 How's it? How's it? You may have heard the expression that those who can do and that those who can't teach. I used to believe that. I used to think that, you know, all my lecturers, if they were any good at photography, then they would be out there actually taking photographs. And for a long time that had been pushed to one side. I never really thought about it. But it was brought to the surface again the other day by a comment that was left on the video that I created about art photographers, Eggleston, Sean, what have you, especially about the trike image where I said it was a poster child for people to say, yeah, what's this all about? Somebody wrote in the comments that they had just started watching a few of my videos and then it was quite clear that I didn't really know how to look at a photograph. That I wasn't really using the right tools to jump in and analyze the image. And I thought, okay, normally I kind of brush those sort of comments off because whatever. But this one for some reason stuck and it reminded me about a comment that also stuck from the channel a couple of years ago. So this commenter had said that for somebody who seemed to know an awful lot about photography, my pictures were pretty rubbish. And that was kind of those two just they sum up something that I've been wanting to address for some time. The idea that I am just a YouTuber. If I was a real photographer, I would be out there in the field taking pictures each day, bringing back the crop and then showing them, sitting at my computer and discussing them in depth. Whether or not that's true, if that's what people really believe, that's not for me to say. But it does play my mind from time to time that I talk about photography, not lectures. These are not designed to be lectures. I'm not here to teach you a specific thing. We're not at the TPE University of Photography and you're doing a doctoral level. These are not meticulously crafted discussions, lectures, as somebody said. They wonder why your lectures are slapdash and you can see you don't put any effort into writing them. And I was like, well, this is not the point. The whole point of this channel is that it is a chat. It's a chat between me and between you. We sit and we talk about photography, as I would do if you were sitting right over there, that I talk in this way, laughing in the middle of a sentence of going, because I'm reaching for something, because that's the way that I talk in real life. This is the passion that I have for photography, just talking about it. And hopefully it encourages you to think about photography in a slightly different way. The aim here is not to give you a definitive answer, but to make you think, to go, ah, I'm going to try something out. But if you really sit there and go, OK, what has Alex got that would lend some gravitas? Why is his experience, the ideas that he's sharing or discussing, what are they based on? And that would be a great question. To most of you, I think you watch the channel for any amount of time, know that I went to photo school. So that was 30 odd years ago. And here is a contact sheet of a friend of mine, Dave. This is definitely first year, because it's one light set up and I'm shooting wide angle portraits or what a no, no, that is, right, you know, in certain circles. And this contact sheet has my fingers on it. I'm evidently just putting a lump of glass on top of a piece of paper, putting the negatives quite slap dash, as you can notice, and just exposing them. And I can see the exposures on the images as well, pretty, pretty slack. But that was the whole point. I was learning. I was new to photography. I was trying things out, much like a lot of people on the channel are right now, you know, I'm taking pictures. Here's one of my old man, you know, he's, he's fixing my brother's KDX in the garage. You know, a little bit of cool side lighting there. That's all funds and framing, playing with light in the studio. That's it. You know, there's, you know, there's Hugh and these are, you know, very old prints now. He says, sticking his fingers all over them. That was this. This is the thing. I have spent time making mistakes, doing things incorrectly, building up experience. I would like to say that I ended up in some sort of high brow, high fly in, marky level client advertising or editorial or do music photography, shooting famous people. But I didn't. For whatever reason, I know the reason actually, but I'm not going to say this is a public environment. I didn't pursue those, those directions. I'm not like, you know, somebody, Scott from Tin House Studios, you know, fantastic commercial photographer and all power to him. He's done some great work, you know, and he does operate at that higher level. I've never been up there and I know what happens. I've spoken to enough people to see what goes on. But that's why I don't really talk about commercial photography and, you know, how to, you know, price for clients. Because it's not the world I know. I know taking photographs at a, let's say a slightly lower level, the local advertising, the weddings, the family portraiture. And I feel that from my perspective, that gives me a foot almost in the hobbyist camp. I know, I know what it's like to, to kind of struggle, make mistakes and things like that to, you know, create images that are not going to be gracing the covers of international magazines, but might be special to one or two people. I've also been fortunate enough to win awards. This is, this is my Olympus MPA portrait photographer of the year 2014, which, you know, why not. I was really pleased about that. That was great. That was a national competition here in the UK. Does that mean I'm any more qualified to talk about portrait photography than somebody else who's basing their, you know, ideas on their own experiences? Of course not. Those people who sit there and go, those who can do and those who can't teach, and I was definitely one of those when I was younger. I think I've been blind. We wouldn't say this, looking at a sports coach, all the top tennis players, the top golfers, all that. They have coaches. If those coaches are so good, why are they out there playing golf and winning all that money instead of the person they're coaching? Can you see how ridiculous that whole comment is? So when I got started with this channel, I wanted to take all that experience, all that enjoyment that I've had from photography over the years, not to present it to people who already know so much about photography, who are very intelligent and very talented, but for people for whom I could have been. If I had not have gone to a photo school, if I had not had the, I think, the good fortune for things to align for me to have a Korean photography, I would be the sort of person I feel that a lot of people who watch the channel are, which is those who love photography. They love the slightly sort of deeper ideas around photography but need a bit of guidance. Somebody just to say, look, I've been, I've got some experience, I know kind of what I'm talking about on a slightly, you know, slightly deeper level and I want to act as a guide. Again, that's why I don't offer fixed solutions. You can't all just sit there and go, you know, if you want to be a great photographer, you need to do this. Or if you want to really enjoy your photographs, you need to do X, Y and Z in that order. This is not linear and this is not a one size fits all. This is me bringing my experiences into a public arena, hopefully to inspire some people. Whether my photographs are good or not, I don't think has any bearing on that. Just as much as you may not like Dan Winters' photography. You may not like Anneli Bavitz's photography and it's quite clear that a lot of you don't like Anneli Bavitz's photography. But both of them are intelligent, articulate photographers, as is Joel Moivitz and Ansel Adams. All those people have something to share and bring to the table beyond their photography because they have experience. A lot of photographers whom I get a chance to talk to, they say, actually I've been taking photographs for 30 years, 40 years. What have you? But I don't have anything I can think of. Of course that's nonsense. They have experience. They have everything that they've learned up until that point, but they don't think it's anything worthy. Because whenever they've opened their mouth or they've said something, those people, you know who we're talking about, come along and say, your photographs aren't very good, you've got nothing to say that's worthwhile. You're not doing this in a certain way that fits my view of photography, so it is inconsequential. If anything that we do throughout this year, looking at the photography, some of it you're going to see is going to be, oh my God, it's like the best thing you've ever seen. And some of it is going to leave you scratching your head going, what is Alex talking about here? But I know you're open to exploring the world of photography with me, of leaning into these conversations and going, ah, okay, I never thought about it that way. There is something I actually wanted to bounce off of you all as well, who got this far in the video because only about 40% of you are watching. But something that I have been mulling over recently is I show a lot of famous photography that's, you know, it's up there and what have you. And if you are, I think somebody who's either just come to photography or has been maybe taking pictures, you know, a year or two, how do you feel about those images? Do they inspire you or do you find them kind of overwhelming? Do you think that there's sort of too much that everything that's attached to them kind of actually makes it feel that you've got an awfully long way to go? So really kind of what do you want to show? I try to bring in some of my older photography, some of my newer photography in a way of kind of balancing it out. Because I think you may have noticed that if you watch the channel for any length of time that some of my images can be quite old. And I've done that on purpose because I feel on a personal level that if this channel was only like the creme de la creme in terms of images that you see on screen, not just my image, but everybody's right, that it sets the bar for what you think you can achieve to be like properly high. So if I show an image, for example, like this one, he says leaning down, right? This is Charles' favourite picture, right? This is Stuart on the stairs with hat, right? That I feel that's within the ability of pretty much everybody who's watching this channel to take if you wanted to, right? It doesn't require a whole heap of skill. Is that the kind of thing that you are happy to see? Anyway, I'll leave it at that. I have to say thank you ever so much for watching. I really appreciate you being here. I hope that over this year and we're going to get started again in February with content that jumps into looking at photographers and natural light and how we can see it in all our photographs and what it brings to images and all those kind of things that are going to continue to inspire you with your photographs because that's what we want here. I don't care that if I take good pictures or bad pictures or whatever. And I don't really mind if you take good or bad pictures so long as you have an opinion that you'd like to share and are open to actually listening and engaging with photography. Anyway, thanks ever so much. And if you're looking for what I did in PhotoSchool, then check out this video over here. I will see you again soon.