 All right, how's it going guys? Welcome back to the channel, it's fantastic. Today we have the very awesome Eric Mencher here. His work is photography that I've been increasingly falling in love with since I saw it in Framish Magazine. So welcome to the channel, Eric, it's fantastic to have you here. Thank you so much. It's an honor, you know, looking through your channel is just incredible what you've put out there. It's like the art history class that I never took, the photography history class. Yeah. And you touch on everything that's so very important to photography. Well, thank you, it's interesting, you know, because we'll touch on to this in a second, you know, obviously the art history class or photography class that you never took, but you're looking at your background here, it's like you were, you know, you were a staff photographer for the Philadelphia Inquirer. You know, you've received many awards. You know, you've got here the well-pressed photo, picture of the year, best of photo journalism. You've had fellowships, I believe, at Penn State University. You just, it seems like there's a list of accomplishments that you have accumulated over the years. So really kind of what, where did this all start? Well, I guess it started in high school, actually. I actually have given presentations and they're called from Instamatic to iPhone. My first camera was a Kodak Instamatic. I don't know if any of your viewers will even know what that is. But to me, it's amazing because the Instamatic in so many ways was like the iPhone is now. It's, you're concentrating on what you're seeing instead of all this peripheral, maybe I can say that gets in the way of doing photography, particularly street photography. Anyway, that was in high school. And one thing led to another. I worked on my university newspaper, which was a daily newspaper, which is rare and it gave me great experience. And then I had a succession of newspaper, staff photography jobs, culminating in the job at the Philadelphia Inquirer where I worked for over 20 years. And in the 80s, 90s, into the early 2000s, was one of the best newspapers in the United States. We had a Sunday magazine. We had all kinds of photographic opportunities traveling the world. But as I like to say, I would cover something in Rwanda and my first assignment back in Philadelphia for the newspaper was to go photograph cannolis in a pastry shop in South Philadelphia. So, you know, it's the beautiful thing about newspaper photography in particular is the breadth of the, sitting down on the job for any assignment. And I put my heart out into almost everything I did, no matter whether it was the cannoli or whether it was Rwanda. Been incredibly passionate about it ever since I first picked up that Instamatic. That is the, I was just thinking another day about my first experience with photography in that kind of immediate, I think it was a Kodak, sort of similar sort of thing, it was a big brick. And it was, I found it was like a palchemy and seeing that image kind of just sort of grow on the little things you flicked it around. And that kind of echoes, did you think that sort of shaped the way that you approached photography sort of subsequently? Yeah, I think a lot of different things have come into play. Wow, my education as a child, the way my parents taught me how to sort of live in the world, relationships I've had probably most important the relationship that I've had in my over 35 years of marriage to Cass who's also a photographer, an amazing photographer. That's probably shaped me more than anything. However, there's also all the things that, everybody looks to. I mistakenly earlier said, art history course, but I meant photography history course. But on the other hand, art history is so important. I mean, it helped shape me. I love going to museums, literature, music. I mean, I listened to a Bob Dylan song and I'm inspired to go out and do photography because I'm hearing somebody who did what he did so well that I'm gonna go out and it inspires me to be an even better photographer. Not that it always helps, but it's all those things that really helped shape me from the time I was very young to all those things you encounter. My experiences living on and off in Guatemala with Cass, it was a really spiritual experience, not in a religious sense, but just that brought out something in me. I think it's some of the best work I've ever done. So many things contribute to where I am right now. Now you've mentioned spiritual ideas and here on your website, which I'll bring up in a second, the first sort of section that you have with your photography is called tradition. So I'm assuming things at the top, it feels very important to you. And you got this striking image and I don't know the word for it, but no doubt you like a saint or some procession going through there. Exactly. Is this, these kind of these photographs that so touch on that, is this something that you sort of stumbled across being in Guatemala? Was it something that you inherently were drawn towards prior to being immersed in this kind of environment? A combination of a lot of things, what you just touched on, but just being there and knowing what is important to the Guatemalan, to some of the Guatemalan people, I just have to give you a quick background. Guatemala is 50% Maya. They have these traditions that date back thousands of years combined with Catholicism that came with the Spanish and somehow they seem to mix it pretty well and that fascinated me. I'm not Catholic, I'm not Christian, but I'm Jewish. But nonetheless, it just fascinated me. And being kind of person interested in how people play out whatever it is they're doing on the street, this was just a goldmine of photographic opportunity for me, not just to photograph what was there, but to, in a way photograph how I felt about what was there as well. It's interesting you mentioned that, how you felt about the image. It's often, when we talk about sort of story, in photography and so now it's a, I think often people confuse it with this idea of, you know, kind of like a, more like a Eugene Smith sort of thing where there has to be a story. Whereas if you're trying to communicate something, it often feels about feeling. So how do you get the way that you feel about a situation through the photograph? I was hoping you wouldn't ask, but. A lot of it is just luck to tell you the truth. I mean, there are some minor details in this particular picture. Do you mind going back just for a second? Okay, so on the far, on the right, kind of in the upper corner is a hand with some sort of smartphone, or some sort of mobile phone coming in. And the rest of it is this very traditional, but it's also a mix. And then it's detailed, it's hard to see here, but there's some sort of spray aerosol can underneath the likeness of Jesus there. And so it's this combination of modernity with these ancient rituals. And that's, I was feeling that I'm in the modern world. I'm there with an iPhone. And I'm feeling that, but I'm also feeling very much a part of these ancient traditions. That's a little bit more on the surface, but nonetheless, that kind of addresses how I might go about, but a lot of it's luck. I mean, I certainly did not see that phone coming in on the upper right when I photographed it, but later in the editing, that's real, because I had four or five frames of this man, so permanently, devoutedly praying that that was the one with the hand coming in, because it combined what I was feeling about being there. Yeah, do you feel about reacting to an image? You mentioned often that it's kind of hard to put into words sometimes why you took a specific photograph. But if you were to give advice to somebody who's just starting off or they want to be a little bit more fluid in their image-taking, how much of a gut instinct or how much does gut instinct play as a role in your taking photographs? Oh, I think it's almost everything to tell you the truth. It really is. You know, it's a matter of, do I make a right turn here? Do I go to the left? The light, all of those things. Do I go to where that one point of light is coming through the buildings? Are from a distance. I see this young woman who was just, I don't know what she was thinking, but she obviously was having some sort of personal experience and I saw that from a distance and I went racing up there. So it's a combination, it's also intuition, but combined with paying attention. I think paying attention is so important to this kind of photography, well, any kind of photography. It's important to life. It's gonna enrich your life by paying attention to what's around you, the people around you, the architecture around you, the light that falls around you, all of those things. One of the things, as I've been looking through here that sort of springs into my mind is this is obviously quite clearly, this is not America. This is not what most people see in their day-to-day lives. And there is occasionally, I think there's a feeling that to create these kind of images or street photography or landscape or anything of this kind of stuff, you need to go that somewhere that is different, photo worthy for one of a better word. People will say, I can't take these pictures. Oh, it's easy for you, because you know, he was in Guatemala and great images just happened. But what would you say to people who don't have, say the capacity to travel, to kind of reconnect with the things that are around in the commonplace the everyday in a way that inspires them visually? Yeah, it can be tricky. Street photography in particular and documentary photography, photojournalism. It involves people. So, you know, although I like to shoot landscapes, I love to shoot architectural photographs where people are just a small part of the picture. But, you know, you can do this in your own backyard. It's rumored that Elliot Irwitt once said you can shoot good pictures anywhere. You can even shoot good pictures in New Jersey, which is a much maligned state in the United States. I don't know if he actually said it, but it's true. I mean, you can go virtually anywhere and find something interesting. Maybe you go out with a macro lens and look, you know, on that really tiny level as opposed to a bigger picture. It can be done anywhere, but it's difficult. I mean, here in Philadelphia, it's like, wow, in the beginning when I first moved here, I photographed everything and some things really fell into place nicely. Now I go out and it's a problem because it's all, it seems common to me. And I take, I walk everywhere. My wife and I, we don't have a car, so we walk, which is also key to good photography is walking. And when you're living, I don't know about that many other parts of the world, but if you're living in a small kind of suburban or rural town in the United States, you don't walk. You know, you're driving in your car. And I think it's really important to get out and walk, every town, everywhere in the world has some sort of central gathering place, whether it's a park or a cafe or, you know, a city hall. And so you go to those places. And maybe the first time you go, it doesn't work out. The second time you go, you start to see a few things. You start to see patterns, people coming and going. And so there's all kind of potential. It is more difficult, you know, but I did find, I mean, we went to Guatemala. We first went for three months, I know it was six months, then a year, and we ended up going, I think a total of a dozen times. And when I look back at my first pictures from there, they were what most kind of tourists would take. And, you know, they were pretty good because it's a beautiful place, but they didn't go beneath the surface. And it was really after I was immersed in it that I felt like my pictures started to get somewhere that were more meaningful. And I think that's true no matter where you are. It's a small town, you know, and the heart of England or, you know, wherever you may be, it's like, there are things to photograph. There's absolutely, there's always, I'm trying to, yeah, I tried to also remind myself to send some friends over from the States. And, you know, everything to them is new. For me, it's kind of, yeah, it's a thing. Exactly. So it is, it's what you said about going beneath the surface, you know, having to scratch away at that little piece there sometimes. Now, you, when I was looking at your photographs, I was like, wow, these are really cool. And it was, I think it was specifically Guatemala images that I was taken that they felt really free. And I kind of use that, like, although they are structured, they're put together no doubt with a keen eye for everything, they have that kind of fluidity that it feels like it's something a little, you're obviously a master of taking photographs. But then I researched a little bit and I was like, wow, and you take them on an iPhone. Now, I was just like, I was like, oh, that's awesome. I love the fact that you take, you know, images on an iPhone, because I do too. And have you ever run into this thing where people go, that's not a real camera? Sure, all the time. And people, you know, on Instagram, where I'm pretty active on Instagram, I try and post something every day. People ask all the time, was this with an iPhone? Was that with an iPhone? It's like, yeah, almost everything I post is with an iPhone. Yeah, you know, it obviously has a stigma attached to it. And I think that that's been kind of self-attached by the photographic community, you know, it's like, okay, so if someone contacted me to do some big ad campaign, I'm not quite so sure an iPhone would work. On the other hand, it's how I see photographically now, since it's all I've used for over 10 years now, I haven't really used another camera. So that's what I'm comfortable with. You know, there are quality issues, there are limitations. I mean, it's basically got three, the equivalent of three lenses is actually three different cameras, the one I use, the iPhone 12 Pro Max. So you don't have those zoom capabilities that other cameras have. The quality is somewhat suspect, but so what? Look at the best photos of, look at Bresson. Have you ever been to a Bresson exhibition and you see, you know, granted pretty early on, he's using, you know, the Leica and slower film and so there's movement, everything's not tack sharp and that adds, I think, to some sort of quality, an intangible quality. So I try and take advantage of what the iPhone is and can do. There are times like here when I maybe apply a certain filtration more, not because it's an iPhone, but more because I felt it was appropriate for the subject matter and it brought out something in the subject matter that otherwise wasn't there without that kind of muted sepia tone. It's interesting, yeah, when I look at this one specifically, as you were talking about, you know, classic photographers and people like Bresson and going even further back to, you know, sort of the David Octavius Hill sort of crowd, you know. And those images, you know, they have an organic quality to them. And that's something I enjoy about digital, not about film. And digital has always felt that it was becoming increasingly, for some reason for me, somewhat sterile. You know, that it felt like you wanted everything super sharp and all the tones had to be perfect. Yeah, right. Whereas, well, obviously this particular image is digital. It feels because that CP nature and the wonkiness of the little thing in the background that it has a sort of somewhat timeless quality. You know, there's nothing here in this photograph that specifically welds this to a place or a time. And I really like that sort of rough and ready almost, quality of just shooting with a camera that does have limitations. And have you found that that has given you maybe like a sense of freedom when you're taking photographs, you just kind of go, you have limited options. So you're concentrating more on the actual image itself. Absolutely. And the freedom starts with the physical aspect of it, which after God knows how many years of carrying around, you know, big cameras starting with, well, Nikon F3, Canon F1, big telephoto lenses. I was doing a lot of sports, you know, it took its toll on my back. And now I have a camera that fits in my hand, fits in my pocket. And so the mobility is a really important factor to me. I came to invoke Brisson's name, I read once where he said, I don't carry any parcels, you know, because it could get in the way with picture taking. And well, with an iPhone, I can shoot with one hand and carry a parcel and another. So, you know, it's like, it is so mobile and so easy to use. And is there another camera that has a screen as big as the iPhones to see, you know, holding it out at a distance? I'm really sold on it for me, the way I'm photographing and seeing right now. So, I don't know if I answered your question though. No, it is, it is, it is not, you know, one of the things, I look at these, and you know, to go back about the question about you know, people use an iPhone. I have a feeling it's, there is a case to be made that it is a tool that needs to be used, not necessarily with skill-dix, but you kind of need to know what it's going to do. And the people who complain about iPhone not being a real camera, why is it, they maybe are thinking about it in terms of the people who are just taking, you know, little holiday pictures of their kids. Yeah, that's a great observation. You know, the thing is now, the latest iPhones have better picture quality than the early generation digital cameras, but that didn't stop photographers from using those early generation digital cameras, you know. So, it's like you can't use the quality as an excuse when they were using something of lesser quality years ago. It does, I remember what your question was, it gives me a lot of freedom. When I was shooting film, I used an, like an M6 a lot, couldn't use it for everything, but for all my personal work, that's what I was using, mainly with a 35 millimeter lens, shooting triads, beautiful combination, printing in my dark room at home with lights in larger, I mean, it didn't get any better than that. And in some ways, the iPhone to me is like that Leica in ease of use and in portability and in how fast it is to use, you know, with Leica with the 35, depending, you knew where the point of focus was based on where the ring, the focus ring was on the 35 millimeter lens, you know, seven feet or, you know, infinity or so. And to me, the iPhone is kind of like that. I mean, obviously it's autofocus and the sensor is so tiny that everything is always sharp unless you're really close to your subject. I mean, look at even the woman on the right in this picture, you know, she's pretty, pretty sharp. She's in focus enough and it goes all the way back. I mean, at least to the guy in the bow of the boat and even back to the mountains. So, you know, you're getting a lot of the sharpness. So the other thing about, you know, the high-end digital cameras these days, it's like, you can do beautiful, beautiful work with it. I mean, it's just amazing what they do on the novel of, you know, all of them, Sony, Fuji, Nikon Canon, they're producing incredible cameras. And then, you know, so people start with like a 35 millimeter, I did this, I was using a Canon 5D, 35 millimeter, 1.4, shooting wide open. So the background's totally blown out of focus. And it was leading me to a place where photographically it just wasn't me, you know. I didn't care that much ultimately about, I can never pronounce the right bokeh, bokeh, whatever the word is. You know, I like having almost everything in focus all of the time. That said, you know, that is a limitation. If like, say you're shooting with a Leica with a 50, you know, 1.8 lens at dusk, it's gonna give you a great look that you're not gonna ever be able to get with the iPhone. Fair enough. And essentially, because, you know, you talk about, what is your process? And I'd often talk about technical processes on the channel. But I imagine, because these are obviously very different to how they would come out through the camera. So I'd imagine, do you photograph with a specific idea in mind in terms of the finishing of the image? Or is this something that you kind of come to in post? However, if you're doing it through an app or if you're doing Lightroom or something. Yeah, it's a combination typically, but so recently my wife and I were in Valencia, Spain and I decided, okay, I need to start shooting color. You know, I'm doing way too much black and white. Let me just challenge myself and do some color. And actually the iPhone has this, it's a filter. It's called, no, dramatic warm. And it's a bit like the old Kodachrome films in a way. And when they're tweaked a little bit in Snapseed, it does have a bit of a Kodachrome feel. And so there I had a preconceived idea of what I was going for as far as the overall feel to the technical part of the picture. But typically, early on I used Hipstimatic a lot. Like this picture, definitely Hipstimatic. Well, yeah, yeah, right. You know, and I was using a lens filter combination that gave the vignetting I use. So I was using that. Then I think Hipstimatic developed some shutter-like problems that were really throwing me off. So I went back to using the native iPhone camera. And the native iPhone camera to me is what I've stuck with. I know there are great apps out there, you know, and I can't recommend any others because now I'm pretty much using solely the native iPhone camera. But I do take images post sometimes in the Hipstimatic to apply certain filter combinations to it post. But it really depends on the subject. I mean, sometimes I just let it, this is totally plagiarizing my wife. I let the image lead me to where it wants to be. You know, but it's being playful. And, you know, having been a photojournalist where there are strict, strict, strict ethical guidelines. I don't know if that's such anymore, but there used to be. I kind of like the idea now of playing and experimenting. And that's not to say, I mean, I don't clone maybe once in a while, but I don't do, let's see, what would have been considered highly unethical principles in journalism. I mean, there's no need to a picture like this. You know, okay, so I burned in the sky. You know, Eugene Smith burned in his skies. So, but it's not like I added or took anything out of the image. And, you know, to the naked eye, this might have been how it looked anyway. So, but I technically, so I'm now using the native iPhone camera, I like the noir filter and I like the silver tone filter, but it's also nice that I can go to the original if I need to. So, and then I take it, and then let me just, I'm sorry. And then I take it into snaps, I take it into Snapseed and work on it in Snapseed. Yeah. You know, you're talking about color earlier because there is this thing here, it says the thing about color, which is very handy. And, you know, you've mentioned a couple, you mentioned I put it on and WG Smith and what have you. And when I first saw the color images that you've got here, it kind of, there seems to be a combination. It's a bit of Steve McCurry and there's a bit of Alex Webb there and, you know, and, you know, are you drawing inspiration from specific photographers when you go out or is this just a combination of, you know, everything you've experienced through your life is coming through in what I suppose we could loosely call the style? Yeah. I mean, definitely I'm drawing on those rich traditions and specific photographers. I mean, I think Alex Webb is more of my style than, you know, others, but, you know, I'm definitely, I have seen a lot of his work, I've seen prints, I've seen books and it's a huge inspiration. And then I'm trying to take that to develop my own way of seeing and my own way of photographing. You know, all of that's in the back of my mind though. I mean, I'm thinking about Brisson and I'm thinking about Walker Evans and Robert Frank and Dorothea Lange and, you know, August Sander and, you know, all of those people when I'm going out and contemporary people who I follow on Instagram too, you know, all of those things are weighing in on me. And then it's like kind of, it all coalesces into, I guess maybe how Eric Metro may see something. I don't know. Maybe, you know, when I'm looking through these photographs, you know, especially the color ones, it feels that the color is the subject. Yeah. And the subject itself is kind of almost secondary to the picture. And, you know, a lot of people have asked me, say, well, if you're going to go from photograph color as the subject, how do you go about that? How do you look for color and then interpret that into an image? Well, I think that's where intuition comes into play, but intuition based on experience and what you've seen in the past in painting. And a lot of that has to do with color combination. You know, you can see bright brilliant colors, but man, if they don't mesh together, the picture is going to be a mess. So I think an intuitive sense of color combinations are a lot of times where there are only two or three colors and not a whole mixture of them. Obviously, like in this picture where the light is falling and then this is also a matter of understanding how any camera, how photography works, knowing that, okay, I could have exposed for the shadows here, or I could have exposed for the highlights, which I did, and still even with the iPhone, opened up for the shadows if I wanted to. But I chose intentionally to highlight the spatial relationships and the color combinations by giving it really deep dark areas. So, you know, you're working with a lot of different things. One thing that's really important to me is, again, plagiarizing from somebody else, the idea of visual construction in the image, how all the pieces fall together. Obviously, that's key to, you know, most any photograph, almost any work of art, but it's not so easy to put it into practice. And that's really important to me to try and photograph in a way where the composition makes a lot of sense. And I do like images that are chaotic as well. If I'm in a situation that feels chaotic, like this one, it's like, boom, you know, that has a lot of detail, like on Instagram, you know, it doesn't read very well at all. It just looks like a big blob, not a big blob, but a lot of different color. But then when you start looking at each space in the picture and what the people are doing, I think, you know, maybe it's a bit stronger image than on the initial viewing. Yeah, and that raises an interesting comment because, you know, you mentioned it, obviously you have a background in print journalism and documentary and what have you, you've now moved to, let's, you know, I don't know what you recall, it's some more personal work. And you're very active on Instagram. Now, if there was somebody came to you and said, Eric, you know, I'd like to pursue this as a career. You know, I'd like to do this kind of photography. How would you go about, you know, suggesting people get started with that? Because as you said, you know, often on Instagram, a lot of the images that when they're bigger, that have a lot of depth of an interest, they just get lost in the, you know, that sea of small squares. So how would you stand out? How would you get going? How would you make it? Yeah, it's really tricky. One of the great things about photography, one of the things I love most about photography is it can be so many things from the kind of photography you practice, you know, whether it's landscape portraiture, weddings, photojournalism, to what you're doing it for, you know, whether it's to make a book or, you know, to make a friend. There are many different uses of photography. And I would say to somebody, find what it is that really appeals to your heart and find a niche for that kind of thing. And then do it, you know, like Elliot Irwitt, again, you know, he did a lot of commercial work and, you know, I'm sure his commercial work was incredible, but it helped support his personal work. So there's nothing wrong with doing that. You know, I know wedding photographers who do weddings and make a ton of money and then they do their own personal work and that's, you know, as important and not more important to them too. So I think it's finding what is closest to your heart, what kind of photography do you like to do and who do you wanna share it with and then try and find those niches, those markets where you can do that. And don't be afraid to do something to make a buck if you have to. I mean, you know, not everybody is independently wealthy. God, sure, anybody in photography, you know. Reminds me of a really bad joke. You can edit this out if you want, but what's the difference between a freelance photographer and an extra large pepperoni pizza? I don't know. A pizza can feed a family of four. I don't know. Yeah, it's a bit like how do you start, how do you make a small fortune in the restaurant business? And it's like, start out with a large fortune. That's a good one. So it is, I'm glad that you mentioned, you know, talking about doing things for yourself because, you know, often there's a tendency, I suppose there's some hobbyist photographers to go, do you know, I really like this. I like taking photographs and my friends have said I'm quite good at this and I would like to do it. And they want to, you know, make a career out of it or earn some money or sell prints or things of that nature. And I feel that as soon as you try to monetize a hobby, that it changes your perspective completely about why you're doing this. And these photographs here, do you photograph these, you know, all the images we've kind of looked at today, specifically just for yourself with the pure love of taking images or do you have something in the back of your head that goes, I could make a living from this or obviously you do make a living. But, you know, is there a monetary idea somewhere behind or is it just purely for yourself? At this point it's purely for myself but it wasn't obviously always this way. I mean, I guess retired as far as financial dependence on working, you know, that doesn't mean I wouldn't work if the right thing came along. But, you know, I was really lucky as a photojournalist to have a steady income and benefits and all of those things and do every day what I really love to do. Those jobs aren't in abundance like they used to be. However, there's some website, I can't remember what it was, maybe it's Petapixel or something like that that occasionally has these pieces, how much the photographer made and they show the billing and they show how they went about it. Yeah, my mind is blown by how much money some of these photographers are making. So the money is out there if you can find it and if you're good enough then if you have the proper channels whether it's a great website, a great Instagram presence, a great rep, a great agent, all of those things all rolled into one, you know, you can make a living but getting back to what you said which I think is such a again, a great observation is man, if you spend your life doing photography basically for somebody else you're gonna look back at your career and go, why didn't I just take two hours on Sunday and photograph for myself, you know? It's like you're not really gonna be happy with, I mean, photography is a great way to make a, can be a great way to make livings but it's an art form, it's a creative form. We all have creative instincts and if you don't take advantage of that, you know, something may be missing. I would implore everybody to work on projects for yourself. Maybe the project is, okay, what does City Hall look like at 12 o'clock on Sunday and you go on your photograph a year round? Something as simple as that. I like the idea, I don't always follow it myself of having two projects going on at one time. One is a long-term project, one is short-term. It gives you something to fall back on. When times are lean, I don't mean financially, I mean as far as emotionally, where am I going with my photography? It can be so challenging. It's like you just think, I throw up your hands, you see great work on Instagram, I'm like, go, there's more to come, I've got photography sucks. You ever feel that, that you kind of, because I'm looking at your photographs and I go, wow, I take pictures on my iPhone and I quite like the pictures that the photographs that I end up with. But then I look at yours and I go, wow, your Eric's work is just outstanding and I feel slightly kind of like, which inspired and yet kind of also a little bit deflated, maybe, because I go, wow, he's really cool. Do you ever come across that? Because if you're active on Instagram, you must see a huge amount of photography that you see people's work and you go, that's, wow, that's really cool. And it makes you feel a bit odd inside. Yes and no, I try and use it as inspiration because, look, I'm not gonna change the fact that other people are out there doing great work every day. That's a given that there are tremendous photographers all over the world photographing every day and it's just a given. So the onus is on me, if I wanna keep up with that to go out and photograph, one, as somebody said, wants something like, you're only as good as your last photograph. And that's true to a degree. It's like, well, okay, you look through this website and you see all this stuff and some of it's pretty decent work. But what am I gonna do today or tomorrow? Is every bit as important to me creatively, photographically, and I like the challenge. The other thing is, wow, I don't know how to say this without sounding like a real, say, asshole. But I've also grown as a person. And I think, you know, I used to be, you know, really jealous and really critical of other photographers. And I feel like I've outgrown that. I feel like, like I said, if it's not working, it's on my shoulders. It's not because of what somebody else is doing. So I try and use it as an inspiration. I see a great picture. It's like, wow, I wanna go out and make a good picture too. Not that I wanna go out and make a better picture, but I wanna make my own image. I think that is a fantastic way of looking at it. You know, rather than letting, as you said, letting that jealousy sort of just kind of stop you from creating something. Yeah. It took me a long time to take it over there as well. Good stuff. Yeah, it is hard. It is hard. But as we kind of like sort of bringing this around, you know, it's, I have to say, you've mentioned long-term projects and I believe you have a project going with your wife at the moment about the Lincoln Highway. Do you wanna just get, because I didn't see any on your website. So I'm assuming that's a project still in the works. Yeah. Well, it's kind of in the past actually. Oh, so. Yeah. So the Lincoln Highway is the first cross-country road in the United States. And it goes from Times Square in New York City to a park in San Francisco. And it goes through the state of Pennsylvania where we live. We first started photographing it in Pennsylvania. A lot of places, it's a two-lane road, other places, a four-lane highway, but it goes through 730 towns and communities. And so we started photographing it. And in 2010, which was really the last time we did anything serious on it, we took three months and drove it both directions across the country. And we kind of view it as a completed project. We made some self-published books to send out to publishers. And there was moderate interest, but not enough interest to get it published. So, you know, and we move on to the next thing. I don't know how much time we have left, but. Oh, I could go on all day. Okay. Okay. So this might be sort of interesting to people who, you know, maybe are a little bit deeper into photography. So we have been going to Spain numerous times, usually for three or four weeks. And then in 2010, we went to Guatemala for the first time, fell in love with it. We both did photography that we thought was, you know, pretty good, love the people, love the landscape, love so much about it. But we missed Spain. So two years ago in our first real trip, you know, since the pandemic started, we went to Valencia, Spain, and I made a reservation at an Airbnb, not knowing much about Valencia at all. And then I was in a neighborhood near the beach. And then I started Googling this neighborhood. And in 1952, Robert Frank went to this neighborhood in Valencia, spent six months there photographing. And when, and I think in two, I forget the year 2012, finally a book of his work was published. It's called Valencia 1952. And these pictures, you can see, set the foundation for how he photographed the Americans. I mean, he truly was like reaching for something and he got it in Valencia. I mean, the stuff is remarkable. The book is incredible. But to us, it was just like, was it the spirit, the ghost of Robert Frank that drew us to this neighborhood? So we were there for three months. We went back again, just returned about a month ago from being there another three months. And we actually hope to move there later this year. But so that's currently kind of a project, a loose project at this point. I love those happy coincidences that you find and you just kind of go, wow. You sort of say, yes, I am like Robert Frank because, you know, I have responded in the same way to his way. I think that's absolutely gorgeous. So you're planning to move to Spain. The work that you have created throughout your career and gladly is, I think, absolutely gorgeous. It has a humanity to it that I really connect with. It has a sort of a slightly, sort of also kind of ethereal feel, you know, especially the Guatemala with the pieces of driftwood and all those sort of things, you know, coming up out of lakes and what have you in there. It has been an absolute pleasure to talk to you, Eric. It is a rare joy to talk to somebody who is in the process of taking images and is about the image itself rather than about being tied up in the gear too much. So thank you. Is there some way, so people say, I will link to your Instagram. Guys, if you want to see more of Eric's work, I'll put his email, no, his email, but his website in the description box below along with your Instagram. And please go check in on his work. Also, if you're interested in seeing more fantastic work like this, you know, check out Frames Magazine. But Eric, I have to say thank you ever so much. Thank you guys. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. It is my pleasure to talk to you. And guys, if you want to see more like this, let me know in the comments below and we'll see you all again soon.