The Art of Photography

Ep 19 - How Christian Fletcher Overcome Years of Struggle to Find His Love for Landscape Photography

Hey Wicked Hunters!I'm so excited to chat with Christian Fletcher, one of the best photographer from Perth, Western Australia. He had won multiple international awards and he has a beautiful gallery in the Southwest region of Australia. 
In this podcast, Christian shared his journey to find the photography that he loves and the struggles that came with it. 
You can learn more about him by connecting in
https://www.instagram.com/christianfletcher_gallery/
https://www.facebook.com/shopchristianfletcher 
https://christianfletcher.com.au/
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Transcription:
Christian Fletcher  0:00  I had a really hard time getting out of that. And my wife pushed me to get away from that fear and to start just pushing myself to do that
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  0:20  hey, we can do this. Welcome back to The Art of Photography podcast. So first of all, happy new year to all of you. And you know, off, we'll have someone very excited is in this episode, and he is definitely one of the most senior photographer from Perth, Western Australia. And he is you have one of the most beautiful gallery who have won multiple different awards. So not only he won, you know, he may he gets some recognition from his photography, but he also get a lot of recognition from his gallery, and I'd like you to welcome Christian Fletcher, Christina, how you doing?
Christian Fletcher  0:56  Hey, good. How are you? Thanks for having me on.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  0:58  Oh, that's, yeah. So yeah, that title
Christian Fletcher  1:02  of senior senior photographer. I have got a great handout. I'm actually getting a hiccup tomorrow, everybody. So sorry for it looking so bad. Just what it is, try to shape
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  1:14  up a few years, once you cut up that hair. Yeah, that's
Christian Fletcher  1:18  what I always say, I look younger when I've got this here. So and when I met my wife, I had hair that was down to here somewhere. And I had been dyed several times. So it was kind like a blondie orangey brown kind of colour was pretty awful, actually. And I looked a bit like a homeless person. So she, she sort of shake me up and every now and then I get back into this homelessness kind of look. Like it's alright.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  1:39  That's really funny. Because when, when I have like a full, like, longer here, and then like, you know, a more beer, like, I don't really grow that much beer. But when I have a little bit more people actually thought I'm like four years old, and then I shaved them off. And then like, are you 20 years old? Like crazy. Alright, well, look, thanks a lot for for jumping in into podcasts. And it's great to have somebody who's been in the game for so long. And you have quite an interesting story on how you get into photography yourself. So do you want to just share with the listeners and a little bit walkthrough of what it's like on your early days when you first got exposed to photography?
Christian Fletcher  2:22  Yeah, I got my first camera 15 Everyone talks about, I think every photographer says, I got my first camera at 10 I got my first camera at 12 I got my I got mine at 15. And didn't make me want to pick up the camera and take photos. It was just what was the cost was 150 bucks, it was a really flex sl 35. And it I went through it with my brother, my dad. So we put in 50 bucks each. And I don't even know where I got $50 as a 15 year old boy, maybe dad paid for the lot and just said, Hey, look, here's 50 Give it back to me out of my anyway, this thing because out of the box. And it's I remember being at home, but no one ever doing anything with it. So for that, that first few years after that I hadn't really even touched that camera and didn't even think anything about taking photographs. And then when I was 18, I was working in the government doing a clerical job just back this back before Photoshop before digital before computers before the internet, so it's quite a long time ago. I'm a pretty old guy, hence the grey here. And I had a I was on a holiday. So I had four weeks off of work. And I was into surfing so I would surf a lot. But on the in the first week I had a surfing accident, cut my leg and I couldn't get back in the water because I got infected with this is just a hole in my leg that didn't heal properly. And so I was so bored. I was like I was shot out three more weeks left, I'm not going to do what I want to do with Surf and I thought I'll just get that camera again and see what that's all about. And so I picked up the camera, put in some just negative film that I don't have the most important shot because you could buy film really easily back in those essence, that's all there was, and started saying if you've got them developed and just kind of enjoyed that process. And I remember it was a point where my sister said, Oh, your photos look really good Christian. I don't know why but you know, you take nice photos. So that was kind of my first compliment that I ever gotten from my system that was back when I was 18 which is I can't remember at all it is now it's 30 something years ago, 35 Six years ago. Anyway.
From there, I sort of gained a bit of an interest and I took the camera to work and I would become I became the unofficial photographer at work. So if there was a birthday party, they would get me to take photos of everybody and then a wedding my cousin got married so I remember taking my camera to the wedding and doing a couple shots here and and but that was the first time when I thought photography was kind of fun, but I never thought it was gonna be a career. I was just doing this horrible job in the government which I ended up hating the passion. And then eventually I quit that job. I just I just couldn't be there anymore. It was just mind numbing. One of my main duties was to file these forms in alphabetical order and when I started I had four piles that were just like massive piles of paper, everyone had gotten in a strict strict alphabetical order. It wasn't just the AC and the A. And the bees, there was a VC with it. Anyway, it was mind numbing. And I did that for three months, finding bits of paper. And at the end of it, I had three piles left standard for after three months, I only had three. So it'll just took me that long it was that and newborns would come in every day, and it was just horrible food, end up cleaning there. And then, just bumming around with a mate, we made a couple of snowboards, because we thought, oh, we'll just make some stuff because I was into sandboarding as well. So I bought some Epsom salt boards and sell those. And that didn't work that well, because we you know, I didn't have any skills my mate did most of the work. I was just kind of like, helping fund some of the materials. And but we made a couple sideboards that didn't float that well, they were a little bit heavy, and I don't think I think I might have sailed one month, but it was a bit of a dog. So that business was never gonna go anywhere. And, and then I started thinking about all well, and crafty sort of stuff. So I would go out in the bush and find old lumps of old tree roots and stuff. And I'd get out there with a file and some sandpaper and a drill. And I would try and make some shapes out of them, and then varnish them up and put little flowers in them and you know, blah, blah. And that wasn't going anywhere. That was I did one I think I gave it to mom, I think she liked it. But it was another dead end business. And then eventually I end up with a video live because governor at the time who are uncle was selling his video library. So my sister and I got into that was really cheap, little rundown thing. And then I ended up we ran that for about five years or so and was quite successful because we, we managed to get a good following with with clients because we, we knew the numbers and we gave them great service. And then eventually that that died out because the big video stores came in. And so I decided, Okay, well I'm going to I'm going to do something else. So at that time, my parents moved to Dunsborough. And I had been on a trip around Australia working on I was actually doing video at that stage, I had a video camera that is shooting film or cast film cassettes, whatever they are, whatever you call them now. And so I started that. And that was three months of just taking video. And I really enjoyed that process. And notice, I would look at my brother and his wife and I would just run ahead and film them walking path. And they were making these little scenes and I edit all this together. And it was pretty cool. I was quite enjoying that, that process. And then I decided that I was going to leave Perth and move down south and just crash with mum dad for a while. So that's when I thought maybe I'll pick up the camera again. And I'll start taking photos. So you know, it's a bit of a long process from from when I first got the camera to when I actually started to be serious about and I was 25 then at that stage when I picked up the camera again, and thought I got to make this into a career because I think it'd be fun a fun job and it'd be easy. I wouldn't have to answer to anyone I can do my own thing. And people might be pushing me around, which is what happened in the government all time. So I got the I got a little camera out and realised that that wasn't going to cut the mustard. So I thought oh, I'll invest all my money in a really good camera. So all the money I had at that stage was 1500 bucks. So I bought a Nikon 801 s that came with two lenses I think and and that that was my first camera. And within six months I realised that camera was not going to cut the mustard. It was just it was a consumer camera. It was well I think I called it a prosumer camera that was a little bit better than the average.
And but then I thought no, I'm not getting the results. I have like my darkroom setup my death house and, and I will just do all the do my stuff there. And I just work in black and white pretty much exclusively at that stage. And then the whole aim was to take landscape photographs and sell them through a gallery and didn't think that I'd have my own gallery eventually. But anyway, I realised that that that Nigam was not going to cut it. So I bought a Bonica medium format film camera so blank sky and started using that. And that's when my work started to be elevated to a different level. And people were starting to take a bit more notice of what I was doing. So I wouldn't say it was good. It took me ages to work out anything I had no I mean, I'm an in green, completely green, bought the gear, and just worked it out myself tried to work it out. But even then I was, you know, you only learned so much with film because you shoot it, then you got to develop it and print it before you know what you've done wrong, pretty much. So that was a really long process. Hence, it took me another 10 years before I started to get anywhere near a reasonable level of quality, but that I was pretty, pretty uptight young guy had a lot of stress, pretty nervy sort of timescale of everything. And I was doing weddings and portraits and that was killing me from the inside. I was just sick every time we do a wedding, I would just be nauseas for the whole week beforehand. And the day before and then the morning of the wedding. I just just woke up with this dread in my heart and I knew that I couldn't continue on doing it. So eventually, I gave up photography for two days. And then I was inspired by a lady who had a small gallery in a small town called Esperance. South of south southeast of But where I was living, and and I thought, well, this lady can do or she's doing what I had intended to do when I first moved down south was to have to shoot NASDAQ photographs and sell them in the gallery. And this lady was doing this. So that's when I thought I've got to get back to, to landscapes. And then from there, it was a long process of doing market stalls, trying to get my photos out wherever I could, it was pitch framing at the time as well. So I managed to con the guy I was framing with to give me space in his in his framing studio to to hang my pitches. And eventually I ended up hiring, releasing the whole front of the building from him. And he had his framings of effects that we shared this season that became our first gallery. And then it sort of kicked off from there. That's sort of abbreviated version of a 20 year period of my photography career.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  10:50  I'm Christian now your audio just dropped off there a little bit. Not sure if the microphone Yeah, the volume kind of just died down a little bit.
Christian Fletcher  10:59  They're speaking close enough in my
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  11:03  mind. No, it was okay. And then it just died also might be like disconnected or something.
Christian Fletcher  11:08  Okay. They seem to be testing one, two, I guess you can't see any. That's just coming through. But microphone on mic.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  11:16  Not that's that's good.
Christian Fletcher  11:18  That's good. Yeah. Yeah.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  11:19  So it must be. Yeah, cool. Well, that's, that's incredible. Yeah. I mean, I can I can't even imagine. So how do you actually progress and learn photography back then, you know, like, right now, it's really hard to think back of your struggle, because we got everything in our hand, we got Instagram, we got Facebook, we got YouTube, we got it's just so interconnected with with the internet, but you know, like you say, back then it was, especially when you do it all yourself all that trial and error really comes back through a lot of legs, you know, after you finish the role, you take a photo, and then you develop it. And so when do you actually learn, like, you know, the technique and, you know, composition and lights and so forth?
Christian Fletcher  12:07  Yeah, I didn't, I didn't learn it. It was just, in fact, I learned nothing until I went digital. And because I had no control. I mean, I remember getting some commercial jobs. And I'd saw some of the top of commercial shooters in Perth, lighting these scenes and I'm going I don't even know how to use I've got lights, but I don't know how to use them. I had no idea of how to balance that out. You know, I was using a light metre lesson stuff. So it was all I didn't I didn't know anything. I think I had a book that Kodak released on photography. And that was one book I remember having. So I had to pretty much learn on the job. And that's why it took so long because I literally went from 25 to 35 not knowing anything. And then 35 I had been to America and I saw some of the some of the best photographers over there, how they were working, what they were doing, and then getting my act together going, Okay, well, I need to have control because I, I'm sending these images off these transparencies off to a lab and the or actually, I was shooting the film a lot of it because it was all leftover film from the wedding days. So I had no control of sending off to the lab expecting to get these great results back and I was going Why can't I get the colours that these guys getting? So then I got a I got into digital. So I basically, I wasn't in digital, I was scanning or scanning of digitally scanning my negative transparencies. So I'd had it I had it I bought a Fuji GX exhibiting panoramic camera that was a that was the first really expensive camera that I bought that was going to allow me to do landscapes that I thought I wanted to do it that that but that time so I built my sort of career on shooting panoramic landscapes, and digitising them. And once I get those files into Photoshop, it was just a matter of teaching myself Photoshop. And that was that was again trial and error. And just I had some books on on Photoshop and how to do it. So yeah, that's when I started to get the control that I needed. And that's and this was still before. I think it'll still be on the internet was around at that stage. But I don't know if YouTube was there. And there was definitely no YouTube videos, on tutorials on whatever. So I was still just trying doing anything myself. I was very insular. When I first brought in for most of my career I spent. I didn't know who was the top photographers were in the country, I wasn't part of the aipp. So I was pretty much just my own guy down in the country. Country hick taking photos and processing my way, the way I sort of thought was right. And it was until I actually joined the AIP that I started to realise what quality, what quality I needed to work towards. And that really helped helped me develop my skills. And then I met some friends that taught me some stuff and went to a couple seminars here and then I did a lot of it. I've been doing a lot of workshops, people I was getting asked to teach people, how I how I did what I did. And so I was very scared of public speaking I hated that the thought of being on the stage and just freezing and not just totally sucking at anything. So I am, I had a really hard time getting out of that. And my wife pushed me to get away from that fear and to start just pushing myself to do that. So I start off doing small workshops in my gallery. And it was actually pretty good because I could set a small amount of people, you know, like, I was doing maximum eight people. And so I thought, Okay, that's good. Then I had a workbook that they could follow along, and I was pretty much going off a formula. And within the first five minutes, I realised that I knew what I was talking about, because that's what I did. So it wasn't so hard. It was, I wasn't off on some topic that I had no idea about. Nobody was like, I know this. But the idea this is this, and whether it was right, it was people didn't mind because it was what I was doing. And they wanted to know what I was doing to get those photos looking like that, you know, that were coming to the gallery. And, and that was, and that was going back about 10 or 12 years ago. So that you know, my my first times doing that I would just get a bottle of wine and pretty much knock off half a bottle before I started so that I wasn't so nervous. And eventually I got to a point where I didn't need any alcohol to, to get on stage. And, and yeah, now now it's all fine. It's all good. But asked me to talk about something I know nothing about, then I'll freeze up. Yeah, that was hard learning. That meant that answer. But learning back then was impossible. And I think in some ways, it made me a better photographer, because I I had to really be sure. And when I was shooting film on my Fuji was $5 Every time I push the button, so I had to make sure that whatever I was pointing the camera at was a reasonable shot. Whereas digital now you just you just shoot away you get moderately interesting, I'll take a photo of that. And then you know, eventually it's just clogging up harddrive.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  16:46  Well, I think that's definitely the struggles with people who shoot digital camera or started with a digital camera and I'm one of them. You know, so? Yeah, you're exactly right. Like, we're, we're, we take it for granted, we don't think about what was you just gonna like, Oh, that's beautiful. And we don't even think about what is beautiful about it. What is you know, whether or not it's a lie, whether or not it's the shape, whether or not is the texture, we just point and shoot. And I guess that's why they call it point and shoot cameras, right? Because you just switched off you just go up beautiful. Snap. And and that's kind of why like, when I first started photography, my photo doesn't really turn out that great because exactly what I did just point and shoot, I didn't really put a lot of thoughts in there. So yeah, yeah, and look, I I'm like everyone else now today, though,
Christian Fletcher  17:31  I still take way more shots than I should. I've gone a bit I think I've taught myself composition a lot better back in those days, I mean, I shooting black and white as well. So I wasn't worrying about colour at all, it's just worrying about tone and contrast and stuff like that. So it maybe it helped me become better at composition. And, you know, it just, I guess you do anything long enough, you kind of know what works and what doesn't work. And I still time and look, I get a ride all the time. I'm just like anyone else. But then you get these moments where you find just that perfect composition. And, and also, it's important to pre visualise when you're out there in the field going okay, well this the lights not perfect, but I know that that little headline is going to look beautiful. And if we put up new sky or if we darken this or light now to add a bit of colour, he'll enhance that area. So you know, I'm always thinking about capturing data as opposed to capturing a photo. So I mean, I still like to capture a photo obviously but an outdoor photos but you know, I might have some stuff some of these things for like I was out data Pesco beach town a little while back and, and I wanted a palm tree I hadn't I hadn't got a shot of a palm tree. So I found this one down there. So I photographed it and then I've used that in other photos so you know I'm not a purist by any any any stretch of imagination I'm I'm always putting in new skies, altering skies, I don't alter landscapes completely, like I don't change the form that's there in nature, but that look if disguise mean sky, something that's changeable. And, and I always say to people, if you're out shooting a commercial job for somebody, you better be good at putting in skies and enhancing images, because that's what they want to see. They want to see the perfect sky over the perfect, you know, building there if that's their beautiful building, yeah, they don't want something average, they want to see the best guy ever. And if you get paid to come out one day, and it's it's not doing what it's supposed to do, then you need to, you need to sort of, so that's that's the way I look at it. i When I'm out photographing, I, especially if I'm away on a trip, if I fly to Iceland, and it cost me X amount of dollars to get there and I want to make sure that I'll catch us guys, I'm not sure if I can catch the skies in Iceland, but I'll use them in other shots. I'll do that. So you know, do that all the time. Just to make things look a little bit more. Perfect. Yeah,
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  19:52  that's that's a good point. Um, you know, with especially with commercial photography, it's really hard especially if you've got a really short window or um timeframe tissue. So, yeah, very interesting. Take on the shoot for data instead of a photo, that's definitely a different one. One thing that I want to ask you this. So when I started photography, the way I learned composition, I didn't know all these composition techniques. And the way I learned it was, I basically take 100 photos of a similar perspective, just slightly different, right? So one, download one out one closer one with this in it when that in it. And that's how I learned composition. But back on the film days, you don't really have that luxury to, like you say, you know, every snap is $5. And $5, back then, is a lot more valuable than it is now. So how do you actually learn composition all together?
Christian Fletcher  20:48  It's very slowly, you learn it very slowly with film. I don't know I, I just got to a point where, and I liked the idea what you just said about taking the same, the same scene 100 times from different perspectives, changing your viewpoint and all that sort of stuff. But I never did that. And because I couldn't, but I think I've made enough mistakes along the way to go, okay, I can work that out. But now I can go out and I can see the balance, and I can see the composition. And it just feels right. And, you know, it's like when you I can like if you're looking at a mountain range, right? I always think about my histogram on my camera, and having that perfect histogram, you know, with that beautiful triangle shape. And you might have a couple of nice, and sometimes you look at the history and go, Wow, that's a beautiful composition. And then other times, you've got this horrible one, it's just like, it comes up and it goes straight across, and it goes down a little bit and then and then cuts off there. And it's like this horrible, ugly histogram that doesn't fill you with any joy. So I just when I'm out shooting, now I kind of feel that the composition is right. And I find that easy. And I work quite quick. And I've done a lot of shooting with mates like them Tony, who who's an amazing photographer. And he does beautiful work. But he goes on to say, How come you you're here? You're there, you're over there you'd like. So I'm either not getting it right. And I'm just moving on think I got it right, or I got it right. And I kind of move on to the next thing. So I think I do have a an ability to see composition, easily. And and I know I can just feel it's balanced or not then. So that that probably helps. I wouldn't say I get it right all the time. Yeah, I find it probably a bit easier than maybe some some people.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  22:28  Yeah, I think like some people might, like looking at composition might come natural to some people. And I guess you're kind of one of those more lucky one than the others.
Christian Fletcher  22:40  So that's why I ended up in photography and why I've been successful, because, I mean, there's a lot of photographers in Australia, but not many of them have galleries or and I'm sure there's some more that could, you know, especially in my case, it's been because it's been a long process. And it's been a process that I've had to help with. I've had staff and partners that have enabled all these things to happen. You know, I've done I've done well, but you know, it's, you think there would be more people doing it, but it just isn't. So aberdovey always a lot of photo galleries of your way kind of
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  23:14  this, there are a few but you know, like nowadays, I think with the way the online world works, it's kind of easier, you got less costs, you know, you just put it out there. And I think it's a lot less risk, right. And I mean, I saw your I saw your bio, and you were inspired to kind of build a gallery, you saw somebody have a gallery and you thought to yourself, you want to build a gallery. So there might have been reason why you get to where you are right now where most people kind of, especially nowadays, in the modern era, don't really think much of a gallery, more of Instagram followings. But that's their dream is to get 30,000 100,000 followers on Instagram. Yeah,
Christian Fletcher  23:57  that's so true. And, and this is probably a reflection on my age. I mean, I've had had my own galleries for 20 years, so 20 years ago, the only way you're gonna sell prints, if you had them in a gallery, though, there was no social media to help you sell them so and it just carried on. But I think one thing about a gallery that just gives you that little bit of credibility, and then also because, you know, we get followed by other people on Instagram that are other photographers that are and not all, but not all, but there's definitely a lot of that so, and a lot of other photographers aren't going to buy your work, they're going to look at what you do and try and emulate it or, and make their own which is perfectly fine. It's great. So a gallery out. And we've done studies on people and how they found out about our gallery and most of them are just walking by and see it see at the front and go let's go in and have a look. And that's where we get our sales from. So even after all these years, we still make more sales out of our gallery than we do online. But then yeah, like you said, you got that massive debt as well. Not a debt but that every week you're gonna sit sell certain amount of pitches to keep the doors open, pay the rent, pay the wages, pay attacks, all that sort of stuff. So. And then when we had when COVID hit us, we closed the gallery for five weeks. And our staff went on to Job keeper, which was fantastic. Because we didn't have to worry about wages we didn't have, we only had some renters our overhead. And electricity had been deferred all those costs. So we were just back to internet sales, and we'll and we got some good sales over that period of time. And I said to my wife, is it far out? Do we really want to reopen the gallery because this, if we can just live like this, we can just, we don't have to do much, we can just bring the printers home, get the oldest make prints, put them in tubes and stuff. And it'd be fantastic. But it's still nice to have your own space. Because people they see see more, you're more visual, basically. Yeah. And being in Dunsborough, in the small little holiday town, we get a lot of people that come in, and we get repeat customers. And it used to be exposed to a different different group of people. And it's kind of nice, because you, you you get immediate feedback from, from real people, not just like on Instagram saying I love to shop man, you know, it's cool that yeah, and they hand over cash. That's, that's always nice, too.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  26:14  Yeah, I think I mean, like, I have a dream that one day, I will have my own gallery. No more not for the sales part of it, but more of just being able to bring my work and present it in a way that I'm happy about, you know, being able to see that big print of yours and hanging on the wall is a different feeling. I'm sure you can relate to that. And that's, that's the main reason why I want to Gallery. But I want to I want to know, and get a little bit of insights or so you did a few different things from commercial portrait and wedding and kind of ended up with travel and landscape photography. How do you get there kind of what is the process of why you decided that it is your it is what you want to do for, you know, for your main part of your photography career.
Christian Fletcher  27:09  It was because I mean, I started out wanting to do that. Because like I said, Back Back in those days, I was very insular, I was quite, you know, I wasn't into being in the limelight. And public speaking, I didn't like being around people so much. Not that I'm not a people person, because I enjoyed it. But I thought the far as work goes, I needed to be controlling my destiny, and I need to do something that I enjoy. And landscapes always seemed like the option for me, that was the most good, the best match for my personality. So I didn't commit I got sucked in. I started out doing landscaping, I got stuck into the commercial work and the portraits and weddings by people, friends, people in town. And I knew, I mean, I had when I put my very first pictures up in an a restaurant, my brother had a restaurant in town where I worked as a dish big washing dishes. I put pictures in there, the first day I sold one. And that was an amazing feeling to have a landscape photograph. They're all black and whites and to sell. So one on the first night was was brilliant. So that again, got me thinking, Yes, this is the path for me. But the reality was that it took another three months before I sold the next one. So I wasn't gonna make any money out of photography. And so I had to wash dishes, pitcher, pitcher, framing, and all that. And then from having the work hanging in the restaurant, I would get business people coming and saying, Can you do this photo for me? Can you do this though? So I started doing commercial work that way. Then I had a friend who I met down south and he said, Can you do my wedding photos. And that was when I started doing weddings and other work out. At least I'm making money from photography, you know, but I had no idea what I was doing. I was shooting these things and these for these people. And I'm heading over the work and I'm not happy with it myself. Because I'm never happy with my work. I know. It has to be pretty special for me to really like it. And if I do like it, I like it for a month, two months, three months, six months, and then I hate it or not. I mean, I've got images I don't hate but there are images that I've just never want to see again. And they just frustrate the hell out of me when they sell on the gallery. Why are you buying that? Horrible? Buy this one? No, no, I like this one. Yeah, but look at that. Look, there's noise and there's some weirdness going on. It's over. There's a small file shot on the canon that he d 60. And IT systems horrible. Anyway, he gets on like a photographer. Yeah, so we are very harsh and very critical. There were. So I didn't that's how I got stuck in the commercial. But then after doing it for so long. It really started to I was getting really nervous and I was starting to feel like I needed to escape from it. I didn't I stopped enjoying it was like when I was back in the government and people were telling me what they wanted me to photograph and I didn't like that. I had no idea what I was doing. I was doing commercial work and they were wanting specific things not going. I didn't even know how to do that. And I was just fudging it. And I remember I had to photograph a fairly important lady a very well known lady I'm in Australia, and I took a few shots and I can't do this anymore. I am too worried about being found out as a fraud. So I need to just get back to doing my landscapes. And that's when I quit for a while and then rediscovered landscape photography.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  30:15  That's fantastic. Yeah, like, I don't have to look back since I think many, many of us really, especially when you kind of just started really got sucked in into the, you know, because the portrait and the commercial all the one that a lot easier to make money, it's in necessity. So cool. That's a it's a really good to hear that story from your side of things. And you know, to kind of see that you do have that struggle as well. So what do you find? How does the photography become a part of your happy lifestyle, then? You know, especially now, you still do a lot of photography? Does it still, you know, after all this year, does it still bring satisfaction and happiness?
Christian Fletcher  30:55  Yeah, I, it's the only passion I've ever had, I've never sort of got sick off. Because I've done a lot of things and have a lot of a lot of fun things. And, but photography has always been dealing with will be and like, if someone said, Hey, Fletch, you know, here's an opportunity to go on a trip across the, you know, to some shitty town 300,000 kilometres away. And we'll end and we'll take a canvas and see what we can get, I'll be in there because I love I love it so much that I just love making images. I love finding it. Because for me, it's like, gold prospecting. You know, when you get it, you get your metal detector, and you go out. I mean, who doesn't want to go dig up a nugget, a golden nugget and, and how exciting is just to be wandering in the bush and all sudden, you see something that's, that's incredible. And, and you get that get that golden moment where you take that photo, and I never get sick of that feeling. It's, you know, whether you liken it to an Easter egg hunt, or opening your presents at Christmas time. If Adobe is like that, for me, every every time and, and I get excited, you know, like, it's, I remember when I used to surf, if I was a good good days in the surf, you know, you pull up to the beach, and you see the ways understand you're starting to get in a heart starts to pound and you're going, you're getting ready and you're getting so many that you want to get out but you're nervous, but you want to do it and then you're worried you're going to miss it. And I'm in photography is I've had so many stressful moments where you're racing in your car to get down to the spot, you know, the sun sets gonna be amazing. We just got to get to that, you know, you're just gonna do another kilometre, and you gotta get out, you got to get the tripod legs out, and you got to race down the beach, and you've got to get to that that spot and shoot it before that sunset disappears. And I love that. Stressful that and that's what keeps me going.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  32:40  I mean, yeah, like hearing your your stories, it sounded like you are passionate about photography in it, because you do you did try a lot of things before you get there. But once you kind of find photography, just stick with it as a ghost to show how much you you're passionate about it. So yeah,
Christian Fletcher  32:55  fantastic. But any day of the week, if I if I could, if I didn't have a business that was a little bit heavy on labour, I would be I'd be out there shooting more and I do need to push myself more to get out. But you know, I've got a family and kids in high school got a business. That's that's almost it was a seven day a week business. So there's always something to do. I got a big yard for the gardening to do just doesn't seem to be enough hours in the day to do anything. But if I could, I'm the happiest when I'm on my own with my camera somewhere in the bush taking photos. That's that's, and it doesn't have to be spectacular. The less spectacular for me the better. Because there's less pressure on you. If you're in the Canadian Rockies, I think you said five out. I mean, you have so much pressure because your landscapes are awesome. If you go out and get photos that suck, then you're in big trouble. Whereas for me, we're in Australia, one of the flattest countries on earth and it's one of the oldest countries and there ain't much out here there's always there's a lot of great stuff that is so spread apart, that we don't have massive mountains with snow capped peaks and glaciers and beautiful blue lakes and all that sort of stuff we we have the Outback, which is had its own sort of nice things about it, which sounded like that we got 15 minutes of good light in the morning and 15 minutes at the end of the day. And the rest of the day. If you're up north it's baking hot. You know you'll die out if you break down it's remote. So yeah, that's there's less pressure it's more pressure on surviving this on getting good photos. It's so much easier.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  34:34  It's interesting that you mentioned that because it is so true that you know when you're out here it seems like you're trying to please everyone else then to please us sometimes and it's like it becomes an uphill battle. Again, you know, because of the social media and you know, say Oh, this guy is making this like the shot is like it's in perfect condition. And sometimes I get like really pushed to go to this location at that certain time. And when I first got here, that's what I did like literally just chasing every single condition. Um, you know, now kind of, because I've already have that I tried to force myself to sit back a little bit and just find one that actually, I really liked. Yeah, really, really interesting that you mentioned that, because that is very true. Over here, a lot of a lot of British gender. Yeah. So you're very passionate about the environment as well. And, you know, I, myself, when I started travelling, before I even got into photography, I have a lot of ignorance with with the environment, and what's happening around the environment. And travel really opened up my eyes, and I get to see a lot of things that I would normally things like, you know, I was just, you know, wandering chameleons, like, it's not going to make a difference. But when you actually go out there and go to those places and actually see, you know, with your own eyes, it really changes your perspective. So, sure, I know you're really passionate about it. So I'd like you, I'd like to hear some of your stories about, you know, either project or some environment sort of issue that, that you see through your travel and photography, and what do you think we can do about it?
Christian Fletcher  36:13  Well, yeah, big issue, big, big question. I really struggle with being an environmentalist and travelling a lot for photography. And, you know, up until in the last 10 years, I've travelled all over the world, you know, long haul flights all over the place. I mean, I always offset my flights. Usually with Qantas, I'm always offsetting those emissions pay a little bit extra than what happens to that money, does anything amazing. So there is that there is that side of it. And when the biggest issue that I found, in my travels was when we went to Antarctica, and we had I was invited as an instructor on a trip. And we I was to drift I was hooked on to back to back. Anyway, we get down to Punta Arenas in Chile. And what's happened is that we get a plane from there down to King George Island. So instead of having to go across the Drake Passage, in a boat, you just fly across it. So you have the same amount of time down on the peninsula, but you're not flooding around in the ocean, getting seasick. So it's quite a good option, you know, that unfortunately, on this particular week that we were there, the conditions were quite warm in Antarctica, and the island was formed, a covered in fog. And that went for a whole week, so that everybody that was on the first trip in Antarctica, didn't get to go. So we were all in Puntarenas, waiting by the hour or waiting for the conditions to change. And so we could fly in. And we had two aborted attempts to get into Antarctica where we got packed the way down and the plane just turned around, and then ended back in Puntarenas. And then the second trip, luckily, the fog cleared, and we were able to get in and, and we we landed because there's it's not a it's an uncontrolled to airspace as there's no tower and all that you basically got people on the ground saying, I don't know, man, I can't even see five in front of me so. So yeah, so that was when I really, really hit home that we've got a problem. And, and how that affected so many people. And I'm sure that happens quite regularly. Now, as we know, Antarctica is having record temperatures, and there's record Ice, ice loss. And another time where I thought, you know, where the pollution was a problem was when I was in Cambodia. And I'd never seen the Natta plastic rubbish that I'd ever seen. And, and basically, the conditions that people were living in and, you know, it was quite confronting, you know, thinking, wow, we've gone this far that we, we, you know, we've just, we can't get rid of our wastes, you know, and we're lucky here in Australia, we're, we're privileged, we've got, you know, we've got a functioning government that's, that works well, we pay our taxes, and we haven't got to 30 There's so many countries that don't have that. And it's not anyone's fault. Well, it probably is the government's fault that, you know,
you know, there's a lot of issues that people, you know, they can't change things for the fact that it's so easy to sit back as a privileged Westerner, to and point fingers, hey, you need to be, you know, turning your lights off at night and then spending, you know, putting the rubbish in the bin and, and, you know, all this other stuff that we're the ones that are creating the bulk of the problems by consuming what we consume. And, and I'm not saying I'm perfect, and we do what we can, but it's such a big topic thing, I think, definitely getting off off coal and gas in Australia was were the one of the worst culprits because we have a lot of it. And it just frustrates the hell out of me because the way I look at it, that they seem to want to protect the coal industry so much, I'm probably gonna get a lot of trouble here. But anyway, I think there's something like 20,000 coal jobs in Australia that might go with it. coal industry was just phased out. But then I sat down I thought about the photography industry, not about, yeah, remember the old days when there was film, you would go take your films down to the mini lab. And every town would have a mini lab where there would be somebody with a processing machine, you get you put your films in, you get your photos back, you know, four by sixes or whatever. And you don't see them anymore. They're just gone. You know, they don't exist anymore. And they would have been one in every town, all across the world, you would think, right? And now that just don't exist anywhere. But no one ever complained about the poor old photography workers that end up without a job. So this is, this kind of annoys me, is this, this kind of this the power of the minerals Council, the lobbies, the lobby groups and all that. They just say, Oh, no, no, no, no, you can't do that. We got to keep digging the coal out of the ground, and blah, blah, blah. Because we got to keep that the jobs and the jobs. Well, how about the jobs in the renewable industries? You know, that's, that's why aren't we making hydrogen and I think that's actually happening. Now, I think Australia is getting a bit more involved in some of the big miners are starting to do that. And it's going to take those sort of people, big industries, the big corporations to go, Hey, we got to change the way we do things. So that's more the issue, as opposed to there's more people that love it, yeah, we can always inspire other people to do things like consume less, on what needs to be consuming less. And, you know, one thing I really see is having young kids teenagers, they're so much more aware. And then than we ever were, and my son, for example is, is he doesn't want anything he doesn't want to consume, you know, he's he, he doesn't see the benefit doesn't see the need, he understands what's going on in the world. And, yeah, and, and there's a lot of kids that are now so much more aware of everything from, you know, racism, sexism, you know, that politically aware, they understand corruption, and, you know, and I'm hoping that they're going to be the ones that make the changes, you know, when they turn 18, and can vote, and I think you can see it happening. We've had a bad run of leaders around the world. Now for a while, or the nutjobs had been out submitting their, their hold on power, but they're in the minority now. So we just gotta get out, get all the rational thinking people together and make some changes that make the world a better place for everybody in it.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  42:16  That's, that's fantastic. I think grant, I totally agree with you, you know, it's not about changing it overnight. And I think it's impossible. It's, it's about finding what sustainable, right? Because there's always that balance between, yes, we can do this, but then what's going to happen with everything. So it's about having that awareness that maybe if you just reduce once a day, it will actually make a lot of impact. So yeah, that's, that's, that's amazing. Um, especially, this is what I find as well. Coming back to your story in Antarctica is that what I find when I'm here in Canada, I see global warming a lot more. One of the glacier that is here, receding at 50 metres per year, at least 50 metres per year, which is, like when you think about it's crazy, because it's, it's massive, like, you go there, it's like, five storeys high, you're looking off, and it's like, what this thing melting, like, disappearing at 50 metres per year, that's just insane, you know? Yeah, it's a really, really happy when I see someone else, you know, spread this, this message, I suppose. It's, it's, it's not gonna be, it's not always gonna be we're not always going to be able to change everyone. But that's, that's where it started, right?
Christian Fletcher  43:25  Well, and I think it's really hard to change people's minds if they if they're not ready to change. And, you know, I've given up ranting and raving on Facebook and stuff on Instagram and on Facebook anymore. Because you don't win any fans, you just alienate people, you just make you push them even further away. Because no one no one wants to be told what to do, and how they should be living their life, they need to want to do it themselves. And then they need to make the changes themselves. And I mean, and inspiring people to do this more effective than calling them out for and we're all hypocrites, we all we all do ship things, I mean, the best thing we can do is go jump off the planet somewhere and let it do its thing, you know, but when it's not gonna happen, we're all here. We just need to be smarter.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  44:10  Yeah, that'll happen. That's very true. Like, and I think one of the reason why I encourage people to travel more is that they will get to experience it for themselves, because a lot of times, you know, they see the media and they think the media is lying, and just finding that headlines like, yeah, they might be finding that headline, but there's also a little bit of truth in it. And, you know, being able to see for yourself like I myself only changed my mindset when I when I see for myself, so it's definitely a difficult one for sure. Well, thanks a lot for being here. Christine. And one last thing, one last question that I always ask my, you know, anyone that comes into this podcast, what is the one message or one advice that you can give photographers, whether or not they're, they're new or they have been in it for a while.
Christian Fletcher  45:02  Yeah, it could be anything. So what is the one message that you would deliver to never be happy with what you've done this week, because it's always gonna you get, you can always get better, you can always strive for more, you can do things that have more meaning. And I do that all the time, I think if you, as a photographer, think that you're at the pinnacle of the game, and you're the best you're ever going to be, then you're probably not going to be that good. You need to keep moving forward, and experimenting and trying new stuff. And, and that's the hardest thing to do. Because, and I'll stay with myself, you know, it's so easy for me to get up in the morning and go out, find a pretty landscape, take a photo, edit it, print it, put it in the gallery, and someone guys lovely, it's beautiful. But that's not gonna last forever, and it doesn't feed your soul. So you need to just continue to push yourself, don't be happy with what you've done. Always know that you can do better, because you can.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  45:58  Perfect. Well, thanks a lot. And that's, that's perfect to close our podcasts. Now, for those of you for the listener who want to find more about you and your work, especially your gallery. Where can they find you? Yet? Well,
Christian Fletcher  46:12  you go online, probably the best way it's Christian fletcher.com.au. And it shouldn't be too hard to find. And yeah, that's where I do most of my stuff through the gallery. I will I'm not doing any much training anymore. I do have a training website where I teach. I've got video tutorials on my Photoshop techniques. And that's Christian Fletcher. training.com. Perfect to that you subscribe to that. And that, you know, like you said, everything's on YouTube. But the difference with my stuff is that if you like my work, what I teach is basically what has become my style. So the techniques that I do, you may be able to find those from other places. But if you like what I do, then that is it's valuable in that respect, but not much different than what you find anywhere else. And on YouTube. There's probably guys doing way better than me. But my tutorials are a bit more quick. And to the point. Less rambling.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  47:08  Yeah, well, I think at the end of the day, it's it's about what, what resonates with people, right? So check out Christian's work. And if you do like his work, you know, see even check out the training and see if you could learn from what you have to teach you because he's been on the game forever. And he's definitely from for for a city that is so isolated.
Unknown Speaker  47:33  Definitely have been to everywhere.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  47:36  So that's fantastic. All right. Well, thank you very much for being here. Thank you very much for sparing some of your time. I know you're busy back home. But yeah, well, we'll come this to an end. We can hunters, thank you very much for tuning in. And hopefully that is you find that inspiring as well as helpful in your photography journey. And if you're, if you liked this and if you're interested to hear more, don't forget to hit the subscribe button just down here and leave a comment or a like, you know, feel free to stay in touch with me and Christian. Well, thank you very much Christina for being here and absolutely love this episode and it was such a pleasure to talk to you.
Christian Fletcher  48:13  Likewise, man, thank you
 

Ep 18 - How Michael Goh from Astro Photo Bear Overcome His Fear to Get Started With Astrophotography

Hey Wicked Hunters, 
In this episode, I had a great conversation with one of the photographers who inspire me to shoot more Milkyway Photos. He takes astrophotography like no other, his photos have been featured in Nasa website, Magazines cover page, and all over Australia. In this podcast, you can learn how he progresses in his Astrophotography journey and overcomes the fear of the dark sky.
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Website: https://astrophotobear.com/
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Transcription:
Michael Goh  0:00  And then from during the first few star trails in the backyard because I was too frightened to go off by myself into the dark somewhere
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  0:16  weekenders Welcome back to The Art of Photography podcast, where we share our passion for photography and share how it gives us hope, purpose and happiness in our life. So today we have, we're going to talk about Astro photography, and we have someone very special. He is one of my inspiration when I started photography. Actually, there's a few peoples in Perth, that really got me into photography, and he was one of them. So I'd like you to welcome Michael go. How's it going, Michael?
Michael Goh  0:52  Hi, Stanley. I'm doing well. Or, actually I'm doing tiredly, I suppose. I'm always a bit tired. I'm reasonable. There you go.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  1:03  Are you having me on? Are you always tired? Because you're always out at night and shooting like this dice? Is that why?
Michael Goh  1:11  No, I'm tired frequently because of that. But I'm tired for many other reasons as well is that I think in this last week, I've I've shot seven to 10 events at the moment as well. So therefore, I'm just basically doing I suppose photographing maybe an event in the morning and event come back quickly changed here. And then head back out to photograph a and awards night or something at the moment. And then it's all the post process. Oops, sorry, my, my camera every now and then we'll freeze up. And then it's basically post processing and delivery to clients, we've been fairly quickly, and then still planning for when I'm going out, because I actually have quite a lot of projects on at the moment, which will require me to head out, possibly anywhere between a few 100 to maybe 1000 kilometres, basically, at this point of time for time lapsing.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  2:03  Oh, wow. So what sort of project is is it like more like a personal project? Or is it a project that you're doing for someone else?
Michael Goh  2:12  These are, there's a combination of it, because the there are personal projects, which you have to do your personal projects. And I'll get to that in a moment. But the these are projects for, I suppose tourism bases, and also for a documentary on astronomy in Western Australia, which I'm a member of the project team for. That's amazing. But you need to always be having your personal projects I actually discovered. So I'll go off on tangents because I'm a tangential sort of person is I discovered over the last few years, as everyone says, hey, look, have you got this footage or that footage or, and you need to be building up your own personal library for all these things for when clients or people need it? Because I had a project earlier this year, and they actually asked me, Hey, have you got the Pleiades as a time lapse? And I said, Well, if you asked me three weeks ago, the answer would be yes, I can go and get that. But unfortunately, because the stars don't care about what our timeframes are, it was actually too late to actually time that sort of anymore. The universe doesn't care we have to fit in with the universe. That is true, that is true.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  3:23  So well, we kind of jump just jump right in there straightaway to your project. But usually I'll ask you to introduce yourself and what you know what, what sort of photography you do and just share with us a little bit more about yourself that you know, the listener might be interested in.
Michael Goh  3:45  Okay, of course, my name is Michael Gove. I am now a full time photographer. I actually only went into full time photography a few years ago. Although I've been photographing astrophotography for about eight years now. I think it's a little bit blurry, my everything blurs into one after a while. I get to do a wide variety of photography. So I do commercial photography. I do a lot of event photography, video, aerial. I do your Google 360 photo spheres. Of course, your landscape. When I sorry, often my tangent again, when I do event photography, I like calling myself John Wick, because you dress in black and you shoot everyone. And I also do of course astrophotography both in terms of just still within your time lapses. It tends to be more of your landscape astrophotography rather than your DSLR at the moment, although it is in my plans to do do so in the next year, basically.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  4:48  So explain to us a little bit. What is DSL for the listener who you know, might not be familiar with that.
Michael Goh  4:55  Okay, DSL is deep sky objects. So you're you're photographing your distinct galaxy. These and I suppose your your distant nebula and and clusters, your distant celestial objects, I've actually more or less leaned more towards the landscape photography rather than the DSO in the past, because the landscape astrophotography connects you with your landscape with your where you are. So that in my opinion, it's always been, I suppose lends you to being a little bit more creative in that regard and also off on the side is that I found this was not the purpose as to what the landscape photography but landscape photography also lends more to your your, I suppose appeal for tourism purposes, because a lot of a lot of regions and sell and say look, we want to have, I suppose say how good this place is for for stargazing Astro photography. But if you're photographing, say, the Orion Nebula, it's got nothing, it's got no connection to where you are.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  6:00  So do you do more landscape as your photography? Because it is, it is more, I suppose, like sellable? Or do you find it more interesting to do more landscape photography because of the dynamic of the landscape, and how you can combine them with the stars.
Michael Goh  6:20  More of the latter, the sailboat side of things just happened. I don't believe in photographing unless you have permission to do a particular photo shoot, I don't believe in basically going out to do it because it's saleable. But that's just basically been the end result. A an additional thing that's come out. It's just that I suppose I love seeing the fantastic landscapes around us and basically combining it with the stars.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  6:47  So what what got you into? I said, Sorry,
Michael Goh  6:53  except includes shape.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  6:57  So what what got you into Astro photography, why Astro photography?
Michael Goh  7:03  Okay, I suppose this, I'll go back a little bit further than that. Sorry. Because the there's a long story about the photography in the first place. One, we, we I originally only got my first DSLR maybe about 11 1011 years ago now. Because we drove across Australia. And we are now on the way back we thought wouldn't be nice if we had better, better photos. And then basically, photograph on professional mode for LP for professional. And I actually did my first long exposure, let the landscape photo by accident. So Oh, wow. That's great. And of course, nowadays, like, oh my god, that's so average, the. But then I saw the fantastic work of a photographer called Corey white. She's a photographer based in the UK, she does drop collisions. So when you've got one drop, hitting another drop, and then then another drop, and that basically spreading out, opened up my mind to thinking, hey, look, you can photograph a lot more than what you can see with the eye. And then that led me down the path of wanting to photograph other things that you can't actually readily see with the eyes. And then that led me to my first star trail, which was from my backyard. So that was my first dip into astrophotography. And the reason why I wanted to do star trails as I thought, I can't remember where I originally saw. Oh, that looks fantastic. And I've always been, I suppose a science fiction fan being Star Wars, Star Trek, and so on Battlestar Galactica in the light. So therefore, that was the interest in space. And then from during the first few star trails in the backyard, because I was too frightened to go off by myself into the dark somewhere. I photograph my first Milky Way at about two o'clock or three o'clock in the morning, about 50 kilometres north of Perth, by the side of the road, I quite literally drove to a location hopped out and said, Okay, this is, this is where it's going to be in photograph and pop there with my first milkyway photo. Wow. And then it just kind of went on an insane path after that, because as you as you know, the astrophotography can be a little bit addictive. And then it was just experiment after experiment, and it just kept on growing bigger and bigger.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  9:26  So it's that's really cool. Like, that's really cool to hear that. I'd like to check out what was her name quarry.
Michael Goh  9:36  The quarry why, or why.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  9:39  Okay, I really have to check that out. Because that sounds interesting. But yeah, like, that's, that's, that's good. Thanks for sharing with us. That's it's good to hear kind of the origin of Azure photography for you. So, in terms of you just said earlier, like, you know, it can be scary and intimidating to go out at night, on your own, especially when you just started. How did you overcome that to begin with? And how did you, I suppose, get used to it and be okay with it, you know, just being alone in the middle of nowhere, when you can't see anything.
Michael Goh  10:21  I suppose it was, there was a little bit of Sukkot, you just you just go out and deal with it. Admittedly, the first few times I did astrophotography, driving off into the dark, I actually thought of that, hey, look, the Milky Way only rises at two o'clock in the morning. So gee, this is going to be a bit of a hard effort doing took me about two o'clock in the morning, every time to photograph the Milky Way. That was before I knew about Milky Way season and so on. The So initially, for the first couple of years, probably I think I just drove out and then photographed and I quite literally drove back the same day, or same night as the case may be. And then it was eventually I went off and did overnight trips as well. So I suppose I wasn't, there was a little bit of intimidation to go out by yourself completely. And photograph these things, I suppose earlier on, I used to apart from the first couple of times, which basically was, like I said, just getting up and driving out at midnight, or two o'clock in the morning is that later on, I actually took a friend out with me, who's not a photographer. So a friend of mine, Stuart, did actually just sit in the car, and wait for me while I'd be doing star trails. Later, it's good friend. So it wasn't terribly interesting for him, because he'd quite literally just be waiting for me in the dark. And then later on, it was it was basically just driving out by myself. And it was just building up my confidence of going out by myself. Because I think quite when I started doing astral photography, as well, I didn't actually know any other photographers. It was is, it was actually quite a, I think a year or so later, we're tracklist bumping into other photographers and joining, I suppose camera groups to actually meet other people. In which case, then all of a sudden, you have a little mob scenes and so on where you've got groups of people, everyone parked around you for your astrophotography because no one wants to go off and look for their own compositions. So I think he was just slowly building up that confidence. And now I quite literally will go out and camp or be on the back of my truck and sleep on the tailgate of my truck at times, depending on the location and photographing through the night.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  12:48  That's that's, that's cool. Yeah, that's really cool. That was, it was the same for me. I actually afraid of the dark. I don't know how I got into astrophotography actually, I need to kind of thing really dig, dig deep on you know how I overcome that fear. But yeah, and I'm sure many people out there not only you know, just the dark, but the whole safety right, it's especially if you're if you're on a foreign land or you know, a place that you kind of never been to it's it can be intimidating. Like for example here in Canada, we got the bears is apparently still still up like they're not hibernating. So that's like another thing in there. So what sort of,
Michael Goh  13:34  I suppose Sorry, I'll just jump in and a little bit more is sometimes still in the dark. You go, what the heck am I doing out here? Because you will hear strange noises or I was actually at as ever location, which I hadn't been before. So I'd actually injured my back while I was out there. And of course, when you injure your back or injure yourself anyway, you're going all the other thoughts come into your mind and you go, why am I out here in the middle of the night because you're basically balancing on on surfaces, which aren't all that great to be out there. So therefore you your mind starts playing tricks on you with all the strange noises that you hear. I was I saw a post from someone recently that there were wild dogs around where they were. And so they decided to retreat from where they work because they were on the side of a cliff. You don't want to be scared basically to fall off the side of the cliff. And nowadays as well I actually carry CB radios a personal locator beacon about to start carrying out selling equipment as well just to tie myself off to the things where if I need to. I bought myself a little climbing ladder recently as well not that I want to be climbing things in the middle of the night like like some photographers I know. You have fantastic photos of them climbing cliffs in the middle of the night. But yeah, the safety is always power. Millions in terms of like, you scout your location before it gets dark, so you know where you are. And I've also got a purse, handheld GPS, so I can't find my way in the dark.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  15:10  That's, that's awesome. Thanks for bringing that up. Actually, you know, it's really good to tell that to the listeners, because although I feel like a lot of that fear is just, it's not true. It's always good to be prepared. And you're you're right, you know, especially when you're out there by yourself. When you start it, it's good to bring a friend, you know, because you kind of just get into it. But even if you've done it for a while, you never know what's going to happen. And you know, bringing a radio or supplicating beacon can actually save you live. So that's, that's a really good point that you bring up there. But one thing that I want to ask you is that, you know, all this fear that you had, when you're about to kind of start this journey, you know, before you can get used to it. Do you find that a lot of those fear are just in your head? Or is it actually a lot of them are like a real fear that you just haven't come across with? Yeah,
Michael Goh  16:17  I think majority of the time is in my head. Because I'm quite comfortable. Most of the time I've been out in the dark now. Except I'm still not fond of being out in the dark at the side of the cliff. Because I'm not I'm not a great fan of heights either. But I used to be an avid ceiling and caving trip leader many years ago. I'm not fond of heights I'm not fond of frequently of the duck. But having said that is that you do sometimes hear stories of say there. I noticed a story a number of years ago when someone was photographing. And then someone turned up with a shotgun. Wow. And it was actually just a farmer who was curious and alerted. No feel concerned that there was strange lights at the location I'm assuming. So you do have thing you do think about that. Most of the time, I'm actually more worried about other people, as there's gear security and my security but based on on if some strange person comes up and you meet people in the middle of the night, and you go Why are you out here in the middle of night. So it's more of that rather than Hey, I'm going to have a a physical threat of other sorts from animals. Especially since I've got the GPS and because going back to my caving days, I usually go out with multiple light sources. So you look at your redundancy. So I've got my headlamp I've got a handheld torch and I've got another light source as well just in case everything goes wrong in addition to the GPS, which drops breadcrumbs, so I can actually quite literally walk back to where I follow the exact field where I came from.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  17:57  Yeah, that's that's really good to hear. I think you know, having that contingency is really important. And that breadcrumb that you mentioned is really really paramount because there's so many times where I've you know, gone hiking and then if it wasn't for the breadcrumb I would have like you know, it probably would have taken me a lot longer to get back if not lost altogether so especially in the dark it's it's crazy isn't it in the dark like that mana things you can see the one thing that really scares me in Australia is the snakes because I had a really close encounter with the snakes in in North in Deep River Road in Mitchell falls so that was really scary. It just sneak up on you. Luckily it was like more mature one but let's go back a little bit I guess. I guess excited we just go right off your you call your photography Astro photo bear. Yeah, yeah, where does that come from? You know, like, give us like origin
Michael Goh  19:08  okay, this is the bear. Okay, many years ago when when the the bear actually came came up is I used to be a bank manager. And as I'm actually while I can talk for hours about about things and so on, I'm quite open with saying it was over sharing information. The working in the bank, you're always you always concerned about your privacy and everyone else's privacy. So therefore, I did not actually want to have an online profile with just my name as such. So for many years, people didn't even there wasn't actually photos of me on the on public media either. So what happened was the so I was just thinking, Well, you know, when your social media platforms came on You're thinking, hey, what sort of what sort of title Do you want to have. And because I was photographing a lot of Astro stuff, I want to tap Astro in there. And then this beer was actually celebrating 100 years of flight. And it was actually released on I think it was my birthday. And I saw it in the shop and I thought, Okay, well by going back a little bit further as to why it has to come with flight is I used to be a Online World War Two Squadron Leader, Oh, wow. So many years before then as well. So therefore, that's that's I used to have the the hands on throbbing stick, the little tracker system. So you when you move your head did that basically shift the the point of view within them on the monitor as well. And we'd fly World War Two planes all over the place and shoot things. So that was the connection to the Wi Fi, the flight thing was important to me. But there was already an astro bear as a brand. I think it's a clothing brand in the UK or something. So I didn't choose that. So I thought well, I'll just create Astro photo bear. And it just and that's basically how it happened. And so therefore, it wasn't Michael go online or anywhere it was basically astrophotos there. But then the bear basically got more of a more of a brand and I did basically just it just stuck. So at the moment I'm actually doing a little bit of a rebrand but astrophotos is thing for the Astro stuff, but I need because of course when commercial clients or find new for the first time they go where's the spare can you actually need to be a little bit more professional at times as well is basically running your multiple brands. So I actually need to have a Michael the substrate and Michael go or something like that. I actually thought of when going through the rebranding, I thought because I think portrait photographers event photographers tend to be quite extroverts, introverts. landscape photographers tend to be more your introverts and Astro photographers are way out there in the introvert side of things could you out by yourself all the time? So I thought as a brand name for the introvert using my surname it was go away photography
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  22:23  Yeah, it's really funny because I think I'm a little bit more of an extrovert, but I do get, like, I do love it. Like when I go out there in the middle of nowhere and just, you know, have that quietness, it's, it's like, yeah, it's like a meditation or is just so serene, you know, like, it's as if you're on your own world and the world problem doesn't exist. That's, it's, it's always so cool to hear to be out there. But there is such a funny story to hear about as your photo Berek is when I first came across the your profile, it was the Azure photo where it's like, what is like, and I saw the photo and just like, wow, I want to be able to take photos like that and you have like an inspiration from like, you know, Astro photography side of things, or you kind of just develop that, that style on your own.
Michael Goh  23:20  Um, it pretty much all came came by itself. I'm not sure if I don't know if there was any specific form of inspiration and I know it sounds terrible is that I tend to be to shoot frequently with my blinkers on a bit because ultimately, I just, I've got a giant list of I think more than 100 things that I need to photograph on my projects list at the moment of I want to do this this I want this under this sort of situation so of course you see things online and so on every now and then you don't want it to I suppose create too much of a of i mean while while it can help create some ideas and say hey, that's a great idea for me to try out is that I've my brains overflowing with stuff at the moment anyway. So if you actually put too much that's where from every all the other sources in there then it might sound overwhelming it I won't quite say contaminated but it basically if you I've got too many things on the go as it is basically, do you want to to specifically imitate anyone else or create or be inspired by anyone else? I mean, the light the I suppose distant lands I suppose the originally originally when I photographed with the figure with the light and in his hand and so on. That was that was actually because something else failed miserably. Originally, I did actually see some some work by a another photographer, I just can't quite remember which one it was, because I don't want to accidentally credit the wrong photographer. For, for the thing that didn't work of mine. I think it was a photographer that I am connected to. And he did a telephoto photo. So he did like a spinning lights photo. Yeah. I like your Star Trek telephoto thing. And I bet then I thought, wouldn't that be cool to do as a panorama. But then I found that as a panorama, for example, it's a little bit difficult to do that. Because the consistency of the light just won't work as a panorama, because you're telling the lighter answers and be different in every single scene. So the so I suppose, if you think because I also did some book covers back then as well, is that you create a and I did an awful lot of flash work, which actually came from Corey white stuff with the flash photography with the drop collisions. So actually just replaced it with hey, look, if I just hold the light out, and you do the photo from the behind. So it actually puts you in that position as as, like on the cover of a book is that people put themselves into that position basically as as the figure in the in the scene. And that was actually just stuff that I suppose that just came out. And I suppose so in the scheme of things, I guess, book covers, and so on, like just looking at your magazine covers or watching movies, or like saying now that I can watch that. Sorry, I think I just froze from it. I like saying how I can watch movies. Now, strictly speaking, that's research. So in a roundabout sort of way, but you know, I guess there's, we are, I suppose a sum of our experiences. So while I'm not specifically chasing, inspirations, and so on, it just all flows together in there. I guess also, this year, more than more than previous years, inspiration has actually come from client requests. So client requests actually has said, hey, look, you photograph this, or time lapse this and you go, Oh, hang on, but I can do this and this and this. And this, as well, in terms of what other things flow into your head, basically, when clients actually asked you to do things
I never would have thought of, of time lapsing some of the objects, which I'm chasing now, before they actually said, Can you do this? I said, Well, I don't know, I haven't done this before. But who knows, let's, let's just see how it goes. And because of the projects, which have been on the go, is that it's made me learn. I mean, I'm definitely not, I'm definitely an amateur still on this side of things, is that I'm actually learning more about astronomy itself, not just photographing the stars, but learning about astronomy, and also learning about Aboriginal astronomy as well. Because the projects of which I've been on have been highly geared towards the Aboriginal astronomy and the cultural aspect of, of, of the sky, not just saying, this is epic. This is actually saying, hey, look that this is a story of the EMU in the sky, or you know, about and the Kinder or the eagle, or any of the other objects and I suppose features, and there's just so much information out there, it's just quite overwhelming at times, you just take one step at a time.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  28:33  Yeah, that's totally I think I'm on the same boat in terms of learning the astronomy, I would love to kind of learn more about it, but it's just so many things in there. But like, you know, that that holding the lie thing that was I really love that and when I saw that it was it's just become an inspiration and it becomes like it goes into the library of things that I could use on different conditions. I particularly love it when there is a lot of trees around you because it will create like a halo kind of thing or a big plane. So, you know, your your work. You do a lot of panoramas and you do crazy panoramas as well, isn't it you do like what 35 mil shot, like
Michael Goh  29:20  um, I think the the one that I did was recently was about 180 image panel, Panorama,
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  29:27  angry edu image.
Michael Goh  29:28  It took a while. I mean, there was no stacking on that as well as just quite literally photo next to each other. There was actually an interesting story about the panoramas as well, is that the panoramas came around because I was shooting a a crop sensor lens on my full frame cameras. And you know that, hey, the centre of the part of each frame when you're doing of each photo is actually your sharpest part. So, as a crop sensor lens on the camera on the full frame camera is all the lens defects are coming in around the edges. So I thought, well, in the scheme of things, if you do a panorama, you're just using all the central beds. So therefore the image quality will be better, it will look better, basically
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  30:16  interesting is that when you do a lot of panorama,
Michael Goh  30:20  that's that's how I originally started and then just kind of got carried away with that as well. So many things were of astrophotography so do you actually look Where's all my money gone? It's,
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  30:34  it's like it's the gears never stop is just the backpacks get heavier and he just noticed you need a bigger backpacks. So okay, coming back to the panorama do you actually like the panorama compared to the normal single image your
Michael Goh  30:57  I suppose I like the panorama because the it just seems to look more epic in terms of you like covering the, the whole band of the Milky Way. Cool. I mean, and also, as a larger image is that the stars actually get smaller.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  31:19  Okay.
Michael Goh  31:21  So pardon me. So therefore, it basically creates I suppose more definition in the nebulosity of the sky. And then also with the panoramas as well, pardon me.
I guess it just creates a has more in my mind a little bit more possible creativity sides of things to it. I mean, I do do your singles ones. And then I rarely actually stack images. But I will stack from time to time just to say, hey, look, this is what happens if you stack. But I like doing the large panoramas because it just feels more epic basically.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  32:03  Yeah. The one thing the one reason why I do I wouldn't say one reason, but one of the reason why I do panorama is just I like to put the viewer perspective where I was, it's like, you know, like, look, this is what I was seeing that night, and you know, not many people, especially with astrophotography, right? Have that. have that chance to go out there and see that kind of view. So that was always amazing for me to be able to kind of show people's like, oh, yeah, there was this on that side, there was this on that side. And when I saw your photo, I was like, wow, like you just put that, you know, the Milky Way and having you as the centre subject inside the photo. So Well, I was just like, wow, I gotta take photos like that. So actually, one of the blob tree that I took one of the early one was inspired by that I was like, I saw your photo with you holding the flash, and then the Milky Way right around it. And I was like, I want to take a photo of the Boyle tree. I was like, how do I make this interesting with the Milky Way? And I was like, I could just you don't have the panorama and Kircher on the top. So that was that was that's probably one of my favourite shots I've ever taken. So all right, well, man that was like, yeah, that's, that's great to hear.
Michael Goh  33:31  I went on a strange tangent. Yeah, no worries. I know that this is way out of sequence. Because I know that a while ago, you said why astrophotography as well, is that ultimately it it has evolved for me. Okay, because ultimately, it's also gone from apart from the sensation of feeling your your humility against overruns the massive backdrop of the universe is that it's also has helped with I suppose promoting stem because people get interested in in space and the stars at that point in time. So interest, your science, technology, engineering, mathematics and so on, also has massive benefits for things like your, your mental health, because of that feeling or I suppose of yourself against, well, not against but with the universe. And also, it has actually been helping with tourism to areas which ultimately then helps with the mental health the economies of various places. So it has that very evolved in terms of how the, the, I suppose the reason in behind astrophotography as well.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  34:39  Well, you know, going back to Australia, especially, I think that I could see how that could be a big impact to the community because, you know, like, for example, right here in the Rockies, the mountains are so stunning that you don't need the you know, the night sky but you know, the back in Australia especially Western Australia, a lot of the places are flat, right? You got this really cool, interesting features that most people will notice, like, you know, the salt lake that you take photo of that, you know, the crack on the on the on the ground and the trees that kind of like, you know, one of your photo with the trees that kind of like just merging towards you that that was, you know, those kinds of things, really, I think those kinds of things would really invite people to come out at night, isn't it? And that's, that's how it kind of helps the tourism industry back in Australia. Is that right?
Michael Goh  35:34  Yeah. The, because there's so many places to go see, we're always so focused on A to B, but we don't see everything in between. So that there's all these other things are basically that that's out there. I am missing now to this, though, it's been a number of years since I've gone to see anything matters. Because as he, as you said, Who is pretty flat? I mean, we've got some great skies and fantastic locations, but I think I do need to get out and see some mountains again, as well. Because mountains, epic in themselves, basically, ya know, as long as you're not on the edge of a cliff on a mountain in the middle.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  36:14  Yeah, totally, totally. It's just totally different, different things to take photo of. And I think what you say that it was totally correct, because I drove around Australia, right. And one of the things that I noticed was that you know exactly what you say we often go to that places that are popular and established. But actually, especially in Western Australia, the places that you that is hard to get to that you know, only that you need four wheel drive, man, it's like once you get there, it's just unbelievable. Sure you're like surrounded by the bushes and the dirts. But it's just unbelievable. It's It's amazing landscape. So, yeah. Well, I'm just looking at the time here. What? I want to hear more, I want to hear about that 100 Adium panorama. How do you take them and why 180 You You know why not just use a 16 millimetre lens and just have probably 14 Max.
Michael Goh  37:23  So the 180 image panorama was because I wanted to shoot at 35 mil because I was got I've got this new lens. So I wanted to photograph the whole thing at 35 and do the panorama. So I was shooting on a of course photographing that sort of panorama takes a long time, especially if you want to do things like your 32nd exposures. So I was on tracking mount I was on this. And because of the weight of the camera I wanted I use the sky watcher star adventurer as because of the weight with with the mount with the panorama head with the camera on top. I suppose was that is that a shameless plug because yeah, they sent me the sky, the sky watcher star adventurer too. So the as the panorama I basically wanted to do your longer exposures and it basically it brings out more detail within the stars. Because you're shooting at the longer focal length. I haven't tried doing it at five mil or anything like that or master panorama. A friend of mine has been doing panoramas at your at five mil space. But ultimately, I just wanted the more more detail in the stars, which basically means that the largest does I mean, all the stars look smaller, and the noise looks smaller as well. So he was just wanting to fill up as much as possible. Actually, the reason why is 100 ad is actually because I want to do I actually took enough capture to do a whole 360 Photo Sphere out of it as well. And then it basically you crop it in to say hey, look, this is the usable working space. I think the image ended up being about before cropping. Even after cropping, I think before I shrunk it down to the size I could actually fit in my Lightroom catalogue. It was about 40,000 pixels wide. Or it could have been larger than that as well. But yeah, I just like the greater detail, but I do it manually as well. So apart from being on the on the tracking mount, I actually click it on the panel heads I click it one one step at a time to cover the whole sky I suppose I could actually just put an automated system up and actually just press the button and let the tracking mount do with you know like your get your pounds and signs up. Let them just do the whole While I go to sleep in a corner somewhere, but I just prefer to do it manually. There was a point of time, which I did, I think it was a 64 image panorama, which had clouds rolling through quite rapidly at the same time as the moon was setting. And I actually did think to myself, Hey, I'm a little bit worried that I won't be able to do it in time.
Let me just actually have a look is that sorry, I'm just going to go the oops, hang on, don't want to share that one, I want to share this one.
So if you see this one here, this one was about a 6060, something image panorama. And you can actually see that the clouds were actually moving quite quickly. And normally, I'd actually just methodically do row after row. But this time, I actually started off at the bottom. By the time I got to here, I said, Hang on, the clouds are moving too quickly. So I actually started doing the top section here to make sure I got the core, and then working backwards and actually just doing like a random path throughout the whole thing. And I was actually quite fortunate that I didn't actually miss any, any panels in it. Because the that was my greatest concern. After putting it all together, it actually stitched almost perfectly after I put it together.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  41:27  Really, I would have thought because I tried in the past with the, with the clouds in it. Great photo, by the way. But I tried once with the cloud, and it just struggled to stitch it together. Because you know, the clouds moving so quickly. It doesn't. It it failed to create reference plane between one and another.
Michael Goh  41:51  The Actually, I'll just share another quick screen. This one was 100 ad image panorama. I did actually try something else was that doing this one as well. But I actually I work hard and being lazy. I decided not to proceed with the experiment I was doing I I did play around with the experiment. And I said no, that's not really working. So you record and you say, Well, I'll try it again in future doing something slightly differently. Next time, basically,
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  42:30  I've been to that place, it's a beautiful place to shoot with the Milky Way there.
Michael Goh  42:34  But the I suppose with the panorama stitches and so on as I'm using as my primary panorama software, I'm using PG GUI Pro, that's not a sponsored statement, PG GUI pro is that you can actually mask in with the image, I mean, after it stitches, you can actually mask in what you want to keep in the scene. So therefore, you can say, hey, look, this cloud here it basically you can see the whole cloud in one panel. But then you say well, but when you stitch it across is that it's cut part of it off, but you can then masking the bit that you want to keep from that one panel that's got all the cloud so it makes the stitching process easier then as well I mean, it put it all together but then I just said okay, I want to make sure that this is included and that's excluded for example. And that also helps with the panorama selfies as well. self portraits because if I wasn't using programmes like PG GRI pro it might actually cut half of me off when it's trying to stitch so therefore painting of myself saying I want to include all of me in the in the final output.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  43:45  Awesome. So like how often you use the the Lightroom panorama stitcher or Lightroom and Photoshop? How often does you know you get success by using them? Or do you always use the pity GUI?
Michael Goh  44:04  Um, well since I've got pages going pro now, I think the last time I use Lightroom as a panoramas teacher was probably about five years ago. The I found it was fine for doing things like your single row panoramas and so on. But as soon as I went to your two row panoramas or two, I think the last one was the Carnarvon space centre with the dish bear that I think that one was about five or six rows or I can't quite remember exactly, but the as soon as he wants to do your multi rose it starts struggling quite severely. And it was actually one image that I took a number of years ago which which prompted me to go to the the I suppose PGA golf pro just have a quick look to see if I can I wonder. Because when I, when I first put together in using Lightroom as as a panorama software, it, it looks really bad. Because I get constructive criticism from, from someone I trust quite, quite heavily. Mind you, she doesn't actually give me any constructive criticism anymore. Oh, well, it's a fantastic image. But the but I used to go to quite frequently saying well, what do you think she actually said was something quite seriously wrong with it basically. And the and this particular image, which was actually using a crop sensor lens, this was my first, this was my first multi row row panoramas. And it it didn't actually work at all using Lightroom is that the perspective just didn't work. And this is actually when I tried a different format for your panorama stitching that created this sort of fisheye effect. And, and then it worked. I know it looks very fancy sort of thing. But it actually all those frames in the panel were actually there. I think it was a 13% luminosity moon. And then this one went off in one, I suppose the an award in local newspapers and all all sorts of things around the world. And that one was quite strange, really, because it just looks weird.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  46:35  I quite liked the perspective on that one. I know because when you do panorama, it it changes your perspective, right? Because you kind of try to flatten a 360 basically or you know, a sphere, I suppose. So then you have that you have that effect on the photo. And I think that that works quite well. And that way kind of frame the Milky Way as well as the you know, whatever. That limestone is a that's in? That's in clinicals clinicals, right? Yeah, yeah.
Michael Goh  47:13  So in that photo, we weren't actually going to go either, because it was actually raining probably about two hours before then. So the the only reason why I went was my older brother actually came into Perth and said I want to go shoot photographs. There was a great weather for it. And that's I suppose another thing as well is that sometimes the better photos are actually when the conditions are not perfect.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  47:37  Yeah, no, that's I totally agree the weird condition gives you a really cool photo but I know like sometimes you have a higher risk of not getting anything. But you also have I suppose that whole whole thing about you know, high res high gain thing, right? Like the more is you you put it out there the more the more gain you might guess. Man, that was awesome. I love talking about this. There's so much that I could learn from you. But coming on to the hour mark and I want to I want you to I want to ask you to give an advice or two for the listener who been wanting to kind of shoot astrophotography or even just to give it a try What what is the you know the easiest way to try without having all this false belief telling you that you can't
Michael Goh  48:43  I suppose the I guess that's exactly what you're saying there as well it's not that there is the false belief is that you can photograph the Milky Way now with some phones when people say oh you must have good equipment for example, I was like pointing towards this photo here is it is quite literally it's a compact camera and I just set it down took a photo of the Milky Way the only thing that this camera had was basically manual settings and I think the ISO tipped out that was 3200 and the maximum shutter it could do with 15 seconds it was an F to two camera I think or so.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  49:31  I think that's I think that is gonna be a lot of push for people out there you know that wait to get their $5,000 camera to shoot out there. Yeah, sorry. Sorry to interrupt you there.
Michael Goh  49:44  So apart from just giving it a shot is that ultimately your camera is most likely be able to do something, you just need to go somewhere dark. And when you go somewhere is try a variety of things out. Because while everyone's come With the idea of shooting, I mean, when I started photographing astral photography was very formulaic. If that's even the word, you're saying, if 2.8 30 seconds, ISO 1600, don't go above 1600. And all of a sudden, I mean, sometimes I shoot 12,800 Or even higher, depending on how I feel. But I mean, I generally speaking like going a little bit lower than that and using your tracking mounds, because you do have your signal, signal to noise ratios and so on, you do start losing stuff after a while, but is try a number of things, take a number of images. So you can do things like use stacking later on to experiment with things, it's great as an experimental sort of, of medium, you can experiment with all sorts of things, you don't have to go ultra wide, you can go longer focal length, you will just have a different look. That's all, there's so many things you can experiment with with astrophotography. There was something else that just floated into my head. But of course, we've Astrophotography and many things that floats into your head and back out of your head as well. In terms of, I suppose you're experimenting and trying things out. But yeah, it's just trying many things out, don't just rely get uncomfortable, is probably the best way to say it with the astrophotography do things that you wouldn't normally try to do shoot at ISO 26,000, whatever. Just try to ignore 25,000, whatever, just try things out. You might look at later on saying that's really that's rubbish. But you tried it because most people don't go out. Most Sorry, I'm just waiting for my cameras to start working. Most people don't go out and photograph the astrophotography every day. I know I get paid for it. But most people don't go out and do it every day. So it's get as much data as you can as possible to experiment with things. And that's right, the end, make sure you actually put down the camera later on. I mean, it might be time lapsing or whatever. And just actually enjoy it. Because enjoying where you are. It helps you create, I suppose. Lets you represent what you felt when you were out there as well. It's not just about saying I need a great photo, it's actually saying well, how did how does it make you feel?
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  52:24  Nice, great advice. Especially you know that last bit where you say, you know, how does that make you feel that that is such a great advice there. And yeah, thanks for sharing that. I think that is very powerful. I think you know, when I started Astro photography was quite intimidating with all the settings but shooting stars is the easiest thing you can do because the exposure doesn't change it's always like that, you know, you should sunset it changes every time but the stars always have the same exposure. So once you dialled that in, it's all about experimenting to get that higher quality. So you're you're exactly right there. Well, thanks a lot, Michael, for for joining us here and for those for those people who want to learn more about yourself and see more of your APPIC astrophotography where is the best place for them to go?
Michael Goh  53:27  I suppose I'm being I'm terrible with social media, by the way, or even with website updates. And I know I'm about two years behind on my YouTube channel updates at the moment as well. But they is ultimately on Astro photo bear on Instagram and on Facebook. I've also also my website is Astra photo bear.com I've also created Michael go I think it was Michael go.com.au recently as well, because like I said I need to actually sound a little bit more professional but all that does is actually route us through to Astra photo bear.com And I've actually been putting a lot more in the story side of things on social media rather than actually posting up because I've just been so busy. So that's more of but I do need to put up more on your behind the scenes because ultimately that's where I want to get across the people saying this is what I'm actually doing to actually achieve these results to actually do these things. And this is why things are happening.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  54:27  That's awesome. Thank you very much Michael and yeah for you've seen how many photos you shared I think three photos and they were all epic. So highly recommend you to check out you know some of these photo is just so inspiring. Definitely when I first got into photography, I saw one of Michael photo and I was just like, yeah, I want to learn how to take photo like that. So thanks a lot wiki hunters for tuning in and hopefully you get a lot of gem there and terms of astrophotography. And there was so, so much interesting story from Michael himself. So hopefully you enjoy that. And let us know in the comment below if you do enjoy and what part of it you enjoy the most. And for those YouTubers out there, don't forget to subscribe on down here and then turn on that little notification button. Yeah, that's right. And yeah, that way you will know when I release a new podcast or new video. Well, thank you very much for tuning in. And I will see you next week. All right, well catch you later. Michael. Thanks a lot for being here.
Michael Goh  55:39  Thanks for having me.
 

Ep 17 - Why you don't need to make a living from it to pursue your passion with Lost Coordinate

Hey Wicked Hunters, 
In this episode, I had a great conversation with Lost Coordinate. He's a successful commercial photographer in the Canadian Rockies and has travelled extensively to shoot for different brands and tourism board. He shared how he enjoyed photography much more, now that he slow down a bit from that side of his life and do it as a side hobby instead. 
You can learn more about him by connecting in Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/lostcoordinate
If you want to watch the video podcast, head to https://youtu.be/u17ujkgeH6Y  
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 let us know your favourite part of the Podcast on the comment below and subscribe

Ep 16 - How Photography Become The Greatest Obsession for Felix Inden

Hey Wicked Hunters!
I can't believe 2020 is almost gone! Well, it's great to close 2020 with Felix Inden. In this podcast, we chat about how photography becomes Felix's Greatest Obsession. Felix also shared his story behind his love for harsh weather and landscape photography. 
For those of you who'd like to know more about Felix Inden, you can find him:
https://www.felixinden.com/
https://www.facebook.com/felixindenlandscapephotographer 
https://www.instagram.com/felixinden/ 
If you want to watch the video podcast, head to https://youtu.be/2M0oMuAW4Ag 
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 let us know your favourite part of the Podcast on the comment below and subscribe
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Felix Inden  0:00  No matter when you have free time, you're just thinking about photo photo photo photo. And then every break I had, I was thinking about that. And yes, I think it was the best obsession I ever developed so far.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  0:22  Hey, wiki hunters, welcome back to The Art of Photography podcast. Now today I have someone very exciting. And you know that if you've been tuning into this podcast, our mission is to share our passion and how photography have given us hope, purpose and happiness. To most of us, if not to all of us, photography started off as something fun, something that makes us happy. And you know, one way to another, you know, we go through a lot of expectation, a lot of pressure, and so forth. And for that reason, sometimes we can abandon photography, or we get burned out from photography. So this is the whole purpose of this podcast. Now today, I have someone very exciting to introduce to you. And he is from based in Germany, and he is Feliks Indian. Are you doing Felix?
Felix Inden  1:20  Yes. Hi, Stanley. Thanks for having me on the show. I'm fine. Quite smashed after the Christmas time with two kids, which is like exponentially making Christmas more tiring than ever before. If you don't have kids, but I'm fine. Yes. And I'm happy to be here. As good. Yeah.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  1:38  How is? How was Christmas back in Germany? I know you in Germany. You're famous with the glue bind and the markets and?
Felix Inden  1:47  Yeah, so in a normal year, Christmas has a huge tradition here. With the Christmas markets where people from all over Europe come in big bust groups just to join the Christmas market have a blue line and about wars, or what do I know. But in 2020, things are a little bit different. So there was not a single Christmas market in whole Germany, I think. But of course, in Germany, there's a big Christmas tradition inside of each family. And my own family isn't the craziest about Christmas. But still, we always have the Christmas tree in some decorations. And we actually also sing and stuff like that. It's like gathering the family spending time together in this modern age. That often doesn't happen so much anymore, that the whole family meets up. And this year, it was quite twit tricky with all these COVID regulation rules and stuff. So we split it up a little bit to avoid having too many people at home at the same time. And then for my wife's family, I got some quick tests to make sure we are not infected. And yeah, different Christmas than I ever had before in these 36 years of life that I've had on this planet. But yeah, I mean, it's Christmas. I'm personally not the huge Christmas fan. Like I go through it, I enjoy it. But I'm also quite happy when it's over. And I can get on with my own stuff. Yeah.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  3:24  Yeah, that's good to hear. It's good to hear that you're enjoying. And, you know, I think the big thing about Christmas, for me is the family part of things. I think it's, it's a good excuse to kind of come together and, you know, meet with family and so forth. So, um, I'm very excited to have you here. You know, I come across your photo in Instagram, and while I was strolling, and it's just going to your photo, and I just love the contrast on your photo and, you know, just the landscapes that you managed to capture. So tell us a little bit more about yourself maybe a little bit. background on how you get into this photography world.
Felix Inden  4:06  Yes, that's quite funny. It's so my girlfriend who's now my wife was into photography way earlier than myself. So my big hobbies in life have been cycling them. So road racing and mountain bike racing, which I was quite obsessive with. After that came a big phase of partying, like party hard while studying. And then I was in Paris with my wife, following her carrying her back and her tripod and she was taking pictures, and I thought it would be okay to stop taking pictures after two or three hours, but no, she went on the whole day. And at some point, I asked her if I can have her old backup camera and started taking pictures myself and realised I found that quite enjoyable. So we spent the next three days shooting together and Then I was already hooked to photography, and then all my free time reading about photography and then also going out to shoot mostly cityscapes. So I didn't afford to go to some exotic location. And the evenings, I stopped going to parties and sat down at home at the computer learning to edit landscape and cityscape pictures. And then things kind of evolved, like the normal way I started using short social media and started communicating with a lot of people who had the same passion, like we're doing right now. And from there, things just slowly kept evolving, somehow. Yeah,
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  5:45  awesome. So what what really hooked you into photography, like, what makes you really love it.
Felix Inden  5:52  So from that moment on, I first, maybe I have to, I have to tell you and everybody that I was really bad in art. So in school, I never had good grades in arts. And I never enjoyed it. Because whenever I tried drawing something, I just instantly saw how bad I am added. So I, yeah, I taught myself I don't have an artsy creativity in me. I always had some writing interest in writing. And I read a lot of books, like, huge amount of books, like I was sitting hiding under my bed. When my parents told me to go sleep, I was hiding there with a flashlight and kept on reading. And this moment, when I picked up the camera from my wife, I realised that I actually was enjoying something that you can at least call art in some way. Like, I think people can argue for years if photography is art, or it isn't. For me it is. And this was like the moment where I felt I'm not totally bad at picturing two dimensional three dimensional scenes into a two dimensional image. And through photography, I even learned how to think three dimensionally, much more than I was able to before. So also in physics, I was bad in school in physics. And now I deeply regret it. Because I think through photography, I learned how interesting all these topics actually are. Yeah. So that's, I don't know if that answers your question.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  7:38  Yeah. So like, it's really interesting how you like that, I actually never heard that kind of how you fall in love with photography, that's really interesting. And I think a lot of people out there kind of think and look at a lot of these photos, you know, there's beautiful photos, they, they kind of thing, they started off, and then they kind of gave up because they feel like, just like yourself, you know, they feel like they don't have that art sight of themselves. And they feel like they cannot do this. So even though they enjoy it, they quickly give it up. So that is really good to hear that from from you, you know, who already basically made it in the photography world, saying that you weren't very good in, you know, in photography, and then you're here you are. So that's amazing.
Felix Inden  8:36  It's was around 10 years ago that I found this interest. And then I quickly developed that obsession that you you need to really get into something. It's when you when you feel that no matter when you have free time, you're just thinking about photo photo photo photo. And then every break I had I was thinking about that. And yes, I think it was the best obsession I ever developed so far. Yeah.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  9:05  Awesome. Yeah. That's, that's one way to put it. Yeah, so what sort of what sort of feeling you get when you can, like when you capture this, you kind of give us a little bit of background on on the different different aspects of your life and how it's so contrast to your to photography and how we cannot connect back. But tell us a little bit more about the feeling that you get when you you know, when you're able to capture some of these images and present it in a way that is Wow, basically.
Felix Inden  9:40  Yeah, so good question. So I think the thing that will probably you've heard that from other photographers, but the experience for me comes first. So I'm not so much about getting that picture, but about going through living that moment in which I'm also taking that picture So I was always driven by, like natural energy like storms, rough weather, rough landscapes, just places where I feel so different than sitting at the cosy home, enjoying the wind, getting blasted with hail, these are those moments that often push my creativity. When I have to force myself to go through something that's not comfortable, that's when I feel the most creative. Now, if you look close to my Instagram, you will see that I have quite a big amount of also typical iconic shots, for which I didn't have to go through any heavy things, I just went there with a photo tour that I was guiding and took that picture again that 100,000 People take. So it's a topic for itself. But when I talk about these experiences, I talk about being out there alone on my own, or with a friend or two at maximum. And then going out in moments where you might make where maybe before you go out, you look at the weather and think we should just skip it and stay home. Those are mostly the sessions where my favourite images take part, if you go if you endure the elements, basically. And that leads to what you were telling about the images that I sometimes show that are quite punchy, or contrasty. Of course, I'm also passionate post producer or Photoshop user, but most of that really comes from the circumstances from the weather while shooting. Yeah,
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  11:41  yeah, it's, it's, I totally agree. I think some of my best photos are or my favourite photos are the one that are have a lot of memories in it. So I think the photo is kind of just like, like, like a, like an award or like, you know, like a, like a piece of momento that you can remember that experience juicer.
Felix Inden  12:05  And as soon as you look at it, even after five years, you will be in that moment, you just cannot forget it, it triggers all the memories. And that's also what I really love about photography. Yeah, I liked that about photography, too, when I was just a tourist taking crappy tourist shots. 20 years ago in South America, I still look at these images and remember everything like it was yesterday. But of course, I curse myself for not having taken a good image, a working landscape photograph so to say.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  12:40  So you do you find that you want to go back to a lot of those places that you've been before you're into photography and wanting to take, retake them all or
Felix Inden  12:52  definitely, definitely actually wanted to do some of that this year. Something happened and I had to cancel those trips. So I lived in Chile, with my parents from my 10th to my 16th year of age. So I visited insanely nice places in Chile, Argentina, Peru, Bolivia all around. So there's a huge amount of super photogenic places that I can remember from my childhood or from a youth where I have to return to take pictures, not tourists, the pioneer or El Chalten that everybody knows with the Fitzroy, the cuernos, the pine, all these iconic mountains, but there's amazing landscapes that just require you to go to areas that few people know about. And I would totally love to go there. And to go there as a landscape photographer and try to put my spin on these places that not so many people know about. Yeah, but you know, life isn't that easy. So now I'm a father of two kids, I have to sustain the family somehow too. So I cannot just say I'm gonna go there for three or four months and return home once I have images that make me happy. So I always have to consider closely how I spent my time when I go to some faraway place. Normally I don't go longer than two and a half ish weeks, maybe a maximum three. And for some of these places, you would normally need an open end trip where you just go and then stay there for maybe three to four month can happen that you that you're done after two weeks, but normally it will take quite some time to to arrange everything.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  14:48  Oh, that's that's crazy. Yeah. It's it sounds it sounds like it sounds like fun though. Like, I think when I got into photography from travelling, so I used to travel and what I used to do back then is just take off places, right? I just go, go go to Eiffel tower, tower, take photo, go home, go next one take photo go home. And that's what I find with photography, I find actually to slow things down and actually go deeper. So it's really cool that, you know, you want to go to places that is not that everyone knows and actually go to the more unbeaten path and a unique kind of perspective. Yes,
Felix Inden  15:28  that that's, that's kind of, it's a little bit like an interior thing. Because the last two to three years, I've spent them mostly guiding people at very famous places, which is always great fun. And you can make sure that everybody gets some amazing shots, which is maybe your job during one of these tours. But from your from my personal point of view, as an artist, maybe I can say that this didn't exactly make my images better. So I have a huge collection of images that are successfully usable in social media. Because as you might know, the popular stuff is what gets you the views and everything. But from the creative point of view, it's not what will bring you forward if you do it for years and years. So I am that's my intent. My secret plan is to break that up a little bit. For I listened to your podcast with Paul, this guy. He's like, extremely inspiring to me. He's just such a such a good guy. And he has like this unique vision on his own photography. And I think that's also in part because he doesn't spend too much time getting these photo tours to famous places.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  16:51  Yeah, it's I think it's, it's, it's funny, because, you know, most of the guests that I've talked to, I think I would say all of the guests that I've talked to have that very have the same kind of take on, you know, about creating something one that is meaningful to ourselves. So I see that a lot of your photo or you have the love for ice and the winter scene as well. Definitely, yeah. So what brings that love, like, you know, what, why the winter? Why, you know, this cold, harsh places?
Felix Inden  17:28  I don't know, maybe because in the places where I spent most of my life, I don't have any real winter. It's like here today it's, yeah, it's the end of December. Without climate change, we would have snow outside cold weather. Now we have a big storm going on outside. So it's really rough weather, but it's still plus five degrees. And it's just rain, rain rain. And I missed these real winter environments. And they just I don't know why but they kicked my creativity of and from the beginning of my landscape photography. The first time I saw the Northern Lights also gave me a big inspiration boost. That's something I constantly miss here too. So I find it incredibly photogenic to have snow that reflects the light and the low standing sun or even the moonlight. And then ice features as a foreground. It's just quite cool. So when I look at Paul's images, I'm always like, think that's heaven in Canada. With all the crazy icy stuff he has around it or YouTube, basically. Yeah, it's
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  18:41  it's pretty crazy. And yeah, it's, you're right. It's it is definitely, like, out of the world a lot. A lot. I mean, I'm from Australia, and a lot of the stuff I see here I just like I couldn't believe it's real. I thought it was you know, it was it was just like, What is this thing is real, like, people actually skate on the lake is like, I thought that's how people like, drown and stuff. I was like, yeah, that's that's that's fine. Yeah, how, how different things are, but that's, that's really cool.
Felix Inden  19:10  How do you feel as an Australian in Canada in this very cold landscape? Well,
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  19:17  it's really interesting. Um, I like the cold better than the hot like, honestly, like when I'm back home. I think I have really high metabolism. So like, when I'm back home, even if I don't do anything because it's so humid and hot. I would just like start sweating and I really hate that I actually have allergic reaction to to the sweat. So if I would have need to like shower twice a day, if not more, to kind of get that like sweat off my body or otherwise I started getting like this reaction on my skin. And it's funny because like, I actually could withstand the cold a lot better than most people, even those people that have been living here in Canada or you know, in Europe where they get the fourth. Always travelling with three people from Germany and one people from France, in Australia. And you know the desert get a little bit cold, obviously not as cold as here, but I'll be honest, short and like, you know, on a t shirt and that'd be like, bundling others like, what are you doing? Like, I don't know, it's okay. So, okay, yeah,
Felix Inden  20:28  it's fun to hear because you clearly come from quite hot place. You live now at a quite cold place. But to to summarise this little bit. I just love seasons, I love to see how seasons change. And here where I live. So of course, we have places with harsh winter in Germany too. But those are in the mountains, not here in the river deltas. So here I have a nice spring with flowers. So you go out and you realise okay, it's spring. Then you go out in summer, and it will be hot and quite humid. Also, you realise it's summer and autumn looks beautiful with all the leaves and foggy weather and everything but the winter, you just go out and think. So this is no winter, this just grey weather. It little, very little sunlight and lots of rain. It's just boring. So that's what I love to escape to the north of Europe, especially Norway. during wintertime, yes.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  21:32  Yeah, no, that's, that's very true. I actually, like the I mean, this place are so beautiful, isn't it not not only the snow, but also the landscape. So it's definitely been on my bucket list as well. Where Where do you get your inspiration for is that like, you know, is there anyone that you can have that really inspire you to to get some of this photo or you know, to basically drive your your creativity in the TOG photography as an art?
Felix Inden  22:03  Yes, there's a bazillion of people that keep inspiring me, some through their imagery, some through their personalities, some through that spirit, or the combination of it all. But I also get inspired by movies quite a lot or series. It's kind of cliche, but for example, Game of Thrones, or Vikings or these series. I think just their directors of photography maybe have a similar way of thinking that I have, or at least they have a similar style of things they like. So whenever I watched those series in TV, I instantly feel inspired again. And then especially Game of Thrones, I keep watching how they set the light on, on set. So then you can try to replicate that in real life. Like look for situations where the sun comes from a certain angle, and stuff like that. But one of my biggest inspirations has been Steven, clue. Clow K L oh, he's a friend from Norway, who lives very close to Lofoten and we started photography, I think we started at the same time. But then I could watch him skyrocket very quickly with his photography, because he was living so close to all these so photogenic places where you can, as a beginner, it's gold if you have a super photogenic place around because no matter what you want to learn, you will have the prime locations to do that. I didn't have that I was shooting mostly in my city, or close to the city. So that allowed me to learn all the techniques that I wanted to learn. And to understand how depth works in an image. You don't need an epic peak in the background and a frozen lake in the foreground. You can learn that at the plaza of your local town. So you put something in the foreground, even if it's just a statue or I don't know, even a brick wall would work to learn how the the how the dynamic of the image changes. But I think having this guy still posting all these images inspired me to keep on going myself to and from there on. I think it's important to just surround yourself with people that inspire you. It's different to difficult to put it into words to say this inspires me it's just more like a mindset. And also, I know your podcast talks about these things more than others. I've also been demotivated when I couldn't travel and have been demotivated when I see my images all look the same. But then I think photography has the power of make you break out from all those thoughts if you if you allow it. And yeah, so some of the best inspiration settings for me is just going out, no matter if with a camera or without go out of your place where you live and walk around for one or two hours. And I bet there will be some inspiring thoughts coming all by themselves.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  25:30  That's awesome. Yeah, thanks for sharing that. I think that's, it's really good for a lot of the listeners out there to hear that. And, you know, I think you're right, I think most a lot of people are really having a hard time sometimes with all the stuff that's going on. And it feels like, you know, their creativity is gone. But it's actually it's still there. So I think that's a really good advice to just go out there. And then just, you know, just don't set any expectation for yourself. Just go out there and see what you get. Yeah, that's very cool. Like, so you were you're talking about? I kind of lost I lost my train of thought this is like so in tune with what you say there is so cool. Yeah, so what what, what would be some of your most favourite moments in photography? Like, it's something that like, probably you, you know, until this day, you go like, yeah, that was probably one of the coolest moment of experience.
Felix Inden  26:34  I think. It's, there's like many like that. Let me think so I think one of the really coolest moments was when I saw my first aurora borealis or the northern lights for the first time, I, I thought, Wow, this looks insane. I need to take pictures of this. And then I realised I wasn't able to. So the pictures I was taking were crap. They didn't look like the way I wanted them to look. That's because I had no idea about how to shoot the northern lights and everything like that. So I just stopped taking pictures and enjoyed those lights and returned a year later, with a much bigger skill set. I knew how to approach that. And then I took pictures that I saw on the back of my screen, the camera screen. And I was like, that's how it should look like this setup was like the feeling of accomplishment for myself, was a big motivation. And that's one of those moments then I also had some trouble some hikes where I doubted I would even reach the point that I wanted. When I was starting to hike, I thought this will never work. Then if you make it through, if you take a picture that you really love yourself. And I don't love many of my shots. I gotta say I'm super critical, super nitpicky with my own work. Those few images that I really liked myself often have like some form of challenge that I had to go through. And those are then also my favourite moments. But I think it was ilaya locality who said it like What is your favourite moment in photography? The next one I'm going to have, you know, so I don't want to think too much about the past. I just hope to get more nice moments through photography as soon as possible. When it's possible again.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  28:38  Yeah, that's, that's really cool. I think it's, that's very true. I think, you know, like, maybe looking forward is probably one of the best thing we can do, especially when we kind of, you know, in this situation and you're gonna lose motivation, I think looking forward, you know, being having that hope is really, really important. I remember now what I was gonna ask you, you know, you're talking about your friend in Norway and how he is in a prime location or photography. And, you know, like, I mean, I kind of live where, you know, the, like, the jewel of Canada at the moment, right? And what I find is that I think sometimes because it's so beautiful. We get quite lazy because you know, it doesn't matter where you shoot it's almost impossible to take a photo that is horrible, right? So almost some kind it's kind of always kind of good. Do you think what are your What are your thoughts on this? In terms of improving your photography will it actually help you to be in a prime location because there is a lot of beautiful thing around it? Or will it actually work the other way? Because you can just start pointing and shooting at everything because it's just so beautiful, right?
Felix Inden  30:09  Yeah, I think it's, let me think it's maybe two sides of a metal with with this reply. So in the beginning, as a beginner, it definitely will help. That's my opinion, because what helps you in the beginning is satisfaction and the feeling of success for yourself. And if you're a beginner, that success will be to take a picture that you really like. And as we are super extroverted, that was wrong. So I'm not extroverted, but the way we show our images to the whole world is some form of weird extrovert ism. So if you are beginning with photography, and you have a cool shot to show your friends, every few days, you will be more motivated to get more of those pictures than somebody who has to wait for two years until he can go to some of those places where he may be is dreaming of going. So, but they will be coming to the point where you may be where this being at a spectacular place will not be doing you any service anymore, because then it goes about what is photography giving you? Is the kick still coming? Like, are you still excited about photography, if you're not, you can be I don't know, you can live in Iceland and still get bored by landscape photography. But if you still have that passion, and it gets stronger and stronger and stronger than I think you will profit from such a place because it will keep you going. Now, there's a huge amount of people who don't live at such places, and they develop over the years and get very good at photography. It's not needed to live at such a place to to be a good photographer. Absolutely not. But I think it can be beneficial. Yes. Yeah, I think you'll surely also know many people who start photography, they develop a really nice style, and suddenly they stop that the name disappears from your online list of people whose work you keep seeing. And that's mainly because they got bored of photography, and picked up another hobby. But yeah, I don't know, when I go out here into my local forests, I also get very inspired. And the challenge to get a picture that satisfies me is much higher than in Lofoten Islands, where you can put your camera wherever you want and take a picture that will be at least like a three out of 10 You can't go lower because the landscape is so beautiful.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  33:07  Yeah, that's very true. Do you find that when you do that, you know, you find that when you go on your, on your local florists where it's more challenging to you know, grab a photo that satisfy you. But when you actually get it, do you find it to be more fulfilling compared to those photos that are, you know, arguably easier to get right?
Felix Inden  33:33  Yeah, I think so too. I think so definitely also because maybe also in your place like I've never been there. But I guess to get unique pictures you need to do quite some hiking climbing or you need to be super lucky with the conditions at an easy place. Like this is how you can set yourself apart from other people it's either getting super unique conditions at the easy places, or putting in a lot of effort to going far away from the crowds and in a place that's so mountainous if that's an English word, like if you have so many mountains like where you live, you will have to go hiking and climbing quite a lot to get away from the crowds I guess. So for me here I tried finding other landscape photographers in this area but I haven't found any at the moment so if I find a nice tree that like the chance is very high that's not been taking photographs ever before. And this is also somehow it's satisfying to to know that I'm taking a picture that maybe is unique to myself like those pictures never create much interest online, but it's more about your, your inner self and what motivates your so these pictures are generally the ones that I print for myself, or that I give as a gift to my mom or whatever. Because she's from the same area. And then you if you show these images to people that also live in the same area as you, they will ask you Oh, where's that? Where's that? That's where you walk every day. But you don't, you don't see it, like I see it when the light is right.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  35:30  Yeah, that's, that's, that's great to hear. For you to hear that. I think as, as a human being, it's very natural for us to take it take things for granted that are easy to get for us. And you know, and that's why one of one of my mission, when I first kind of left my full time job for photography was to actually explore my own backyard, which was Indonesia, and Australia, actually drove around the continent of Australia, which was pretty, pretty cool. Like, yeah. But yeah, that's, that's really cool in take on that. And I think, you know, the listeners out there should take that as an inspiration where, you know, even if you're in a place where you think it's not a very good place to put that as a question mark, because I feel like everywhere you go, there's always a good place to take photos, just what type of photography you're gonna get. So that kind of brings me a question. Why landscape photography? You know, you kind of start in Europe, which has a really strong kind of urban and as well as street photography, environment, how do you actually fall in love with landscape?
Felix Inden  36:45  This was funny, the, I went to Norway the first time with my wife, before I even had this moment in Paris that I told you about. So, and with my parents, I travelled to incredibly beautiful places in South America. So I had seen a fair amount of beautiful places in nature, before I was interested in photography. And then when I realised that photography is super fun, instantly, I wanted to go to these places in nature and take pictures of them. Like, as I've been always passionate for nature, and landscapes just clicked together very nicely. And I also went to Dubai last year to shoot cityscapes. And with some email trickery. And some, I don't know, some moves I made, I got to some pretty cool rooftops that are not accessible. And I have all these images, and I look at them, and I don't edit them, and like they don't give me that adrenaline kick. But when I look at the landscape images, that's what kicks in drives for inspiration. So it's, it comes down to personal likes, I definitely learned almost everything I know, from the basics of photography, while shooting cityscapes and street. But then, when I was able to afford to go to beautiful nature, it was the purpose of photography, that is more expensive than going to some place to chill out. Because you will need a rental car and this and that and what you know, all that stuff. But nature. And photography was what clicked for me and this quite early. So I knew I don't want to spend time shooting portraits. I don't want to walk around the city and take street candidates or how it's called, I just want to go somewhere nice. In my preference, rough and dramatic landscape and take pictures there.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  38:58  Yeah, that's, that's cool. That's probably like, no, no, no, many people wanted to do that. As I know, most people wanted to go out and during a nice blue blue sky, instead of this rough condition that is blowing. You tried to stand and you tried to survive. Yeah. That's amazing. So going back to what you kind of started off in the beginning. What are your thoughts in photography? Do you think it's an art? Or do you think it's, it's not and why?
Felix Inden  39:32  I think it's both art and no art. So because obviously photography is a medium. And a camera has a tool that you can use for many things. You can take your camera and take a picture of a contract, and then you pretty much scanned the contract. I wouldn't call that art. And then the comes the moment where you as an artist, walk out with your camera and take pictures yours. Not every picture will be what people define as art. But I think the activity that you are doing with your camera camera is still something artsy. It just depends what you create in the end. Like, if you shoot commercial architecture that I've done, I wouldn't call that artsy. But if you look at the work of some of the most popular architecture photographers worldwide, they most likely have something artsy in their architecture, photography, because that sets them apart from the rest. And that's why they became so popular. Like at the moment, I don't have any name present, but there's certainly some that take artsy architecture photography commercially. Now, there are nature photographers that are generally more artsy than we typical landscape photographers. We often or I also guilty of this, I often follow some form of formula that leads me to an effective picture. I don't know, following a formula, it's really artsy anymore. There's just so many. I just can never decide. So for me, it's a form of art. Not every picture that I take is art. Definitely not. But some of them are. I can never decide what to think about this, I don't know, for me, personally, doesn't really matter to me, I will let others decide if they see me as an artist or not. Yes, it's weird to think about it. Because, of course, it's so easy to reproduce, reproduce everything that we do. And a painter is certainly more perceivable as art than photographer. But I know so many people that I admire that are super artsy in their photography. And those are what inspire me nowadays. So I hope to, to get to a point where people look at my stuff and think that's art. I would be happy then. Cool.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  42:17  So well, just wrapping up to the hour mark here. One last question that I usually ask all my guests, you know, what can you share with the listener? One advice that you think is that you think is very important to other photographers, or artists in photography out there, on, you know, either how to, you know how to start or how to get inspired in photography, or even, you know, how to master photography, it's, you know, what are your best advice that you have learned throughout your career in photography that you feel like other photographers should know?
Felix Inden  43:03  Yeah, so I think in the beginning, let's make one for beginner and one for more advanced. As a beginner, you should just listen to your inner voice. And don't listen to social media. Don't be don't let social media be your main advisor. Because this can trigger you the wrong way to pursue a happy life as a photographer, you know what I'm talking about? Like? There's so many things that can happen once you focus too much on social media. And if you do that, because you have to promote your products to make a living, that's fine. It's your job. But if you're just starting out as a hobby amateur photographer, forget about that and listen to yourself. You will notice what inspires you and you will know what was right and what was wrong. You don't need to count the likes that you picture got to make your decision for a way to pursue. That's one point. And the next one would be just practice. So there's a good portrait photographer and editor Joelle Grimes and I think I saw him many years ago on Photokina. And he was saying on stage, hard work will outperform talent every single day of the week. And I don't know if I agree 100% But 99.9 I agree. If you want to learn and improve, you need to do things. You can only consume tutorials and read books for a certain part but that will not make you improve. If you don't grab your camera, go out somewhere and try practice photography. Also, I know quite a mount of quite a big amount of people sit at home thinking, Yeah, but I cannot go to place x or place y. So I cannot advance, wrong way of thinking, no matter where you live, if you have a camera, you will profit from just going out. And even if the pictures are taken on a junkyard, you can use that junkyard to learn the basics of photography. And once you make it to one of those places that you want to take pictures of, you will be prepared and take much better pictures than if you spent the last year just dreaming about it without touching the camera.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  45:39  Awesome. Thanks a lot for the advice. I hope the listeners out there gonna find this inspiring, because there's some good advice there. Going back to kind of what you say, around the social media, I think the social media have a lot of have a lot of responsibility to a lot of the burnouts out there. And I kind of feel that myself mentally well, I feel like you you kind of have that expectation, right? And that you have to create that photo and you're no longer taking photo for yourself. And that kind of take away the fun of photography. You know, you say that to your a lot earlier today. You know, the photo that you're most proud of? Are the photo that actually mean something to you. So exactly. That's a really good advice to share. And I think going back to what you were saying earlier, as well, I just want to point out that you know, what you say about your friend in Norway and how we compare these two? Is it good or bad to be in a place that are more photogenic is that just go out there and find a little bit of result. I think that's a you know, going back to what you say it's really good way to get that moment to him in your photography. So that is definitely one thing that he should consider and think about if he just started so perfect. That's, that's, that's amazing. Thanks a lot for sharing that. Felix and yeah, look, it's been fun. And I had a lot of fun listening to you. Very inspiring, as well to hear some of your perspective and your point of view. For the listeners out there who you know, want to hear more about you and also want to see more of your photos, your your beautiful landscapes and all that stuff. What is the best way to find you and connect with you?
Felix Inden  47:37  Yes, so I'm Felix in them. i n d n is my afternoon. If you Google that you will find all my homepage Felix in.com or IG Instagram slash Felix in so that way you can find everything about me. And I encourage I would like it, if you check out my homepage, there will be a magic little pop up coming telling you to subscribe to my newsletter. And this is something quite new to me. So I haven't been working much on a newsletter subscription list. But I started now and I'm just finishing my own little ebook about how to improve your landscape photography that you'll get if you subscribe to my newsletter. And all this is done by many. But I put a lot of thought into this little ebook and just go check it out or have a look at my pictures on Instagram. You can also DM me I go through every message that I get and enjoy communicating with people. Then I also hope that my English was understandable. In this podcast like because I'm a German. I guess I have some form of accent in there. But yeah, I enjoy to be here to talk with you. Stanley was really good.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  48:58  Fantastic. Yeah, well, we'll put the link on description below. So if you're interested to subscribe, go to the homepage. But also, Felix is really good in social media at socialising, I suppose. Social media. Yeah, he's, he's quite enjoyable to follow and to learn from so highly encourage you to Instagram and Facebook. Yeah, so well. Thanks a lot for thanks for your time. And thanks a lot for setting setting aside some of your time especially with the BC kids and the holiday season. But yeah, look, we Qantas Thank you very much for tuning in. And it's been very it's been a lot of fun talking to Felix here and let us know in the comment below what are some of the best, you know, insights that are Felix have shared with us and For those of you who join us in YouTube, don't forget to subscribe. You got the subscribe button down here and then hit that notification button so that you get notified next time I upload the photo. But hopefully you guys have the rest of 2020. And I mean, we're, we are literally Yeah, we're recording at the last week of 2020. So I will see you guys in 2021. Well, Felix, thank you very much for being here. And thank you very much for all of your insights, as well as your wisdom. And hopefully you have the rest. Good rest of 2020 and an amazing 2021
Felix Inden  50:51  Yesterday, thanks again for having me. And I wish you and everybody who listens this happy new year. Let's just all sit tight. We're going to back we're going to see each other on the flip side Sunday. Stay safe everyone.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  51:09  And yet everyone and I'll see you guys next week. I mean next year
 

Ep 15 - Emeric’s Story Behind 9 years of Timelapse photography

Hey Wicked Hunters, 
Welcome back to another episode The Art of Photography Podcast. Today you'll here conversation I had with Emeric behind 9 years of his journey as a timelapse photographer. He shared how he got started and fell in love with timelapse photography, but most of all how managed to get to where he is right now working with world's leading brand within 7 years doing it professionally. 
For you who want to learn more about Emeric you can go to:
https://www.emerictimelapse.com/
https://www.facebook.com/EmericTimelapse
https://www.instagram.com/emerictimelapse/
If you want to watch the video podcast, head to https://youtu.be/AtpeYlMWPfw
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Don't forget to let us know your favourite part of the Podcast on the comment below and subscribe
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Emeric Time Lapse  0:00  And at some point, the sun shining through the clouds and, you know, lit up the entire skyline. But since you know we're facing east, you can see the sunset in the buildings. So it's a pretty interesting concept. And then, few minutes later the clouds starting to turn pink. I was like, oh my god, it's like perfect timing so,
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  0:33  you know, this podcast if you already been tuning in, you know, it's it's, it's more about how we share our passion as photographers and creatives. And in this podcast as someone very excited to introduce to you very different in terms of photography world. So I actually met him or come across his profile in social media, and about his score. So I'm excited to go through that. But it's Emmerich and he is a master of time lapse photography. Hamrick. How're you doing?
Emeric Time Lapse  1:10  He's totally doing great. What about you?
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  1:12  Yeah, not too bad. Not too bad. Just, I mean, I'm so happy to have you here today. having me? Yeah, I'm so glad to have you on board. I mean, you know, I just met you. Well, just first time I talked to you, I suppose. That's what I was trying to say. I just hit you up, Instagram and you reply, and then you say, yeah, so I was really,
Emeric Time Lapse  1:35  the first time we talked was like, five days ago, right? Like this. And you asked me for the podcast. I was like, yeah, it's exciting. That's awesome.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  1:46  I mean, like, you know, it's, I guess that's the cool thing about the social media nowadays, you get to meet new people that you know, in the other side of the world, so that's perfectly what you've been up to a house. You know, how's 2020 been for you?
Emeric Time Lapse  2:04  It's been pretty hectic. I have to say. No, yeah, I was actually living in Atlanta at the being of the year. So my story is kind of crazy. But I'm going to try to, you know, not talk for too long. So I was living in LA for seven years. At the end of 2018. I moved to Atlanta. And for a year 2018 2020, I was living in Atlanta, I just hated it. I was I was missing LA. I was like, I'd like to another great time. At the end of 20, I moved back to LA. And it was a you know, another big trip where I had to move all my furniture from coast to coast. Drive for 30 hours alone. It was a pretty pretty long, but um, anyway, yeah, I'm back here in LA. And even was the situation right now. I'm pretty happy to be back. Yeah, finally settling. That's fine. I'm pregnant, as you can see.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  3:03  Yeah, it looks it looks good. That's, that's awesome to hear. I'm glad you you know, it's I think it's always good to be able to find your happy place. And I heard that you got your visa as a top notch photographer. So Congratulation. Thank you. Appreciate that. So So tell us a bit more about your background, like you say that you are living in Atlanta, and then you can move to Los Angeles, but where you actually from and you know, what makes you come to America or you know, to settle in Los Angeles? And what makes Los Angeles. So your your happy place basically?
Emeric Time Lapse  3:42  That's a good question. So I'm actually from France. So I was born in France. But for say, I took both languages. And so until I was 21, I was living in a medium town called Andre in France. It's like ours from Paris. And I went actually went to college in France to and shortly after. graduating, I actually always wanted to come to America for some reason, like the American dream, what you see in the movies, it's big. It's like you can make money, so many opportunities, all this and I wanted to try it out. Just wanted to see only come here, I didn't know where exactly. At first, I really I was a big fan of New York. And then LA was kind of the back of my mind as well. So shortly after college, I was sending emails to companies. I was finding on Craigslist. It was like, Okay, I do video editing. I'm gonna go to Craigslist and try to see if I can find companies offering you know, internship or maybe small jobs, to see if they agree to work with. And actually one company accepted, you know, to to work with me. So I worked a little bit for them in France and they say okay, Come here for a few months. So I came to LA actually near La was a j one visa. So it was this student visa for people who just graduated. So it was for like, you know, experience the professional work in the US. The experience, I think also it's called anyway, so I started now like this just as an intern in video editing. And then you know, I climb the ladder, we can say this started from the bottom now we're here. And year after year, year after year, I got like new visa. And like recently, I have an O one visa, which is a visa for artists people for people talented in, in their field. That's how they call it. So it's people in the film industry photography. Even like athletes, all of this, it's pretty wide, but it's people who are pretty good in what they're doing. So I was pretty happy to get my own visa for video editing and time lapse photography. This year, they added the time lapse photographer title in the visa, so I got pretty excited. Finally. So yeah, I was living in LA, I started I moved from France to Los Angeles in 2013. I lived in LA for seven years until 2019, which is six, six and a half years. And I was coming titled la so last year I moved to Atlanta on the East Coast. And I was actually sorry, I talk a lot. I was supposed to move to New York. So I drove between LA and New York. I didn't want to move to New York. So I moved to Atlanta because I'd love to it was cheaper. I could keep my car and you know, I want to try it. It's kind of centralised. There is Miami Chicago not too far. So I tried to plan it out for a year just didn't like it decided to come back. Because I feel comfortable in LA you know, I feel like I have some I have a bigger network. I have people around. The weather is nice. I know the city really well. You know, I'm someone who is kind of love anxiety sometimes. So if I feel comfortable in a CD, I feel like it's gonna help a lot.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  7:16  Yeah, for sure.
Emeric Time Lapse  7:18  Finding in Atlanta Title I was every time I was going out and especially because you know, you have like expensive gear. So I need to know the area I need to feel comfortable in place where I'm shooting or it's just not going to work.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  7:33  You could argue LA is not the safest as hell.
Emeric Time Lapse  7:36  I know the area to avoid areas not to go that's why I should allow from Griffith Park Santa Monica some area in downtown where you're fine. And there's also most people I know more people in LA photographers, we need to go shoot with me so
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  7:54  it's I actually used to live in LA. That really Yeah, I live in in Korea, Thailand, and I went to Mark Twain Middle School right in Venice Beach. I used to skip school all the time to skate in Venice Beach. I love that place. But you watch this or hear this stay in school, right? Yeah, I love LA actually, I've been I've been meaning to come out. I was gonna come back this year. I was gonna go storm chasing in this storm alley or something like that. And then yeah, I was gonna make it east coast. But then this can
Emeric Time Lapse  8:30  the tornado Valley. Yeah, that's, that's my that's my bucket list. That's definitely my list,
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  8:36  man. It's, it's amazing. They're cool. Like, um, yeah, thanks for sharing that. For those listeners who kind of like, don't know what time lapse photography is. You're like, well, I guess time lapse and Hyperlapse gets theirs to to kind of like intertwined. If you want to like, tell us a little bit more about what it is?
Emeric Time Lapse  8:57  Sure. Yeah, it's pretty remote. I'm always having a hard time answering this question. But the time zone Hyperlapse is a time lapse that moves in space. So that's pretty simple. A time lapse is a time lapse or Hyperlapse is a time lapse that moves. So time lapse is it's a sequence of images that you're going to take with a specific interval. And then when you put all these images to regular, you know, format video format, like 2430 frames per second is going to make your scene look like everything is going faster than real time. So this time that you know time lapses you know, how do you explain that it's it's like you take a two hour video and if you speed up this video to five minutes, for example, everything's gonna look faster, but to grid better time lapse, cheaper price, better quality, we take a sequence of images with a specific interval and then we have like programmes to like kind of create the video from the image sequence And yeah, I think it's amazing to see day to night transition in like 20 seconds. The clouds floating above a city skyline or landscape or changing like traffic is so many awesome subject for time lapse photography, which makes it really exciting. It's a very different than still photography, because you need to think how is how's your scene gonna look like in 1020 minutes or maybe two hours? Is it worth shooting a time lapse of this? Do you have like constant motion and Zimbra thing moving? Is it a good subject for time now Salafi?
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  10:39  Yeah, is that in the hyperlapse? Sorry, yeah, keep going.
Emeric Time Lapse  10:44  And Hyperlapse is a time lapse. But between every time you take a picture, you can move the tripod a little bit the camera a little bit, and it's going to create, like a kind of 3d perspective around your subject. It's pretty exciting.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  10:58  So do you actually do Hyperlapse manually by moving your tripod.
Emeric Time Lapse  11:06  So yeah, you have different way of doing Hyperlapse videos, you can do handheld, but you're limited, you know, as your shutter speed. I always use a tripod. Yeah, so I do a tripod, I take a picture and move the tripod, maybe a foot or so. And then you aim the camera at your anchor point, you have to select an anchor point or the perspective is going to change if you move the camera. So if you use the guideline on your camera, you set an anchor point. And it's pretty easy. We still have to stabilise the clip after but having the anchor point is very important to get something that looks real, you know,
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  11:40  that's crazy. Yeah, cuz like I know that. More people nowadays start using doing Hyperlapse using the gimbal. And connect this with emotion, time lapse on like you say a faster shutter speed. So, but to do it. I know like I've seen kind of tutorials on how to do that, man, it's, it's less, it's a lot of effort to do that.
Emeric Time Lapse  12:03  It is time consuming. For sure. Yeah, it takes a long time, especially if you do a tripod where you really have to move the tripod every time. So obviously, your interval is going to be longer than a regular time lapse because you need the time. But the effect you get at the end is amazing. Yeah, I should force myself more Hyperlapse videos, because it's really cool.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  12:27  That's really cool. Yeah, this might be just what I need to push me to start doing Hyperlapse but so far, I haven't had the patience to do it. Is that you cannot touch base a little bit on that. But tell us a little bit why why time lapse photography one why not just still photography, what makes you jump into that sort of genre.
Emeric Time Lapse  12:53  The funny thing is, I started photography by shooting time lapse. Oh, like I never actually I've never ever shot still photography for fun. I really went straight from like doing some fun videos with my family and friends to time. That was photography. I didn't do really still photography and I'm thinking I'm pretty bad at still photography. Yeah, I do sometimes do still photography for fun. But yeah, I went straight to time lapse. And I know that there's something very special about time lapse photography, it's mixing, first of all photography and video making, you know, there's no other art form that mixes both video and photography, which is pretty exciting because you get a video from photos from pictures. So I really love the aspect of you know, mixing two different art forms into one. And I really just, I get super excited every time I come back home and and watch you know the products watch the time lapse live for the first time. Enter time lapse. Yeah, I think it's it's exciting. And it's travelling to new places and staring at amazing views for hours. I've actually shut timelapses was still photographers. And obviously still photographers don't like staying in one place for four hours. Like they take they take their pictures and like okay, I'm good. I'm done. Let's go to the next locations. And like, I have only one time lapse like I can't believe right now.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  14:29  I got the second. Yeah, exactly. So
Emeric Time Lapse  14:33  it's a very different world than still photography. And yeah, I just I'm getting it's exciting. I think it's it's like seeing the world turn in a way. Yeah.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  14:45  I think one thing that really makes me excited about how much it's just that transformation from one to another interesting thing. And I suppose like, you know, people can argue Oh, why not just take video right? Well A video is very difficult to see that transformation in such a long period so that you don't actually see that much transformation. So, I really love that. Especially day to night. That's something that I really been wanting to do. I can I try a little bit on that, but I want to do like a proper date and I what I've done is kind of just like from two hours. It's quite incredible to see. And, look, I know how much commitment it takes to to to do this to make this short food he has hers right? How long does usually stay out there to have your time lapse like at a time
Emeric Time Lapse  15:44  usually so what I've been doing a lot recently is like you just said I'm a big data nice fan. So like at a point where maybe like a few months back had to tell my son to force myself to shoot something else and I'm so like, Okay, I should always do tonight because it's exciting. It's challenging, you know, and yeah, like you say seeing the transition from day to night is exciting. So now when I go shoot my time lapses I just usually go a couple hours before sunset. I shoot a few few time lapses during the day a couple day tonight's a few night shots. And if I feel like it I go to different spots but usually I don't like going to different spots so I just go home. So yeah, really average is like three two flowers on location. As I'm travelling sometimes we can go way more than this because you know I have limited time in the city so I need to get the most out of it in a few days only so I can stay out for like seven hours and go different places different location in the city. It's pretty exhausting. Yeah. But it's exciting. Yeah, it's exciting.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  16:56  That's insane, like four and a half hours at a time staying at one place. Well what do you do and you're waiting.
Emeric Time Lapse  17:04  So I should have identified manually so I have to keep an eye on my camera all the time. So it kind of keeps me busy. I know a lot of people have started shooting AV mud that's when I could get better but I'm the manual guy I like shooting my stuff manually all the time. Otherwise it just to Instagram I shoot my blog I try to find a class or a free youtube tutorial two shoots just look at the view. Seriously, sometimes it's just what I'm doing. And every time I regret not bringing a chair with me, I don't have a chair I need to buy a chair. But every time I forget to buy a chair so I'm like standing for like four or five hours sometimes it's it's pretty exhausting, but I don't know I have the passion around time lapse photography like that has been going for almost 10 years now and it's not fading away so that's pretty exciting.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  17:57  So what what what was she like every time you know like like you say you know you get to a location you're looking at this beautiful scenery, you don't have a chair you have to stand you reset your camera for a time lapse and you start shooting everything else blogging, whatever you enjoy the scenery and then I'm sure after a while you're like Okay, I think I had enough of this kind of like scenery you know, after you spend half an hour an hour on that, what puts you to go like the extra hour or you know the extra whatever time it takes for you to stay there to get that footage.
Emeric Time Lapse  18:33  Sometimes I tell myself like I'm here, so just let's just shoot it, you know, like it will be pointless to just come back later. I'm here let's do it. I think I just don't want to I don't like wasting my time. So I feel like and also make money from the time lapse I'm like okay, that's a good time lapse. If I if I feel like it's worth it. I'm gonna force myself to stay a little longer and then just do it you know, even if it's outside my comfort zone even if I'm tired like okay, I'm here I'm on vacation I can reset up let's just shoot it or I'm going to regret it. I rather you know get a little more tired but not regret it later.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  19:13  Yeah, I do I do get that I do get get that as like I really hate it when I go to a place and I realised I should have brought that particular lens. You know it's slightly different context there. I know exactly what you mean. termsof rather have that extra effort and not regret it later.
Emeric Time Lapse  19:33  Exactly. Yeah.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  19:34  Do you have like a you have like a specific like song or like snack that you would bring? You're like, Tom let's
Emeric Time Lapse  19:43  not even besides water actually I never bring anything with me for some reason. If I feel tired, I'm gonna get like, like an energy drink. But for some reason I don't like eating on when I'm shooting. So I just besides water I don't really have anything with me.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  20:00  It's crazy I remember this lunch I was doing like I'm like I was gonna shoot the sunset. And then because the cloud was like oh interesting and then the cloud was disgusting I was like well that's perfect. And now it's like you know what the Milky Way gonna rise there I can kind of be a good like you know, they didn't like bacon I found that so I brought up like a stove and like I was kicking into noodles and everything because I just got bored that's that's crazy. Like that's Yeah, that's amazing to see that that much dedication I suppose we should
Emeric Time Lapse  20:37  like to do is like you were talking about like food or whatever is something I really like is booking like hotels was like crazy views. So you can set up the camera by the window and do whatever you want. You can have a couple of beers you can go up at a restaurant for you know to eat you don't care because the camera are protected they're safe. So that's why I like to do a lot when I go to a new city trying to find a hotel is a crazy view. I've been I've been doing this in San Francisco and Chicago New York yet but it's a I love shooting from hotels because you can relax you know Yeah, just a camera watch TV enjoy a few beers go for food like and then the time lapse is doing it's the camera is doing his job. So
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  21:23  that's awesome. Yeah, that's that's definitely good to add tips there. What sort of So what sort of gear that can be used to shoot unless you like bring like sliders and all that as well or mainly just a tripod and your camera.
Emeric Time Lapse  21:39  So 90% of the time I should just use a regular tripod I do have all the gear for slider you know Pan and Tilt system but 90% of the time as just my cameras and couple of tripods. I have two cameras because sometimes you know there's a beautiful sunset you want to shoot different part different like time lapses so I have two cameras sometimes two tripods and like some hiking I just take one camera and yeah, I have sliders. I have a drone as well to do some like Hyperlapse from the sky which is pretty amazing what you can do yeah, that's pretty much it but I do have sliders I have actually served you know serve the brand.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  22:21  No, not really.
Emeric Time Lapse  22:22  That is why RP serve. They do like filmmaking and time lapse sliders Pan and Tilt system. So I'm a brand ambassador, they actually from New Zealand for it's a new company based in New Zealand, and some brand ambassador, they send me some gear and I'm you know, I have to work with a do some review videos. So once in a while do should we sliders. It's, it takes a while to set up. I think that's why I don't like it so much. But um, definitely get like a very nice, you know, one, two or three axis time lapse at the end. So it's pretty exciting. But it takes time to set up so
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  23:01  Yeah, cuz like, I mean, I could imagine if you have two cameras, that means two tripods. Yep. And then at least
Emeric Time Lapse  23:09  two or three lenses? Exactly, we telemeters Bunch of that it's yeah, it's a love gear.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  23:16  You don't need a second, like a third and a fourth antiquary all that gear, right? Actually, I'm
Emeric Time Lapse  23:22  pretty lucky because I have a roller bag. Okay, it's like the maximum carry on sides, you can have on a plane, so it's pretty big. And you can attach a tripod on the side so I can just, you know, pull the bag was the tripod, and then I carry another tripod on my left hand. So yeah, um it gets complicated when I have to bring sliders actually, or other stuff because I'm like, have the roller bag and everybody's tripod kit. Sometimes I also have a backpack who has more stuff. It's so it's a lot of gear. But yeah, I'd rather have the gear on vacation and not use it. You know?
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  24:00  Yeah, it goes back to that notion, right? Rather than to regret it.
Emeric Time Lapse  24:07  Yep. Yep.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  24:08  So I actually saw your, your post the other day on YouTube about that progression from when your story that's a time lapse video. You only just like, share with the listeners out there. And I'll probably put the put that link on the on the description anyway, but share us a little bit about you know, how do you progress and, you know, what, what was it like to start? How much photography because I think for many people especially like, I mean, I know it was for myself as well, it was it was a little bit out of reach when I start thinking about it, you know, it's like, Man, I cannot do that as like I had to wait there for like three hours and like, you know, it's like picking what it's like, how do you do this? Like you know, so Uh, so take us through a little bit of that, like, you know, how you how you begin all this in terms of, yeah, just making a start and then to where you are right now.
Emeric Time Lapse  25:10  It's an exam question, actually, yeah, when I was actually doing this video and looking at my old timelapses, I was trying to figure out how I started where I started, you know, and you get a laugh, but I started shooting time lapse, video, like photography. But even back in 2013, I wasn't even sure what my picture was doing. You know how, like, I didn't know it was really changing the depth of field. It's just, I wasn't really good at photography, but I was still shooting, I was going out there in 2013, sorry. And I didn't know how to control my camera settings. So most sometimes I was shooting either in the AV or even auto mode was my first time lapse in LA. So it's horrible. But I didn't know how to set the perfect interval, I didn't have any. I wasn't really aware of my environments. So I was just shooting a time lapse. For example, in the video, you can see a time lapse of the Hollywood sign. And that said, there's a couple of trees moving in the foreground, but there is nothing moving. So I was shooting time lapse to shoot time lapse. But I learned a lot from the shitty clips, sorry for my language. But I did learn a lot from those clips. Because I knew what I was doing wrong. Like, okay, I'm looking at the clip when I go back to my apartment or house. And yes, that's a boring time lapse. So I need to find a better subject. And then sometimes, okay, maybe my purchase to open here was too close. So next time I go, I'm going to use a slightly different temperature. Okay, the interval right now it's too long. So next time I go outside, I'm going to maybe say to faster interval. So I need to select a better shutter speed. It's like, it's an entire process. Like every time you go out, you experience something, you fail. But the next time you go outside, should I get what you learned from the previous session so you can create better content. And it's really what you see in the video I just posted like seven years of time lapse evolution, you can really see, every single year was pretty much focusing on a new problem. Almost like 2013 2014 is cam this same, but you can see the white balance is off a little bit 2015 the white balance is getting a little better. And starting to enrol files. Yes, I was shooting JPEG. It's terrible. It's terrible. Once you discover, you know the power of row files, it's amazing. But then yeah, white balance 2016 I was maybe shooting more interval that or position or subjects 2017 I was challenging myself shooting Hyperlapse videos. And now 2018. Until now, it's mostly about challenging myself funny new location chasing awesome sunrise and sunset. Because once you know how to do something, and you keep doing the same thing, can I get get bored at some point, like, you need to challenge yourself, you need to try new things, you know, and that's what I'm trying to do with my YouTube channel. I have like, a series of challenge videos that's gonna come up soon, when I'm trying to challenge myself do new things that I'm not so comfortable with, but learn from those things. And during those YouTube videos, I can share my experience with my followers as well.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  28:32  That's really cool. I was blogging because I remember one of the PDF, you're, you're looking at it and it's like, it's like, I don't know what it was thinking that
Emeric Time Lapse  28:44  there's some like white balance at night, it looks super yellow. I'm like, What the hell is going on here?
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  28:51  It's really funny because I had that moment all the time. It's like, like, I know, I wasn't, you know, like, I was just starting photography. But like, surely like, you know, I wouldn't have been this is great. So like, that's just, it's good, I guess, you know, for especially your listeners who kind of just get started or want to get started that, you know, we all been there. We're not the superhero that sort of social media make us look like you know, like, we didn't wake up yesterday and start picking up a camera and of
Emeric Time Lapse  29:20  course not. Yeah.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  29:23  That's yeah, it's really it's really cool to actually see that transformation and it's really it's really good to see the passion, the patient, patient and the passion you have to focus on one problem at a time. I think there is a lot of thing a lot of us have problem with I know like for me, I I'm really impatient. So I want to get there really quickly. And for that reason, I usually rush into all these different things. And I become a jack of all trades and an expert at none. You know what I mean? I
Emeric Time Lapse  30:01  think I think the focusing on one problem at a time wasn't really something I decided to do is just it happened. Like, I was showing my time lapse and I, oh, I realise there's a problem here. So I'm going to work to fix it. When I know how to manage this problem what I discover new odd until, until you know, 2018 where now I'm like cleaning my time lapses like crazy. And, yeah, when I look back to 2013 2015 time lapses, I see all those problems that I didn't see at the time. But yeah, focusing on one thing at a time. It's not something that you know, it was doing on purpose, it was really just, it just happened one thing at a time, but as you can see, it took like, several years,
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  30:45  I guess you're much wiser person than most of us. You know, it right, the right way us but so, like I said, this is one thing I really want to hear from you. Because, again, as a photographer, right, I could go out into one place, and I could, within the hour or half an hour or whatever time I'm there, I could look at it have a beat back, and I could correct it right away. As a timeless photographer, you don't have that. So how does this How does this learning progression works for you? And you know, what, what kind of works that you find in this, in this experience? What kind of works and what can I do some work to, you know, get better? Quickly at how much photography?
Emeric Time Lapse  31:33  That's a good question. I think I think analysing your environments to see to see the city or landscape you're shooting as a time lapse photographer is gonna make the difference. So you need to Yeah, like to sit and analyse your environment. So see what's moving, you shouldn't have timeouts, you know, choosing one picture. So you need to find stuff that are moving in your environment. So most of the time, it's clouds. If you're in the city, it's cars, people like change, like Yeah, analyse your environment, I think that's going to make that you can see it in my video. Like the turn point is I already said sorry. The point where my time lapse is starting to get better is when I really started focusing on what I was capturing. So beautiful sunrise before sunset, constant motion. And I actually found that my favourite time lapses of them all they have like three different components. Because I always said sorry, my English is not 100% Perfect company. But when you have the city skyline makes we have some clouds. And the fast moving elements in the foreground is usually like the best recipe for a good time lapse. Because you have this city skyline is your subject, you have the clouds floating in the sky, and you have really fast moving elements like cars or boats moving in the foreground. And when I realised that you can mix different subjects together, like the city skyline with a sunset, or sunrise with cars or something like this, it's usually what's going to make a good time lapse. So I think if people like who are listening right now, just want to start doing time lapse yet start thinking time lapse. Like it's, it's you're not shooting one frame, you know, it's not, you're not shooting the time frozen. You're not frozen in time. That's what I want to say. So you shooting a period of time, five minutes to two hours, maybe more. So you need to sorry, you need to think about this. I don't know if it makes sense.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  33:45  Yeah, no, totally. I think what you're trying to say there basically think about things that will be right because the timeline information there. Yeah, yeah. So you say about like the foreground having moving foreground changing lights in the meet to meet ground and having clouds that move on the on the background makes Yeah, that cool. That cool. Timeless, is it I remember, when I was first started, I take a photo of this. It was actually a really nice sunset, but it was like you say there was like it was the mountain and then you got like, the sun, the sky kind of changing colour, but there was no cloud. And sure it was kind of nice to see the change in colour, but it takes a while and it's like
Emeric Time Lapse  34:30  something missing right? You could do better. Yeah, totally.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  34:35  So that was like when you say that was like yeah, I remember that that when I take that video and that really, really explain why you know that that I feel like there's something missing like you say. Yeah, so that's awesome. Thanks for sharing that. And I think you're exactly right. When you say if there's nothing moving in, in in the in your scene, then There's no point in making a tablet because at the moment is just a multiple same thing. Right?
Emeric Time Lapse  35:05  Exactly. That's actually what I'm actually writing a free class right now. And I was talking about this issue where I told people it's not because you can show a time lapse that you should don't show a time lapse, because you can show a time lapse because you should. And I think it's it makes a difference. Like, yeah, I can't go through a time lapse every day here in LA, but I'm not going because first of all, I'm lazy kind of sometimes, but I'm saying it's not worth it to go every day. There is no reason for me to go out every day. I need to pick up when there's no smog when I say some clubs, because it's makes always the difference. So yeah, don't your time lapse because you can yes, you have the gear or the time but go on is worth it. It's what makes the difference. It's what makes a difference between the time lapse in a good beautiful time lapse. Yeah, for sure. message behind behind time lapse, you know,
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  35:57  yeah, I think as as photographers, you know, whatever photographers we are we have this tendency of like, looking at one like a scenery and and just like, oh, yeah, that's beautiful. And we didn't think about it and just try to snap it. And then obviously, it doesn't work, because our eyes and our camera are two different looking at two different things. Right. Yeah, that's, that's, I think that's great, too, that you mentioned that, for the viewer out there. To think about what you're shooting and analyse that with. So how is that? How do you learn? Like, you actually, I guess what I'm trying to say is, you should have time lapse, right? You invest like, two, three hours, whatever. And then after that, you've got your, your, your video, so your photo in the video, and then you cannot realise where it's missing. And then the next time you have to try to fix that, right? So is there like, how do you do that is is it just pretty much just a long, long winded process that you have to do? Like, just have to shoot? You know, like hope for the best and then review it and then kind of just try to fix it the next time? Or is there a better way of kind of analysing what you what might have gone wrong during the shoot itself?
Emeric Time Lapse  37:18  I'm trying to understand your question.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  37:21  So I guess what, I guess what I'm trying to say is that when we should still photography, we know if we shoot the wrong way, if it's the wrong settings, or what? Well as in a time lapse photography, you don't know your final product that you go home and put it all together. So is there a way? Is there any, like a way that you can recognise that you're like, oh, no, like, you know, I shouldn't I shouldn't have done that. Or, you know, I should have done this, where you don't have to kind of wait until you go home and put it all together, you know that you did wrong? Yeah, I
Emeric Time Lapse  37:55  think that's something you develop was time. Like, I think it makes a big difference to really think, like, imagine how the future is going to be like the future is like, what 10 minutes? Like, you really need to think about how it's gonna look like I think a time lapse photographer has to obviously, sometimes you can't control the weather. So you don't know. You don't know how it's gonna end. You know, you don't know what to expect. But there is like different apps and different. And I think knowledge and experience is making you better and better at, you know, thinking what's going to happen. So you is that? Is that your question? Am I answering your question? Yeah, it's a very interesting question. But I'm trying to make sure it's clear for people listening. But yeah, I think that's the experience like, I think 80% of the time, an hour before sunset, I can predict what's going to happen what's going to happen, because I've seen so many different clouds so many different sunset. Yeah, I know what's going to happen. So I know if it's worth going out shooting the next time, you know, obviously I'm not 100% right all the time, but
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  39:05  you don't go out there you don't get it right.
Emeric Time Lapse  39:08  Exactly. That's That's my moto. I haven't moto that say in French. Can you talk to iron out? Yeah. Which means if you don't try anything, you won't get anything?
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  39:15  Yeah. So like, you have to
Emeric Time Lapse  39:19  try and yes, sometimes it fails. So many times. I'm like I came back was like very bad footage. It's like you can control the weather. So the best you can do is just show up expect for the best. Sometimes it works sometimes you expected something bad and something amazing happened. It can go both ways. You know?
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  39:39  Yeah. That is very clear. Like is a lot of times where that kind of happens. I actually like some of them. My favourite shots are like that. I was like I'm expecting it's like, Oh, it's nothing. It's like, oh, whoa, what's that?
Emeric Time Lapse  39:53  Way in time and photography. You need to learn to wait. That's what's gonna make the difference. especially if you're shooting sunset likes. Sometimes you shouldn't use sunset and like Okay, since it was like 1015 minutes ago and yeah, the clouds of the sky looks boring. And then one it later it's like Sky fires super red and pink and like, oh, Mike. Good thing I learned I stayed a little bit longer, you know?
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  40:22  Yeah, that's, I actually learned that the hard way. There's so many times that you're like, oh, yeah, it's gone. It's like everything on dry palms like.
Emeric Time Lapse  40:33  And you feel so bad. Like you're super angry. But yeah, learn to weights, even in photography, like regular photography.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  40:41  Yeah, totally. That's, yeah, that's cool. So yeah, that's, I mean, thanks a lot for sharing that. I think that's a it's really important for, for many of us to kind of have that passion of patient. It's really hard to
Emeric Time Lapse  40:56  lose patience. Yeah. And passion. Yeah. Yeah, that patience
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  40:59  to just wait a little bit longer. And, you know, don't don't go for that final product all the time. But yeah, that's, that's amazing. What, what are, share with us some of your favourite time lapse moment, or maybe your time lapse? You know, it can be experienced or photo combat altogether?
Emeric Time Lapse  41:21  Excellent question. I'm trying to remember like, which one comes to my mind first. The most recent one was, I was in New York, it was July 2018. So before, all the cosmic thing. But I was meeting a few friends. In New Jersey, you know, we have a skyline view on New York. And then there was, there were a few clouds in the sky, but nothing really, like super exciting. But you know, it was my last day in New York. So we met up there, we started showing time lapses. And at some point, the sun shining through the clouds and, you know, lit up the entire skyline. But since you know we're facing east, you can see the sunset in the buildings. So it's a pretty interesting concept. And then, few minutes later, the the clouds starting to turn pink. I was like, oh my god, it's like perfect time lapse. And then you had like a lot of boat traffic from the Hudson River. And then maybe 20 minutes later, almost full moon rising in my shot was like all. Like, everything came together in one single time lapse. And he got me super excited. And I was like, oh my god, I had to share with my Instagram followers, because every time everything comes together, it gets me super pumped up. And I'm excited. And like, this is why I'm showing time lapse. This is why I have some bad days. This is why sometimes I fail. It's because I want this type of shoot to happen. And there's this one. I think there was another one. Obviously, yeah, I don't know if you've seen this case space. Not not just a space SpaceX sorry. The SpaceX time lapse of the Falcon nine rocket launch above downtown LA. Like this one was super exciting. I didn't know what to expect. I just knew two rockets. So it's gonna go fast. It's going up, so I need to get some room in the sky. So this is what I did. I started with a one second interval, and super wide. And then he came out and like super awesome. And when you see a rocket launch in front of you, it's like super freaking exciting.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  43:36  Is that was that the one that looked like there was an explosion in the sky? Yep. I saw that. I was like, whoa. And yeah, that was that was insane. Actually, I haven't seen the moon one yet. I really need to get a link on that one. Because
Emeric Time Lapse  43:54  I don't know if it's it's definitely on Instagram. I don't. I might have a version on YouTube. I still I've been wanting to do a YouTube kind of time lapse mix of New York. But yeah, I think there was, I think there was I feel like I'm missing one. Yeah, I mean, there was a private property in LA, I got a special access to shoot from there. And the view was amazing. The sunset was crazy. It's like you feel excited when you are the right place at the right time. Okay, maybe it happens 5% of the time, but when it happens, it's just super exciting. And it gives you so much energy to further 95% of the time or you won't be at the right place. So yeah, that's why I keep doing this so can chase amazing moment like this in time.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  44:47  Yeah, that's very inspiring, actually. It's very, very true the way you say that. You know, sometimes like I hope all that 95% Only five of them come true, but you know that 5% is like, not go for more. Right?
Emeric Time Lapse  45:03  It's so good. It's like, I don't know, gives you so much energy for you know, 95% that it's not so good. I mean, it's still good, but it's anyway, you know what I mean? It's, it's crazy. Yeah.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  45:19  Really hard to explain it isn't it is
Emeric Time Lapse  45:21  hard because it's something to live yourself and you need to experience it to understand. Yeah,
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  45:27  yeah, that's totally totally. You have like, so like, this year, someone's like, you're really, you know, found moments, I suppose. You know, one, you're, you're most proud of that. 5%. But share us a little bit more about that. 95% like, you know, what is your struggle as a time of photography? And, you know, to get to where you are right now, especially.
Emeric Time Lapse  45:54  So there's the most, I think it's like, learning how to read the weather, like sometimes. The 95 It's, How do you say this? It's a good question. Again, you're really good at this. You really did. But it gets me like thinking about how I do things, which sometimes I don't actually, I just do things, but I don't know the psychology behind it.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  46:20  I realised that as well, when I started to, like, teach his that out. It's like, I don't know how to explain that. Like, you cannot have that.
Emeric Time Lapse  46:28  It's like putting words on stuff you do physically like actions. But yeah, sometimes what I fail, it's just yeah, it's it's an expected sunset, for example, like a weather that like a sunset that didn't end the way you want it. So you can't have disappointing or you're not at the right place at the right time. Are you facing the wrong way? Like, for example, I was, it was the following maybe a month ago or so. So I went to a spot in LA facing camera east will downtown LA. But it was so smoky, that we can actually live in a cloud as well. Like, I couldn't see the moon at all. I saw the moon for like two minutes, and it was gone. But if at sunset, if I just you know, turn 180 degrees behind me facing west, the sunset was crazy. So I was like, like, I should have gone to a different place facing west. But yeah, it's like you can't get mad at yourself in a way because you didn't go to the right location on time. It's like it's hard to expect what's going to happen I talk a lot about sunset because that's what I shoot the most but that's why I'm you know, more experienced with Yeah, it's just kind of getting mad at yourself for not being in the right place. I feel like that's why I'm struggling struggling and lots and also trying to find new locations, new angles of the cities can be tough in you know, safe areas, especially in LA. So I often goes go back to like the same spots and but I'm trying to get different weather conditions. Stuff like this. Yeah, trying to be original. It's kind of tough after like, seven years in the same area.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  48:13  It's, it's, it's, it's actually one of the reason why I got a second camera. Because there was so many times where I was like, I want to shoot time lapse and then 15 minutes to that and I was like, No, I want to shoot the steel frame as well. But I don't want to break the child's like I hate myself more than I was like, you know, getting taken care of. That's yeah, that's a that's that's great. Thanks for sharing that. I think there's a lot of our struggle as photographers especially when we get when we expect one thing facing another and then the other the good things happened on the other side.
Emeric Time Lapse  48:58  Yeah, One day One day I was shooting with one camera I think oh, are you here? Yeah, good. One camera and I didn't expect this sensor to be crazy so I can have zoomed in on my time lapse 100 Me also downtown LA is like you know kind of close up shot of downtown LA and obviously the sunset got super crazy and the clouds were super pink and red and and I got super mad at myself because what was happening in front of me but I couldn't really change anything you want to stop the data in a time lapse I'm going to show you the full transition so yeah, you got kind of mad at yourself again for taking a bad decision. The right the wrong fucking lens that time instead of the location location was good but the wrong focal length.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  49:48  It's it's it's always a struggle, isn't it? So like as, as a timeless photographer who's been doing this for seven years, he said
Emeric Time Lapse  50:00  So I have seven years professionally, but I started like, for fun back in 2011. So nine years,
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  50:06  nine years in Yeah. So how, you know, like, like you say is, it's really hard to come up with something new, right? It's something that's interesting or fresh. How do you? How do you basically fight this uphill battle? To come up with something new for yourself? I guess not only for yourself, but also for your audience, right? Because if it's always the same thing, they become less interesting. So how do you create that view? Engaging, unique content? You know, after 10 years?
Emeric Time Lapse  50:42  Good question. Yeah. I try to inspire myself from other people a little bit, try and see what they do. Not so much. Because I don't like copying other people's work. I like to find my own stuff up, you see, but it's great to see what other time lapse photography due to can inspire yourself. And, you know, I'm someone who really overthink a lot, I think a lot, my brains always like to do too. So sometimes I can be, I don't know, brushing my teeth, and bam, I have an idea. So I always have a document open on my computer, it's like, oh, that's gonna be a great idea. Like, it's very new original. So I write it down. And then later on, I go there to shoot it and do it. But yeah, I'm trying to challenge myself a little more. Trying to even if I don't know how to do that thing, I'm gonna try go out and do it. It doesn't mean I'm going to succeed. You know, I think that's, that's why I don't like it. Because I don't like failures. I don't like doing that work. I don't like to waste my time. So every time I go up, it has to be perfect. I have to come back with a great time lapse or I'm going to be angry. I'm very mad at myself. But I realised that it can get boring at some point, because you always go for the safe. The safe game in a way, like always, it's not fun, you know? So if you challenge yourself, okay, you might fail at the beginning. But then you're going to learn from this. It's exactly what I've been doing for the past seven years. I'm just for some reason. I don't want to get out of my comfort zone lately. I'm pretty lazy. Here's something but I've been out of my comfort zone since 2013 in LA and that's why I'm here today. So I need to find again, what's going to take me out of my comfort zone to you know, keep growing, you know it because I don't want to stay where I am. I don't wanna be stagnant. I want to stay. Yeah, I'm a good level. I'm good at what I'm doing. But I need change myself more. To be more clear to be more happy, I guess was the content I create to be more fulfilled? I guess. That would be the the word for it. The world the word sorry, word.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  52:53  Yeah. That's, that's good. Thanks. Thanks for that. I think that's really inspiring to hear. Especially you know, how you say that you're, you're, you know, you're you're a perfectionist, and we don't like failures, but by by doing that, you stay in that safe zone. So you know, what the saying stays, you know, there's nothing's gonna happen. There's nothing exciting in your inside your comfort zone. And you know, all
Emeric Time Lapse  53:19  this what I've been trying to do, like, okay, when I'm shooting a YouTube video, for example, and oh, I did something wrong. It's fine. I'm gonna I'm still going to share it with my YouTube now. Okay, I did. I did this wrong. I learned from it, I fixed it. Now I'm moving on. And I used to maybe the past couple years to be really okay has to be perfect. Was my YouTube videos was my time lapse videos. And obviously, my time lapse scenes, you know, it's the final products, I really want it to be perfect, but it's still like, if I fail one day, it's fine. I can still you know, share the experience. And I'm a teacher. So I need I think it's the teaching part that makes me Okay, now to teach, I have to be perfect. And it's kind of like the bad side of being a teacher because you put yourself some limits, not limits. You put yourself into a mood where you have to constantly be perfect, better than your students who stuff like this. But no, it's fine. If it's not always perfect. You know, you have to you learn, you see, I was still holding human beings. And it's so cliche, but you know, that's true at the end of the day,
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  54:33  that is very curious that it's funny because it's a cliche, but we often forget it so Exactly, yeah. Today, you mentioned that and I think especially as an educator like yourself, you know, I, I follow your, your, your journey, and I appreciate those those failures. Personally, you know, it makes me like, it's like, okay, so I'm kind of right here on you know, like Emmerich's kind of gear In the end, I know how to get to where to go like an inspiration and a goal to aim for I suppose. As someone who started I think that's one thing that could be difficult, just relating back to myself, is that, okay? Like, where? What's next? You know, like, because we don't know any better, right? We only know what we know. So seeing that, like, I think that that that that episode that you share between the eight years it was like really cool. Like, it's like, I got to see us like, okay, it's like, so I kind of know where I am now. And then I kind of know where to fix that. So that's, that's great. Yeah. Cool. Like, yeah, like, that's awesome. Very inspiring. We're coming out to the end of it, so don't want to keep you any longer. A couple more questions for you. Sure. Mine The first one is I'm I'm very I love your your time lapse of that New York and the Milky Way I want you to talk about the lovers. I want to hear that a little bit.
Emeric Time Lapse  56:08  It's this time lapse is kind of like the kind of like I just said earlier, where I was doing something super random and approved, I got this idea. So I had to go on my computer and do it and it turned out super well. So it's a time lapse of the Milky Way with the Flatiron Building in New York. It's obviously two different time lapses, you cannot see the Milky Way like this scene in New York, in the centre of Manhattan, you cannot see the Milky Way. But uh, when I do I can composite like this, like a fake blending was two different time lapse, I want to be as as real as possible. Like, sometimes I need the moon but you know, people, they're going to add like a super giant moon on their photo, and it looks fake. I'm going to be the one who's gonna like, maybe make it a little bigger, but I'm going to make it blurrier. I'm going to try to make the same colour. Maybe I'm going to remove a little bit I don't know, I'm always trying to imagine how it really could be. So when I imagined how to see the Milky Way, in New York, I didn't want to have the same exact same milky way that the middle of the desert, you know, because in the middle of a desert, you can, there's not a lot of light pollution. So you can see a lot of contrast in the sky. So I put my Milky Way. But I also put some, you know, light pollution back on top of it to kind of make it a little more real in a way. It's not real, obviously. But I'm trying to fight to be as close as possible from the reality if it was possible to see it.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  57:41  I think that's that's why he was I think that's why it's so cool. Because like, you're right, like when I when I saw it, I was like, wow, like, that looks so real. That's insane. Like, what what actually inspired you to do that?
Emeric Time Lapse  57:54  No idea, I think it was. The only reason is like I was trying to find like a time lapse to share on Instagram. And I saw this one of the Flatiron Building that I've never shot. But this guy was completely dark. It was okay, it's super. It's black, it's peach black in New York. There's no clouds. It's like super easy. So I was like, Maybe I should I add something in it. It's nighttime, so I could be away. And so I put it on After Effects. I say like doing the masking around the building. And I don't know, if you look on the left, you can see a building was like balconies. And I had to, you know, mask all around every single balcony to make it even nicer. And it took me like two hours just to do this, you know, tiny part of the time lapse. But yeah, like I say, I'm a perfectionist. So even if I'm going to fake something, I really want it to be as close as possible from the reality.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  58:56  It was really nicely planned. I must say like, I don't do much composite as well. Like, like you do. But like, you know, sometimes I like to do it. And yeah, it's fun to like, the things
Emeric Time Lapse  59:08  very fun. Yeah. Because like, you get to challenge yourself, you know,
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  59:13  you get the you get to get out of your reality for a little bit. Right, just like imagine what actually possible and I think that's, that's one thing that I really liked about composite is that hey, like, you know, yeah, it's sure it's not real, but like, just imagine this, you know, it could just turn off the light please for three hours New York.
Emeric Time Lapse  59:35  If you look at my latest personal Instagram, it's a it's a sensation of Downtown LA. And same it's actually I added the clouds. So it was I wanted to share these time lapse but you know, it's le sky so there's no clouds. And I was like okay, I'm going to try and find a time lapse or shot in the past and I'm going to add the sky and that. So I found a sunrise So I had to flip the time lapse. So the the sun will be on the right side. And so so it certain ways, so it's going from night to day. So I find the size, the speed of the sunrise to make it look like a sunset. And then I, again did like the New York one where I, you know, mask the skyline out in the clouds on top of it. So again, it's fake, but no one saw anything.
Unknown Speaker  1:00:27  Very cool. It's very cool.
Emeric Time Lapse  1:00:29  Myself, like, you know, like I said earlier trying new things. And yeah, it doesn't work. It doesn't work.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  1:00:35  Yeah. Now that I think that turns out really well. So, you know, like, thanks a lot for being here. And I think we're one question that I always asked to. My, my guess is that, if there is one advice that you can give to the listener who might want to try, you know, time lapse or whatnot, what would be that one thing that they should they can use to focus on and either start a time lapse or get better at time lapse?
Emeric Time Lapse  1:01:08  There's just so many. That's why it's interesting. It's just time lapse photography. It's so many little details and things to put together. But I would say, I don't know if it's cliche, but just go out and experience. You know, I have a failure that's, I've been talking about in this podcast a few minutes before. But yeah, just try go out. And yeah, you might fail at the beginning, you might come back with some bad time lapses. But yeah, you can learn from this. And I feel like that's how I learned to create good content is by failing before that the good content, you know,
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  1:01:45  yeah. I would say, awesome. Yeah. That's, that's good. Have fun. Yeah, that's it. Right. How fun. That's the one.
Emeric Time Lapse  1:01:55  But it makes a big difference.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  1:01:57  Yeah. All right. Well, thanks a lot for being here in America. And yeah, that was a lot of fun. Happy to chat with us. Yeah,
Emeric Time Lapse  1:02:05  thank you for having me. It was a lot of fun. Yeah,
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  1:02:07  yeah, for sure. So like, you know, for, I know, you got a few projects gonna come in up, you know, like, maybe share with us some of the projects that you have coming up, or some of the ideas that you want to shoot, and let the listener know where they can see more of your, of your real work as well as how to get in touch with you. Especially, you know, like, I know that you're, you're you have a core so for those of you kind of want to learn that I did buy a course I haven't opened it. I haven't edited yet, but I did. So, yeah, let us know how to find you. Sure. First, the
Emeric Time Lapse  1:02:45  projects I have right now coming up. I'm working on a big time lapse masterclass. 2021, it's gonna make it's gonna be different than what I have right now. Because I'm travelling all around the country. I'm going to different cities, I'm actually sharing how I approach the different cities. All the problems I'm coming across how I fix the problem, how I adapt my myself and my work to where I am. And so I'm going to have it's a masterclass in a mix of UC education like learning time lapses, but also travelling, and I'm gonna have motion control. Astro time lapse hyperlapse video is going to be big, big masterclass, coming hopefully before the summer 2021 I'm also working on a film festival, a time lapse Film Festival I've been trying to it's an idea I've been having for a hide for almost two years now. To like, create like an awesome good time lapse Film Festival in North America because there's nothing right here. So I got some I got the jury already got the guidelines. I'm working on a website anyway, it's gonna come very soon. By the end, by the by next year, probably. And yeah, obviously in tonnes of YouTube videos coming soon, so people can find me on on YouTube and Rick's timelapse on Instagram as well and make time lapse. And on my website in real time labs.com where I have my classes, all my online classes if people want to purchase, you know, it helps me create more content for free and paid as well. But yeah, I'm really glad I have those classes. Yeah, can learn anything time lapse, Hyperlapse day to like cleaning ever time lapse. Everything you want is 24 hours of lessons. So you got the full day. You can watch my classes for full desk traits. Anyway, yeah, it's all online on Google as well. You can just type my name, you'll find me.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  1:04:53  All right. Well, cool. Well, thanks a lot for that. I was hoping that you mentioned about that one festival because that looks really amazing. Yeah,
Emeric Time Lapse  1:05:00  yeah, it's it's gonna come next year I have, I don't know if you know, again to Veganuary is like the creator of our time lapse is gonna be one of the jury and a few other people too. It's gonna be I think it's gonna be a great festival.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  1:05:15  Yeah, that's it. Yeah, that's awesome. I saw that on your, on your feed and like, and this looks like pretty. It's just
Emeric Time Lapse  1:05:22  teasing for now because I don't have much ready but I'm just teasing people. It's like a couple of screenshots.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  1:05:30  All right, well, thanks a lot. They're coming in again.
Emeric Time Lapse  1:05:33  Well, thanks for having me.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  1:05:35  Appreciate your time, and thanks for sharing your wisdom and also your knowledge. And that was that was a it was great. You know, especially on a really niche type of photography. I suppose. I was really hoping that you jumped on board because I don't know maybe 10 of us photographers. So glad that you did.
Emeric Time Lapse  1:05:54  Yeah. My pleasure. That was nice. Yeah. Like I said at the beginning, I'm always trying, you know, if I don't have an excuse for going for it, I was saying yes, it can change a lot of stuff.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  1:06:08  All right, well, we get hundreds Thank you very much for listening in and focus, we get a lot from that. And, you know, even though maybe you want to try time lapse, maybe you know, it's not kind of your your forte, but you should really give it a go because it is a lot of fun. And I started with my cell phone and my GoPro so you don't need to actually use this crazy camera to start it. But as soon as I started, I was hooked like I just there is no looking back. So thanks a lot for being here and tune up for next week. And if you haven't subscribed yet, make sure you follow our channel and you get to hear more about this passionate photographers sharing their how photography give them more hope, purpose and happiness. So if you're watching this on YouTube, you can hit the subscribe button down here and then hit that notification bell, the bell, notification bell and you'll get notified when there's a new episode coming. Alright, well stay safe out there and stay healthy. Hopefully you guys have a good holiday coming up.
 

Ep 14 - 3 things you can do to get out from photography burnout

Hey Wicked Hunters, 
So I want to share my recent experience with photography burnout. I'll be honest with you, it wasn't fun. I struggle to find any motivation to pick up a camera and to head out. There were so many ideal conditions where it presents a very unique opportunity for me to be able to create something different. But instead I was at home watching Netflix and feeling frustrated for myself. How did I get out of it? Well in this episode I will cover the 3 things that helped me to get my passion for photography back. 
If you want to watch the video podcast, head to https://youtu.be/H452OQlGg6c
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Masterclass: https://www.TheWickedHuntPhotography.com   
Photo print: https://www.TheWickedHunt.com/ 
Don't forget to let us know your favourite part of the Podcast on the comment below and subscribe

Ep 13 - What does it mean to approach photography with an open mind?

Hey Wicked Hunters,
Welcome to another episode of The ART of Photography Podcast with Stanley Ar. Today I want to share what it means to approach photography with an open mind.
For those of you who want to learn more about Johannes:
www.johannes.com.au
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/johannesreinhart/
If you want to watch the video podcast, head to https://youtu.be/UVL4v3AZcuM
Other ways to listen and subscribe to the podcast:
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Masterclass: https://www.TheWickedHuntPhotography.com   
Photo print: https://www.TheWickedHunt.com/ 
Don't forget to let us know your favourite part of the Podcast on the comment below and subscribe

Ep 12 - How to approach photography with an open mind with Johannes Reinhart

Hey Wicked Hunters,
Welcome to another episode of The ART of Photography Podcast with Stanley Ar. Today I want to introduce Johannes Reinhart who's a master in performance photography but also in finding unique perspectives in common places. He shared how to approach photography with an open mind to be able to capture one that is unique to you.
For those of you who want to learn more about Johannes:
www.johannes.com.au
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/johannesreinhart/
If you want to watch the video podcast, head to https://youtu.be/g4ttCEb7GLc 
Other ways to listen and subscribe to the podcast:
Spotify - http://bit.ly/twhspotify 
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Website: podcast.thewickedhunt.com  
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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 let us know your favourite part of the Podcast on the comment below and subscribe
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Johannes Reinhart  0:00  It's really like keeping an open mind. Like, look around and keep an open mind and don't get stuck on. I want to take this particular photo
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  0:18  here, we can do this Welcome back to The Art of Photography podcast where we share our passion as a photographer, and we share how photography has brought hope, purpose and even happiness to our life. So today we have someone very special from Perth. I met him back during one of the project is called the 730 project. We were we were doing that as fundraising. And he is definitely one of the top Perth event photographer and one of the most creative photographer out there. He definitely find beautiful things in the order in ordinary things. So I'm very excited to welcome Johan is, are you doing your hunters?
Johannes Reinhart  1:09  Yeah, good. Thank you. Thanks for having me.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  1:12  Yeah, no, great. How's things back in Perth?
Johannes Reinhart  1:15  Pretty good. We don't have much COVID restrictions or life goes mostly normal.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  1:21  And it's crazy. It's just amazing. Yeah, yeah, it's crazy. I mean, like, it's crazy how people can you know, all the everything's open to venues and stuff. Like there's practically banging? Well, I guess that's the one advantage of being the most isolated city in the world. A
Johannes Reinhart  1:37  definitely. Yeah.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  1:40  All right. So like, thanks a lot for coming in. And yeah, we met on, you know, that is 730 project there. And I think that was the first time I met you, which was a little bit embarrassing, because you're very young. It looks like everyone knows you. And you got definitely one of the top photographers begging for them, especially to learn from. Give us a little bit just introduction about yourself, you know, where are you? Where are you coming from in what type of photography you do and how you kind of get there.
Johannes Reinhart  2:15  Because I come from Germany, and it's where the accent is, I moved to Australia, I think I was 25. And I live here for 20 years already. And I started photography, probably around 25 years ago, like proper way, I bought my first SLR camera and then really gotten into it. And in the last summit in 2003, I started going out professionally as well maybe like, after 789 years, being really keen photographer. So I shot a wedding at you know, we went to a wedding and took some pictures. And that turned out better than the ones from the wedding photographer. And the same thing happened again that year for another wedding. And then I thought I'm becoming a wedding photographer. So I started Yes, I started off as a wedding photographer, you know, just like, Okay, I'm a wedding photographer now. And that's why they're and you know, and then learning and then all learning and then digital came around. And then everything had to be learned kind of new, you know, computers and colour management, all that. And then and then after a couple of years, I didn't really pick up my camera anymore. Because I was associated picking the camera up with Burke and and then through some coincidence, and there was this photographer, like PIP photographers and Kurth group on Flickr. And then people being like going out and meeting each other. And I always did photography in isolation, really. And so Oh, there's other people like me, isn't that amazing? And then I went out and to the mates and we shared the photos after on online I mean, it's all normal now but back then, it was like to start off the internet, so to speak. And then I've really reignited my passion for photography. And I also realised what I've lost with you know, not picking up the camera for myself anymore for my own book. Just for playing around and then yeah, and then I never stopped, you know, taking pictures for myself and my personal work is really important to me, like I mean I'm really busy doing professional work which I kind of shoot everything nowadays, but I concentrated events and especially performance and a bit of commercial and bit of everything and teaching obviously. So it's it's a nice variety nowadays, that I can
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  4:37  set that up. So would you say that performance and art photography is your main passion? Is that why you kind of you know, sway into that categories or
Johannes Reinhart  4:51  nothing? Well yes and no performance for that used to be a passionate because it was so you know a such a different world. Hold on I Love You know, having access and the camera is a bit like a passport as the saying goes. So you Yeah, I I, I had total passion for performance photography and now I'm doing it for maybe over 10 years and then so it's not in I really love it. But it's it's kinda it's not this strange, exotic real animals, everything kind of becomes quite normal, which is really interesting, isn't it? And it's definitely a passion but at the moment I'm, I'm, I'm more kind of interested in my personal work I'm more interested in like, which sometimes performance matches like themes like light and shadow and alienation and life and death and loneliness and and subcultures, which, which performance, obviously, part of.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  5:51  Yeah, that's, that's really cool. I think definitely one of the photo that really catch caught my eyes on that project was that, just that the way you play with the shadow, you know, playing that contrast, it was it was, I never actually do that, in previous to that it was, it was mostly about, you know, trying to get the even lighting, make sure that all the subject is lined up. And it was, it was definitely a big mind shift, when, when I first saw that I was like, wow, like, you know, like, you don't have to see the dark, like, you don't have to see what's under the shadow, it actually could create something, like, quite unique about it. So that was really cool to see. What, what inspires you to, you know, do to do that kind of photography in the first place? Is it just as a, like, accident that you kind of come across it? Or was there an inspiration somewhere along the line
Johannes Reinhart  6:49  that already leads back to my childhood? Because I, I've been really drawn to, you know, days to be black and white photographs and magazines and papers. I don't know where I've seen them. But I've been really drawn to Yeah, with the stark contrast the images, which, which those sometimes used to do and then when I had a camera, I kind of tried to do that. And obviously it doesn't quite work like that. And then you come to Australia and the sun is so much harsher than in Europe, as you know. Yeah, it's crazy. Like in Germany, if I should, in the middle of the diet, it's like a kind of overcast ish, almost overcast dish down here, the lights really soft in comparison. And in Perth, we have this extraordinary hard light. So you can create you know, if you expose for the highlights and your shadows become really deep and dark and, and I really love that kind of effect. And I'm, I'm naturally drawn towards it that just sort of an extension of myself really?
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  7:47  Well that's, that's really interesting, you know, like, because, you know, most photographers look for that soft light, right? Where we're taught, like, hey, you know, go in the morning, or go in the afternoon where the light is soft. But here you are, like just taking advantage of something totally different. Something that's just so harsh, and people would probably stay at home, I probably would be stay at home by that time. But you take that into advantage. That's really cool.
Johannes Reinhart  8:14  So can I just say something for that? Yeah, for sure. So it also came through necessity because I'm a stay at home dad, and I look after my kids and when they were little. So now they're teenagers, but whenever little is like during the day was the only time I could go out and have my own life. So, so I was like, I felt like I'm the lunchtime photographer, you know, the middle of the day here, I'm out and then I just kind of had to do with what I got. And then that's another layer that kind of added on to that. Yeah, that's I think
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  8:45  that's that's also an important factor. You know, a lot of a lot of photographers out there, especially the one that can just start it, see those explosive sunset or sunrise, you know, for landscape or, you know, a special lighting and we are so fixated with those lighting, that, you know, if we go to the location, and then we didn't get that light, we would just pack our gear and go home which, you know, you said it perfectly sometimes you just have to take advantage of were what was the condition that you have? So that's that's really amazing. Yeah, so what what was your what's your biggest inspiration if there is any, you know, what, what, how does this creativity mind works? Like, you know, what sparked this create DVD? I suppose.
Johannes Reinhart  9:35  That's a really hard question for me. It's like, I just thought back and mind I mean, the Magnum photographers used to inspire me. And now because I do photography for a long time and like 20 years intensively really, or obsessively could say, so now at the moment my inspirations really kind of trying to go deeper in my own personal work and vision and whatever that means, I don't even know what that means but but that's the kind of place I want to go to. So I kind of work on projects, I just finished a book from a Japan holiday that I might free books out of it, one family, one, street photography, and one that's about to do with, you know, the temporary nests of everything in our whole life. And, and, and, and that's just me, you know, being in middle age and trying to get my head around, but I'm going to die 40 years, maybe sooner. And just kind of being more aware of my time is limited here. And, and it just comes out in the work I should naturally and then it's like sequencing and putting it together and finding the theme. And just how I photograph, usually it's very much based on serendipity, I kind of go through everything a little bit. I something pops up, and then I go Oh, that's interesting. And I take note and and then over time I work out what are the important themes in my work, or what are themes in my work that just naturally come up and trying to kind of dig in on that and move forward. And so it's all like it, it's, it's a little bit like just finding myself and photography helps me to kind of put a light to what's in my subconscious then I can learn our game that's going on, because the subconscious was like maybe a year ahead or half a year ahead of what you actually know what's going on. And, and then just trying to combine it with my photography and learn about myself and my feelings. And, and, and also have fun and just like we beat New Zealand in January, which was very, very good timing and very lucky. And I was so excited about you know, discovering all I mean, we go for those beautiful nature walks and seeing those amazing things and, and I'm there with my camera as I can capture it and I'm so excited. And I think photography with photography, the the whole worlds like a treasure box, really. And it's just like, going out and discovering what's around the corner here and what's there and, and that brings a lot of joy into for me and capturing that it's a lot more fun for me than just seeing it. So because then I guess I can go hey, look at this. Look, look what I've seen, you know, and I mean, when I go with my family, I go oh, look at this and amazing, they're lucky or whatever. And once I take a picture, sometimes they go oh, that's actually not bad. Yeah, that's,
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  12:43  that's a it's really funny, isn't it? Like, and it's really cool as well, like, how so basically, you're saying, you know, use photography as a way to express yourself and, you know, express your kind of inner thought and where you can going or what's in your head? In terms of photograph? Yeah, so like that, I find that it's really definitely one of the reasons that a lot, a lot of us do photography as a creative outlet. So how does that you know, how do you look beyond the ordinary? You know, because I see a lot of your photos, you, you, you focus on things that people wouldn't focus on just the quirky things, the little small details. And that was the one thing that I really noticed, you know, when I was there next, you cannot watch your work. It was just like, wow, and it was just like, how did he think of this just like blow you out of your mind, because it's not something that people would normally think about.
Johannes Reinhart  13:47  When it comes to I think there's two different layers of it. One is I'm not interested in just another pretty picture. So I'm, I you know, that's how you start off or that's how I started off, you know, trying to emulate the photographer scene and emulate, you know, the great photos or, you know, Christian Fletcher took this photo of something and you know, and Duncan and you have that in mind when you go to Ayers Rock and you're trying to take kinda that similar photo and then you're very proud when just looks kind of similar. And then and then the next step was like, more finding my own voice and because I mean me lighting is just a great thing to learn photography, but then it's really like it might have been when I went to photo for you, which might have been 2003 or four. There was photo for you and then I went there and I say in photography that kind of found confronting is like, what this is, like supposed to be good photography, you know, because it wasn't just pretty pictures and then and that kind of really opened up my my world and seeing this was photography and that is photography and then going okay, what is it that I do? And I guess then I took a little bit of is a free pass to explore, go a little more me personal. And for a number of years, I was really struggling with that, you know, like this is popular and you feel like you're supposed to do what's popular, right. But then it's also but I prefer those pictures, you know. And then eventually, I ended up winning prices winning documentary photographer of the year, at the IPP with my own picture with that, yeah, put my own pictures in, I actually won. And I was like, amazing. And then that really manifested in my, okay, I, I basically, I won those prices, because I did what I did my own thing anyway. And then it's after that, it became really easy to just follow my own thing. And nowadays, I just do my photography, the why, in my personal work, do my photography that the way I want to do it. And then and it's very easy just to and then the other part of that is I go out and I try, I basically go out with an open mind and just look around and see what I find. And just trust in my gut instinct and trust in serendipity and, and often start with light in our NSA some interesting light somewhere, and then I look closer, and then I find something and then if I react to it, and then I start to take pictures of it. And then I mean, obviously if I react to it, and there's there's something that interests me, and I just kind of follow that. So yeah, like a treasure hunt, like, like in New Zealand. Yeah, that's, that's come out the way I like it in a way, which does not there many pretty pictures. But I don't know, oh, they're a little more more clutter, they're not as clean, I think I could shoot a lot more cleaner. If I and I do that more in my commercial work, where things are more orderly and clean. And in my personal work, it's sometimes maybe a little messy, but there's still some structure to it. And I guess my brain is a bit messy. So it just comes out like that.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  17:03  So that's, that's really cool to hear. And, you know, it's, I think a lot, a lot of people out there might have that thinking of, or pressure I should say, or pressure of reproducing something that you know, is beautiful as what the status quo accepted. So that's great to hear that you say that because, you know, it was a testament to itself that you you were able to win an awards just by being original. So you know, what sort of advice would you say to people who kind of just started and struggled to find their voice or, you know, try to find to be where you are right now. And they are still in the emulation sort of period. Yeah,
Johannes Reinhart  17:51  I mean, just be yourself. Really, it's, it's sounds simple. And it is it is hard, because I mean, the old trying to fit in, like all of us, and I mean, the older you grow, maybe then you have a bit more luck with that, I just do my own thing, I think he probably really helps. It also really helps that I I had recognition with doing what I do. And then you know, it took like 10 years to get there. And I was sometimes really torn and not knowing what I'm supposed to do and, and but I learned by winning awards, I learned that you know, it doesn't really matter, like it's you just do your own thing and and if you get recognition, that's great. And if you don't get recognition at least you do work that's meaningful to you. And and that's I think that's a bigger price than winning awards. By ending up having photos they mean something to you and I got a couple of projects that that you know, they go a lot deeper and they're a lot more they're kind of important that in my life the kind of key the mark sort of key points and that came out in photography and I have a lot of pretty pictures that are really nice that you could hang up the wall but I don't really I don't have no deeper connection to them so they they're just kind of nice in our and maybe they get likes on Facebook or Instagram but they don't they don't do anything other than just being pretty to me and and I guess for your listeners if you if you just go out and you do you do what you connect with and you do things uy uy just means you like it like this and you're like high contrast or low contrast and it's just do that and and don't worry about you know the likes and what how it resonates with other people initially because if you just posted it just post you what you will really like to do over a period of time you will attract the people who connect to that kind of thing. And then you know in the long run you're gonna get your your recognition run by people liking what you do. And don't worry so much about the gatekeepers. You know, like we all we get recognition from our friends or friends, God is amazing. This is awesome, you know, but we want it from some strange, unknown people like an industry or somewhere that that we don't even know. But we want the recognition from them. And, and I mean, what does what's more important your friends are some random stranger really. So put emphasis on that to just play like, you know, move, move the blocks around a bit and give yourself the freedom to just go and explore.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  20:36  Yeah, that's that's a really good advice. I think that's, it's really powerful to say that, you know, do what, express yourself and do what do what's right for you and let those people that resonate with you follow you and not worry about those people who doesn't follow you, or doesn't resonate with you. So I think that's a really good advice. So, you know, you were sharing earlier about meeting up with this group of photographers and they were going out together and that kind of sparks back your your photography after kind of a wall, how important it is to have a community and you know, being able to be part of community in terms of progressing your photography, I guess not only just progressing your photography, but also enjoying photography.
Johannes Reinhart  21:31  Yeah, I think it's like, for me, it's more enjoying photography and also enjoying connecting to people and, and sometimes I guess we feel, you know, like, I had this from a lot of photographers or artists, they feel a little isolated. I feel like I'm a bit weird. And then you go to a photographer's me, then you go, or I'm not the only weird one. There's, there's lots of us. That's, that's a really nice thing too. You know, I mean, I have friends of our family friends, we have friends who get my photography, and we have friends who just don't get you know that they like to pretty pictures and they go, Oh, that's great. But if I show them like my RT book, then I go it's all a bit strange and random. You know, not not everybody's gonna get it. And, and yeah, photography mates. It's nice to meet those people. And you can, I mean, human connection is like, many when you look at life, I think that's, that's the biggest thing, like your family and friends comes, I think when you all that comes before everything else it will crystallise for I think for most people. And photography is like a way to make friends and to meet people and be don't feel so lonely and isolated, I guess.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  22:46  Yeah, it's, it's actually really interesting that you say that, because sometimes photography, for me is a good thing. It's a thing to run away and actually be alone and isolated. And I think it's one of the reasons why I like to do Astro photography, because, you know, he was so serene, like, you know, being out there at night. And yet you you don't feel alone, because you know, you get to enjoy all the stars. And it just give me a perception that there's somebody out there. So yeah, it's really, it's really interesting to see that different perspective. And you know, how everyone have that different perspective. So what, sir, yeah,
Johannes Reinhart  23:25  good. Yeah, but um, I totally get what you do. And I do that too. And, and I'm an introvert and I need time on on my own, but then it's, it's also really nice to be kind of connected to photographic community. Like, for me, it's a real benefit. To be, you know, to have that community. Yeah. And then, also going out alone. I mean, my best pictures I usually take when I'm on my own, because that's where you can really focus and connect with what you're photographing.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  23:57  Yeah, it's, yeah, it's, it's very interesting. I mean, like, one of the things that I like about hanging out with like, other photographers is just the inspiration and different perspective that I get learn from them. And, you know, like, for example, when I was meeting you or like, for example, now I'm part of the collective exhibitions, shorts, photo exhibition, and that was that there was a big sort of mind shift in my photography, because I saw some photography that I've never seen before. And I was like, wow, like, you know, possibilities, just analysts. So so that's really cool that you know, you kind of have that realisation and you know, follow that your own path. So how how do you translate a lot of this in terms of to your do your professional work you know, because then you how do you how do people can see is like, Okay, I'll hire Your Highness because he's really good. When a lot of your photo are more like, you know, really artsy and Really, I should say that a lot of people, like you say, hard to resonate with.
Johannes Reinhart  25:06  I mean, the ones I've posted are mostly mostly like what I consider the cool photos. And then so that's in other performance ones, a lot of them apply to most of them. And some event photos sometimes I post but mostly it's like work I finished the job and I kind of move on to the next one. So it kind of works because I have enough people who know me and know my work and I've worked for them previously or that you hear recommendations are made my business kind of doesn't run online, it is just like word of mouth and, and I don't actually post that much. I started posting a little bit more with COVID since I lost all my work and then I thought oh, maybe I should post a bit of this what I can do kind of thing for you. Yeah, the business is it's a little bit different as an I photograph to you know, you need a product or you need a promo shot or you need a photo for specific purpose and trying to deliver on that purpose and provide value to you. And I've been very lucky because I shot weddings for almost 15 years. And then I realised I don't have the passion for it anymore. And I thought it's time to move on. And I was really worried that you know, I don't get enough business after because that's my bread and butter. And then I just realised very quickly that I said no to a lot of jobs when you know when when people ring as I can you do this next week, and often they go can you do this next week, and I always had to say no, because I've been booked out with weddings, and I didn't really realise that so so much. So that really helped and I started teaching and then over the over the years I've build up performance photography, especially at fringe and a little bit during the year to that kind of Yeah, just just just by doing it passion first for passion for a while and then you know works kind of crystallised out of that and then more work crystallised out of that. And nowadays, I don't shoot many shows for free anymore, so to speak, you know, the most of them are paid. And when I shoot free, I'm shooting very different. I'm picturing fairy, like I'm trying to get artistic photos, which are sometimes better, or I find them better, but they're really hard to photograph and you missed a lot of good shots, if you follow down at artistic rabbit hole, because then I go blurry, and I go, you know, all sorts of stuff. Because I'm really, in my personal work, I'm experimenting, like a lot, and I just, I just play around in a way. And through the applying, I'm learning and become a better photographer, which then feeds into my professional work that, you know, I have all those tricks up my sleeve that I could, you know, this scenario could do this, and that's an I could do that. And I you know, break it up here a little bit and they and and also realised over the years people book me for my artistry, not just for commercially pretty, like, you know, nice, nice images, they also want a little bit on maybe extra feeling or something.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  28:18  Yeah, that's, that's really cool. Because, you know, at the end of the day, it's it's come back to what you say about being yourself and then just let those people who can resonate, you know, come to you and not worry about those. So that that really, really good to see how that translate just not only in the personal side, but also to professional so so I want to talk more about your event photography side of things, you know, you take the amazing event photos, performances and stuff like that. Whereas a lot of this angle came from you know, like the the creativity and you know, playing around with the lights and so forth, the poses and so forth.
Johannes Reinhart  29:02  Well, depending on where it is, it always often always starts with light, I look for good light. And as an event photographer, especially if performance photographer, you you are a little bit at the mercy of the lighting guy or the lighting, shot out show connections last week that had amazing lighting and now in it, it makes my job to create powerful images like much easier even though I was like a crazy man. But, but you know, like if they liked it well and they have to smoke for extra effect and all that that really adds or like in French, you know, the Spiegeltent shows so much better than some of the other venues where you just have one spotlight, and that's about it and then you a lot more limited in what you can do as a photographer. So light comes first and then the performance because I mostly should live performance. It's And it's really, by, by doing a lot of my doing a lot of photography does this kind of sixth sense to know when to press the button and things line up to you kind of now, I mean, you, you keep a light, you know, is obviously something I pay a lot of attention towards, and then the performance to and and, you know, you soom in and you zoom out and just trying to anticipate what's going to happen next, which then experience experience really helps, you know, like, you've seen a lot of shows and do certain things do you think art is probably going to something, something big is gonna happen? Maybe soon, that I better be ready to capture that, you know, over fire, you know, when I go fire, you know, and you have to then underexposed before it starts. So you're ready, and then and you hope you do, right. And because there's only one goes on often. And then you know, zoom out a bit, because often that that fire goes up. So it's just the experience and trial and error and, and everything I do you I kind of put in a memory bank, and I was like anything you've ser that works, I put in a memory bank. And I just kind of keep building on that. Yeah, that's cool.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  31:11  I do that as well, in terms of the memory bank, I think like, you know, you find a little quirky technique that comes up really nice, or that you really like you just like, oh, yeah, that's, that's a good technique, if it and then, you know, eventually, you have so many libraries you could play around with. But, um, and then, sorry, yeah,
Johannes Reinhart  31:30  can I just add on to this. The other thing, the obvious thing that I haven't mentioned is, there's also the performance, I mean, they they bring their own artistry and creativity to this day, and their talent to the stage, and that, it kind of makes my job easy in a way, you know, because I don't have to make it all update, they create this world that I then really just kind of capture sometimes. And sometimes I'll fill in my own. Also with the
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  31:58  with the live performances, you know, I see a lot of your work with the performance photography, it's, it's, it's usually on a dark condition, right, it's really dark, and then you got maybe a spotlight and hence what you say about how light is important. The ticker is true in terms of how do you go about and thinking about you know, because the most important things is in photography is light timing and placement, right, those three really dries the type of photo that you get. So how do you go about this thing? And how do you you know, how do you know when it's how do you decide I suppose not to know because you know, knowing can be from experience, but how do you decide when you want to go to this angle that angle or overexposed underexposed, and so forth.
Johannes Reinhart  32:54  A lot of it is it's, it's a bit like being a documentary photographer, or wedding photographer, where you just you kind of photograph and you anticipate what's going to happen next and you think, is just going to be better from this side or that side. Or, or sometimes I like to move around. So it's not all just the same angles, there's not just you know, same angles as a TV camera will be which often is the best angle like the front and centre, you know, but you know, if you run around and you should from the sign up closer and shoot up and you just get more variety for for the client. And then you Yeah, it's really like trusting my gut instinct a lot. Or I'm going oh my god, this is gonna happen I'd better shoot off to the middle again, because then just needs to be photographed in the middle. So it's, it's I think previous visualisation plays a big role in that that you experience the performance especially where you can anticipate you kind of know a few things by seeing a lot of shows that this might go this way or that might go that way. And and then yeah, and then just paying attention to light and your camera settings and under exposes like I'm mostly exposed more to the right so I don't really try and blow on highlights but then sometimes I just go darker and then it's just I say something and I I react to it and I go I got to photograph it this way or that way and everything happens so fast that you really just kind of I don't know like it's like it's being driven
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  34:30  cool. Yeah. Yeah. Cuz you go to this to this performance is the first time isn't it? It's not like you go there once and then you can watch
Johannes Reinhart  34:40  a lot of Yeah, on most shows I should one time sometimes i I'm lucky. I should, you know, like, design people who put shows on and then some parts of that is similar as seen a couple of performers that I rephotographed and then sometimes so you design your shows or whatever, start off this I'm going to change it later slide. It gives me more sense of what might happen. But yeah, a lot of them is just reacting to because every time they put on a different show, it's usually it is a different show. And then you just kind of, but that also keeps it really fresh. I mean, if I photographed a snapshot twice, I could, I could improve some photos of that. Definitely. But then by photographing a show once it keeps it fresh, and it's better for the budget of the company twice.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  35:37  Yeah, like, that's, that's really cool advice. And it's, yeah, I find it great. I mean, I've never really done it myself. But just in my head thinking about, man, how do you know when you know things going to happen? And you know, when kind of placing yourself and especially when you saw it for the first time is, it's almost like you always have to be ready or something like that. A? Yeah.
Johannes Reinhart  35:59  I take a lot of photos. Usually. It's not like film.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  36:06  It's that's the good thing about the digital camera. Right? Yeah. Cool. So now that's awesome. I love how how you share your perspective, or you hear that, you know, go with your gut. I think you said that a lot in this conversation, conversation is that go with your gut, and trust yourself and express yourself. I think those are the few things that are really important. So if you were to go back, let's say, you know, let's say you wake up tomorrow, and you lost all your skills, and you have to start all over again. How would you do? Like, you know, for those of you for those of the listeners who kind of just get started and want to get to it, you know, how would you do it? What are the steps that you would take?
Johannes Reinhart  36:55  So what I, what I really, if I lose everything, I kind of want to lose it in a way that I also don't remember that I had the skill before. So I can just be fresh. And the beauty is like, the beauty is, when you don't do photography for very long, that you have this kind of inner sense, and everything is new and exciting and fresh. And I don't have that anymore, because I've been doing it so long. And yes, I can get probably a really good quality consistently. But the images that excite me, for me, it's much harder to get those images, because you just don't find them very often. And when you when you're just starting out, you know, like an image that maybe five years from that time you took it you think, Oh, this is amazing. And three years ago, oh, actually, it wasn't. But at the time was amazing, and a lot more things are amazing. And that, that that is really so beautiful. And I think it needs to be enjoyed. And rather than trying to be somewhere at the top, whatever the top might be, because, um, you know, that all those things are kind of, I feel like they're a little bit concepts, you know, I mean, I don't see myself at the top, I just do my photography. And, and it's, it's really great that I'm very lucky that I have a lot of people connect to my work. I made people who told me that they really love my photography, and I really valued it and, and appreciate it. At the same time, I just kind of do it for myself, it's kind of a little bit selfish, you know, exploring my little rabbit hole of photography, so to speak. And, and, yeah, and, and each stage you are on, like whether you're just starting out, or whether you're doing this for 10 or 20 years, it's, it's, there's a benefit to it, and you but you can't have everything and so just enjoy the state you in and not worry so much about, I guess external validation, that's, I think, a really big tip and just kind of do your own thing and, and ply and feel free and try not to force things too much. You know, I see a lot of people that kind of create it to the block, you know, because they kind of want to do something, but then in any event, I do that myself and you know, like a year and a half ago, I was like I wanted to do some great project, you know, I'm thinking about the outcome. Instead of thinking about the actual project and doing the project kind of freely, you know, I'm thinking about the outcome and because I want the outcome to be great. I put pressure on myself to even you know, even get started and can be blocked to even start which is kind of really the opposite of when you start out and pick up a camera and everything is just kind of playful and nice. And so I guess we all try to keep more of that so and I would really enjoy like you know, just starting out and and not knowing what I was good at and just you know, kind of just playing around.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  39:59  That's that's cool. I think that's really cool. You know, the fact that you see just focused on on having fun and enjoying it, that's, that's really amazing. We just have that conversation right there. You say something about, you know, just just gonna go your own way, enjoy it have that first perspective and have enjoy that first back first perspective. And as you kind of get get along, the more you do it that that excitement can go away. So, for yourself, um, you know, how do you keep the excitement going like do not burn now in photography, and to keep enjoying photography.
Johannes Reinhart  40:41  I mean, I burn out once or twice a year, usually, usually when I work too much, and it's kind of I've gotten, I'll just say, I'm alright with that. I know, I need to back off, like, I just can't work all the time. But then, and then there's also lose my mojo at least once a year, if not three times a year, when I lose my mojo that I don't want to, I don't feel like picking up the camera. And I usually force myself to pick up the camera and just go, you know, I feel like, everything's a bit jaded and bit boring or whatever. And, and I'm not really in the mood to force myself to go out and take pictures, you know. And by going out, I find, you know, once I find something that I just really cool, then that gives me the first spark and then that leads to Oh, that's really cool, too. And then, you know, I got three of really cool things. And then then I'm back in, you know, enjoying photography and, and doing it. So for me, it really works to push myself and force myself not to not to force myself to pick up the camera and, and that will I learn from that, that, hey, I really love this. Because by doing it, I realised how much I actually love just capturing moments and, and looking at things. Because it's also reminds me of when I've been out on a photo walk, you know, and I'm thinking, you know, like, oh, isn't that nice? Here? Yes, I don't have to perfect clouds for this perfect landscape shot that you probably hoping for, you know, but I still find things here and there. And isn't it just nice just to be out in that beautiful environment and soak up the atmosphere even though it's not perfect for photography. And then I thought, you know, that was poor landscape photographer who make a living, they go out and I think ash clouds are wrong. And it's, it's, it's the same sunset at the beach. But it's two different approaches, right? One is like, I'm so happy I can be here and enjoy it. And the others, like our shirt is not working. Because I want perfection. And Perfection doesn't happen every day. And I'm trying to be more than that, that first one, we're just trying to enjoy my environment. Even if I don't get the perfect pictures, and I'm quite famous. So
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  43:02  it's interesting that you say like, because I think I'm not well, maybe I'll just speaking for myself, but I feel like a lot of photographers out there are really perfectionist about their art, like, you know, they, they really want to make sure that everything's right that you know that the noise is really low. Well, most of the most of the time, like the viewer actually just enjoy it the way it is. So what have you, you know, what advice or what have you got to say to the listeners out there who really basically stopped progressing further or stopped taking more photo because they're looking for that perfect one photo.
Johannes Reinhart  43:42  Yes. Like, open your eyes. And, and I guess, you know, you go down to the beach, just use the beach as an example you go down and, and you want to take this amazing picture of like a shovel of rock, you know, like, iconic web location. And then the clouds is you know, there, you take a really great photo there when the clouds landscape is as always to do the clouds have to be in the right spot. So it frames it just the right way, right. And you want to match them with sunset time. If those two things don't match up, you know, you can go there like 200 times a year and maybe five or six times a year you get something that's close to perfect. And maybe once a year or once every two years from that spot that you think is the best spot to photograph you might only get that once and then but the thing is like when the clouds are a little off you can move left or right to Frank a subject you know so you don't get it from the perfect spot but just by moving around a lot. You can you know work compositionally and then when you open your eyes you can find a lot of other things you know there's this decide Robin Sugarloaf that looks a little bit like a hawk, you know that. You can just take a photo of that and last time I was there after sunset, I was like seagulls landing on and Flying offence I took kind of, you know, sumed in the big lens and, and took photos of that in blurry birds and, and it's really like keeping an open mind, you know, like, look around and keep an open mind and don't get stuck on, I want to take this particular photo and but it's more like reacting to what's around you and making making the most of it working with what you got in and then looking around you know and keep keep looking to see what you find.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  45:28  Yeah, that's, that's awesome that is really awesome. Like to get those kinds of photos I would imagine because, you know, those, those story that you just told me there, I was just thinking that requires a lot of observation and actually, you know, looking into the different thing and looking actually quite deep into the scene, right? How how long you usually spend in a spot do until you can, you know, come up or notice those quirky things that most people don't notice it.
Johannes Reinhart  46:01  Yeah, no, I totally, I don't have much patience. I really thought about taking up painting and it's like, when I see them, I spent like three hours on a painting and it's on quarter finished or something it's like bigger than not for me.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  46:22  Yeah, I as
Johannes Reinhart  46:23  long as if I don't find anything interesting, then I just usually keep walking, you know, walking around, and then and if I find something interesting, then I stay and linger on and then it depends on because, you know, often the lights good when Mendes happens and then so either now I got a couple hours I go out, you know, I'll go photographing for an hour or two. And then then I need to go home. Because it's like, it's time. So I just want the round. Really just, you know, I go to an area where I think there could be something. And then sometimes the light works, and sometimes the light doesn't work. So it's really like sometimes you got you got it, there's nothing here, you know, and then you just keep walking and, you know, it's always good to be out. That's what I tell myself anyway. And but you have to be out there because it's like hunting and then sometimes in Alabama think oh, there's nothing here then I see this tree and I'm really drawn towards this tree, you know, like, because the branches kind of reach up. And obviously, that's something I really connect with reaching up to the sky at the moment sort of thing and, and then you know, and then I photograph final group composition for that branch. And that, you know, that I find so so amazing at that time. And then the next thing is a bird lands on it. And then I you know, there's just a little extra something and then wait for the bird to be in the right spot. And then And that's like me like spending eight minutes just photographing just this tray with a bird and then I think is time to move on. You know, like the bird hasn't been that the perfect spot, but it's good enough. And I'm kind of I don't feel like engaged anymore. So I move on. I guess that's when I moved home and I don't feel engaged. Wow,
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  48:04  that's really interesting to hear that you are now patient guy because, you know, I saw a lot of that formula requires a lot of patience and you know, observation and actually watching you know, for a while until you kind of see those things.
Johannes Reinhart  48:19  Yeah, usually, yeah, like, contract to cut every so I don't, I don't usually wait more than five minutes when I see like an error. I think I'd be a really cool picture and waiting for someone to come through it. And yeah, five minutes is I find it very hard to stand on a street corner without feeling like I'm going to be being up to something better so but by moving around, I mean that's that's a downside to that because I sometimes don't have this, you know, the perfect composition for people just walking through but then I'm not interesting, just pictures of people walking, for example. So when I walk straight and I might see a character that I'm gonna think oh, you know, that looked really interesting and I now over there does this doorway and so I kind of shoot off and trying to get him at that that doorway or, or just kind of react to the scene much more and I think the good side of that is that the photos are kind of more fresh than not as stage so to speak. And and by I think that really worked in the long run for me because sometimes you're lucky and you see something that's, that's out of the ordinary and obviously and then trying to capture it and and also try to capture it well and not just you know, just pointing the camera I'm thinking about okay, where are they going? What see I love it. What can I work with here? You know, sci fi at the beach, and that's this rainbow you know, and obviously none of the normal thing is to photograph the rainbow but then the next step is to step back and go. What else is around kits that can sell something I can use with the rainbow you know, some static element or is there Hey, that's a couple Hey, Guys, do you mind if I take a picture of you in rainbow? And it just kind of work with what you got? Or there's a dog and you chase the dog in front of that in the rainbow maybe or something? I don't know, especially when he left legs up. That'd be a picture anyway. Sorry. Yes, I react to and, and trying to make things work for what I got a lot.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  50:23  Awesome. So it's more like so literally where you say that you just basically capture a moment when it's there like you don't wait for it to happen. You don't stage us. You say it happens, then you capture it free? Yeah. Wow. That's amazing. Well, thanks a lot, Johan, is, you know, it's been a interesting conversation there. And there's a lot of things to do learn from that just both be so philosophically as well as technically in photography. So that's great. Like, thanks a lot for sharing that. So share with us what what kind of because you say you're like working in project, you have a project that you're working on at the moment?
Johannes Reinhart  51:08  Yeah, I have one project I worked on for a week last year. It's called What's it called silently falling apart, and then I'm totally blocked to kind of restart it again. So that's going to be an exhibition in the long run, maybe, maybe in 22. Maybe even later, because it's it's a project that I'm trying to go deeper with this one, and I'm trying to really kind of shoot it till I feel like I got nothing left to give in this project not not to finish prematurely. Yeah, so that might be a while. And I guess the resistance is big for this project. So I'm kind of have to work with my own fears of overcoming and try not to put pressure on myself. And I, you know, there's a couple of blocks I've shifted in my head. So I give myself an opening to tell myself just be playful, just just basically see what happens, you know, don't don't make this bigger thing where you don't want to go into just kind of be playful and see what happens. That's, that's where I'm going. But lately, I've been really busy with work again, and then. And then it keeps going to school holidays and an astringent. And this after finishing this kind of an exhibition. And in digital next year, we plan for the book project and, and things just keep moving. Yeah. Awesome. I'll get there.
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  52:33  I'm glad to hear I'm looking forward to that. But for the listener who's wanting to hear more about you and wanting to learn more about you where what is the best place for them to find you.
Johannes Reinhart  52:46  So the best place is my website that's at www.yohannes.com.au. So Johan is J out h a double n Es. And there's a signup form to my newsletter, I started a newsletter a couple of months ago, that's kind of inspirational newsletter that I show a bit of what I do and then and it's really meant to kind of be more inspirational and not like, you know, like, yeah, it's got my voice a little bit and I think it's, it's quite nice. And then there's photo Mate, I'm going to do a bimonthly photo mate if you're from Perth. So that's where you're going to find out about that. And the productivity tips like yeah, better, like five different little things. And, and that keeps me on my toes and on top of everything else. And then Facebook and Instagram Yanis. Reinhard, yeah,
Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  53:40  awesome. Awesome. Yeah, no, no worries, I will make sure that I have all that in in the description. So if you didn't get that, don't worry, it's all gonna be in description. But look, thanks a lot. You're honest, for being with us. And yeah, that was a great conversation there. And we can do so thank you very much for tuning in. And like I say, if you want to learn more about your harness, you can look it up in the description below. You can check out some of his art photos as well as his performance photo. I just love his performance photo. It's it's so it's so unique as well, this is just out there. And don't forget to subscribe below and follow. Let me know in the comment below. What do you think of this conversation? Let me know if you try some of them. You know, Hannah's tips there about coming up with something really different and something that really interesting that helps you to express yourself instead of just you know, taking photo that is the most popular one out there. But thanks a lot for tuning in. We get hunters and I will see you again next week. Until next time,
Johannes Reinhart  54:58  thanks so much for having me. Awesome thank you bye