Navigating the Creative and Business Realms of Photography - Sean Dalton, E012

Why do you do what you do?
Ultimately, for me, i think it always comes down to the aesthetic right and the story behind an image.
What drew you to the education side of photography?
I'm good at simplifying complex topics and making them accessible.
Do you think it will replace?
certain genres of photography.
Yeah, I think it's going to greatly impact the industry.
Tell us something that people don't know about you and that they can't find online on any of your new platforms.
Being mentally healthy allows us to thrive creatively.
Were you depressed?
Welcome.
Thank you, sean, good to be here.
It's good to be here too, man.
Thanks for taking time out of your extremely busy schedule, which we'll talk about, i'm sure, in today's chat, but give us a very quick introduction about who you are, what you're doing, how you find yourself here with me today.
Yeah Well, first off, i'm happy to be here.
Thank you for having me.
I am originally from San Jose, california.
I grew up in the Bay Area, moved up to Oregon for school and then I moved to Thailand when I was 24, working for an NGO, and that is where I started my photography journey back in 2016.
And yes, i started from zero, built a photography business in Thailand and started teaching, doing a bunch of things in the photography industry, and then I moved out here to Bali.
So that's basically my story and that's why I'm here.
What is your business?
Photography.
So I shoot client work as well as education.
Education is a big part of my business.
Youtube there's a lot of different income streams when it comes to this industry, so I try to keep my hands in as many as possible to keep things diversified and more secure as well.
And why do you do what you do?
What is the passion that lies behind that?
That's a great question, and I was thinking about this the other day, and I think that there's a lot of different reasons why I'm drawn to photography, but ultimately for me, i think it always comes down to the aesthetic and the story behind an image.
There's something about capturing an image, capturing a moment in time in a beautiful way that just gets me, and it's always been like that.
I've always been a very visual person, ever since I was a kid, so I think that's ultimately what it is for me.
Where did the education side come into it?
We'll talk a bit more about the way you educate so many people in photography later.
But where do you have a teaching background?
Is that running the family or what drew you to the education side of photography?
Yeah, no teaching background, it just kind of came about.
When I was living in Thailand, my buddy was like man, you're so good, you're good at teaching.
I'm like, no, i'm not.
And he's like this is a good opportunity, you should try and teach a course.
And, of course, i had imposter syndrome.
Everyone has a posture syndrome when it comes to teaching But I just did it.
I just jumped into it, created a course.
It was terrible, but it worked and it had a unique angle.
And after teaching two to three courses, i realized I'm actually pretty good at this.
I'm good at simplifying complex topics and making them accessible.
And that's when it started.
Back in 2017, in Thailand, i taught a course on cafe photography, like how to capture cool photos of coffee, and that was the first one.
And then it was an Instagram course and then a bunch of other kind of smaller courses about photography.
But that's when it started back then.
And then, since then, i've refined my teaching style and learned new techniques And I've put effort into it because I want to make things easy for people to understand.
I want to put an emphasis on taking these complex topics and making them simple and accessible.
So what were the lessons you learned After you did your first course, which you said was not good?
Obviously, the first time we do everything is generally not good.
What were the biggest takeaways and what did you then put into practice to improve?
It's a good question, i think, sorting through all the books there's a lot of things that you could teach in a course.
There's so much that goes into photography business.
There's a million topics we can discuss in a course And it's a matter of refining it into the most important concepts And I think I've gotten progressively better at that over time And also organizing the lessons in a way that's really easy to understand and really easy to follow.
In the beginning I would just kind of like just one topic after the next, but now it's more like how can we make it flow, how can we make everything relate to each other And end on this ultimate goal of whatever that goal is becoming a better photographer or growing a photography business or something like that And so do your courses specialize more in the photography, like how to be a better photographer, or do they focus more on the business side How to make a business out of photography?
So it's a mix.
Like my older courses, they were all more focused on the photography side, the technical, the artistic side of photography, like how to capture cool landscape photos or creative portrait photography and the entire artistic and technical process behind that.
But recently I've gone more into the business side of things And I'm teaching a signature course on how to become a professional travel photographer And that is much more focused on Out now.
And enrollment is closed.
Currently, It's closed.
Yeah, so I'm doing it as a cohort style.
So I'm going to be going through five weeks with a set number of students working with them directly.
How many?
40, 42.
Wow, we wanted to limit this first cohort to two more.
Snuck in at the last moment But we wanted to limit it to 40, so I could just dedicate as much of my time and energy to making sure that they succeed.
And then later on, whatever green it will make it, we'll record it, and this is going to be great because I'm going to learn from what they I can learn from them and they can tell me what their biggest struggles are and then I can kind of reformat the course and make sure that for future iterations it encompasses all of those things.
I don't think we'll be doing it as a cohort style for the next launch.
It's just a lot of energy, a lot of work, but-.
Yeah, and if everything's live.
But that's a great kind of tool to launch into a passive income stream that you don't have to put as much energy into, yeah, set it all up, and then you put it out there and that's it.
That's the master class ready for you.
Exactly, you have to apply, and I think doing it as a cohort first is great because I can ensure that I'm providing all the support these students need when they're starting out, answering all their questions, just being engaged with them, and then, like I said, for future iterations, i can include all that information in the record.
How do you keep the course fresh.
I mean, we'll get on to current trends and things like AI later, And things change so quickly at the moment, whether you're talking social media technology, AI, artistic expressions, saturation of the market.
How do you make that course as relevant as possible on any given?
day.
It's a really good question.
I think as a teacher, as an educator, you have to stay curious, you have to pay attention to what's going on in the industry And it's like the more you close yourself off to new ideas, the more you're depriving your students.
So, for me, when I see something, when I see some trend, or I'm on YouTube, when I see some video about some discourse in photography, i pay attention, i like to listen, i like to pay attention to what people are talking about, what's going on, because that's information I can share with my students.
So I think it's important to be curious and stay on top of trends as they're coming.
And is that something you teach them as well.
Here's the technical side of growing a business or something, but the conversations and the further education that isn't necessarily within the photography bubble.
You teach them that as well.
Because my first question to that would be where do you go for that information?
Where do you go for you've got YouTube, which is algorithm based.
You've got social media it's algorithm based.
You've got media outlets, websites, which are all curated by humans.
Where do you go to get reliable and interesting information that is relevant to photography?
Absolutely.
I think I always tell my students to be curious in this industry, be curious about the business side of things, be curious about the artistic side of things, be curious about everything.
And in terms of where to find that information, there's a few ways right Having a community like here in Bali.
We have a really great community of photographers.
We're always having these conversations.
I had a really great conversation yesterday with my buddy, luke.
We're talking about AI and social media, and that was a really interesting conversation And that's a great way to learn new perspectives.
And then YouTube as well.
Yeah, youtube's great.
There's a lot of really interesting people on there, i think, and if you're watching photography videos, those will come up.
But with AI, for example, this is a very new topic.
A lot of photographers are creating videos about it And a simple search on YouTube AI and photography can yield some pretty interesting results with some pretty interesting angles as well.
What is the biggest challenge you've had with students?
And I wrote down here what's the shit student you've ever had?
That's probably not the right question to ask, But if I ask you, you kind of get what I mean.
You must have such a variety of, I guess, learning ability and talent and insight And must be so many different artistic expressions that people want to get out there through photography.
I guess I should rephrase what's the kind of the most interesting experience you've had with a student.
That's a really good question.
In the past my courses have all been I haven't been like that present because it was just kind of record in post.
But now that I'm coming into this new iteration where I'm going to be working with my students, i'm going to get to know them a lot more.
So the most interesting experience I've had with a student.
I don't know if I can answer that right now.
Okay.
Yeah, we'll move on.
Yeah, sorry about that.
No problem, as I'm really interested to kind of dive into the market.
generally, it seems and I don't know whether that's because we're in kind of the photography bubble, so all we kind of see is photography, and whenever we go online we're kind of in that echo chamber of photography, but it seems to be an industry that's more and more popular, that more and more people want to get into.
It's more accessible, for a start.
How do you make yourself stand out from that crowd?
and most specifically your courses and the education side of it.
Yeah, i think right now, having a personal brand is incredibly important for any business, right?
Not just photography, but with the advent of AI and all these things and just a massive amount of content that's being uploaded from smartphones, like you said, photography is very accessible.
Having a strong personal brand and identity with your name is one of the best things we can do for our businesses right now, because there's a lot of things that go along with a personal brand.
It's your style, it's your attitude, it's the story that you express behind your images, and I think having a personal brand is very important right now.
So why do people, do you think, come to your brand?
Why do?
people come to you?
I think a number of reasons.
I think I'm a good educator, i'm confident in my education skills, i know how to teach, i know how to express topics in a simple way And I like to keep things chill.
I don't want to be too intense.
I'm got that Cali vibe.
Yeah, i like to support people and make them feel comfortable, and I think that's very important is, if you're putting too much pressure on somebody to achieve a certain goal, people can freeze up and not get where they want to be because they don't feel supported.
So it's a lot of positive reinforcement.
That's what I like to do and it seems to be working.
How did you learn?
What was your process getting into photography?
Did you go to school for it?
Did you learn?
teach yourself?
I was curious growing up.
My dad had a camera.
I played around with it.
I got a camera when I was 14, Nikon D3300.
And I was like, yeah, just to begin our $500 camera And I remember just doing all kinds of crazy stuff.
I used to take long exposures of my house at night And I thought digital noise had to do with the noise in the scene.
So I would hit my shutter taking a long exposure at my house like a 30 second exposure And I would hold my breath because I didn't want to like the breathing sound to introduce noise into the image.
That's brilliant.
I don't have any laughing because I did some stupid stuff.
Yeah, it's classic.
That's amazing, yeah, but yeah, like being curious, like at that age, was fun and I learned a lot, i think.
And then I did take a photography class in college And that was great, you know, learning like some of the more principles of photography.
But, honestly, most of it even after that I didn't know what depth of field was Like.
There's a lot that I just didn't understand.
And I learned all of those things through shooting And later on, like when I was 24, 25, just diving into the industry and learning as I go.
Yeah it's probably often the best way to learn.
It's just to make mistakes as you go.
Absolutely, i'd correct him that, yeah, can you tell me anything that you might offer in your course that I might not know as a photographer?
Is there anything that you know?
basically, tell me something I don't know.
There's, and there's, a lot that I don't know about.
About business?
Yeah, probably business would be a better one.
Yeah, yeah, i think that's a really good question.
Something that you might not know.
I'm on the spot a lot already, haven't I?
You're gonna put me on the spot today.
I think, something that a lot of one of the biggest misconceptions in this industry is like oh, you grow social media following and then you get clients.
right, they just show up and maybe you do a little bit of outreach here and there.
But I think one of the best things that we can do for our business when we're starting out as photographers is to go crazy on the outreach right, like reach out to as many possible brands as you can in many different niches, and there's techniques to do that.
right, we can hire a virtual assistant, we can use chat GPT to help us come up with just different everything.
brands, yeah, like yeah, a list of brands in specific industries that you want to work with.
a watch company, give me, you know, 50 small to medium sized watch brands with their websites.
Boom, you have 50 contacts right there.
Then we can outreach to them and, you know, hopefully one of them will, we can score one of them as a client and you can scale this massively right, like, you don't have to limit it to 50.
And this is what I did really early on in my career is, even when I didn't have a social media following.
I reached out to like 500 coffee shops in San Francisco, new York and Portland And I got a ton of work just simply because my name was in front of them, right, and they like oh yeah, we do need photos.
So I think just the idea of outreach is underutilized in this industry.
Why is that?
Because people are lazy or not confident Think probably.
Yeah, not confident.
Yeah that's a huge thing in this industry.
People are not confident, and confident enough to put themselves out there And that's something I focus quite heavily on in my courses as well as like you can do this, Like you can definitely do this.
I didn't think I could teach you know back in 2017.
And I turned out to be a great teacher, So it's mindset is a huge part of it, And also maybe people feel a little bit intimidated by you know reaching like cold emailing somebody like hey, my name is Sean, want to buy my photos, Right?
It's never that simple, But I think that's daunting for a lot of people.
But if you create a system, it's a lot easier than a lot of people think it is.
Do you enjoy client work?
Do you do much of it.
I used to do a lot more like.
It used to be the foundation of my business.
It used to be working with a ton of different clients.
I probably had four to five clients a week.
It was great, i was making great money, but it was a lot of work It's.
It can be stressful at times But, yeah, i enjoy.
It Keeps things interesting, you know, and it keeps us on top of the industry and what people want.
These days I still do client work not as much and it's often in different forms.
So I'm doing, you know, youtube sponsorships and creating videos.
I'm doing more campaign based shoots, which I enjoy, like I love shooting lookbooks.
I love shooting for fashion brands, especially, like in the adventure wear industry.
That's a lot of fun, especially, you know, when you're traveling to these cool places and you get the opportunity to shoot a really cool product in that place, like that's, that's dope.
And I'm also very drawn to the commercial style of photography.
There's a lot of photographers who are like that are commercial photographers, and you can just admire their quality of their images.
So, yeah, i do like client work to an extent, depending on the client.
Dealing with humans.
Yeah, absolutely.
Some's good, some's bad.
Yeah, do do you recommend client work as kind of the first step on that business photography, business ladder?
Yeah.
Because maybe you don't want to work with clients right.
You don't want to work with brands, as a photographer.
You're more of.
You know you don't necessarily shoot.
You know a style that would suit 90% of brands.
Maybe it's a different style of photography that would is much more niche And so maybe the outreach isn't as appropriate.
Is that correct?
Am I saying that with with credence or is?
do you talk about that in your course?
Or is it just like okay, go for brands and send easy way in?
I think client work is the easiest way for us to get into this industry.
It's accessible and with, like the advent of social media, the amount of content that brands need to be sharing online is obscene.
Right, just to stay relevant, they have to be posting so much reels, that need to be posting photos, videos.
So that's where we come in And there's a lot of opportunities for us right now And it's it's a great way to start and get paid And then from there, you know, we can build up our socials, we can maybe start a YouTube channel, we can learn about digital marketing and we can implement digital products.
We can start teaching.
We can do a lot of different things to earn more income outside of client work, but in the beginning, i think client work is a really great tool for us to start out.
And just going back to the teaching side of it and we'll probably talk about YouTube later as well What makes you a good teacher?
If, if, if someone wants to go into I'm very interested in the education side.
I'd much, i'd much rather educate than work with brands If it was a choice if it was one or the other.
What makes you a good teacher?
You know one thing, would you say, that you've, that is either innate to you or that you've learned.
That makes you a good, good educator.
I think yeah, i think I mentioned this earlier, but it's it's taking all of this information that you find that you learn because you're curious right, you're a good teacher is curious, and it's compiling it all into an easy to follow formula and easy, easy to understand, easy to implement and also engaging as well.
I think it's important to be engaging and engage your students, get them interacting with you, and that's something I'm doing in this new cohort of finding freedom.
That's my new signature course is we're doing weekly projects, we're doing weekly mock briefs, so I'm going to have students go out and like go pretend that they're working with us with a client.
We have like these, these fake briefs that you know have all these different deliverables and like style, mood boards and stuff, and that's going to get them out in the field interacting, engaging, and I think that's really important for for teaching.
You mentioned style there.
How important is that for a photographer?
or because I, you know, i put this out there sometimes and I think a you know, a basic style is important to be identifiable.
But other people disagree with me.
You don't need it.
You need to be versatile, need to be able to do loads of stuff, and I don't know your style, and you know it's about emotion and storytelling, which you, which you talk about being the the pillars of your content is.
what do you tell your students when it comes to style and finding your kind of your voice?
Is it?
Yeah.
So I think eventually, later down the line, photographers can and you know, maybe you should at a certain level, at a high level really niche down Into a specific kind of area of photography, whether that's, you know, landscape photography, fashion photography or whatnot, and and with that niche down comes like a specific style, right.
But in the beginning, i think one of the most important things about being a photographer, especially a travel photographer, is being multifaceted.
Right, it's being able to shoot portraits, landscapes, products, hotels, because travel that's what we do as travel photographers, right.
We're not just like going out and shooting banger landscapes, as much as, as cool as that would be, like, realistically that doesn't pay the bills.
So we need to be shooting a lot of different things.
So I tell my students like, be curious, shoot whatever the hell you want.
You know, whatever inspires you shoot.
That We can build separate portfolios, yeah, and then just show that to the client.
That's it That is relevant to right.
So it's like you want to shoot, you want to work for a hotel?
You don't have to only shoot hotels.
You better not be just shooting hotels, but when you reach out to a hotel, show them your hotel work.
If you want to shoot for a restaurant.
Show them your restaurant work.
So I think in the beginning it's important to shoot a lot of different things.
Shooting different subject matter doesn't mean you can't have one style, though right Like you can shoot a lot of different things and still have a consistent style, and I think a lot of that comes into the way you utilize light.
Your editing style is very important for that, yeah.
And I think what you, further down the line, what you're trying to say as a photographer, as an artist, right Is the difference between maybe being a photographer for a client and, you know, working across many portfolios to being an artist with a voice And I think, people can get confused with style and voice.
Style, i think, is just aesthetics.
Voices, you know?
what are you trying to make out of this, right?
What is the deep meaning behind a collection of images or your journey as a photographer, right?
It's so complex, and that's where the beauty of it comes in in my mind And that's where really the skill comes into it, absolutely.
So yeah, i think there's kind of too much confusion over there but it's an interesting topic.
It brings me onto a subject that we'll probably need a beer for, but AI.
Yeah, i just released a video of my thoughts on it on YouTube and that doesn't even cover the start of it.
I don't think And I'd love to hear just generally.
you know your thoughts on AI, both for, i guess, the humanity, but more specifically, you know our industry and photography.
Yeah, it's a massive topic, right.
I've been trying to organize my thoughts about AI and I just I haven't been able to.
I'm like, what are some themes that I can narrow this down to?
And I think the approach that I'm taking to AI is what I mentioned earlier is just like being curious about it.
I think if we deny the significance of this, especially as a photographer, and we're like, yeah, like AI, like you know, it's going to ruin our industry, we're going to get left behind.
You know, we have to stay on top of these trends and we have to pay attention to what's going on.
So I think AI is like, really interesting.
I think there's a lot of opportunity with photographers.
At least, that's how I'm trying to look at it And I'm trying to figure out how I can use it and implement it into my photography business and into the artistic side of photography.
To, you know, stay on top of what's going on.
So that's kind of my take on it, and it's big.
You know, there's so many different platforms coming out, whether it's text based, image based right, that's the one everyone's concerned about is, you know, mid-journey.
It's incredible Like I play around with mid-journey all the time and there's so much capability with that And.
But at the end of the day, i think the thing that's going to separate photography from AI is the fact that photography is real, or at least as close to real as possible, right, like it's still going through an image sensor.
It's always going to be biased to some degree, but I think it's a realistic depiction of real life and AI is not, and it will never be right.
So photography will always have its place.
It just might look a little bit different in the next few years, i think.
It depends how you define real life.
I've had this debate with many people before, kind of more old school people who don't even believe in editing photos, and if they do, it's like dodger burn only, whereas I take the view as like well, that's the artistic creation side of it.
You can structurally change a photo, but if that's your artistic expression and that's the way you want to put a piece of art out there, then who are we to say that that's right or wrong?
Right And that like that's also like there's a flaw in that thinking as well.
Like not editing your photos, because an image sensor is editing your photo, exactly So it's like Exactly.
Yeah.
Yeah, As soon as you turn that camera on, especially if it's a digital photo you are editing.
You're editing even if you've got a box and you just put it.
You're editing what you see right, yeah.
You're choosing not to see that part.
You're choosing not to see that part, whatever.
Yeah, you're choosing to shoot specific time because of the light.
No, yeah, you are editing.
You are editing it before you even press the shutter button.
So I mean, that's a different discussion altogether.
But yeah, how will you talk about opportunities with AI?
What do you see those opportunities to be?
Yeah, well, right now I'm utilizing chat GPT a lot in my business the business side of things, right, yeah, like we have to.
It's super powerful Writing briefs, coming up with ideas, researching brands.
We can use chat GPT for so many different things.
Just to explain.
Some people may not know what chat GPT is yet.
I mean, i'm sure they do, but just in case it's explained.
Yeah, it's a text-based AI engine.
You basically feed it prompts and it gives you responses based on everything that's on the internet, right?
So it's not perfect, like I wouldn't use it for writing like a personalized email template, but it's good And it gives us a good starting point to build off of, and it's great for coming up with ideas as well Do you get the paid version chat GPT for.
I'll send the free version.
The free version, yeah.
The biggest limitation I see with chat GPT and there are others that don't have this limitation but most of the data sources, all of the data sources, is 2021 and before, so I think people can are confusing at the moment chat GPT with, like Google and search engines Like no, don't use it for a search engine because AI is probably not going to be accurate and it's all use Google or use a search engine.
Right, but yeah, i mean, i'm thinking of ways that I can use AI to just answer any question, that anyone just even wake up in the morning and my wife will ask me something, i'll just put a phone in her face, just yeah, that's the answer.
So I don't have to talk or think or do anything, which is the danger, right.
Yeah, if you end up relying on it too much.
I guess it can detract from intelligence or effort or motivation or drive.
So it's a balancing act, isn't it Yeah?
it is a balancing act.
Is it something you think you're going to introduce into the education side of it mid journey and how you can use that to, I guess, be a better photographer.
So I'm still trying to figure out how it's going to massively impact the artistic side of photography, like for us as photographers, how can we use AI to improve our images, right, like AI editing is here.
It's been here.
We've been using it for a while now, but it's getting better.
Luminar AI is something that I'm really curious about playing with a little bit more.
I haven't downloaded it, but I haven't played with it too much.
But we have these new Lightroom features.
They're awesome, like the new AI editing tools.
Yeah, those new masking tools came out last year.
Yeah.
I mean, takes so much of the effort.
It's incredible.
Yeah, it's amazing.
I love it.
It speeds up my work.
It does so much.
I can be so much more precise, but I think we're at this turning point now where, like, things are still just starting to happen with AI and photography Obviously, with mid-journey, like you can like create a photo, but in terms of like utilizing AI for our photography is just getting started And I'm really curious to see what's going to happen in the next few years.
I mean, how those two are going to mesh together really well.
So, yeah, i mean I think it's exciting.
It's technology.
We have to embrace it And I'm curious to see where things are going to go.
Do you think it will replace?
seven genres of photography.
Yeah, i think it's going to greatly impact the industry.
I think it's going to impact the industry at especially at a lower level, you know, where brands they might not want to have to pay five, six grand to get photos of their coffee shop or something like that.
Like that's not sustainable, whereas they could create an AI rendering of the interior of their menu and save a bunch of money and it will look real.
But I think, at a certain level, photography will never be replaced, right?
These high level brands that want to depict things realistically will still hire photographers right, like, because it comes back to the idea of like realism.
I think that's going to become something that's very important for brands.
as AI gets more important, gets bigger and bigger and bigger, realism is going to be like this very important topic for the entire world, right?
I think that's why photography is going to stick around for a very long time.
Why do you think realism matters?
I think realism matters because it's authentic, and authenticity is very important.
Online right Especially.
I feel like it's gotten more and more important over time And, as all of this content is being uploaded on the internet thanks to AI right Like the amount of text being generated, the amount of blog posts and videos that were written by AI scripts are being generated and flooding into this social media marketplace, authenticity is what's going to allow brands and businesses and people to stand out, because it's a real human right.
It's a real coming from a real human being.
Do you think there are?
what do you think of the legal implications that we haven't seen yet, certainly with image generation, where you've got rights issues, authenticity issues, i'd like to see in the future, maybe a way that I think of it, like the Instagram checkmark or the Twitter checkmark If you see a photo and it's got a little checkmark, means it's authentic or it's been through a process that has authenticated it as real.
However, that's defined, I mean a real person, should we say?
if it's a person or a real place or a real person that's taking it.
I mean, there are so many different parts of an image that you could say is real and isn't.
But I guess you know the two biggest things was the subject is a real subject and the generation of that image is by a real human.
But I'm interested to kind of figure out How the legal side of it is going to work, because at the moment it's just free fall.
It's so great, which is like just that scares me.
Yeah, because where is mid-journey?
getting the image?
getting getting image?
it's getting accused and image parts of images from people's images from stock images and yeah, from Google or from people who've put I don't know exactly where it gets it from.
Do you know?
I don't.
I'm not sure either.
I think.
I think it just scrapes like the internet.
I'm not really sure, I mean the fight, the entire fucking internet and you know 30 seconds and like what are your fears with it?
What are you know?
do you have any fears with the introduction?
of AI Yeah, yeah, i think a lot of photographers fear it right now is like it's never been easier to create something incredibly aesthetic, right, like you can go on a mid-journey and make a dope photo in two minutes, and that's scary, you know it's.
It is certainly going to replace certain industries in, you know, photography, in the photography industry, like I said earlier, and that's definitely scary.
What do you see?
those industries being, or that the sectors of the photography industry being, that's going to replace.
I think it's going to have implications across the entire industry, but I think that there's certain, you know, there's certain businesses, clients, brands, whatever you want to call them that are still going to really want to express like this realism and authenticity.
Right, like I said, like wedding photos, for example, you're not going to AI generate wedding photos.
It's not well, first off, there's there might not be any like other photos to pull from, yeah, so, so it can't generate those images than in a real way.
But also, like, the beauty of a photograph is it's like an accurate depiction of a moment in time, and AI is not right, and that is one of the things that.
That's one of, like, the core concepts of photography is like this happened, right, and we captured that moment in time.
And there's certain things that that is incredibly important.
You know, special events, journalism And, i think, travel photography as well.
It's like this is a real place, yeah, it's beautiful, but there's a story behind it as well, right, so I think that side of photography will allow it to to, you know, power through this massive AI interruption, but I think it will have.
It will, you know, take over a lot of different other parts of the photography industry.
Yeah, i think it's definitely going to be a diminished industry.
There are some sectors of the industry, like you said food photography product photography, surely that's you know you're thinking about where.
where does the demand come from?
right, the demand comes from businesses.
you know, put the art aside and just the aesthetics of an image.
and you know what, with social media and the demand for images and content that is ever growing for businesses, they're going to want a quicker and cheaper solution.
The majority of businesses, right, yeah, there are going to be, you know, the, the, the higher echelons of businesses that want authenticity and that want a story and that want, you know, the, the, the depth of an image to go with whatever they're trying to sell or say, yeah, but yeah, i worry, i think photography will become more of a cottage industry where it's a little bit more, it's a bit like I think of it like film photography today.
I was just going to say that.
It's like it still has such an artistic value and such an amazing craft.
But it's not.
You know, it's not mass produced?
It's not yeah it's not commercialized as what it used to be, which I think is, you know, depending on where you sit in the photography world.
I think that's that's kind of a nice thing to think about And you know, going on into social media, i think one of the problems with photography today problems is probably the wrong word.
One of the the difficulties is certainly if you're starting out and you probably talk about this in the course but it's so saturated, especially social media.
You know, how do you grow in social media these days?
It's more difficult than it was back in 2017, 18.
Even before that.
So, having so many photographers and maybe AI will be a bit of a.
The first word that came to mind was chemotherapy Probably the wrong word, but chemotherapy for photography, you know, it will get get rid of some of the low lying, the low hanging fruit.
Maybe, i don't know, that's just my and I think that's maybe a good thing.
But yeah, social media is, is going to be a biggest benefit of AI.
I think I mean, it's already used as AI.
I mean, what am I talking about?
But I mean the artistic side of it.
Um, you know, even I'm thinking about just starting a new social media channel that is just AI images, because that the the art of it really interests me, not the reality or the authenticity of it, and what I think we shouldn't do is bundle it together with photography.
Right Like it's not, it's nothing to do with photography.
Just because it's a visual format, it doesn't mean it's anything to do with photography.
True, so it's interesting.
We all kind of bundle it in with how it's going to affect photography Nothing to do with photography.
Yeah, businesses will use it to generate images and and, unfortunately, jobs will be lost or people will have to adapt.
but it's just a new art form.
It's exciting.
It's exciting, brace it.
Try it out.
It's cool, it's fun.
Yeah, i love my journey.
Like it's so cool, you can even use it to generate mood boards too.
You know, like that's another great tool of it, right.
If you're in like, well, any type of mood mood board, but anything like yeah, fashion photography is a great example.
Yeah, cause you have really easy prompts for that.
Like I want a, you know, a lady in a blue dress, wearing gold or whatever.
Some basic stylistic traits that you are thinking.
What's the best image you've created so far on mid-journey Anything you're proud of, you go like, oh yeah, that's legit.
I've only played with it a little bit and I I when I was really playing with it it was early, it was one of the earlier versions, so it wasn't where it is now, but I created some cool images of like this.
I had I used to listen to a lot of like lo-fi when I was working And I always loved the the image on the YouTube videos.
In the lo-fi videos They're like really vibey, it's like a, it's like a you know 3D rendering of a of a bedroom in like Hong Kong at night and there's like a window and there's like the cities going on outside And it's like a really vibey study session or something like that.
And so I was like I love that stuff, man.
Like it's there's so much mood and emotion and story.
Yeah, so I created these images of like this, this girl like working in her you know small little flat with the window open and the city kind of going on behind her, and it was like moody and emotional and very dark and blue, like blue hour, and cool.
Yeah, it's pretty cool.
Yeah, it's great to.
it's great to experiment and get inspired.
I mean, i've played quite a lot with it.
Um, i you know I want to do more with it, but I think some of the stuff I've generated and I've gone, you know I would never have thought of that or I've never thought of that, look, or what it can, just what it can generate, just blows my mind.
and what blows my mind even more?
and going back to kind of the how we started this conversation, the speed of it is is scary, but I don't know why it's scary, it's insane Like where are we going to be in a year?
let alone 10 years.
It's a I don't know what can answer that question You just like three months ago we were on a different version of Midgetown.
Yeah, like it's got two different versions.
Yeah, yeah, it's crazy, it's nuts.
How, how do you think um?
how do you think it plays into social media and does it?
I mean, do you think it can enhance someone's profile?
Do you think people can use that for growth?
Yeah, i mean in terms of.
I think there's like two sides of it.
There's AI tools that we can use to make our, you know, social media creation process more streamlined, more efficient.
And then there's the actual like content that can be AI generated.
Right, that might be writing scripts, it might be the actual images, like creating images and, you know, posting those if that fits within your niche on social media.
But how I'm utilizing it right now is is the, the workflow, the efficiency side of things, right, like chat, gpt, coming up with ideas.
You can use those, like apps like once called captions, where you upload your short form video and it automatically generates captions for you and they look sick and you can customize them and stuff and highlight certain words.
So I think it's it's going to help us become more efficient and putting out more content, for sure.
What do you think of social media generally?
I think it's necessary.
It's a necessary evil, i think and I don't I don't know if I really want to say evil, you know, i think the thing about being an artist.
I think there's the.
The two most important things is creating great work and getting that work seen right, creating that work And the medium in which we share.
That work is constantly changing and it will always be changing.
In the past, artists showed their work in galleries.
They hustled, they went out, they gave their business cards and like, hey, can, can I get in your gallery?
Like back in the old days, right?
Or they stood on a on a corner and they sold their images and they tried to get their images seen, maybe in a newspaper.
But now it's social media, that is our medium in which we can best get our work seen, and there's nothing out there that that's better than that, right?
So we have to play the game.
We have to invest ourselves in social media and get our work seen, because it doesn't matter if you're creating sick work and no one sees it, right.
So I think it's something that is absolutely necessary for creatives.
Does it matter if people see it or not?
It depends, right.
If you want to make a living, yes, Mm, hmm, right, so that that's absolutely okay.
If you don't care about that, no, absolutely not.
So what do you teach your students about social media?
What are the kind of big lessons that you teach people with on a growth?
You know, your portfolio kind of thing.
You know you see Instagram as more of a portfolio based app, or you know it's both you know, like When I'm teaching my students, i kind of get clients In the beginning.
I think it's important to just build out an Instagram.
It doesn't have to be big, doesn't have to grow, but it does serve as a portfolio.
Absolutely, it shows, it serves as a portfolio, it serves as social proof that you're a real person, shows what you're about And then, beyond that, you know, growing that can help us get a lot more work and also help us sell more products.
You mentioned earlier that you think it's harder to grow on social media now than it was back in 2018, but I actually disagree.
I think it's much easier to grow now because of the virality of content.
Right Like short form videos can fucking explode and you can get so many followers like that right, and it's if you're posting consistently, i think it's you can grow incredibly fast right now.
Yeah, interesting, i mean it's.
it depends how flexible you are with what you would you know if you're still image photographer right Back in 2017.
Right, but you've got to be good.
Yeah, you know, let's, let's take that as a as a given.
If you're a good photographer, you post good images.
You're, you're, you're probably going to grow.
Yeah, right back back then.
You post good images.
now you're not going to grow.
I just don't believe you are.
So then, yes, you have to, you have to adapt, but that kind of can mean that you dilute your, your voice or your you know really what you want to do, and it saps energy from, yeah, from really what you want to do.
I don't want to do video, i know, but I know that this is a tool that's going to help me do more of what I want to do.
So it's like playing that long game.
So yeah, i do.
I know what you mean And maybe I didn't phrase it correctly, but I think you have to think much more strategically about social media than maybe you used to.
But I wasn't in social media six years ago.
So I I'd be a wrong guy to really say that that's just an opinion base of nothing, but actually a few people I know that grew so much so quickly back five years ago And now not so much, right.
Yeah, i mean, i would definitely agree with that, like just pure photography back in the day was much easier.
Yeah, but photography is not enough anymore.
You know and you mentioned video, and that's something I teach my students is like we got to learn video.
We have to learn video.
You don't have to learn it at a super high level, but you should be able to create short from videos for yourself, possibly for clients, and also, you know, video is so important for building a personal brand, having a YouTube channel, we can share so many ideas And that can you know, we can attract sponsors through that.
We can make videos, you know, showing how we use our products that we're selling on our website, whether it's like presets, guidebooks, whatever, like marketing videos for ourselves, right?
So there's so many avenues in which we can use video.
I think it's very important for photographers to learn, and all the cameras can do it these days.
Yeah, all the all the mirrorless cameras can shoot great video.
So, apart from the Hasselblad, so when it, when it comes to social media and I do kind of think it's a necessary evil, i think there is I think the net result of social media is maybe not a good one.
Yeah.
As photographers.
I think it's different, because I think the net result is beneficial, because most of the times, photographers, we're like you said.
We're using it as a as a portal to share our art which and the community is generally very spirited.
It's encouraging people you know engage It's.
it's more of an artistic sharing right It's, which I think is just amazing school.
Yeah, social media in general.
I mean, i did a, i did a bit of a competitor analysis a couple of years ago And I set up a dummy account and I just thought, ok, what is the world interested in?
And so the dummy account was fresh, like, didn't follow anyone, no one following it, zero, zero, zero, no posts or anything.
So I was like what is the algorithm going to turn out to me?
And so I was just scrolling for hours, hours on, for days, just making notes, like, ok, you know, how can I adapt my output, not my photography, just my, what I'm going to put out there?
How am I going to adapt that in order to enable more growth and more of an audience?
And what would you get?
Just disturbing trash content, trash.
Yeah, so, literally, i think it came into like 45 percent of what I saw.
With it I mean all of it, videos.
45 percent of what I saw was almost fully naked women.
Yeah, like doing something sexual, not like explicit sexually, not porn, but like maybe they're eating a banana and they're, like you know, looking seductively at the camera with barely anything on.
But that was like almost half of what I saw, yeah, you know.
And as a guy, like OK, you know, that's just.
You know, i don't mind looking at half naked women.
But that's not what I'm interested in And I'm amazed that the general population that's all they want to see on on on a social media, i mean there's sex cells.
It does, it always will.
So the other thing is what else sells violence?
And so it's like a third, 30 odd percent of what I saw were fights, car crashes, just generals like shocking stuff, but kind of that morbid fascination thing.
If you boil it down, it's like the most core things of being a human, yeah, right, like sex, morbid curiosity, money, food, survival, survival, yeah.
So, yeah, that was like 80 percent of of Instagram.
How am I meant to compete with this?
Yeah, do I just throw my life out there and just see what sticks?
Yeah, do I, you know, think about this in a completely different way?
Do I?
just do not do photography, but I?
I I make it more personal, so I get why I'm saying this is I get disheartened and I'm sure, like a lot of students, of your students, or people starting photography, it's daunting, right?
It is, it's really daunting.
Do you have you ever been in that position and and do you put everything out there, or is there, like, some images and content that you will never share and that you kind of keep kind of in a private setting?
Yeah, i would.
I would say I probably share like five percent of my photos.
Honestly.
Wow, i share the best of the best.
There's so many photos that I shoot that you know mean a lot to me that I that I keep to myself or, you know, i don't share them on the main stage, just with family and friends.
One of the things I started doing was actually putting together a photo yearbook with all of my favorite photos, and I'm, when I'm building this yearbook, i'm not thinking about anybody else, i'm thinking about myself and what I like, right?
So it's for 2021, 2022,.
I put together a book.
It's, like, you know, 90 pages.
There's like 250 photos, and it's 250 of my favorite photos that I shot with my iPhone, that I shot with my Fuji, that I shot with my, you know, my Sony, and It's all kinds of things.
It's banger landscapes, but it's also Small moments.
That means something to me.
That might not mean something to anybody else.
You know it's it's just a documentation of my entire year through photos, and All the photos that are in that book means something to me, and they're beautiful as well, like there's, i have, you know, a standard of of beauty that I put in that book I don't just put snapshots has to be somewhat aesthetic and I love it.
It's one of the best things ever done.
And I can take that book and when someone comes over and be like, hey, here's my 2021 yearbook, check it out.
And people love it, man, and it's it's for me, it's for my family, it's for my friends, and at the end of the book I have like a little write-up, a little little recap of the year, talking about some of the themes of that year From a personal perspective.
You know, this is some of the stuff that happened.
This is my life, these are my friends, kind of like a visual diary almost.
Yeah, like a visual diary Yeah, yeah and it's awesome.
That sounds awesome and I I do something similar.
Definitely I don't do that.
I'd love to.
It's a great idea, i guess it's.
It's refreshing to hear from a start.
Most most people I talk to in photography space They're just glued to, they're fun, right.
They're glued to social media, glue to like yeah.
I need to either see what someone else is doing, or I need someone else to see what I'm doing, and they don't necessarily have the or, from what I can see, they don't necessarily have that introspection and that's really where the beauty comes in.
Is that that expression, that is an expression of Art, that is just for the sake of the art?
itself, not for the sake of anyone else, or a media platform or Whatever right It is just for you or for who you care about.
The most and I think that has a beauty itself, absolutely The most meaningful.
The most meaningful images I've I've ever taken.
I probably haven't shared, yeah, or I have, but they're with my wife and maybe close friends, yeah, and that for me makes it I don't know more more precious, yeah, more powerful for sure.
I mean, if you look, you know in, 50 years more old or we're dying, what's what's gonna matter?
I hope I'm not dying at 50.
No, in 50 years, i guess you'll be like 70.
Hopefully I'll still be, you know, still pumping along.
We'll see deadlifting.
Yeah, you know the social media is not gonna mean shit, like the medium in which we share might not be even be social media.
It most likely won't be.
It's gonna be some completely different technology that we haven't seen yet.
But a Printed photo, right, that we have in front of us will last forever, yeah, and it's gonna be there until the day we die and it's gonna mean something to us.
Yeah and I think that's why it's so important to Share as much as you can for the sake of business, for the sake of you know, finding success as a photographer, but Also pay attention to the photos that aren't, you know, insta worthy and and compile those and put them somewhere, print them.
I think printing is one of the best things we can do.
I love it seeing your work.
You have all.
You have all those photo books downstairs.
I love that.
Yeah, like I have photo books at home too, and There's something about sitting in a room And looking at images on paper and the way the light hits the paper and you know, changes and it's just a whole mood.
It brings the story of a book, the story exactly the way it's, the way it's laid out and The setting in which you read that book, and it's such a so much more of a vibe right, and I love printing my work And I love doing this this yearly photo book.
Yeah, that's a great idea.
Yeah, i've started doing something similar with film because mmm film, i find I Don't know, it's just more personal, i find it more personal, i don't know.
do you know what I mean?
It's like a love, so I just we've, we've.
I've got a Polaroid which I've had for years, but I only really started like taking it everywhere.
Now, yeah, and even if it's just one Polaroid I get.
Love with space of a month, like even whatever is just, but it's a memory, it's a, it's a moment, which is really the essence.
Yeah yes, it's a photography and, and I totally agree with you, that is where That won't change, that will last forever, and Whereas social media won't, or it'd be different if it's still around to be different.
Yeah and so And you don't own that, remember as well Yeah, you don't own it, meta does Mm-hmm.
So anyway, yeah, interesting.
Yeah, talk to me about YouTube, because I've just started my journey on YouTube and have no idea what I'm doing, but I enjoy it.
Yeah, how much of YouTube plays into your kind of business portfolio and how much attention do you give it?
Yeah, youtube is man.
YouTube is huge, like there's so much potential there, and I've, you know, played around with YouTube over the years.
I think I have like 50, 60 videos on there over the course of, like you know, six years and It's something that's very hard to stay consistent because it's a lot of work, you know posting every week and There's a standard of quality that a lot of us photographers hold ourselves to and it's hard to, you know, match that level of quality week after week.
But I've had, you know, i Just a simple case study, like I had a video that I put out back in 2020 about aperture super simple, and In that video I just, you know, discussed like what aperture means, what it does.
It's gotten 1.4 million views, you know, and I hada Free lead magnet in that video where I'm, you know, here's a free preset pack to download and that was linked up to a funnel and that has made me so much money over the last, you know, two years, three years now, and That's the beauty of YouTube is like, if you have one video go off and it's, you know, you have the right sponsor, you have the right, ideally, your own product that you're selling That can generate so much income over the next few years.
And so I think YouTube is incredibly powerful and it doesn't have to be as complicated as people think it is.
Quantity is is more important than Your videos just to be quality, but they don't need to be, you know, perfect, like they don't have to be shot perfectly, super beautifully It's.
It's more about the themes, the messages and your personality.
It's the most important thing on YouTube, so How important a sponsors.
I mean, that's really the the biggest driver in revenue, isn't it?
Yeah, yeah, i think sponsors are a huge part of the game, especially as you get bigger.
Like sponsors pay well to, how do you get them A lot of the time they reach out to you today.
Yeah Yeah, i get sponsors reaching out to me all the time for you.
Can I have some of them please?
Yeah, i'll send you some contacts Once you get to a certain level.
You know they just start reaching out, So that's the chicken, and egg situation.
Right, it's like I need to grow, i need to.
I need to grow a channel.
All right, so you know you need to do the, the basic, the foundation of, of Growing that channel to a certain point where it kind of takes care of itself.
Well, yeah, the monetization of it takes care of itself because then you start getting sponsors.
So, yeah, what is that level?
Is there a you know, would you say you know, for student?
of yours wants to start a YouTube channel.
Okay, get to 10,000 subscribers and You know you'll be set with, or you'll should start then getting Expenses being attracted.
Yeah, i don't even think like the subscriber count has all that much to do with it.
Okay, like, subscribers really don't mean all that much on YouTube anymore.
You probably subscribed to a thousand channels and don't ever see the videos, right?
Yeah, it's, it's view count, it's consistency The more your content is being seen, the more it's also being seen by Potential brands, right?
So, even though I don't share on YouTube all that much, i still have so many people reaching out to me, gear companies reaching out to me, trying to market on my channel, willing to pay me, you know, a few thousand dollars per video, just to you know, talk about their filters or their audio equipment.
And it's not like that on Instagram.
Like, yeah, you do.
Youtube is a much better medium for platforms to sell, for brands to sell Yeah, they're, they're, you know, products On.
So the sponsors on YouTube are all over and there's there plentiful.
But that's only one way we can monetize, right?
like I said earlier, having our own products is massive and There's so much potential there, whether it's a course, whether it's presets, whether it's a software or a guidebook or anything.
Right?
Who do you follow on YouTube?
Who's your biggest inspiration when it comes to either YouTube or photographers in general?
Um Ali Abdaal Oh yeah, awesome.
Yeah Yeah, his YouTube course is incredible.
He's.
I just really love his content.
It's the vibe as well.
As you know.
The actual content itself is great, like he's sharing new ideas.
He's great.
I'm a huge Ali Abdaal fan.
He's probably one of the biggest ones that I follow There's.
Where's the biggest one?
The biggest ones that I follow?
Um, there's.
Uh.
Willem Verbeek is a film photographer Big fan, and a lot of the other film photographers as well.
Um Voulandis Amazing work.
He shoots film.
I forget where he is in the us, but his work is stunning man And he's cool and he you know he shares Interesting perspectives.
He shoots with a lot of cool cameras.
Huge fan of the channel.
Cool, i'm gonna check it out.
I don't know him.
Yeah, film film, mostly film, yeah, all film.
All right, yeah, cool.
Um, it's been a wonderful conversation.
I'm gonna end with a couple of probably the more difficult questions, but interesting.
Bring them on.
Tell us something that people don't Know about you and that they can't find online on any of your your platforms.
Um, put him on the spot again.
Yeah, for real man Could, i could have provided some value.
Uh, a story, something that happened in my life.
Sure, either one, either one When I, uh, when I graduated from graduate school, i was Desperate to travel and I had done Southeast Asia, but I wanted to go somewhere like in the hardcore.
I was like I want to jump into this, do two months like in a weird place.
And I went to China and I don't mean to say like China is a weird place, it's a very foreign place And I did two months solo, backpacking through this country and there's so many uncomfortable moments, crazy stories.
But One of the best days of my life I decided to hike the abandoned section of the Great Wall of China.
Okay, and there's like these remodeled sections where you can go and it's, you know, it's nice, yeah, all the tourists go there, but I was like I want to get like raw, i want to see this thing where, like how it was built 600 years ago.
Whatever the original original blocks.
So I I found all these like old blog posts They were like seven years old about this place called gianco, where you could go and you could climb the Great Wall and it's illegal and there's, you know, all this stuff and All the posts were, like, like I said, super outdated So I didn't know if it was accurate.
I woke up at like 4 am, took a bus, took a taxi to like this tiny little town on the base of the Great Wall, hiked up and for seven to eight hours I walked, i hiked the abandoned section of the Great Wall of China by myself.
There was no one up there.
There's all these signs saying this is illegal, you can't be here, and I turned off.
I got a text from the Chinese government, turned off my phone and, yeah, i hiked this incredible World heritage site alone and it was stunning man, and I didn't know what I was doing with photography.
I took, you know, a couple hundred photos, but, um, i lost all the photos.
No, yeah, except I have like a few of the jpegs on instagram and one of the photo one of the compositions that I got is, to this day, like one of the most unique, beautiful compositions I've ever seen and I've tried to play around with the jpeg file and it's just.
It's brutal.
It's not easy to edit, but, um, that's a story that I haven't really talked all that much about.
Lesson learned lesson learned.
Well wait, how did you lose the photos?
Not being organized with my data.
Okay, because I was new.
Okay, you know, i just didn't have everything organized And I think I formatted the wrong hard drive or something and yeah, poof gone.
Oh, man tried to recover.
Yeah, i was talking to you early off camera, but, um, i always get scared when I format, format, even though I know 100 like I've got three backups.
Yeah but just pressing that format is terrible.
It's terrible, um, especially if you've been through an experience like that.
Right, yeah, but I know if photographer I went, i definitely won't name him, but he's good friend of ours.
Um, he went shooting the other week, shot everything jpeg.
I got beautiful shots.
Yeah, beautiful shots for his jpegs and it still happens and he's a very successful, very successful photographer Yeah.
Um, so it still happens.
Yeah, you know, i guess processes and systems help with that, for sure, um, and being in the correct space for interesting, so you know, interesting.
Last question, and this is a This is a kind of a series of kind of, uh, conversation cards, but I picked, luckily picked, one out.
There was the same as usually, a kind of tradition we get each guest to You write out a question for the next guest without, no, you actually know who the next guest is, which is a bit annoying.
But you write a question for the next guest for for them to to answer Okay, um, and this one I picked out was Very, very similar to to the previous guests and what what they asked.
So question is What are you clear about now that one year ago you didn't know?
That's a really tough question.
I think One thing I've learned in the past year you know I had some Some difficult personal things that happened to me in the last year and I realized how much it affected my work, my creativity.
And I think you know, the topic of mental health and mindset is so incredibly important in this industry.
Being mentally healthy allows us to thrive creatively and from a business perspective as well, and I felt the full brunt of that when I was in, you know, a state of poor mental health.
I was really struggling for a few months and it greatly impacted me and I couldn't work, you know.
And now that I've climbed out of it and I feel like myself again and I feel creative again, i can look back and say, wow, like it is so incredibly important, if you're working as a creative or you have your own business, to stay on top of yourself, to stay on top of your mental health, to be aware of what you're feeling, to be mentally healthy but physically healthy as well, and these are things that now I value greatly.
You know I try hard to take care of myself as much as I possibly can from a mental health perspective, otherwise my work suffers.
So it's okay to take that day off, even if you have stuff going on Like you need to look after yourself.
Otherwise it's gonna be hard to make it in this industry.
Were you depressed?
Absolutely, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, i've struggled with depression throughout my entire life, ever since I lost my dad at a very young age very suddenly, and since then it's kind of been a battle.
You know, it goes back and forth.
Generally, my mental health is really good, but there's periods where something triggers it and it triggers these past traumas and it comes back And that's the reality of life.
I think a lot of people struggle with mental health and it's being aware of that and addressing it.
Yeah, well said, i've been through my own experiences of that, and it certainly is men as well.
We, generally speaking, we find it difficult to talk about it or to accept it or just man up, get on with it.
How did you get through that period in life?
You know, any kind of processes?
Did you seek external help Or did you, you know, were there things you did in your routine to kind of get you out of that?
Yeah, yeah, it's a really good point you bring up about men not being willing to share And it's sad and it breaks my heart And luckily, you know, when I lost my dad at a young age, my mom, you know, threw us into therapy and some of the therapists that I saw completely changed the way I look at things And I'm not afraid to ask for help, i'm not afraid to talk about my feelings and share the things that are going on inside.
But I know a lot of men struggle with that, you know.
And I reached out to the mental health.
You know facilities here in Bali are not great.
There's really not a whole lot of options for us.
So what I did was I reached out to probably a hundred different mental health practitioners in Australia, which is a similar time zone, and I found one that worked and she was monumental and helping me kind of deconstruct everything and work through things that I was going through And I was on top of that.
Friends, you know, I have a great support system here and I was able to lean on them And they held me up, man, they held me up and they're great And I'm forever grateful for the friends that helped me through those rough periods, you know, at different stages of my life.
Yeah, well, good for you and good for them.
I think it's.
We get so focused on photographers, artists, some kind of creative output.
It's so easy to get so singular with that right.
Yeah.
Focus, focus, focus, work, work, work.
When you're working for yourself, you have a business like you think that's the priority and it isn't.
It just isn't Like you will end up doing so much damage, whether it's mental health, physical health or often both, that it's sometimes irreparable or you have to take elongated periods off.
So I think, especially youngsters, i have the benefit of a bit of wisdom, being 40 years old, having kind of made those f***ing mistakes, yeah, and I see youngsters now like doing really well, working their arses off and being amazing at what they do, but I'm looking at them going.
Just be, just please, look after your health.
First and foremost.
Building blocks of all of your success and longevity is your health.
Everything comes to mind, and mental health especially, because I think physical health, physical health, goes into mental health and vice versa.
Like, if you're prepared to start the day, then you're prepared to go and work out, you're prepared to eat well, et cetera, et cetera.
So, yeah, i just think it's.
I'd like to talk more about it actually on the mood podcast, on our series, because I think it and as you've said, it impacted your work and your creativity.
Like, so why are we not giving it more attention?
Why are we not taking care of ourselves more?
So, obviously, easier said than done.
Yeah, life is tough.
Life is tough, But ultimately, at the end of the day, the things that matter most is our health mental, physical, social, the relationships that we have in our lives And with that strong foundation of health we can thrive in business as well.
It's all we have, right?
It's all we have.
All we have really is our brain.
That's all we have, so why not take care of it Absolutely?
On that note, Thanks for being with us, man.
Thanks so much for having me, man.
Yeah, it's been an absolute pleasure, i'm sure everyone's enjoyed watching it.
And where can people find you?
Where can, if they don't know who you are?
where can they find you online?
Yeah, they can check me out on Instagram at wwwSeanDalt S-E-A-N-D-A-L-T.
Yep, bit of a confusion.
We'll put it in the caption anyway, Yeah put it in the caption, My website wwwSeanDaltcom.
I got a bunch of freebies on there.
Cool YouTube as well A bunch of free tutorials, So that's probably the best place to check it out And your new courses on the website, Yep.
So Enrollment is currently closed, but we're going to be opening it probably pretty soon after this course goes live.
So make sure you register to my email list so you can check that out.
You can do that via the link in my bio.
It's a great course.
I pumped about it and I hope you guys are interested as well.
Yeah absolutely Well, best of luck and see you soon, I guess.
Thank you, yeah, see you soon, cheers mate.
Appreciate it.