In this episode, I get to very briefly chat with Louis Wahl, CEO of WEX Photo Video. Turns out he is a really nice guy (and with luck, I'll get to chat to him in a full-length interview at some point in the future.) It's the great thing about the photography show - I get to meet loads of people!
As well as the short chat, the episode is primarily a response to an email I received from 'Steve' asking what first strobe he should choose. Having sat and pieced together an answer, I thought it would be useful to make a podcast out of the answer. I guess you can be the judge of that!
Cheers P.
If you enjoy this podcast, please head over to Mastering Portrait Photography, for more articles and videos about this beautiful industry. You can also read a full transcript of this episode.
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If there are any topics, you would like to hear, have questions we could answer or would like to come and be interviewed on the podcast, please contact me at paul@paulwilkinsonphotography.co.uk.
Transcript
[00:00:00] My name is Lewis Wall, and I'm the CEO of Wexphoto Video. Okay. So maybe this needs just a little explanation at the photography show last week, which was a blast. I took my little handheld recorder and just grabbed a few people as I wanted ran the show. And I had a vision of creating one big podcast episode where multiple photographers could answer the same question.
[00:00:25] Just questions about the industry, how they felt and why they were, where they're at the show. But when I played them back for a couple of reasons, I didn't think that that was going to work mostly. And you'll hear this in this little snippet. I get quite excited and an hour of that. Well, nobody needs that in their life.
[00:00:42] So instead I'm going to sprinkle these little clips. Through some upcoming podcasts just for interest. And so you can hear the views. I have some really interesting people in our industry.
[00:00:53] And I started with this guy. Now I bumped into him. And by accident. I was buying a memory card for the recorder. Actually. I needed additional memory card. And so I went and queued at warehouse express, WEX photo and video. Standing there quietly in the queue and the next chapter at the till waved his arm at me, I went over and while I was there, I noticed that it was Louis. It said on his badge CEO. Of WEX photo video. And do you know what I thought I chance, my arm and see if he would be willing to do a short interview. Well, you couldn't have met a nicer guy. And he was very willing to give me a few, a little bit of a viewpoint. And so we grabbed just five minutes and this is that interview.
[00:01:33] And I start the conversation with why. Do you come to the photography show? This is where our customers are, uh, and they expect to get the service that we provide to them all the time in the stores, and we provide to them online, as well as our institutional customers, a lot of our professional customers, so, yeah, I mean, this has got to be the place to be.
[00:01:52] Where else wouldn't you be at a time like this? This is a brilliant place for us to meet our customers. And, of course, I have to ask you, well, I guess it's an obvious question, but you're a supplier to this incredible industry. Why do you love the photography industry so much? Well, the one thing is that I don't come from a photographic background myself.
[00:02:10] I actually come from a kind of a radio television production background. But it's all about the intrinsic desire that our customers have to accomplish something. There's an artistic need, so We've got a mission, which is to help our customers get the perfect shot every time and anytime. People come to us not to buy a black box with a camera in it.
[00:02:31] They come to us because they've got a problem, and that's brilliant. So they've got a project, they've got a creative spark, they want to achieve something. And all of the people who work with us, they're all photographers as well. So they've all started with some kind of imaging or background, a creative background.
[00:02:46] My last question, this is just a very short set of snippets, but my last question is if you could change just one thing about this beautiful industry of ours, what would it be? That's a tough one. I wouldn't necessarily say it was a perfect industry. I wouldn't say it was problematic.
[00:03:02] It's, what would I change? I'd probably make it a bit easier for us to understand how people work. Product is flowing through from the developers, the people who are originally designing it all the way through the end user. 'cause that's often a very translucen
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