 Do-do-do. Hello, hello, hello, hello, hello, everybody. Um, I'm just gonna, oh, it says, it's gonna do this sort of thing, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Hello, everyone. How is everybody doing? That's it, I was going to just check. We've got, um, Hellish Gaming. Hi, Hellish Gaming. Nicholas, hi from Wokingham, visiting from the US. Oh, fantastic. Welcome to Blyty. We've got Robert here, hello, Robert. Peter, uh, Arcanus, Arcanics? I don't, it says terrible sort of things. And Sue, hello, and Warren, good afternoon. Yes, indeed, hello, Warren. How are we all doing? I'm, I'm hoping that, um, everything works all cool. It says, sign into chat, um, I need to sign, why would I need to sign into my own chat? Who? Why would I need to sign into my own chat? I don't know, that's sweet. I bet I'm gonna turn that off, because I can't have my own stream on the background. Blah, I can noob, so I'm just gonna turn these things. So there we go, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, boom, boom, boom. Okay. Oh, I know why, because you need to have a little window. There we go. So how's everybody? Yes, so a, yeah, um, a year, it's been a whole year. A whole year, since I first sat down in front of a camera and said, um, well, I didn't say how's it, how's it? I just said, um, hello, which is, which is lovely. Hi, hello, well, I was gonna say something from, from in German, but my German's awful. It's terrible, there we go. Yes, thank everybody. It's been wonderful for a whole year. Thank you, Nicholas. Yes, woo, it's lovely. Yeah, whole year, a whole year. I was just saying to my wife earlier that this, this day, a year ago, I sat down and I was like, oh, if, if I get like a thousand subs in a year and 4,000 watch hours and stuff, that would be my goal. And I, um, has to be said, I'm, I'm, well, I'm, I'm just, I'm blown away. I'm, I'm really, thank you ever so much. Each and every one of you for all of the support of all the, the, the, the well wishes and the, the, the fantastic comments that you, you guys, you know, putting the channels that have kept me going through, through some, I won't say dark times. It seems a little bit full on, but, but some of the, the fantastic, you know, sort of moments that we've all had. So here we are. So it's a year. And we have a very small glass of Prosecco in a, in a glass, I don't know why this is in Prosecco. We had some people around earlier and I'm not going to put a wine glass on a thing. Anyway, so, so we're all here. So we're just going to, I thought what we would do today is, I have threatened or have been asked many times to, you know, show some of my photography. Yeah, as, as regular viewers of the channel will know, I don't really kind of show my photography too much. I, it's, it's one of those things where, I don't know, my, my photography is somewhat personal. And, and, and I've kind of reached the stage in my photographic career where I kind of go, do you know, it's, it's, it's kind of just for me. But today, today I'm going to give you the potted history of, of Alex's photographic sort of career starting from, from way back, you know, and, and, and so much of proff rays. Yes. Yeah, we're not going to go into, to, to digital thing. But tonight I'm going to try and sell you the iPhone 5S. Yes, this is the phone that you need to know. Amazon links are in the description box below. Yeah, it's, it's, yeah, the gear, gear is not what we're here for, is it? It's, it's the things and I'm going to be very, very unprofessional here. I'm going to show you my room that is still full of photo books that have not been yeah, that have not actually been put in place where they're supposed to be. And for some reason, yeah. So we moved in September and this room that I record and edit all the TV stuff is still like, it's a bare room. My wife says it's very depressing. So that's why I filmed one of the episodes in the lounge because it's done. So, so that's kind of thing. So here we go. Anyway, and so I thought, well, we'll have a look at my photography and, and talking through kind of, you know, who am I, who is Alex? I, you know, I kind of allude to, to some things in, in my, in my, in my videos and talk about bits and bobs of my background. And obviously back in the day when, when I said, oh, it's only a year ago, a year ago when I started doing the, the photographic I videos most of the people who interacted with them were people who I know. Obviously on Facebook, I went on to Facebook and did what is actually a kind of a rookie mistake and asked the people who I know to, to watch my videos. As it turns out, that's actually not too bad because most of my friends on Facebook are photographic type of people, so kind of an audience. But the very first comment on my channel was by a guy called Craig von Straten who I know from student days. And he went, oh, this is so fantastic. I will be certainly looking forward to more of your episodes and has never commented again. So, so thanks Craig. I know Craig pretty well. So, so that that's fine, but yeah, it's a kind of, so we've come from there to all of these guys, you know, whose names I, I can remember. And it's lovely to see in the, you know, in the chat here, which is not working. So I'm going to disable the chat thing because that looks silly, it seems it doesn't work. I've just noticed that it was ridiculous. You know, it's kind of, it's nice to see everybody or the people whose, some of the names are fairly new. Some of the names go back a little bit while and I feel like I get to know you like Warren. I see your name, your name comes up quite a lot. The cake, you're asking my cake, well, this is the weird prosecco-y thing. And I have, because I'm boring, some Adnam's ghost chip pale L, 0.5%. Boo! But that's the thing. I had, I had a, it was a heavy night last night, but I had more than I probably should have last night. So I'm going to go on the lighter side of things tonight. Anyway, yeah, so we say, yeah, so Sue, I'm a knack. There we go. Yes, Sue, I've gotten rid of the white rectangle. I thought it was going to work. It did work previously, it was just about the chat, but I haven't said it up properly because I am noob, so we'll put it up. Anyway, so what kind of prompted me to start the photographic eye? It was way back, way back in 2008. No, it wasn't, it was a couple of years ago. I had been watching Ted Forbes and people like that. And oh, I've just noticed my cat, Haggis, is busy licking his bum on screen. See, look at it. Hello, Haggis. You're famous. Yeah, he's like, oh, there are people that are watching me. So I kind of went, do you know what? There's a lot of people talking about photography on YouTube. And oh, hi, Helish. That's cool. I'm fantastic to have you here. Yeah, so it was kind of like, I thought, you know, I'd like to do that. I'd like to talk about photography. I do like to talk about photography in real life. I like to talk to people about photographic things, not necessarily gear. I find that kind of conversation, it is kind of, it's dull and there's only so much you can discuss about lenses and things. But there are, when you get talking to people about photography, about photographers and about the sort of things that they enjoy, that becomes a far more engaging conversation. And that's what I wanted to try and do is to say, well, look, there are other ways of approaching photography. So that's kind of where I came from with the TPI. It's like, yeah, Incorporal is like, yeah, dead cats do that. They absolutely do. And Haggis has decided that he definitely wants to be part of this stream. So I'm not going to kick him out of the root shape, poor little cat. He's 15 years old. So I will put up with him and he's not crawling at the door going mute. And so my first photograph, yes, the aperture of life is what was my first photograph? And the very first photograph that I can think of of the top of my head is, sitting the one that I remember taking was of a guy called Andrew Turner in front of my front door in a place called North Crawley, which is just outside of Milton Keynes. I probably would have been about like seven, maybe eight. It was on my Spider-Man camera, which I do still have, but not here with me. I just want to remember this. It's in the lounge downstairs. So yeah, it was a little Spider-Man camera. I took one 26 film or something like that. I don't know, square pictures, which is probably why I like square photographs now. And it was him just being silly in front of the door. So that was kind of, that was sort of what got me started. And there was, I was going to show a picture, which I'm not entirely sure that I actually have, so I'm just going to double check. You know, it was that was the kickstart of my time in photography, of me starting to feel like this was something that was interesting. And that sort of came across also because of my grandfather and my dad. We're both keen, I suppose that's what I would call these days, the keen amateur. You know, they would enter photo competitions more my grandfather than my dad. And it was just kind of, that's where it seems to have all started. And I was encouraged throughout my teens and my formative years, you wouldn't want to call it that, about sort of pursuing photography as something to enjoy. I never really considered it as a career. It was never something that was suggested to me as something that one could do. And the only reason that I started photography is that because when I was a teenager in South Africa, conscription was still going. And I really didn't want to join the army. I got some call-up papers and they were like, hey, if you're not in tertiary education on such and such a date, then you can come and visit us at Nazarex Centre. And we will give you a two-year all-expenses paid trip to the bush to drive around artillery, which is what they called me up for the first time. And I was just like, kind of, that sounds like a naff deal. That sounds kind of like, well, I'm going to, I'm going to go and study something because you could defer it. So I looked around and studying, study photography was an option and because my marks at school were not very good, I went, hey, photography will take me. So I went and I did that. And it turns out I actually had a reasonable aptitude for it, I'd like to think. And we will look at some of my photos today. So I was going to say, today's a bit of a, like an ask me anything on Reddit. So if you'd like to ask a question, you can just, as Eric has done, put a big question mark in there so I can see it in the chat. He says, do I still develop my own film and prints? And I don't. I think that's kind of, it's a shame. I do, I do miss it. I have to say I really do miss, I miss the dark, I miss the smell of chemistry. I miss the tactile nature of photography when it's, when it's film, when it, when you are doing that alchemistic process of capturing the light. And this, this is the international sign for light, right? And then just kind of putting the film into the counter, doing all the magic process and then seeing when you pull out the spiral and you roll it out, you look through the picture and you go, oh my God, that's pretty cool, that's pretty cool. And then you go through the process of, of obviously creating a contact print and then test prints and so it's a very, it is a very hands on process. And I do miss it. And I, one of the things that is on the very long list of projects to do with the new house that we moved into is that there is actually space now to have a, have a dark room or that a kind of need is plumbing, actually, is a very long, boring story. But it's an old house, it's a half of the house, the half that's behind me now has plumbing, but all the rooms that are suitable for dark room are on that side of the house. So there's no plumbing, there's no water. Anyway, but yes, I would very much like to get back into to developing my own films and all that sort of stuff. And I'm gonna say, if you haven't had a chance to do something and certainly you don't need all this kind of thing to do your own, you could do it in a cupboard under the stairs, it's not difficult. There is, I would certainly suggest that you give it a whirl. So we got here, so hi Gordon, hello from Scotland. Yeah, I used to live in Edinburgh for a couple of years, whereabouts is Scotland? You're from a photo editorial. This is from Black Pit Studio. I have been threatening for many years now to put some sort of monograph together. And it's always one of those things that seems to get kicked down the road. I don't know why, it's just I never seem to get around to getting there, but hey ho, you know, hopefully sometime in the future. 35 mil or 120, says Tom. Quite frankly, most of my stuff is 35 mil, or at least it was 35 mil. I do like in square format. So if I'm talking 120 like medium format, I would somewhat gravitate towards square because that's kind of, that was my preferred format. Obviously, if you shoot like six, seven, or six by four, five, you know, it's not gonna be square. And my first medium format was a Bronica ETRSI, which is a six, four, five. Obviously has a benefit from a very poor student's perspective of having, was it 15 images on a roll? So it's better than six, six, and obviously better than six, seven. But I think it's different strokes for different fields and moods. And some of the pictures we're gonna look at today I have both, so that's kind of interesting. Archaics, yeah, yeah, it's lovely. It's such a nice sort of feeling that kind of the process is really good. So Lars, fantastic, JR Mentors as a Therapeutic Tool. Yeah, I absolutely, I totally agree. I think, you know, there are so many ways with photography that we can disconnect with the world and feel more relaxed, more chilled and stuff like this. I'm glad to hear that it's helping, helping you out. Sue, or many thanks. I mean, there's so many things. I have to say, it's absolutely heartwarming to see everybody. It's, Sue has asked, like, apart from other photographers, are there film directors or directors who are an influencer or cinematographers? I, yeah, interestingly enough, they're kind of names that I don't necessarily know off the top of my head. But as a student, as somebody who was in my formative years of photography, I was very much into music. And at that time, you know, that we, this period, MTV had just started in South Africa, so everybody was like, oh, yeah, MTV, and we used to watch, like, Hey, Bang This Ball and stuff. And this was kind of the period of Marilyn Manson and Grunge and all these sort of things. And a lot of those videos late at night were extremely visually arresting. And a lot of my work, certainly in the early days, was influenced by them, by the music videos of the time. So this is why it's kind of tricky to put their things on, because obviously they're not names that necessarily would spring to mind. But if I'm looking at external influencers, those are certainly the people who I draw a lot of influence from. And in my portraiture work, it's people like John Singer Sargent, you know, they kind of, just the way that people stand and they comport themselves, I suppose, might be the word. So that's kind of, yeah, so lots of places where I draw influence from. But you should just kind of, you know, whatever you sort of like, you just go, oh, I quite like that, you know, write it down. And I think, you know, just be free to pull in stuff from everywhere that you like. So we've got, Aperture of Life has asked me, apart from portraiture, what other genres am I into? Again, we're gonna see, see today, and we're gonna get in in a little bit. So Steve Simmonds, he got a thumbs up yesterday and they're all so lovely. You know, it's, yes, fantastic. So I think what we're gonna do, I'm gonna try something out. Now, if I'm using a piece of software called OBS, which is how we stream all this. And I have set up a thing where I could do slideshow. So if it goes all a bit, goes a bit pear shaped, then spare with me. So I'm gonna just change over here. We should, there we go. Oh, look at that. Right, okay. So it's got that picture there. So we'll get rid of the chat. Get that, there we go. So these pictures that we have here, and if I do this, yes, it does actually work. What do you know? Okay, so I'm gonna give you kind of like a little, a potted history about my career as a photographer from the images that I actually have to hand because obviously there's a lot that have changed, or not have changed, they're stuck on hard drives in all sorts of places. So these are the ones that I've got. And this as a starting point is kind of what I wanted to do as a younger photographer. As somebody getting into photography, I wanted to be a photo journalist. He said something on his prosecco because it's a photo journalist's draw, you know? Yeah, I wanted to be a photo journalist. And what I started off with was photographing what was around. And this is South Africa in the early 90s. And one of the things that I was, I got the very great privilege to do was spend some time on a platinum mine out near a place called Rustenburg in South Africa. And so I think this is first year because my dad worked on the mines at the time. And so this was me as a first year with a 50mm lens walking around the marshalling yards because they were still using steam at the time as you can see. So it was one of the few places in South Africa where steam locomotion was still in use. And this is all FP4. I can remember it. My dad sort of dropped me off at the gate and said, look, I've arranged for you to go in. I've just spent the whole day just wandering around. And I was free to do whatever I wanted, go wherever. There was no health and safety stuff. It was just like, do your own thing. So these photographs are a time of the guys doing repair work. So they were kind of the steam yards, you know, the train yards. Where they would strip apart these things. So you see these guys here are working on, I think it looks like a ball bearing or a bearing setup from, I don't know what the correct stuff is. But this is kind of, this was sort of pretty much me as I photographed, as I felt at the time, which was, you know, I liked the look of things. I liked the industrial thing. I was beginning to make story. And at the time, I don't want to say that, you know, oh, you know, I had such an eye for things and what have you. Because it's not not true at all. But it just goes to show that I do think that if you just kind of follow your gut and photograph things that you find interesting and let it sort itself out afterwards, then you can start finding things. Like I didn't walk around this yard kind of going, I want to shoot this picture. I want to shoot that picture. It was sort of like, let's just see what happens. Let's see how it rolls. And this was, you know, so this little sequence here, we've got, you know, the guys who have opened up the bearing case and they're doing all the bits and bobs and they put some new stuff in. And then this is an old bloke who was then putting the cover back on. And this actually, I photographed this so many years ago. This is still one of my favorite portraits that I've ever taken. It was in post. I didn't ask him to do anything. I just photographed him doing his roll. And even now, this is what, 1994, so 30 years later. I look at that and there's, and I can remember that print because I struggled with it because it's hard to print that picture because there's obviously quite a lot of difference going on. And I remember that print being slapped up on the wall in the dark room at photo school trying to get it right. And I just love it. It's such a beautiful, beautiful picture. He says, and maybe some people are gonna, whatever. It's, I would have quite happily done my entire career taking pictures like this, but it was not to be. Anyway, so more pictures of the steam yard and this is, again, this is completely different to the picture from before. But it's photographing things you find quite interesting. I think there's anything more to it than that. It's just, you photograph what you see. You photograph things that are interesting to you. And you just let people be themselves. This guy always reminds me of Clusso, Inspector Clusso from the big panther pictures. It must be the moustache, I think. And the fact that he does look a little bit like Peter Sellers. But it's funny that you can sit there and 30 years later, I can remember being in the cab with this guy and smoking cigarettes with him and just talking. And that's what, I think ultimately, this is what it's about. This was a moment where all these guys were just going about their jobs and we were happy to, they were happy for me just to be in the background, just taking pictures, not worrying about anything. And it's interesting that none of them burned for the camera. There's one or two pictures where the guys are being a little bit silly. But for the most part, I think because I just let them get on with what it is they're doing. So if you find yourself in a situation where you are just making a photo story and what have you, just, yeah, don't worry too much about all the aesthetics and the things like that. Just go with it. And of course, this is a period now that has long gone. I'm gonna guess that Steam is now not used on the mines in South Africa. And it's just, yeah. And of course, that picture sums it up. It's like all of these old locomotives that are now basically derelict. It's just the kind of thing. So there we go. So that's kind of a brief, and we'll just nip out of this quickly. That is a very brief look at some of the work that I wish I'd had kind of sort of continued with. I never really pursued that too much. But we'll look at some other pursuit work in a minute. So we got, we got the pursuit of perfection, Vonit, Randolz, and Turkish Angora. I'm guessing that's some sort of cat channel or something. Anyway, thank you very much for a happy birthday from New Zealand. Although I have some friends in, not Auckland, and Dunedin, there we go. And here we've got Sue. Yeah, thank you, Sue. Yes, I think the black and white does work very well. And because that was first year at PhotoScore, all of our photography was required to be black and white because we had to process and print our own film. And we were only allowed to photograph black and white. So only secondly, we were allowed to the mysteries of color, which was very cool. So yes, I think had I photographed that in color, it would not have had anything like the sort of, the tonal impact that it has. Lovely, so we've got some Dave, so Dave Hamelberg, cool name. Yeah, thanks for telling us. Yes, it can be hybrid. I sort of sit down and go, hmm. We should discuss, let's discuss the meaning of layering in my pictures. It's great to, you know, sometimes it can get a little bit full on. But for the most part, I think if you just sit back and relax and just chill, and remember why we're here, because we enjoy it. So that's kind of a nice thing. And thank you, Shelly, and this side towards screen. Yes, congratulations. Thanks ever so much. I'm glad to hear it helps. Yes, Shelly, it is a thing. And we'll see some other work of my student days time, because obviously for those of you who I'm sure you're aware in 1993, 94, 95, there was a big transition, or a big period of change in South Africa. So there are some photographs coming up, which kind of also sort of showcase that sort of stuff. And we've got, I didn't, no, Aperture Life, he says, Pentex K1000. No, no, no, no, no, no. This is Canon 01. But the K1000 was a, it was the recommended camera for the photo school, seems to be just nice and basic and easy to do. But I inherited my dad's A1 for that. And we got, so Black Pit Studio has heard of, have I heard of Miksang Photography? I haven't. No, please do enlighten me in the chat. Thank you very much, Finland Wildlife Clips. You have been around for a while, I say. And I don't always reply to you. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I do see your comments. And then I kind of think, I will get back to you. And then things happen and I can be, so if I have not replied to your comments, I do apologize. We've got Granville here. Maharaj, there we go. Hey, Alex, how's it from Mananze, Mananze? Sorry, I'm so out of practice with these things. Anyway, congrats. Thanks, it's awesome. Thank you ever so much for being here. I agree the photo goes in black and white. Yeah, thank you for channeling. I love it because it's not bad. It is, that's the, that's, that he is, Adam has hit the nail on the head here. Adam Lesak. It is, that's the whole point. I've never been a very accomplished technical photographer. I think that's probably the way of putting it. So my focus has always been on kind of, yeah, just taking pictures that I like. And maybe as you get older, you're kind of like, oh, it becomes less of an issue and it's like, I don't really care because, you know, somebody pays me money for my pictures. So, you know, sort of thing. And, but if I look back throughout my entire career, I've never been that fast. He said, thinking, well, no, I've never been that fast about having things perfect. And maybe to my detriment sometimes, but there was always a thing in a KONAC control book because we used to do hand processing color in a photo school. So we'd have E6 and C41 tanks that we would hand for as a dip and dunk thing. So, oh, there was a nightmare. But they had a control strip from KONAC that you put through every day and you ran to make sure that the chemistry was all in control. And in that book, and it was a folder like this of stuff, so it was a nightmare to go through. So if the thing was out of control once you plotted it, it would have examples. And KONAC never said the word correct. And all of those people, they never said this is right. They never said this is the way it should be. The phrase that they used was called customer acceptable. And I kind of took that and maybe kind of ran with it a little bit first and then probably should be. But so long as, certainly in my photography that I was selling to people that I would use that as a gauge. It's like, so long as the customer is happy, so long as the person who's buying, who's commissioning, paying me money for this is happy with what I've produced for them, then that's what matters. The technicalities are not necessarily the most important thing. So that was the kind of thing. Oh, look at this. I've been waffling where I've got a whole bunch of stuff. So are the glasses new? No, they're not new. I don't wear them day to day. I don't wear glasses as a normal thing. So I think, but on a screen, I do because I'm a little bit short-sighted. I think it's short-sighted, but it's okay. So what happens is I get headaches because I have a drooling drain, I'm getting old. So that's kind of where they come from. I've worn them with screens for many years now. So this is kind of my I'm at work look. And this is my, this is my camera face. So there we go. So we've got, yeah, the cameras that I had inspired Charles, thank you so much. Manuel, thank you from Poland. I'm not Poland, Portugal, unfortunately. My Portuguese, I know no Portuguese. Why do I not know Portuguese? It is a failing on my part, no prego role. And that's kind of it, which is ridiculous. And it's selky. And again, you can see I'm kind of the lean in recovery because I've got a 27 inch screen. Do you think I'll be able to see some of this stuff? Yeah, it's the last couple of years, I think have been, they've been tricky for all of us and finding, and of course, I have to say that if it has not been for COVID, it has not been for being forced to set at home and being forced to reevaluate my priorities in for authority and things like that. Then I would have, I would probably never have actually started the channel. So in a very weird way, I should probably say thank you to COVID because it gave me the kick up of the bum that I think I needed for some time. But I'm here, I'm glad it's given you inspiration. Yeah, it is, I can't believe it's been a year, but wow, it's made me. It's a grand awesome interesting point about, did, does photography, has being photograph, shooting in black and white helped me understand color more. I think one of the reasons why they did it, why they said that we need to photograph in black and white is because it was, there was a couple of things, either they said, well, look, we're dealing with the visual aspect, the technical aspect, and the actual, the process. There were three separate things that they ended. So they wanted us to know about how to do black and white properly. And if you spend a year photographing in black and white and processing black and white and printing in black and white, you get a fairly decent handle on how all these sorts of things work. Before we introduced color, and then you had to process all your color, not individual, because you could actually dump it in the lab, so we all took turns. I think what it does not necessarily made you appreciate color more. It made you appreciate more about how you influenced the image making process. Because obviously, black and white, there's a lot more scope, personally, I feel, for manipulation, for changing things, for working things around. So it gave me an idea of understanding the process, the physical process of how light interacts with film and creates that latent image that we then sort of break. You know, not break, so I'm talking about it, because this thing flashed, and it totally destroyed my whole channel. But that's like, yeah, so we learn how to use the black and white, we learn how to understand the way that all the film is working and how that light interacts with things like that. And that gives you a far better idea about what you as a photographer are doing. Because you are taking something from over here, which is the light, and you're putting onto the film in a lot of sense, whatever you want to call it, and you're the conduit that it falls through. And if you understand how the light interacts with the film, then it's a lot better thing. So that's kind of, I think, where they were looking for us to have it, where we photographed it for an entire year with film. So we've got here, so the black and white. Thank you, Colton Sheppard, I was about to call you Colton Sheppard, I'm so sorry, Colton. Thank you, happy birthdays. It's also, I don't know how to find you, Ryan. I know, I have no idea either. It just seems like one day, and it wasn't that long ago. I sent it to my wife at Christmas, I remember being in my mom and dad's place, and I just released a video on William Eggleston. I was going, oh, it's got like 20 views. It's so great, I had 20 views today, it was so amazing. And I had like 100 subscribers, of which I could name all of them. And yeah, just something, YouTube gods went, hey, I quite like, we like your stuff, and we think other people might like it as well. And here you guys are, so thank you for staying with me for so long. Ron, thank you, I said, but so Ron, it's not Ron, it's Helish, thank you ever so much. That was very kind of you. I'll come back to your question in a second. So, Ryan, thank you for being here. I know sometimes I don't respond to everybody's comments and things, and I do, I'm so sorry, I try and keep on top of them, but they just, I've got a three and a half year old in the house, he doesn't want to stop, he just leaves me alone, man. And I still remember, I remember all the guys that we used to have, when there's only two or three comments a day, you have proper conversations with people, and then you turn around all of a sudden, it's like 150 or 200 a day, and you're kind of like, I really, I try to keep on, but it gets away from you. So, well, JC, thank you ever so much, JC. Eric, yeah, I think if you stick to black and white and you do one thing, that it's certainly, she's one lens, it certainly helps focus the mind, which is always good. Thinly Folded Egg, awesome name, I think that, right? Thank you, it's my pleasure, I'm sort of like, I still can't do it. You'd think, spending 20 years in South Africa, I could save Manzanzi. It's because I'm thinking about it too much, and I'm so out of practice, it's like I see Afrikaans words, I'm like, oh yeah, but if anybody who ever wants to know, completely piece of useless information, my favorite Afrikaans word is doodle-suck, which is bagpipe in Afrikaans. So there you go, lovely. Oh, okay, black pet, thank you. So black pet, so he says, the Mixang Institute is for contemplative photography, and it's a zen-based thing. And it actually sounds completely up my channel, something about a channel, up my street, and yeah, that sounds good. I do, there was a guy who comments on the channels fairly often, he sent me an email recently, and he said he's legally blind, I think he's in the UK, and he takes photographs, and I have yet to respond to him, because again, email is also just, you know. But I would love, I think that's a fantastic idea to kind of meld those two ideas, there's this idea of sort of zen photography mindfulness, I think it's probably the more fashionable word, maybe. And what people see when they don't have the full capacity of their eyes, I think that we have a fascinating aspect to really dig into. So thank you for saying that, I'm going to actually mix-sang, and I'm gonna go and just Google that now. So I don't forget, because that would be terrible, mix-sang, there we go, it's come up, I don't usually like it when you go up and it's this first thing that you do, I need to do things. So we're going to say hi, Nures, oh, Nuresh, probably, from Portugal, hi, thanks ever so much. I've got five of course now. Oh, the catracks, I don't know, I'll avoid them, what if I can. Hi, Dino, from Croatia, I do know a Croat, one Croat, I say, he's one of my most best friends, but I don't know any Croatian, or any Croat, so it's terrible. Tex AU, oh, congrats from Australia, that's Tex AU, of course, yeah, good day, I've been accused of being Australian in many, many times, and once I did spend an entire afternoon in a pub in Edinburgh, pretending to be from Melbourne, and saying Australian kind of things, but there we go, which is kind of a thing, so we've got this, Curvy's a failure, Finland saying about sort of film photography, I, would I recommend it? I enjoy it, yeah, so personally I would recommend it, I think it very much depends on what you want to photograph, will it make you a better photographer? I don't think necessarily shooting film would make you a better photographer, it would make you possibly more disciplined, and I think ultimately, and probably more confident in your, the way that you see a scene, obviously with film, you don't have the instant feedback, you can't change things on the fly, you kind of have to make a best guess judgment about how that image is going to look, and so it does make you focus, it makes you think about the actual technicality a little bit more, but I don't think it necessarily makes you better, having said that, I would certainly recommend that if you get an opportunity to go on a workshop to shoot film or something, to do so, especially if you've not done it before, because it is such, and I keep saying this a bit, like being hands-on or being tacked on sort of things, but there is a magic, there is a magic to seeing film come out of a spiral, there is a magic to seeing an image develop from a piece of paper under that red or orange light in a dark room that just come out of there like a ghost out of this gloom, it is so different, it is so, so, so, so, so different to taking a picture on a digital camera and just looking immediately on the back of the screen and seeing it, so if you get a chance, yeah, yeah, do it, or an alternative process workshop, just give it a whirl. So we got here, so film COVID, DSLRs back in my, yeah, sort of things, so we got there, all sorts of, wow, there's a whole heap of comments in there, sorry, okay, so hey, let's go, thank you, Ron, so what is Ron, is that Romanian as a currency? So we got all sorts of things, stop apologizing, you don't have to buy, no, it's fine, we're looking here, so we got happy birthdays, yeah, there are so many things in Gordon the St. Hyde to the cat, and we got here, we got, sorry, I can't pronounce your name, Ionut, Ionut Shinescu, I really do apologize, I'm so sorry, but your best wishes for Milton Keynes, dude, my very first photograph was taken in North Crawley, which is within eyesight of Milton Keynes, yes, it's just outside Newport Pagnell, so that's kind of where I grew up, back in the day when it was very much a new town, and all the trees and all the roundabouts were little itty bitty trees, so I think with the concrete cows and going to Willow Lake and seeing the thing, and Milton Keynes was now called the center at MK, when it was completely brand new, so there we go. Anyway, so I've been rattling on a bit, let's look at some pictures here, so we were looking at some of these guys, so I'm just going to zoom through these, because apparently what happens is it goes back to the beginning every time we do this, so that's fun, anyway, just a little brief catch up, so previously on the photographic, I have Alex talking about stuff, there were some pictures of things, so moving forward by like 30 odd years, I these days mostly take photographs on my phone, I mentioned this before on my iPhone, it's convenient I have a small child with me mostly, which is not really conducive to photographing, anything, because it's one big lump of things, so my phone is my go-to, and excuse me, all this talking, it's okay, so I kind of photograph the things, and because I like the square format, which is what I kind of got started with, I sort of tend to gravitate towards things, and over the years, and neatly, we were just talking about Milton Keynes, I never understood where this feeling, this gut feeling with me, to be drawn towards brutalist kind of architecture, and very angular geometry came from, and it's from Milton Keynes, it's from growing up around Milton Keynes, which if you don't know, if you're not from the UK, is what's called Newtown, and it was built in the 70s, with lots of brutalist architecture, the shopping center itself is a, I think it's brutalist or modernist, it's one of the two, so lots of very square builders, lots of very industrial, very hard, angular, modern kind of things, and I sort of look at those photographs now, and I see this is where it comes from, this is where all these feelings in me are coming out, this photograph, for example, is the roof of a shopping center in Johannesburg, which I quite like, and this is this kind of thing, when you're walking around, you can see photographs wherever, if you just kind of know what resonates with you, then why is this picture sideways? So this picture's not supposed to be sideways. Oh, this is gonna be annoying, because they've put them all sideways, yes, and that picture's sideways as well, and that one, it's also sideways, why are they all sideways? No, don't be silly, you twittish thing, I know why, I know why these are sideways. Oh, technical issues, ridiculous, because I photograph them with my iPhone, and they have a built-in rotate thing, so we'll skip through some of these that are now sideways, unless I can do this, let's try this, let's try if we can rotate it, can we rotate it? I don't know, no we can't, okay, so we'll skip through that, but this one is fine, because I photograph straight up, so you kind of, you see so many of these things that are around that once you start realizing that you, certainly in my own case, that I seem to like architectural aspects of things and geometric shapes, that the world opens up to you in a way that is wonderful, that I certainly like, because I've sort of decided, as I get older, that I don't like, or unless it's maybe not, I don't like, I'm not fussed about being conformed about, or being considered to be one photographer or another, I tend to just photograph things that I like, and I know this is a topic that I came to, they look good sideways, yeah, that's the kind of thing, you know, I don't really mind too much about what things, you know, that I photograph, and yes, one of the, of course, one of the joys about the things I actually photograph that were coming up on the screen is that for the most part, yeah, their orientation doesn't matter, like this is me looking at a roof of some things in Burno, I think, in the Czech Republic. It's like, you know, they are like panels where some art was hanging on and stuff, because most people would just look at the art and go, mm, okay, but when you start looking around, you go, oh, I quite like the way the light's working with that thing in the roof, you know, it's such an interesting way of looking at the world, and of course, again here, you know, this traditionally would have been another 90 degrees clockwise, so the building's on the bottom and they think, but now look at it, actually, it doesn't need to be that way, it could be anyway, and I do like this kind of juxtaposition between modern architecture, especially, and the natural world. I find there's a very interesting flow with these things, and this one definitely doesn't work this way, all right, but this one, this is completely upside down, but this is, again, a shopping center in Burno. Now, I really like this photograph, it's a stairwell, I've been a big fan of stairwells for many years now, I'm gonna start a magazine called Stairwell Monthly. All right, I've copyrighted that, you can't go to. You know, they're just lovely, and this is by no means like the world's greatest photograph, and but when you're walking through something, this is a shopping center, it wasn't the world's greatest shopping center even, it was a bit a little bit run down, kind of a little bit rough, you know, and but there was a photograph here to be had, it was a little bit tricky to find a composition that sort of worked, the two bright lights and they kind of ruin it, but they don't, because whatever, I like it. This is, you know, we went to an escape room, and now it's a light side, actually, do you know what? This is a really good exercise that these photographs are not displayed the way that I had imagined that they should be displayed, and yet, we're looking at this and going, do you know how does the world look when we're not doing things, the way that we're supposed to do, I would never have considered of putting this picture sideways, but now that I look at it, it changes the whole aspect of the photograph, it changes the way that it feels, it changes the way that we read it, because all of a sudden, this is, you know, if you tilt your head, tilt your head 90 degrees to the left, and you're looking at sideways, that's how it should be, it is a light fixture in a communist era office block in Bernau and the Czech Republic, there was a really good escape room, so if you're in Bernau, go to that escape room, it was awesome, and I finished it with no life, just me and the two of us, it was awesome, but you sort of look at it, you go, now that it's sideways, it's a whole different picture. Oh, why are we back in here? Why, that shouldn't be there, so anyway, so that's kind of some of the pictures I will, in the background I'm going to fix some of these pictures, because why not? So it's a very interesting thing that when we look at photographs in a way that we are kind of going, well, that's not right, you know, that's not how they're supposed to be, then you sort of go, well, it's a crazy, a gothic stairwell, somebody said, I do have some gothic stairwells, I think, coming up, I'm going to make another slide show with these, and you look at these photographs, and I'm going to sort of say, oh, that's very strange. Yeah, it's sort of weird, maybe there's, maybe I say, oh, I know, there's probably a list of things that you can't do, or too many that you can't add, so I'm going to add another one. So you kind of, there we go, but that's now far too big, so I'm just going to make that a bit smaller. There you go, he says, look at this, look at always doing things on the fly, because we can, sort of thing. Yeah, it's, you know, when you look at photographs that are, you know, they're sort of made wrong, or they've been, oops, no, that's the wrong thing. Look at me, I'm just being, Chuckie's being a twit, sorry, Chuckie's my gaming, Chuckie's my gaming, my gaming, my gaming handle, he says gaming handle, like people know what he's talking about. So there we go, so we're just, wait, let's just make a new slideshow. Yeah, so when you look at photographs, and you sort of go, well, this is the way it's supposed to be, this is how it's supposed to look, then you sort of like, why do we not ever consider that we could see them in different ways? I really wish we should, so I'm just busy making this thing a little smaller, because of course it makes it huge. I really wish that we would actually have the ability, the capacity, there we go, that's better, to say to ourselves, you know, we should just do our own thing, that we should absolutely just kind of not worry about, there we go, not worry about how people perceive our photographs and free us from the restraint of just being, why is this not, sort of saying just being, oh, I know why, sorry. This is what happens when you use software that you don't actually know what you're doing with. No, we're gonna use it, we're gonna automatic, and we'll just run through them. So, I see I've got, people stare well monthly, absolutely. Yes, oh yes, Graham has recognized Lincoln and Hellish government, yes, I used to play, what, tanks, and I've played many tanks, games and things. So more pictures that are on their side, because why not, you know, that sort of thing. So these kind of pictures, so like this, this photograph here, so this is from Burno, I think, you know, so basically what it's doing is giving you an overview of the sort of thing that I like to photograph, which you can sort of see a feel, irrespective of the way that it looks, and I've been waffling around about a certain thing. I'd say certain thing, I've been waffling around about talking about pictures that are of, you know, in a certain orientation. And while some of these photographs don't work because they are in a, in the incorrect orientation because, you know, it was a nice, you know, that something that I feel that, we were talking earlier about, so there's that Lincoln photograph, that we were talking about, you know, the tactile nature of printing your own pictures. And one of those things is that you can move the easel when you are making the print. We tend not to do that in digital, and I wonder why we've kind of stopped this idea of changing the perspective of how we look at things. Like this, for example, is a fan that's moving. Now, we could look at that and go, well, it's supposed to be a fan that hangs from the roof. Now, obviously, this photograph, you can't really, it doesn't really make too many sense because the chair or the lounge is incorrect. But this photograph here, it could be in any orientation, just because you know that it's not supposed to be, or I know it's not supposed to be like, it's supposed to be round the other way, and this one too, doesn't mean that it has to be. Now that I'm looking at, that actually is a far more interesting photograph when it is, this one is a little bit because we kind of know that the vase would slide down. There's a feeling that we know it would slide, and this one, there's obviously an arrow that distorts our perspective on it. Shelly's like, are you tipsy? No, I've been talking about it. I've been talking all day. We've had some friends around, and I've just been going at it. And I'm just kind of, I'm just going with the flow. So, it is very much a thing where, if you look at all these photographs, what I like for them, what moves them is that they are not of a specific thing. I certainly don't photograph a, I say specific thing. I don't photograph in a set genre. I think that's kind of, as I've gotten older, I don't do, this is Gramsci, if you look at the thing. And that's kind of, that's what makes me happy. These are the photographs, and you can sort of maybe see that now, when you look at them, that they are not, they're not necessarily of any one thing. They're just things that I like. And that's why I don't show them too much, because I'm not, I don't really want to, I was about to say impress people, but I don't really want to just put them up and have people go, oh, this is so nice and stuff. Yeah, it's nice. It's obviously, it's nice when people like your photographs. But through all of those things, they're just things that interest me, that they're something that I've seen. It's like, you know, the picture, I said this doesn't work because the arrow is pointing down. That's a toilet in an airport. It's pretty mundane. And there's nothing, it doesn't have a meaning. It doesn't have any deeper purpose or whatever. I was, we were there slightly early for the airplane. So we spent a lot of time in the departure lounge walking around and I went to the toilet and I went, that's an interesting picture. So I got on my phone and took a picture because yeah, nothing says suspicious like taking pictures in a loo, you know, that's exactly how we roll, you know, it's those sort of things. But this is kind of one of the things that I would like to encourage all of you guys to do is to photograph whatever makes you happy. There's going to be a theme. There's going to be a common theme throughout the channel over the next few months which is to not worry about what you do. If I think we look at all of the people, all of the stuff who have created art and by art, I mean anything that is, you know, a creation process so that can be food as well, you know, they don't particularly worry too much about making other people happy. They're doing things that come from themselves and I think that's kind of, so I'm reading, Gordon will says, which way up weekly could be a sister publication? Absolutely, it wouldn't be a TPE episode without some sort of weird issue. So, you know, it would be great to have just, you know, people remember that they're not doing this. They're not doing this to please somebody else. That all of you guys, every single one of you watching is like you, you there. You start taking photographs because you enjoy it. Just the same way that I, when I was giving that Spider-Man camera and I took photographs, that I didn't do it to please somebody else. I didn't do it to garner likes or shares or any of that stuff that comes around in the modern world or even in pre-social media days, I didn't do it to enter into competition or to put up a war and be judged by a panel of peers. I took a photograph because I was having fun with it. I was being silly. I was, you know, looking at this, hey, let's take a picture and this is what you do, you know, sort of thing. So that's absolutely kind of where we are anyway. So if anybody has any sort of, you know, I'll say actual questions. If anybody has any questions like you'd like to know, you know, all sorts of things, I'm happy to say. I'm just gonna have a little look see here. Like, yeah, all these pictures, it's very annoying, isn't it? So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna ditch some of the, because it's the iPhone pictures, of course. Of course it's the digital pictures being the issue. It's, isn't it? So just quickly, while I'm rattling off or waiting for some questions, I'm going to get two heads test, so images, stuff like that. So I'm gonna bring this on, I'm gonna put that picture back up on screen while I fiddle in the background with images slideshow number one. So we're just gonna do that. So we're gonna remove that. Yes, we're gonna do this, and we're gonna move that. And we've got folio, which is now hidden. And that was not, there we go. Look at the trains. I'd love a lovely train, boop boop. Yeah, so what's my Insta? So there we go, that didn't take long, did it? I don't really have an Instagram page, I'm afraid to say. It is something that never really grabbed me. It just did not, it never really, yeah, it never really just grabbed me. I don't know, I can't really say much more than that, unfortunately, that the, I don't know, there was a thing about it, it just didn't make sense. If you desperately want to see my Instagram page, there is a, I do have it for my studio, which is called Muse Portraits. There is a very old, very not really used Instagram page. So if you search Muse Portraits, it should be me. I think there's one or two. I think there was a, or there is, or was a Muse portrait in Vancouver, I feel, at some point, who was doing all sorts of things. Yeah, Instagram is not something that I've really kind of gone good. Warren's saying he started reading Susan Sontag. Yeah, so Wayne's, John, I'll come back to your question in a minute. So Wayne has said, why would the so-called greats, and inspire me, yeah, unheard of people really at home. It's tricky, isn't it? There's a lot of people, there's a lot of great photographers, and I'm gonna use the word great as a label. That are not particularly great. I think it's probably fair to say. And one of the things is that, certainly with a lot of photography, in fact, all photography and all art, is that you need to be in a time and a place ready to receive it. There's a lot of photography that I saw 20 years ago that I just kind of went doesn't do anything for me. But now when I look at it now, I can see it with a different lens and I can see it with a different perspective. So it resonates with me more. It may be just at that point that S, if that's you, who sent me these things. I doubt you'll be watching from Iceland, but if it is you, yeah, that'd be nice. So you just have to tell me. There's a lot of great photographers who I think are more considered to be great because there's been a lot written about them. That there's a lot of baggage of people saying, I want to tell you how great this person is. And their photography isn't necessarily something that resonates with you. And that's perfectly fine. It is absolutely fine. There are many photographers who, like, I like Fan Ho's work as I like it. It's kind of cool, but I'm not gonna, I'm not a Fan Ho fan boy. See what I did there? And a lot of people say, but why? Because he's amazing. He's like a poster child. And it's like, well, some of that stuff just doesn't resonate with me. It's okay to say that you don't like the great. It's okay. It's absolutely okay. Like what you like. Don't feel that because somebody says that this person is worth liking, and that includes me, that you have to. Because don't, just absolutely don't. Anyway, so we got here. So this is one of my, so I did think long and hard about showing you some of my studio photography of actual paying clients. And ultimately I thought was, no, they came to me to have family pictures taken. They didn't, you know, sort of thing. So it's a different thing. So what I'm showing you is the studio work that I create, or some of it, for myself, or as a competition, as was when I used to enter competitions. So this is one I had, they actually came in on a, you know, and they came in with a family and I photographed them, and I said, oh, look, you got identical twins. And they were like properly identical. So they came in and we photographed them, and what have you. Now there is some noise on this picture, as somebody pointed about noise. And no, I don't really mind noise. It's never been something that really, really bothers me too much. I know that noise and grain are not the same thing. So, you know, sort of thing. So this is actually a grain filter rather than noise because the two are kind of different things. And I was going through a stage of experimenting with processing styles. So, excuse me. So this is the whole thing. And I had a big, this is actually my scout, Union Jack, because I was a scout leader at the time. So I had a nice big Union Jack flag and I got the girls to rap it. I was like channeling some, channeling, what you call it, Britpop from the 90s and stuff. And I've already really quite liked this photograph, but you know, some people are like, yeah, it's not so much. So this is the same, so these are the same girls, or one of the same girls. And this is kind of, it's not to everybody's taste or something, but it does go to show that you can do all sorts of things in the studio if you just kind of just try some things out. Now, I could look at this and go, well, it's reminiscent of Edward Weston and, you know, not Edward Weston, oh, Edward Curtis, and his work with the Native American Indians. And that would be wrong because it's not, it's nothing like that. But it has the same sort of coloring and it has the same sort of lighting sort of feel. But that's not the point with it because it's not. It's just a picture of this young lady who I was trying to do something different in the studio. And what she's wrapped in is actually a, like a B&Q or for our American viewers, that would be like home base, or some of the hardware store dust sheet that cost me like 12 quid. And I went, oh, and I have like a little cupboard of stuff that I kind of threw out. I said, just wrap yourself in this because what she was wearing wasn't conducive to this kind of photograph. And I noticed, excuse me, when I was photographing that they had an interesting look to them, like a kind of an interesting story look in terms of their face. So I wanted to do some pictures. And actually her sister, her sister is kneeled down behind her, pulling the thing tight around her. So it's not just like a kind of, like a wrap to it in a cloth. There's got a bit of shape to it. And it's, I just like it. So I thought, it's one of these pictures. And also it's one octabox. There's an octabox off to her left that is just kind of, it's feathered on the front. So it's kind of about 45 degrees in front. And it's not pointing at her. So feathering, if you're not familiar with the term, if you've never used studio lights, is rather than having the light point, and I'm trying to get in the camera yet, rather than having the light point directly at you, what it does, it's kind of smush in across the side of you. So it's got a more of a wrap sort of quality. And so that's kind of thing. So that's why the shadow is a little bit sort of soft and has a little bit of a sweet of the quality. But it just goes through. You don't need all this fancy stuff, man. You know, this is a 12 pound drop cloth. There's a painter thing, you know, a young lady who's channeling something inside her eyes. And oh, and there's a fan as well. I can see that I've been blowing here with a little handheld, like a desk fan kind of thing, which is not great because there's lots of little thingy hairs coming up, but there we go. So this is again, now you'll notice that all of these photographs that we're looking here, this is all of you too, they're all very different. Because, A, they're not from the same timeframe, but I like to experiment with things. So this is a particular young lady. I think, yeah, yeah, I'll go back there. So this is a young lady called Stephanie who came and modeled for me. And one of the things that I had always been intrigued about, if I want to call it art or whatever, is the masks that we wear as a person. You know, we put on a facade and I got some white, like white makeup, you know, pan stick sort of clown kind of makeup. So Steph is wearing white makeup on her face all around here and you can see it on her shoulders. And this is a case of me going into Lightroom, into Photoshop and just mucking with an image, playing with it, really pulling it and just saying like, what have you got in there that you can give to me? So it's very reminiscent of kind of Lith film. So Lith is like a copy kind of film from back in the day. So it's very, very contrasty. So you can see there's no shadow, there's no details in the shadows and stuff like that. And I did have to kind of black out her eyes with a bit of cloning just to kind of do that. But my idea was to try and just have the surface area of the skin be the picture and then there's nothing else. So it's kind of like, it's like what we would have had on our faces. So, you know, so this guy's kind of showed and you could kind of just, just try things out, just see what happens, you know? I mean, I did a whole series of pictures like this and they're just kind of, they're for the lulls but I really like them and it's fun to experiment and you should experiment with things. So this is her without me doing all that kind of weird stuff with her. So again, this is kind of, I was going through a phase of really working on my lighting and being a little bit more considerate about lighting. And this is nothing special. I say it's nothing special. It's, I think it's a reasonably nice photograph. I could have changed some things. But the lighting is coming from sort of three quarters behind her, skimming across her face and then there's a bit of film with a 40 inch, what you call it, phone call border just to get on this side of the face with her and stuff like that. So, you know, again, nothing too fancy and I will say anybody who's looking to get involved into taking photographs with models going into a studio or just trying stuff out. Steph, I found her on a place called Purple Port and she was fantastic. She didn't cost me anything. All that she wanted was some copies of the pictures for her furlough. And I absolutely thoroughly enjoyed photographing and I've photographed her actually a number of times. So, you know, if you are looking to experiment with these sort of things, absolutely you can find a lot of things for these sort of things. Absolutely, you can find these people. Amongst all the dross and there is some dross on places like Purple Port, you get ladies like Steph. This is all her makeup. This is all her clothing. And she was absolutely fantastic. So, we've got some questions. So, Leeds, I'm new to photographing, do you do a lot of editing in the studio? So, yeah, I was gonna say the editing and stuff like that, if you're new to photographing, try and get as much right as you can in camera. So, like with this, there's not too much, maybe a little bit dodge and burn, but there's not too much. Why are none of the people smiling in their portraits? Because we take it seriously around here. It's this whole thing of like, if you go back to traditional art, portraits, people generally don't smile. I'm talking about painted portraits. And then, of course, photography came along and it was two or three second exposures. So, it was all kind of not kind of, you can't hold on to the smile thing. So, that's kind of where it sort of comes from. And it's not to say that you need to do that. It's one of those things that just seems to have happened to have been a trend, I suppose you could call it a trend, that seems to have just stuck. I would be interested to see, I certainly should probably go back and look at this, interested to see what would happen if you submitted pictures of people having fun, I suppose would be a word, since I'm like Taylor Wessing, to go back and see how many of those pictures would have an element of that with him. Leads the fallen vlogs. Don't you find if you over edit it? It does, yeah. Sometimes you get a feel for this. You're sitting in front of an image and you go, I am now just dicking around with it for the sake of dicking around with it. You kind of get a feel for when you're just now over cooking, you're over egging the pudding, I think is a feel, a feel like that. Going back to one of John's questions earlier, what does he attribute, he says leaning off the camera, what I attribute the grossest of the channel to, I want to say me, I think that there was just a gap, there was a gap in the market in YouTube photography channels of people talking about photography and talking about sort of more classical photographers. And once YouTube had enough data on the people who watch the videos that I put out, it went, okay, now I get it, I get the sort of person who's going to maybe like this channel. And that's what's happened, is that they put it out to people who go, that's exactly the sort of comment, that's exactly the content that I've been looking for. And that's I think where we are, that's where the grossest of channel has come from. And also the fact that I, I don't want to put on a big hat and say oh it's because me and it's my personality, but I think the fact that I do enjoy talking about photography, I do enjoy sharing this with you, I think that comes across. This is something that I have been doing. This is a job that I have done, he says job for 30 years. You've seen, this is the thing of the books I showed earlier. That's a small portion of some of the books that I have. I have been around photography as a thing since I was a child. And I want to share with you, I want to share with you guys, every single one of you, how much I've enjoyed this and I want to give you the ability to enjoy it as well or enjoy it more, you know, because that's the sort of thing. Maybe that's kind of, like I'm not some guy who just kind of come along and gone, oh photography is a niche that I can, you know, think. And I, you know, oh I don't know anything about photography and yeah, yeah, yeah, but I'm going to tell you that I do because, you know, because Adnomes have just released this new bottle opener. Oh yeah. And you need to have this bottle opener because it's going to make your photography awesome. You know, it's that kind of thing. So to people, I think there are people who have jumped on it because it is a niche that can be quite lucrative. You know, certainly from affiliate things because if you're buying a 5,000 pound camera based on YouTube video, which maybe not be the best thing, but the commission on that would be quite good. Anyway, so here's a picture of my studio in all of its mucky glory. So if you're thinking about how lights actually look when they're lighting somebody, this is how it looks. And so this was, this is a guy called Stuart who I photographed many years ago. So you can see I've got my 1.3 octa which is kind of just feathered. So we talked about feathering earlier so my throat is going. And so you can sort of see the light itself is not pointing at Stuart. It's sort of pointing kind of in front of him. And then there's a little head with a, a tiny cone on the back there just sliding the thing. So, you know, I didn't have the biggest space. You can look at that and see that's not the, that's not a huge space to work in. There's also a photograph to help us to in the afternoon. We can see with the light with the clock and my camera bags in it. But that's kind of one of the things is that, you know, don't forget photography is a, it's theater at the end of the day and it's theater about what you choose to show somebody, you know. And you are free to show them as much or as little of the artifice of photography as you absolutely want. So this is Stephanie again. This is, same sort of lighting. Same, you know, just nice sort of simple. You know, she did all of her, her makeup on this. Yeah, Alexsoft. So I'm just looking at the comments. Yeah, Alexsoft is a great photographer and again somebody who talks a lot about photography rather than the gear. So this picture is Stephanie. She's got this kind of headpiece thing on her head. That's actually a bouquet holder because the lady who was in the unit next to my studio is a, oh God, what's the word, a floral. You know, she does floral arrangements and things. Actually she's won a gold medal at Chelsea. So, you know, but not that she would tell anybody because, you know, why should she. And that was a big floral thing. And I said, oh, can I borrow it? Because I used to go to a store. This looks pretty cool. And I said, Steph, would you mind jamming this in your hair? So she said, yeah, it's kind of cool. You know, but there we go. So that's kind of one of the things. And then we're back at these guys. We'll leave them for a minute. So that's kind of, you know, it's, no, that's the wrong thing. There we go. So that gives you a bit of a flavor of the photography that I do. It's a bit of a mixed bag. It's sort of all over the place. And I think probably the reason why I don't show it too much on the channel is that I have a kind of a weird thing that goes contrary to sort of what I was saying earlier about the idea that people resonate with the channel, that you have kind of stuck with the channel, you've watched the channel and enjoyed and subscribed. Because you like various things about it. And one of those various things is me, who is now getting away from that. The way that I talk, if I was like, hey, guys, what you're doing, let's smash the like button and, you know, let's make photography. We've got a photography. That would probably put you off. But for whatever reason, you like me, you like my personality. And that's... And I've always kind of been mindful of not wanting to make the channel about me. That this channel is not about Alex the person. This is not about Alex the photographer. There are other channels who do that perfectly fine. You know, all the channels like you know, Thomas Heaton and Eddie Channel that has a name as the person. Or the channel name is the actual person. It's kind of about that person. It's about their photography. But this channel was not... I did not start this channel to promote my photography. I did not start this channel to say, look at me, look at me, look how great my photographs are and things of that nature. Because that's not why I'm doing this. I'm doing this because we're celebrating photography. The whole gamut of photography. Everything about it. So you know, fentanyl, wildlife photography, you often ask me questions about, you know, wildlife photography. And I don't actually know particularly much about wildlife photography. But that's perfectly fine. And we probably should look into it because it is an interesting genre that I think is quite overlooked. So that's kind of why I don't show my photographs is because I don't want this channel to devolve into me, me, me, me, me, me, look how great I am. This is all the things. This is more about showing to you and saying to you, look, there are all these things. There are all these things in photography and some of them you're going to like. Some of them you're going to go, nope, do not care for that. One iota. And other stuff you're going to go, I hadn't really considered that. But actually I quite like it. And that's kind of what I want this channel to be. It's also for me to kind of sit and play with my camera because it's driving me nuts. It looks ridiculous. And now I've just made it look completely stupid. It's about looking to just introduce you and have people enjoy photography in the same way that I have done for 30 odd years. Where my hair was a lot more controllable. It's just to say that. So that's kind of why I don't show the photographs. That's why I don't show mine because this channel is not about me. It's about you guys. It's about holding up an option to you and saying, let's just try this out. Try this out. Look at this. This is an opportunity for me to share some of the things that I have enjoyed throughout my careers of photography, which I think is probably only about halfway through. And as I discover more and more and more, then I get to share it with you guys. And some of it sticks and some of it doesn't. But that's fine because we are all unique. We are all different people. And I think that's just a lovely thing. And that's kind of shone through with the channel, with your responses. The person who sat here a year ago, we're not in here because I didn't live here a year ago, but the person who sat in front of the camera a year ago with his brown jumper. And as soon as I reached 50,000 subs, I'm going to treat myself to a few ways to go. Which we'll have in the next few days. He sat there and he went, I don't know how long anybody's going to watch this or whether a lot of people like it. But if I get a chance to say to one person, to touch one person and say, look, there are things about photography that you may not be aware of because they don't fall into the world of what's popular on Facebook or what have you. Then I will have done what I wanted to do, to reach out and inspire somebody to either stick with photography, because as you may know, I kind of was on the fence about it for the last couple of years and it was filmed for various reasons. But I just want people to be inspired. I want you to stick with photography, to enjoy it, to realize that there are so many people, there are so many voices and things just telling you, do this, do this, this is the way, this is the way, this is the way, this is the way, you must do it. This is the secret, this is the mistake that you keep making. And that's not what it is. Photography is about you expressing yourself. It's about you doing your thing. I can simply say, I just want to hold up something and say, you know, William Klein, have you thought about William Klein? Do you know about him? If not, here's the thing, you might like him, you may not. But if you get something from him, cool. And that's kind of where we are. See, Andrew looks like he's last week. Yes, these are all the guys. There are so many, so many of your people. And it feels like there are a lot of people whom I feel like I know. And I've had some emails from people where my throat is, look at me, this is my non-alcoholic thing. If you're not familiar with the UK, so AdNems is a brewery down Southwold. They do some very nice stuff, so anyway. And I'm not sponsored by AdNems. You know, there are so many people who I feel like I'm getting to know. Certainly a number of you have reached out and emailed me and we have conversations through email. And there is the photographic eye community, which unfortunately has been a little bit on low key, because I've been working on some other things. But there's going to be more about that in the future, certainly towards New Year. You know, I'll have you put up videos that don't have ads on them and things of that nature. But one of the things is I, Tanya, thanks, Tanya, she has to check out later on. You know, one of the things that I would like to do is, and I've always thought about this with TPE, is it would be great to have a conversation with you in person, to sit around and actually talk, because this is a one-sided thing. And obviously with a stream of this I can see some comments and it's nice to be able to respond to those comments. But the real beauty, the real magic about photography is when we are engaged with each other, when we are engaged in an actual dialogue. And of course one of the things we can do about that is to be in person. And there was a company that reached out to me recently who said, look, no, we organise some trips away and stuff like that. And I thought, this might be quite cool. And rather than sort of saying, you know, oh, we're going to go here, we're going to do this or what have you, is they said, look, we can do it like a survey and we can find out from your audience what it is that you, you know, what they would like to do. So there is a link in the description, blogs below, and you may have noticed something about like a TPE get together. So if you are interested in like going like a little kind of a TPE holiday, and there will be obviously photography and there will be a chance to talk and we can put together our itinerary that's all about centred around photography, but also just kind of getting to know each other, having a nice little sort of chat. Yeah, then please do, you know, check out the link below because it's for 2022. God, it seems like 2021 is just blown by and I think I'm going to struggle through the whole 2020s with 2022. So I think, but that would be nice. It would be nice to sort of see what you guys sort of think about things like that. And you know, I just, that's kind of ultimately what I really get from this is a reminder that there are people who are enjoying photography, who don't look at it like a business. That's probably the biggest thing is that it's not a business. I, you know, obviously from a professional point of view, have different kind of feelings about photography. And you guys have reminded me the majority of people who watch the channel are amateurs in a strict sense of the word and in a positive sense of the word. And I've used the word amateur in a slightly derogatory way in the past. And you have reminded me about why we do this. And actually now, the more that I've spent with you, the more I've spent with you guys talking about photography and enjoying it, I consider myself more to be leaning towards the amateur side of things. And that's the person who does it for the love of it, rather than because it pays my bills. And that's probably why I don't show, or I've not shown, excuse me, gee, I'm getting all teared up. I have not shown any of my actual paid photography work. It's because it's not what I do as a photographer. It is so rare, I think, that a photographer can actually create what they want to create and be paid for it. You know, you're always going to be forced to do something by either the client or the art director or whoever, so it's the whole sort of thing. Yeah, OK, as mentioned, there is a Discord server. Yes, there is a Discord server. I found that Discord, I so started it and it wasn't quite right for what I want. I would like to do with TPE. And I'm going to put out some course content if you'd like to go into a bit more depth about learning to see and to speak visually to improve that side of photography that works in conjunction with the side of photography that is the technical. So the two things kind of really want to work together, those sort of things. And then also, you know, with the other thing, I know some people have talked about they would like to have more sort of direct feedback on their photographs, and that's kind of one of the things that I'm looking at is putting into place maybe a monthly stream where people can submit a photograph and we can look at them together in a positive way. Because I do think that there is a difference between if you ask for feedback on your photograph and you go online and people are like, oh, your photograph is nice, or it's rubbish, and that's not really feedback. And quite often people are trying to make your photograph look like theirs. I think that is a big doubt for when you're asking about feedback on your photographs is that quite often, yeah, people are going, oh, well I would have done this, or I would have done that, or I explained that, and it's not really thinking about what you would have done. How are you going to improve your photography if you're just going to try and copy what somebody else says you should do? So it's a whole thing. Yeah, and that sort of thing. It would be nice to kind of get into those sort of things. And I don't think she's watching tonight because as far as I'm aware she's in Iceland. But there is somebody just going back to the beginnings of the channel, why it's sort of come through. And there are, you know, my wife is obviously very supportive in the channel. So shines if you're watching. And I would put it on the streets, and I'd just be like, no! But see, I shine if you're watching. I'll be done pretty soon as it's all coming through. But thank you ever so much for your support. It means a great deal. And yeah, so also my friend in America who sends me bags of armored M&Ms for me to snack on because she knows that I'm a sucker for armored M&Ms. So S, we sat around your kitchen table in 2016, something like that, with Jay. And I was like, oh no, YouTube is not a thing and stuff like that. But certainly all those videos in the beginning, you know, we talked about them. And your support was also equally important and it's been great to know that you've been here all the time. But thank you for also being supportive. So that's the end. And finally, thank you to each and every one of you. I'm going to look straight into my lens here. You don't want to see that. That's a horrible thing. That's terrible. Yeah, every single one of you, every single one of you guys who has sat and given up of your extremely precious time to listen to me waffle about photography, to send me emails saying Alex, you need to line up. We've sent emails saying, you know, I'm not so sure about this or I really enjoyed this or to say you have reinvigorated it or you have inspired me. None of this, none of this would be possible. I would not be able to sit here and talk to you guys without you. So without you, that person, you, you are, this is the channel that it is, not because of me, not because of the photography we look at. It's because of you. You have inspired me, you have kept me going. You have made me reconnect with my photography. And without you being here, none of this would have been possible. None of this would have been, but it would have just been a pipe dream, a kind of like we'll do some day sort of thing. So I absolutely, if I could come and give you all a big hug, just come and give you all just big hugs, because I cannot believe how much I have enjoyed and been equally frustrated over the last year of really just discovering the joy of photography. It has been an absolute pleasure. And I really want to thank you so much for everything. And hopefully we can sit there in a year's time as well and say, you know, it's been two years and now I have 51,000 subscribers or something like that. But it is just, you know, I really cannot thank you enough for all of your support and stuff. And now I've been staring at this screen for like two hours. I really, I do need to get some new glasses because these prescriptions are like 15 years old. My eyes are not what they used to be, which is one of the shame. But yes, but anyway, there was a thing in the background, he said, go all the way back and probably pulling stuff off. There is a thing, that friend of mine from America, not only did she send me Armin M's, Armin M and M's, but she made this little, it's crochet, I think, sort of thing. And this is you guys. So this is also to you, that you are all some source. And I really cannot thank you enough. I could spend the next hour just saying thank you. But it really does. It has absolutely blown me away that so many people share this love of photography. So I would like to say, well, thank you once again. I'm just going to keep on saying thank you to your leave. So thank you. Now, it's been great and I'm going to sign off. But before I do, I was going to say, yes, if you are interested in finding out a little bit more about sort of getting together and just putting your thoughts and your feedback into that little survey, that would be fantastic. As always, anything that you can do to encourage other people to watch the channel, you may not think that the liking or a comment or something makes a huge difference. But it helps YouTube understand who is like you, who are the people who are like you who would enjoy this content. And you sort of, you know, so you guys have come in recently, you're here or you found this content not because of a random chance, but because the algorithm, the algorithm, look to all the people who watch the photographic car and they make assumptions about things. They go, well, the person, you know, they go, well, I get lots of Alice Cooper videos. I like Alice Cooper, but they've been trying to get me to watch Alice Cooper videos for the pages. And because it goes, well, you watch this channel and other people who watch this channel also like this. So when you interact with the videos, when you say hi, I like it and stuff like that, it helps YouTube understand what sort of person likes watching these things. So anyway, so that's a little kind of, that's my like and subscribe sort of thing, but anyway, it's, and I do love to, I think we should do an Alice Cooper episode about, you know, all sorts of things. And I got told to sit down one of these concerts. I was right at the back and the spotlight was bouncing off my head. Anyway, but here I am no more Mr. Nice guy. So there we go. Guys, thank you. It's been an absolute pleasure. And if I, well, I will obviously will see you with other content throughout December. But if, and we'll probably have a live stream before Christmas, but if you're not on the next live stream, please have a wonderful Christmas, have a fantastic December, wherever you are in the world, you know, look after yourselves. And thank you once again, every single one of you, right. Thank you ever so much for making this, this channel that we all all enjoy, because it is, it is, it is more you than it is me. So thank you. And I'm going to hit the end stream button now. And yeah, have a wonderful Saturday, have a fantastic Sunday and be lucky and we'll chat to you all again soon. Right, cheers. Bye bye.