The Art of Photography

Ep 27 - How Mads Peter Iversen took a leap of faith to leave his professional calling as a teacher to pursue his passion for landscape photography

Hey Wicked Hunters,
I am absolutely excited to talk to Mads Peter Iversen about his story and struggles to get to where he’s at right now. Mads has built his following to 829k on Instagram and 109k on YouTube.
Now that I have your attention let’s talk about what really matters! Mads is a world-class photographer who’s absolutely humble and approachable. We had a chat about how his passion for landscape photography started and the sacrifices he has to do to get to where he’s today.
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Transcription:
Mads Peter Iversen  0:00  I remember when I started thinking like that, it was a little bit frightening. I had a plan, I went through the usual educational system, and then I could come out and become a school teacher for the rest of my life. And I was like, I don't want to do that
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  0:26  hey, wiki hunters, welcome back to The Art of Photography podcast, where we share our passion as photographers and how photography bring us hope, purpose and happiness. And today is such an special occasion for me, myself to be able to introduce a world renowned photographer, who I mean, you know, he's, he's just amazing is and you will hear a lot about him his journey and what got him to where he is right now. Matt, Peter Iverson, how you doing?
Mads Peter Iversen  1:04  Thank you so much for that very nice introduction. It's, it's when people introduce me like that. I'm always like, what? It's, I got only been here, like, you know, five years on this scene here as landscape photographer, been doing it full time for five years. So when they say world renowned, yes, okay. I know how to use social media. But I think that's about it. Right?
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  1:38  Oh, you're very humble. And I love that. And, look, you know, welcome to the podcast. And I absolutely love having you here. You know, your work in the northern part of the Earth is just amazing. And I'm sure we can get more into that. But before we get into that part of it, share us. Share us a little bit about your journey and how you get to where you are right now, you just mentioned that you know, you've been doing this professionally, five years. But what really got you here? Why do you want to be a landscape photographer?
Mads Peter Iversen  2:20  Yeah, so in the first half, it is by now of my photography career, which is lasted about 10 years time or something like that. I mainly focused on like, very broad photography in general. And then I kind of went very much into portrait photography, and headshot photography. And I learned all that. And I figured out that there was people who wanted me to take the portraits and stuff, so I could earn a little bit there. I also did a little bit of video editing. So I kind of knew how to also make videos. So in that way, I very fast figured out that there is a market here that I can earn a few bucks from relative to in the direction of the job, I kind of wanted back then. And then at some point, I got a little bit more into landscape photography. And then a tour to Iceland was obviously what set it off. Like I think that's what happens with most landscape photographers. So I spent like, three weeks in Iceland, I had a little bit in the middle where I was doing some job stuff, so to cover the costs of that tour. But besides that, I have basically had to two and a half weeks also myself photographing in Iceland back in autumn 2015. And that just sold me like I just absolutely fell in love with landscape photography and figured out that's what I wanted to do. So I also recorded quite a lot of video footage back then I didn't really know exactly what I wanted to use it for, like those compilation videos to three minute compilation videos from different countries were quite big back then. But also fast figured out that I didn't want to exactly do that I didn't want to burn off all my footage in just one video, which probably wouldn't even go viral. And then I kind of figured out that, okay, I could make like a video per location I visited and then make it into like some guiding stuff in regard to Iceland. And I think that set me apart as a landscape photographer on YouTube to begin with, and Dennis has basically just grown from there.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  4:39  That's fantastic. And so before you do photography, what were you doing? Were you always in the field of photography, or were you
Mads Peter Iversen  4:47  not at all? Not at all. If we go way back like after germination, which is like the American high school, I went I had Read my military service, which was only four months back then. And then I started studying physics and astronomy, which was what I wanted to do like, basically my entire youth that lasted for three months, then I figured out I didn't want to do that, too much math in that. But I still have my big interest for physics and astronomy and science in general. So after that, I didn't really know exactly what to do. I've been a gymnasts, gymnast and gymnastic coach for my most of my teenage life back then. So I kind of just figured that, yeah, I could start being a teacher. So I started studying to become a teacher that lasted for four years after that, I figured I didn't want to go out and be a teacher in primary school. So I, in Denmark, you get what's called a professional bachelor, when you're a teacher. And after that, you can build a master's degree on top of that. So I did do that just after. And that took about two and a half years to get my master's degree in educational philosophy. Because I had a huge interest for philosophy. That spectrum between science and religion was super interesting for me. And after that, in them that time when I was doing my Masters, my interest of photography really exploded. And that was where I, along with studying also could earn a little bit on the side. And then for the next couple of years, I was in that, should I go down the path of being a teacher? Or should I try to pursue this photography stuff. And after having, I decided to take a job in a photography store, instead of taking a job in the primary school. And after half a year in that store, I figured out that the photography store working there is not the same as being a photographer. So I was just like, done with that. And I was like, Okay, let's try it. I'm young, I can, let's see what happens, I can always fall back and become a teacher in the school system if I wanted to. So let's just pursue the photography stuff. And that was kind of where it said off. Wow,
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  7:11  that's amazing. I think it's great that you have like, tried so many different things. And, you know, like me, for myself, like I was, I don't think I had that, that. That ability to be able to, you know, quit, especially where I was, you know, that with the culture that I had. So it was really hard decision when I decided to pursue full time. So that's that's really very courageous for you to to say no, I think that's one of the hardest thing is to say no. And I
Mads Peter Iversen  7:45  would add to that, that due to my culture here in Scandinavia, and our countries and how our systems are, we are extremely privileged relative to the rest of the world in regard to making the choices that we want to take in. And for our own life. Like we we don't have a huge student depth when we are done studying, because, well, technically, it's not free for us to study, we paid through our high taxes. But we do get money when we study from the state so that we can always stay afloat. So in that way, we are not forced out to anything is the Free to Choose afterwards. And that is, that's the benefit of paying like you know, 40% in Texas, like for me now, when I earn my own money, of course, it feels a little bit like 40% of all the money I earn is going into the state. Okay, fair enough. But then on the other hand, you have to see it, and what do you get back? Like we have free roads, we have one, hopefully the best health care systems in the world, we have free school system, we are more or less able to actually break the social circle, so that anyone can basically be the Prime Minister of Denmark, anyone can be the head of a multi million company, if so be and yeah, personally, like, relative to how many Americans think I would probably be a communist, but, but I am really happy about the system we are in. We are very, we are also a very capitalist country. Like I pride myself of saying we usually like No 6040 Because our taxes are like 40% ish. So like 40% socialist, and then 60% capitalists.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  9:46  So interesting, and that's, that's, you know, that's like such an eye opener, I suppose for people who don't like to pay taxes, because there are a benefit that goes with that. Going back to your photography, so what What was, you know what make you love photography and want to do more of it? You know, as instead of your other passion in life teaching or gymnastic, because you're, you're saying that you were doing a lot of gymnastic. And I know, gymnastic is a lot of fun as well. So what what, what, take that away from you and, you know, bring you to the photography world.
Mads Peter Iversen  10:22  I think that, well, in the very beginning, I could combine my interest for gymnastics with photography, because I was taking a lot of photographs when we did gymnastics, and I did a lot of videos and stuff. But I'm also like, reached the point like I'm through back then when I stopped at gymnastics, I was 30 years old. And it is considered an extreme sport, like the age does catch up, you can continue, yes. But it was getting a little bit tough. I can be honest about that. And I think just all the way through my life, I've had this, I like to be creative. And I like to maybe not create worlds. But I have a very vivid imagination. Also, I'm playing, I've been playing a lot of computer games like World of Warcraft and stuff. So I'm very high on when it comes to fantasy and all the things I'm a real child of the postmodern era, the 90s and early 2000s. So it's just what has shaped me. So I've just like basically followed what I wanted to do. And then when I hit photography, I very fast. I learned what a raw file is. And then I figured out Oh, that is how the professional photographers get the look, they do. And I was still I was way before Lightroom, I was still working in Canons own role converter back then. So I was just like, Okay, this is how they do, that's the secret. And then the crew creates a feedback loop loop, I think in photography is just to learn how to paint, you don't have to, like, you know, to have a finished product really fast, is easier or faster in photography than it is. In paintings, of course, it takes time to learn how to take great photographs and so forth. But I would say that, of course, having some success relatively early in the process is also a thing that helps motivate yourself, I'm not blind for that, like, I do take photographs, mainly for myself, and I have made my career in a way where I'm not hugely dependent on others, and clients and so forth. But being in this creative workspace, obviously, there is still an audience. So if I was only, like, only making photos for myself and didn't care whatsoever about others, it could also be hard to sustain a business, because you can very fast become extremely niche. And there might not be someone who is actually interesting, interested in buying your photo. So you always have to, like, you know, probably find the golden, middle part of the road, where we take a lot of different things into consideration, and then look down, maybe a year or two ahead, how can I design my life so that I can solve the problems that might occur? So that's basically how I think, wow, that's,
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  13:55  that's amazing for you to come to that conclusion very early on, you know, I think a lot of a lot of photographer nowadays, might not realise that, you know, what you decided to do full time is to support your life. And I know, like, for me, it took me a while until I realised that until I decided, you know, a business model that suits that suits with me. Yeah, that's, that's, that's really great that you share that. And what, you know, sharing those those journey that you have to get to where you are and your whole thought process. What are some of the challenges and have you ever come to like a self doubt where you feel like hmm, I'm not sure if I can do this, you know, like I like I know there's a lot of photographers having that and I know like I have that all the time so I'm wondering if that is something that you ever come across or were you always have discuss conviction in your in yourself that you know what, this is what I'm gonna do? And I'm gonna make it happen
Mads Peter Iversen  15:11  yes and no. Because on the one hand, if somebody had told me like 10 years ago where I would be today, I would just have laughed at them. But it, it's not that I set myself goals like some people like to have a five year plan, where do I want to be in five years, and then I work towards that. I would hate to do that. Because I want to be in a position where I do not know where I am in a year. I remember when I started thinking like that, it was a little bit frightening. I had a plan, I went through the usual educational system, and then I could come out and become a school teacher for the rest of my life. And I was like, I don't want to do that. So I like to be in a position where I do not know where I mean a year. And I just have to figure out how also to be able to sustain myself, while at the same time. Make something which is meaningful for me. And that is where yeah, as I said before, I'm trying to look a little bit ahead. How can I make sure that I reached that it's not a specific goal. It's just the goal maybe of continuously being happy and feeling safe. Because if I'm stressed about like my economy and stuff, I definitely less creative. Okay, if that's the case that I need to solve the economy stuff first. So in that way, okay, should I take sponsorships? Yes, no, maybe I'm not sure. At least I can make my own products like I am educated teacher, I know how to teach, I can use that. And then I can make my own products, and then I can sell it, okay, fine. Now I have an income. So in that way, I can go and do stuff that is a bit more free. And that's, again, it's the thing, it's balanced, like I can see when I create YouTube videos, which are doing less good, then I sell less, and it hurts my economy. So I need to also figure out how to make videos that a lot of people will see. So I get more eyeballs on my products. And that in itself is of course, problematic in regard to, to your creative freedom. But nothing in this world is really perfect. So to get get back to your question about is the things I have felt that I can't do. No, not particularly big. But that's because I generally try to not put myself in a situation where I'm jumping out into way too deep water before I can swim I am, I have always been the careful person. I'm not the big, innovative person who just hammers off and tries 100 different things, or throws 100 different things at the wall, and hopefully something sticks. I try to learn from others what their successes so I don't waste my time, and my life doing stuff, which is basically just a waste of time.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  18:43  Wow, that's, that's amazing. When you break it down like that, that is really amazing how you, you know, your whole decision making and man, like, for those of you who listen here and did not get that and you want to pursue it full time, make sure you rewind that because you know that that is I wish I had talked with you like few years ago, that would have solved a lot of my problem. That's amazing. And that's crazy. I love how you use this analogy of you know, testing the water before you jump into deep because that's that, that that's what got me like, finally got me the courage to leave my nine to five job was being able to try that. So I think that's a really important part to pursue your passion or whether or not you want to pursue your passion, I suppose because you know,
Mads Peter Iversen  19:41  so I want to elaborate a little bit on it because again, I come from a relatively privileged situation because I'm a dean. I have a society that holds me up. But it's also that I have the security that I can always take another job. And I didn't have to do that when I was building up my YouTube.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  20:01  You just froze there. And you're back. You were lagging. Yeah, yes for a little bit. All right, you might need to, you might need to repeat that whole bit.
Mads Peter Iversen  20:10  Okay, I will do that. So just to elaborate a little bit on what I said, Because I come from a relatively privileged position because I am a dean. But again, I position myself, so I didn't have a huge amount of expenses. And I could live with my parents for a couple of years. And that is very uncommon for a person in Denmark, when when you're more than 30 years old to live with your parents. So that caught off a lot of the expenses that I would have had building up my YouTube channel. So I could spend all the time I didn't have to earn money putting into actually creating my YouTube channel. So in that way, it does come with some sacrifices. But I do know that not everybody can do that. I know that some one have to go out there and work a bartending job, like, I don't know, 18 hours a day, or whatever the shifts are, and then have to sleep and only maybe work for an hour or two on their passion stuff. But again, it's very much about like, Okay, what do I have to do to get like, on? So yeah, I just wanted to elaborate on that, because I know that he moved
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  21:28  back with your parents for a little bit for two years. You say, Well, you building this up? Yeah. Wow. Okay. So I mean, that's a really good point, you know, like, saying that, I mean, I, I, I grew up in Indonesia, you know, when my parents didn't have as as much privilege and I know the difference now being in Australia, being part of Australia, citizen and all that stuff. But I think the big thing here that is important is that you, you don't feel entitled about it, and you still make sacrifice, you know, I mean, especially, I mean, nowadays, like, you know, I'm not sure if you ever seen Gary Vaynerchuk. But
Mads Peter Iversen  22:12  I have seen a lot of Gary Vaynerchuk. Yeah, and you know, like
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  22:14  that, that culture has kind of comeback of living with your parents to make things happen. But you know, Brandon, I'm sure it's really unconventional to do that. So yeah, massive sacrifice there. So wow, thanks for sharing that. That's amazing. You're welcome. Yeah,
Mads Peter Iversen  22:31  it's a lot about like, just going into that entrepreneurship way of thinking. And that is very new to me. And thinking business, like I am learning so much about business. I've always been like businessmen, those guys who just do Wall Street and do shares and just like, who are they like, we don't like them. That's the socialist. But you, you just have to realise that, at least in most of the world, we live in capitalistic societies, and you have to be able to earn some money to sustain yourself. And if you choose to go full time, landscape photography, you are from the very beginning, positioning yourself in a very bad situation. Because if you want to make money, you should not be a landscape photographer. But I knew that I just find landscape photography, so meaningful, and I really enjoy it. And having that creative part of me, is very fulfilling. So that obviously makes up for me becoming ever an a millionaire, but it's, it's fine. Like, I'm doing fine now. But for the first two years, I didn't learn anything.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  23:41  Like, you know, I think that's something that's really important is that, you know, you said earlier about that something that really strike me is that you you cut down your expenses as well, you know, you're not living beyond people means you're your own means, right? Because I see that nowadays, a lot of people are complaining that they don't have the money to support their creative lifestyle when they keep eating out every single day and you know, buying this brand new stuff, and you know, so that's Wow, that's, that's really cool to hear that, you know, I think a lot of people can can learn from that and should learn from that being just being humble and actually, you know, keep things to the minimum while you're trying to make things happen.
Mads Peter Iversen  24:27  Yeah, I'm really happy for one of my friends Nigel Denson, also another photographer, that I can like bounce ideas off with him and we talk a lot and also about like YouTube and how to make money and like he has to sustain an entire family. He has a wife, dog, three kids and a house. I don't have that. So he has to be even more focused on that. And of course, it's just part of it is part of the job trying to earn money
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  24:59  as well. Awesome. And, you know, I want to go back to, you know, you, you mentioned earlier about when you want to make it in, in this industry, you need to learn how to make money off of it, obviously, right? And you say that, you know, become learning the business side of it and entrepreneurship. And you said that when you first started, you didn't like that part or that aspect at all. So can you share with us a little bit? What, what got you there? Or what did you do to get you to that mindset and learn the business side of things so that you could actually thrive as a landscape photographer, and not fall back to you know, I suppose, being a teacher back then.
Mads Peter Iversen  25:49  I think, the main push I needed and that again, I have to thank Nigel Vance on for I was doing a workshop with him in the Faroe Islands, it's like, two years ago, actually, exactly now. And I was just doing the presentation I have for for the group about like basic photography and stuff, and him and another guy from the group. They were like, mess, you need to create some maps that goes along with your videos, it's so obvious. And um, on top of that later, I also made an an ebook. It's basically just showing and sharing what I know and how I think, and realising that there was actually people who were interested in learning from me was you all always like, when it comes to self worth, like, is what I create really that interesting? Is it really that new, but that's the thing, like you don't have to invention, like the deep played one more time, you don't have to invention socks or anything like they are more interested in learning from you, they follow you more than they, they want to get into your mindset. Like they could go out and find all this information by themselves. Like, how much have we really pushed photography in the past 1020 years, like, it's still the same compositional tools that we use, it's same, still the same kind of storytelling and so forth. Like the tools have changed a little bit with Photoshop and Lightroom. And how we edit and process and the camera has changed and the technology do but the creative part is more or less the same still. So in that way, when when I make educational content, from what I hear from people who get my stuff is that they really enjoy the way I teach it. So I think it's getting that push from someone else that they tell you that what you are you actually have something of value here that you ought that you can earn money from, basically. And I was like, Okay, let's try and see what happens. And luckily, it worked out.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  28:29  Awesome, awesome. Yeah, that's kudos to you making all that happen. And, you know, I know you say lucky, it worked out, I'm sure there's a lot of hard work.
Mads Peter Iversen  28:42  You know, it's you apply what you have learned, but it's, yeah, it's probably not luck. But it is work. It is what it is, like, I don't really believe in that talent stuff, either. So it's work hard work, just work, work, work. And yeah, at some point, you'll reach there.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  29:02  Awesome. Yeah. So. So you mentioned a lot about Nigel and was Was he your mentor and your inspiration that got you into, you know, when you try to find creative sight in photography, or do you have other things or other methods that you can in tune to get that creativity? Because, you know, like, after a while, as a photographer, sometimes we can get so fixated on you know, just the composition rule or you know, the foreground, mid ground background, that rule of thirds, you know, so how do you get out of that, that that rule and actually create something that is unique again, that is, you know, that makes you excited again?
Mads Peter Iversen  29:54  Well, to begin with what made me excited was just that I figured out how to actually take photos even though like that's the sentiment within landscape photography that you shouldn't go to all the famous locations and take the same photos like everybody else. For me, it has been a huge part of my learning process. Because I figured out firstly, specifically how the cameras work, I've found out all the different relations to each other. And over time, I've also build up a portfolio where I can go through it, okay, what kind of photos do I actually prefer to make, like when I went to Iceland to begin with, like I just long exposed, everything, like just tends to filter on and just like two minute long exposure, everything. As if people follow me on YouTube, they see that I hardly do that anymore. And I figured out it was a look like that very, very long exposure, it's just the look that it doesn't really do it for me. I don't mind like, you know, like, half a second shutter speed for water falls and small waterfalls and stuff. But when it comes to big waterfalls, I actually prefer them. Just like, you know, fast shutter speed. So you actually see the waterfall. It's just not like, you know, a sheet of white. So, for me going into all the iconic places, and there are so many more iconic places I want to photograph but that's mainly because I am attracted to also the cultural stuff like why do we go to Paris, you go to Paris to see the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre. Like you don't go to Paris, for I don't know, exploring it in down in the most deep places, like maybe some photographers do. But most tourists go to Paris to photograph the Eiffel Tower. And I think that when you start out in landscape photography, it's or less the same thing. And then over time, you try to be a little bit more regional at those different iconic locations. And from their own, you get your mind of your own and you start to recognise the patterns and you start to recognise what it is you like to do. So you can maybe go out in another mountainous area. And you can see, okay, this mountain kind of reminds me a little bit about this other composition I have, maybe I can do it here. So you will use the same compositional tools to make a photo which is more or less like a like one of the classic compositions, it's in a new location, you can always ask yourself whether or not it's original or not. But again, I don't believe that you have to go 100% original because the viewer of your photos still need to be able to relate to that photo, somehow, they'll just jump out into like visual anarchy. And I don't mind being original and innovative. But what I've learned when it comes to being innovative is that if we throw everything we know when to like a box of information, you have to be there on the edge where you can just push the edge, you still need to be where most people can recognise what it is you're doing. Whether you're doing it in a new location, or you're adding a little bit of new elements to it, and so forth. It's extremely hard to be original in landscape photography these days, whether or not you swap out skies, or you don't swap out skies, whether or not you go gung ho with editing, or you're more like an old, traditional one exposure. And this is what I saw. being original and landscape photography is just extremely hard. And all that stuff with it should take a lot of effort. Like some most of my original photos is taken very close by and first and foremost, because it's locations that nobody else goes to. But also because that I can really just play around with a lot of more things that I can't do when I'm out on a photography tour. Like I plan my tour, I'm going to locations that I find interesting. And then in between those locations, I might stumble upon something which is more or less original, but then again, like how original is it when you're just using the same compositional tools that you always do? So it's a long discussion when it comes to originality whether or not it's it's even a thing anymore, but yeah, I can talk about this for a long time, but I think the conclusion is just like in the end, whatever. Nobody cares.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  34:46  Hey, interesting, you know how you put it there and it's funny when you say that like one of you some of your most original photo are shot close to your your home and And that's because not as many people visit those places because they don't say as you know, the isolinux, and stuff like that. So, when when it comes to photography, especially nowadays, it's like, you know, a lot of people argue that it's like very oversaturated. And a lot of people try one thing to be able to separate themselves from other photographers and stand out. What are what would be the advice that you, you will you can tell those, the people to be able to separate themselves from other photographers so that they can stand out?
Mads Peter Iversen  35:41  The easy answer is just don't do what everybody else is doing. But that's like, stupid.
Again, it's a complete cliche, but just do whatever you want to do. Like, don't listen to the noise, don't listen to other people telling you what you should do. Depending on where you are, in your career, if you're living from landscape photography, you need to take that into consideration. Not every photograph you take has to be like, the most intrusive, spective deepest photo and most original stuff you had, that humankind has ever seen. It doesn't need to be like that. Sometimes you just have to go and take a photo and full daylight of like a town and that everybody else is taking sell it as a stock for so like if that's what it takes to create income. I'm sorry, I keep blabbering out. What was the initial question?
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  36:44  That's, that's interesting that you mentioned that. Oh, let me just go back to that. Because I think it's really important how you separate some of the work that create money and some of the work that doesn't create one, it's a, that's another another good point in there. But I suppose what what I was asking was, how, how do you differentiate your photography compared to other people, especially if you kind of just started out? Right?
Mads Peter Iversen  37:14  Yeah. Yes. Okay. So we usually see that every three years or so the trends time kind of shift, like back in 2017. Everybody had like a very specific style on Instagram, like yellow raincoats, and desaturated colours and blown out skies, right? You don't really see that anymore. Like it was a trend. And I think many of those photographers who did that back then over time, if they're still doing landscape photography has kind of probably branched out and doing something now, which is more than in the sense that they probably, if they're still here, have found something which they relate more to. And I think it's like, when I started out, I just went straight into that ugly HDR photography, like looking back at it looks like crap. Like, it's so terrible. But you know, you figure things out by mistake over time. And if you stick to the subject you're in, in my case, landscape photography, you you over time, just figure out what you want to do. And if you can do that, then I think that slowly you do, maybe not develop a specific style, but you do something which is more aligned with you and to say another cliche, you are the best at being you. So like I have had when I've done a lot of my workshops and stuff I've been exposed to quite a lot of like, older landscape photographers maybe started out doing analogue photography, and their way of approaching it is different from mine. And there's also the saying that, once you're done with the epic vistas and epic landscape photos, you go more into abstract photography, and maybe some old black and white, I have tried both, and I see the abstract patterns. It's just so utterly boring, at least for now. Like, it's just not me. And when you have when, when there's like this meme in the entire landscape photography community, that when patterns and abstract photos kind of start to trend because a lot of the influential photographers start talking about that. You have to find stuff for yourself and you have to do it for yourself and what they are doing is abstract photography, then the herd mentality is that everybody goes into abstract photography. And suddenly that's the thing. That's the trend. And I think it's trending quite a lot right now abstract photography and that stuff. But I know how to do abstract photography, I see those patterns myself when I'm out. I sometimes photograph them, I have an entire section of abstract photographs on my website. But the long evety For me is not in abstract photography. Maybe it isn't in yours, I don't know. But for now I am. I'm way more like, if I'm moving away from the epic business, I'm much more into like Forest photography, by now much more atmospheric photography. It's not I wouldn't call it an intimate scene. But it is much more focused on a calm scene. Rather than the epic wide angle scene with a strong foreground, I still like those photos. And you can just see, obviously, people can't see it. But on my wall here hanging behind me like it is epic photographs, but they don't have like that very strong foreground that is almost falling out of the photo. So what I want to hang on my walls is I'm also trying like, again, as I only been here for five years, I'm still figuring out stuff myself, like what it is I like. So I like the epic VISTAs but I don't want them to yell in my face. And that goes against what works on the social medias. Because Funny enough, those are the photos that makes the most Wow, when you see them. And if anybody's following me on Instagram, like, it's obvious how I'm working Instagram, like it's each time, like I usually try to put out new photos on Instagram each week.
And then I figure out if they work or not. But if you want to do Instagram and use Instagram to reach a broad audience, you can't expect putting up photos that doesn't work on Instagram and then get a huge following. It's just not how it works like I wish it was I have a lot of things I can complain about Instagram. But in the end, when it comes to these social medias on a mass scale it basically like of course, Facebook can change the algorithm a little bit like just over the past two months, like my reach has been cut in half. It's frustrating that I'm getting less reach now than I did when I had 80,000 followers. Now I have 10 times as much as made no sense. But
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  42:45  you,
Mads Peter Iversen  42:47  you kind of just have to do what you have to do when you are working on these platforms. And yes, that that can of course limit your creativity. But again, that's a problem you have to solve over time, and I'm doing my best to solve it. But again, he's trying to find that middle road. And I'm also Yeah, I'm taking photos that I don't want to hang on my wall, but I know that they will work on Instagram. So I'm not photographing specifically for Instagram. But when I recognise that here is a scene, here's a photo that would work on Instagram. Okay, then I use it for Instagram. It's like, if you had a store, it's like what Gary Vee says when he made his his wine store, build up his dad's wine store, like you don't put your garbage wine in the window, you put the best wine in the window, right to put the wine out which get the attention to get people into your store, you have to take that into consideration when you're living off of landscape photography. In many ways, it's a big privilege not having to live off landscape photography, because then you can go and do exactly what you want to do. I need to take that extra step where I do what I want to do, but also try to earn money from it. And yeah, it's not always easy. You know?
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  44:12  That's amazing. That's amazing. I love that I love how you're keeping it real. You know, I mean, like, especially with a lot less pressure with the social media, I know that more and more people are saying you know, like, just shoot what you like and you know, Do do do do what makes you happy and as important as that may be but I think it's important to recognise that Instagram is more of a marketing tool. So
Mads Peter Iversen  44:41  certainly been designed to that over the past five six years.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  44:45  Yeah. And I love how you how you keeping it real buy just you know laying it out, you know you have to attract those people at the end of the day. It's that's how marketing works. And yeah, that's that's a really good point. And that's, that's great. And by By the way, I love your forest photography as well, I feel like you were able to find the granting in the boring, the most boring scene like, I remember what you want some of your reels and I was looking at as like, you know is there is a path I remember there was like a gay and then you're like showing it as the photo that came out of it. I was like, Wow, that's incredible. So what were you looking out when you were approaching a landscape or a scenery? That doesn't look as interesting to make it? You know, to make it interesting?
You cut out ago, you
Mads Peter Iversen  45:49  were lacking a little bit there. So I may have to repeat the question that
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  45:53  I get. So I was just saying that. I love how you find the grandest thing on the most boring stuff. And you know, I remember when you post that reel, you were, I think walking on this path with this, like brown gate on the side, and you're showing the scenery, and, you know, you have some of the coolest like photo of just like forests, and there was just so many interesting in that. But when you I think when a lot of people can approach that scenery and look at it, it might not look as interesting. And when they see your photo, just go like, where did that come from? So what I'm interested about is how do you approach a scenery that looks boring, you know, that looks that doesn't look that doesn't have the epic Vista, as you say, to create that photo that is still appealing and beautiful.
Mads Peter Iversen  46:51  Oh, I think it comes with experience. I rely pretty heavily on editing, like 50% of my photos is usually down to editing even though that the scene might look good on video, when you see the raw file is often flat and boring. It's completely unbalanced in regard to where highlights and shadows should be. So in that way, I very much like it at the very least in my forest photography, dodge and burn quite a lot with different techniques. But I think just it's a question about experience that over time you start to recognise those patterns, which you find the static is very hard to put into words, because it's just such an internalised way of seeing I approach a scene like if I know, okay, here's a cool tree, here's a cool part of the forest that I've explored, then I have a pretty good idea how the compositions are, go out and try them out. Figure does it work with fog? Does it work with the sun coming in somehow and all those things. So in that way becomes you practice and then you wait for the good conditions, and then you actually basically just have to go out and click the shutter right. It's like you have done all the preparation. Other times, it's just like you're walking around, and then you'll see something a that's pretty click, and then it turns out to be really good for so. And I think the more experience you get, the more you recognise, oh, this is pretty. Like, the more you you yourself are like that works. So yeah, it's it's very much about just going out and shoot, shoot, shoot, get a lot of inspiration from others. I don't mind people emulating my photos like that they will find their own way over time. It's the people must have a really sad life, if they are just going out and completely copying all my photos. That's that doesn't last long, I assure you. So at some point, you do reach a place where you're like, you just stop recognising and taking your own photos. You do get much more like you know, I would say mental health but much more like positive feedback from yourself. If you figure out something by yourself and you feel that what you're doing is more and more. You Yeah, should I use the word original, but at least like it's not just like going out and copying what someone else is doing.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  49:39  That's really interesting. So I was wondering, you know, you've been in this journey for a while and you've, you obviously have worked very hard to get to where you are right now.
Mads Peter Iversen  49:50  I've worked a lot to get where I am maybe not hard.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  49:56  And like during that journey, do you ever We're like, come to a place where you were like, where you were burning out when you feel like you don't want to do this anymore? Like, is that ever come across within your journey? And if it does, what? What can you do to keep this journey sustainable in the longer term? Because I think the reason why I asked this is because a lot of creatives nowadays are very ambitious. And they, you know, they see people who are succeed, and they were like, yes, I want to get there, like in two years time, and unfortunately, a lot of the time, because they were hammering so hard on it, they get really, they don't understand how to make it sustainable, both on the mental side as well as you know, in the, in the money side, because it's, it's a marathon, let's face it, it's a marathon. Right? So what are some of the, you know, have you ever come across those situation? And if it has, what are some of the advice you can offer to some of the newer creatives who's kind of like, you know, in the beginning part of their journey? Yeah,
Mads Peter Iversen  51:15  I can only speak for myself. But yes, I of course, have reached periods where it has been like, I remember especially like, by the end of 2019, I have been doing a whole lot of workshops in Iceland. And it was just like the same locations again, and again, and again. And you're saying the same things again, and again, and again. And even, I really liked doing the workshops, and spending time with those people who attend the workshops. That's always interesting, super nice people, always. But the work in itself does become rather repetitive, like I still enjoy like going to the ice beach and Iceland, I could spend hours there just and I'm even thinking of just like going with my girlfriend twice in the summer, because we haven't been to Iceland together yet. That's a lot of things, a lot of places I want to visit. But after 2019, I was really like, burned out with with the epic business. And I got a much more, I got much more interesting in exploring Denmark and photographing in Denmark, which luckily, came together with the pandemic where I couldn't travel. So luckily, I had my interest for photographing in Denmark before being forced to having to photograph in Denmark. So in that way, that was like a really nice energy boost and also go much more into forest photography has been a very big energy boost. Because my parents house is in a forest I've grown up in a forest I relate to forests. And that is why many of my favourite photos are from like, they're very, very local. Because I relate much more to those photos than I do to my Iceland photos. I'm happy about like my big epic business, from Iceland on my travels and all that stuff. But it is nice to also get that extra part where it's more local. And it's refreshing, it's different way of thinking, rather than only doing the epic stuff. So mixing it up, figure out what you like to do, maybe from time to time force yourself out. It can be hard to get out and up for in the morning, hum the first to say that. And you might not get anything which is particularly interesting, but chances are you are if you just come prepare it like if you go out a summer morning, and it has been a cold night and you're aiming to get to a foggy location like go go to a place with a varied landscape. Again, I know if you're living in the middle of desert is probably a little bit hard, but then you have to just be innovative about how you're thinking about approaching these things. So for me, it's seek out those special conditions maybe rather than seeking out specific locations. Yeah, it's hard for me to really answer it because I'm still so young in it. I'm still so passionate about it. That's those very small down periods where I'm like, this is boring, like two weeks of just overcast weather and no snow or whatever like the start of December like last year 2020 I was a bit like dark period and you just do something else like it's and then usually comes back
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  55:01  I interesting, I like how you say, you know, don't necessarily seek out the location, but seek out the condition. I think that is, I never really think about it that way. But it's very true because it doesn't matter, you might go to the same popular spot, but a really unique condition make that popular spot unique altogether. That's really interesting way of looking at it. Wow, man, it's been like, amazing conversation. I love how just seeing how you approach this, you know, and the way you approach your photography, as well as, like being a full time landscape photographer. We're kind of coming to the one hour mark here. And I always ask every guest, that come into the podcast. If you have one advice that you can give other photographers out there that you feel, this is the most important thing that a photographer should know, what would that advice be?
Mads Peter Iversen  56:10  Do what you want to do? Don't listen to the noise. It's okay, it's okay to do the trending stuff, it's okay to do all the obvious stuff. At some point, you will reach a point where you start becoming more original and just just just follow your own wishes, like of course, within the law, like and ethics, do whatever you want to do.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  56:36  That's great. That is great. You know, like, in, in just late last year, I had I had this burnout. And the main reason of that burnout was, you know, I wasn't doing what I want to do, I was pressured to, to do the things that I need to do. And you know, that advice is so important. It doesn't matter if you, like you say doesn't matter if it's going to be a popular sport or not. But being able to do what you want to do is really important for your mental health. Wow, that's amazing. And I absolutely enjoyed this conversation conversation. And you know, you have beautiful photos, beautiful. imagery from especially the north part of the world. Where can the listener find new and see more of your work, as well as learn from you if they choose to? Yeah, what's the best way to find you?
Mads Peter Iversen  57:35  YouTube, just Google my name. I'm probably everywhere. So YouTube and Instagram. And of course, my homepage, which is a little bit of an odd homepage name, but it's MPI like mess Peter iris and MPI and then photo pH o to.dk. For Denmark. And so MPI photo.tk and YouTube, Instagram. And that's it. I have my ebooks on composition, how I think composition, I talk about it as compositional tools. I don't like the word rules. It's more like, you see a scene, you approach a scene? And then you can maybe like think about okay, is there some kind of leading line I can use? How is the separation between the trees? And what can I do to show scale? If I'm in a mountainous area, if that's the point of actually showing scale? Should I go with a long lens? Should I go with a wide lens and all those things? Should I do horizontal? Should I do verticals? So yeah, and then I have, of course my huge Photoshop for landscape photographers from beginners to advanced course, about post processing. I'm sharing everything I know about how I post process my photos. If you're a complete beginner and you want to get started, it should work really well for you. I haven't heard anybody who said that it was much too advanced. And yeah, so it's like 19 hours of editing tutorials. So there's a lot to dig into very systematically build up with a lot of different ways to like approach a specific way a specific look and the look I have. So yeah, that was it.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  59:32  Fantastic. Yeah, I'll make sure that all that links is under on the description below but we can't thank you very much for tuning in. And I hope you get a lot of those jam a lot of those wisdom and hopefully you are taking notes and as well as thinking about, you know how to implement all a lot of these things in your way of photography. Mads, it's been incredible having you here, I love that Um, just the way you actually think and, you know, chunk down a lot of the decision process. And that's definitely helpful for a lot of people, you know, as well as myself to kind of understand that, that way of attacking of what should I do next? And you know, what are ways? What are the different ways we should do and stuff like that. So, thank you very much. And, yeah, I really appreciate you sparing your time and to be in this podcast, sharing your wisdom with the listeners.
Mads Peter Iversen  1:00:34  Thank you so much for having me. It's always a great pressure.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  1:00:39  Well, there you have it. We care hunters and you haven't already subscribed, so don't forget to hit the subscribe button. But apart from that, I'll see you guys next week.
 

Ep 26 - How Liz Barker Used Her Time in Isolation to Craft 14 Inspiring Photos That Got Published in ABC Australia

Hey Wicked Hunters,
First of all happy easter, I hope you have a festive holiday. Today we have an enthusiast photographer who takes world-class quality photos. As a result, Liz has won multiple awards including 1st Place in Mono Awards 2020. Liz shared the story behind the photos that she took during her 14 days of isolation that eventually got picked up by ABC Australia which you can find on the link below.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-08-16/woman-takes-photo-each-day-coronavirus-quarantine-in-perth/12541654
If you want to learn more about Liz's work, you can find it here:
www.lizbarkerphotography.com
https://www.instagram.com/lizbnw229/
https://www.instagram.com/lizb229/   
Other ways to listen and subscribe to the podcast:
Spotify - http://bit.ly/twhspotify 
Apple Podcast - https://bit.ly/Theartofphotography 
Google Podcast: https://bit.ly/TheArtOfPhotographyWithStanleyAr 
Website: podcast.thewickedhunt.com  
Tune In (Alexa) - https://bit.ly/TuneInTheArtOfPhotographyPodcastWithStanleyAr 
For those of you who want to learn more about The Wicked Hunt Photography:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thewickedhunt/   
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thewickedhunt/
Masterclass: https://www.TheWickedHuntPhotography.com   
Photo print: https://www.TheWickedHunt.com/ 
Don't forget to leave a review on the podcast if you enjoy this conversation, it would help us to get found and help to inspire other photographers. 

Ep 25 - Crafting a photo that mean something to you before you considering other people opinion with Bret Blakely

Hey Wicked Hunters, 
This week we have an awesome conversation with Bret Blakely where he shares his approach to adding emotion to photography. Bret is a big believer in creating photography that means something to you before you even consider what others might have to think about it. Bret has master photography in such a short period of time and you can learn more about Bret's work here:
You can learn more about him by connecting in
https://www.facebook.com/bretblakelyphotography/ 
https://www.instagram.com/bretblakely/ 
https://bretblakely.darkroom.tech/ 
Other ways to listen and subscribe to the podcast:
Spotify - http://bit.ly/twhspotify 
Apple Podcast - https://bit.ly/Theartofphotography 
Google Podcast: https://bit.ly/TheArtOfPhotographyWithStanleyAr 
Website: podcast.thewickedhunt.com  
Tune In (Alexa) - https://bit.ly/TuneInTheArtOfPhotographyPodcastWithStanleyAr 
For those of you who want to learn more about The Wicked Hunt Photography:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thewickedhunt/   
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thewickedhunt/
Masterclass: https://www.TheWickedHuntPhotography.com   
Photo print: https://www.TheWickedHunt.com/ 
Don't forget to leave a review on the podcast if you enjoy this conversation, it would help us to get found and help to inspire other photographers. 
 
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Transcription:
 
Bret Blakely  0:00  What'd you think expectations are for your photography from other people not letting that be the narrative
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  0:14  Hey Wicked Hunters, Welcome back to The Art of Photography podcast, where we share our passion and share how photography gives us hope, purpose and happiness. And today we have a guest who is so passionate about photography and about the wildlife. I am so excited to have him here. Hey, Brett, how you doing? Good. Good. How are you? I'm doing well. So welcome to the podcast. And I am so glad to have you here. I think you are the first wildlife photographer. Well, actually I have another like underwater but you're like over over the over the land wildlife photographer above the water. Yeah. About the water. But you're not you don't only shoot wildlife, isn't it? You like to do landscape as well? Is that? What's so if you were is there like a type of like a genre that you like to shoot? Or do you just pretty much shoot anything?
Bret Blakely  1:15  Yeah, so I would actually call myself a landscape photographer that is just getting into wildlife because I fell in love with the photography about three years ago after a trip to Africa. And I wanted to learn everything like you know, I was I was like, Man, if I had good camera gear and like knew what I was doing and wasn't shooting on auto. I was kind of bummed. I was like, I wish I could go back and do that again. So I made sure that yeah, that was really the catalyst and my first trip was to Yosemite. With a good buddy of mine, Adam, our Danny, he's phenomenal. Landscape composition, everything is just so good. I learned a boatload but for the first like two and a half years, two years, it was all landscape. And then it was actually the quarantine it was the global pandemic that kind of made me switch. Don't get me wrong, I've always loved animals you know, always just got a huge heart for them. You know, I just love them love everything about and I think they're so emotionally intelligent, so intelligent, you know, far beyond what we understand anyway, like, I feel like when you see an animal, you know, you can really, you can see the story behind that. And with not being able to travel, a lot of my trips being cancelled. For landscape it kind of, I don't know, it just the guys are shooting with we're like, Hey, let's go try and get a fox, you know, let's go try and do this. And so we started buying, you know, camo gear and blinds set up behind and you know, just getting all this stuff and like researching and it really created a passion for wildlife as well and I am still just as obsessed with landscape as ever, but now I am you know, it's it's equally matched by the wildlife portion of it, I just think there's something about being able to look and capture an animal you know, it's, I'm not a religious person, but it does feel almost spiritual when you you know, you're able to connect, make eye contact with that animal or something. It's just been a really fun experience. I think helping me develop you know, doing a different genre can absolutely help develop the other genre that you've been doing I am quicker to be able to figure out settings and you know, shoot in different light for my landscape now it's a result of wildlife and vice versa, you know, you take a lot of those things and they they transfer over I think
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  3:41  yeah, cool. That's that's really cool story. I mean, I myself like to shoot wildlife but I just don't have the passion to like not not passion to patient safety patient to like go after them. So I like to I like to call myself you know, if I see wildlife photographer, it's there I'll be ready. If not,
Bret Blakely  4:07  that is a dream. It is great when it's just there for you. There is something to be said for the repeated failure and struggle to capture something how much more means you know when when it does. I just got back from the Grand Tetons yesterday from Wyoming and I had been wanting a shot of a bison the whole time and didn't see one at all and the morning of my last second last day pretty much my last day because I left yesterday morning so the morning of my last day we went out for like three and a half hours. Did not see anything at all except for bald eagle which is great got some cool shots. But I was like I can't believe because from you know being from Buffalo, New York, our sports seems like the bills and the Sabres a bison is the logo like that is our logo. I'm like I'm from Buffalo. I need to get a shot of a bye And, and sure enough, we went back out in the afternoon we were driving around for a couple hours, we saw some 200 plus yards 300 yard probably longer actually three 400 yards in the distance, had to find a spot to park through the snow shoes on, hiked a quarter half mile through, through the forest got to this open, clear. And it was I mean, no joke, it was about five feet deep of snow. I mean, even with snow shoes, every every step, you're going on two and a half feet had to jump across two rivers to get close enough to shoot them. And then I got my bison shots. And then as I'm like finishing getting my bison shots, they all get up because they're all just grazing in the snow pack wilderness. And they all get up and start stampeding across like it was unbelievable. You know, it's one of those experiences you don't forget, I'm like, you know, I'm glad that I didn't get that bison shot just off the side of the road. You know, there's an actual story behind it is cool.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  5:55  Yeah, no, I can see that. It's it's usually the experience that really make the photo isn't it? It's how the first thing? Yeah, so how do you so how do you fall in love with landscape photography? And what really got you started in there? You know, why? Why all of a sudden, you know what, I want to be able to take beautiful landscape photos.
Bret Blakely  6:19  Yeah, so I've always been a picture guy. So when I say that I did take a little class and in high school, you know, when you actually make the prints yourself and everything. But when I say I was a picture guy, I was the guy who used to carry around. I'm not sure how old we are. But when I was a kid, so I'll be 40 this summer. I mean, we had the disposable cameras, you know. So on spring break, whether, you know, in high school hanging out with the friends, I always had a disposable camera because I just wanted to make sure that I remember going to a restaurant. I mean, it didn't had didn't have to be anything special. But those memories of my friends. So they always used to tease me they're like, you always have a disposable camera view. And then of course, when it was yearbook time, and they all needed photos for the yearbook. Who did they come ask me? So I think I always you know, really just like the, I guess the idea of of having memories to look back on. But yeah, it was and I've always loved to travel. I mean, always really have but even as a kid, I would sit in front of a sunset and take a picture with my disposable camera for every minute, the whole 30 minutes. You know, they're like, why are you taking a picture of it every minute. I'm like, because it changes the light changes. I think it was like always inside me, but just never, never really did it. And then when I went to Rwanda with my now fiance, she, I mean, it was the most it was the furthest away I'd ever been outside of Japan when I was in like fifth grade. But you know, is the furthest I've ever been and just such a drastically different culture. Different landscape. I mean, I was just in awe the whole time. And, and I'd already started to be because of my friend Adam. I had been looking at his photography and I'm like, man, just I'm a creative person but had never put that part of creativity to the real test you know, and explore that. And so I was already kind of starting to get like an inch of like, man, maybe there's something I want to try I love the stuff that he's doing this is really cool. And then yeah, sure enough after I got back from the trip, I was like Screw this man, I gotta get a camera and I just went down the YouTube rabbit hole and you know, spent three hours a day learning everything in anything about what camera will gear, ISO aperture colour theory exposure triangle, like everything you could do for three months before he invited me then on that trip to Yosemite and so I'm like, it was basically my time to prepare before my first test, you know, and I took a little 16 millimetre lens, I had my kit lens that came with a Sony a six 300 and got to work and just fell in love with it there. That's a hell of a place to start off landscape journey though, too. I mean, you're talking about an iconic park, you know?
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  9:11  Awesome. Yeah, I mean, man, like, last time I went to Yosemite was probably when I was like 13 or something like that. And you know, when you're a kid, you don't really have that appreciation of you know, the place and like now looking back to this photos and just like, Ah, I don't remember all these like, all these lodges is like, I gotta go back there. It's it's crazy. And I was supposed to go back to the US in last well about this time last year, but you know, when everything hits, I was like, man, you know, it's gonna get a lot more complicated away from home so I decided to stay but um, yeah, like you sent me to being like, on my high on my bucket list to visit as well as a lot of the other national parks in the US, but it's so interesting for you to hear that. So do you, how many disposable cameras do you go to take photo of this sunset? Because like,
Bret Blakely  10:17  okay, so no joke about so every spring break when I was a kid, you know, like, fifth grade through like high school, I would say, on average when I got back in one week's time, I had 10 to 12 disposable cameras that I had to take and get developed. I mean, it was just like a guarantee, you know, and don't get me wrong there were there were no bangers out of those. It was just like, a kid who was just super excited and in love with the sunset and like the beach and everything. And yeah, so it was it was bad. I spent, I can't imagine how much money I spent getting disposable cameras developed when I was a kid I probably read if I had never done that
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  10:57  is hilarious. Sorry. I was just like off topic there. But it's, I was so interested to hear that because you're not. I know the feeling like I have that as well. It's like, it's like, oh, okay, sounds like coming down a little bit. It's like, oh, it's like just stats like different, you always want to capture it. On this. It's
Bret Blakely  11:15  like, you don't want to miss it sometimes, like you have to almost put the camera down for a second be like, let me just watch this for you know, yeah, it's tough. Being in love with photography is, you know, you get to you put yourself in a position to see these beautiful moments. And, you know, you you kind of look at things differently, where you really do appreciate a sunrise or a sunset or anything, you know, flowers away, they're whispering across the field, whatever. But then the curse of it is that sometimes you're always caught up having your camera because you're like, I want to make sure that I remember that specific second of that sunset. And that you know, I mean, so it's, it's a gift and a curse. I would say way more of a gift though.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  12:02  Awesome. Yeah, that's that's very, that's very true. Like, you're right, because like, you know, when you I actually have to force myself to leave the camera behind. Yeah, because you know, I get this FOMO Fear Of Missing Out is like, oh, man, what if just what if, you know, there's like, one shot that I could get, you know, as I progress you I have to leave it behind. Because like, otherwise, you're right. Like, I can't enjoy the moment. Like, I'd be like, Oh, that's beautiful. And you know, as a photographer, we see this beauty on everything, right? So we constantly take photos, so heads on
Bret Blakely  12:41  a swivel constantly, like you're never just looking forward. You're always you know, doing this and everything because you're like, I don't want to miss anything figured out, can I pull over here? It's like, No, dude, you're in the middle of the highway, you're gonna cause an accident, and you can't pull over here to get the fucking sunlight.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  12:59  It's a Lariat. So how do you find that balance for yourself? What what, like, you know, what had been working for you where, you know, there'll be moments where it's so beautiful that you just enjoy it. And then there'll be moments that it's so beautiful that you just working on capturing it? How do you find that balance?
Bret Blakely  13:18  I don't know that I've done it effectively yet. You know, I think I think it's struggle every time. But a lot of the balance to comes from, in my opinion, like, are the moments that aren't necessarily we're pulling out the camera and setting up a tripod or whatever, but it's like the, you know, the hike to get to the spot. You know, those are just a special two. And those are things that you can fully take in whether you're just whether you're with a couple buddies, and everyone's just kind of quiet in their own head as they're hiking, or you're maybe just telling jokes throughout the whole thing, or it's sketchy and you're laughing about how scared shitless you want to you know, those are just as important, if not more important, you know, like, they always talk about how it's the journey, not the destination. And I do think a lot of those that I think a lot of that resonates. And I think then actually, you know, I guess the way I'd say I don't balance but I don't have too much guilt over it. Because that final picture is not just a picture of that. Second, it's the final scene in what was a movie that day for you. You know, it's like that that one picture allows you to see from minute one to minute 120 of that movie that took you to that image. So for you personally, it encapsulates all those memories. It's like, you know, if you smell something and it can take you back to a memory that lasts an entire year of your childhood, maybe you know and this way I think it's the same thing you know, for us. The reason I think photography is so addictive and important to the photog for themselves, and why it's so important that they capture things for themselves is because for them, it's not just another good looking picture that they're swiping through and double tapping, you know, like, that's, that's, that's other photographers for them. But that picture to them is like a whole movie. It's a whole scene, it's maybe five hours of that day, maybe 10 hours of that day, it's a trip, you know, it's friends that you made on that trip, like, I can't wait to go through all these Grand Teton shots, because the two guys that took me out Hayden and Arthur, like, they literally were the best hosts, you know, I met them through Instagram, never met in person, and these guys got up every single morning, picked me up at 5am and took me to the best spots for sunrise, we, you know, hang out all day, they take me out to shoot at night, we'd all go to dinner every night. Like they both ski and snowboard, they didn't ski or snowboard the that whole week, they took off work, like just to show me around and, and it was like that trip all the all the pictures that I get to go through now. And again, I absolutely have memories that are directly attached to them, you know, and that's how it is every time.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  16:15  That's awesome, man. That's awesome, man. You know, that's, it's a big lesson learned there. And you just want to bring this up a little bit, because you might not notice it. But it's true. Like photography, it's not always about that destination. And I used to get caught up in that a lot. When I first started, you know, I used to go to places to get the iconic shot and I would go I would literally do the thing where people go to the place, take the iconic shot take like, you know, like 2030 of the same view, right? The same way tourists view you get in the postcard view. And then you go to the next spot. And for that reason, like I miss I miss so many, like, cool perspective and cool things that happen in you know, apart from this frame that I'm always looking at an observer that so I think that's such an important thing to raise. And you know that's why I call it like my photography the wicked hunt because like for me it's about the hunt for those you know, for this photo it's not it's not always about the N photo that that really mean something that handful is just the trophy, isn't it?
Bret Blakely  17:27  Yeah, I love that. That you just kind of gave me an insight into your Instagram name. That's cool that like That's badass or wicked hunt. It was actually funny though, too, because, you know, you talked about like the iconic shots and when you go to a place like Yosemite or Grand Tetons, it's impossible not to, to you know, be confronted with those opportunities to get the iconic shot because they're iconic for a reason. Because they're amazing compositional opportunity, you know, to unities the lighting is great. The view of the mountains so like my, my personal challenge to myself going out there before this was to really try and like expand compositionally, and try and try and just get very creative with the way I was shooting things and I'm I'm super excited because not only were there a lot of shots at like, I don't do a lot of minimalism. And I took a bunch of ones that I'm really excited about. I mean the atmosphere lent itself for it, you know, just like simple you know, one tree amongst this like ferocious mood in the background. The Tetons have covered things like that. But even like the the the first shot that I posted from the two times trip, that's an iconic view, it's up at Target the pass and you're the roads going down, and you're looking at it. And what was funny is that me and the other guys were all shooting there. And I kept waiting for a car something just to make it a little bit different. And then as you'll see at the bottom left of it, there's a huge snow cloud and all you can see are the headlights through it. That was a snow plough coming in the other direction, which is why it push all this snow in front of it, which is why you couldn't see the car. And when that car started coming up everyone was when I got off the road and went back to the car and I stayed out and shot it because I'm like this can make an iconic shot. Just a little bit different. And my buddy was like, Dude, that's awesome. He's like, Man, I saw that I was gone. And I look back and you're out there shooting and he's like, because I genuinely don't want any signs of like human life in my photos he goes, but that kind of made that shot. I'm like, sweet so that you know, I think it's good to always like when you're travelling somewhere or even if you're just going out in your neighbourhood, whatever. Like think of a way to challenge yourself because for me, it made me really reevaluate the way I go about shooting things. I mean, I'm happy that I really tried to push myself and there may be shots at you know, I should have just gone with a more Standard composition or something, because maybe I didn't pull it off as much as I think I did or something. But I think that's part of a great way to grow. And now I'm, like, really excited for a lot of these shots. And, you know, I think a lot of people shoot the same subject, but I'm hoping I did it in a really different way. And that'll just make me better for the next time I go out and shoot, you know?
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  20:24  Yeah, that's really well put, and you know, like in this photography, it's funny because people say, this, this genre is so so saturated. And I think the reason why it's saturated is for that reason that you just mentioned, right? People, like, go to this iconic place, and just try to take that one photo. But as you said, like, you don't have to stop there. Like, just because, like, don't get me wrong. I take iconic photos all the time. But it doesn't mean you have to stop there. Right? What the one word that I was, that really struck me from one of the other podcasts or the pot? Yeah, the guests that I have in this podcast was the word open mind, like, you know, approach a scenery with an open mind that really sum up everything. It's like, yeah, of course, like, you know, if you get there, of course, you want to get the iconic shot, but approach it with an open mind, maybe there is some other thing and like you say, like, with your experience in grand, Grand Teton, you know, like, you're like, you're shooting this iconic view, but then it's like, Oh, something else happened. And if you have that open mind, you will notice that bit. But yeah, I remember back when I first started, I would be frustrated with those car, right? I would be like, Oh, come on, get away, I wonder is like, I caught each other. So that's, I think that's the important bit is like, you know, like, yeah, of course, like, you know, the iconic is great. But if you have it with an open mind, you might, you know, the things that you think is a distraction might actually be the hero of your shot, or the focal point, or the things that are in and out. So,
Bret Blakely  22:02  yeah, I had any comments or like those headlights, because if it wasn't a snow plough, either, like it still would have been cool. But the fact that it created a camouflage and it looked almost like to Animalize you know, just peeking through the snow, it just added a tonne and like so that's again, having an open mind. Like, that's just a little bit of luck. I have that same shot from that morning without a car in it. But I went with that one because I'm like, You know what, it's, it's kind of different. I always I also think that you know, expectations, always not always, they can lead to disappointment. And in any facet of life, you know, relationships in, I mean in anything, and I think having an open part of having having an open mind is trying to, you know, alleviate some of the expectation, stress and anxiety that we put on ourselves like I'm expecting there to be perfect light I'm expecting there to be no cars I'm expecting there to be no other people that I have to worry about getting my shot and like, like you said, you know, having an open mind and maybe not having expectations but just going to enjoy and being like you know, I'm going to go there and just try and do something totally different not have not worry about if I get the iconic shot or not. If it's there, go ahead and take it so you have it out of the way and then you can like take a couple breaths and be like alright, now let me try shooting it this way. You know, if you shot a vertical shoot, shoot or if you have not in the foreground, put something in the foreground or get behind something in the foreground. You know change the angle like anything have an open mind because you might think that the one that everybody's gotten before that you want to get because you know it's going to be popular and it will work because it's like a proven composition. They might be like Dude, I've never seen a take on on that shot before I've seen a shot a million times I've never seen it like that and then you're like alright, sweet outlines, outlines the best
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  23:58  well, those kinds of shots, you know are the one that makes you happy, isn't it? That's the one that really gives you a full fulfilment from photography and it's it's no one it's something that not a lot of people talk about but it's having a good photo is like a good start. But once you can progress to it, you want to be able to capture what's yours. So that's it that's really well iterated and explained. So thanks for sharing that that's really really cool insights from from your way of thinking so I love that I absolutely love it. So when do you is Was there ever a turning point in your photography journey that kind of shift I mean you already kind of mentioned a little bit about you know this pandemic and a half you that bigger shift towards more of the wildlife but during early on in your photography journey on you know, finding your photog Have you start on finding what you really like on, you know, shooting landscape from that first shot that you take in, in Yosemite to now, what are some of the biggest shifts? And in your photography?
Bret Blakely  25:18  Well, I mean, as you know, we all I mean, I even still like the amount that I learned on on this trip, and I'm three years into my photography journey. So I feel like I somewhat know what I'm doing. But the amount that I learned on this trip was crazy. At times, you don't even realise it. So I would say like, the first trip is to semi second one was Iceland, and the third one was Oregon. So you're dealing with a tonne of variety of like weather conditions, rain, snow, but you're also getting like, what a blessing like those were such cool places to shoot, I have to go back to all of them because I butchered so many of the of the first shots and opportunities. So I think, especially from shooting with, like I went on all three of those with Adam, Danny who's so good compositionally that he I think probably accelerated, the way I look at landscapes and like, made me look outside just a classic take on something because, you know, when you first start, you're disappointing shoot, like, you don't think I'm gonna get low, I'm gonna get high, I'm gonna have a quarter of the frame covered by you know, flowers, or I'm going to shoot in between or look for the Sun Star, there's just so many things that you don't do. Because all you're worried about just making sure it's in focus at first, you know, first time and just making sure you don't butcher the settings, because if you're trying to learn and shoot on manual and everything you're like, so this is it's just so I mean, it was a big learning experience. But I think the biggest shift has also just been necessarily biggest shift. But one of the highlights is been when I felt, and it probably took about a year and a half when I felt like I finally understood postprocessing enough that I could have I could really bring a picture to the vision that I want, you know, like I, I know how to make it something that I want. I'm still I would say an okay, Editor. In my part, like I just have very high expectations. I know a lot of people that I think are way better at editing. One thing that I don't do is I don't try and make every photo look the same. I don't use any presets, I literally start from scratch and every photo because I don't care if it matches the last one. And there's usually enough usually the season provides enough consistency or like little hints of the same colours, you know, I mean, but for me, I know you'll notice even even the way my grid is I really don't care about the grid i i do landscape wildlife, landscape, wildlife, dark, light, dark, light colour, you know, decent, it really doesn't matter, as long as it looks good for that image, because I'm more concerned of how's it gonna look as a print. You know, Instagram is great, but I don't personally need for all of them to have the exact same preset on them or colour tone. And there are artists that do that phenomenally, so it's no knock on them, I just don't think I am skilled enough to turn anytime of day, anytime of anything into you know, a very, very similar looking, colour tone type of things. So I think, you know, getting to the point where I felt like, I knew enough of how to not only capture the photo and field but then really put kind of a little bit of my own style is the biggest part. And for me, I'm a super passionate guy. Very much live my life led by emotion, which isn't always a good thing. But you know, I just whether it's relationships or things that I get really excited about stuff. I'm basically like 39 and a half year old kid. But I think for me like that's what my that's what I hope my style
expresses is that like, I want people to feel something. And a lot of a lot of especially in the winter, I was on a clubhouse room and we were talking about style and the one guy had said yeah, I'm looking at your stuff he's like, I just love your style, he said but I can tell you're kind of a dark person I'm like actually quite the opposite just because a lot of my work has very, especially in the winter very moody like I love stormy clouds. I love that, but has nothing to do with negativity for me for me like it's almost a polar opposite. Those represent like life in the scariest moments like when you feel most alive is when you get these just unique, not normal conditions that come together in this perfect storm. So I really love mood and stuff but not because I'm a dark person So just because to me, it's it signifies a very intense emotion. So even if it's a bright mood, I mean, I would say my style is just it's going to be something that I hope makes, you know, the viewer feel something. Because usually if I'm posting it means that I felt something from it, you know, it means something to me.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  30:23  Awesome. Thanks for sharing that. And I think, like, I'm the same, I'm horrible at grades go from like, bright yellow to moody, like. And it's, it's great. I think that for you to share that because I guess especially Instagram, right, Instagram had really make that perspective very, very strongly. Because, for for for a point in time, that was the one thing that people think that will bring growth to the Instagram. So right, a lot of people got into that. I know that some people are not doing it intentionally, that they literally just like that kind of mood. But I know there are a lot of other influencers and photographers who actually try to curate, curate, they their colour tone and stuff, and I don't have the patience for it to actually, like, do all that. And I think that that's, that's great that you share that because you're absolutely right, in terms of you know, every every photo have its own feeling like if you got a bright yellow, a full colour, and then you want to make it moody, it just doesn't work, isn't it? Like it's, it's absolutely a different scenery? And and, yeah, so that's, that's really great. Like to hear that, I think there's a lot of inspiration there to be had there. For the listeners to see that, you know, photography is about that moment, like, what is that moment how that makes you feel? And actually, in some of my photo, I would have more of a dreamy kind of fine art look at some more often nature look, because that's how that that's that moment makes me feel, you know, so yeah, absolutely, absolutely love that you share that. And, yeah, I think a lot of listeners can learn a lot from this. So
Bret Blakely  32:22  it's almost just like not letting that letting a grid or, again, like, what you think expectations are for your photography from other people. Not letting that be the narrative. Like that should not be what narrates how you and affects how you edit, because like, there's no way that you felt the same or had the same memories in one shot to another. And that is what should determine the direction you go. You know, when you're editing that, not not the other way around. So
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  32:53  that's awesome. So with that in mind, this is the next question. And you know, because you mentioned about your conversation in clubhouse about finding the style. So yeah, in your, in your perspective, right, what is style in photography, because you know, if you can just do you know, like, we proceed style as a colour tone as a this, this very monochromatic of genre that you could see that, you know, when people see, your photo is like, Okay, I know, that's, that's Brad's photo, right? But if you kind of have a different interpretation of that image, you could go from one one extreme to another for that reason. So what what what, in your opinion, what is style? And you know, how can you create a style if you approach your photography? It within the moment? Not? Not really collectively?
Bret Blakely  33:54  Yeah, I mean, there's something to be said that the way that I go about it may not be the most conducive to having like a absolutely identifiable style, you know, that and that may be it just where do you put that on your priority list? Is it you know, is being recognisable from the first second, I the way I look at is I think the consistent consistency needs to come from the quality if it's a good looking shot, they're going to look at who made it you know, they're gonna they're not going to need to necessarily be like, Oh, well the Greens don't look the same as the last one I saw so it's probably not Hibs. You know, I feel like the quality is what should be what defines your style but like I said, for me I always think it's better to have you know, your style defined by something personal. I mean, genre is going to be a lot of it. There aren't very many people that go way outside their genre not to say that our I mean I do landscape and wildlife. There are people that do product people city or you know, I mean all on one. But usually it's something in the same vein. So that's part of the way you know what style, there's a quarter genre as far as minimalist or whatever. And, like I said to you, I'm going to be a lot of stuff, all posts are going to be in tight or artsy crap shots, too, there may be a way back out massive grandiose type landscape to a minimalist shot, like, so you won't even be able to think of, oh, well, there's a style there too. But I just think I think style is gonna be so different from for everyone, it's kind of almost impossible for me to say, how somebody should find their style, because what it should come from is what what's motivating them to go out and shoot in the first place. So whatever that might be, is, I think, where you're going to eventually find yourself, of course, you have to also do the work and put in the time to learn postprocessing. So that you're able to execute on your vision, like you don't want to have this fully, you know, thought out, I guess, motivation style in your head, and then just not have the skill set to be able to do it. And there's nothing that you know, anybody can just just do the work, put the time into learning the programmes, and you'll be able to, to bring it to life. But yeah, I think that's kind of the most important thing is just making sure you find it for motivation. I actually have a question then for you. Because when I did the finding your style room, I had like five questions I was gonna go through for that room. And we got stuck on the second one for like, two hours because people were really into it. And my question to them, if you don't mind me asking you a question is, do you think? And I'll answer to after? Do you think that your style has been? is more representative, representative of your life experiences up to this point, like as have your life experiences influenced your style? Or do you think photography has changed the way you look at the world, like which of those do you think has been had more of an impact, you know, one being on your style and one on life?
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  37:06  That's interesting. That's really interesting. And I saw that the room when it was in a clubhouse, but I was like, I kind of like jump in there. And I was like, oh, man, this, I would love to get into this conversation. But I had to go, so I had to get out of clubhouse. But that's a really, really interesting topic there. For me, I think, wow, I really never think about that. That's, you know, I think a lot about my my life and my experience, I'm more like philosophy cool, but I never think about that. So that's really interesting. But the way I approach life is really sorry, the way I approach photography, or the photo that I take is really, more in the moment, I believe, you know, if it's a photo itself, like, when I like, take the photo, I really tried to think what I feel there, and that's why I think some of the photo that I take can be more have like a more subtle edit to it with, like, you know, like more natural looks. And with that one, usually, I'm more, I'm more attached to the nature part of it. And I just like, you know, I love the nature and, you know, with that moment, it felt like the nature was the most important thing. And then and at other times, you know, there might be like, I might enhance, like the colour and you know, bring that out a little bit more and more hot, have more of a fine art look to it. Because at that time, I feel more about the vibrance and the excitement that I would get from you know, what it may look like. So the way I approach it really, I really tried to feel and think how I, how I actually felt during that photoshoot? What was the emotion that gone through it? And, you know, when I see that photo itself, what was the emotion that that photo brings to me and I think that's the way I approach both editing and, like, composition wise in photography, but as the general inventory photography I think photography would have more impact. Yeah, yeah. Cuz, like I said, like, it really changed my life. You know, photography, I'm not a patient guy. You know, and when I when I was a kid man, like I could not stand still, you know, I always on a roll, like literally, you know, and now I would literally like I would sit on my my tripod up and I would sit there in front of, you know, whatever scenery may be, and I'm may or may not take a photo, but more often than not, I would stay longer in that place and actually absorb and observe about the environment and what happened around it. And that really that was real The big shift and you know, I had a lot more appreciation for the smaller things, you know, like just the small texture and the small, you know, the low and tree like I never looked at, I never looked at three the same way how I do photography? And I think that's that's a positive impact in my life because yeah, like you just see the, like we mentioned earlier when you take like, photography, right? I have a lot of students who kind of just get started in photography, because, you know, the masterclass that I put on is about, like more about the beginning. And, you know, I do plan to create another one, but, and for that reason, like, I think a lot of my students can have the struggle as well. And I can see where they go, like, like, oh, yeah, I'm in this place. There's nothing interesting here is like, look, again, because I can bet you there is something interesting there. It's like, I mean, I walk through there every single day. It's like, yeah, okay, you walk there. But do you actually look deeper and look at different perspective, because, you know, like, we're on automotive, we go drive to the same place all the time, we don't think about it, we just go like, Get in the car, drive park, there you are. But when I do photography, totally different. Even if it's the same place of going to all the time I go like, okay, so like, there is the big thing, there's the mountain or there is the waterfall, but it's like, what else is there? So I think photography have a bigger impact. How does that? Is that something that you relate, you can relate with? Or how has that been a different effect for yourself?
Bret Blakely  41:46  So it's funny, because when I posed the question, I had an answer in my head that I had that day, and I'll give again, but then the more I think about I'm like, Man, both have had such a massive, you know, impact. But for me, what I answered originally was that, I think my, my style of photography was more influenced by my life experiences than necessarily the way I looked at the world. And the reason I would still probably say that is because I've always appreciated that I maybe wasn't as good at finding the subtle beauties, you know, before photography, like, photography has allowed my eyes to definitely see the world more clearly, I think and really, like spot those beautiful things. But from a personality standpoint, and everything, I think I've always been somebody that like, I mean, like I said, I was a kid, taking a picture of a sunset, you know, every minute for 30 minutes in fifth grade, even I didn't have the equipment or skill to take good picture of it. Like, I still very much appreciate that part of the world. So I was gonna say, overall, I think the bigger, you know, shift or impact from one to the other would be I think the reason I like emotion, emotional photos and stuff like that, and moody things are, because that had more of an impact. I feel like I started photography seriously three years ago. And I definitely think like, right from the bat, just because I've always been that type of person that you know, has a heart on his sleeve type thing, and I can cry at a commercial, I have no problem mitigate, you know, I have no problem. Being sensitive, I think that did shape, my style, or what I want it to be, as a photographer from the beginning, even when in the beginning, I definitely didn't know how to express that I didn't know how to post process or turning the images that I was getting on my first few trips into, you know, what, I guess would hope like, if I have to go back, like I said, because I want to redo those and receive those places and be able to really create that emotion with the post process as much as the image that I get there that I just didn't know what I was doing enough, you know, in the first year of photography, so
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  44:09  Yeah, interesting. Yeah, that's really interesting. And I think this is what really frustrated me about photography, and the social media. Actually, I don't know if social media is to blame. But I think in general, we tried to put labels on everything, like you know, just, like, just approach it with an open mind. Like, you know, like, just because that person approach to photography is different doesn't mean you're, they're wrong. Like it's just different. And I think that is the beautiful thing about this, isn't it? Like that's what make life is beautiful, right? Because everyone is different. But yeah, when you try to put a label on everything, like we, I'm, I'm really, you know, one of the thing that I came with a mission when when I left my job and pursue this career, which I I truly felt in the first eight months was to share the unseen perspective of the world, right. And I think perspective is really important because we can learn from each other's perspective. And when you put a label, unfortunately, whether we like it or not, we really get this, like, Horsh eyes, right, that we go, like, Oh, I think, even though they, they might try to think outside the box, but there is like, a box vision, exactly a tunnel vision. So, you know, I love how you, you know, this, like, conversation been awesome, because like, we just bounce different perspective and different ideas, because that's how we should approach photography, like, you know, somebody like it really saturated and vibrance, like maybe it's not your forte, maybe it's not the best look. But if that's something that really bring them happiness, you know, it's, is that really a problem? Because, right, right, and
Bret Blakely  45:59  this would be for them, like, yes, we want other people to like our work, we hope that that's a bonus. But the end of the day, like, it's, if you're not, if you're doing it for that, then you're already behind the game, that shouldn't be doing it for your own for the right reasons. And that's why I like what we talked about with the style thing. First, figure out what your motivation is, because otherwise, your style is going to change so many times, and it's fine. If it does, but not if it's for the wrong reasons. If you're going to change it every time there's a new trend of editing or whatever, then good luck, like you're gonna get so burned out, because you're gonna try and learn a new trend, and you're never going to be as good as you need it to be quick enough for until then it's not a trend. You're like, oh, I finally mastered it. Now it's off to the next, you know, trend. So yeah,
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  46:48  that's it. Yeah, exactly. So, you know, with that in mind, let me ask you this, like, how? How do you personally try to fight that urge of, you know, this, this tunnel vision that I guess, our environment with the social media? A lot of them have really put that on us? Right? Yeah, you know, the website travels, if you travel a lot, when you, when you look at the website, it has this iconic shot all the time. And, you know, whether you like it or not, it really kind of great, you know, like, it really changed the way you see. And it really like when you get to that shot, they go like, Oh, yeah, this is this place. So how do you how do you fight that urge and, you know, try to look outside of the box.
Bret Blakely  47:36  I mean, to be honest, it's I my urge is to not do that, like I don't, I don't really have to fight that urge. Because I don't have that urge. I, I really want I want I consider so many photographers that are way better than me, way better than I'll ever be, no matter how much work I put into it. It could be they're better post product could be they're better at everything, like, I am still a beginner photographer, three years is not a long time, there are people that have been shooting for 2025, you know, I, I only work in Lightroom, I barely know how to do a thing on Photoshop, it's one of the things that are my goals for this year to to learn Photoshop and stuff, not because I want to change a bunch of stuff, but just because they're little things that I can, you know, due to lights and shadows, dodging and burning and stuff that I you know, I can do pretty well on Lightroom. But I'm sure to be able to do do better. So for me, it's like, I always just want to try and push myself to be creative, where what I get in field is like the foundation, and what I get field is already going to be different enough that I don't need to worry about like, processing it in a way that's going to fit a certain trend. I feel like if I if I push myself enough out in the field, and walk away with something that I'm really happy about, then there's zero urge anyway, that's going to like filter into that, my into my mindset, you know, going into post processing. So I think if you can get comfortable with that, and like kind of put more of the pressure on yourself, then, you know, let me be creative enough to see this scene that everybody sees in a way that nobody has, or very few people have. Because that'll make your photo stand out more than anything. And then just you know, I don't think that post processing and the trends of that will be nearly as much of an issue because you're already you're already going to the post processing. Happy with the picture for yourself. So then you're you're not going to feel an urge Well, I don't know if I really like it. So maybe I should just go towards something that everybody likes. I can get that. You know that endorphin from everybody being like, ah, sick man, I love that, you know, sick tones. It's if you're already happy with the photo before even touching in the editing, then it's not going to really be a determining factor. By the end how, you know, I think that urge is almost a moot point. It's not existent.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  50:06  Awesome. Yeah. So what what would you what would you say to someone who, you know, have this kind of struggle and urge or? Or not really have struggle? Or they might, they might not notice it right? But what would you say to the people out there who, who kind of struggled to get out of the comfort zone or who want to be able to capture a more unique photos? Than you know, the typical postcard or Instagram shot? What? You know, Wes, what are some of your mindset shifts that you can pass on to them? Yeah.
Bret Blakely  50:45  So a lot of times I sent my, one of my good friends came out to two towns with me who's not a photographer, but he loves the outdoors. And so he borrowed his mom's camera just so we'd have something to take. And every day, you know, just like most photographers, you point and shoot, like, you know, not thinking about anything else. And like, as I can I give you some advice, like just ways to go about it, you know, because trust me, every photographer does what you're doing the first time they have a camera out, and of course out there, there was so much to see just like smiling and taking pictures. So happy, right? Like a like a pig and shit and, and suddenly, but no matter what level of photographer I mean, now I find myself often like I got so I guess trained to shoot in Portrait mode because of Instagram. And then I started getting print requests. And I'm like, Oh my God, I need it for like people like prints and horizontal. A lot of times, like, sometimes portrait mode is not really the best mode so often often shoot the same scene, vertical, horizontal, high perspective, low perspective, have, you know, core recovered with a foreground element perspective. You know, I'll basically it was a challenge I put out to one of the rooms that was doing clubhouse would try and shoot something five different ways. And then try and edit it five different ways, you know, totally different fields, because that also helps people that don't really know what their style is figure it out. And also just give you flexibility, especially if you're selling prints or something if a client wants, like, Man, I love that shot, but I wish I had, you know, I needed to cover a hole, I need to be three feet wide or something or two feet wide, then you're like, actually, I have that shot. You know, I've got that shot too. So don't worry. So that'd be one thing, I would say, try and shoot, try and find five different compositions within a little, you know, three by three foot area that you stand in, you know, shoot a high, shoot a low shoot it all different ways on a tripod with a long exposure without a long exposure. And that's one thing. And then yeah, I would also just say, the more you become comfortable with postprocessing, the more you continue like that learning process, I think that's another way that you will not feel you will not feel pressured to fit into a trend. Because there's when there's a trend, there's always a video on how to do that trend. So yeah, it can be easy for you to just be like, how to edit like so and so and then they're gonna find a video. And it will literally walk you through your photo, like I did that in the beginning, that's supposed to find out how to do things like I didn't really understand how the light you know, the colour sliders were affecting and colour calibration, it's a great way to learn. Like if there are people that you I don't recommend not doing that as far as a learning tool. But I want to go about that and be like, Well, I'm just going to find whoever taught and that trend find a YouTube for it. So one thing that I've been doing this whole year, it's been my goal for 2021 to watch at least one tutorial video every night on anything real photography related doesn't always have to be whatever I feel like I need to get better at because for the first year, I was first six, nine months, I was watching all the time I was obsessed, then I just became more concerned with just getting out and shooting all the time and kind of forgot to continue the learning. And then I was like, you know, I there's still so much I need to learn. And you know, just even going back to some of the basic ones. It's good to like hammer those in. So I always challenge people to try and like commit. It's the last thing I do before I go to bed every night is just watch you know, a 15 to 30 minute YouTube video. Sometimes I take notes sometimes I don't even I just let it sink in. And then lo and behold, I noticed you know, two weeks later on post processing, and this technique I didn't even remember that I knew how to do from a video I watched you know two weeks ago I'm like, Oh, this would be great. They're great photo to try that on. So, you know that'll that'll help a lot. You know, once you have once you're more in control of of how something's gonna turn out you're not really going to feel the need to, I guess get into a trend I think.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  55:03  Awesome. Yeah. Like, that's, that's really awesome. Absolutely love that. And there's a lot of really good advice in there. You know, if you are listening, you might want to just rewind back to that fortune because that is such an amazing advice, especially, you know, for someone who kind of just started because I remember when I first started who just shot on on on phone? That's exactly what I did. I was, you know, I don't know, what's what's, what's composition is that I was curious, just like you and you shooting sunset, I would do like, literally I would be like, take one here, take one here and like, you know, just like snap happy, right? So people call it is you just take a whole bunch of photos and you know, at the end of it all when you have when all of those adrenaline kinda like toned down a little bit when you come back home, you know, you don't have the excitement that just make you push the button, you could actually think about it a little bit more and see, you know, which one kind of works. I didn't amazing advice. And you know, it's it's so easy to do, like, I know, like, as photographers, sometimes we get lazy, right? To kind of do this. It sounds like it's tedious. Like what take five photo of the same exact thing. Are you crazy? So it's great that you mentioned that because I think it's it's one of the best thing to to learn in, in photography, or actually in anything for that matter, because you get to see what works and what doesn't. Well, right, that's, you know, like, Man, I had so much fun, would love to have a chat more, we kind of come into the hour mark, and I'm not sure how much longer our listeners can can listen. But I definitely would love to have you back at some point. You know, I had, I had so much fun, just bouncing ideas from you and so many things that just really opened up my mind just like wow, I never really think about that. And I think you know, just the way you you, you you share your advice, your wisdom. One thing that I really want to make sure if you are listening is to have that open mind like you know, like Brett really, really share a lot of his wisdom and really share how you could broaden your view instead of you know, and there is no right answer here. Like there's just so important to really hone that in. So Brett, you have such amazing not only advice but also you have such a beautiful gallery of photos and now for those people who cannot want to get in touch with your connect with you or you know see more of your work. What is the best way for them to find you?
Bret Blakely  57:53  Oh yeah, for sure man and thank you so much for the discussion. I really enjoyed it. Definitely hope we get to shoot together one day but yeah, to find me I mean, Brent Blakely just be R et de la que el y that's my Instagram. I respond to every single direct message I get. I try and remain very engaged because it helped me out a lot. You know, when I reached out to names and I remember the ones that did and you know, and it's just not cool. Like when somebody is trying to learn ask you for advice or even if they're just giving you a compliment. I think I think you know ignoring those is really messed up. We're all the exact same you know, living on the same world so that's easy. You can DM me on Instagram, I'm on Facebook, Brent Blakely photography. I do have a website Brent Blakely dot dark excuse me dark room dot tech right now it's just an easy you know basic site that sells prints I'm going to be working on one that has more storytelling behind it that you know I have videos from my adventures from and blogs and things like that. But that's just that's a 2021 goal it's not you know not ready yet but if someone's interested in Prince Brett Blakely that dark room devtech
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  59:09  Awesome awesome and listeners if you you know if you're tuning in and if you're listening to this discussion, highly recommend to have a look at his gallery because his photo is just so beautiful and and you know, whatever he say here it's it's very true like you go to to his gallery, you can see all sorts of stuff, you know, from different genre and I think that makes it really interesting and dynamic to to enjoy. So yeah, highly recommend to check out his work and also
Bret Blakely  59:45  they got to check out your work because their stuff is amazing and I love it.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  59:48  Appreciate that right. But look, listeners. Thank you very much for tuning in. I hope you have a tonne of wisdom from on that on how to approach your photography, as well as how to think about what is photography, because it's really important that it is about you before you make it about everything, everyone else. So I think that's one thing that I really want to hone in in this discussion. And, you know, for those of you listen, if you enjoy this episode or the podcast, please help me out and shoot that like button, hit the subscribe button. Next time you get more of this golden nugget in, you know, in that you get to listen to beautiful inspiration for all photographers all around the world from all the different experience. So thanks a lot for tuning in wiki hunters. And, Brett again. Thank you so much for sharing a lot of your wisdom. It had been such an A fun hour. And you know what, like, I started this podcast because when I wanted to hear more inspiration and happiness in this darker times, but you know, this podcast every time I talk to a new photographer had really bring like a lot of inspiration for myself. So thanks a lot for bringing that to the table. And yeah, I think thank you very much for sharing your time and wisdom with us. My pleasure.
Bret Blakely  1:01:22  Such a cool honour to be on and thanks a lot. Keep killing it. I'll be in touch with you for sure.
 

Ep 24 - How Viktoria Haack, a Nikon & Lowepro Ambassador find balance in her photography to avoid burnout

Hey Wicked Hunters, 
I'm excited to have Viktoria Haack, Nikon and Lowepro Ambassador to join us this week. Viktoria shared her story on how she decided not to niche down on her photography. She shared her humble beginning and how she progressed in her photography journey over the years. Viktoria shared her view and approach on the different photography genre and how she finds the balance to avoid burn out and keep her spark and passion in photography.
You can learn more about her by connecting in
https://www.viktoriahaackphotography.ca/ 
 
https://www.instagram.com/viktoriahaack/
 
https://www.facebook.com/viktoriahaack 
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Website: podcast.thewickedhunt.com  
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For those of you who want to learn more about The Wicked Hunt Photography:
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Photo print: https://www.TheWickedHunt.com/ 
Don't forget to leave a review on the podcast if you enjoy this conversation, it would help us to get found and help to inspire other photographers. 
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Transcription:
Viktoria Haack  0:00  You know, I don't consider myself to be a landscape photographer or a wedding photographer. I just consider myself to be a photographer. So wherever I am, whatever I want to shoot I shoot
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  0:20  Hey, weekenders Welcome back to The Art of Photography podcast where we share our passion and how photography gives us hope, purpose and happiness. Today, I have someone very excited, exciting. And Victoria has been, you know, in the game for a while, and she is one of the world class photographer who is currently living here in Canada. I guess it's still considered as Canadian Rockies. And you know, if you look at her photos, she goes from portrait all the way to landscape and her photos are absolutely amazing. So without further further ado, I'd like to welcome Victoria How're you doing, Victoria? Hi, Sandy.
Viktoria Haack  1:02  I'm good. Thank you so much for having me.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  1:05  Oh, perfect. Well, yeah, thank you very much for joining us. I'm sure the listener will be, you know, very excited to listen to some of your story and some of your struggles. So first of all, give us a little bit introduction, you know, who is Victoria, and kind of give us a little bit of background, how you fell in love with photography in the first place. And why you decided to, you know, make it a full time thing.
Viktoria Haack  1:36  Okay, so I've been doing photography, probably, well, I mean, I should probably start by saying I've always been interested in in the art, so I was going to be a fine artist. And I headed off to art college to do that to start with. And then I ended up doing an art history degree. And I studied more kind of anthropology and non western art. So that was kind of interesting. So I moved away from actually physically creating art for a while. I then ended up working for the National Trust in the UK, which is a big conservation charity. And I moved on to a tiny island with my husband, and this island was only 500 acres in size, and only about 10 minutes from the mainland. But we were fairly isolated, the boats would stop running at about 430 In the afternoon, and they didn't run before, I think it was eight o'clock in the morning. So we were kind of stuck on this little island. And it was beautiful. It was a nature reserve. And it was really beautiful. But it was at that point that I picked my camera back up. I mean, there wasn't, you know, you couldn't kind of pop to the cafe or the pub or whatever at night. So really well, you know, it was fairly isolated in from that respect. So I picked my camera back up, and I had a dog and so I would walk the dog on the island, and I would just take my camera with me. And so I was seeing the same kind of views every day, but with a little bit of different light or a little bit of mist or things like that. So that's kind of where I started with photography. And when I lived on the island, I had no one to really share what I was shooting with. So I, I started using online stuff. So I went online, and there was a a site called Deviant Art, which I used. And so I would upload my images. And I would get inspiration from the other photographers that I could see on that site. And I was very new to it. Also, I was kind of learning the craft by looking at their images, and then trying to figure out how they done stuff. And then sharing my images and, you know, getting some feedback from people. And so that's kind of how it really started. And I guess I was lucky in that my first commercial client was the National Trust, who are a very large organisation in the UK, but because I worked for them, you know, it was a great, great step, they needed some images of the island, I had images. And so my first big client was this huge client. So that was pretty awesome as a start. And then we left the island after 10 years looking for a place that was kind of quiet. But and so that we could, you know, maybe go out for a meal in a restaurant or like go to the pub or something. But we still wanted it to not be you know, super busy and we love the landscape. And my brother lived in Canada at the time. And so we ended up moving to Canada. And we've been here ever since. So that was 13 years ago that we moved here. And then I continued you know, I was suddenly able to visit way more places so I could jump in the car, and you know, go shoot different stuff. I had more than 500 acres to shoot. And so you know, it was fantastic. And I continue to post my stuff on social media. I started using Facebook at the time. And then I think inevitably, you know, what happens is if you're in a small community, people see your work and then you know They'll think, oh, this person is a photographer, maybe they can photograph my kids or something. And so I ended up, you know, shooting, doing kind of family stuff. And it was terrible, you know, really scary, you know, shooting commercially and people paying me for stuff, they'd see my landscapes and then asked me to shoot that family. And I was like, Oh, okay. So I kind of fell into commercial work that way. And it just kind of escalated from there. So then I, you know, I shot my first wedding, which was kind of scary, but then, you know, I kind of got over that, and continued doing that. And, really, it's just a story of living in a small community and shooting a lot of different things. Because I couldn't be, there wouldn't be an industry to support me as a food photographer, for example, in this tiny little town, so I needed to continue to shoot everything. And initially, my landscaping nature work didn't really generate any kind of income, you know, I was just really shooting that for myself. And then gradually, that has come as well. So I'm pretty lucky that I can be a photographer who shoots many different things and can turn my eye in a lot of different directions and still make an income from all those different sources. So that's kind of my story of how I got here. That's amazing. So
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  6:13  do you still shoot a wedding? Or you can put that, oh, wow, okay.
Viktoria Haack  6:19  Still, my, my income is made of so many different kinds of small things. So I mean, I'm not making a load of money from one big thing. But my, my income comes from a number of smaller kind of sources. And I think the thing that I enjoy was, at one point, I was making, you know, quite a lot of money from wedding photography, but I felt kind of burnt out, I didn't want to be shooting, you know, weddings all summer, and my daughter was growing up, and I was spending my summer editing. And so I thought, you know, okay, I'm just not going to do too much of that, I'm going to do a little bit of that. And so I've always tried to keep everything in some kind of a balance, so that I don't get, you know, don't get bored of shooting people's weddings, and I don't dread shooting the next wedding, I actually look forward to it, because I don't do you know, so much of it. Like when again, when I was first doing kind of commercial people photography, I would get to kind of the end of the fall, which is big kind of family photo time. And I would just say I don't want to see another smiling face, you know, just put take me to the mountains, I just want to get out of it. So I've tried to, and I've been lucky that I've been able to kind of balance the different genres so that I can enjoy, you know, still continuing to shoot wedding photography, still doing family stuff, or whatever it is. But there's a nice kind of a balance.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  7:36  So that's great to hear. Thanks for sharing that, you know, I myself love. I love so many things I like, you know, so many different genres of photography, and I find I struggle with that, like trying to find a balance. And that's, you know exactly what you say I usually do one thing so much and now burnout and and move on to the next day and then go like, Oh, I missed the other thing is, yeah, it's interesting that you share that. It's it's definitely, like a different type of photography really bring a different type of fulfilment, I suppose. To our soul. So yeah, very interesting. And so I see a lot of this work from you where it's, it's like a winter wonderland. Portrait, like a moral landscape that is complemented with a portrait not Not, not mainly a portrait, but like a landscape with a portrait. And, you know, those, those work are just so beautiful. I really love being able to have that fashion part of it with the landscape. What got you started into that? And, yeah, share us a little bit what got you into the story into that and why you started to do that.
Viktoria Haack  8:52  I think because all the different genres of photography that I shoot crossover, I don't see any kind of, you know, I don't see any, you know, I don't consider myself to be a landscape photographer, or a wedding photographer, I just consider myself to be a photographer. So wherever I am, whatever I want to shoot, I shoot. So if I'm shooting a landscape, and I think, oh, this might be cool to, you know, put a person in there and see what that looks like, then that's what I do. Like, I just don't feel that there are any, I don't want to be bounded by any kind of, you know, I don't want any boundaries on what I can shoot. So basically, if I'm in the landscape, and I happen to be hiking with a friend and you know, I think I maybe shoot the landscape and I think it's missing something or it you know, how interesting would it be to put the human element in here and sometimes I will shoot those shots and they will never see the light of day and sometimes the shots with the human and the ones that I you know, prefer to share or maybe I share both, but it's just another you know, facet of things that interests me and I could just be with my A dog might pop him into the shot just to see how that looks. So there's, I really just have no, I think there's just no there. And there's also not an awful lot of pre planning, I'm usually just in the place, and I just do whatever feels like I want to do. Like, it's as simple as that really
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  10:20  awesome. And so I, you know, when I, when I think of, you know, landscape photography, or when I'm on the wearing the landscape photography, hat, usually I really focus about the landscape and the nature and stuff like that and totally forgot about, you know, adding human element on that. But when I see your work, it really creates something that is that is extra ordinary, you know, like something that's really different. How do you how do you think that adding human to your to landscape help you with creativity and creating a more unique images?
Viktoria Haack  11:01  Um, I mean, there are people that absolutely hate seeing the human element in the landscape. And I'm, I'm also one of those people too, sometimes, you know, I just don't want to see I just want to see the landscape. I don't know, I think it's a difficult one. Yeah, I don't know, I've kind of I'm kind of lost track of my thought now. But sorry, remind me again, what the question is,
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  11:29  I was just, my question was just simply like, you know, do you think that it's important for photographers, you know, like people like landscape photographers, to think about a different genre of photography, and try to incorporate that with, you know, what they love the most in photography, in order to create a unique type of photo, you know, we all know that photography is, can be saturated in a way. So Does, does that help you with your creativity and being able to create something that stands out?
Viktoria Haack  12:04  I think so. I mean, I think we're all so different, that I think that, you know, if you, I think you should I, my feeling is that you should just do whatever speaks to you, if it, you know, I don't think that landscape photographers should necessarily put a human element into their landscape photography, if that's not their thing, you know, but if they want to, then why should they not that, you know, I just think that it should be it's an art form. And it's, however, you want to express yourself in whatever medium and I think, just because you're a landscape photographer, you shouldn't feel that you shouldn't do that thing, if you want to do that thing. But I think it should just be open, I think you should, you know, in the same way that I think that, you know, you don't have to shoot the landscape with a wide angle lens, you can shoot it with a long lens, you can shoot details, you can shoot, you know, I don't think there should be any rules, really, in that respect, I think, you know, it's an art form, and you should be able to express yourself and shoot, you know, however you want to do it. And just for me, sometimes adding the human element adds something to certain images. And sometimes it probably doesn't, and then I won't use that shot, or maybe I do use that shot. And people are just like, why the heck did you put that? You know, sometimes maybe it doesn't work? I don't know. But I just, you know, sometimes it just adds maybe a little bit of scale or adds, you know, I think I posted a shot on my Instagram recently, it was a frozen waterfall, and I posted the shot without the human element and the shot with the human element, you know, and then there are those people that, you know, the majority of people on Instagram prefer the human element, but that just might be, you know, the people that were looking at that image, and for some people, they probably would just rather not see a person in there. So, you know, it's so subjective. I'm not very good at giving you a clear answer on that one.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  13:50  But that's great. Yeah. So like, I guess what I get from that is, you know, not don't be afraid to, to go outside your comfort zone and try to incorporate different things in your photography.
Viktoria Haack  14:03  Yeah, I agree. And I think there is some, you know, I think sometimes if you're labelled as a landscape photographer, you know, why should you not you know, but people that just are very keen, I think, sometimes to stay within their particular genre, because they think that it's going to, if they shoot other stuff, or share other stuff, and I think the other thing that I've learned from a lot of photographers is that they do shoot a lot of different things, but they just don't choose to share it, they choose to just share the thing that they want to be known for. And I mean, I don't know whether that's, you know, there there are schools of thought that that say that that's definitely the way that you should go and that's definitely what I always you know, learned was that you know, you should, you should have a niche, you should just shoot the one thing and be a specialist at that. But all I can say that is in my own personal experience. The opposite has worked for me I have kind of made more of a name for myself by being more of a generalist and shooting different things. Things that I have from just shooting the one thing, but I hope that people would still take me seriously in whichever genre I'm, you know, shooting, and that's the thing. I don't know, maybe I'm not considered to be a landscape in nature photographer by many people, because I shoot other stuff, too. I don't know.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  15:19  That's fantastic. Yeah, I mean, you know, I know that there are a lot of photographers out there who enjoy just shooting and not, not being able to, I guess not, not not being able, but not being pressured to label themselves as a certain photographer would really, you know, take that weights off, you know, their shoulder, as, as you say earlier, there's a lot of this notion of, you know, niching, down, niching down, and, you know, it might be true in a way but in some other way, if that takes away the happiness of shooting and taking photo, then I totally agree with you, you know, just do do take what you love. So really good advice there, thank you very much for sharing that. Sharing some, some of your struggle I know, you know, being a female in a male dominated photography, male dominated industry can be challenging, I would be guessing. So share some of your struggles, and maybe some of the stories on where you can where the listeners can find some inspiration and find some. What do you call it, like, someone to look up to, when it comes to photography and excelling in photography?
Viktoria Haack  16:41  So I think, you know, when I was starting out, it was there were definitely more male kind of landscape and nature photographers that you would see, I don't know that there are less women shooting, I just think that they were less visible. And, you know, this is something that I've really thought about a lot, I think, certainly there are more and more female, nature and landscape photographers becoming visible. And I think that's the key is that people just need to see that there are people like them out there. And I think that, you know, it comes down to you know, the colour of your skin, and, you know, whatever it is, like, you need to see that there are people like you doing the thing that you love, because that helps you to feel that you you can succeed in that thing. So yeah, I mean, to be honest, like, I haven't had huge struggles, I don't think as a as a woman, just Well, I don't know, maybe I just maybe I just don't notice stuff. But I think the main thing has just been the lack of visibility of women out there. And I think that's certainly changing these days, you're seeing a lot more women. And, and I think a lot, there are more different styles of kind of nature and landscape photography that we're seeing as well, because I know, you know, at one point, I was using a kind of 500 px as an example of as a, an online sharing platform, and you would see very similar styles of photography all the time, you know, very much the wide angle, excuse me, landscape. And I think, you know, things, I'm certainly seeing a change in what I'm viewing on social media, I'm seeing, you know, different styles of nature and landscape photography, which is a real kind of breath of fresh air, I just think anything that opens the doors and allows people to express themselves and not feel that this is the only way or this is, this is the only way to be popular, if that's what they want. You know, it's just nice to see, as with everything in life, a diversity of, you know, people and of styles. And, you know, that's, that's yeah, I'm not sure if I went off track again, there.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  18:51  It's very interesting that you mentioned that actually, because I never really considered that. But yeah, like, it's very interesting that, to think that, you know, it might not necessarily there are less female photographers, but maybe just less female photographers that are more vocal about it, that there wasn't as much back then. So that's very interesting point of view.
Viktoria Haack  19:14  So sorry, just to interrupt, but I do own workshops and things, you know, the the number of women, there's loads of women up there, and when I'm out, you know, in the back country and stuff, but there's not more men than women, and there's, you know, just as many women with cameras and stuff, they're out there doing it, but for some reason they've just not been as visible I think, you know, that's that's the thing. There's definitely a lot of women out there doing it. Sorry.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  19:39  Yeah, no, that's perfect. And so is that I guess, you know, like being a male like we all like to we all have that dominant you know, nature on our cell phone, that self centeredness you're gonna get there. Well, there's the female subtypes are a little bit more mode is about there. But they are about themselves. So would you encourage? What would what would you encourage other female photographers to get out there and to be to share more of their work? You know, to be seen more of, in this world of photography.
Viktoria Haack  20:15  So you say, what? How would I encourage them to? Yeah, what what I think sometimes, as well, with female photographers, they tend to be just for my, the experience that I've had, and I could be wrong with this, but I see a kind of an intuitiveness, about female photographers, often it's less, they tend to be less technical, and more kind of intuitive, intuitive. And so sometimes when they're placed in a situation with, you know, guys who are maybe talking or kind of techie terms, it can be a bit a bit intimidating, or it's just not the way that their brain and I'm not might be making sweeping statements here, I'm not sure. But I know, I've been in situations where, you know, I've been sitting with, you know, some some guys chatting about landscape photography, and there tends to be a very kind of technical bias to that kind of talk. And sometimes I feel a little lost, but you know, I can look at I know my staff, but it's, it's an intuitive kind of, I can't necessarily put the right word to it, but it's more of an intuitive thing. And I think for some women, because that there were a lot of men that were very visible in the landscape field and running the workshops, and that kind of stuff, the thought of going on one of those workshops where maybe you the technical side would be would be just kept, you know, sort of talked about in terms that weren't as, as, as easy for you to connect to. Maybe that has been something that women have found difficult. But, you know, I hope I'm not making massive sweeping statements here about the sexes, but and there are lots of women who are really technically savvy, I'm not one of those women, but for different, I should really be talking from my own point of view, but certainly for me, I'm not that technical. So that kind of stuff I find a little bit intimidating. And so I could see maybe some other women might feel the same. I don't know.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  22:12  Interesting, thanks for sharing that point of view. I've never really again, it's something that I never really think about. And yeah, that's very interesting to think about, you know, whether how we approach it as, as a human in terms of photography, so I'm really get technical about the gears and the settings. And I know that there is a lot of people who really care a lot about, like, what the settings is, well as like, you know, like, for example, for me, like if you if you ask me, it's like, what setting you shoot is like, I'm not sure I just put it on the aperture priority mode. And, you know, if you set your priority, right, the, the photo will turn out, right. So that's, I can totally relate to that. And that's, I think that's not only in, you know, fail in mail kind of separation, but just like in personality separation, I can definitely see that. Because, like, when I when I see people talking about it's like, oh, yeah, this is the settings, I get switched off as well. It's like, you know, like, it's just a number guys. So, yeah, I'm glad that you share that. It's something that I've never really think about. And I guess when you know, when you do like a workshop, a lot of workshop like yourself, it's important to understand that point of view so that you can relate to different people at their own level. So perfect. Yeah.
Viktoria Haack  23:35  Sorry, carry on.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  23:38  So, share share with us. One of your favourite story in photography, or your favourite moment in photography, where you, you know, where you capture a certain photo and it's just maybe one of your favourite or one of your memorable because of the condition that you had to capture those photos.
Viktoria Haack  24:00  I'm just trying to think of one I guess one of my, one of my favourite images would be one that I shot. I think it was not this last fall but the fall before and I just headed out with a friend. And we had some kind of Misty conditions but no sun coming through. So it's very kind of dull and and sort of overcast but some some some quite nice poor frost and mist, but just waiting for the light to come. And we will just buy a lake and we had suddenly had about 10 minutes of this beautiful the light just broke through the clouds. And we just had these beautiful light rays and just this intense, beautiful life for just a short sliver of time and then disappeared again. But I get I think it's moments like that for me like just these, you know when you're in nature and especially when you go out as regularly as I do and, you know, quite often conditions are not not optimal for the for the kind of, I don't know, and this is the other, we're going off point here in my mind because you know there are, you can say that conditions are not optimal for landscape photography, but really any conditions can be great for landscape photography, you just have to go out. But when you do hit those golden moments when you know the light does something beautiful and you happen to be in the right spot, and you know, you can shoot it, it kind of, it really helps with those many days when you head out with your camera. And you know, you don't get that kind of situation. And you know, you can be shooting all sorts of things you can be shooting puddles with, you know, frozen puddles, or leaves, or you know, there's so many different things you can shoot, but it is really nice when nature delivers those amazing moments and you happen to be there, especially when you go out as regularly as I do, and that doesn't happen. So it is nice when it does. But yeah, I guess that would be one moment. Interesting.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  25:55  And, you know, I'm glad that you mentioned that because I think as, as photographers, we really get fixated on that perfect, perfect moments, I'd say in quotation marks. The audience might not necessarily be able to see that, but I'm doing this quotation mark, get jester here. Yeah, that perfect moment. And I love how you share that. You know, like, it's not always about that perfect moment. One thing that I want to, I want to get your take on is, you know, especially like you do like weddings as well. What, what can you do when, when the condition doesn't turn out the way you like it, like, you know, or the way you expect it, I should say, because, you know, as a photographer, whatever photoshoot we we plan to do, usually we have this expectation of, you know, the lights going to be like this, and the sun's gonna be you know, at a certain angle or whatever it may be, you know, but what, what can you do? And what what do you do when the condition can I just say it's like, you know, what I'm getting give you the whole total expectation from from what you had in mind.
Viktoria Haack  27:07  I think it's two, it's kind of different when I'm shooting portrait stuff to landscape stuff. But as an example of a landscape situation, I was heading into the back country in the footage last fall with it with a couple of friends and the forest fires were really raging down in the US and the smoke was really bad coming up into Canada. And, you know, you could you could barely see anything like you couldn't see the mountains, you couldn't, you know, it's like, do we go like, we can't even see the mountains. And then of course, you've got the issue of actually hiking in those smoky conditions. And you know, how much you breathing in, and is it worth doing this, and I know, loads of people, because that particular hike that we were booked onto, we'd had real problems getting onto it, it was very popular. And so loads of people had cancelled that trip, and maybe partly because of the actual physical problems they might encounter with hiking in the smoke. But I that trip produced some of the most, some of the images that I loved the best last year, that hazy smoke, added this amazing atmosphere to the shots. They're some of my favourite images. And I think, you know, if I'd have actually looked at, you know, I did look at the forecast. And if I'd have gone by that and thought, well, you know, I won't see the mountains, and you know, it, I think, you know, sometimes those adverse conditions can produce the most beautiful and unexpected things. And I think that can be the issue with projecting forward what you want to capture rather than just being I mean, I think, you know, we all do that to some extent. And I certainly, if I'm going to a place, I will look at images of that area, just to get some idea of what I might see and that kind of stuff, and you see certain conditions, and you're just like, Oh, I really want that I really want those conditions. But I think if you just go with an open mind and adapt to whatever is provided, sometimes those adverse conditions can produce the most beautiful and unexpected results, but you just have to adapt to the environment and not be fixated on Well, I was going to get that shot with that tree and that mountain and it doesn't work because of this and so I can't shoot it you just arrive and then just see what is presenting itself to you and shoot it that way. And then I think with the portrait stuff, you know, again, I'm when I shoot, when I shoot portrait stuff for me, the environment, again is really important. So I'm often looking at weather forecasts and you know, trying to predict whether if there's sun, what direction will it be in so you know, where am I going to position my client or whatever. So it's a slightly different situation, but whatever happens, you know, if you're booked to shoot at that time, then you have to just go with the conditions that are available and adapt. And, you know, for example, if it's a super bright sunny day, you know, then maybe move your subject into the shade. You'd or you know, there's loads of different things you can do. But it's slightly different, I think, with portraiture and I mean, I've got a shoot coming up tomorrow. And I need to look at the weather forecast. So I will start by, you know, it's a portrait shoot, I will start by looking at the weather forecast and trying to figure out what the light might be might be doing. So then I can decide on what kind of location but at the end of the day, it could all be totally different. So I'm just gonna have to kind of plan according to that, and then just go with whatever I'm provided with, and try and make the best of it and move things around to just make use of the conditions. And quite often, you go into a shoot with the idea of maybe the thing that you want to get, but quite often, you'll come up with something entirely different, but it could be better. So I just think Don't be disappointed if you can't capture the thing that you envisioned. You can have that kind of idea, but maybe something even better will happen. So yeah,
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  30:56  awesome. Yeah, I think one that one word that I really like what you just mentioned, you know, within that, within what you shared earlier, is that that open mind, like approach it with an open mind. And I think that's a really, really strong word, when it comes to photography, because I know I had done this in the past, where I go come to a location, the condition doesn't look great. And then I would just go home. But over time, like you say, like, you know, sometimes it's unexpected, unexpected things would happen. And if you don't, if you don't approach photography, with an open mind, I probably would miss a lot of those moments for sure. Because, you know, we just go like, okay, not great, let's go home. But if you approach it with an open mind, you could look past that and look at different things around the area. So yeah, that's a really good advice that you have, they're fantastic. And so, do you have a source of inspiration that you usually go to when it feels like, you know, when you feel uninspired, or when you feel like, you know, like, when you don't feel like taking photos, and your photo is just like repetition or, you know, boring and so forth? How would you find? And how would you get out of that mindset and try to find that spark, again, and that creativity within yourself to create a photo that you can be excited again,
Viktoria Haack  32:25  I think, you know, I spend quite a lot of time looking at the work of other photographers, and, you know, kind of going down rabbit holes on different social media platforms, and, you know, looking at people's websites and that kind of stuff. And so yeah, I just find looking at other people's art, you know, if I'm struggling, you know, I know, with the pandemic, and people not being able to travel, I've been become a lot more interested in the smaller scenes, which I was interested in back when I started photography, but that stuff kind of went by the wayside a little bit. And so looking at the way that, you know, certain people are shooting, you know, kind of smaller scenes and stuff, that gives me inspiration. And so, you know, I'll head out with my dog with no plan to shoot anything, but just take my camera. And then as I'm moving around in the forest, and the light does something or I see something, you know, sometimes in the back of my mind, I'll come back to some of those images that I've seen, and I've been maybe looking at recently and they will help to inspire me or help me to think about how I would approach shooting that certain subject. So I think, you know, looking at other people's work is is for me, that's one of the you know, and I think you know, not just looking at one person you never want to to just copy somebody but just taking inspiration from a number of different photographers is probably how I do and artists as well and sometimes reading stuff or watching a movie can trigger something you know, you can be watching a movie and then there's some kind of like, you know, if you're into portrait photography and you watch Blade Runner or something like that, you know there's a certain feel to that movie. And that can can help me to feel inspired about maybe doing some kind of a shoot with that kind of a feel or so yeah, just being open to kind of and the same with music you know, music can can kind of make me feel creative as well. So yeah, a number of different ways. But I think for me, I just you know, I have to just go out as well so look at stuff you know, look at stuff in books or on the screens or whatever, but then I have to actually go out there's no point in me just sitting here thinking about well if I do this, you know, I've just I've just need to get out there and actually, you know, maybe not go out there with the intention of shooting but have my camera with me and then that everything kind of comes into play the images that I've seen will you know they'll still be in my mind and that kind of stuff.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  34:50  Awesome. Yeah, that's a it's really interesting with the music, something that I've never really considered but yeah, you're right because like with the music, you get this stuff. From feeling and you know, when you have different feeling you approach things differently, never really done that, but definitely something that I would try now. That's very interesting advice there. Now with, with the, you know, photography being, we can call it saturated being so popular, right? How do you stand out amongst all of these photographers? You know, for, for those listeners who can just start it and in their journey in, in their photography journey, what kind of advice would you would you give them to be able to stand out from other photographers
Viktoria Haack  35:43  out there? I think the key thing is to not try to adapt yourself to what you think that you should be or, you know, I think you need to really hold on to the thing that's important to you. So for example, you know, if you, I don't know, if you if you're stuck at home with your kids, you know, and and photographing your kids in a certain way is the thing that really speaks to you. There's no point in trying to be I don't know, I think really, whatever's really interests, you don't shoot stuff that doesn't interest you. Because there's no point there'll be no soul in it. So she, what, what means something to you, and what interests you and, and stick with it, and you can listen to advice from people and take little snippets of it. But ultimately, I think, listening to your own gut feeling about what speaks to you, and what works for you, is certainly what I've done. You know, I mean, like I said earlier, so many people said, Oh, you need you need to specialise, you need to be this, you need to be that. And I just thought, well, you know, I don't want to, like I want to, if I want to shoot that, I want to shoot that. And so I'm going to do it. And I might, you might know that if you put it out there, if you're engaging stuff by some of your social media, you know, you're gonna have people that will be like, Oh, I didn't want to see that. And maybe they'll unfollow you, but that's okay. With me. I'm just like, Okay, well, that's okay. You know, if you don't, if you don't want to stick around for those kind of images, then you know, by that's okay. Like, I'll still continue to, to shoot what, what interests me and I think that's the key for people. You know, just really stick with what resonates, resonates for you. And then ultimately, you know, hopefully, your own vision will bring you above the crowd. And you'll kind of, hopefully, if you want to get noticed, I don't know, but you'll certainly feel more fulfilled if that's, you know, if you're not in it for the for the money or you're not in it for the social media, then you'll certainly feel more fulfilled if you do it for yourself as well.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  37:48  Awesome. Yeah, that's, I think that's something that's really important for I mean, in photography, anyway, I know that I have kind of fall down that mistake before where, you know, I cannot take away my love for photography, trying to confirm conform with what other people like. So really, I think that's really important in photography or in, in sustaining your love for photography in the longer term. Yeah, really. And so, having said that, you know, like when you kind of shift from, for those listeners who kind of want to shift from just being a hobby and try to make a living out of their passion, whether they want to do it as a full time or a part time, what are some of the advice can you can you give them, you know, based on your journey,
Viktoria Haack  38:42  um, it's gonna be so different for every single photographer, it's really hard to know, I think, just, I think always trying to be sort of true to yourself. And, you know, whether you're trying to make money or not people, if, you know, people tend to buy from people that they like, as well. So, you know, if you're, if you're going to spend an hour shooting with someone, they kind of, you know, they want to like you as well, so, I don't know, it's a tough one, but be true to yourself, don't be an asshole, like try and be a nice person. And, you know, I think that kind of pays off really, like you know, just be a nice person, be somebody who responds to people that that inquires of things with you be be someone who hopefully is generally likeable. And then they might want to do business with you. And it's not really a photography. It's not too much about the imagery but more about just the kind of person that you are. I think
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  39:49  that's, that's really interesting. I mean, you know, when you think about it, it's very true. You know, like, nowadays people with with the social media, we feel like it feels sometimes it feels like it's more distance, right with with, with, with this human interaction. So I think that's a really good advice, being able to being able to be a person and be personable will actually give you a competitive advantage. Yeah, that's a really good advice.
Viktoria Haack  40:19  I think so. And I think, you know, like, if you're, if you're physically shooting somebody, so for example, if you're shooting somebody, somebody's wedding and you're with them for 12 to 14 hours, you know, you need to not be need to be a reasonable person, you need to be somebody that they want to be with for that amount of time. But But again, you know, coming back to social media stuff and social media interactions as well, you know, if people interact with you, and you don't bother to even say, Thanks, or, you know, how did they feel about that? How does that make them feel if they take the time to say something about your image, and you just put it out there, and you're just like, well, here's my stuff, and you can like it, you know, like, it's, it's, I feel that, you know, for me, social media is, like a global, it's like, word of mouth, but on a huge scale. So it's like, if you're trying to build those clients by word of mouth, in your city or your town, social media is that same thing, like you're building clients, potentially, but on a global scale. So if you interact with them the way that you would a person, I, that's how I look at it. So you know, I feel that if somebody messages me, unless it's, you know, just a spam thing, then I will do my utmost to respond to that. And the same with people making comments about my posts, or whatever. And even, you know, people that may say stuff that you don't want to hear, you know, they may not say the most complimentary thing, but again, I think thinking about how you deal with that, and not just like losing your shit, and just like that, and then have it, you know, like, think about how you're going to respond to that, because, you know, you this is these are potentially your clients as well. So, yeah, I may have gone off track there. I'm sorry, if I did.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  42:02  The thing you're really spot on now, um, you know, I mean, like, I know that as with the social media, it's true. Sometimes it feels like you're, you're talking to a robot, right? You know, some, some, some people doesn't reply, you know, and kind of go like, okay. It's like, it's like, well, thanks. I'm talking to the wall. It's literally it feels like that isn't the I know, it's the social media, but it literally feels like that, like, you know, if you're talking to somebody in a cafe, and he or she doesn't reply to you, that's literally what it feels like. But yeah, it's, it's really interesting. Because you because like, you don't see the expiration, so you don't really kind of you don't really think of that sometimes, but when when you think about it, it's literally feels like you're talking to a wall when you don't reply to someone else.
Viktoria Haack  42:55  Yeah, totally. I mean, every person that puts a comment out there is a person. Yeah, like, so if you can attach the person to the comment, and respond to them in that way. You know, it would be the same as like walking down the street and someone says to you, that's a really nice coat you're wearing and you're just like, do you say nothing? When you say, well, thanks. And it's hard to you know, if you do have, you know, if you are busy on social media, it's not always easy to keep up with all of that stuff. And maybe you can't always be, you know, 100% responsive, but I think that it goes a long way to let you know, if you let people know that they have been hurt, even if you can't necessarily respond, because you're really busy. You know, like the these we're all humans out there. So I think you need to interact with people in that way.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  43:45  Oh, that's amazing. Definitely. You just changed the way I think about social media for sure. You know, like, like, I know, like, it's, it's always in my in my mind that you know, there's it's a person behind that that account, but when you put it that way, it's really different. Like, you know, think think of it like, like you say when you're taught when you when somebody gives you a compliment on your colour, it's yeah, it's totally like true. Like, wow, it's just I had, sorry, I just have a big aha moment. Just like wow, that's, that's amazing. Awesome. Well, thanks a lot for sharing that. Victoria. I'm just coming on onto our one hour mark here. So one question that I always ask the guests that come here is what advice like if you were to give one advice to other photographers out there, it can be anything? What would what would that advice be?
Viktoria Haack  44:43  That's a tough one. I don't know. I think, I think I think probably the advice I would give is, just remember why you picked up your camera. You know, whatever you're doing. Remember about why you picked it up. So if you, you know, if it's your business and you're trying to make money out of it or whatever, just remember why you pick the camera up and come back to that at some point because we can get lost in all the different things that we're trying to achieve. But what was it that that that took us to picking up the camera? And how did we? Why did we continue with it? Why did we pick it up? Why did we shoot? Why did we keep shooting? So what what was it about it that made you want to carry on to start with, even if you may have lost that now? Probably that's,
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  45:32  that's that's a really good advice. You know, like, back in 2020. I like at the end of the 2020. I had a photography Bernau. And it was, it was something that I never thought I would ever have. Because I love photography, too, so much. But yeah, like at the end of it, I did exactly what you say. We're just like, try to remember what I love about it and stop putting expectation for for myself when I go out and shooting. And yeah, I think I think that's a really important advice, too, you know, that you just gave out there. So thanks for sharing that. Well, Victoria, it's been a pleasure, I had so much aha moments, they own that conversation. I love them all the wisdom and the advice that you shared with not only me, but also the listeners out there. And hopefully, you know, the listeners out there can relate to some of those, some of those advice and some of those stories that you gave out and make a difference in not only their in their photography, but also in their life. So yeah, thanks a lot for that. So I know you have a beautiful collection of photos. How can the listeners find or, you know, get to know you better and see more of your photos.
Viktoria Haack  46:46  I've got a website. So if you want to head to my website, it's Victoria heart photography.ca. The spelling of my name is very strange and difficult. So
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  46:56  I'll put it under description. No worries at all.
Viktoria Haack  47:00  I've got a website. I'm on Instagram, at Victoria Hawk, and I'm on Facebook, Victoria Hart photography as well. So yeah, come say hi, I will always do my best to say hi, back.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  47:12  Oh, fantastic. Oh, thanks a lot for for that. Thanks a lot for being here. And we really enjoy it. Well, I really enjoy that conversation. And I'm sure the listeners do too. There's so many things that I have learned. And I'm sure you will reach a lot of the audience in there and bring some inspiration to them. So thanks for being here. And I really appreciate your time, to the time that you spare to share all of this experience that you had.
Viktoria Haack  47:43  Thank you so much, Stanley, I really appreciate you inviting me Thank you.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  47:46  Well, weekenders there you have it is absolutely beautiful advice is there, some that I definitely, you know, some point of view that I never really have in my, in my mind or in my experience before and it's definitely something that I that will change how I approach photography and also how I approach sharing my photography. So I'm really glad that we had this conversation. Just let us know and hit that hit. Hit that like button and subscribe to the podcast if you enjoy it. Don't forget to have a look at Victoria's work. It is absolutely stunning. And as she shares in this in this podcast, he have a really wide range of photography collection and they all beautiful, so highly recommend to say hi, visit her or visit her on her Instagram and Facebook. And yeah, just like Victoria says you always try to reply to everyone. So don't hesitate to give her a nudge and say hi. Well thank you very much for being here. And I'll see you guys next week.
 
 

Ep 23 - Story Behind Tom Cannon’s favourite underwater wildlife photo and how it got featured in Nat Geo App

Hey Wicked Hunters, 
This week we take you out of the world, into the underwater. I'm so excited to chat with Tom Cannon, an underwater wildlife photographer from Western Australia. In this podcast, he shared his journey on how he got into underwater photography, his story behind his favourite shot that eventually got used by the National Geographic app and the challenges that our Marine National park is struggling with.  
You can learn more about her by connecting in
www.tomcannon.com.au
https://www.instagram.com/tomcannonphotography
www.protectwhatyoulove.com.au 
https://instagram.com/protectwhatyoulove.com.au
Other ways to listen and subscribe to the podcast:
Spotify - http://bit.ly/twhspotify 
Apple Podcast - https://bit.ly/Theartofphotography 
Google Podcast: https://bit.ly/TheArtOfPhotographyWithStanleyAr 
Website: podcast.thewickedhunt.com  
Tune In (Alexa) - https://bit.ly/TuneInTheArtOfPhotographyPodcastWithStanleyAr 
For those of you who want to see more of The Wicked Hunt Photography:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thewickedhunt/   
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thewickedhunt/
Masterclass: https://www.TheWickedHuntPhotography.com   
Photo print: https://www.TheWickedHunt.com/ 
Don't forget to leave a review on the podcast if you enjoy this conversation, it would help us to get found and help to inspire other photographers. 
 

Ep 22 - How Camera helped published writer Lynn Martel to compliment her stories through photos

Hey Wicked Hunters, 
Welcome back to The Art of Photography Podcast!
Today we have a published and award-winning writer sharing her creative journey through writing and photography. Lynn grew up in Montreal and moved to Banff, Alberta, in Canada’s Rocky Mountains, in the early 1980s. She shared some of the most interesting stories from her 40 years of adventures in Canadian Rockies. Like how one person fell into a glacier crevasse and stuck there for 5 hours.
You can learn more about her by connecting in
https://lynnmartel.ca/ 
https://www.facebook.com/lynnmartelwriter 
https://www.instagram.com/martellynn/ 
Other ways to listen and subscribe to the podcast:
Spotify - http://bit.ly/twhspotify 
Apple Podcast - https://bit.ly/Theartofphotography 
Google Podcast: https://bit.ly/TheArtOfPhotographyWithStanleyAr 
Website: podcast.thewickedhunt.com  
Tune In (Alexa) - https://bit.ly/TuneInTheArtOfPhotographyPodcastWithStanleyAr 
For those of you who want to see more of The Wicked Hunt Photography:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thewickedhunt/   
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thewickedhunt/
Masterclass: https://www.TheWickedHuntPhotography.com   
Photo print: https://www.TheWickedHunt.com/ 
Don't forget to leave a review on the podcast if you enjoy this conversation, it really helps
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Transcription:
Lynn Martel  0:00  Wow when I climbed Mount Victoria, oh, it was such a funky day because the clouds were right up to the edge of the mountain on on front side. So we couldn't see the big drop down the glacier and down the backside was conceal the rubble bellies. I didn't have a camera on that trip. And I still think about
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  0:27  a weekend this Welcome back to The Art of Photography podcast, where we share our passion on photography and how share how photography have given us hope, purpose and happiness for many of us. Now, today I have a guest who's not only a photographer, but also an award winning as well as publish writer. So she's based here in Canadian Rockies and I'm so excited to have her on board. halen. How're you doing?
Lynn Martel  0:55  I'm good, Stanley. How are you doing?
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  0:57  I'm doing perfect. It's a little bit warm here. And it's crazy. I never thought it's gonna be this warm ever in winter?
Lynn Martel  1:09  Well, yeah, you've been living in the Rockies. One thing to know is that winter changes a lot. It varies a lot all across Canada, it's different everywhere. And in the Rockies, we get wild wild swings. So it can eat a lot six one day and minus 26. The next day, when that happens. Montreal, Montreal winters are totally different.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  1:33  Wow, that's crazy. Because like last year, I had like pretty much like, as soon as I think November hits it never like I never see water coming out of the sky. It's like
Lynn Martel  1:45  oh, four. That's perfect. Big. And our cold spell came really late last year, like late February when we had minus 25 minus 30 days. That's a bit late. Usually we get them earlier, but every year is different. And it is warmer than when I first came to this part of the country.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  2:05  Yeah, I can imagine. I mean, it's crazy. So look, welcome in. I'm so glad to have you in here. I'm so excited to talk to you, actually. And give us a little bit of introduction, who's Lin marteau and share with the listeners. Who are you and how you kind of get in here.
Lynn Martel  2:25  Well, I'm a writer, that's my first thing. But I'm also a passionate photographer. I grew up in Montreal, Montreal at that time was the biggest city in Canada. It was many New York, it was hip and happening. And fashion and music and dance clubs. That was my life. I thought that was what was important in the world was and dancing and music. Music is very important. But then as a 20 year old, my sister came up to bat to the Rockies. And I mean, if you look at a map of Canada, that's like five hours on an aeroplane. It's a long ways away. She came out here, and I came to visit and we both ended up staying. So that's almost 40 years now. So living get coming to the mountains and dance then you got to understand that's before the internet. It's before much music from MTV. Its VCRs were brand new. Nobody had a computer in their house. Cell phones. No, none of that. I remember my first answering machine. So to come and come from a happening city like Montreal, where the food, the music, it's very cosmopolitan, multicultural city. Yeah, to all of a sudden be advanced. This little town of like 8000 people in the mountains. It was a game changer for sure. A lot of ways. People were very friendly. If you're a 20 year old kid advanced, it is a big party. It's better than going to university. Because you don't have class in the morning but you went we went to work on over a lot. But it was also then total commitment. Because people now live in mountain towns and they work remotely and you know they're connected to people all over the world. For us to stay in bounce meant your whole life was in damp. You know I spoke to my parents on the phone like once a month. They probably phoned me and thankfully they retired here and my mom is 83 still hiking snowshoeing, cross country skiing. She's great. That's no longer with us. But yeah, so it was a total commitment. Your whole life your work your play your friends, your world within the small mountain town.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  4:43  That's That's crazy. That's amazing. I mean, it's so inspiring. Sorry to hear about your your mom.
Lynn Martel  4:50  Most good mums. Good. Oh, okay, still here. She's 83 She's still good. She lives in camo she's out all the time. We lost my dad five years ago,
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  4:58  right sorry. So that's that's where I was. I can't Okay, so that's, that's amazing to hear. And yeah, like, it's so inspiring. That is one of the most inspiring thing when I moved here to Canada, just seeing these people that are like 60 7080 years old that still going up this mountain and you know, like I'm on early on in my early 30. And I would bring my backpack and I go, like, first switch back and be like, Oh my God, how many? How many more and I just feel like, I saw these people. It's like, Okay, I better shut up. And so walking, just it's so inspiring and so inspiring. Indeed. Just seeing the commitment the love for the outdoor and the love for the mountain. It's, it's, it really opens up my world like, it's like you right, I was born in, in metropolitan country, but it's in Asia. So we try to park as close as as possible to the mall door. That's
Unknown Speaker  5:54  what we do. We would go around and around to find a parking by the door. It's
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  5:58  crazy. So yeah, it's so inspiring to hear that and I'm glad that your your mind is still like healthy enough to to be able to do that. That's
Lynn Martel  6:07  great. You know, I did a 10 kilometre hike with her last summer.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  6:11  Oh my god.
Lynn Martel  6:12  Awesome Lake. That seems it's incredible. It took her it took us about an hour and a half to get to the lake. Actually, it took two hours. But that's because I stopped to do a lot of photography. So really, it was an hour and a half of walking time. Yeah, she's steady. She's just walking poles and she. But one thing you know what you said about the shopping mall. We didn't grow up with a car. Montreal is a very transit friendly, friendly city. And it's actually a terrible place. It's where I learned to drive. And it was terrifying. But, so I grew up walking, always. And I have no patience to wait for a bus. So I blew off the high heels pretty early in my teenage life, because that was stupid. I couldn't walk anywhere in the dark things. I wore them to the dance club once in a while, but I got rid of them too, because you can't dance in them either. But walking is something that I grew up doing. And, and I walked, I would go through long long walks in Montreal. And when I go to the mountains, you know that and my mum walks like an hour and a half every day. That's one of the reasons she's so healthy at 83. She's out there walking every day. She got off she goes and if it's ICAO she put spikes on her boots, she actually has trouble with the putting the spikes on her boots. So she has two pairs of boots one pair that she keeps the spikes on.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  7:31  Yeah, that's very smart. Wow, that's incredible. That's incredible.
Lynn Martel  7:35  Walking is and find somewhere different or new. Walking is the best way to explore a place. fast way to stay healthy.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  7:45  I agree. So how does this? How does this all like fit in with them with with writing and photography? You know, like, how when do you actually start writing and when you decided that this was for me, like, you know, I'm not gonna do this corporate lifestyle or whatever the you know, the rest of the world is doing. But you're taking a really courageous path in you know, in a great creative world. And we all know it's it's a tough industry to break into, especially when you just started so how did how does this passion come about? And how do you know that this was for
Lynn Martel  8:23  you? I'll say I wouldn't recommend it to anybody. And I wouldn't trade it for anything. So that's pretty much when it got to dance when I was 20 years old. When you live in a small mountain town you don't have there are more options now, but there weren't a lot of job options. So of course I learned to do retail and waitressing and I worked in ski shops, Snowboard Shop through the 90s in the early 90s. Sold sportswear a lot. And I waitress. And waitressing was when I started writing, I never I've never been part of the corporate world. I've never had a good paying job. So I kind of envy people who do that for a period of time and then have a nest egg before they go to the creative thing. But I skipped that part. But yeah, I did retail in waitressing for a long time, I worked with the tourists and I learned a tonne, working with our tourists, because people save their money and from all over the world save their money to come and see the Canadian Rockies. Wow, that's humbling. And I get to live here. It's not easy. But um, and so after the writing was something I always did, I kept a journal since the age of 11 or 12. i i and the journal was just all about me all the time. And the life I was living whatever year but then after being in the mountains about 10 years, one thing that happened was outdoor magazines, powders United States, which just closed this year broke my heart powder by mountain bike magazine, I was reading these magazines and and I thought, well, I'm living this life I should be writing about this too. So I started that way. I didn't do really well with the magazine with the American magazines, I, I didn't know how to pitch to them. They weren't looking for outside stories and but I did. So it started with local local newspapers. So I started writing a column every couple of weeks and it was editor, the editor of the bath newspaper at the time. His name is Dave Rooney. I think he's still in Revelstoke now. Um, he told me never to write without getting paid. And I'll say that man, then I got, I didn't get paid a lot. But writing pays half as much now. Like, writing for an online magazine pays less than I got paid 20 years ago, or 25 years ago. At the higher levels, writing campaigns, so anyone writing for National Geographic is getting paid well. But anyways, uh, but I saw this. The thing was, my friends were ski patrollers, they were at lunch technicians. They were training to be mountain guides. Now they're all veteran veteran, senior mountain guides. And I felt that there was in our, in our local newspaper down, there was a lot of focus on the business community and on downhill skiing. But I was living at backcountry life, I was living skiing away from the ski hills and backpacking, I started mountaineering and climbing. And I, I learned there was a lot of history in this area that went with those activities. But at that time, nobody was writing about it. And then I learned, I worked part time for a heli ski company for a number of years and met a lot of the older guides, guides who started being mountain guides in the 60s and 70s. And who were part of the creation of the heli ski industry. I learned a lot from them. And and I realised there were so many stories all around me. And they weren't getting a lot of attention in those years in the 90s. Nobody, hardly anybody was writing about them. Nobody. Yeah. It's very different now, because there's so many young people writing but then there wasn't. And so I started doing it. And
I got a lot of encouragement. I got a lot of work. People were Yeah, I got a lot of assignments from that mostly in the mountain community. But I got some awesome, awesome assignments. They did. And over the years 10 biographical booklets on very special, accomplished mountain people. I just learned a lot of stories. So for me, it was about stories that were happening all around me. And I didn't, I didn't feel like they were being recorded very well. And also, some of the early stories have been recorded. There were some history books. But what was happening in the 90s and the 2000s, the 80s. And yeah, like, even the 70s, there were a lot of there was a period there that I didn't feel I felt had been overlooked and not not written about enough. So to me, history is not what happened 100 years ago. Yes, it is. But it's also what happened five minutes ago. And so I started interviewing all these fascinating people around me, who were living really interesting lives. That's really
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  13:33  cool. Yeah, I mean, I think the reason, sorry.
Lynn Martel  13:38  And I think it's because I grew up in a city. Because I understood coming from a city. And I used to go to New York as a 19 year old and run around for the day, and be back on the plane. But my dad worked for Air Canada, so I'd free plane tickets. And I would be back in Montreal by dark. Because I grew up that way. When it goes to the mountains, I knew this world was different. And special and unique.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  14:06  Yeah, that's cool that you like you actually share a lot of that. And, you know, like, that's why I like to slow down my travel, I travelled to a lot of countries, I think it was like 29 countries or something like that. But it's it's very few that I actually get to spend a lot of times and go into a little bit more of the culture and the lifestyle. And, you know, I spent here for almost two years now and you know, I think the history part of it, like I haven't really scratched even scratched the surface. So it's been incredible to kind of see, like, you know, every now and then people would post this like old photos from back there and share a little bit of history and just be like, Wow, that's incredible. There's just yeah, it's just like an unworldly thing, isn't it when especially I suppose back there, you know, when it's a little bit more untouched? It's, yeah, it's interesting. And now how does photography so so how do you go from writing to photography? You know how How'd you start saying, Well, I actually enjoy photography.
Lynn Martel  15:04  Um, I've always had a bit of some interest in photography. In Montreal, my dad actually had a little Pentax and he would set up a dark room in the bathroom. Yeah, to black curtain and, and a couple other places we lived, he was able to do that. And then the last place, I lived with my parents when I was in Sitia, which is Quebec college. Yeah, he wasn't able to do it in that place. But anyways, it's something so there was always a bit of an exposure to it. And when I came out to the mountains I went lots of years without having a camera, because in those days, you had to buy film, and then you had processor. So when you're making minimum wage, you don't always have money for that. So I had, yeah, wow, when I climbed Mount Victoria, oh, it was such a funky day, because the clouds were right up to the edge of the mountain on on front side. So we couldn't see the big drop down the glacier. And down the backside was, you could see all the rubble bellies, I didn't have a camera on that trip. And I still think about digital changed my life. Because prior to that, computers not have not, it's heavy. And I'm small. I'm five foot three. Now I've shrunken and she used to be five, four, I think carrying a pack might be part of that. And if I was going to try and keep up with with six foot guys, you know, I had to work really hard to keep up and carry a pack. And so there were lots of trips where I didn't have a camera, but then the digital cameras came along. And in the early 2000s Really big. And I had tried little periods of time where I had a camera didn't have one had one didn't want. But anyways, with digital, all of a sudden, you could have a small talk small camera that fit on my chest strap that took decent pictures. So that was great, because since about 2006 or seven, I've had a camera with me on all my adventures. And I've gone through a big progression of cameras. Now here I am getting older and shrinking. And I'm carrying I'm using a Sony a seven, two. But I don't take it everywhere. Because sometimes it's too much. And I have a fabulous little canon that I carry. I can't remember which model is actually getting a little repair right now. Anyways, but it wasn't a cheap one. It's a really nice one, but it fits on my chest strap. So that when I can take any gear, I can take it rock on a rock climb. It can take it up anything and there's no weight so it's not a problem. Yeah. So it was a progression and the more time I spend in the mountains especially now because I'm moving a little slower my partner and I take our time a bit more than than mountains when you're young you're trying to get to the summit. It's go go go go go. And now you know all these amazing beautiful things they see in nature. I actually stop and take the picture now.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  18:20  That's incredible. I know exactly what you mean. I'm pretty sure this LM like 160 centimetre I don't know what's that translate to two feet but man like close to me. Yeah, so like trying to keep up with this tall guy. So he's like, I have to do twice steps where every step you take and exactly, and I got like this big pack is I got my DSLR and I'm not the foetus as well because you know they live here in the Mountain I just like it like you know, every time I took like one photo and like man like they disappear already. It's a tough job for sure for sure. You know, the vertical challenge vertically challenged problems for sure. So I know exactly what you mean. And it's really changed the game isn't it like the digital cameras is everything a lot more compact and a lot more possibility. So
Lynn Martel  19:14  even my Sony mirrorless like that actually. When I have my big lens I have a 24 to 105 which is fabulous lens and it's good for a lot of situations but it's quite heavy. And I don't take my tripod everywhere but I just recently got a little point lander Hilliard Super Why because that's great for if I'm getting up high, but it's small enough and light enough that I can actually bring it with me.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  19:42  Yeah, no, that's cool. And now I think that story that you share with us in Victoria. First of all, that's incredible. You went up Mark Victoria is it's it's a it's a beautiful place there. I haven't been there myself. It's a big achievement for sure. But um, you Yeah, like, I think a lot of us can go through that sort of place as well, where we go, oh, man, I really wish I could, you know, capture and share that with everyone. So what are some of the most interesting maybe share with us one or two experience that you have that, that you are able to capture with your camera?
Lynn Martel  20:22  It's the little things. I have some hammer with me, every time I go with backcountry skiing, and it's the simple, small things. And I'm still working on my skills because I see things that I wish I could do a better job of capturing something really great in that place that my skills aren't there yet, but we're gonna have only been working at it really for the last couple of years. Let me think.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  20:57  So what are some of the things that you love to capture maybe when you go back countries
Lynn Martel  21:01  marketing up on the glaciers? Yeah. It's funny, because there's a lot of people right now going in photographing glacier cakes, which are fabulous. But I like to get up on glacier and get out there. And where you're just surrounded by this ocean of snow with some pizza distance and, and to be in that world, when you're up in that world in the winter, there's no sound if it's not windy, there's no sound. There's no trees. So there's no birds. There's nothing growing up there as you're surrounded by miles of Niles, of snow and ice. It's such an amazing environment. When I give a presentation on my book, which I'll show you guys later, on my glacier book. Yeah, I have a couple of video clips I use and if you're around the glacier in the summertime, it's water, water water. So that actually that environment in the summer is my favourite place to be at the toe of glaciers in the moraines with the rocks that have just been recently exposed that you know, were under ice for 1000s of years. And now, every year more new rocks are being being exposed the mouth sei smells, but that's a fascinating environment for me. Where the waters trickling, trickling, roaring, gushing, spilling waterfalls, the noisy environment in the summer, there's so much water going on. And wildflowers is the other summer passion. So yeah,
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  22:31  it's it's amazing to hear that you go into the glacier. It's something that I want you to do, but I never, I haven't had the chance or the skill to be able to travel into glacier yet. But it's like looking at so the other day when I was going to exploring the ice cave, I saw like four people on the glacier and just like man, that would have been so wild, like just travelling up the glacier.
Lynn Martel  22:55  On glaciers, sorry, I camped in a tent on glaciers.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  22:59  Yeah, that would have been really well that like, you get you get like blown over like with the with the highway
Lynn Martel  23:06  sometimes. One of the chapters in my stories advice book is called How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the wind. When you can, when you camp in a tent on a glacier, you you stake it down with your ice axes, your ski poles, your skis, you're tying it down. You build a fence of snow blocks, like an igloo fence around your your tent. Yeah, you do a lot of things.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  23:33  Yeah, cuz I was like just imagining it. Like if they were going up in and pitch a tent. And for whatever reason, if the anchor can it comes down, it comes out, man that's like a long way down. And it's a slippery slope from the looks of it.
Lynn Martel  23:47  Well, it's depending on the glacier, a lot of weight, like when you get up on the Columbia Icefield it's pretty flat up there. But the wind can throw you a long distance. And I've been I've been knocked over in the wind when the wind is so strong that, that it just knocks me to my butt, even with a pack of one.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  24:06  So I want to talk a little bit more about your book. And your book is it's the story of Isaac in mind, right? Yeah. Yeah, story itself is Yeah. So. And in there, you cover a lot about your experiences, you know, which is what you just mentioned here. Do you want to share with us what really inspired you to write this book? And you know how? Yeah, how does it come about?
Lynn Martel  24:36  Well, I've been writing about people mountain, the mountain community for more than 25 years. And over those years, I interviewed I wrote stories about a lot of artists going up on a glacier creating something from something artistic being inspired by glaciers. I've been out on glaciers with mountain guides by backcountry skiing lodges, and also with scientists, and, and I've been out in the field with scientists as they work on the different kinds of research they do on glaciers. There's a lot happening on the glaciers in Alberta and British Columbia. So that's southern Southwestern Canada. And we'll all have BC coast. It's the coast mountains is a massive glaciation glaciated area. So, over the years, I have a friend who works to the United Nation. He's in water. So he's a water expert. And he works lots of scientists to hydrologists in glaciologist. So from him, I ended up meeting a lot of scientists. But also over the years, I saw that whenever I saw books about glaciers, so often, they were looking at glaciers from the scientific perspective, but not really from the cultural one. And in our part of the world, bleachers are part of our lives, whether you know it or not, like some of the meltwater that can send the Bow River right through Banff and through Calgary and through Saskatchewan, all the way to the Hudson Bay. That's glacier water, partly. But yeah, we we have people in this part of the world who make a living on glaciers every day. You know, Pete, and mountaineers who are out on glaciers every day, scientists, artists, so I wanted to write a book that showed glaciers to be more than just these massive device on a landscape that scientists study and tell us they're melting. Glaciers are in the news a lot. But I wonder how much does anybody living in Manila, know about a glacier? So and even in Canada, growing up in Montreal, and no clue, no one's really sure was. So I thought, and because of my experience, my writing experience and all the different people I've interviewed over the years, and, and my own experiences, my own adventures. So the idea grew from there. And I took senior. So the idea I had the idea six years ago, and the book came out in October. So it took six years to make it happen. I had lots of my own interviews and articles in my files, pulled them all together, and then I had to shape it. And then I went out looking for new stories, too, because I things I'd heard about over the years. People I'd heard about, oh, I need to interview this person. I contacted I got like 20 different photographers give me some of their photos, because mine weren't good enough to tell the story. Or people had just great photos that I knew would help tell the stories. Because it's many, many stories. And I tried to tell the story of what glaciers mean to us.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  27:47  Share us some interesting stories, you know, give us a little bit of insight, like 510 minutes version, you know, one of the most interesting parts of it. So, you know, we can learn a little bit more.
Lynn Martel  27:59  I got one. One guy, I got a phone call one day or email, probably, Robert Raymond says me and he's somebody I didn't know, mountaineering with a couple of times. And he said, I got a story for you. So years ago, he had in skiing up the Athabasca glacier onto the Columbia Icefield with a buddy they were they attend some all their mountaineering gear and they were planning to be up there for five days and and climb some summits. But on their way up to the glacier, they're skiing long. Robert was in front. All the sudden his world goes dark. He's fallen in a crevasse. Thanks, good thing, their rope together. So he falls like 40 feet into the crevasse. He's in the dark and the ice and his buddies on the surface who are trying to you know building an anchor to stop him from falling and further and he was successful in doing that. But his buddy couldn't remember how to do crevasse rescue, how to build a pulley system to get them out of there and one on one, it's really difficult to pull someone out of a glitch out of progress. So they couldn't communicate. Like he was calling up from the hole. His buddy was calling down to him. They didn't hear each other because he was so far down. And his buddy had a lead in there. He tied off the rope, build a good anchor tied off the rope and then he skied back down the glacier all the way down to the road to where there's a payphone might have had a cell phone but this was quite a was like 20 years ago. And yeah, so his buddy was able to contact Parks Canada and and get the rescue team to come in. Robert is in the glacier for five hours. Five hours, never ever go on glacier without Mungus down jacket. He put every layer on that he could he was able to put a screw you know, drill the ice screw into the wall, hung his pack from it. He was able to put all his clothes on and he had to wait in there for five hours in the dark. They came and rescued him so great. He was pretty happy about that the helicopter full and we've got some of that As rescue people in the world here, they're world class. So they get out of the fat. Because when you're skiing up the Athabasca up on the side of snowboarding, there's these cliffs, these rocks, these broken pillars of ice, and they fall off in chunks every once in a while. So it's not a place you want to hang out. The rescuers. They, they got him out, but they left his pack and his skis in the class. 12 years later, somebody contacts him. One of the tour guides that there's guides who do walking tours on the glaciers. Well, one of the guides, she found this gear laying out on the moraine. And it turned out after 12 years, his gear had melted out of the crevasse. It's an amazing story. So he went back there, it had actually, because it had been inside the glacier for 12 years, it got all mangled and crushed, and glacier was moving, melting, stretching, like doing all the things that glacier does. And it actually had pushed the gear came out half a kilometre from where it went in. And it had, so the glacier had melted back, you know, the crevasse that he fell into No, no longer exists.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  31:10  That's crazy. That's, that is why I don't go on on a glacier.
Lynn Martel  31:17  And he took pictures to the great thing was some when he went back and he collected all his gear, you bought a garden. And he took pictures. So I've got some pictures. And visitations when I give presentations, I have some of those pictures to share. That's
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  31:32  such an incredible story. Like, I mean, that's that's why, you know, like, if you're listening, and you're, you know, you're not trained, you shouldn't go on a glacier. And that's why I haven't been travelling in a glacier because I don't have that skill. Yeah, but that's just incredible. And look, I mean, like, as a, as a, as someone who had been living here in, in the heart of the Rockies, you know, with basically having the glacier and snow as, as part of our backyard. Right? You would have seen a lot, a lot of challenges that come with it. What what are some of those challenges? Because I know, like, for myself, like, like you say, I wasn't even aware about glacier. And actually, only a month ago, I found out that, like one of the glacier or most of the glacier here, like receipts at a rate of 50 metre per per year, which was, it's crazy. So what are some of the challenges that you see around around here that maybe you can share with the listener, the listener, and give a little bit more awareness of what's happening?
Lynn Martel  32:41  Um, Glacia glaciers all over the world are melting, because our, our average temperature all over the world is racing. Whenever somebody says to you, oh, but that's happened before in Earth's history. So there's two points to remember. Yes, our glaciers have melted and returned before, but never have they melted as fast as they're melting. Now. It's insane how much they've melted in 100 years. And the second thing is that, in periods of Earth's very long, long history, when the glaciers have melted, and returned, those changes happened, before humans ever lived on earth. So we are the first gen or the first humans to live with this kind of rapid temperature change. 1.3 degrees doesn't sound a lot. But if you're a glacier, if you go from, you know, being point three degrees below zero, you stay frozen. You go to point three, you know, but one degree above zero, you stop being frozen. So in society a challenge is that in this part of the world, and in a lot of parts of God in the Himalayas in a huge way. societies and towns and infrastructure is built to expect glaciers to release water, especially late in the summer, when we're not getting much rainfall. Our river here the Bow River, in at the end of summer can be 30% of that river could be the glacier float meltwater. And we have no plan for when the glaciers aren't doing that anymore. So there's a funny little challenge. We're gonna have we have something adapting to do. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that's crazy. Yeah.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  34:35  It's crazy to see like, I mean, when I'm living here, it's crazy to see how the water of the river fluctuates between summer and winter, and you know, it's only that it's only because I was able to like experience it the full year to kind of like see and observe this and I'm sure like people who come here for a week or two that would, wouldn't even you know aware of this right so Yeah, I think it's a really important message to share with people and to, I guess it's really hard to know about it unless you live in it, isn't it?
Lynn Martel  35:09  You know, it's like that everywhere. If you've never been to the west coast of BC, and walked in a rain forest of massive old growth cedar trees, it's a mind boggling experience to see that kind of forest. And I've only seen tiny blue bits of it. So they that, yeah. Travelling and having experiences. I think, though, it's a fine line, and how much travelling anyone needs to do. I grew up with as a teenager in my 20s with free plane tickets. That was awesome. Now, I have not been in an aeroplane since 2011. I don't have a lot of money. So plane tickets aren't part of my picture. But I do prefer a road trip and because then you see the landscape as you're travelling through it. And when you find it, an aeroplane from here to there, you're so disconnected from it. And granted, there are places I do hope in my lifetime to go to the Himalayas. We actually had plans to go my honey and I, we were gonna go to Nepal last May. So that trip got cancelled. I don't know when we'll be able to go. And he's got Sherpa friends. So there's a lot of meaning. For me, I would prefer to save and wait and do one larger trip rather than a small one. And in my book, in the back of my book, I talked about that, you know, I can't imagine what you're gonna see 30 years from now because you're like 30 years. 28 years younger than me. I'm 59 now moisturising works, you sunscreen. But the change that I've seen in my life, but one of the freakiest ones. There was a statistic and I put it in my book, where we have had on Earth as many as 200,000 aircraft in the sky in 124 hour period. We can't keep doing that. We can't think that that's okay. We can't think it's okay to cut down all our old growth forests, whether it's Brazil, or British Columbia, and we're guilty of that in Canada, too. Got a government in Alberta right now that wants to do coal mining on the eastern slopes, which is headwaters of so many creeks, feeding rivers that grow our grow crops in the prairies. Insane. There's so many things that we do as humans for matters of greed or convenience, or, Oh, well, that'd be somebody else's problem down the road. It's our problem now. So my book is mostly a tonne of fun. It's stories and it's people and it's exciting, and it's fun. You'll learn stuff you never imagined. But at the end, we got to think about how we treat planet Earth. So back to travelling. I think travelling less is more. And you said it. So you stayed here for two years. Like how much you learned, like how much you learned by staying in one place. I spent two months in New York travelling around New Zealand did some bike touring roads bus travelled a whole bunch of different ways in two months, and I got to learn a lot more about the country than if I had flown there for you know what takes a day and a half to get there day and a half to come home. So you got like 10 days for your vacation. I don't need to see a place that badly. I want to actually learn something about when I'm there. My last big trip was Peru in 2006. But I stayed a month. I never saw much Picchu. I stayed more of the climbing area. Lots of climbers from Spain, Basque climbers, all the Spanish speaking countries. They go and the mountains there are humongous. They're 20,000 feet 22,000 For Huascaran is the second highest mountain in North America. It's the monster of a mountain. But I stayed there for a month and lived in a hostel run by a Peruvian woman. And I got to learn something about the place by staying that long. Yeah, I lived in Maui for two months, one year. So much rather it didn't and Whistler for three months. So in here almost three months. But yeah, staying one place and
living with the locals. learning something about it because if you get off a plane and go stay in some hotel and eat in restaurants, and heaven forbid, and that's funny because I work as a tour guy but as I can go but Um, yeah, hire a local learn something about a place, like one thing to go to our, our trip to Nepal will be five weeks when we do it. And we will have a local person take us for three weeks trekking in the mountains, three weeks, I want to place pop in for an hour and say I've been there.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  40:20  Not that's very true. You know, like, I think people should kind of try to slow down, they travel and get off, get out of this mindset of ticking the bucket list because I have done that. And the thing is the experience that you get sure you get to see a lot of this different places, but the experience that you get is totally different. Like, you know, like, I spent, like I say, like two years here, man, like the amount of experience that I get from that experience from that two years is much better compared to two years of travelling to, you know, 25 different countries or whatnot, to just jump from one place to another. So, yeah, totally. Like, I think you're very true. And thanks for bringing that up. I think it's people should really try that. At least, like, like we say earlier, right? It's hard to kind of, to kind of convince you until you actually try it. But you know, just try and see how it actually changed your mindset and your, your experience in travelling. So yeah, that's that's a great advice.
Lynn Martel  41:26  You know what else and that ties into photography too. Because I enjoy taking photos, you know, we go on a road trip last spring, we went on a three week road trip to BC, went to some places I've been to before favourites, and other places I haven't. But I like to go back to and spend a little longer because I'm enjoying photography so much now. Mostly in my home mountains. Because it's a world I know intimately. And I've seen so much crazy beauty over the years. And I want to grow my skills, so I can capture more of that beauty. And, and I'm going and I do that by not going to the tourist spots. Like still carrying a pack. In October I went out for two nights by myself with I have a tiny little tent that weighs two pounds. I carried my tripod, my camera, and I was there for two nights with food, the sleeping bag and I can't and God doesn't my favourite trips. I miss my honey. But I'm to slow down to wake up in the mountains. That's the backcountry is very important to me. I need to spend time where I wake up where there's no Wi Fi, no electricity, no running water. I go in the winter, usually once a winter, it's not happening this year. Sometimes we ski to Hudson do that. And then you got to carry your sleeping bag, but you don't have a tent or a stove. You save a little bit of weight, but then you're carrying glacier gear anyways. But I go to cabin sometimes in the winter. And I will say oh use a helicopter for that the helicopter flies you there leaves you there with all your food. There's like 12 of you. And then it flies away and it's gone for a week. And for a week you have no electricity. No, no running water. There's a wood burning sauna that's go in there and clean up at the end of the day. And we ski tour. We climb up hill on our skis. And we ski down make turns. And we'll do that all day. And yeah, I'm almost 60 And I'm still doing it that way. And those experiences to be away from my computer for a week. I think that's a big advice. big piece of advice I have from young people. I grew up without a cell phone without a computer. Get outside and leave those things at home. And if you have access to a national park, where you can go camp for two or three or four nights and not have any anything electronic other than your camera. But no Wi Fi. I don't Instagram from my camera, I come home and then decide what to post. Nobody needs to know where you are. Give yourself a few days out in nature. With no electronics, no motors, no machines, no vehicle, just you and your feet, maybe a pair of skis and on the season. Do it that way. No, that's good. In the world. That's advice. Sorry. Take the time. That's a gift. And in COVID so it's so sad when I hear stay home stay home, stay home. No, go for a walk.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  44:43  Ya know for sure. Like, especially here in the National Park. Right. We have that chancer it's and it's isolated. So, you know there's no reason why not and I think like I get the best sleep when I'm in the middle of nowhere and I don't have anything to wear about in terms of getting notification or whatnot, because there is no cell phone, and yeah, you stop worrying about life and actually like get to, to be in peace. That's a really good advice. And yeah, thanks for sharing that. All right, so we're coming to the hour mark now. And it's been interesting to hear your story about, you know, your adventure in the eyes and your adventure moving here, and how you get into photography and your view of photography, as well as writing. How for people who want to find out a little bit more about about yourself, how can they? How can they get how can they get in touch with you?
Lynn Martel  45:37  Well, it's really easy. I have a website, and it's very well organised. But when Martell so it's Lynn martell.ca. Not CA is the Canadian suffix for? So Allah martel.ca. So this is my book. So he's nice. Yeah, and it's a big book, lots of pictures and sell stories, you'll learn tonnes about Western Canada, because it's a bunch of history going back 1000s of years, right up to today. Big mix. So and on my website, it's all there. Lynn martell.ca And I've got my books, speaking and photography. So check it out that way.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  46:21  Perfect. Well, thanks a lot for sharing that. And, you know, I've seen some of your work and like, like you say, I think one of the thing that I really like about your approach in photography, how you find the small things and focus on the small thing, you know, I mean, I saw, like some of your photos that really focus on just the ice or the soft snow, and some of them are focusing on the wall, sorry, the wildflowers and you know, instead of the whole scenery actually go into deeper and a lot of going deeper in the landscape and actually take taking a photo of the micro and show them in a grand way. So that's very inspiring. It's very cool to see that. I think I'm guilty, too, to look at the macro level. And it's definitely something that I could learn from.
Lynn Martel  47:06  I think it takes time. Especially, you know, we get what, four 4 million tourists a year normally, you know, pre COVID Coming to the Canadian Rockies back to this area. And when you first come here, yeah, it's all big. We would be the same. If I was running around in or, you know, walking around the streets in New York City. At first, it's like, oh, skyscrapers. Slow down. Watch, look around you. And that's where I think getting to know one place really well. So wherever you live, whatever you have access to get to know that place. Really well. Awesome. Started.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  47:50  That's a great advice. And I Yeah, that's a great way to close up this podcast as well. So thank you very much for being here late now. It's been a pleasure. And it's been fun hearing a lot of these stories. So yeah, we can do this. Thank you very much for tuning in. And if you are a person who get intrigued with the ice and the snow and the glacier, or even if you're not, you know, highly recommend check out some of these work as well as her book and look at some of the stories some of the challenges that it came with, but also some of the the culture that is out of the world, I mean, coming from myself that never been here never been in a glacier never seen in a glacier before in my life. It's definitely out of the world. When you first time see it, it's, it's quite amazing. So you know, getting there. And if you want to get in touch with Lynn like, Lindsey, just go on the website. And you know, you can say hi, on, on on on her website there. Well, thank you very much for tuning in. And if you enjoy this podcast, don't forget to subscribe and hit the like button. But Lynn, thank you very much for being here. And it was it was a lot of fun. A lot of it was a pleasure to have you here and thank you for sparing some of your time.
Lynn Martel  49:08  Well, thank you so much for inviting me, Stanley.
 

Ep 21 - How Steve Scalone was able to find true happiness by trading wedding photography business for urban landscape photography

Hey Wicked Hunters, 
Today I'd like to introduce Steve Scalone, a professional photographer and educator. He is Proud Ilford Master and AIPP Travel Photographer of the Year. In his journey, Steve's dream was to build an empire of the wedding photography business. As time progress he took a break and decided to travel for about 9 months. At the end of his travel, he found his true happiness in urban landscape photography and have been more profitable as well as happier since he made the shift. 
You can learn more about him by connecting in
https://www.stevescalone.com 
https://smallphotoart.com
https://www.projectstreet.com.au 
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Transcription:
Steve Scalone  0:00  Almost a year off to travel purely because I felt stage had no social life
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  0:14  weekenders Welcome back to do wicky, Han photography podcast where we share our passion for photography and how photography have given us hope, purpose and happiness. Now today, I want to welcome a photographer, an Australian photographer who have been crushing it in his categories, which is really unique categories and something that I actually haven't come across with haven't come across to until later in my photography journey. So it's quite interesting to to see that side of the photography itself. So today we have Steve Scallon. Is that did I pronounce your last name correct?
Steve Scalone  0:59  did well.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  1:01  Well, welcome to the podcast. How you how you doing?
Steve Scalone  1:05  Thank you. I'm doing great. Doing great. I do have a bit of a croaky voice. So hopefully your listeners can make sense of me and my Australian accent.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  1:14  Yeah, no worries. I look like my Australian also come on. As soon as I talk to other Australian,
Steve Scalone  1:22  it comes back as well. So
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  1:25  all right, well, yeah. Welcome. Welcome to the show, and really excited to have you here in a habit chat about your journey, as well as some of the projects that you have been involved to. So I met you on 730 projects, three, and that was a while back, it was probably two years ago.
Steve Scalone  1:49  I'm gonna say two years ago as well. Yeah. Well, I
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  1:52  came here, so definitely about two years ago. But well, before we get into that project Street, share us a little bit more about yourself and how you find this. Not only your passion in photography, but also this really niche in photography world of urban landscape.
Steve Scalone  2:17  Yeah, yeah, great question. So I have been part of the photographic industry, or coming up to well over 25 years now or something ridiculous. So ever since I pretty much left school, I started working in commercial labs. Back then there was no digital or if there was it was in its infancy. So I was preparing film e6 Slide, all of that type of thing for other probes in commercial labs in Sydney. So that kind of led me on the pathway. And I always had an interest within photography, I was doing jobs and assisting as at the same time as I was doing that, as well as studying. So when I hit my 30s, I purchased a wedding studio, and delved into that for about 12 years 12 or 15. And that was great. That actually taught me absolutely everything I could, in terms of getting the shot, no matter what. So you cannot obviously postpone a wedding. Because it's raining or there's floods or, or what have you. So you just have to make do dealing with many different personalities and, and all that type of thing. So I'm very grateful I don't do weddings anymore. Even when people beg me, it's like, no, I'm sorry, I just I just don't do it. It was a great time in my life. But yeah, I've definitely moved on now. But I'm very grateful for it, because it taught me absolutely everything I needed to know about photography, and how to get around the biggest part of the problem of photography, which is problem solving. So, so did I. Yeah.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  4:10  Sorry to interrupt you there a little bit, though. But do you decide to move on and not shoot wedding anymore? Because of the pressure pressure associated with it? Or is there a different reason why you don't do that anymore?
Steve Scalone  4:24  Ah, such a great question. It was a number of different reasons. I started to close my wedding business in 2008. So it was around about the GFC was happening. Weddings took a slump in Australia didn't really affect us that much. But the confidence sort of went out of the market. And I was by that stage I was easily working or 80 hours a week just on my business in my business. As I had six staff, it was quite a very, it was a large wedding business, I will admit it was. And it was exactly what I wanted. It was like my dream studio, all of that beautiful stuff. It was great. So I'd been running it along nicely for about 10 years, but I felt like I was getting tired. I, I was photographing other people's briefs, essentially. So a bride and groom come in, I'm not necessarily photographing me to be part of that day, I'm photographing them, their personalities, which is exactly what I think a wedding photographer should do, really listening to the couple, getting the best out of them, their families, so on and so forth. So I wasn't really shooting for myself at all. And it was really affecting my passion, and my motivation for photography. So I did decide to now all of this was in Sydney, in New South Wales. So I actually decided to move down to Melbourne. So it's kind of, it's kind of like moving from it's a terrible analogy, but kinda like moving from Toronto to Montreal, in a way. So, so there was a very big kind of push towards doing that. The, the wonderful, horrible thing about it all is that I just couldn't end the business because many brides hadn't booked like 18 months in advance. So I was constantly flying up to Sydney and, and Newcastle to photograph these last wedding. So it took about two years to eventually wind up. But when I moved down to Melbourne, I then just started to completely travel. All I took a year off and just travelled the world. And really just started finding myself it was great. From then on in what I do now ever since 2009 is photograph architecture, and they're basically all my clients, so I rarely photograph people much anymore, and I kind of like it. So photograph a lot of interiors, a lot of architecture, a lot of post production in video two, now. It's it's great drone work. So that's my last 10 years or so.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  7:32  It's very interesting, because so, you know, like, I used to be an engineer, and I kind of found photography and have that as a passion and sort of decide to pursue that full time. But from the sun of, you know, your wedding photography days was like your nine to five for me, you know, it's still photography, but not necessarily doing the things that you want to do or things that you're passionate about. So it's actually really interesting to see that that like, you know, you're actually in photography world, but, you know, just because you're in photography, doesn't mean you're gonna be happy.
Steve Scalone  8:09  Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And don't get me wrong. I wasn't bitter about it all. But I think if I was doing it, right up until this day, I would my viewpoint and the thought process on wedding days, and that type of thing would have definitely changed. So yeah, I got out at the good time. I think for myself that is before you fully burn it. Right. Exactly, exactly. Yeah.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  8:38  You say that after there you took you took some time off to find yourself and just travel. How? How does that journey? Yeah, share us a little bit more about the journey and does it really affect where you are right now in terms of what you do for in photography?
Steve Scalone  9:00  Ah, such a great question. Yes, absolutely. 100%. So, being a wedding photographer, as anybody listening out there if if you do aspire to be a wedding photographer, almost all of your social life on weekends, doesn't exist with family and friends because you're out there working while everybody else is partying. Hence almost the year off I think it was about nine months I went to travel hence the almost a year off to travel purely because I felt stage had no social life. I was literally working 80 hours a week and I did love it. You know when you're nurturing your own business and seeing it grow and keeping it run. It is fun. But uh, yeah, it was a very deliberate decision. And what I did was what I mean immediately found freeing was I didn't have to shoot to anybody's brief anymore. So I could just go out, walk around the block, for example, I didn't have to travel anywhere, walk around the block and just photograph, you know, the cracks in the, in the footpath and, and things like that just looking at shapes and just going out and it's okay if I missed the sunset or, or you know what I mean that there was, there was no kind of consequence. And that's what I found completely fraying. And it was something that I didn't do like the previous 10 years or so, because I was always, like every ounce of energy, I had always went back into the business and the wedding realm. So I made a conscious decision. I've simplified my life very, very nicely now, which is great. I teach a day or two a week. And 2020 has been very interesting, because everything has been on Zoom and practical classes and all that type of thing. So that's been a wonderful challenge. I love it. But I get immense pleasure of helping others learn photography. And I also have now just started photographing myself, sorry for myself in the last 10 years, but now have attracted clients that like that look, and want to actually photograph their landscape properties, like landscape designers, interior designers, architects, and so now that's my realm. So I have found that that beautiful synergy, where the things that I actually now love to do, I can more or less do personally, and still make money out of it as well, which is great.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  11:55  That's amazing to hear. Yeah, I mean, you know, I'm still kind of on that journey, trying to find that midpoint of where I enjoy it and have that balance. And one of the thing that I think one of the decision that I did, right, when I left, my job was that I promised myself that I will I will not do a thing for a sake of money, you know, which a lot of us do, right? Yes, we give away to that, you know, it's like, okay, it's fine. I'll just do this for a little bit. And, you know, it'll make me money and then after a while, it will, it will be okay. But it's, it never is. That's that's what I learned. So, I actually, you know, I've tried a lot of different photography, not not not wedding yet. Different photography. You know, I've tried like, high fashion portraits, real estate, commercial and stuff like that. And I never really pursued it because I feel like if I were to pursue it, it's gonna be like that nine to five feeling again, where I was just doing it for the money, right? So it's, it's been a long, like, kind of like discovery and journey. And it's cool to hear that point of view from from, from your story, because I think a lot of people out there have that same thought about, yeah, it's okay. You know, I'll just do wedding because wedding is where the money say or that's what everyone say, right? The wedding is. Just did a wedding but three years later, that's all you know how to do. Because all your portfolio is around the wedding. So yeah. How do you find that balance? What what sort of advice would you give, you know, the people who kind of started off this notion of doing it for the pay of passion, but then start selling out for the money? How do you find that balance? Especially during the you know, like where you are right now is perfect because you you kind of gone through it all and you're finally find that the paradise that that works, right? But a lot of people that started with the end when they're in the messy middle, what are they need to do? What do they need to do to find that balance?
Steve Scalone  14:28  Yes, you are. There's so many great things and such a good question. Awesome, Stanley, this is brilliant. So one of the things that I wanted, I had this and very false idea in my head way back when I'm talking 2000. So 2000 2001 is when I actually started the wedding business and kind of grew it from there. So I had this false ideal in my head that I wasn't a photographer until I had this big studio, and staff, and I was making x amount of dollars per year, and so on and so forth. So that was, and it was all achievable. It was all kind of working towards that. But that is what actually motivated me to, to grow my business and kind of go at it that way. What I ended up doing was creating this massive beast that just didn't stop running. So what I mean by that is, it's kind of like when you start a motor, you're kind of getting it needs to be fed. So the and I'm talking about cashflow, and bookings, and sales and all that type of thing. So the larger I got, the harder it was to actually step away from it and move away from it or even try to slow it down. So it kind of and it was good. It did grow rapidly. My my wedding business, like over the 10 years or so. And it was great. It was absolutely everything I wished for. But when I was in it, it was like, Oh, wow, this is consuming me. And even though I had like I had three wedding photographers, two of those were just contractors. I had a full time graphic designer that was all organising all the albums, I did have a sales and admin person that would take care of a little bit of that type of thing for album sales and stuff like that. But I also learned, not law I know now. But I also found it very difficult to delegate, especially when it came to the finer retouching, because that's what people were hiring us for. It was for our particular style, the look of the images, so on and so forth. So, in hindsight, I should have outsourced that far better than I did. And then that would have stopped that kind of burning out, which I was experiencing towards the end. The beautiful thing about what I have done, and my biggest advice is to figure out what you want, and then do whatever you can to do it. It may not actually be exactly what you want, once you actually do it, if that makes sense. So I was very pleased and very satisfied that I had like a 400 square metre studio it was massive at a beautiful cyclorama. So on and so forth. That was my dream studio. Now that I had it, it was kind of like in the bag, I was satisfied from the soul. And I was ready to move on. So I'm jump jumping now to like 12 years later now. And essentially, I don't own a studio, I have very little overheads. I've got this beautiful setup office in my home. I don't need to photograph people anymore. So I don't need a kind of massive amounts of gear. I rarely, like I have all my studio gear and medium format gear. I rarely bring it out only for the odd one or two jobs. Yeah, so I've really simplified my life. And I love it. Absolutely love it. So what I ended up doing was diversifying. So I really around about that time, I've been teaching now for about 10 years. So one of the things that I started to pursue was a lot more of my time.
And so I applied to teach at a college, a TAFE. And I did that only one day a week for maybe three or four years. When I moved down here. I started doing it more as well. So one to two days. And I really found that that huge satisfaction. The beauty of it is as well it was always kind of that little bit of income too. So I didn't need to have massive sales and and you know, keep this beast running like I had too many years before with the with the studio. So it all depends on what you're after. That's, that's the biggest thing. One thing that you should do is really have a very strong Don't plan and think about, if you do want this beast of a business, you do actually need very strong plans in order to feed it. Very much so. So it's okay to have like a multi story Studio, you just need to know the consequences that kind of come with that.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  20:20  That's, that's a really good advice. It's funny because as you say it down, I just remember the phrase of, you know, be careful what you wish for. And, yeah, exactly. Like it's really appropriate for this.
Steve Scalone  20:35  Exactly. And I have no regrets. I think, if I didn't do it, I would still be regretting it and still wanting it. But now that I had lived through the whole thing, it's like, you know what, I do not want a studio ever again, because I loved it. I did it. It was the perfect time in my life for it. I had a lot of energy back then. And it's like now No, it's all about simplification and, and kind of the quality of life now.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  21:07  Yeah, it's, it's that whole transformation, right? Because we chase, we often chase that one thing, and then we will realise on the back end, that's actually, you know, what, that's not what we're actually after. So, I'm so glad that you managed to find that I think, a lot of people not only in photography world, but just in general struggle to find to be able to find that or have the courage to let go those, those big piece that you say that the more you make money, the more you need to put money in it. That is just
Steve Scalone  21:41  as Oh, definitely. Absolutely.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  21:45  So a lot of a lot of your photo, actually quite interesting to see this connection. And I'm wondering if this is true. When I see some of your photos, they're very simplified, you know, very, very fine art very, really high quality, but really simplified. Sometimes. I mean, when I first saw some of your photos is just like, taken away, you just shoot like a corner of a building and just like, wow, like never in a million years, I would take photo like that. Like, honestly, if I'd never seen your photo, I would, I would that would never come on in my in my mind at all. Like, just like, wow, like seriously, like, a pull like a pole. Beautiful. It's like how does that happen? And is this like your your this, this simplify way of capturing the world around you? Does that go back or relate it to how you try to simplify your life as well?
Steve Scalone  22:50  Oh, 100% Absolutely. So everything was very frenetic when I was doing weddings. And yet again, I was in that perfect mindset where I loved it. But as I was not loving it much anymore, and actively finding how to close it. The travel kind of really led me because I didn't end up travelling for like well over 10 years because of the wedding business. You know, I couldn't go any further away from my business than like a week, for example. So hence the really long enjoyed. Break. And one thing that really struck me was that coming back to that whole, there was no brief that I wasn't shooting for clients anymore. I was literally just going out with my camera, and it's like, I have absolutely no plans. I don't know where I'm gonna go. I'm gonna go straight out of my hotel room and either turn left or turn right. Either one, it's going to be interesting. And so my early work I was thinking too much. So I was like trying to get absolutely every bit of detail in or you know, do the kind of sightseeing thing I think I went to the States basically. And spent a good couple of months there to begin with. So my first stop was San Fran, and you know, just kind of walking in and around Union Square and kind of around market and that type of thing. You're trying to grab the whole feeling of San Francisco and so on and so forth. So the when it really struck me was when I flew into Chicago, and as you know, Australia doesn't get a lot of snow. But it was it was in the dead of winter in Chicago. And to me this was new and exciting. Like I Sure, I'd locals there as like, Oh no, you know, I can't go to work for weeks on end because of snow ins and, and things like that. But for me it was a playground. So I, the beauty of what happened there was, I didn't have to think much anymore because the built huge blankets of snow minimalized every scene for me. So that's how I started to see the the kind of simplification of it all. And I ended up getting a fool like this very first time that I actually walked down. Lake Michigan, it was I can't remember exactly where it was, but it's only about 500 metres down towards maybe a pier. And within that 500 metres or so I ended up getting a full exhibition, which I ended up exhibiting a number of years later, probably about three or four years, and it was called white. And it was just probably easily 19 to 24 images, just a really clean, beautiful, white images. And then that's what really started to excite me, it's like this is completely different from the wedding's that I was doing. And that kind of led me down the road of just simplifying absolutely everything within a particular scene. So what I do now, and just to put this into words, is if I'm looking at Parkland, and with some buildings, for example, I don't see a green hedge as a whole bunch of little bushes with leaves, and twigs and branches, all I see is a rectangle that is a building block for composition. So likewise, with a pole, I don't see, you know, a timber tree trunk that had been shaped into a pole or whether it be metal or forward. All I see is a vertical line. And I use that straight line in in a composition. So I'm turning 3d complex visual elements into a really simple two dimensional image. And that's basically all I do. Wow, yeah.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  27:29  How do you actually is there like, is there any, anyone that inspires you to do this kind of photo? Or is that that time in Chicago pretty much just transformed the way you look at things altogether?
Steve Scalone  27:48  Yeah, it really did, there was one image. And I call it affinity. And it's basically a white image. And it's is a very small person walking through on a pathway with a couple of really tall buildings in the background. So that was the image that I guess got sold the most, and kind of won a few awards around that time, this probably would have been about 2012 2012, something like that. And that was really the defining point, that that kind of image set me on a path to really kind of continue down the realm of shooting and things like that. So the beauty of it is I was still photographing at that state level, and product photography and all that type of thing. But the more I thought about it, the more I wanted to actually incorporate architecture and interiors into my commercial work purely because it just felt like a really good synergy for the type of things that I was shooting for myself.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  29:07  So it's Wow, that's quite interesting. And And before that, before that point in time, is mostly what, what type of photography do you do? Like, you know, between when you start that travel until you find that, that that time in Chicago? What is it more like just like a street photography and like documentary tuber, tuber thing?
Steve Scalone  29:33  Yeah, for my own. The beauty of it is I definitely made more time for myself and that's where the passion started coming back. I delve deeper into teaching. And I this is actually the one bit that I do regret, and this was for the money. But when I moved down here to Melbourne, I was actually subcontracting for other wedding photographers. So that was good. It was because I did. Because I was experienced in it, they didn't have to worry about it absolutely anything. And it's not that I'm a good wedding photographer, I just know how to make people feel comfortable in front of the camera. And I think that's even more important than the photography tag. So it's all about dealing with personalities and making them feel comfortable. That's if you want to be an amazing wedding photographer, I think that's far more important than the photography you actually take. Making people feel completely comfortable and open and trusted. So I was very good at that. And I guess I still am. Yeah, so that's, it was great. Because all I had to do was kind of meet the bride and groom. Really get along with them have a whole heap of fun, and do their actual wedding handle the images back to the studio that I was subcontracting for and then kind of forget about it, it was, it was great. So I was doing that, knowing that it was a means to an end, it was kind of just like a stepping, stepping stone. At that same time, I was gathering my own work through architects, I was doing a lot of product back then as well. Not so much now at all. Yeah, but but a lot of product photography, which was great. I could easily set up a very small kind of product table, and just go at that it was very mindless. I do love product photography. Not I do love the the kind of whole advertising aspect of it. But these were just very mindless, you know, photograph hundreds of little glass vases or whatever it might be. So you get the lighting just right. And then you just kind of go left and right for about five or six hours, just photographing every single one. I love that type of work. It's a no brainer. So yeah, I don't even know if I answered that question.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  32:09  Okay, so basically you try a whole bunch of stuff after, after that wedding. In putting product, I'm guessing. Cool. Yeah, yeah.
Steve Scalone  32:19  Yeah, absolutely.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  32:21  I guess. I want to talk a little bit about that project. 730 Street. That was such a fun project, something that really out of my comfort zone, I really don't know, if I wanted to take that. Because I'm more of a nature and landscape photographer. And there's more of urban and street photography. And I was I wasn't sure how I feel about that. But I know that, you know, trying new things really like, like, you find things that you love, and you don't like about new things. So that's why I was like, You know what, I'll just gonna jump on it. And I actually quite enjoy that street photography, side of, of the side, you know, street photography, genre side of it, and actually quite enjoyed a lot. And it was a really good for a good purpose as well. So do you want to share us a little bit more about what is project street 730 project? Is it projects 733 or projects? Three, seven.
Steve Scalone  33:36  So we just call it project St. Now, because there was a lot of confusion about the 730. Which I'll explain. I'll explain. Yeah. Can I just say I, I do remember your image if it wasn't like a wide angle, like a super wide angle? Almost like a 360 degree.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  33:56  It was a fish. I
Steve Scalone  33:56  had this hours of fisheye. Yes. And I'm so glad that you did that. Because I do hear a lot like about how terrified people are. And not just yourself, but everybody on the day, whether they're kind of just, you know, just starting photography or seasoned professionals. I think everyone is kind of crapping their pants a little bit because there's so much pressure and that's great, but it's fun pressure. Yeah. The way it all started was I was trying different things whilst living in Melbourne. So I was building up a good contact of other photographers and a great network was starting to become friends. And I made friends with a fashion photographer that she's amazing. She's, she's kind of fashion slash stylist. And we were talking and I mentioned to her wouldn't it be fun if we got one A model, one makeup artist and one designer. So those three didn't change. And we got eight photographers. And we gave each other 20 minutes each, we locked each other out of the room. So nobody could see what we were doing. And let's see how different the results were. And it was incredible. The, like all of us had, obviously the same model to work with the same gown, or the was more or less a kind of outfit. And it was great, absolutely great. Every single image was completely different. And I love the energy that that was producing, because everybody was really nervous. You know, they didn't know what what they were going to do yet there was pressure was like 20 minutes. Are you kidding? Only 20 minutes. So when I was having a chat to Craig, which and so that's kind of where the premise come from. And we didn't really do too much more after that, for the fashion, kind of kind of realm. I think we call that eight to one. So eight photographers one model, essentially. So Craig, Gretchen and I are the co founders of project Street. And we have done. I'm going to say probably about eight cities, I could be wrong on that. We were meant to do Brisbane in 2020. But hence the Coronavirus and the kind of lock downs that have happened. We've still got everyone booked, we're hopefully going to be starting that mid year, this year, if all goes well. And there's vaccines that are working, and so on and so forth. So essentially what we did was get together and start this particular idea where we invite it, I only more or less wanted about 15 photographers because I was thinking trying to juggle 30 is incredible. But the what ended up happening, it was all for charity. So we was a non not for profit. If anything in the beginning, we were actually putting money into it, especially things like website registration and stuff like that. But basically, the two of us come from different parts of the realm. He So Craig, which is a very successful publisher, he he and is great with fundraising, where I come from a very logistical sort of realm where I was good with systems and running printers and computers and juggling people and things like that. So I don't think I could have done it without him specially for the fundraising benefits of it all because that's where his experience came in. And Craig is also a teacher of also a kind of tertiary teacher as well. So the two of us kind of got together, it's like, yeah, this is fantastic. And so we started looking for
art galleries. And this one particular art gallery that we did really want was essentially $3,000 to hire for the two weeks, and so on and so forth. So that's kind of where the 30 people sort of come along. It's like, okay, we're gonna charge $100 I think now it's 120 booth specially when we were travelling. But yeah, basically, it's essentially $100 You get to participate with this. All the printing and all the kinds of paper is donated, which is fabulous. I'm fortunate enough to be an Ilford ambassador, and kind of affiliated with Epson as well. So I kind of got them on board rather quickly, which is great. And now we're all for it. Absolutely all for it. So never had a problem with the inks or the paper. Or even that the printers to operate it in many different cities, which was fabulous. Because yeah, that logistically that could have been really tricky. And it was a couple of times. But that's why we I guess we kept it to small a two printers instead of large prints, so on and so forth, which was also a time based thing. So essentially, for those of you that don't know what project Street is, we invite 30 photographers in one particular city to meet at 7:30am in the at one given location, pretty much just to meet each other, get a large group shot, and then essentially we disperse and try and get our best photograph within maybe about three to four hours. What happens then is we will reconvene back at either a gallery or the place where we're going to be running the event. And it is later that night. And everyone's encouraged to kind of work together to edit their one image, what they ended up doing is giving their image to me. And that whole process has had gotten better now. Now, it's just like a dropbox link where you just upload and it all comes rushing to me, which is fabulous, where before it was just madly running around with USB sticks, and it just didn't work. So essentially, once we have these 30 images are, by the way, Craig and I are also part of that, then we start to print them, and we print them for charity. So there's already a whole bunch of people coming that night. And that starts at 7:30pm. So we've got this essential 12 hour gap where we need to photograph, print, hang, and then exhibit an auction every single image for the night. So once and we got pretty good at kind of getting donations from wine wineries, and you know, food and things like that. But essentially, what we did was at 730, we started auctioning off each piece. And all of it was done for charity. So normally, the charities that we invited, were either from either street homelessness, youth homelessness, even perhaps cancer research, things like that. So we would always try and get a representative to be there on the night with their own merchant facilities. So whoever kind of was the winning bid, on that night, they essentially get their image, we wrap it up for them, and then they pay the actual charity, then in there, the beauty of that is I didn't want to kind of collect the money and then handle it and do all that type of thing. So that way, once the events over, it's kind of over, which is, which is great. It didn't work that way in the beginning, but that's kind of how we we sort of worked on it throughout the years. And I think the first one we did, I could be wrong. I think it was 2017, which was in Melbourne.
And yeah, we just kind of kept going on from there. So it's such a great cause. Because as you would have felt it's so terrifying yet challenging. You're scared but excited. You know, it's all of these emotions in order to get the the kind of desired result that you're after. And then when you see it finished, in that very same day, you kind of feel really great about yourself and inspired. And so that was kind of my premise for the whole thing, just complete satisfaction all around. And it's like a win win for the greater good. It just Yeah, that's great. So good
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  43:24  boy, yeah, it's, I mean, like the experience itself, just I don't think I've ever shot that many photos in, in that, in that like really intense style, to be honest, it's crazy. And the amount of hours that I was able to get is just crazy. It's like from architecture to like this, like street, people that doing this funny stuff. And, yes, it's really cool. And I really enjoy that actually, it really enjoy that. So yeah, thanks a lot for sharing that. And I think the one thing that I would, I would highly encourage other people to take away from this is to get out of your comfort zone, like, you know, try new things. Even though you might not like it at the end of the day shoe, you will find some sort of inspiration. And I I've been meaning to, if when I get a chance to travel around Asia again, where there's a lot of people, because right here in a month, and there's not many people at the moment. I've been wanting to kind of do a little bit more of that street photography and dwell into that a little bit. I found that quite interesting to observe just strangers doing what they doing and it's always so natural to everyone. But when you watch it and you're like, Wow, do I actually do that? It's like it's crazy.
Steve Scalone  44:59  Yes, yeah, absolutely, absolutely. No, I think delving out of your comfort zone is such a healthy, healthy thing to do. Because once it's all over your comfort zone is now so much wider. Yeah. And you feel far more comfortable to jump out just that little bit more,
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  45:18  ya know, for sure, for sure. It was That was definitely my, my introduction to street and urban photography, I don't think I've ever
Steve Scalone  45:29  fabulous, and your work was amazing. So well done.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  45:33  I just shot a bunch of stuff and hoping this one turned out? Well, that's what you do. Actually, the hardest thing out of that challenge was picking the one that was the hardest thing like, Yes, and I share that, you know, like, you're, you come across this all the time, especially, for example, when you create exhibition or your photo book, and that was always a challenge of, you know, what's gonna make it in there, and what's not gonna make it in there. Let us share us a little bit of tips of, you know, how do you how do you find so, you know, for listeners out there, there might be a hobbyist that like, try to get a little bit more reach and send it to a newspaper, for example, or they just want to send it to this competition and see where, how far they've come and so forth. How, what sort of advice would you give them in, in actually curating the photo? That is best for for those particular theme or competition or so?
Steve Scalone  46:46  Yes, ah, such a good question. You're right on the good questions today. So, you're right, I think the hardest job any photographer has, is choosing the one photo. Like, it's like, why does it have to be one? Like, why can't I supplied 12, so forth, it's like, I can't give this one up, so on and so forth. So a lot of my students really have that huge, huge dilemma as well. But I kind of make it an exercise, it's like this is going to be the hardest thing, one of the hardest things that you do. So let's kind of put it down into logistics, what I would do is number one, think about, or there's probably three things that you should think of, number one is think about carefully where you want this one particular photo to go. So if people on the day at Project Street, were asking, or which one do you like, I've got three images here. There's this one, there's that one, and there's that one, the first thing I would say is, number one, take your own emotion out of it. So that's like, stop and step back. Number two, think about the motives of what you're, you're actually supplying the image for, in Project Street's case, the images were to appear on somebody else's wall. So a beautiful street portrait of somebody pouring coffee, for example, may not be as likely to get a higher price than perhaps something more a little bit architectural or something like that. So your motive, the second one is choose your motive very carefully. However, if it was for documentary competition, then that would be the one that you would end up choosing. And then number three, which I think's the most important thing once you've made those two decisions, number three is bring your all your emotion back into it. And everybody has a couple of images where you you get excited just by looking at it. It's almost like you can't leave the photo alone, you're opening it up in Photoshop, again, you're kind of just zooming in at 800% and you just retouching it a little bit, you zoom it back out, and you're just loving yourself sick over that image. So they're the images that for some reason have really kind of connected with you. They more often than not will also reconnect strongly with somebody else. So that is also another thing to think about. But if it is like your most favourite image of your pet that you love daily, for example, or your kids or your grandkids, then it may not have that same bundled emotion to somebody else, because they're not your grandkids, so on and so forth. But yeah, so those three things, so think about who is going to see it, think about the motive of why you're supplying an image, take all of that emotion away. So those two decisions should be completely logical. And then you bring in your own emotion and go at it that way. That's kind of how I choose images for awards, so on and so forth. In my point of view, because I am actually a judge at most of the major competitions as well, I would ask myself, what would a judge say about this image. And so I completely wipe my own emotion away from it, it's not the compositions off on this, you know that the hand is in front of the face too much, or, you know, it's slightly out of focus here, and it's drawing the viewer away too much to that spot, that's not good enough. So on and so forth. So even though you took six hours to wait there in the freezing cold to get just that one image, and that's why you're so emotionally attached to it. Anybody else that if you put yourself in a situation where you're having your images judged, which is yet again, a very brave yet very strong thing I think everyone should do to increase your, your comfort zone.
Think about that the the person that's judging it has no idea of the torture that you went through to get that image. So you've also got to remove that emotion away from it. So emotion removal is my biggest. Yeah, take that emotion away from it.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  52:05  That's definitely the hardest. And like you say, like, you know, and you and you take a photo and you go through like, it's like, sometimes that photo is just, well, the way I see it anyways, photo is like a metal, you know, like you you go through this experience, and you capture it. And that's like, that's my momento that I get to preserve for the rest of my life. Yeah. And sometimes Yeah, you're right. It's very difficult to take away that. That emotion of you taking it and it's really hard not to be biassed. So yeah, really good advice. And, you know, how I decide my photo that day, I think I went from, like about 1000, or something like that to like, 500. And I was like, holy, and I was like, Okay, I want me to be like ruthless. And then after there's still about about 100. And then, so I go from Wow, or to two star to three star to four star. And then why should I go to five star they still like 25 of the
Unknown Speaker  53:13  just like, you see which one you like the most is like, okay, yeah, that's like, that's it? I'm pretty.
Steve Scalone  53:21  Yes. Absolutely. That's a great, yay, bringing in some really harsh kind of people. Usually it's spouses. Spouses is like that. I don't like that at all. They speak the truth, or at least my one does. Anyway.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  53:45  That's, that's, that's great. Advice and suggestion. So coming to our end to the podcast here, and I always ask this to all of people that I interviewed. If you were to have one thing, and that you could want advice that you could give other photographers out there now, it doesn't matter if they're beginner, advanced or intermediate. But what is the one advice that you feel most important to you? That you that you feel that it doesn't matter where they are, or it doesn't matter where they go? They should hear this one advice? What would that
Steve Scalone  54:31  Ah, love it? Yeah, I've got it. It's one that took me many years to stop doing and that's to stop looking at other photographers work. So that yeah, that and I did that very early, like stopped looking at other photographers work. And the reason I do it, it may not work for everyone, but this is what I would ask everyone to try is you start looking at other influences. Like, for me, major influences are movies, music, I also play musical instruments as well. So that's a huge part of what I do. I can kind of see sound. We'll get into that, like colour and sound and stuff like that. But yeah, the biggest, what I discovered was my own work bit started becoming more unique. When I stopped looking at other people's work. Yeah, so that's my big, just try it, try it for, you need to give it a good block of time. Try it for about six months, and see where it had led you.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  55:44  That's, that's very interesting. Because in my journey, you know, like early on on my stage, that's all I did. And that's where I realised if I need to make a change, because all my photos become an Instagram photo that everybody else takes just better. Yeah. And it has become a really a hard balance, I suppose. Finding that because other people photo can work as inspiration. But at the same time, it can give you this really close mindedness or what you should get. So very sure, Brian, you bring that up? Cool. Yeah. So thanks a lot for all that advice. And you want to share a little bit because you didn't mention there about, you know, seeing sound and colour. So you want to like finish that point of people that?
Steve Scalone  56:46  I know. Yeah. So I had been, I'm a bass player, and have been, since by early early teens. I'm terrible at it now. But I used to be quite good, because I don't practice any. But one of my influences has never really been photographers anyway. Of course, there's the greats that everybody loves. But essentially, I hear music, and can kind of associate sour colour. The only way I can really describe it is happy equals yellow, sad is blue, so on and so forth. So it is kind of a typical colour theory that I think we all know. But yeah, when I can kind of see it in real time when listening to music. And that kind of helps me put together a lot of colour sequences and so on and so forth. So yeah, that's, that's as far as I'm getting into that, because I don't really know how to explain it properly yet. So without getting myself into too much trouble. Yeah. But try it. It's right. It's I kind of mixed those senses up.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  58:09  That's actually very true. I mean, you know, even when you just said, I feel like, you know, when you when you listen to, to a music, you there is there is a theme in mind of what that should be. what that should look like, as a picture. So that's quite Yeah, I might actually try that. That's very interesting. Yeah, it's,
Steve Scalone  58:32  it's almost like meditating. Uh huh. So
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  58:37  cool. Well, thank you very much for all of your wisdom and your, your advices as well as sharing your experience on, you know, the struggles and the successes and where you end up, you know, at the end of it, so that was great to hear all that and I'm sure the listeners would be ecstatic to know a little bit more about you and some more, some more of some more of your work or on the left. Where is the best how can they best find you?
Steve Scalone  59:13  Yes, certainly. I'm so I'm, I'm trying to get better at social media. I think I don't think I've posted on Instagram for months. So my website is Steve ascalon.com. I also have a an online store, which is called small art photo.com. And then there's Project st.com.au. So when you do that, that will actually show you everything about every little city that we have gone to so far. Your works tucked away in there somewhere which is great.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  59:56  Where's your next project stream?
Steve Scalone  59:59  Yes. Well, it's it wasn't meant to be up in Brisbane in April of 2020. So we're hoping to get there around about the the June 2021. So everybody's more or less locked in. We're just waiting for, for things to settle down a little bit with a pandemic, before we kind of bring large groups of people together and things like that. Say, Yes,
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  1:00:23  one for a year. Is that Is that what you're doing?
Steve Scalone  1:00:27  We usually aim to yes, we're hoping to get over to the States. Yet again, I think that will be well into 2022. We did have plans to actually do a web API, Project St. Which would have been amazing. So that is still on the cards. We just have to kind of wait till the world gets back to normal just a little bit. But yeah, we've done New Zealand. And we were hoping to do New Zealand again, once per year as well.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  1:01:01  Awesome. Well, yeah. Thanks for being here. And that was great. Yeah, so we can't thank you very much for tuning in. Thank you very much. Thanks to Steve for sharing all that advices, as well as insight on his journey. And it is quite interesting to hear a lot of that story. And also, there's a lot of takeaway talk in there. So if you listen to this, so feel free to drop us a line and let us know, you know, if you find this helpful, you know, if you find this to be inspirational, or you know if you just find it to be educational altogether. Now. Yeah. If you tuning in on the podcast, I'll see you next week. But if you're in in YouTube, don't forget to subscribe so that you get notified the next time I put a video out. And, Steve, thank you very much for being here again, to spare some of your time for being here and sharing your wisdom. That was amazing.
Steve Scalone  1:02:04  Thanks so much, Stanley.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  1:02:06  Thank you. All right. Well, thank you very much and until next time,
 

Ep 20 - How Felix Gerz found inspirations in his life from doing landscape photography

Hey Wicked Hunters,
This week we chat with Felix about his journey to get started in photography. How he was able to find inspiration from landscape photography and his big dream to pursue his passion for photography. 
You can learn more about him by connecting in
www.felixgerz.com
www.felixgerzphotography.com
www.instagram.com/exploreincreation
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Transcription:
Felix Gerz  0:00  After landscape photography, I feel inspired. You know, like, I feel absolutely I feel thrilled. I feel like recharge being out there in nature is what I'd want to do anyways
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  0:16  so again, this welcome back to the weekend photography podcast where we share our passion as a photographer, and how photography gives us hope, purpose, and happiness. Now, welcome back. And today we have Felix from Germany, who's currently in Canada, and he's a landscape photographer who work with brands all over the world. So hey, Felix, how you doing? Very good,
Felix Gerz  0:41  man. How you doing?
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  0:42  Doing well, doing well? Glad to see you again. It's been a while. Totally. Yeah. So what you've been up to what you've been up to lately?
Felix Gerz  0:53  Oh, man, I've been living in a beautiful town of Revelstoke enjoying the small mountain community town and getting a lot of just scattering recently. Yeah, that's basically most of my life right now.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  1:04  Man, every time I see your photo, you really make me jealous. It's, it's, yeah, I mean, it's so beautiful. And I Yeah, wish I have more time to do a little bit more of that this year. But yeah, I got a little bit. My priorities shifted a little bit this year. So um, you are from Germany. And you came here, I guess. Give us a little bit of story, a little bit of background story about who you are, and why you choose photography.
Felix Gerz  1:38  Totally, totally. So originally, I was born and raised in Germany, other two for 18 years. But I quickly realised that Germany is not the place for me, like I quickly realised the German culture, the Western culture is not 100% where I feel at home, I feel a lot of pressure growing up. And I felt like I was pushed into like a little drawer. And yeah, I had to kind of follow up everyone else's pathway in life, I guess, like to start really deep here. Which is like, yeah, studying, and then get a job, get an apartment, get the car and blah, blah, blah, you kind of kind of know what I mean, I guess. And this totally did not suit my personality. So that's why as soon as I could when I was 18, I booked a flight. And when we fly back then it was to New Zealand and I, yeah, I was living there for a while. I just tried to rediscover who I am, who I was. And yes, it's now been three and a half years since I've since I left Germany. And I ended up in Canada. To your question, why photography? That's a very big question. I guess it all started actually, when I was really I think I was 13 years old. And we had to do this like really random biology observation project. We just had to photograph trees and the change of seasons in it. And yeah, back then I picked up my good old 450 D of my like, my dad's camera. Good old Canon old DSLR. And yeah, it ended up it started off with me photographing trees for the biology project, but it ended up with me being in the forest for Thai days, just shooting deer mushrooms and stuff. And then from then on, it just developed you know, I got to know how a camera works. I went out of the auto mode. And yeah, I got my own camera when I was 15 then and good old T three I who didn't have that in the back then. Yeah, and then just grew from there, man. Yeah, and I shot lots of weddings when I grew up grew up, when I grew up, and they kind of tried to find my style more and more and specialise in specific niches. And then at some point, when I left Germany, I combined it with my travelling so wherever I travelled, I tried to reestablish the business and work with tourism brands. And yeah, as you said, already, the landscape photography niche. Cool.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  3:59  Awesome. You just mentioned that you shot weddings as well. That's, that's a bit usually, I mean, you know, from most of landscape photographers, and as well as myself. Usually we don't shoot weddings because and we should we choose like landscape. It's like the two very extreme side of it, right? One of them is like with so many people are in pressure and one of them is like, do a one and it's no one there's like, chill. So like, how does that feel like, you know, merging between the two like going from one to another?
Felix Gerz  4:33  That is a very good question, actually. Because there is tension between landscape and commercial photographers and wedding photographers, for sure. And I had a lot about discussion it was about that. But I think it's actually not it's actually really, really interesting to cop combined those two together. Let's say to get the scenic landscape photography way you look at the weather, you look at the sun, you look at landscapes, and just combine it with weddings, for example, getting in stead of having having different nature foregrounds having the couple as a foreground in the scenery. And I think that's absolutely amazing, especially if you have people that are totally in for that and happy to wake up at 4am Just to hike a freaking mountain in their wedding dress, you know. And I think that is really cool. And I love combining those things. But yeah, you are right, like landscape photography is a very well your day in nature, you're soaking it all in their silence, usually. And wedding photography is stressful wedding photography, especially on the wedding day has to do with lots of responsibility. Lots of people, you have to communicate with everyone. And yeah, but I have a passion for both. And I like to combine it and I think that's a really cool niche as well. Yeah, that's,
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  5:45  that's really cool to hear. I mean, I never, I always say I don't want to do it. But I guess I shouldn't give it a try. Because I never know, um, I actually like it. But let's, let's not go into that. With landscape because, yeah, anyway, so I guess like with with the thing that with wedding photography, the thing that really stressed me is always the pressure. And it's okay, I feel like if you find like someone who actually enjoy, who actually let you be the creative side, and actually along with your creativity, but some people are very, you know, they're really close minded so that they want a certain type of shot. So if you miss that certain type of shot, they become unhappy. And that's, that's what I guess that's what I really scared about. Have you come across that sort of people?
Felix Gerz  6:37  I say generally speaking, the couples I shoot are very young. And they stayed they they hire me because they like, what they identify with the style with that with my shooting style. So right, right off the bat, there's a lot of trust, usually where they're saying, okay, you know, what, we know your work, we trust you in there, you know, better than we do. And that's ideal. That's what we want to hear as photographers, right? Like people are having trust, and we can totally unfold our creativity. But yeah, and sometimes there, there are people that are saying, okay, hey, you know what, I had one person that sent me like, an entire Pinterest list of photos where they're like, Okay, I want this, I want this, and I want this, and it's totally fine. I mean, it's a once in a lifetime day, hopefully, if everything goes right. And that's totally fair. And I like to respect that and take Yeah, and make these put these expectations into reality as well. And that's totally fine. And then there are just a couple of situations where you, yeah, we were, you're just really focused on that one shot, but then I try to always guide people into a non stage uncurbed, unperfect. Atmosphere, what can they can repeat themselves. And I think that's what is really special about wedding photography, because you are a stranger for them. I as someone who travels all around the world who's not even speaking their language as my first language, you know, and I have just a very, very minimal of time to gain that confidence and to make them really comfort comfortable, that I can capture raw and emotion, raw emotions and unstaged photos. And I think building that bridge between Okay, I have no idea who you are, and you have no idea who no idea who I am. And hair, you totally trust me and everything I do. And you can totally be yourself in a very, very short amount of time. I think that is a really, really cool aspect in wedding photography. That is not happening in any other type of photography.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  8:30  Yeah, that's, that's awesome. It's definitely really difficult. One of the most difficult thing is to gain, you know, like, I mean, you kind of see that on a little bit on portrait as well as like fashion, but you don't have that much of you know, different like, John, because, you know, with the wedding, you go from nothing to like, everything, right? So, I actually like came across these clients when I was doing portrait wear. And it was like a nightmare, because she's like, oh, yeah, yeah, it's good, it's good. You do whatever you want and took a bunch of photos, send it to her and it's like, it's just not professional quality, like, it's just not worth my money. And I was just like, Okay. And yeah, it's just like, I don't know, like, I mean, I felt like he was just wanting her money back. But you know, just have to move on sometimes and cut your losses. But I guess what, I know that you identify yourself as a landscape and commercial photographer and reason why I want to ask you a lot of this wedding question is I want to bring a contrast and then I want to see how you feel about this in comparison to landscape. So now, now that we've talked about that, let's talk about the landscape and how are they contrast with each other like what what are the different feelings that you get or the different shifts or feelings that you get from from wedding that is, you know, Depending on people opinion and very, a lot of pressure to landscape where it's like, man, like go for your life, do what you want, you know, the nature will never pay anything back.
Felix Gerz  10:12  Totally, I think, I think the biggest difference between it and I think that's a question is that wedding photography drains me. And nature photography. If you consider the shooting part on set in nature and the type of photography I do that this really fills me up, if that makes sense recharges me. Because I'm an introvert. I'm when I'm around people. Yeah, I'm definitely getting drained and when I'm on my own or in nature and recharging, so I feel like, Yeah, I know, wedding day after wedding day, I'm actually pooped. I'm like, I'm just going to stretch a bed. I'm backing up the footage. I'm done for the day, after landscape photography, African inspired, you know, like, I feel absolutely, I feel thrilled. I feel like recharge being out there in nature is what I'd want to do anyways, and with my free time, you know, ski touring best example for that you just out there. So only you, your buddy. And then like just just nature everywhere, you know, and you're in the middle of nowhere. So ideally didn't know people around. So it's yeah, as you said, it's the biggest contrast that you can get.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  11:16  Yeah, that's, that's, that's actually true. I've never actually think of it that way. But it's very true. You know, when I was working in Lake Louise as a portrait photographer, it was very, it was very draining. Like, it's kind of nice to be able to, like, you know, like, talk to people and socialise a little bit in your photo shoot, but after a while, it just really get drained. You're right, like, I'm not exactly sure why there. But yeah, wow, very interesting. And so, you mentioned that you work with brands as well and do a lot of commercial and how is that fit in with everything else?
Felix Gerz  11:55  Yeah, so it's basically product because of my lifestyle, right? Like, wherever I go, right now. I see myself as an outdoorsy person. So wherever I travel is usually it's usually mountains, it's usually an outdoor outdoorsy area. And there's always tourism wherever I go. And I saw myself finding potential in the tourism area, because that's just where it was anyways. So that's right off the bat, how does that fit in everything else? Well, how did it work? I approached a lot of brands, I have different pitch boards where I can be like, okay, hey, look, I've been doing that for a couple of years straight. Now. I have the references. This is this is what I do. This is my style. And then I basically prove, yeah, I approached brands basically on the spot, and sometimes in advance, but usually it's really spontaneous as well. Yeah. And that's been working pretty well, actually. And you know, it's with everything you gain experience. In the beginning of it all, if I saw the email sent out in the beginning of like, four years ago or something, I would probably get my favourite headshot, if I saw that again, you know, but the more you do it, the more you get a feel for the industry, the more you chat with people that are like that, I might like mine, or the similar similar niche, the more you narrow down your portfolio to certain niches, or the more you just know how to how exactly, you can approach brands or tourism boards accurately. And it's just a development process with everything, you know. Yeah. So to answer your question really quickly, I think it's just how it just fit my lifestyle. And it just fit what I feel like I'm talented in. And that's why I saw potential and then that's why I kept following it.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  13:42  Cool. Yeah. Like Commercial is very interesting, because it's coming. I guess, depending on the type of people that you work with, or the company that you work with commercial can really aligned with either the crazy side of things of wedding and also could align with the landscape side of things of, sorry, the chill side of things off landscape, isn't it?
Felix Gerz  14:06  Totally. It's very versatile. That's what I love about it as well. Yeah.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  14:10  Yeah. So you get a lot of like, different changes is very dynamic. Not boring. Is that Is that what you're saying?
Felix Gerz  14:16  Yeah, totally, totally. Like, you know, and I love the entire process of it. Like I obviously like, love going up with with with people that are on the team and just shoot the actual content, but I also like to go back and see okay, this is the situation right now. For example, now we have the pandemic and everyone is kind of itching to get out there's a new consciousness for like, the outdoors everywhere. And I feel like that is so has so much potential for story and you know, going from okay, what's the situation right now, when a pandemic, we want to promote this outdoor brand, how can we put things together? And yeah, create a great campaign or product that reflects that I think that process in advance is also really really cool. Um, Um, yeah. So it is versatile. Yeah, it is not really just heading out there, like 1010 years ago, like, putting your tripod down putting your gradient filter down and just shooting one photo. That's it, and then you try to promote it. No, it's more it's the entire process that every like.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  15:15  Awesome. So you you came to Canada about a year ago? Give or take? Yeah. 50 month Yeah. 18 months. Yeah. So you say that you share with us a little bit story of how you your story in in back at home when you were doing your project and then you as soon as you kind of finished with that you took off to New Zealand and now you're here in Canada. So tell us a little bit story about that about your adventure and how photography cannot have fit in and, you know, help you document a lot of those adventures within your travel.
Felix Gerz  15:58  Very good question. Photography was before was there before I travelled. So it was always with me when I travelled. And yeah, I picked up on the reason why I left Germany because of the let's call it social pressure, let's call it, let's call it that I just didn't know what's out there. I just knew what I was used to. And I saw on Instagram on the page on YouTube and stuff, all these people being outdoors, and I was never really in the mountain. So I was like, I think I'm missing out. So that was one reason why I was like, Alright, I need to get out of here. And, yeah, then I went to New Zealand. And you know, I had a couple of Buck like dreams on my bucket list. I want to live in a car. I wanted to climb five peaks in the South Island, I wanted to go back then it was like things like bungee jumping, you know, I had a lot of things in my on my bucket list. I was like, Okay, I was never able to do it, I really want to do it. And then I planned backpacking trips around it, I was living in a surf town and how to surf and things like that. And the role that photography played in that was definitely just that I was able, and that was actually a major reason why I was able to grow in my ability as well, just because I took the camera along, wherever I was, and try to document how I felt and how what Yeah, on like, document the adventure itself, right, and the people that were involved. So what that meant was, for example, I I had it yeah, let me let me tell you very quickly about like something really, we really, you know, like I, I was back then I was only a backpacker, you know, I was only having a couple of bucks and spent that all on a car. And then at some point, the car broke down. I didn't have any money anymore. I wanted to have a job, I really tried to get it. And in the beginning, I was obviously trying to work with tourism, tourism brands, that wasn't a very, very beginning in New Zealand now. And in the beginning, it didn't, it didn't work. I was just not experienced enough. I didn't have the portfolio yet. And I was just really last so I didn't work. I tried to work in a for retail shops after that, and like stores and stuff. You know, I kind of went down all the time because things didn't work out. And it ended up me going through malls and through anything and just actually at some point just getting a job. It didn't really matter anymore because I was just broke. And yeah, and at some point, you know, I even got sick. My harddrive broke. That was like I still had the head of backup. But that was back in Germany. So I got really nervous here. It's like the nightmare of every photographer if like, your main hard drive is not working anymore. So I was crushed, you know, and it was like, oh, what should I do? And then you know, at some point I got a job as a farmer like what I was never I can't believe I'm telling you this right now but like you know, it's like something never considered I never really enjoyed. And then after that it was a horrible time I worked 16 hour days and I got treated like yeah, not like a nice person. It was not a really friendly environment. After that I worked with as a dishwasher you know it like it was jobs that were totally not relating to what I'm doing right now. But it was just the situation that travel situation that put me into the circumstances that I did things like that, but I'm telling you, you know, after that things shifted and what did I do and during these times I took my camera along I documented you know was a format my GoPro my head and and filmed like how I chased chased the cars into the colour chips the things that would hold that I brushed the crap out of the shed you know like things like that and then afterwards like right now I'm in a position okay, it's been a long time but have all this footage and back then I was already taking these stories that were already like always like it was not these dream stories of like, oh yeah, I travel I have the best time but it will also stories that way I was really like sad and really like drained you know and I took these stories and publish them. And beginning was only my channels you know on social media and stuff and it really like changed people and then I use my camera gadget to I visualise what I was feeling and to redraw people in my circumstances. And I think that's where really like my, my passion for storytelling began, you know, was really just telling my story. And just making sure that there's more reality on Instagram as well. Like, that's a really big topic for me that, you know, like, we just share 1% That's not really real, or real life, and people just assume it is. And I'm having a huge problem with that. So I really want to be more way more transparent, and that I want to be more real, because that's not what life is. And I think the camera just helps me to tell to, to, to build that bridge, you know, to, to really tell that story of it and just make sure,
yeah, there's more reality online. And yeah, from then on. In New Zealand, I learned so much like tele told the stories, and it just continued after. After that, when I went through Asia, I was in Nepal tracking. And that's why that was the second time I was working with tourism brands, you know. And back then it was a clothing company in New Zealand. And they send us up there in the Himalayas. That was really cool. And from then on, we went to Java and Indonesia, and had a great time there with the tourism board there. And, you know, I think the time in New Zealand wasn't amazing. And stuff was really leading up to that I learned so many things, I learned to appreciate these things and like really, how to really work hard so that the things I experienced in New Zealand, were not happening anymore. And the camera along the way, it was always a tool for me to bring to bring out to process it for myself, but also to prove to include other people and tell my story along the way. And yeah, that went over to dinner afterwards. I went to Norway, same thing worked with tourism, Norway out there. And then yeah, back in, I was in Portugal, same thing. And now I'm in Canada, and Canada has been a little different. But um, that's been that's been the last three years in a very, very, very short amount of time.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  21:55  Yeah, it's crazy, isn't it? I met It's so crazy, because we have really sort of a similar story. In terms of like timing, like, I started all this journey about three years ago as well. So and, I mean, I started travelling way before I started photography, probably not long before that, probably about a year before that, where I took it really seriously. But yeah, I started to travel full time. And I left my nine to five about three years ago. So it was so crazy to hear all this story. And it's, it's exactly the same thing. Like I had the same feeling when I right after I left that lifestyle, I feel like I finally live again, like I finally, like, living like you know, the life that I want. And honestly, like when I think back the past three years is more memorable than the past 30 years of my life. So it's been crazy to kind of see that it's insane. And that's one hour later, I love travelling, isn't it? Like you just get to see. I mean, if you didn't travel, you probably wouldn't be able to, you know, develop your skill that quickly because you wouldn't be able to see and face all that different challenges and adversity, isn't it?
Felix Gerz  23:15  And I think if I didn't travel, I would be a bank or broker right now in in Germany, that would be it would have been the worst thing that could have happened. So I'm pretty happy that. Yeah, you know, and the, you know, encounters like, like the one we had together, you know, that just really encourage you because you know that people are in the same boat, you know, and that are that you're not alone with what you what you how you feel. And maybe I can just throw in a little story of a person I met on a on a grid walk in New Zealand. I was Thomas, he was 40 years old. And he's been working for 20 years and a job back in, in Eastern Europe. And I met him on the trail. And he told me his story. And it was really inspiring, because it hasn't had a big impact on my life. Because he said, Yeah, he worked 20 years for a development company. You know, he had what people in our culture just promise us, which is reputation, money, fame, let's even put girls in there or whatever, you know, like, the car, and he had something he just broke down. He almost had a car accident, he just crashed down and he was like, hey, I need to change something like that's not what I want to do, you know, and hit this revealing moment where he just had to sell everything, go to New Zealand, and he was a cherry picker. And it was the happiest person he has ever been. You know, and it's like, I can totally relate. You know, it's not about the things you have for the job you do. It's like following your passion heart in that case, you know, and that's just what you felt when I assume when you started three years ago, and you just went out and you felt so like, you know, and I think that's just so inspiring. But I said, I don't want to be 35 or 40 to realise that so like I wanted to just start a little earlier. Yeah, but yeah, encounters like that man just really inspired me.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  25:00  Yeah, you're you're really lucky to have kind of realise this very early on. I definitely, you know, if, if I were to go back, the one thing that I would change is that like, you know, I mean, I didn't really regret anything that I've gone through because, you know, I'm in a position now where I, I a little bit more secured. And you know, people like you because I have, you know, the university and stuff like that, which actually, I think is a bad thing, because it can discourage me, sometimes I always go, you know, if things go wrong, I always have this, it's really bad thing. And I only, it's only just last year where I actually give up that option. I was like, I would never go back to that lifestyle period. You know, and before, I used to always say that, but never really kind of mean it always at the back of my mind. It's like that.
Felix Gerz  25:54  It's really interesting. That can I can interrupt you for a second. I had a lot of I had a lot of I had a lot of conversations about there were lots of filmmakers, you know, because let's be honest, especially during COVID times, like things are uncertain. And we as creative sometimes. Well, yeah, we things are not, let's be honest, like 2020 As a creative, opportune job opportunity year wasn't like incredible for us. I had the best year but like, not out of this perspective. So having a backup, like you did, is something that would really reassure me a little bit, just give gives me a good feeling in my stomach. I think like, that's what I would expect from it, you know, because, oh, if everything fails, if I can reestablish my business, your things just go down, I still have this as a backup Do you feel that gives you any insurance?
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  26:39  So I do, and I don't, I. But a couple of months ago, actually, my old boss contacted me because he thought I was back in person offered me a job and a promotion from where I was. But I thought about it, and I turned it down straightaway. And here's, here's the good and the bad thing. The good thing is that people say always say that you always have a backup. And for my case, it's a really, really comfortable backup, right? An engineer, like I could literally work anywhere as an engineer, really comfortable backup. And I've also worked like in business improvement and business side of things. I've been supervisor as well. So I have a wide array of skill that I could fall back to. Now, the bad thing about this is that sometimes when you don't, sometimes when you have something to fall back to you don't go all in and for that reason, you know, you get lazy, you get complacent. And a good example is I guess when, like so, the reason why I left my job is that when I started photography, I feel like I enjoying it. And I mean, before even that, probably three years into the I know that I want to build a lapstone laptop style lifestyle. But it never happened because it's too much comfort. Like, I don't have the push to go there. You know, like, it's like, oh, yeah, I could wait till tomorrow, you know, I don't need this right now. It's like, totally, there's always something. And I the reason why I decided to leave my job was that, I know that I don't want that lifestyle. I I've known for a while, but there's just so much doubt in myself, I know that there is something better out there. And I know that if I stay with my nine to five of never, I'll never gonna get there, it's always gonna there's always going to be an excuse. So actually cutting cutting your your safety net is the best thing to get there. And it is really scary. But the one thing that I always come back to is going back to what you're saying with the working farm. When I was after my trip in Indonesia and Australia when I first came here, I worked back in a restaurant where I get $12.50 per hour. Going back from from engineering job is like, you know, really good hourly rate to like to another 50 And now Right?
Felix Gerz  29:29  Like, it's, it's even worse.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  29:32  By the end of the day, I got like 60 bucks. I was like yeah, like it's, it's, it's more, I think it's that that lesson just taught me that. You know, you always have a safety net, like you know, like in this especially for our our world like you know, like for Australia and Canadian and all that really developed country like worst case scenario, just kind of a quirk And the restaurants like, it's like, I could literally live off that if I just worked my ass off there and built, you know, on the site. So, yeah, it's a bad it's a good and a bad thing actually. Yeah, quite interestingly. So. And also when you're on like yourself you have more hunger you have you have more energy and you have you have less, less desire for comfort, because you haven't experienced yet as much as,
Felix Gerz  30:26  as I do. I totally, totally. Yeah, it's true. It's true. We get we get spoiled, you know, especially in these Western countries, the worst, the worst thing that can happen, you know, it's, it's something even acceptable still. So yeah, I'm with you.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  30:41  It's really interesting, though, like, I really thought, I mean, I was born in Indonesia, and I was raised up in, in that culture, where, I mean, my parents was actually really cool. They have been supported me. You know, even when I was most Asian parents would say it's like, all you either have to do the three things, which is Doctor engineer, and yeah, and accountant type of thing, which I, and my parents actually had been really supportive and just like, do what you want to do. I, I had at one point, I wanted to do like, social studies and become a politician, which I realised how much I hate and so glad, didn't take that wanted to do. I'm so surprised that, you know, for a Western culture, like Germany, it's like that as well.
Felix Gerz  31:37  Totally, totally debt there is there's a lot of pressure going on. Like, I mean, that's just my opinion, I'm pretty sure that this is controversial. And I'm definitely someone who doesn't really fit into the pattern. That's what I am very, I feel provoked, provoked for like to that but um, I agree. Yeah, there's a lot of pressure pressure for achieving things for building up a reputation. And there's a lot of competition thinking, No, I think in Canada, especially where we live right now. It's more like, okay, let's work together. Let's, you know, like, make your passion big, and it's okay. Even if it sounds weird, and it's the same in New Zealand. But I feel like in Germany, it's like, okay, if it's not, if it's not, sort of an official way of doing things, if it's not something that people did in the past, and it's proven that it works. You are your weirdo, you're a little bit different. And, yeah, no, I really feel this way. And I agree, I think that's not where I fit in. And I'm pretty glad your parents are not like that. For you. I'm pretty awesome. Like, I think it's pretty awesome that they support you the way you want to build your future, you know,
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  32:45  well, they had a lot of doubts, and they were really worried. But it goes That's
Felix Gerz  32:48  definitely Yeah, I agree. Same of mine. But, you know, like, we are spoiled, like, I don't know where abouts from Indonesia you from? It sounds like you're not from a very poor background. But um, I've been in Java, for example, as I mentioned earlier, and it's been that's what that was a poorest country after a poll I've ever been to and you know, people there I met people that was actually the project I was most proud of, of my life, I documented a group of a self reminding worker working in a volcano in Java, this mountain in Mount Egypt. Exactly. And I think that was one of the most inspiring things I've ever that changed my life the most because yeah, just really quickly to carry up to 110 kilos on their shoulders on a bamboo basket. Before they after they dismantled it with them next to like 120 degrees solemn sour crater, like inside a crater and then it just balance it out and just get it down to valley and, you know, 700 metres on bare feet. And, you know, they have no insurance, no nothing, and they have no choice. You know, they were, I talk to the guys and they have no choice because they've been doing it for generations, and they're not having the money to leave the country. The policy is corrupt. And yeah, it's really sad, but that's just reality. They're, you know, and yeah, telling that story and realising how, and come back to that what we said earlier, you know, how spoiled we are no restaurant cultures now. And, you know, even the worst case, let's say the worst case would be that working for a restaurant or something like that would be like an absolute luxury case for them something, something they could never even dream of. So and things like that, when you realise them, they humble you down and they bring you back back to the ground, you know, and I think I would actually encourage everyone to have experiences like that where you just really reset your mind and just see okay, hey, the Terex jacket I want to buy tomorrow. It's not like it's absolutely a luxury item. You know, it's something people don't even think of down there and yeah, do you know an hour an hour worth of was obsessed salary like in our daily daily wage for us, it's like a monthly wage for them. So it brings you back to the grind On for sure. And, you know, that's you appreciate where we are.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  35:03  Well, that's, that's the interesting thing is like, when I grew up, I mean, like, we, I wouldn't say we were poor, but we're like, okay, and my parents are working really hard to stay afloat, right. And so when I got my engineering job, it was like, like a dream come true, I finally have the money to you know, spend or get what I wanted. And, and that's why it was really hard to leave that behind. Because I was like, wow, I really want to go back to like, being broke. But, yeah, that's, that's, it's been an interesting journey so far. So one of one thing that I really like, hearing from your story, or your, the way you put photography, you always say feeling like, you know how, like the emotion behind and I feel like not many people in photography world talking about that. They're more fixated about how good they look, instead of the emotion that that photo really evoke. So I really love how how you bring that up. Tell us a little bit more about your, your take on how photography and emotion kind of interconnected and how it helps you to capture the photo that you're capturing, right now?
Felix Gerz  36:32  Um, yeah, sure. I think nowadays, it's really, it's really easy to take a photo without putting any thought and emotion into it. I think you know, you like you live in Lake Louise, you see that every day, people just going through, like, at like, a certain amount of time. And just like take that one photo. I think that's the most, like, emotional. So thing you can you can do and caught while you call yourself a creative, you know. And I think photos, especially now, when we have an overflow of photos in on Instagram, where you can edit it like it was, you know, it wasn't possible for like 10 years or five years ago that I think it's way more important that we have motion or photos or that we display or focus on that, because I think that's at some point, making a lot of difference. And yeah, I think how do you how you do get a motion in your photo, it's just if your photo tells a story if your photo reflects something you are dealing with, or the viewer deals with. And I think that is something you can deliver with. Yeah, you can do it in the photo itself through comprehensive composition through like, telling a story with different characters and different emotions or like different facial expressions and people. You can also do it in a caption way, just tell the the actual story in a text. That's what I do a lot.
And, yeah, and best thing you can do is combining those two things, you know, so yeah, maybe an example of how I feel like I did accomplish that. Let's go back. Let's go back to the to the example in Java and stick to that for a second. Like, you know, I could have said like it was it's a touristy area by now. Like it's people go there all the time to check it out. And you see a blue flame phentermine. And then yeah, just to go into the crater. But um, I really hated it. I really hated the tour. Like, we didn't book a tour or anything. So we just walked up on the place. And we said, okay, who's local here? Our taxi driver was translating for us. It's like, okay, hey, please. Could you ask one of these guys, you and disability living in this village, if he's working in this in this in this volcano, and maybe he can, maybe he can give us he can just bring us up there. That's all we said. We didn't say okay, we want to have a tour. That's what should be what should be included. We didn't get there with a tour bus or anything. And we really wanted to have the raw and the real experience of the place and the people that live and act in it. And yeah, and it actually happened. So I'll check with you, I was able to communicate with them. One of the guys that works there, his name was Vito, and yeah, he took us up there. And I think that was the first the first step and bringing, and just really considering emotional photo because we weren't there on like on our own, or like with like a big company or anything. We were really there because we wanted to experience the place. How the local student how it actually really is because tourism very, very often just blurs places and perspective. And I think that was the first step. So he took us up here he told us things that no what no tour guy would ever tell us. You know, he told us how people died in the volcano he told us how about all his any injuries he had while working there, he told us about the competition with within the workers and the pressure within the inter inter Yeah, the pressure within the people that work there is and he was actually also able to, you know, we rocked in up into place and all the tourists were gone at some point. We because we totally took took a different time to go to go there from the beginning of from the beginning. So we were really seeing the people that acting in it and like how they actually are because of when they're tourists around, they're different. You know, they're like, you know, they try to sell them things and take photos with them. But when they're all gone, they tried to focus on the work, because that's what I had to get the money as well. Right. And, yeah, I think having that approach gave us the opportunity to see the place and the people in an authentic way. And having this local showing us around, there was a perfect door opener, because he couldn't, he obviously knew every person and he was able to, you know, I had questions, for example, about the place and about the person I was I was photographing, because I wanted to tell the story in an emotional way again. And so he was able to give us information about that person and to talk to him and introduce us and really, like break the ice between that strange like between us with who was stranger to each other, you know, I think the approach definitely determines this the emotion you can you like the amount of emotion you can deliver in a photo as well. And it's not like, oh, yeah, just walk up in a place and see how it goes. But it's actually having a more intention into the story behind it and try to make an make making make an effort to experience that, that place in its real state, I guess. I don't know if that makes sense. Yeah, no, for sure. Oh, yeah. And then And then, you know, I was able to tell the story. I was a person with a photo that day, you know, and even the shooting process was like, a lot more confident, confident, comfortable, because, again, we had that person that was connecting us to the workers. And also at the end of it, I just had more info. I had more info about the place, I have more info about the person's back when I was shooting. And because we had that local app up there I was that veto that guy. I was able to interview him later on, you know, and ask him like more questions. And, yeah, again, get a real impression.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  42:03  That's awesome. Yeah, that's, that's really cool. Like, really authentic? I mean, you know, not a lot of people can do that. I mean, I was actually, I was born in Java. So I know that, for sure. Yeah. I mean, it's not, you know, it's a big social difference there from, you know, people that really, really comfortable and rich to people that really, you know, can't totally make, or put the food in front of their house, even though it's only, I mean, for us probably like $1, yeah, probably less than $1 a day to cost to put in front of their family. So it's crazy. But it's quite interesting that you take that approach, because a lot of people are and including myself, because I was born there. And people. And my parents are like, be careful. Be careful, like, you know, like, because there's so many people trying to take advantage of you're obviously on a heart economy, you always hear me that. It's, yeah, we're what what were the thought of you kind of doing that? Weren't you like worried that you get ripped off? Or you get, you know, taken advantage of?
Felix Gerz  43:17  Yeah, totally. I have to be honest with you, like I got ripped up a lot ripped off a lot. In the beginning, when I was in New Zealand, you know, I was a I was 18 years old, I just turned 19 or something. And, you know, I didn't know anything about life. And obviously, people take advantage of that and take advantage of you. But you know, the more that happens, the more you learn a bit. And then the more you develop a resistance and a feeling where you're like, okay, something's wrong here. And I think until I got to just this situation in Java, I've been learning and like reevaluating a lot in that case, but yeah, obviously, it's a different culture. It's a it's not a Western, western country. So yeah, obviously, there was a risk, but I think I was absolutely willing to take that risk and to be able to tell to tell the actual story.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  44:05  That's awesome. Yeah, it's it's definitely, it's definitely take a lot of courage, especially with you know, when you have that much gear that costs so much, right, it's, it's always Yeah,
Felix Gerz  44:16  it's true. It's true. I was actually minimalizing my demo gear, I brought up this trip because I was a little sketchy. But, um, you know, I, that's something I felt during my entire travels through, like, I've been to a lot of countries, you know, and I think especially from where you're from, where I'm from back in Germany, in Europe, and also in Canada, you get told, hey, the world is dangerous, you know, everyone in Germany this obviously, really general generalised and stereotypical, stereotypical now, but um, everyone who don't know can be dangerous, so be very cautious, you know, and ideally, not have any contact with them. That's how at least how I felt. And then you go into the world, you know, and as long as you have You know, obviously, you'd have to go into the world with a common sense. You know, there are places in South Africa, we shouldn't be after 10pm In the evening. But generally speaking, if you have a bit of a common sense, I think, and if you have, if you have a smile on your face, and you have, if you're a genuine, genuine person, and you approach people in that way, then you will be surprised how safe and how genuine and Hona friendly the world is, and how a lot of stereotypical things you thought about this world are actually wrong and how nice people are. I cannot tell you a single situation through my, in my Asia trip, where people wanted to harm me. You know, like, obviously, if you are in the streets in Nepal, and the main streets and the touristy areas, and you're running around with the 5g for up over your head, of course, people will be, you know, people see them, they're like, Okay, let's, let's rip the scope. But if you're, if you're a normal person, if you don't do things like that, and if you talk to the person, you know, and you'll be surprised, you'll be surprised how open they are to share their own story, how I got invited to people's houses, you know, I'm a white person, you know, over there, it's different. And they sometimes didn't even see a white person yet. But they just invited me to their house, I got invited once to wedding party on the spot, you know, and I was the firt, the one, the one that was my Kiwi friend, we were just totally confused about what's happening. And I never saw a white person. And we were the first people that saw, you know, in a very, very remote village and Java. And then they had this one day of the year where they had two weddings. And I think they celebrated most birthdays of everyone who lived in the village because they were otherwise they were still pretty quick. Just do it once a day, once a year for everyone, you know. And then they sat us down there in the smart key in this tent. And we were supposed to be the first ones eating before even the bride or the groom, or anyone you know. So basically, you just have to imagine 250 People sitting on their chairs, looking at two white people, me and my friend, Caleb. And we're supposed to, like eat something there. And everyone was watching us. And we're like, Oh, my goodness, this is not good. I we were not feeling confident. You know, and for them, you know, it's a big deal. Like they had meat there was slaughtering like animals. And you know, making sure this was an amazing meal. And then we were the first ones out there big being able to eat. And it was meant that was a life changing experience, like and then also myself, how non generous and like, egocentric will i am? And I also have, like I was about to hit myself in the face for that, you know, because I was like, Man, how can these people not have anything but give you everything they have and still be happy? You know? Yeah, there were crazy things. But it's definitely coming back to. I'm just saying like, the world is less dangerous than you think.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  47:53  Yeah, no, like, definitely. I think coming back to what you're saying there, there is probably a small percentage of bad things are bad people. But unfortunately, those small percentage is, you know, people are attracted to negative stuff and negative stories. So that's why it looks a lot bigger. But yeah, once when you meet Indonesian people, they're actually very genuine, and they're very welcoming. And they will totally will put their guests in front of themselves. So that's, that's, that's why you get that experience. I'm glad that you get you get a chance to, to, to experience it's a it's a genuine experience. It's hard to get, especially as as a foreigner. So that's, that's good that you get to experience that. So I'm coming off to one hour mark here. I want to ask you a couple more question. And then we can wrap this up. So one question that I want to ask you is, I guess I want to I want to hear one of your most memorable moments in your travel on your photography journey that you that makes you feel like you're on the right track or that makes you feel like this is what you meant to be doing.
Felix Gerz  49:24  I think I took it away already by stating that story off the cell for my new work as a job. I think that was a really life changing thing. But on the other hand you know, I tried to avoid your question a little bit now, but I'm saying I think that the confirmation that what I'm doing is right. And that I'm you know, because I'm doing something that's not common from where I'm from, and it's kind of a little wandering without purpose people would say from where I'm from, is that the response means it's it is the response that I get from other people that is very encouraging. You know, when I share things like the story in Java, or with the silver mining worker, people see, like, you know, I share that with people like, I flew to Canada and on the flight, I shared it with like a teenager, like an 18 year old teenage teenager, you know, and he was like, oh, what should I do with my life? Oh, blah. And he was I saw myself in his situation. And I told him the story. And I showed him my photos. And then he said, you know, what? I think you really want I think you're really walking in your, what did he say? I think you're really walking in your calling. And I was like, what, you know that that was like, in your face, I was really like, whoa, okay. And like, sometimes, you know, when when I show people like stories like that people begin to be reflective about their own life. And they're like, whoa, okay, maybe I should change something in my life when I after I saw this now, and just really getting this response that it changes people, because as you am, I'm so glad you you mentioned that I tried to really put emotion into my into motion shots. You know, when you do that, and it affects people, I think you making an impact. And I think that is one of the most rewarding things I just to talk to you like a good old DP in a debit debit, Whetstone. You know, and you've worked with like Patagonia, every and lots of brands like that. And he says, you know, he finds fulfilment and confirmation in what he's doing. Because he has an impact, he changes people's worldviews, he improves the you know, he, he just leaves the world as a better place. And I think that is getting this feedback is the most encouraging thing you can get. But on the other hand, I believe that you shouldn't rely on feedback and comparison and things like that. And that can be really, really poisonous if you use it, use it in the wrong context. But then on the other hand, I see myself how I'm reacting on how I feel joy in this, you know, and how I can connect it to what my heart is beating for, you know, the outdoors with storytelling. And then combined with the response that I just mentioned from other people, I think that is really confirming for me, that I'm doing the right thing that I'm doing something that I made for, you know, sounds pretty deep. I hope that makes sense. But that's just what I feel about it.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  52:20  Yeah, no, that's, that's awesome. I think, you know, that that what what he said in that person that you met in the plane is probably one of the best compliment you can you can get, isn't it? Being knowing where you need to be, is probably the hardest thing I think in life. Because like getting to one place is is not necessarily the hardest thing. But knowing where you want to go is I think it's a lot a lot harder, like knowing which path you need to be. Yeah, thanks for sharing that. That's, that's, that's good to hear. And I think you answered that question really? Well. You know, that's, that was one of my intention is to share a little bit more of that. So that's great. Yeah, so a question that I always ask my guests who come into the podcast. If you were to think back through all of your photography, experience and storytelling experience through photography, what is the one thing that you would give as an advice that you know, that you would tell other people who want to start or want to get into photography world? The one advice that you you feel like it's the most important for them to, to get whether or not they're beginner, intermediate, or even advanced?
Felix Gerz  53:52  Very good question. Once again, you're doing a great job. I think. I think what I would give as an advice is I give two advices. Can I give two?
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  54:13  Yeah, sure. Well, you get one.
Felix Gerz  54:17  Okay, okay. Okay. So first of all, my advice is ask yourself, why you're doing what you're doing, and why you're loving what you're loving. Because there will be times when you compare yourself and you think your work is not what you're good enough, you're not good enough and things like that. And then it's good to remember why you're doing things in the first place, and that you are having a talent and as soon as it gives you joy, it you know that there's enough reason for you to do it. So ask yourself why you're doing things. And what helped me in my career, or like in my pathway, I guess, to grow a lot was to reach out to people that are where I wanted to be, you know, and I'm doing this right now. I'm doing this current You know, reaching out to I want to be a DP working in Canada eventually. And what am I doing to get there right now, I'm trying to connect with DPS in the area I want to be at, you know, and I'm trying to ask them a lot of questions just to keep on reaching out. And don't care where you are right now. Like, if you're just shooting for shooting your pet in your garden, or if you're doing a big campaign already, for a big company, it doesn't matter. You know, reach out and be proud of what you're doing, no matter where you are, in your path and your photography path. And reach out to people where they are where you want to be. And you will be surprised how open they are to tell you how they got there. And they help how they that how even they're able to know that they're there. They're keen to even help you to get where you want to be. I think that's the two things I would mention.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  55:53  Awesome. Yeah, that's, that's, that's really powerful stuff right there. I think understanding the why is really important, not only in photography, but in life. So really good advice. There. Be like some thanks a lot for sharing that. And yeah, look, be an amazing conversation had a lot of fun there a lot of fun. Listening to your story. Really awesome episode. And for those people who want to see more of your work and who want to follow your journey and your story, what are some ways they can find you?
Felix Gerz  56:31  Totally got a website where I have the one double 0.5% of my life that I think is worth sharing creatively. If you want to have see my shell Look over there. If you want to see more inside, I'm pretty. I'm pretty active on Instagram. And I think, yeah, that would be a way of being in contact with me on more of a daily basis. Yep.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  56:54  Awesome. All right, cool. Well, thanks a lot for being here. And yeah, look, we can hunters, hopefully you enjoy that there's a lot of inspiration. And also, like I opening story from what we've heard from Felix, so I'm glad that you listening to this episode, because, you know, as a traveller, it's, it's, it's not always the easiest, it's not always smooth sailing. And it's very true, what he said, when you look at some of the stuff that we produce that we create, it can it can bring a perception that we have it all that life is easy that we enjoy everything, but I must say that every everything that we come to comes with the struggle, every achievement that we get, you know, we we just like you we just like everyone else, we're just using. And yeah, and when when we come to these places, it's because we have that struggle to get there. So doesn't matter where you are like Felix says, you know, don't don't, don't get discouraged to where you are, but just look up, look up and see where you can go and look back where and how far you look back and see how far you've gone. So yeah, thank you very much for tuning in. And if you haven't subscribed yet, be sure to subscribe, but leave a comment and hit the like so that we know that this is the type of things that we'd like that you'd like to hear. But thank you very much for sparing your time Felix. I know you're busy on your adventures. You're out there making me jealous.
Felix Gerz  58:38  I spent I appreciate you having me. Thanks so much. Yeah,
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  58:41  all right. Fantastic, man. All right. Well, thank you very much we can hunters and until she I'll see you on. Until next episode.