Exploring the World Through the Lens: A Journey from the Cockpit to the Camera with Matt Jacob

Welcome to the Martin Bailey Photography Podcast.
It's August 9, 2023, and this is episode 820.
Today, I bring you a conversation with an awesome photographer, matt Jacob.
He's doing amazing work over in Bali and in many areas of the world that he was taken to during his job as a pilot and also now that he's based in Bali and still travelling around.
I apologise for the audio quality of my mic.
There was some sort of a loop in place and I couldn't hear it as we were recording, so there's a bit of an echo and the audio quality is not up to par, but hopefully the conversation will keep you engaged, as opposed to the audio quality disengaging you.
Let's jump in now, though, and listen to my conversation with Matt Jacob.
Matt, welcome to the show.
Thank you very much.
It's an absolute pleasure to be on here with you.
The pleasure is mine.
I've seen your work and I'm thoroughly impressed with the quality of your portraiture and your website and everything.
You're doing a great job.
I want to start from the beginning to tell us a little bit about yourself and how maybe you up to the point to where you got into photography.
Yeah, I was born in the UK back in the 80s and actually I was kind of brought up in a very my dad was in the Navy, my mum was a dentist and I would say and hopefully not a fence for my parents, but kind of a non-creative household.
It was a lot of sport, a lot of kind of doing the right things well in a strict, fair and structured environment.
Ever since I was a child I always wanted to be a pilot, and kind of that's my story up until the age of kind of mid 30s I'm now 41.
And kind of achieved that dream at an early age, which I'm extremely proud of, and spent most of my kind of adult life, up to kind of 35 enjoying being a pilot.
The photography came into my life much like, I'm sure, with most photographers just through happenstance and just through circumstance and as a byproduct of me being a pilot, I used to travel a lot and figured out a way to tell people or at least expose what I had seen to either the rest of the world or just my family and friends.
So the best way I found to do that was not necessarily writing or talking, it was more with a camera, and so I started just learning through practice.
Learning through there was no real I mean, youtube was around, but there weren't really kind of the free access to those type of educational materials that there are now.
So I used to go on a few workshops and just learn the craft just by doing.
I touched in a lot of different genres landscape, wildlife, street and portraiture and portraiture was the one kind of genre that I just fell in love with and I found that picking up a camera that was my way to even just document for myself, and that's kind of where it all started.
And once I learned how to capture aesthetic beauty from it, as well as a narrative or a story or just a moment, I really fell in love with it.
And so I learned as fast as I could in my spare time, just through workshops, through mainly experimentation, teaching myself a couple of kind of unofficial courses online.
There wasn't a huge YouTube community that I could tap into for free lessons, like I guess the kind of is now, and I loved every bit of it.
And I touched upon various genres of photography.
I tried everything and kind of settled on, I guess, the human aspect side of photography or the human aspect subjects that I wanted to capture and hopefully translate into more of a fine art way.
So that was it.
I kind of dive deep into the portrait side of it and very much a project based photographer.
Now I kind of build up over a few months to do a specific project that I have my mind on and combine my travel bug with my I guess, curiosity with culture and the photography side of it and hopefully combine all of that into one.
I also have a studio here, so we lived in after moving from the UK.
Moved from the UK when I was 30.
We lived in, went to Hong Kong with my job and lived there for nine years.
Loved every minute of it until COVID hit.
And.
COVID kind of forced us to reframe life, as it did with nearly everyone, and life became quickly quite difficult and doing photography became very difficult for two years, going on three years in Hong Kong.
So we decided to move to, I guess, somewhere where we've always wanted to go, which is Bali.
We're here now.
We've been here every year and part of that move a deal to myself was, if we move and can afford a studio, then we'd find a space and rent a space to.
I guess, practice, get creative, have other photographers in, build a little community.
We started a podcast and just have a nice, really cool, creative space.
So that's where I am now and that kind of leads us up to today and me sitting across from you in my studio and chatting about all things photography, yeah.
Well, I mean, there's so much in there that I want to talk about.
My memory is probably going to be my biggest enemy here, but I have friends in Hong Kong and I understand that it was pretty difficult for you just getting in and getting out.
And if you did go out you had to go into the Gulag for a couple of weeks when you got back.
So I can absolutely understand.
Although it's a great place, it probably was quite a pain to live there during the COVID years I was still flying.
I was still coming in and out Because I still fly now on a freelance basis.
So I, just like you said, once you were in the city it was very open compared to other countries and cities around the world.
There were still kind of general restrictions around bars, restaurants, gyms and kind of public areas, but everything was open.
We never had a lockdown.
There was not one lockdown where you had to stay inside and couldn't go out.
So, we were very, very fortunate with that, because it's a small country, it's essentially a city, and a small city at that.
They just closed the borders figuratively.
They didn't actually close the borders, but they made it so difficult to go in and out or to come back in.
Essentially, were you able?
to go into the Gulag with you being a pilot.
If you had to go out with work and come back, could you essentially just go home.
Initially, until they caught on to it very quickly, especially with airline pilots.
So I fly private jets and I have friends who fly for airlines at Cathay Pacific, based at Hong Kong, because they were doing so many flights every day or needed to, especially with cargo, so the airline, so the passenger flights were suspended, but they still had to get cargo in and out of the country and so there were still many, many flights going in and out every day.
Some of those crew actually I won't say some of those crew abused it, but it was just a matter of maths.
It was bound to happen that some of these crews were going to catch COVID and then bring it into the city.
If they weren't going to quarantine Because it's a densely populated city, the government were very worried about it spreading very quickly.
So I kind of understand where the politics and the decision-making was coming from.
There are other arguments as to how long it went on and playing games with people's livelihoods, essentially in the politics, the sub-politics that went on, which is a complete other discussion.
So initially, yes, and then they caught on to that very quickly and we had to do the same as passengers, which made life and work extremely difficult.
I mean sitting in a hotel room for three weeks, and hotels in Hong Kong they're small rooms, houses are smaller, apartments are smaller in Hong Kong just because of space.
So it became very difficult and if you caught COVID, if you tested positive when you came back in, you were sent off to a government isolation facility, which was a medical form of prison essentially.
So it was difficult.
It was difficult.
Yeah, well, I'm pleased that you got to Bali and obviously we're going to take a look at some of your work in a moment as well, and it also makes it easier to talk because we're only an hour away time zone.
But when you decided to open your studio, just sort of on the business aspect, are you intending to do portraiture, to charge people to do portraiture in the studio, or is it more because you mentioned that it's more like a community and people can come in and use the studio?
Is there a strong business aspect or is it more?
You know, I wanted this and we're going to make.
We're going to have fun with this studio.
Yeah, it's more of the latter.
As an expat here, you are not allowed to work as a photographer without a specific work permit, and those work permits, at Avery expensive, be very limited.
So, quite right, the government wants as many photographers, as well as other professions, to be locally filled with people from the country, and so I can't do that.
I can collaborate with other people or we employ a few photographers as well, so there are business opportunities with people wanting portraits, but actually most of the time we use it as creative space.
So really, if I was honest with you and myself, it was just a little baby, a little toy that I wanted, and actually, you know when I think about it and I don't know whether you experienced this, I'd love to hear but I get rusty pretty quickly with the camera.
You know the fundamentals are still there, but if I was to have a week of not picking up a camera which sometimes I do if I'm flying, for instance, or on holiday, you know, getting straight back, going straight back into either a paid project or a personal project it takes me a few days to kind of get back on my feet.
So that's where the studio is really helpful.
I can practice, I can conceptualize stuff and see if it works.
So that's kind of what I'm using it for.
I get rusty, but I can blow the cobwebs off pretty quickly when I start.
So it's, I mean I will do all sorts of projects.
I as well as my photography, I do lots of things.
I've got like a whole load of hats.
It's like those old Benny Hill sketches, where he's got he goes and puts a different hat on for everything and probably half the world won't understand Benny Hill.
But and now it's good to say but it's.
You know, I can go not just weeks, sometimes I can go a couple of months without picking the camera up.
And yes, it initially feels rusty when I pick it up, but normally say, for example, I've been busy working up to my winter tour season and I haven't picked the camera up for a month or so, and then I actually go on the tour and start shooting with the guests.
It's pretty quick to blow those cobwebs off and then the camera pretty much becomes an extension of my arm, probably in the course of a few minutes.
But yeah, I mean it's, and I can definitely appreciate it.
I mean I have this space that I've got here.
It's not a big space, but when I opened, when I started, you know, quit my old day job 13 years ago to become a photographer per se.
I decided that I needed to have a space away from the family space and so I rented the set.
It's the second and third floor of an apartment building, and so we do all of our living and family stuff downstairs.
But once I come upstairs to the third floor, this is my space and I sort of I've got a pulley system.
I'll pull a background down and just photograph stuff, you know, or I'll take a walk down to the river and grab some shots of the flowers there and things like that.
So I do keep my hand in, but for me, most of the time it's more a case of trying to.
I'm like, for example, at the moment it's so hot here I'd only go outside.
I mean, I'm doing, I do archery.
So I go to archery three times a week and that I end up covered in covered in sweat and have to come back and take a shower.
But apart from that, at the moment I avoid going outside as much as possible, but as soon as the fall comes along, I'm going to be off.
I've got a few locations that I want to do a reconnaissance trip for a new tour that I'm thinking of and, yeah, I'll be in another month or so well, maybe two months.
I'll be back out there and the camera will become a part of my arm again.
And are those tours?
Are they more like workshop based or are they more kind of guide based?
It's both.
My tours are essentially we go somewhere beautiful and we do the photography and I help people with their photography as much or as little as they want.
I'll do sessions on processing when we're at the hotel and things like that.
So, yeah, I call them tours and workshops and yeah, they are essentially a bit of both.
But if it's the person that's attending is a beginner, I'll spend as much time as they want to get to really suck as much of my knowledge up as possible.
If they're an advanced photographer, they probably won't need or want to listen to everything I talk about.
So it's really it's up to the participant as well.
Anyway enjoying one one day.
Oh, yeah, that would be great.
So Bali now is your new home.
I mean why Bali is there, and that's not a negative thing, it's a beautiful place, but out of all of the places that you've, you've, you know, possibly thought about no-transcript.
Really good question and everyone asked me that, quite rightly, because it's very much seen as a more of a tourist destination than an expat destination, if that makes sense.
But after making the decision that we wanted to exit Hong Kong, whether that was going to be a three month process or a three year process, we quickly narrowed down.
We knew we didn't want to go back to the UK.
We never want to go back to the UK.
You know I've been fortunate enough to experience visiting many countries, some of the more, I guess, destination friendly countries, multiple times, for example the US.
After being there so many times for many years I know that I don't want to go to the US for many reasons.
The same with a lot of countries in Europe.
And so that kind of left us with and we love Asia, we love Southeast Asia, we love the history, the many, many different cultures, the geography.
I mean there's so much beauty here and so much variety.
And I was always in love with Indonesia since I first came here 10 years ago.
I'm a big scuba diver, so I used to go to all these scuba diving places, kind of a mecca for scuba diving in Indonesia, and so I just learned, you know I experienced it a little bit more, really loved the people, really loved the culture and really loved the landscape and so and the climate, where warm weather, people and you know just kind of fit.
We got married here because of that and some of those reasons.
In 2018, my wife and I got married in Bali and you know we've just I don't know we should have an affinity for it.
So when we thought about moving, the added bonus of somewhere like Bali was the cost of living.
You know you can't stay in somewhere like Hong Kong for that long if you're not getting paid, and so we didn't want to be handcuffed too much to a job or to income necessary income if we didn't have to.
So all of those kind of ingredients fit together and, yeah, we don't regret it.
It's been difficult.
I won't lie.
Like it is moving to any country when you're 40 years old, it's a completely different way of living.
Coming from Hong Kong, which was very different, and so it took us took us a good six months to really settle in and actually a full year to build a community and quickly realize the photography community here is incredible.
You know there's a lot of it is quite a transient place, but there's many, many photographers, especially young photographers, who come and hone their craft here or use this as a base to work.
Various especially travel photography is huge here.
People, a lot of people base themselves here to launch to various jobs around the world, because one reason is it's cheap, but it's also has this environment and culture that's conducive to that type of person.
So it kind of it kind of fit with what we wanted at the time.
So, yeah, we're really happy here.
That's great.
That's great, and I completely understand the feeling when you find, when you get an affinity with a place.
So I mean, I came to Japan in 1991 and I was homesick for three days and then on the fourth morning I woke up and realized that I didn't want to leave.
It was really weird, it was like flicking a switch, and so that's essentially 32 years ago now and I I'm still here and I'm no longer have a British passport, as I was saying before, yes, hit the record button.
So, anyway, so excellent.
I have seen, obviously, in your, on your website, and you've sent me some images to take a look at, and I want to.
I'm going to actually share my screen now and open up your images, just so that you know I'd, so that the audience can see what we're looking at as well.
But here we go, I'm going to share my screen and let's, let's open this up, like so, if you what I would like to do.
We've got 10 images, I've got a few comments on some of them and and you know I'll interject those, but I initially just want you to quickly tell us a little bit about each of the images, if you could.
So what about?
What's this first one, I think it's.
It's Mongolia, right?
Yeah, so this is a photo of the equal hunters of Mongolia and the Altai Mountains.
I went there back in 2018 and, you know, spent some time living with these nomads and and these this is a long standing tradition of using eagles to hunt foxes, birds, ferrets, whatever you know kind of animals that these birds can catch.
They can catch anything up to the size of a fox, which is incredible, and they live with the.
They live with these eagles, they, they are their life.
Essentially.
They have them sitting in the living room with them.
It's very strange.
So, yeah, these, these equal hunters, captured my attention a while back and really allowed me to hone my craft of even though this, this photo, isn't a portrait 90% of this series was portraits and the beautiful light there, the beautiful people and just the aesthetics of how they lived in their mud huts and the very easy way of life seems easy, but slow paced way of life until they have to go hunting.
So I went on a couple of kind of hunting expeditions with them and this, this was part of it.
It was more staged.
I wanted to get a photo of them galloping at full speed and so, yeah, this was, this was with them.
We went out of Sony a7R3 and a 100, 400 and caught this shot at sunset with with the dust coming up as they gallop.
So incredible, incredible people, incredible animals.
Yeah.
Where is the sun in relation to this?
Is it coming from the left or the left?
Yeah.
Okay, yeah, it's, it's a.
I mean, I I love dust, fog, mist, rain, anything that, anything that puts particles in the air, because it really enables us to really see the atmosphere and and it creates atmosphere, as in, you know, the, the, the feel of the image, and this is absolutely stunning.
It was the first one that opened up when I, when I unzipped your images folder, and it's absolutely wonderful.
I'm aware of the Eagle Hunters and it's one of those, one of those things that I would also love to shoot, but I don't know if I'll get there very soon, but this makes me want to go even more.
It's freezing.
I mean, we went most people go in the summer, we went in the winter because it was a lot cheaper and I wanted that.
I wanted that atmosphere and and this I remember I'll never forget taking this shot, because I was with a couple of other guys.
Their cameras froze, it was minus 30 and below, and so you're trying to take a photo, as I'm sure you've experienced, with multiple layers of gloves on and, you know, multiple layers of clothes and hoping that the camera just doesn't break on you.
So, yeah, it was.
I would recommend going the summer, but there's something about the winter and the sun.
Obviously that far north in the, in the, in the summer you would get really nice long sunsets and sunrise.
So yeah, there's there's, there's pros and cons, I guess.
Yeah, I'm good with cold and not so good with heat, but I I have, I believe I have what's what's called fisherman's response or hunter's response, and I, even in minus 25, minus 30, I actually wear just just glove liners.
I don't wear gloves because so that I can use my, my.
My hands get warm when I'm cold, essentially so only if I'm standing around they get cold and I've almost had frostbite a few times because I only have to gloves up.
But the moment I start to photograph my I'm hunting essentially and this Northern European gene kicks in and it says okay, you need your dexterity, here's, here's some blood for your hands, and so it's really nice.
I didn't even know that was a thing I wish I had that, I think I've got the opposite.
I'm just bad circulation.
Let me see if I can switch this.
I think I need to come out of full screen to actually switch images, and this next one is an absolutely another stunning image.
Tell us a little bit about this.
This was one of the first photos it took in Bali, so it has this kind of special place in my heart and I'll tell you about the woman in a minute.
But this was a very, very simple rice field in Bali and they're obviously you know the ubiquitous here, they're everywhere and you know a lot of people come here to photograph the rice fields and I didn't want to do that.
I wanted them to be an element of the photo, but I wanted to capture the people who work.
Oh my goodness, they work at such long hours, even into the ages of what this woman is she's late 80s.
I mean, that for me, is something that I just, you know, we just don't experience that in the West, really, and you know, a lot of these old people are walking with almost 90 degree backs.
And they're just in Japan as well, and the thing that catches me is how friendly these people are and that's what I wanted to try and get across with this face and hopefully I do.
The lighting technical aspects I mean you've got the sunset coming from the left.
I wanted some rays.
I didn't quite get the rays, but I got some kind of haze in there.
I wanted that in the corner and this is obviously staged.
I mean, they are working in their field but I got them for 20 minutes to kind of give me some of their time, which is kind of how I do it.
Most of my shots are staged but they're the real people in their real environments.
So it's kind of a bit of both.
I had a Profoto B1X sorry, no, b10+, I think it was a few years ago now and a Profoto 135 Octobox which is kind of my go-to equipment on location If I need a little punch of light and I'm probably 50% of my images have a little punch of artificial light just to bring that subject out, so I can have all of the environment in, usually a golden hour in there, golden hour or blue hour in there, but also having the subject stand out from that background, and so kind of front left I've got the soft box, the Octobox, pointing at a 45 degree angle, giving that kind of Rembrandt lighting on a face.
And she was.
I only usually I try and get to know the subjects as well as I can.
So I'm with an assistant and my fixer and he's obviously speaking the local language.
They don't speak any English and I thought she wasn't very.
She was very, very smiley.
All she did was smile and laugh.
I thought, oh, I'm doing something right.
And not until the end did I realize she's actually deaf.
So getting her to pose the way I wanted to pose and hold up her sheath I think you call it sheath.
Do you call it sheath?
What do you call it?
Size sickle that's the word sickle.
Yeah, having her just get it the way I wanted to get it was easier than I thought.
Now I know that she was deaf.
So, yeah, this was really just a pure documentation of a typical rice farm worker into her.
I think she was 88, but just a beautiful lady and a beautiful shop.
Yeah, it absolutely is, and I think that you've the lighting.
From a photographer's perspective, it's obviously lit and you know you've obviously got the softbox there, but because you chose to put it on the same side as the sun, it almost feels like the sun wrapping around her face and it just it's so beautifully done and it's.
This is one of the first ones that I saw on your website when I was looking through, and it really is so beautifully done and I'm really sorry, go on.
No go ahead.
No, I'm really you bring up, brought up a good point actually, and I tell this to some people who want advice.
I often get these kinds of questions and the artificial light thing is a contentious issue with the purists and a lot of people dismiss it immediately and I guess I can understand why.
But it depends on what your intent is with it and, obviously, how you use it.
I mean, you see many photos out there with people over, using or overpowering the artificial light and it just looks tacky, porcelain, like artificial and just not nice in my opinion.
I'm so, so, so keen on just using it as subtle as possible.
If you could use it on the lowest setting possible, use it on the lowest setting possible.
If you can still bring out just a little bit of, I just like, say, a punch of light, just a tiny little of light onto someone's face, then that's how you do it.
Obviously, the materials help.
The closer you get, the bigger the light, the softer the light.
It makes it look more natural.
You know, and I know some people who actually put the light as close to the face as possible and then just Photoshop the light up.
I never really wanted to do that because I'm lazy and I don't want to use Photoshopers if I don't have to.
But B, I just felt that was a little bit even less authentic than doing it the way I do it.
But yeah, softening for me in photography is key with everything with pre-production and post.
Yeah, you're doing it.
I mean, if you go too close with the light you start to, the light becomes overpowering and you lose the ambient light.
But the balance that you're getting between the ambient light that your flash has no way of getting to, like in the distant hills there, and stuff like that, you're using it as a fill light and it's really just, it's perfect, it's subtle and very, very nice.
I mean it's high quality work and this was I mean I have to tell you.
I mean I get asked by people on the time if you'd like to interview so and so and that, but when I saw your work, it was like a three second decision.
It was okay, I was very kindly thank you.
I really wanted to get you on to share this.
So, and this is why I mean you're doing such a beautiful job of this and I had one other question, and this is not, again, not a negative thing.
It's all beautiful, but this is the only lady that has a smile.
I noticed that a lot of your other work the people are not smiling.
Is that a conscious decision?
Yes.
And now I'd say, I wouldn't say she has a smile.
This is.
I want it to be as natural as possible.
Yeah, yeah.
So the natural element of it.
There's something about when you put a camera in front of.
So.
90% of my subjects have either not been photographed before or not had someone like me specifically want to photograph them.
They've had, might have had selfies before, or they've never had a professional shoot before, and certainly not outside on location.
So immediately, as soon as I if I were to not kind of breathe them or make them feel a bit more at ease and break their eyes and that's a completely different topic altogether but if I was to just put a camera in their face their natural reaction is to smile and pose.
Now, the posing side of it is kind of okay, but they tend to pose like anyone would do, like quite rigidly and I'm demonstrating on camera here, so apologies to your audience, but quite rigidly and then smile like a fake smile.
It's like they're not smiling because I've made them laugh, they're smiling because they think that's what they should do for a photo.
So immediately I'm kind of like well, no, I know this is all has an element of fakeness, but you're a real person in a real situation and I want to document as much of your natural emotions and natural look as possible.
So usually speaking, that is when they relax and relax their face.
When they don't smile, it just adds a little bit more mood and drama, which is kind of the thing I like.
You know, I don't want to be depressing here, but life isn't all happy smiles and stuff.
I'm not doing family shoots, I'm not doing selfies, I'm not doing something along those kind of lines, I guess, and I want people to express with their eyes, I want people to express with their hands.
They're way more powerful than a smile is.
So you know, and sometimes it comes naturally because they're not very happy or they're struggling, or they're in pain or something like that.
This lady, she just couldn't help but smile.
So I just had to temper that a little bit.
I think I did get some photos that had her laughing.
Yeah, it's very subtle, but again, like the light, it's very subtle, but there's a bit of a smile there.
Well, obviously we'll go on to look at some of the others.
You just reminded me I think it was Chris Allweig who wrote a book about portraits and you reminded me.
There he talks about a session.
He got a few minutes with Ben Harper, the singer, and after taking a few shots he said, ben, could I get you to smile?
And Ben Harper said to him I smile with my eyes, man, and literally when you look at him.
Sometimes he's got this slight angle of his eyes and it's almost as though you know when he's happy.
You can tell in his eyes and not on his face, on his mouth, which you just reminded me of that.
So let me drive on to the next one.
Let's see, here we go, the fisherman.
Let's tell us about this.
This was about a stage design yet, so I had a very clear idea of this was in Bali as well, and obviously there are many, many local people here who rely on fish every day to just live, so the fishing community is huge.
Obviously, it's an island surrounded by water, so I wanted that to be a part of my Bali series and, for those who don't know Bali, a lot of people come here to surf, so getting a shot of someone fishing that isn't in the middle of the ocean was a challenge.
Just because of waves, there are very, very few calm areas in Bali.
We found a place that was relatively you can see on the photo there was still some not waves, but it's not flat, and I wanted to.
You know, I was watching this guy for a long time and kind of knew the area we wanted to surf.
We did a recce the day before at both sunrise, sunset, and we're happy with the location.
Just needed to find a person that was representative of what they do down there at that location every morning, and this guy was, you know, a young chap who would basically take his tiny little boat out every you know every morning for and go back and forth, back and forth with fish and this is how he would kind of bring the fish out.
I didn't want to get the boat in, I wanted this to be kind of minimalist, because I wanted the sun, the backlight, the sun to do the work and then again just the tiny little pop of light to bring his face out.
And what I liked what I wanted and liked that I got was the sun coming through the net behind him.
So it just adds some depth.
So, yeah, this guy, he was great.
He was cold by the end of it because he was standing around for 20 minutes while I was getting pushed over by the waves and the light was in the water.
Yeah, it was challenging, but you know, I wanted that glow of a fisherman coming back in with some fishy caught and this is the way I envisioned it.
Yeah, again another beautiful, and again there's very subtle lighting, but, yeah, beautiful.
I actually thought with this that you'd probably just used a reflector rather than a, you know, pop light into it.
So again, that just shows how subtle and how well you're doing what you're trying to do here, so wonderful.
Thank you, yeah, we did.
Actually.
It's funny you brought that up, because we did have a reflector, but I didn't have one big enough and one that wouldn't.
At the time and this is, I guess, a lesson for preparation, I just had a small gold reflector and it just didn't work.
It was too reflective almost, I see, and so this was just a very, very the soft box, provided that even softer film light, which just seemed to work, you know.
I have.
Over the years, I've used various colored reflectors and I had one gold and silver, and the gold was way too warm and the silver was way too harsh.
I often find that even if you want a bit of warm sunlight, if the light reflecting off the white is warm, you get warm light anyway.
So yeah, I've never really been a big fan of gold reflectors.
But excellent, let's move on to the next one.
Another beautiful shot.
Tell us about this.
This was quite a recent one, back in February this year, and we did a tour of East Java, which is one of the bigger islands in Indonesia and the home of Jakarta, the capital, and on the east side there are various subcultures surrounding a multitude of volcanoes.
So the landscape is beautiful and there are these tiny little kind of tribes that you wouldn't think of tribes, I mean, they're just cohorts of people.
But once you get to know them and what their belief systems are and how they live their life, it's fascinating.
And this is a shaman who practices a specific form of spirituality where he uses I guess what would you say incense and smoke to allure spirits into human bodies, to basically excise them of any evil spirits.
So you know, we watched this young guy get possessed.
Essentially, whether you believe in that stuff or not, it was just a good visual experience.
This guy went crazy, did things I didn't know a human body could do.
He was eating charcoal and that's why I wanted this in the photo and he uses this as, essentially, a coconut shell that he puts various substances in and lights them and gets this really incandescent smoke that he uses to that.
He gets this subject, he gets his patient, I guess, to smell and then go into this trance-like state.
And so I wanted to capture the shaman himself in a peaceful, not praying, but a spiritual state, with his tool, which is essentially his coconut shell, filled with smoke and fire, and with the Bali sorry, not with the Bali with the Indonesian palm trees as a backdrop, with a tiny bit of sun coming through there, so the angle of me on the ground.
I wanted to portray a feeling of power with the shaman.
So that's kind of the technical explanation from it, I guess.
Yeah, you've achieved all of it.
I mean everything, not just this photo, but all of your photos.
Everything that you have in the frame is helping to tell the story of that.
You're obviously trying to relay the trees, the sea in the last one, the rice field in the first one, the second one, the one, even the eagle guys, obviously with the dust and the landscape, everything that you put into the frame.
I see that you're very careful to make sure that it all adds to the story and nothing in there that doesn't.
It's probably why it's such something works.
Thank you, thank you, not at all, let's move on to the next one.
Another excellent shot.
Tell us about this one.
This was on the same project well, a slightly different project, but on the same trip.
This lady is part of the Tengah tribe in the Bromo Valley of Indonesia.
Bromo is very well known for its huge volcano.
There's actually a triad of volcanoes all in this beautiful valley, which is just a stunning thing to look at.
But a million people have shot that and it's great to visit.
But I wanted to capture what is this area about?
Who are the people?
What do they normally do?
It's a very agricultural area and I really enjoy shooting in agricultural environments with my subjects.
I don't know why.
I guess because there's some cool tools that we can use and props and like here with the motorbike and this grass.
You see them, and this was on the last day of the trip and I'd spent five days just watching people go up and down mountains and valleys on their really old kind of rickety motorbikes carrying huge sacks of grass.
I was like why?
Where's all this grass going?
It goes to their horses and they because the terrain is so mountainous and a lot of it can't be accessed by motorbikes or cars, they use horses just literally to carry stuff every day.
So I did get some photos of them, their horses.
But I really loved this one, mainly because of the atmosphere, and we had really really bad weather that trip.
Unfortunately, we went kind of at the end of rainy season and so I didn't what I had had planned.
With some beautiful landscapes in the background, with my subjects, I had to kind of pivot and go well, we, let's go into the clouds.
So we went up to the top of this volcano and there was a really kind of well conditioned road there.
I was like, well, this is amazing.
And just passed this lady on a bike and you know, I'd asked a few people before I found her and they weren't interested, which is fine, like happens all the time.
Yeah, it's rare that I can ask someone in their their up for it, and she was.
She was very keen.
So, yeah, no problem.
Obviously we give them a little bit of money to spend some time with us, but she was just a depiction of of the people there and really part of their daily ritual of carrying these, these huge sacks of grass, heavy sacks of grass, and up and down mountains to to fields and to feed feed the horses, wow.
Yeah, I'm interested in.
Obviously again, the atmosphere is beautiful and the the light on the motorbike adds so much.
Did you have any technical issues sort of balancing that light or you know?
Was it pretty easy?
No, martin, I have.
I have technical issues every shoe.
I mean it's it's just part of the part of the person.
I mean the biggest, to be honest, the biggest difficulty with this was the rain, and it wasn't quite rainy on this shot, but it was.
It was almost like the UK drizzle.
You know you get to buy.
You know, by the after 10 minutes our cameras were getting wet and the lights getting wet, and so you know we'll obviously prepare as much as we can for that.
But getting that light, the motorbike light, which was in and out, I mean we're talking Indonesia, rural poor Indonesia, where the bike, you know, could barely make it up the hill and the light only turns on sometimes and then it flickers out and then it's.
So that was an issue she had to keep.
They didn't in this photo but most of the photos that I took of her she had to keep a hand on the accelerator.
I was like I can't.
I don't want that.
I want her to.
I want her to be in a natural pose for it, not as if she's going biking.
It's just the way I wanted it to look.
So we got lucky with this and you know the light.
I think I did bring it out in post a lot more than than what it is in raw, but yeah, yeah, that was.
We did have some technical issues with that, yeah.
I thought probably, so.
It's again a beautiful shot, so let me move on.
Tell us about this one.
Mohamed.
Yeah, him and I were friends.
After this shot we got to know each other really well.
This was in Oman.
I took a trip.
I had a small amount of time off between actually flying jobs in Dubai.
I was like, well, I'm not going to sit around in Dubai, I'm not a huge fan of Dubai, I don't want to sit there, for I think I had five days and not do anything, where I can kind of go into the desert and see what's see what's about and meet some people and you will try and try my best to get you know.
If anyone knows, the history of that area of the world used to be kind of ruled by the Bedouins, who were essentially shepherds, camel shepherds and were nomadic as well.
They've moved from one place to another throughout the whole of the Arabian Peninsula and when Dubai and Abu Dhabi kind of were came along, essentially were created, 95% of them from the UAE, as we know today.
95% of them got jobs and were westernized and didn't need to continue with their way of life.
So that was a challenge to me.
I was like, well, let's go and try and find some.
Couldn't find any in the UAE went to hide a car after speaking to various kind of fixers, guides and people in the area.
I was like where can I find some authentic Bedouins?
And they said, well, you're not going to find them in the UAE and you might find some in this area of Oman which is from Dubai.
Oh, I can't remember now, maybe a five, six hour car journey.
So I rented a car, got across the border for a recce, found a hotel and just went to this village, which is its own island, essentially on the northeast tip of Oman, and befriended a guy who kind of showed me around and met these people.
And this village was in the middle of nowhere.
I had to get a boat there and I said, you know, explained, kind of none of them spoke English, but I had the guy there, which is essential for me, and he explained what I wanted to do, and so I spent two very fast days with them.
I said, look, I just want to get some photos.
And the challenges were that the village was nestled in a bay that was surrounded by huge cliffs and so getting natural light was soft, natural light in golden hours was almost impossible and the sun wasn't going the right way.
So well, this is.
You have to work with what you got.
So I didn't get many outside.
I got a couple outside which were nice, but this one was kind of powerful and quite emotional.
At the time I said to this man he was kind of the leader, not the leader, but he was the most forefront man that I was with at the time and he was really happy to meet me.
He had me in his home, we ate together, drank together.
He had limited English so at least I could converse with him a little bit Said look, I hope it's not too sensitive, but the core, the core values of your life and your village and the way you live actually aren't what I thought they were in terms of camels, desert shepherd, not in this part of the world.
You live in and around Islam.
And how can I capture something that means something to you but also to others?
And you know, and this was kind of it, he showed me the area where he prays a lot and obviously he has the Quran there and you know I learned a lot.
It was interesting how ignorant I was of that religion, and not in a nasty or derogatory way.
You can always learn more.
And he taught me a lot about his values, his beliefs, how he prays.
And it just just lucky for me that this room had a window, kind of a window, a shuttered window that I could put light in.
Outside of that window was another kind of room which was completely dark.
So if you, if you shut that shutter, pitch black.
So immediate challenge there was to somehow get light in, because the aesthetics of the room and the composition that naturally was given to me was perfect and it was his room, his rugs, his Quran, his, his moment of prayer.
And so I had the softbox, I put it outside and flashed away.
And he allowed me to photograph while he was praying, which which was a privilege, and you know it's it's not as sensitive as I thought it might be, but yeah, this was, this was special.
Yeah, I enjoyed, enjoyed it.
Yeah, that's amazing.
I, I realized, as you were talking, that that was that was softbox light coming through there and I'm thinking, wow, what an amazing job again.
But yeah, you, you took some, a lot of things there.
I, I did a couple of tours in Morocco a few years ago and our guide there was he.
He talked to me a lot about the religion and you know he talked about his Quran readings when he was a kid and we, you know, we got into some very deep conversations and I, I, I can completely understand, you know, when you talk with people in that live, that life it's, it's a big eye opener and I think it helps to remove a lot of the stigma that we tend to have in in Western countries.
You know a lot of not everybody, but I'm sure a lot of people, and I, I really enjoyed those experiences and this came it, it all brought, brought it all straight back and I actually bought a Quran on my last visit.
But I, it's obvious I can't read it.
The guy said.
But he said, would you like to get an English translated one?
And I said I don't want to offend you.
I said I don't want to read it, I just want to own it and and just look at the, the writing, you know the way that it's such beautiful writing.
Yeah, but yeah, I totally agree.
And you know, like, like a lot of cultures, a lot of belief systems, there are extremist viewpoints right and unfortunately those I mean look at politics same same kind of belief, the structure right, it's the.
Those extreme opinions get the headlines and obviously obviously outside of kind of the, the tragedies that happen, but just in the generalization and the way people have to process it to make sense of it, they will, they will just make decision.
Well, I don't like that or I don't, I don't agree with that way of believing.
So there's so many nuances within that and you know Islam specifically, there are very, very there are many different forms of it or nuances that are that are attributed to it according to not only the country that the people are living in but also the history of those sectarian areas, et cetera, et cetera.
So I totally agree with you and actually you know this is why I'm a huge fan of podcasts and just generally discourse.
It's the biggest educator in the world is meeting other people and talking to them and, more importantly, listening, right.
So this is where you know if photography is secondary to that for me anyway, and you know, having having those experiences and traveling it as a privilege if you're able to use that privilege to either educate people or open someone's eyes, or if it's just open your own eyes, then then do it.
So, yeah, this was a privilege for me, for sure, yeah, wow.
Yeah, you know you.
You I mentioned the writing a moment ago and I one of the biggest appeals for me when I moved to Japan was the, was the writing system, and you just reminded me of.
The Japanese have a number of different ways of of writing the word to listen.
One of them is more like to hear, which is more passive, and you know, it just comes into your ears and that's it.
But the other one is written in a way that the, the particles that make up the character and they actually represent you, moving your body towards the person and and looking at them while you're listening.
And that's really important, because a lot of people don't.
You know, you can sit Like a doctor in an office, can be typing away, writing notes, looking at their computer screen, while they're listening to you and all they're doing is hearing you.
But the moment they stop writing and turn their chair and look towards you, you feel much more engaged than as though they really are listening to you.
And that, that point that you made there it just brought that back to me as well.
It's, it's all Interesting.
Yeah, it's beautiful stuff.
So let's move on to the next one.
Let's see, tell us about this shot.
Look at the face on the camel.
Isn't that grimace?
It's brilliant.
Yeah, this was in the same area, and I actually call this one lost tribes because this man is a Bedouin, a young Bedouin, and his job was to herd camels right for the day, every day, and so he had the way with dealing with these camels because obviously, as you know, when you are trying to photograph animals or children, you've got a big task on your hands right to get what you want.
So, because there's so unpredictable, I wanted a photo that was angular, I wanted this feeling of movement and I wanted the camels in line with the shepherd.
So I had a very specific way of no, I need the camels here and I need you here.
And I could see him thinking well, what do you, how do you explain me to do that?
These are two huge camels.
But he did it.
We tried quite a few times and I had an assistant here.
So actually, if I remember correctly, I did use a softbox, but I didn't need it in the end because the sun that's actually sunlight on his face and I think I just accentuated that a little bit with, again, tiny little subtle pop, just because he had really dark skin and if I wanted the camels lighter for hair or whatever you call it to be as well exposed along with him, then I just needed a little pop.
So, yeah, he was walking along, camels were walking and yeah, I was lucky to get that really cool expression on the lead camels face.
Yeah, yeah.
But the guy as well, he's a.
He's really good looking.
He's got, he's got that.
The features and the you know, just the shape of his face and the way the lights catching his well, it will be his right cheek and then going off into darkness is really really nice.
But that, yeah, the lights on the camel, the main camel, the lights on that is absolutely amazing as well.
You've done a.
I mean, every one of these are stunning, thank you, and we're going to have to.
I think I'm keeping you way too long, so I'm going to try and go a little bit quicker on these, but Choose any other one Tell us a little bit about this.
This was a lady called Tatu and she was part of the Mentawai tribe in Indonesia and Sibirut, indonesia.
She was a very animist belief system, lived purely off the land and express their belonging and spirituality with tattoos, jewelry and shamanism.
So I went to visit them many years ago now and lived in their house for you know, just a wooden hut for four days and just got to know them essentially, and she was the life and soul of the party.
And they smoke like I've never seen anyone smoke.
It is it's chain smoking to another level.
So I had to get photos of them smoking.
It's just that they were either smoking what I guess would be there's kind of some form of weed and marijuana or some kind of plant that they would smoke in these big, long cigarettes, or we brought them as a gift you know, 1000 cigarettes, whatever it was, and they got through those in a few days, no problem.
So she was, she would sit in the corner of her house all the time like this and, just, you know, spout a load of nonsense and have a laugh and smoke, and I just wanted to capture her really because she was just, she was just super cool, but that whole experience was incredible.
Yeah, yeah.
So I'm not sure if that was the, if you went on for the explanation, but you said animist.
Was it the word about their religion or their beliefs?
I've not heard that word, is that?
What does it mean?
Um, animist is is the belief that objects, places and creatures or animals all possess like a distinct spiritual essence.
So really it's a form of spirituality with the earth and with all natural things, which is why they live in, in natural surroundings, you know, they build, they, they eat whatever they kill.
They don't have any kind of influence from, from the outside world, other than the odd photographer coming or, um, I think one of them has a phone, so they kind of gather around that I, I had an iPad with me and I've never seen anyone react to an iPad as as as they did.
So there was about a family of 10 living under one roof.
And then, obviously, when they, when they know some white, uh, essentially rich people, according to them come to the area, there's families from all over that come out and you end up with 50 people in the house and you know, just having fun with them and them doing ceremonies, and and when I got my iPad out, I was quite careful.
I had some expensive camera equipment, lighting and laptop, so but I I said, look, you know, worst case, I'm willing to.
You know, worst case, I'm willing to lose an iPad.
But I wasn't and they didn't steal anything, but I put an iPad in front of them and literally I've never seen like 50 people circle around an iPad.
I think I had a movie on there and I just put something on for them in English.
They couldn't understand any of it, but they have never seen one before, so they were just transfixed.
But yeah anyway, animus, animus, animism is essentially a spiritual connection with, with nature.
That's very much like Shintoism, the Japanese, one of the two main Japanese religions.
There's a spirit in everything.
Essentially, they say, even a grain of rice.
If you waste a grain of rice, you're upsetting the, the, the bigger scheme of things.
So I mean, my wife and I won't, won't leave up, even if we eat every single grain in our world every, every evening, when we, when we eat, we won't leave anything.
And that's the basis of the.
You know because I've been out for dinner with Japanese people before and it's polite to correct me if I'm wrong.
Is it polite to leave some food or to not make sure you finish everything?
It's.
So there are two different, contradictory ways of eating.
One is if you're out with someone, it's it's impolite for them to not overfeed you to the point where you can't finish the food.
So if you've got a hotel or a restaurant or something, then generally there'll be more food there and they end up they've got a big as a, as a nation.
They've got a huge food loss problem.
You know, through waste, they, they, they waste a lot of food in hotels and places like that, but in the home most people are, are kind of spiritual and have this belief that you don't waste anything.
So it's it's kind of two sides of the same coin which are very contradictory.
But yeah, it depends on the situation.
And is that why they bless a lot of objects as well?
Yeah, I mean, if you go to on my winter tours, my wildlife tours, we actually go to a Shinto shrine and have a blessing, and if you go in there, there's always a shelf and a few things at the back of the shrine where they have like fish and and fruit and vegetables and everything, and they're all put, they're all taken to the shrine as as offerings, but they're all blessed and then they'll be either given back to the community, having been blessed, or the shrine will use them.
But they're, they're, they're very much into.
Everything has a God.
You know the, the, the, obviously, the mountains, the trees, the land, the insects, everything has, has its, has its God and that, like you know, a God is in every, in everything around us.
So it's kind of how you're, it teaches you to be respectful to things.
There was, there was even a I'm saying this kind of as an amusing thing, but it was.
It was.
There was a song that was very popular a few years ago about the God of the toilet and how this.
This young girl had been told by her grandmother about the God of the toilet and if you don't keep your toilet clean, the toilet God will be upset with you, and so she always thinks about her grandmother as she cleans the toilet and it was.
It's typical of how a lot of the Japanese people pass on spiritualism and things like that through stories about, about the gods and things and and yeah, that sort of I guess you know it would be the animism.
Did you say that for the?
It's that type of of religion, so it's nice to.
I've not heard that word, but it's definitely a fit.
Anyway, let's try and get through these last few photos.
I think they've got two more.
So again, this was another one with no smiles, which which makes it so much more powerful.
Tell us about this.
Yeah, so this was actually genuinely no smiles these were.
I want to say this word not in an English way, because it's derogatory in an English way, but this is the way they explain who they are.
They were peasants of of Uganda, an area in Uganda called Ginger, and this was one of my first ever like photos I was happy with ever.
This is probably six years ago now, and this was also one of the first photos I'd used artificial light on and this family were.
I saw this lady and I actually have a video of it.
I saw the lady in the middle cutting down these huge groups of bananas from the tree just outside her house and you can't really call it house, it's just like a mud hut essentially and I was there initially seeing the gorillas of Bawindi and because I was just really starting to get into photography and I still have a lot of wildlife I still do I'm from taking photos of gorillas down to the, the Ginger area, which was, you know, a different part of the country, but where I wanted to see how people live down there was it was known for just rural, authentic life essentially, and that's what I titled this photo.
That's Life and this is.
This is their life, this is their living room, this is their daily kind of daily food, daily consumption, and this is the only clothes they own it.
Through luck, the color of her dress matched the color of the bananas.
I've got another portrait of her holding bananas on her head and it took me a while.
This took me a while to get them to warm up to me and I guess in the middle of that warm up process I had this shot and so I kind of took shots and showed them.
You know, showing them is everything.
They loved it.
I gave them printouts and just wanted to somehow give back and obviously gave them some money which they were very thankful for and, you know, sat with them and this was, this was my portrayal of them in in their own habitat.
And it's a sad one for me because they are sad, they were sad people they were, they were suffering and you know, visiting these types of villages is difficult because you're coming in as as a very rich person in comparison to them financially, and they have nothing.
They literally have nothing.
So sometimes to to photograph them almost feels like you're stealing from them, which I felt a little bit at the time.
I hadn't much less experience.
So I was you know I was.
I was both naive and ignorant.
I guess Not that I upset them in any way, I just felt I I definitely felt after that trip a little bit of unease that I had gone there to photograph people, even though I treated them as I do with everyone, like with full respect, gave them as much money as I could and gave them some photos that hopefully they still keep.
They went back about a week later and they had their little printouts on their on their wall in the house, which was really lovely to see.
Yeah, this is a.
This was a kind of a sad, a sad photo, but yeah, that's that's.
That is life sometimes and it's very much, very much is for them.
Yeah.
Again you you're connecting lots of dots in my mind as I'm listening to your explanation and the Himba people in Namibia.
The word Himba is a rare, old word.
It means beggar and a lot of people know that the Himba people they're a proud and a wonderful culture.
They're proud people with a wonderful culture, but the name given to them means beggar and that to me is kind of, again sad.
But they live a very, very humble life and I've photographed them most years, for the last 13, no, last 10 years or so.
And this, when you said about the, you know, not in a derogative way, but the word use, the word peasant, it kind of reminded me of that.
But also, I mean I just I know what you mean we always, when we go to the Himba, we always take them.
We give them money in the form of we will buy their souvenirs.
But we actually, whenever we go to the Himba, we take them a car full of produce.
We will take them like a couple of like 50 pounds sacks of corn flour or maces and we'll take them.
They like the big tubs of Vaseline because they can make the.
They mix ochre, they grind ochre and mix it with the Vaseline now instead of goat's milk butter, because that starts to go rancid.
So rather than the goat's milk butter to make their cream that they put their or their ochre on the skin, they like to mix it with Vaseline.
So we take them big tubs of.
Vaseline and things like that.
But, yeah, trying to help out as much as you can.
You've got to try to help the people that you're photographing or it does feel like stealing, but I think you did.
You did what you could here and you know yeah, when you're an individual, you can only, you can only do so.
We can only do so much anyway other than going there building them stuff and basically just funding directly whatever they want.
And you know, if you can't do that, which nearly all of us can't then what can you do?
And if you're going to what feels like take something from them in the form of an image where I don't look at it like that at all, but that's the way it may be perceived to them or to others then obviously you have to pay them for their time or contribute to something, or you know, or whatever it may look like.
And I do that everywhere we go.
This was just a bit more of a visceral kind of experience, I guess, with them.
Yeah, yeah, okay, this is the last one that tells us about this.
Yeah, this was on the same trip and this has been my most popular photo with people and it's it's not my favorite.
But the girl in green I call this was again a peasant you can see by her clothes.
Like she.
She got given this dress years ago but before I took the shot and she bet she and she barely takes it off and she was playing with this, this branch, with leaves, with her fellow brothers and sisters and people in the village and just having like these kind of fights.
And I found one of a hut which had really nice light in it and not so much of a there's kind of a brick wall behind which which bounced a little bit of light, but it was just perfect for kind of a kind of quasi studio type area.
And she was keen, she was, she was.
You know, you can tell if you're in a group of people, you can tell even with children, like, oh, maybe that one's a bit more keen for a photo than that one and through my fortune, she was very photogenic, just had this natural, that was purely natural look, natural stance, natural hands, and it just all kind of clicked excuse the pun.
And yeah, she was, she was beautiful and I hope I get to see her one day again, but that there's not much story behind this image.
It was just a beautiful little girl who who had nothing other than a smile on her face and and friends to play with.
And and I wanted to take a photo of her.
So, yeah, it's, the color is is stunning, the way it really, it really brings out the yeah.
Yeah, like the color contrast between the darks and the, the greeners, and the way the green is almost the same color in the dress and the leaves, but those eyes, the, you know the look on her face.
This is almost it feels a little bit like Tim Tim Curry's Afghan girl.
Steve McCurry.
Yeah, steve McCurry, yeah.
And the Afghan girl photo is absolutely.
You know that comes.
That came to me when I looked at this the eyes, the way she's looking straight at you and again a certain sadness certain sadness, but, yeah, beautiful young girl and absolutely stunning work.
So what I want to do but I'm aware I've, I've, I've had you talking now, including our pre recording chat, for an hour and a half, so we're not.
We're going to try and wrap this up, it's okay.
I, I was.
I got a couple of other things that I wanted to ask.
One was if you have any advice for people that want to shoot portraits and if it can be really quick or as long as you want, but you know anything that you know because you, you are doing such a wonderful job of this and have you got any advice for anyone that would like to do even just portrait work?
Yeah, well, first of all, I was following my YouTube channel.
Yeah, do you have a lot of tips and tricks on there?
And later in the year I'm releasing a portrait masterclass, so standby for that.
But I can run through a couple quickly that I've experienced, not through Birx, not through YouTube, not through, just through failing.
And that's probably the first step is just like with all photography right, be prepared to fail.
But when it comes to portraits, try not to worry too much about the technical stuff and I know that's easy for me to say, but people will see my shots and go well, what light did you use or what lens did you use?
And they're all important if you have the luxury of being able to choose.
But actually, with portraits, you are dealing with humans, and that is both a beautiful thing because they're so complex and full of depth.
If you're able to pull that out, give yourself time.
Let's put it in the context of maybe an easy to understand context.
You have someone in a studio, in a confined room with one light source, whether that's natural light coming through a window or artificial light.
That immediately is going to be intimidating for the person, especially if they haven't done it before, if they're members of the public and they're paying you to get some cool portraits, even if they're models and maybe they haven't met you before, they don't know the environment, it's always always a little bit intimidating.
There's always apprehension there and there's a complete necessity to break the ice.
So give yourself time to.
That.
Could be 30 minutes, could be 10 minutes, could be two hours.
I've been with myself for an hour Just for them to know where the toilet is, where to sit, what the backdrop is, what my camera looks like, what the setup is about, if they get to see the photos or not, where they're from, if they've done this before, what they're looking for in terms of what type of images do they want?
So there's a whole conversation and even if that conversation means nothing, it helps that person feel a little bit more at ease.
And if you don't kind of have those skills, then maybe have someone else there If you don't feel comfortable in yourself.
Because, as you know as well, photographers, if you're dealing with other human, there's a little bit of pressure or there's a little bit of nerves there as well.
You don't want to keep people waiting for too long and or how am I going to get them to do this and how am I going to get them to do that?
Most of the work comes from the preparation and just chatting to them.
You can see it in someone's photo and I'm trying to demonstrate that with my master class later in the year.
Getting a stranger off the street and I mentioned this earlier putting them in front of the camera.
They're going to be rigid, they're going to be fake, they're not going to know what to do, they're going to be scared, and that will come across in the images.
If you can somehow find a connection, I send my clients' questionnaires out about at least three or four days before a shoot so that immediately there is a connection that oh, they actually care about me and oh, I've got to answer.
Now it becomes more of a collaboration.
I've got to answer some questions and maybe I can have an input and even though I'm paying them, I can kind of I'll take their advice, but now I can also feel a bit more free to say what I want to say.
That's really, really important when you're trying to get the best out of eyes, your best out of a face, best out of a pose, or even what to do after that.
That would be a big, big tip for me.
The next one is you can be applied across all photography practice and you can practice the good thing with portraits.
If you live with someone else, or if you have children or you're married, or even if you just have a flatmate or someone else you live with, you can just buy them a beer or buy them some sweets or whatever it is.
Bribe them to be, your test subject and sit them on your bed, have a light coming from somewhere.
It doesn't need to be anything fancy, just practice and understand where something like light is coming from and how that is going to change the look of a portrait, the emotion of a portrait, because, you know, as photographers we rely on light to tell as much of the story as anything else.
If you have exactly the same composition, the same subject and the same pose, but they both have completely different lighting, one's going to mean something compared to the other.
Just practice with that.
Try not to worry about technical settings and just practice as much as you can with someone else, essentially, and one source of light, and just practice away.
Excellent advice and a wonderful conversation.
I will start to wrap it up.
I am going to include your Mac Jacob photography and your Mood Studio Bali links in the podcast.
Can people get to your YouTube channel from there, from your website?
Yes, it's on my website, on the home page, all my social links, and actually the website has a podcast page itself.
You can find me, obviously, on youtube.
My username for all my social channels is the same it's mattyj underscore ay.
You can find me across Instagram, twitter, youtube and Apple podcasts.
You can find me on other news or platforms as well as my website.
Excellent, I'll make sure that the links go into there.
I'm sure people will come and check out your work.
It really is stunning.
It's been a pleasure to speak today.
Was there anything else that you wanted to add before you leave?
Oh good, I don't think so.
I think I've talked myself out of any other conversation topics today.
Thank you very much for having me, it's always a pleasure to just talk to other photographers.
Thank you very much.
It's been really enjoyable Not at all.
It's been a pleasure.
I've enjoyed the conversation.
I hope to talk again at some point as well.
I'm sure we will Thank you very much, Matt.
We'll catch up again.
Thank you very much.
Thank you very much for listening today.
I hope you enjoyed that conversation and the audio quality didn't spoil it too much.
I tried to find some plugins and various ways to remove that slight echo, but I couldn't find anything that would do it properly, so it's how it had to be.
I hope you enjoyed the conversation with Matt.
He's a very talented photographer and I really enjoyed the conversation.
If you do enjoy the podcast and would consider supporting us via Patreon, go to mbpac.
If you'd like to catch up with me, go to martinbaileyphotographycom and you will find links there to everything 820 episodes at this point on the blog and you can find links to all of the social media that I'm into, as well as links to my tours and workshops and things like that.
So, thank you very much.
I'll see you next week.
Bye, bye.