):
do i find it really relaxing i mean sometimes it stresses
me out like learning some of the russian alphabet confuses the crap out of me
because there's the same letters but they don't make the same sounds and my
brain especially because it's at night and i'm going to bed and i'm de-stressing
my brain just short circuits and And it's just like, why can't I get this right?

(08:21):
So that one can sometimes stress me out a little bit. But it is really fun watching
because I watch a lot of foreign documentaries and stuff like that and like foreign film.
And so I love being able to listen to them and be like, oh, I knew that word.
Like, I don't know what else they said, but I knew that word.
Blah, blah, blah, cat. Blah, blah, blah, chicken. Blah, blah, blah, little.

(08:41):
Yeah yeah exactly yeah or even like simple words
like that or it or there or them
you know and it's it's like oh that's really
fun because last week when i watched the episode of this previously i didn't
understand any of the words and now i understand some of them and so it's starting
to happen as well with arabic like we have a large arabic community especially

(09:02):
where i live i'm really close to the islamic academy and so there's lots of
arabic signs you know with small businesses and small businesses and stuff.
And I'm starting to be like, oh, I know that letter.
It's supposed to be actually quite good for keeping your brain sort of refreshing
itself and growing new sort of neural pathways and things like that, apparently as well.

(09:26):
Yeah, that's actually one of the big reasons why I started it is a couple of
years ago, a woman blew a stop sign and T-boned a car that my mom and I were
in and I got concussion from it. And it's, you know, I've had,
this is not my first one, unfortunately.
So the effects are getting more and more compounding.
And so I had a lot of complications from it.

(09:46):
And I was just like, you know what, like, I was talking to the concussion clinic,
and I was like, what can I do?
And they were like, brain games are great. And I was like, how about languages?
Because I hadn't been traveling as much the last couple years.
And therefore, like, you know, using the Dutch and German that I knew,
I wasn't in the Netherlands or Germany. I haven't been over in like four years,
which is like hard to imagine because I used to be over there for like three or four months a year.

(10:11):
For like 12 years so to not
have that anymore i was just like i could feel because my social media
is also set up because i set up when i was overseas like a
long time ago so it's set up that whoever i'm communicating
with whatever their facebook is set to mine switches to that
language which is really fun i don't know how it happened but like
when i'm talking to my dutch friends my facebook switches to dutch i'm talking

(10:32):
to my german friends it switches to german when i'm talking to my polish friends that
gets super confusing because i don't know anything about polish i didn't
know you could even do that so that's interesting i don't know how it happened but
it is a thing so like you know their notifications will show up
in the native language and so it's it's like it's
interesting for me so i said you know okay well what about languages and i said
languages are great and i was like perfect so i've got two apps on my phone

(10:55):
one of them i basically i use duolingo which i find is like mostly just like
the gamification of learning it's not it's so formal i don't think people who speak those languages
naturally speak that formally but it's
still good for like learning the words and you know some grammar and
stuff like that but then i also i basically googled i was like what are the

(11:15):
best language apps for learning if you want to become a polyglot and speakly
kept coming up on top and so i got speakly and i was like oh yeah this is like
a whole nother level like if you're interested in learning other languages speakly
it's very very good because it's based off of
the most commonly spoken 4,000 phrases in any language.
And so it's really, really interesting that way.

(11:38):
And so I like to compare, you know, like how Duo will teach me how to speak
something versus how Speakly will. Yeah.
It doesn't always start out with how do I get to the train station,
please, and stuff like that that we always used to have in our textbooks at school.
No, that is definitely some of it for sure. There's a lot of train stations.

(11:58):
Yeah. The interesting thing that I've found having come from a sort of a language
background is and I wonder how true this is for you with the way that you think
is that for me, images are kind of another form of communication.
Communication so i i think of an image as as
as again kind of saying something with
how you put it together so not that there's necessarily a strict grammar but

(12:21):
you know you can learn to read images you can learn what kind of symbols and
colors and things play what kind of role so i'm saying i've never actually thought
of that before that's that's a very interesting perspective yeah it's it's probably
a fairly nerdy one i doubt very many people would.
Bothered to go down that route.
But I think when you're trying to put something together, especially like for

(12:43):
an advertising image or something that's got to tell a story quite quickly,
you want everything in there to contribute to that in a positive way.
So yeah, I suppose for me, it's a little bit like thinking, how can I say something
concisely without going on and on and on for ages?
How can I get an image in a way to do that sort of thing visually?
Yeah, that's interesting. Yeah. I mean, I should think about it because

(13:05):
I make images for a living but yeah that's
that's an interesting an interesting thought especially how it
relates to to languages i'm gonna marinate
on that that's fun for me my brain is like puddle peas
install well if you if you
want to get super nerdy with that there's this thing
called semiotics which is a subdiscipline of linguistics and and so on which

(13:29):
looks at basically how we have systems of signs to communicate with it's initially
applied to languages but it's also something that you can use to apply visually
culturally and so some things are like a kind of a direct representation,
i'm something down right now i'm just moving my tea out of the way to some piece of paper semiotics,
Yeah, you can guarantee the listeners will be switching off about now, but we're having fun.

(13:57):
You've got like the main types is one which is kind of like if you have like
a little picture of a tree, an oak tree, which is standing in for a tree.
That's a kind of almost like a one to one correlation. And in other other instances,
you might have something like a footprint, which is called an indexical sign,
which points to something beyond itself.
Self so it points to is that was that a male

(14:18):
or a female person a child an adult who
made that footprint and so on and then you've got
the really sort of abstract symbolic ones and a
lot of language works in a very sort of similar way but it's an interesting
one uh wake up at the back there no it's an interesting one for um for putting
together images i think so yeah that's the difference between like someone like

(14:42):
me who's getting taught by the internet to speak languages than someone who
went to school for languages.
Well, I wouldn't say I'm... The depth of comprehension is very different and
the application of it is... I wouldn't say I'm necessarily very typical because
we did do some linguistics and that at university when I did the languages.
So we did Chomsky and drawing these funny little diagrams and all that kind

(15:05):
of stuff, which is not useful at all.
But it's interesting. Chomsky is very interesting.
I just have this bookshelf full of things that I know that nobody is ever going
to nick because nobody wants to read them.
I don't have to worry about finding out who I've lent a book to because people
look at my shelf and go, oh, you're all right.

(15:27):
It's like that book of CDs and your car gets broken into and they don't take
the CDs and you're just like, what?
What have you got against my taste in music?
Exactly. But no, the interesting thing you're mentioning about saying things concisely,
And, you know, without rambling on and on and on, I'm working on my art book

(15:47):
right now and I'm getting a crash course in writing because,
of course, I'm not a writer.
So and this book is largely there's not a lot of writing in it.
There's about 10,000 words so far, so it's not very much.
But still, I ramble and then I read it back to myself and my eyes glaze over
halfway through and I'm just like, oh, God, I need an editor.

(16:12):
Yeah that that's kind of i suppose the litmus test really if you're reading
it back in your board then yeah yeah exactly your readers are not going to be
enjoying it probably nobody's gonna care yeah yeah how's the image side of that
going then oh it's good i mean have been torn on,

(16:32):
how many images to put in the book. So I was like, oh, this is going to be a 300-page book.
And so I called down the images in it from 3,200 down to about 400 images,
which means right now it's a 400-page book, which is 100 pages over than what
I planned. And I was like, oh, no.
And I still have to put words in somewhere and like, oh, no.

(16:53):
So I'm talking to the book designer that I'm bringing on about this and just like, how do we do this?
Because not all these images, not all these images have
to be full page but some of them should be double page
right but then i'm yeah this is where like i'm i
find and this is not meant to be
you know kicking down on myself or anything

(17:14):
like that but there's something about when you make a book and you
put all of your work together and you go oh wow no you
like center composition way too much because if
i'm gonna put anything double spread it's like right through the middle
of a person oh no mistakes were
made i chose poorly yeah that does make that rather difficult especially if

(17:40):
it's not a lay flat you know yeah exactly well at 400 pages there's no way you
can make it a lay flat like it's it's too really no it's too big i talked to the printer.
Yeah yeah no i chose poorly so
i'm having to make design choices now going like
i had planned on this book being a vertical book and

(18:00):
so I have the cover art designed for a vertical book and now
I'm going crap maybe I need to make it horizontal so I'm gonna have to call
up my cover artist and be like I love your work so much how much to do it a
second time like horizontal instead I'm so sorry so yeah but it's a steep learning

(18:21):
curve when you do anything like that oh my god God. Yeah.
Yeah. You're just like, here, there's no water wings. Learn to swim. You're just like.
Taking in water. Yeah.
And the thing is just because you can like compose a decent image doesn't necessarily
mean you can like compose a page in a book. It's a different skill.

(18:43):
Yeah. A hundred percent. Like I do not know anything about book design,
which is why I have hired a book designer.
I, you know, I, I, I talked to some friends who have done books and one of them
he he told me this story about how and he we're working with the same book designer because I
love how she laid out his book she did just such an incredible job it's exquisite
his name is Steve Richard he does like these incredible art nude books and one

(19:06):
of them is called Ariel and it's just like.
Chef's kiss it's stunning okay so shout out for that book it is incredible incredible work
but anyways so he started like mucking around with the book design and being
like you know like oh but what if we tried this and oh what if we tried this
no what if we tried this and he sent the samples out to some friends that he
trusted and the friends were fortunately very honest with him and they were

(19:30):
like what is going on with these pages and he's like oh well you know
i thought and they're just like don't don't think just
just let her do it just get out
of the way and so that's exactly
what i'm gonna do with this book as well is just be like when i send everything
over to her i'm just gonna be like doing a thing if i notice anything jarringly

(19:50):
out of place like the wrong text is with the wrong image that's different but
you know maybe if she makes those decisions it might be for a better reason
where like maybe that paragraph
actually fits better with a different image than the one that I thought it would, right?
She's going to look at it from like a completely different skill set.
So I'm really excited and or terrified to see what she's going to say.
And then I'm also very terrified of the amount of red ink that I get back from an editor.

(20:16):
So a friend of mine went to journalism school, so he's got editorial skills
as well. And so I was just like, I'll just send you everything.
And then, you know, just shred it. And he's like, most people I do this for,
they don't talk to me anymore afterwards.
And I was like, I know it's OK. I'm not that sensitive about this.

(20:36):
I just like I need this to make more sense.
Well, it's absolutely worth it because you think otherwise you've got your work,
which, you know, is at a certain level.
And then you're presenting it using a skill set, which is a far lower level.
You might as well get a
partner in it that's going to be able to
complement your contribution with their contribution at

(20:59):
the same level and give you a final product that you can be really
proud of yeah yeah exactly and actually one thing that i i've started doing
with some of this with some of the sentences because i notice every now and
then i'll write like those old british paragraphs where it's like an entire
paragraph is one sentence and you're just like Like, no, like, no.

(21:20):
That sounds very German as well, where they just seem to go on and on and on.
And it's like, you know, find the verb and then eventually you'll find the full stop as well.
Exactly. Exactly. Because I read a bunch of like old English books every now and then.
And sometimes, man, I can get like, like half a page and like,
okay, I need a break. It's like, that was so long.
I have some sentences that can kind of run on like that and I hate it.

(21:43):
And I'm just like, okay. Okay. I mean, you hear how much I say like,
when I'm communicating English.
So this is not I did well in English in school, but I did not go to university for it.
So anyways, I started running through these paragraphs.
And like some of the sentences, I've been running it through chat GPT being

(22:05):
like, Hey, can you take this, but make it like more concise.
And a little more reader friendly and then i'll read what it says and then like
there's every now and then i'm just like oh that's actually a better way to
phrase that part of that sentence and i can cut out like i'm not going to copy
the whole thing because chachi pt is just not that good,

(22:25):
no there are times when it can do things well yeah like it takes the edge off
and i think what it does is it takes the edge off the editor of all the bleeding
eyes he's gonna have reading I'm reading this atrocious grammatical hot mess that I'm sending him.
It's a funny old thing, though, with the AI and chat GPT, a prime sort of example.

(22:50):
You know, sometimes people type in there, oh, write this as if you were a college
professor. And you think, it doesn't know what that is.
No idea. Yeah, it has no idea. It can't pretend it's an expert in something.
And it doesn't know it's not an expert in it either.
Yeah. and you can't compare it
stuff out and it doesn't it doesn't give
you anything that necessarily makes any sense but it just it's super

(23:13):
confident there you go yeah yeah exactly but
i have found that it is it has been quite helpful though in
just you know if i'm not sure of a
sentence or like the sentence structure doesn't really make sense but
i don't know enough and how to fix it myself and i'm still trying
to make it just like a little bit easier for the guy who's doing the editing to just
like you know just take this paragraph or take this this page even sometimes

(23:36):
I'll have it just like go through the whole page and just say make this a little
bit more reader friendly or make this a little bit less flowery and then there's
usually like parts of a sentence in there where I'm just like okay yeah that
that arrangement of words.
Skips out all this stuff here that I don't actually need and then I keep both,
So I've decided that I'll just keep both copies of it and I send both of them

(23:59):
now instead of like I'm sending both versions to the guy who's doing the editing
being like, and I'm very clearly being like, this is the one that I cleaned
up and this is the raw page.
So you can just throw this out if you want, like you don't even have to look
at it. I'm fine. I don't care.
But at least so that they're both there because sometimes the other thing that
can happen that i've noticed when i'm editing down the words is i will edit

(24:21):
it down too far and then it loses.
It loses the thing that makes it sound like me you know whether whether i'm
using like chat gpt or just like through my own culling of words of just being
like that's too flowery that's too this that's too that it's like every now
and then it can be a little bit flowery with the words and And that's OK.
But I don't really know enough sentence structure to to build that in eloquently. I don't think anyways.

(24:47):
I'm really good at writing funny Facebook posts. And that's about where it starts.
Well, that has its place with the with the actual images that are going in there.
Is there a particular structure to it?
Is it telling a story over a period of time or is it a secret?
Secret this is no no it's not a secret at all no this is
basically the best my favorite work from

(25:10):
the last 15 years so yeah and
i can't say my favorite because there's a bunch of favorites in
there that didn't make the cut that like i have these like great emotional connections
to but the work isn't quite it doesn't when i put it with the rest of it it
kind of stands out and it's like okay why are you there like i love you but
i'm sorry bye but yeah so this is a digital book and then i'm also working on

(25:32):
the next book that's going to come out afterwards is a shibari book,
Oh, right. That's, that's the one way you're dangling people on a rope, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah.
As you can see, I've got lots of technical understanding of that.
Yeah. That sounds a bit like you're hanging them in your studio, but no.
Yeah. I mean, we are, but not by their neck most of the time.

(25:52):
Most of the time. Depends how the day goes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Were you good or bad?
Kidding. Our shoes are not like that. They're so clinical.
So how is your new studio because you've recently had
to move into a new one um are you enjoying that
are you settling in okay so i still haven't decided on

(26:12):
which one i'm going to use monthly there's there's two
studios that i found so again when the building got
sold at my old place that was like heartbreaking but
also for 100 the right reasons the
guy who owns it owes us nothing and he
provided an incredible space for many many
many years longer than he needed to so I'm

(26:33):
very very grateful for the time in there but I just miss
it so much because it was so unique same with the
studio that I had prior to that one it was very unique it
was this big large cove wall with tall ceilings and stuff and yeah I mean what
what's crazy is how different the work looks when the studios change and I'd

(26:54):
been spoiled for so long like it was same thing when I moved into the,
the one that I just moved out of.
So when the previous studio closed, because they basically doubled our price
per square foot when the lease was up and we were like, nope, we're out.
But so moved into the, to the next one.
And I had a really hard time figuring out how to make the work that I wanted

(27:16):
to make in a new space because,
the light moves differently studio to studio right like you're just like oh but light control but it,
behaves differently when you have a different amount of space to
work with especially with the type of work that
i like to do which is i like to shoot back quite a ways i like to shoot full
length at 135 millimeter if i can right now there isn't a studio that i found

(27:39):
that i can do that in so i'm like okay that's fine like this is an opportunity
to change you just need one with the door at the back there so you can open
the door and disappear down into the car park.
I've kind of got that with with mine it's not it's not big enough to shoot at
that focal length unfortunately but i disappear down into the kitchen yeah through
the door yeah yeah exactly,

(28:00):
it's like nothing against you as a model or anything but i'm just going to go
through to the kitchen so i can use a longer focal length through the doorway
yeah 100 and that's that's like all totally a thing so like one of the studios
that i'm in the the longest i can shoot,
is a 50 and i'm just like i hate
this but also it's giving me an opportunity for

(28:23):
the for the work to look different and that's okay right like
it's it is forcing me to change and forcing me to look at the work differently
and i'm very slow to that i'm very slow to these types of changes i'm very glacial
because i'm just like i have my way of doing things and i don't want to change
it and and then it's like well you have to change i'm like i don't want to change
And if you have to change,

(28:44):
I'm like, but I don't want to change. And then eventually you're just like,
all right, fine, I'll change.
Well, yeah, in situations like that, you don't have much choice.
How about when you're doing commercial work? Because some clients can be quite...
Picky in what they want to specify. Others can potentially give you quite a
lot of freedom and say, do your thing with it.
How are your clients generally with that? Are they quite controlling?

(29:07):
Have you had a lot of freedom or have you had to work in quite tight boxes?
I actually haven't taken commercial work yet this year, at least on the scale
that requires what I had, because I haven't got a space that I can do that work in right now.
So i i've just been very honest.
With the clients of just being like hey you know like i'm looking

(29:28):
for space when i find it i'll let you know so yeah
that that is like the downside of having like a highly specified
very unique studio like what we had is that
like okay we're kind of scrambling here like
there is a there's a film studio on the west end of
town that's brand new and so but the
the rental fee on that is like several

(29:49):
several several thousand dollars a day which is
fine because it's an incredible space and it will do exactly what
i need but that also means that like when the commercial studio the
commercial jobs start coming it's like okay so remember how you
know studio rental fees used to be a thousand dollars a day they're going to be closer to
like five or eight thousand dollars a day now and so if
you're cool with that then like let's go ahead but if you're not then these

(30:11):
are the workarounds and these are the sacrifices that we're going to have to make
so yeah yeah so in
in the past then so when you've worked in your studio they very
much wanted the look that
you create in there they're very much commissioning you
for that what about in terms of stylistic input
and that into a into a commercial project do you have

(30:32):
you had much say with your commercial clients do they give you much freedom
with uh thinking about the style and the overall look of the image it depends
client to client some of them might get a lot of freedom and some of them i
get no freedom whatsoever and i'm fine with either or because Because sometimes if they have,
I mean, it is the nicest thing to work with an excellent art director.

(30:54):
When they're just like, this is what we want. And you're like,
that is a really good idea. I love that. Let's make that happen.
And you can kind of just get to be like a cog in a wheel.
And that actually can feel really nice sometimes because then you're not just
like, it's not all the pressure is on you.
But also it can be on the flip side can be very frustrating when you have an art director who's,
maybe new or like your styles are very very opposite and

(31:15):
you're both just trying to like force each other into these
these boxes and these shapes and you know everybody's
just kind of uncomfortable the whole time you know it's kind of like you know
you're rubbing the fur on a cat the wrong way or they're just like yeah you're
like nobody's actually mad but everyone's just like why are you doing
it that way yeah yeah so you just kind of like buck up and shut up and just

(31:37):
like okay yeah let's do it terrible idea but let's do it so how's your motivation
when you go to a shoot like that and does it vary perhaps with other types of
shoots because some people.
Can find it very difficult if they don't have creative control and other people it's like well,
i've got bills to pay as long as you pay me some money don't care

(31:58):
and there can be all sorts of different places in between what do you think
is is your is driving you when you do that kind of work i like having a balance
of both like i said i'm totally fine if someone's got like a very specific idea
of what they want i actually kind of i kind of like the control freaks sometimes,
because all i have to do is deliver exactly what they want and so long as they

(32:23):
can communicate to me exactly what they want which is the key because some people
have exactly what they want but they don't know how to communicate it that's
less common in the commercial world but it still happens.
That can get frustrating. But so long as you have a control freak who's just
like, you know when you've got it. There's no guesswork.

(32:44):
You're just like, sweet, awesome. We have to do that. Perfect.
Let's go. You know, this is how we set it up. This is it. And it's just done.
But then the creative control stuff also can be, it can also be really exciting and really freeing.
But I also find that can be sometimes more anxious because they're looking for
your interpretation, but they still have an idea of what they want in their head.

(33:06):
And so I have to get that out of them so that I can take that information and
use that as like my soup base to like add my own stuff in afterwards.
And then it's a lot more communication back and forth of like,
what do you think of this?
What do you think of this? because there's nothing worse than someone just being
like, oh, just do whatever, do whatever you want, do whatever you want,

(33:27):
and then you do whatever you want. And they're like, that's not really what I imagined.
And you're just like, cool, right on. That was a waste of time.
Exactly. I tend to say to people who get inquiries through emails that basically
are just saying, I've got this product that needs photographing.
How much is it going to cost?
I say, don't answer that with a price.

(33:49):
Never. Don't do it because you just, you don't know what that person has got in their head.
Get as detailed a brief as you can. Get them to break it down.
Because as you say, once you have created an image and you can tick off all
those things on the brief, you know in your head that you're going to be fine.
If they say, oh, yeah, you know, just take a photo of it and do your thing.

(34:10):
And you do that and they go, yeah, but not that. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Yeah, 100%. So frustrating. So frustrating. I think it's one of the key parts
of the job is actually getting into a deeper conversation before you talk numbers or anything else.
And for me, if they're not willing to do that, then chances are I'm not going to work with them.

(34:32):
Yeah, no, 100%. That's exactly right. Yeah, definitely getting as detailed a
brief as possible. I even tell people, like, well, I can't really find anything online.
And I'm like, go to Midjourney, man.
Let's start there. just be like okay you want this like
bottle of water like this like bottle product
or whatever splashing in water with a blue background okay

(34:53):
that's pretty generic there's a lot of ways we can
do that do you want it vertically do you want it horizontally do you like just
like give me something so i'm always asking for like mood boards like hook me
up with a mood board and you know if it's a good commercial companies particularly
through an agency or something they're they usually have all that stuff like
locked down and that usually comes in like

(35:14):
Within the first two or three conversations back and forth, you know,
once they figure out like, okay, this is someone that we could work with.
Okay, fine. But then, you know, you always have to have the conversations of
like, I even work. So basically how, how my pricing works is I have a day rate.
And then, and that even goes for like boudoir people, like aerialists,
like, like individuals who want to hire me for their own work,

(35:35):
for the headshots or whatever.
I have a day rate and I just like cut up what, how much time they want,
including editing for day rate.
So if they want to do like a 45 minute headshot session and then,
you know, editing is going to take 45 minutes and I'm like, okay,
you're paying for, you know, two and a half hours because there's also,
I'm going to include time for the emails going back and forth.
And that's fine. And I'm cool with that because that's how long the job takes.

(35:57):
And then commercial clients but then with commercial clients also comes usage
right and so that's another thing that a lot of people really miss out on and
a lot of companies now are really pushing for like oh we want all the rights
i'm like do you know how much money that's going to cost you my dear friend
they have all the rights they don't need it either they.

(36:17):
Often ask for far more that
they need in that regard i mean it's usually interns that
are are asking those questions that they don't know any better you know so
they don't understand how how this works and so you're
just yeah it's it's a whole thing yeah
and then you get the interesting ones with
product photography sometimes who say oh well you know what's what's your day

(36:40):
rate oh great okay you could do our entire product line of 100 things in a day
couldn't you no and by all by the way a day is not midnight to midnight you
know exactly right Right. Yeah.
A day is eight hours. And if I really like you, I might push it to 10, but that's it.
So having quite sort of, I always send over, I call it an agreement because

(37:04):
a contract sounds a bit scary, but it's essentially it's a contract and it tells
them all this kind of stuff.
And I think that that's one of those things that when people start out,
especially in the sort of commercial side of photography, it's dangerous if
you don't really have that because you're going to get taken for a ride.
100%. Yeah. Yeah. And the other thing that can happen a lot is you can get what

(37:27):
you will get sent contracts from from clients as well. That's just the nature of it.
Normally, a contract, in my experience, goes both ways.
You send them one and they send you one. And we both look through it with a
fine tooth comb and go like, all right, which way is I don't know if you're
like this, but one of my favorite things with with,
contracts is reading them and because it's like a company's bad breakup history

(37:51):
yes i mean like that is an interesting clause i've never seen that before exactly
what's happened there yeah something's gone really wrong hasn't it.
Yeah and then you start sometimes straight out ask i will sometimes like if i'm just like what

(38:13):
happened that made this very niche thing necessary
and like oh yeah no we had this in the
past i'm like i never would have thought of that that's crazy
like yeah no problem but also
the other thing people have to remember is that contracts are negotiable so
if you see something in the contract that they're sending you you can negotiate
on it you have to be willing to walk away but you can negotiate on these things

(38:37):
so that's the other thing that a lot of people when they're starting out they
just like get these contracts and they're just like well i guess i they have to sign it.
And sometimes you just have to sign it. Like they're not going to wiggle or anything,
but you always check, always check because every now and then,
like what you're doing is niche enough or specific enough that all that other
junk that they're asking for isn't always necessary. So.

(39:00):
Absolutely. There, there'll be times when you'll be back, batting back and forth,
arguing about payment terms and things like that.
And sometimes times big companies have got the process
that you've got to get on as a supplier and so on and so forth
whereas a small company might be able to pay
you next week but it's finding it's finding
that common ground if possible with people and but

(39:22):
yeah you will always find the odd client that just those are
those are the terms take it or leave it and you've got
to then decide whether you're willing to work in
that way and whether in a few years time you're
willing for them to still be using your work and you're getting nothing for it
that's exactly right yeah we had we had an opportunity come up
and it was a massive like

(39:45):
a huge company clothing company and
they wanted 10 images that they could print in their flagship stores that were
in tokyo in london new york toronto vancouver amsterdam somewhere anyways it
was like 10 or 12 cities around the world and they're all oh los angeles is

(40:05):
another one so these are like big high traffic,
yeah yeah stores huge traffic a lot of eyeballs on those 10 images they wanted
to have them up in the stores for a year and you know what their budget was hit me with it guess.
Oh 10 images for a year most popular

(40:27):
stores in the world and this is this is just to have them up this is not to
have them shot as well or is this just the license they're licensing pre-existing
work oh okay yes the work had already been shot they knew which images they
wanted thousand dollars an image three thousand dollars period what,
for all the stores for the whole lot for the whole all 10 images every single

(40:51):
store not three thousand dollars a store three thousand dollars and i was like absolutely not,
you're gonna spend more in glue than you would spend on the licensing and i
was like no i was like i'll cut you a deal and say five thousand dollars a store.

(41:13):
Wow yeah i mean what do you what do you think about what it
costs to like just put an advert in not even a
national or an international magazine you know and it's like a half a page thing
or something what gets charged for that and then they're trying to get away
with that for something on on that kind of scale which is gonna get that many
eyeballs on it you think no yeah yeah and they weren't gonna and they and i

(41:35):
was and then it was like well can we so the negotiations process
starts right where you're just like that is a number that doesn't exist absolutely no no,
and it's like well okay can we put the photographer
name on the images on the corner somewhere somewhere visible
then that's that might count
for something right where you're just like you can die of exposure but like

(41:55):
yes absolutely yeah you know this then there's a little bit of back and forth
here right because there's other companies that will do that you know a friend
A friend of mine works for a big outdoor company and it always says in the bottom
of every single billboard,
the bottom of every single store, everything shot by so-and-so.
And so it's like, okay, maybe that's what we can do here. And like,

(42:17):
nope, not doing that. It's this is the rate. And it was just like.
On one hand, you're like, oh, yeah, all of my work could be like in all these
amazing stores around the world.
And also, I feel so used. Oh, yeah.
So used. And you're just like, yeah, I know the $3,000 would be super helpful
right now. But like, I feel so used.
And you know, somebody is going to take that. Someone is going to take that.

(42:37):
And it's so wrong.
It's so wrong. That is the problem with the industry is that because it's kind
of hobbies that evolve into businesses, a lot of the time when people are starting
out and enjoying it, or perhaps even just because they're desperate,
will accept these sort of ridiculous terms.
I mean, if you think that that was silly, I had a, this was an intern and they cocked up big time.

(43:03):
They contacted me for on
behalf of an architect that they wanted to license
an image to use because they'd they'd been involved
in the design of the place but whatever reason they weren't
involved in the photo shoot or anything like that and they
wanted to license some images for to advertise the fact that they'd been winning
awards and this was one of the projects they'd been involved in she said oh

(43:27):
i've been doing some research online about how much it costs to license an image
we would like to offer you 50 quid.
After i looked at that and thought hang on a minute there's
there must be a zero missing there at least or something right are you are you

(43:51):
having a laugh this is ridiculous where have you been looking i said even if
you go on to kind of one of the major sort of stock libraries and you just license
an image of a location just to use on your website, it's going to cost you more than that.
This is a specific image shot in a particular way to show off the building,

(44:11):
and you're saying you're offering me 50 quid.
Wow yeah that's rough they didn't get
the nicest of emails back i mean no you know i i try
not to burn bridges but still it was it was kind
of um do you realize how insulting that
is yeah yeah exactly yeah and that's a
similar similar email that we that we sent back for this other company it was

(44:34):
just being like you do realize you're going to spend more in glue than you would
on licensing these images that are going to make your store look amazing well
then we're going to have a one of them printed in and put up in the like where
they meet with clients in the office and i was thinking they're going to pay
more for the print than they are,
paying me to license the thing yeah no yeah exactly yeah yeah and then no the

(44:57):
negotiation starts of like okay
yeah so sorry maybe there was a typo you might be missing a zero on that.
Yeah i had a bit of a groveling phone call afterwards
from the one of the owners of this of the architectural firm it's like i'm sorry
we shouldn't have let the intern loose on that they thought they were being
clever doing some research and all that i was like yeah yeah well exactly and

(45:21):
that's i think that's exactly what happened in this case was it was the same
thing i had a record label do the same thing they gave the intern was the one doing the negotiating,
and they were like you know they didn't they just didn't want to even pay for
the licensing they were just like oh we really like this image of this artist
we'd love it up at our headquarters And I was like, yeah, a hundred percent,
like a licensing fee for that is going to be about this much.

(45:41):
Like, oh, we just thought we could have it for free. And I was like, but you're a business.
And I was like, and I love these artists and I'd be more than happy to supply the images, but.
You're gonna have to pay to print them therefore you should be
paying to license them and it was just an intern thing
and and you know the intern was like well i

(46:02):
don't have authority and i was like can you get me someone who does and they
just didn't they just stopped responding to the emails and i was just like man
i hate dealing with interns are the worst because they they just don't know
they don't know that like magazines can be yeah i mean magazines can be a tricky
one because sometimes with some of my work,
it might be that the client gets some kind of, and I'm not talking about an advert here.

(46:26):
I'm just talking like a bit of editorial or something.
The client might get a little bit of publicity through it and they've paid somebody
to write some copy for it and so on.
And then it gets sent over to the magazine and the magazine are asking for,
oh, could we use that image and that image?
And yeah, okay, what's your standard fee that you pay for that?
Oh, no, we don't have a budget for that. but you sell like magazines with content

(46:49):
in it where do you think this comes from and
then you're thinking if i say no i risk falling out with the client yeah because
i'm not representing letting them represent their work with the images if i
say yes this magazine is just getting a load of stuff for nothing you can get
in a real pickle sometimes that's exactly it like and that's what happened with
with the record label so i wound up having like not like

(47:11):
a major falling out but like things changed between me and the the people that i'd photographed.
Because they were just like oh but those are our favorite images and
i was like and just like get your record label to
like i'm not asking for much here and like you know it's i'm
not asking for thousands by any stretch of the imagination but like
something and so after
that they started booking like a different photographer from work because i

(47:33):
knew that she was just giving them the rights to do whatever they wanted with and
i was like because i like especially with musicians i
know life is is difficult for them you know
like it's it's it's also a really hard industry to make
a living in but if you have a record label behind you they can
they can fork out a little bit of pocket change for licensing and you know like
again i'm not asking for huge money like i am you know a company that's printing

(47:57):
everything that's going massive in stores around the world the most popular
cities in the world you know like we're talking just a few hundred bucks here
and yeah you know and they weren't able to do that and i was just like man man,
I hate this position. I hate being in this position.
And I still kick myself because I really like that relationship that I have
with that client. But also, same thing with that other client.

(48:20):
It hurts. It hurts to know that you've been taken advantage of and then having those boundaries,
Sometimes, yeah, it can cost you a relationship with a client and you're like,
I don't know which one hurts more, knowing that I got taken advantage of or losing the client.
Exactly. Yeah. So it's a tough spot to be in.

(48:42):
And so I really have a lot of empathy for people who have to go through that
because everyone who's working professionally in this field,
you're probably having to deal with that unless you have an agent,
in which case your agent's dealing with it.
But either way, it's a problem.
Yeah. Generally, when I do architecture, it's more things like for hotels or

(49:04):
for architects or something like that.
When I see people who are doing more on the real estate market like that,
I'm thinking, look, unless you're super healthy and in your 20s and full of
life and energy, you ain't going to keep that up for very long.
So they're paying so little that they're dashing from property to property to
property all the way through the day.
You say, no way. yeah no exactly yeah i've had some real estate agents reach out to me before,

(49:28):
and because they're like oh i really love your work you would do an amazing job
with like the houses that i have and i'm like yeah 100 like you
know here's my day rate and they're like oh yeah i know
the person we use is like this much and i'm like you should keep using them
then because there's no there's no way i'm showing
up i know that it's just not even
covering the gas in my car absolutely not and like and like

(49:48):
and they're doing video and i'm like keep hiring them then yeah
and drawing a floor plan and yeah yeah yeah
i know i mean as far as i know they're not doing that but they are doing video work
and stuff like that which is which is great but yeah like you know that that
person that's a lot yeah i'm in my i'm in my 40s now i'm not gonna go running

(50:10):
around like that oh yeah that's the other thing right so like i'm 39 i turn
40 i turn 40 in january and like.
I'm not, I'm not doing that anymore, man. Like if you want to run around and
like, if you have that in you still, by all means, my friend, you are welcome to it.
I am not taking that. I'm not taking that work.

(50:30):
Cause like we've, I think we've all been there too, but you know,
when you're starting out and you're hungry and you're doing like everything
you possibly can for like pocket change, then, you know, yeah.
And that is how you learn. And eventually you learn like, this is really hard
and I am not charging enough.
Yes absolutely so how
do you get working these days is it
mainly through people approaching you do

(50:53):
you have to go looking for work pitching for work so my situation is a little
bit more complicated these days helping look after somebody in my life who's
who's not well so i have very very very limited amount of time that i can give
to photography so i have to i have to be.
Very precise about it and i can't

(51:15):
have a lot of homework with it so i still
will take the occasional client if they if they reach out to me but i'm not
doing any of the traveling stuff for the last like year and a half uh i've just
been here so that changes a lot is just like you know how do i how do i do this
because i've never really made a huge living in my hometown i always

(51:36):
make my best money abroad but I came up
with this thing it was like it started as as many things in my life do especially
with photography it started as a joke on Facebook and I said I said I wonder
is this the 15 minutes of chaos thing is it that one yeah that's excellent that
yeah I love that I started I started as a joke and I said you know okay,

(51:58):
I wonder if anyone would pay me to do whatever I wanted with your face in 15
minutes or less. You show up wearing whatever you want.
And I have 15 minutes or less to get a good photo of you. Just one.
And, you know, I'll charge you just for super like to start out.
I was just like, I will do these super cheap at once at 150.

(52:19):
So they're up to 175 now because it is a so much work because it's basically improv portraits.
Yeah i don't know what anybody's wearing when they
show up in my studio and i basically just like think of something instantly
of just being like okay this is how we're gonna light it and like i don't really
care if you like it or not i want you to like it but i don't know if you're
going to like it because this is not a two-way street of conversation you are

(52:43):
showing up and i'm just like doing rent like we're throwing glitter on your
face we're like weird lighting it's like
whatever and it's it's 15 minutes i literally
start a timer and got time to do
much there have you at all well so it's really interesting what's
really interesting is that for most people i can get a good portrait of them
something that they love because i shoot tethered so and this this is this is

(53:06):
where i find it's the most helpful as i shoot tethered and i five star the ones
where they go oh my god so then i know like i'll pull when it comes to editing
because i'm also not letting them pick which image I'm editing.
They can pick later if they want more, but I'm picking the one that,
that they're going to edit because I have no time.
Right. So the limitation is in my case is time. So I need to be able to like

(53:27):
shoot all day, edit them all that night. And by the time I wake up the next
morning, the job is done.
Like everyone's portraits are done because I need time to do other things. Yeah. So that's.
And that's been like, it's so much fun.
And it is a lot of work for admittedly, like not a ton of money,

(53:48):
really, like, especially when you consider like you're making the Facebook groups,
you're finding everybody and you're organizing everything and like all the pre-work ahead of time.
But I can do all that on my phone from wherever I am doing whatever I'm doing,
right? So it's not like I have to be on the computer or I have to be on a location.
But it is a wild, wild day.
I can only imagine yeah

(54:08):
for me i'm just just thinking changing the lighting
setups and moving everything around and so on several times a
day like that you must have some somebody assisting you
to do that don't you i yeah i need i need an
assistant it is yeah absolutely impossible to do without.
One yeah i can imagine that that i'd
be dead on my feet i think otherwise if it tries to do that

(54:28):
yeah yeah but it is it is it is
really fun you know because then i also so on
the other there's the flip side of that is that most of the time for
people to hire me to photograph them individually i
cost more than what the average
person can afford so what's been really interesting is i'm
getting to meet a whole new demographic of clients that i wouldn't

(54:49):
normally get to meet because i'm outside of
their price range because i don't have any shoot booking
that you can get for under for for that
price not even close i mean it's a totally different product
though isn't it so it's not like you're sort of discounting what
you normally do you've actually set up a totally different product
that works for you at that price point exactly so

(55:11):
because i also didn't want to devalue the people who hire
me for like the bigger or longer shoots and everything like that right so it's
like i want to make sure that when people hire me for a day like when an aerialist
comes to me and we spend like five hours together in the studio like working
out poses is working out lighting working out you know and like really carving out what they want.

(55:33):
It's a very different experience than like what people show
up for like the 15 minute portrait thing and i've had people who've
done both who have hired me for like the longer
sessions and then who've also showed up for these ones and they're
just like oh my god this is
a vastly different experience because they also like they don't really
have input as to what it's going

(55:54):
to to be right so like it's kind of like somebody said it's like
those gumball machine tattoos you know where you like you get
the little sticker thing and that's what you're getting tattooed that day
people have been kind of treating it like that and it's actually been really fun and
also it forces me to think differently about portraiture and portraits of like
what do i think because there's all the ways that i normally would shoot portraits

(56:15):
and then it's like okay but if i have this free reign to play what can i do
what am i going to do right so every Every single time I've done it now, I've done three.
And it's like, I pack different lighting modifiers.
I pack different, different everything just to force myself to do something
differently each time. That's a good idea. Yeah.

(56:37):
Yeah. It's fun. Well, we can, we can easily end up getting caught into using
our favorite setups and favorite modifiers, all that kind of thing. Yeah. So guilty of that.
Yeah. Yeah. That is, that is something that like, you know, I,
I, I realized that I fell into the world
of competent professional when i could show up jet lag

(56:58):
tired sick whatever and i could still deliver exactly what the client was looking
for and i was like okay we have we have arrived at competency and now when i'm
doing those 15 minute portraits it's just like everything is everything is an
experiment again and like i don't know this is gonna work but we're gonna try it,
yeah i can give you quite a buzz that sort of improvisation i would have thought i sometimes

(57:21):
do that for creative products for my own sort of thing i mean i'm a i'm a i'm
a very sort of sedate introverted person so i tend to be normally it's me on
my own with a product in my little studio which is not quite the same thing
but you know i get excited in my own way and,
move the lights around and have a bit of fun with it and it's it's interesting

(57:41):
when you put limitations on how that actually can fuel your creativity i sometimes
find that if i've got if If I give myself access to everything,
I can sort of stand there scratching my head thinking,
well, I haven't got a brief I'm working to here.
What shall I do? Yeah, the paralysis is real.
It's like too much choice. It's that choice paralysis where as soon as you start

(58:03):
chopping the options down and say, okay, I'm only using grids. What am I going to do?
That could that can be quite good for you i think yeah yeah i
think so too i think it's yeah limitations are definitely
a really great way to basically jump
start everything for yourself as well so yeah yeah
yeah i i do i do find though when when

(58:25):
i do these 15 minute portrait thing and and i have it written down
in the agreement i'm like there's a 50 chance you're going to hate.
How i photograph your face are you okay with that and and
it's it's fun because i would say about 60 to 70 of the
people that i photograph they either share
the images or they get more edits and then there's always the like
the little percentage of people where they're just like oh yeah

(58:48):
i know that one was good and i'm just like oh did i
do it wrong how can
i make it better next time you know like and i start to internalize
it and then i'm just like nope nope don't do that that's it's the
not a game worth doing yeah you don't
want to go down down that route so i mean you must have
um quite a lot of kit that you've

(59:10):
developed brought in over the years to do with your
when you do things like your more fantasy looks
and so on is do you end up
keeping all that stuff you know do you have cupboards and cupboards and
cupboards full of lighting modifiers and dresses and so so on and so on
and yeah i have a
lot i do i do rent slash borrow as much

(59:31):
as possible as well but i do have
a lot yeah yeah so i mean i do love to work with designers and i work with as
many as i can but there's also there's so much stuff are you a gear junkie then
do you keep going out and buying new stuff or are you able to keep yourself
quite disciplined in what you use relatively.

(59:53):
Disciplined because at this
point i have pretty much everything that i want the
only thing that i don't have that i do want is the
photoc soft lighter and i've never been able to find them
in stock anywhere and i would love
i would love one of those the small one and then
a medium soft lighter i think i could i would

(01:00:14):
have a lot of fun with those and since i switched from
alien bees to elen chrome i don't have a beauty dish
anymore and i miss having a beauty dish because I originally
bought one from from Elinchrom but it
was I didn't realize how large it was
that I ordered it was just way too big and it was the
wrong light quality so I sold it to a friend of mine and then I just haven't

(01:00:36):
haven't gone to replace to replace it yet but also storing beauty dishes is
such a pain because they don't fold up or anything well you can get those fold
up ones now can't you but I mean they can't give you the same quality yeah it's
slightly different light quality.
It's not the same. Cause I have, I have one that folds up and I love it and
it does nice work, but it's not the same.

(01:00:58):
It's not the same. I can imagine. Yeah. I've never tried them myself,
but yeah, I can imagine that it,
the shape the material the color it all
makes it all makes a difference you know that it's got a white interior
or silver interior exactly yeah yeah it
all it all changes it and you know the the shape of it
and it it's just different it's just different so uh the first time i really

(01:01:22):
noticed the difference on that a friend of mine has a mola beauty dish and i
was at the time i was still shooting alien beast so i had my own and i had just
shot with mine the day before and And then I worked with his the next day and I was like, oh,
there actually is like a pretty decent difference here in light quality.
Because I was just like, why would you spend so much on a modifier?
What is wrong with you? That's bananas.

(01:01:44):
And then after shooting with it, I was like, all right, like I'm still not going
to buy it. But like that actually is pretty nice light.
There is that danger that you see something and you think that could fuel my creativity.
I could do that with it. I could do this with it. But I think at the same time,
once you've been in business a while, you start to realize, actually,

(01:02:05):
that's not always going to be the best use of your money. 100%.
So, you know, for you at this stage where you're at at the moment,
if you had a sort of a spare chunk of cash to invest in your business, where would you put it?
Would it go into kit or would it go into something else?
That's a super good question. I mean, I guess it depends on how big the chunk of cash was.

(01:02:29):
Oh, dream big. Huh? I said dream big, you know. I would build my dream studio.
And I know exactly what it would look like. I know exactly what it would look like.
I have everything plotted out in my brain, exactly what I want and how I would want it to look.
Yeah, I would just, yeah, if money was no object.

(01:02:50):
And it wouldn't even cost that much money to build, really.
Like, you know, just getting like a big square box, basically.
Well, that's the thing, isn't it? studios just it's
just it's just a box and you could use like an old barn or
something like that potentially depending on the ceiling
and everything obviously but you can adapt these old buildings
to that i think it's one of those

(01:03:13):
things that occasionally my wife and i think about
is it would that be a good investment for the future so that when i
retire i can then sell that you know yeah yeah it's
a tricky tricky decision because it's a huge investment so i think unless the
money really is spare you're thinking yeah exactly yeah do i want to spend you
know half a million dollars building building a space you know we're buying

(01:03:34):
one and retrofitting it because i mean even the most basic of retrofits even
like you're getting if you're getting a commercial,
bay you know that you can drive vehicles in and out of it's still going to cost
you about 100 grand to set that up and that's cheap you know to like you get
the cove built and everything I get everything painted, build your makeup room, set up the bathroom.

(01:03:55):
It just adds up really, really, really quickly.
Even if you're doing it all by yourself, just the raw materials alone,
it is quite expensive. So, you know, like...
You've got to figure that stuff out. Is it something that you would set up to teach from as well?
So would you have lights to record video or something?
Or are you thinking you'd like to carry on teaching in the studio?

(01:04:18):
Or is that something you're not so interested in for the foreseeable future?
I don't know. I mean, I wonder if there's anything anybody even still wants to learn from me.
I haven't put anything out in a really long time. so like
you know a lot of my process hasn't changed
that much especially when it comes to composites because i like

(01:04:39):
the way that i do it and i like the results and you
know every now and then i'll find like small things that i can change to
make things more efficient or whatever like the remove
tool in photoshop is oh my god that saves
so much time it's hard to even put into of words but you
know there's there's yeah there's always that

(01:05:00):
conversation of being like well you know if you watch this thing back
in 2017 like my process has changed 10 you know do you do you do you want to
pay for that again for that extra 10 i don't know you know and then of course
like there's all the the shibari work and stuff like that i've never done any
teaching on that And so I've debated that. I'm teaching.

(01:05:22):
I mean, I do some lectures every now and then online, things like that.
Yeah, basically, if people are interested, then speak the words to me.
Oh, well, there you go. So petition you for a workshop and it might just happen.
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. Excellent.
Yeah. So, yeah, we'll see how it goes. We'll see how it goes.

(01:05:46):
So you you obviously refined your
your uh your workflow over well without meaning
to make you feel old now but about 25 years in
the industry yeah yeah it's been 26
years this year oh wow yeah it's
been it's been a long haul so what do you think has
enabled you to keep going and and stay in business

(01:06:07):
because there's going to be a lot of people in any business
not just in photography who are going to think 25 years
now they could they can't keep going that
long yeah i mean i have that conversation with myself all the
time it's just like you know i've been doing the same thing for so long
and i've worked in the same industry for so long do i still want
to keep going in this industry you know is there something else that i want

(01:06:29):
to do i just haven't found it yet but i i am looking because you know at some
point like you only get one life
so what else is there to do that could be exciting and interesting and,
you know, new and shiny and whatever, right?
I don't know. I don't think I'll ever quit doing photography. I think that is...

(01:06:52):
Ridiculous i mean i do fantasize about it sometimes of just being
like oh my god i have so much room in my house if i didn't do this
there would be so much
like all this stuff that i just that i just wouldn't have
to store anymore and like i would have breathing room
you know like i have a whole second bedroom in my house here that is just
like full of costuming and equipment and

(01:07:12):
gear and just like to be able to just
turn that into like an office would just
be delightful but it's impossible it's just this
room of doom right now or like this black hole of
where stuff goes in and occasionally it comes out again then it goes back
in so yeah I
like yeah I think about it but I still haven't

(01:07:33):
found it yet you know and I have been looking
for probably the last five years kind of like poking around
in different industries and thinking about and imagining like
what would it be like if and what would it be like if and
nothing because because the reality is like
knowing my personality as soon as I found whatever that thing is I
would just start doing the steps towards doing the

(01:07:54):
thing so it would be like I would start learning about
it I would start doing online courses I would start trying to meet people
who work in those industries and you know like trying to start build those next
steps I would just instantly be doing it so yeah and yeah I guess sometimes
that makes me feel like a little bit sometimes stuck in the industry because

(01:08:15):
I I haven't found anything else yet, but.
Do you feel you've been able to evolve over that sort of time?
Do you feel that you've kind of hit your rut fairly early and have stayed stuck in it?
Or because, you know, 25 years of developing, I mean, you started with the modeling
side of things first before you got on to doing the photography and so on.

(01:08:38):
So do you feel that you've kind
of reinvented yourself or gradually niched down more over those years?
Oh, for sure. Sure. Yeah. I mean, like one of the big things that has been really
healthy for me is actually starting to shoot more Shibari work because it's,
I'm getting to work with, it's a very, it's a very different type of photo shoot.
It's a very, there's a lot of communication going back and forth.

(01:09:02):
There's a lot of pre-work that goes into it and like prepping and practicing.
Cause I mean, obviously for anybody who's photographed Shibari,
if you've ever like a photo shoot should It should never be the first time you experience shibari.
Right. Especially for models, right? Because I get so many models messaging
me being like, oh my God, I'd love to be in your shibari sheets.
I'm like, well, have you ever...

(01:09:22):
Been a shibari model have you ever like have you ever had anybody
do this to you oh no no but it'd be fine like absolutely not like
no yeah imagine that there's
a certain amount of strength you've got to have in certain parts of
your body just to hold well also also you have
to know the difference between like good and bad pain and like you know
you have to know how to hold these things safely and like how to

(01:09:43):
communicate when things are not feeling right or.
How like you you have to there's so many soft skills that
go into being a rope model that like
it unless you've done it you're not gonna know
and so and like safety on these shoots is
like so over the top like we have we
have so many safety crew we have so many safety

(01:10:05):
crew it's ridiculous and you know and we have
like crash mats and like you know just all the
things safety scissors you know people there to
make sure like you know we've got somebody trained in first aid like all
the things you know to make sure that these
things go smoothly and then we also make sure everyone is a professional and
everyone is experienced and everyone has worked together before prior

(01:10:27):
to the photo shoot yeah you know
because like things can go wrong
really quickly with shibari unfortunately on our shoots it
hasn't happened yet but it can still happen and so
we're always ready for it because you can have somebody who's super
super experienced and for whatever reason
that day like they just can't lift their foot off the ground and

(01:10:48):
you're just like cool not a problem absolutely not
a problem then like we're just gonna get you down and we're gonna we're gonna
let you like breathe through this and just if this is not your day then today
is not your day and that's fine and we can all go home because i always i always
make sure that like i mean even from the rigging standpoint like their hands
get exhausted like they're so tired and raw because these knots have to be so tight.

(01:11:11):
But there's something that's really refreshing for me, because I'm not spending
hours and hours and hours on digital art on the back end once we're done the shoot.
It's like I'm shooting it, and then I'm cleaning up the image,
doing basic cleanup and stuff, and then it's done.
And that feels really nice to not come home and then sit in front of the computer
for another 10, 15, 20 hours building these composites just by myself in the dark.

(01:11:38):
Well, don't the cats come and join you sometimes? They do sometimes,
yeah, and they step on the keyboard and then Photoshop does weird things and
I'm like, oh God, what just happened?
Oh, yeah, yeah, that's not so great. Yeah, yeah, that happens.
I've more than once put a question into the Photoshop forums being like,
this is a screenshot of what happened, how do I fix this?
And i'm like well how does this happen when my cat stepped on the keyboard or

(01:12:01):
my wake-up tablet that's another one oh you've
got a touch sensitive one then have you with that but there's also
the buttons on the side and her little toes yes yeah her little toes will like
push buttons and i'm just like oh oh no what's happening because she'll sit
she'll sit here it's super cute she'll sit here and watch the screen and like
watch the mouse go back and forth and back and forth and it's it's so cute but

(01:12:22):
then yeah then my wake-up starts going crazy and then And like everything starts
like skitzing out and I'm like, oh, man.
Yeah. Excellent. It's been really good talking to you. Really enjoyed getting
to know you a little bit through this.
And I would like people to know where they can look at more of your work,
where they can keep up with what's going on, where they can show an interest

(01:12:44):
in the book if they would like to. So where would you send people to?
So you can go to my website, reneerobin.com. and
on there there's also a mailing list to sign up for where i
will be sharing book updates and you
know tour updates and everything else i haven't actually sent out a mailing
thing yet but working on it i'm i'm late that's one thing that i made a mistake

(01:13:07):
on everyone told me like years ago like 10 15 years ago they're like make sure
you make a mailing list because everyone told me to make a mailing list i was like absolutely not.
Yeah that that i i know that kind of feeling it's it's like when people talk
about getting your systems in place and everything's got to be all processy

(01:13:27):
and so on i know the logic of it but my brain just goes no yeah no which is
the wrong answer because that's the
best thing to do yeah it
shoot yourself in in the foot with that right i fully fully
shot myself in the face there's no question about it yeah it's i
i absolutely screwed up my career by

(01:13:49):
not starting mailing list sooner so i do finally
have a mailing list up so you can sign up there and that'll be the
best way i also have patreon which is where i share like a lot
of behind the scenes and like sneak peeks of work coming up that's the one place
where you can see like actual sneak peeks of the book where because i haven't
put them anywhere else on social media i have instagram which is renee robin
photography i'm on tiktok youtube some version of renee robin renee robin photo

(01:14:13):
renee robin photography if you search i'll show up somewhere.
I imagine so you'd spread about quite a lot there what about for your tutorials
now people who perhaps don't already know you for your compositing tutorials
where would you send them to take a look at those the most recent ones are up on creative live live.
So those are probably some of the best places to go. And I am low key working

(01:14:37):
on another compositing tutorial.
It's just time is the limiting factor these days. So we're working on the layouts
and everything else. And I'm trying to figure out like, do I include the.
What am I doing here? Or do I want to just make it like purely a retouching tutorial?
I mean, that would be the easiest one to film, but I also like to include the
lighting as well. So we'll see. We'll see. We'll see.

(01:15:01):
I've debated putting out like these micro tutorials of, you know,
something that's like 45 minutes or less and making like cheap,
like 25 bucks or something of just being like, hey, if you want to learn how to blank,
then this is where you can get that.
So I'm debating that. And I also photographed a whole bunch of really beautiful,

(01:15:23):
I haven't even got it off the camera yet.
The camera is sitting right there judging me.
I shot some beautiful stock because we had just like the most incredible snow days here this winter.
So I have this like really great Boca snowfall stock that I can't wait to like
put that online and then also work with it.
Because yeah i i just did a portrait of a woman with like fairy wings and a

(01:15:46):
corset and stuff like that on on my instagram her name is ruby rocks and i was
like i was thinking about it going oh man it'd be so nice to use that stuff
for like glitter to have like the shimmery sparkly stuff around her and then
i was like oh well that means i have to get it off the camera that's like,
it's an o'clock i just put it out without it.

(01:16:08):
So i'm looking forward to getting that out as well i
think we all end up with some of those images that get stuck on
the memory card somewhere or on a drive somewhere and
we think oh yeah i meant to do something with that and occasionally i find i
go through some old stuff and do a clear out and then suddenly go oh why did
i never edit that yeah yeah i call it i call it dumpster diving for my hard

(01:16:31):
drives hard drive dumpster diving of just like digging back into old stuff being
like oh yeah that was really good i should probably Yeah, we're going to do that right now.
Yeah. Well, thanks again for agreeing to come on to the podcast.
Thank you for having me. I appreciate it. Thank you so much.
Yeah, it's been fun having you on. And thank you, everybody,

(01:16:52):
if you're still listening and we haven't put you off with all that linguistics
and language stuff at the beginning.
Thank you all for listening to the Focused Professional podcast.
Get connected, trained, supported and qualified with the Society of Photographers.
Sponsors of the Focused Professional Podcast.
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