Ten years, 50,000+ copies, four languages, and about a million stories later… the second edition of Mastering Portrait Photography is here. Sarah flips the mic and grills me about why we did a new edition, what changed (spoiler: basically everything but one image), how mirrorless and AI have shifted the craft, and why a tiny chapter on staying creative might be the most important two pages I’ve ever written. There’s a Westie called Dodi, a cover star called Dory, and a street scene in La Boca that still makes me grin.

Enjoy!

Links:

Signed Copy of Mastering Portrait Photography, New Edition - https://masteringportraitphotography.com/resource/signed-copy-mastering-portrait-photography-new-edition/

 

Transcript:

Sarah: So welcome back to the Mastering Portrait Photography podcast and today's a special one. Hi, I'm Sarah, and I'm the business partner of Paul at Paulwilkinsonphotography.co.uk and also his wife too. Now, you might already know him as the voice behind this podcast, but today I'm gonna get the rare pleasure of turning the microphone around and asking him the questions. So Paul, it's been 10 years since the first edition of mastering portrait photography hit the shelves, and with selling over 50,000 copies, multiple reprints and translation into four languages, it's safe to say it's had a bit of an impact, but as we all know, photography doesn't stand still and neither do you. So today we're diving into the brand new second edition. So Hello Paul.

Paul: Hello.

It feels weird saying hello to my wife in a way that makes it sound like we've only just met.

Sarah: Mm. Maybe, maybe.

Paul: The ships that pass in the night.

Sarah: Yes. So I thought we'd start with talking about the, the first version. You know, how did it come about? A bit of the origin story about it. Um, and I'll leave that with you.

Paul: Well, of course Confusingly, it's co-authored with another Sarah, um, another photographer. And the photographer and brilliant writer called Sarah Plater, and she approached us actually, it wasn't my instigation, it was Sarah's, and she had written another book with another photographer on the Foundations of Photography. Very popular book. But she wanted to progress and had been approached by the publisher to create Mastering Portrait Photography. This thing that we now have become used to didn't exist 10 years ago, and when she approached us, it was because she needed someone who could demonstrate photographic techniques that would live up to the title, mastering portrait photography. And we were lucky enough to be that photographer. And so that first book was really a, a sort of trial and error process of Sarah sitting and interviewing me over and over and over and over and over, and talking about the techniques that photographers use in portraiture.

Some of it very sort of over the sort of cursory look, some of it in depth, deep dives, but all of it focusing on how to get the very best out of your camera, your techniques, and the people in front of you. And that's how it came about. I mean, little did I know 10 years ago we'd be sitting here where we are with Mastering Portrait Photography as a brand in and of itself.This is the Mastering Portrait Photography Podcast

Yes,

because the book sold so well.

Sarah: And did you expect it to do as well as it

Paul : Oh, I'm a typical photographer, so, no, of course I didn't, you know, I kind of shrugged and thought it'd be all right. Um, and, and in some ways, because you have to boil it down into, I think there's a 176 pictures or there, there were in the first book or somewhere around there, a couple of hundred pages.

There's this sense that there's no way you can describe everything you do in that short amount of space. And so instead of, and I think this is true of all creatives, instead of looking what we achieve. We look at the things we haven't done. And I talk about this on the podcast regularly, the insecurity, you know, how to, how to think like a scientist.

That's something that will come up later when we talk about the new version of the book. But no, I, I thought it would be reasonably well accepted. I thought it was a beautiful book. I thought Sarah's words were brilliant. I thought she'd captured the, the processes that I was talking about in a way that clarified them because I'm not known for my clarity of thought.

You know, you know, I am who I am, I'm a creative, um, and actually what happened was the minute it was launched, the feedback we got has been amazing. And of course then it's gone on to be translated into Italian. A couple of different Italian versions for National Geographic. It's been translated into Korean, it's been translated into German, it's been translated into Chinese.

Um, and of course, technically it's been translated into American English. And, and one of the reviews that made me laugh, we've got amazing reviews on Amazon, but there is one that kind of made me laugh, but also upset me slightly, is that both Sarah and myself are British authors. Using English uk, UK English, but for the international market right from the get go the book was using American spellings,

Sarah: right?

Paul : We didn't know that was what was gonna happen. We provided everything in UK English and of course it went out in with American English as its base language. Its originating language. Um, and that's one of the biggest criticisms we

Sarah: got.

Paul - Studio Rode Broadcaster V4 (new AI): And when that's the criticism you're getting that people are a bit fed up that it's in American English and apologies to my US friends, of which I have many.

Um, it was the only one that really. I don't like that. So I thought, well, it must be all right. And so for 10 years it's been selling really well. book. I never knew it'd be in different languages. Um, it was in the original contract that if the publisher wanted to do that, they could.

And really, I only found out it was an Italian when I started getting messages in Italian from people who'd bought the book in Italy. And then of course, we found out. So it's been a remarkable journey and. I don't think I've been as proud of something we've done as I have of the book. I mean, me and you spent hours pouring over pictures and talking about stories.

Sarah had to then listen to me.

Sarah: Yes.

Paul: Mono, sort of giving these sort of diatribes on techniques and things we do. Um, you know, and I think, I think it's a remark. I, well, I still think it's a remarkable achievement. I'm really proud of it.

Sarah: Yes. Did, did you think the second edition would, would happen or, um, or how did it come about?

Paul: No, not really. Because if you remember, we did a sort of interim update, which was just off the ISBN, so the same ISBN, same book number, but we'd been asked if there was anything that needed tweaking minor word changes, those kinds of things.

And I assumed not really being, you know, that time experienced with this stuff is that was. Was a second edition, it was basically a reprint. So I sort of assumed that was the end of it. And then, um, we were contacted the end of last year, um, to say that with the success of the book over the past decade, would we consider, uh, refreshing it properly refreshing it, a new updated edition because of course there's lots of things that change over time.

Um. And it's, it was worth having another look at it. So no, I didn't expect it, but it was an absolute joy when the email came in

It must have been. It's, it's one of those things that's so lovely when other people appreciate it and know that, um, it would be really good to have a, have another go at it and, uh, see what's changed.

Sarah: So it kind of brings me onto what, what have you changed in it? What's, what are the new, the new bits that are in the second edition? Or was it even that from the first edition? You, you knew that there were things you'd love to include?

Paul: Well, in a decade, so much changes. I. The equipment is the most obvious. You know, there's a chapter at the beginning on Kit, so you know, one of these dilemmas with books. I think again, we took advice from the publisher as to what do you include in a book? And the publisher were really keen and have stayed really keen that there's a chapter on the kit at the beginning.

Um, and apparently that just helps a very particular part of the market sell. So that's fair enough. No problem with that. It's quite fun talking about technology. I don't mind it. Um, but of course that technology's evolved, so we had to update all of that to reflect the fact that 10 years ago we were just beginning to talk about the advent of mirrorless cameras, but they were nowhere near the quality of a digital SLR, for instance.

Well, now mirrorless is the professional choice. Everything has gone mirrorless because it's got fewer moving parts. The sensors have increased in, um, sensitivity to focusing, you know, there's a million reasons why that's happened. So of course we've updated all of the technology. I think more importantly, certainly from my point of view is in those 10 intervening years, I've changed every picture.

Our clients, the techniques, the. Post-production, the thought processes, um, even down to the fact that with mirrorless cameras, you can actually shoot in a slightly different way. I mean, I'm a traditionalist in many ways. I grew up with a film camera. Yes. So, you know, metering either using a meter or very careful control.

Because your dynamic range is pretty limited. Um, maybe the fact that you would focus on a point and then wait for whatever it is that's moving through it, to move through it and take your, take your picture. Um, these were the kind of techniques, you know, lock your focus repose when I started, even even A-D-S-L-R, you know, I'll give you a really good example on how the technology has helped, though.

It's not actually part of this book, but it's a, it's a really good illustrative point. Um, technology isn't the be all and end all of photography. What goes on in your head is what matters, but the technology is the enabler. And I work with the hearing dogs every week. We photograph running dogs all the time and with the DSLRs I was using, it would just take four goes, maybe five goes to get that perfect moment where the dog is spot perfect in focus.

It's airborne, its paws are off the floor. Everything about it is absolutely right. Four or five goes, you know, because I'm shooting at maybe 10 frames a second. The focusing is more or less keeping up because of course, every time you take a picture, the mirror slaps up and the focusing then has to predict where the dog might have ended up.

It's not doing, it's not tracking it at that point, and then you move to mirrorless. Um, and the Z9 that I use now, the Nikon is an unbelievable piece of kit. It locks onto the dog. I can shoot at 20 frames a second. Um, and one of those shots is invariably the shot I'm looking for. And, and that sounds like I'm cheating in some ways, but when you are a professional photographer, your job is to do the very best for your client.

And so instead of spending an inordinate, inordinate amount, it's not easy for me to say a very long time. Um. You know, trying to get the right shot. Now I can do it very quickly and move on to another shot so we can provide a wider variety to our clients. And that's true with running children too. Yes. So the technology has changed and the techniques have changed with it.

Um, now you're seeing on the back of your camera or through the viewfinder exactly the image. Not a facsimile of it, not a mirror. Prism view of it, you're seeing precisely what you're gonna capture. Um, and that gives you a huge amount of confidence in the shot and a huge amount of control too. You can really fine tune exactly how you want the exposure to be.

For instance, you know, you don't have to worry about, is that right? Let's must check the histogram afterwards. You can check the histogram, live in the viewfinder and all these little bits, just make your job different. They, you connect with the shot in a different way. You connect with a client in a different way, and that's the tech side.

But I've also, you know, I, in 10 years, I'm 10 years older. You know, in some ways I'm 10 years faster. In other ways, I'm 10 years slower. You know, the cameras are quicker, my shots are quicker, my knees are slower. Um, and it's a different perspective on life. I also teach a lot. The podcast, the book itself, the first edition of the book, led us to the podcast and the website where we run workshops and everything else.

So all of this cumulative knowledge, when you look back at the old book, and while I'm still massively proud of it, the new edition was a wonderful opportunity to sit down and say, what would I like, how would I like to be represented this time?

Yes,

and it's a much more grown up approach, I think. I mean, I, I wasn't a kid back then, but this time around because the book was successful, instead of providing 10 pictures for every slot, I provided the picture I want, in that slot.

Right?

And so the book is much closer to how I would like it to be as a photographer. Every picture. Now, I could tell you a story about every single picture, every single client, and having the luxury of success on the first version gave me the luxury of being able to do more of what I wanted in this version.

This is much more reflective, I think. Of me personally. Yes. And so I've, I've loved it. It's absolutely, it's such a, a lovely process to go through.

Sarah: So how many pictures have been changed between the two versions?

Paul: All bar one.

Sarah: bar one. How intriguing. So will you tell us what the one is, or is that

Paul: can, you can go and find that out for yourself.

Yeah, so there's one single image that hasn't been changed. There's single image that hasn't been

but every other image has has changed from the first edition.

Uh, just a caveat to that, of course, some of the kit pictures, uh, 'cause they were generic, they've stayed the same. But every portrait,

Wow.

every single portrait except for one, has been changed.

Sarah: And how did you go about choosing those pictures? 'cause I can imagine, you know, if you're starting effectively with a blank canvas for where the images have gotta go, uh, how on earth did you do that

Paul: Um, slowly the publisher will tell you, uh. The thing to you have to remember though, is that this is an updated edition.

Yes.

And that was the contract. It was not a complete start again. So, although I had the opportunity to change every picture, every picture had to fit into an almost identical space because they weren't gonna redesign it.

Right. It's updated edition and we have to be clear about that. So part of the puzzle was not just, which pictures do I want to illustrate, which point.

It was, which pictures in the same shape previous do I want to illustrate? I mean, there's some wiggle room in there, but the designers did not want to do a full redesign. That was not what we were contracted for. Um, obviously the words were being updated too. And both Sarah and myself, um, I mean, since the first book I now write for magazines and online articles and things all the time, I write for all sorts of photography stuff.

Um, and so actually both Sarah and myself wrote words this time round. Um, but nonetheless, we couldn't change too much. We could bring it up to date, but there, there were still bits that, you know, if I was being truly honest, there are things that I think in the past 10 years have become less relevant. And things, it would've been nice to have put some different stuff in, but that again, this is an updated edition, um, not a complete from the ground up rewrite.

So actually I sat down and I looked at all of the, um, chapters and the words that we'd written in the first edition and thought about what we were trying to illustrate and went back to sort of basics really, and where I already had pictures in the portfolio. Um, we used pictures of great clients, interesting light, interesting locations, interesting techniques where there are certain things where, I'm not sure, the first time round, um, the illustrations of them were as good as I, as strong as I would've liked.

I shot them again here in the studio, so things like the lighting pattern. You know, I have, I've talked about them for 10 years, these lighting patterns. So it was a really nice chance to sit Katie, who works for us in the studio, uh, to sit Katie in front of the camera and say, right, this is what we're gonna do.

And I worked every lighting pattern and redrew every diagram to make that absolutely on point, which I think the first time round, while they are very, very good. They're not what I would've liked them to be this time round. So there was that side of it too. And then of course, and I'm sure you're gonna come onto it, there's a couple of, well, there's a new chapter in there which did give us a chance to explore something a little bit different.

Um, so yeah, it was just a long process of finding pictures that if I'm gonna put my name to it, are the ones that I would like. Yes. And it's not always the best picture. It's not always the competition winners. they're in there. They are in there. Of course they're in there. Um, but I think this time round, um, I really enjoyed reminiscing.

I think some of the pictures in there, they're all beautiful pictures, don't get me wrong. But some of the people I picked to be in them are people because actually that was a moment that I will remember for the rest of my life for all sorts of reasons. And I think the, the strongest example of that is our cover shot is Dory now.

The story of Dory. That sounds really weird. The story of Dory? photo. Dory. Story of photograph. Oh yeah, my

you met Dory? Or should we go with

I dunno if the story of Dory that's like, sounds like a children's book. That'd be a great chance to write a children's book. So Sarah and I were having dinner. Dory was working in the restaurant that, uh, we are having dinner in.

Um, I laughed to Sarah and said, I think, um, Dory would photograph beautifully. Sarah said, we'll, go and ask her. And I asked her and she said, no. She absolutely said no, categorically. And I said, okay. Then I wrote our email address, sorry, I wrote our web address. Uh, on the back of a, of a napkin and handed it to her.

I said, look, you know, if you're not interested, that's fine, but have a look at my work. Um, and this was after the first edition of mastering portrait photography, and my idea was for Dorie to come to the studio and we'd film some stuff where we photographed her and use it for information, stuff for people who read the book and maybe create some YouTube videos and things.

Um, anyway, at four o'clock in the morning, got an email back from Dory saying, actually, I've just looked at your work. Yes, please. And Dory has gone on to be someone we've worked with fairly regularly. Um, mostly, um, because she's just the nicest person in the world, but also she's supremely photogenic and you bring those two things together and they're the kind of people I love to work with.

I love to celebrate. Photography with, so her picture, one of those pictures I shot in that session is the cover shot in the book and she features later on as well. 'cause she's come back with her husband and her kids and it's just a delight. And then there, you know, there are people from all over the world.

Um, and so there's a lot of memories in there for both me and for you I

Yes,

Um, and it was, uh, just a pleasure to go through it. Oh, and the other thing is every single shot is shot since we published the first edition. So I did limit us to the past 10

everything is limited to what, what you've captured in the last 10 years?

Yeah. Yes. Because

figured that, um, if you're gonna do an updated edition, then, although there were pictures in the first version of the book, I would've loved to have had in there that never made it. Why don't we start from that point and move forwards?

Other than the one

Other than

other than the one other than,

one

Sarah: so you've, you've talked a little bit about how you've changed and that's been reflected in the book. You've talked a little bit about how the technology has changed, but probably one of the biggest changes has been post-production, um, the introduction of, of ai. So is that reflected in the book,

Paul: Yeah, of course it is. Um, the post-production chapter, um, I mean, the thing with post-production is that's a volume of books in and of itself. Uh, we put it into the book Sarah and myself, because I think it was important to note that an image isn't generally finished in camera. It's finished when it's finished.

And this is true for film, by the way. This is not news, you know? Um, and it's for as long as film has been shot, transparency's and negatives. People have been doing a certain amount of post-production on them afterwards in their development tanks. Um, or whether they're doing hand toning or something is', this isn't new for me.

I think you're about halfway there. Now, the second half might be a very short half, but it's almost certainly gonna evolve, at the very least, um, brightening controlling your tones and cropping. Okay. Maybe a bit of sharpening if that's your thing. So we put that chapter in just to make the point that there is a finishing stage.

That was 10 years ago. In those 10 years, everything has changed. Yes.

Yes.

You know, even if I just kept it to the Photoshopping that we had in the first edition, all of that is different. I. And of course AI has now arrived. Um, I mean, it's a precocious child of a technology at the moment, but it's growing up really very fast and it's gonna affect us in every single element of us as creatives of, of us as business owners.

There's, there's no part of our work. Even. Even the people that say I don't believe in AI are using cameras that have AI in them. You know, there's no way of escaping it. It's here with us and you can fight it if you want. And there are bits of it that I'm not that comfortable with. Certainly some of the training, the way they did it on images, without any acknowledgement of copywriting things, it's problematic.

But in the end, it's here, it's now, and if you don't embrace it, the people who are in your market as a professional competing with you. Are embracing it so there's no getting around it. So yeah, there's a part of our post-production now talks about specifically EVOTO.AI, which is the app that we use.

There's others as well re Bloom and a few others that do a very similar thing. Um, and we've put it in there. Again, not as this is what AI does, but for make, to make people aware that AI is now part of the puzzle. Use it, don't use it. And that's completely your choice. The same as it is with Photoshop. But it's a good place to just remind people.

That this is the direction of travel for a good chunk of the industry. So yeah, we've changed that quite a lot.

Sarah: And a section at the end. Is it

Paul: my favorite section? Yes. this

Sarah: a, this was a request from you to add this in.

Paul: Yes, yes.

Um, there's a, one of the things with doing this as a job, and it's not just a risk, it really does happen, is you find yourself.

Sort of burnt out isn't the right word for it, really, or the right phrase for it. But you find yourself same old, same old, same old. You get good at stuff, you get known for stuff. People ask you to do that stuff. You do more of it. You, you're still good at it, but eventually you start to find yourself just a little bit flat.

Um, and it happens all the time. And so I put a chapter and I asked the publishers if we could wiggle some stuff around and make some space to put one specific chapter in. It's not a long chapter, but to me it might be the most important chapter in there. It's about staying creative. It's just little techniques, little ideas for staying on top of your game, thinking of new things, being a creative.

And, and being a creative is something you have to work at. You can't just, you don't just invent ideas. You have to be open to seeing things and thinking things and trying things, experimenting, working with different people, having mentoring. These are all the facets that I wanted to just in a very short chapter, 'cause we could only squeeze in a couple of pages.

But it's the chapter that I think I am the most proud of

Sarah: Yes. And knowing you as well as I do, you know, it's part of my challenge in the business is making sure that you keep motivated and keep being creative. So I, I know how important it's, and how we have to put shoots in the diary and, and do things that are just for you, for no other reason. Just than just to let you play. So I, I can see how important that is.

Paul: Yeah. I'm, I'm aware of just how much cotton wool you wrap me in and I can feel it building as well. I always know when I'm not firing on all cylinders, because you start to sort of wrap cotton wool around me and start to think about putting it in other things that we need to do, or just a break to get away for a week.

You know, there's those things. It's really hard. It's hard being a creative, as in it's hard to be a creative a hundred percent of the time, and b, creative a hundred percent of the time. The, the, you know, being called a creative is one thing, but actually being creative is a process of invention and experimenting and doing things that you haven't done before.

That's the point of being creative. Um, and so, yeah, I'm always aware when I'm clearly starting to feel a bit frazzled because I can feel you starting to. Talk about doing other things.

Sarah: So what I didn't realize is what you said earlier, that the, all the images have all been taken since the last book. Um, and they're from clients we've had all around the world as well.

So I wondered if it would be. Nice to pull out a couple of our favorite images. Um, I sort of going on from your comments about staying creative. One that jumps out to me is when, um, Vivian and Dody came to the studio and, you know, this was a, a lady who came in with her West Highland tert. So Westy Westy, it's a

white west. Highland, ter.

And, um, we did some beautiful shots indoors, outdoors, um, having lots of fun. And then you built this, uh, amazing scene, um, which is including in the, included in the posing chapter. Do you wanna just explain and tell me a little bit about that one? Yeah. Um.

Paul: Um, you know, Dodie, sorry.

Vivian had emailed Dodie didn't email, obviously Doty's

Do's dog,

Vivian Vivian emailed to say she wanted a shoot with her dog. And I kind of, I say I distinctly remember the email. I remember what she said in the email, which is that she couldn't find another photographer who photographed the owner with their dog.

Now, I dunno how hard Vivian looked. I'm not, I'm sure there's a lot of photographers listening to this that photograph dogs with their owners and I judge a lot now as a, as a judge and as a coach. So I know it to. Out there. But anyway, she landed on us and I'm thrilled that she did Vivian and, uh, Dodie turned at the studio.

And Vivian is just beautiful. She's elegant. She has a real sort of gentle way about her, uh, and this beautiful little West Highland ter, which was for the first 10 minutes, I have to be honest in now. Backstory, my Nan had repeatedly West Highland Terriers. My Nan repeatedly did not train her. Westie, my Nan's dogs repeatedly bit us all of us as kids, as teenagers, as adults.

Even my dad would like shut the door and run because this dog would go for him. And so when she turned up with this little Westie, I must admit I backed away. However, Dodi, just like Vivian, was gentle and calm and just followed her around and, and he would sit. In the studio just looking at her while we worked, if it was shots for her on her own.

And then when she scooped him up or we tried to do something with him, he was so patient and so well behaved. So I've got this incredible client who wants to do these shots, and at the end of the shoot sometimes the greatest privilege you get is to say to someone, how long have you got? And if they've got a little bit more time.

What you can do is say, would you mind just trying a few bits with us? So we cleaned the studio out. It's a white, the, the dog was a white dog. Vivian had a light colored outfit and this kind of fair, and she was just, it. It struck me that we could do something interesting with the white walls of the studio, the white floor of the studio, the white posing blocks that I've had probably for 20 years here.

And so I did a couple of things and we, we shot some different combinations and then in the post-production STA stage, I built a model of our studio in 3D in blender, it with blocks exactly the same. And then I can create almost any scene I wanted around this shot that's right in the middle of Dodi looking up at Vivian.

Um, and it was one of those shoots that, I mean, every shoot in here, there's a story similar to this where I could tell you it's a shoot I'll remember forever. Um, and it was, and it was just a, a real luxury and, and just, you know, I dunno if Vivian listens to the podcast, but hello. Um, and Vivian's also very kindly sourced books from China for us.

Yeah.

yes. It's

hard to get hold of some of these things when you are not in country. So we're still in touch with her very much. He's a lovely client.

Another one that, um, oh, actually there's quite a few in the book from where we work as master photographers with Crystal cruises and so, um.

Sarah: We've got this lovely line where we talk about the book, where is it From Venice to Vietnam and Haddenham to Hawaii. Yeah. But, uh, one of my favorite shoots that's included is Christine, when we were in Brena Aires, and actually this is from this year when we were in South America and there's quite a few people that we borrowed on the ship to get some pictures. And also what a lovely opportunity.

I think it's in locations. Um. Where there is it and where was it? It was in Le Bocca. Wasn't Itca Le Bocca with Christine? Do you

Well, a little bit about that one? What's

Paul: It has been a, a real luxury for us in the intervening 10 years. So a lot happened in 20 14, 20 15. And one of the things that happened around the time of the book was they were asked to work with Crystal Cruises, a company that provided the photography to them.

Interviewed myself and Sarah. Sorry, us too.

It's

weird talking, made a third person and giving it right here. Um, interviewed us as a team and ever since then we've been traveling the world with them grading high-end portraits for these beautiful international clients. Um, and this time round the deadline.

Not the instigation, but the deadline for the book came up while we were working for about seven weeks around South America on the cruise. So I already had earmarked images from previous cruises, previous visits to different places. But when I was on the ship, there were a couple of people, um, that really leapt out just.

Ship. And one of the great luxuries when you have something like a book or you like you've become well known as a photographer, is you can say to people, would you mind stepping in to allow us to take some photographs? So there's a couple of people from the crew where you have to get permission to work with the crew.

Um, there's, um. Uh, Barbara is one of the team on there. Uh, say Hi is one of the people on there, um, who were crew members that we just loved the way they were with us. They made our lives wonderful. And so we photographed them specifically to put them in the book. Um, and then there's a client of ours, which is the one you've alluded to, which is Christine Now.

We met Christine at the end of another shoot, and this is. Um, I mean, remember this is still the Mastering Portrait Photography podcast, and so it's always worth remembering some of the things that you can do as photographers. This is not just an interview about me in a book, but here's some ideas for you that work.

So on the ship, we had just done a shoot, an amazing shoot, and a lady who was in that shoot was showing her images round the bar to all of her friends on our iPad. Now we were drinking, we were sat and we were sat next to this lovely lady who was very quiet and we'd said hello and had a quick chitchat, but not majorly a long conversation.

When our client handed us back the iPad, Christine, who was the lady who was sitting with us, said, do you mind if I have a look? And I said, yeah, of course. It'd be my pleasure. You know? So she had a look and she said, would you be willing to do that for me? And I said, well, of course we would, you know, this is what we're here for.

Um, and so we arranged to do a couple of different bits. A couple of it is actually two different shoots, but we did a site visit to Le Baca, this area in Buenos Aires. Is that right? Yes. Bueno Aires. Was it? No. Yes. Yes, it was. Bueno

Argentina. Yeah. Thank you. Are

confused. So we, we did a couple of visits to this place in, uh, bueno Aires Laca to go and check it out for different locations.

Uh, myself and you and Keith, who's our client, strictly speaking, who runs the, the photo. Um, company found all these locations and went the following day with Christine to go and explore this really beautiful, touristy area of leer. It's very characterful, it's very hot. Um, very intense actually. There's a lot going on and you do have to have your head on a swivel.

Yes.

it's quite notorious for pickpockets and thefts and so you do have to be careful. So, Sarah, I mean you, sorry, this is really weird. So

I'm

used those to talking on my own. So you and me, we were working as a team with Keith. Christine was not. Christine was stealing sausages from barbecue places and running them down alleyways that probably she shouldn't have been.

Christine

everywhere, but really where we wanted her to be, which was safe and in our site. Um, and if you remember, we kind of, um, we went round a corner. In fact, we were just heading back to the car. We, so Christina had arranged the driver and we'd gone round the corner, haven't we? And we were in this little street.

And I just, I looked over the top of the cars to the street shops, the shop fronts on the other side of the road and thought that would make a great picture because the color of Christine's dress, the color of these shops, the whole scene would just be something interesting. But I'm shooting across the road through cars.

Um, we've got Keith on the other side of the road with her. You are on the side of the road with me. Both of us trying to keep eyes everywhere 'cause we've now stepped out of the touristy bit. We are now in an area where, strictly speaking, you shouldn't be hanging around with a 10,000 pound camera.

Yes.

Um, so I dragged the shutter.

I got, I got everything else. I wanted it and dragged the shutter in a gap between the cars as somebody walked past. And I have this shot of Christine killing herself, laughing, looking at the camera. Um. With somebody walking past and it has this real vibe of a street shot, a candid shot. It's not, it's been staged, but it's one of my favorite shots in the book because it's, to me, every time I look at it, and this is true of your clients too, and when you're listening, the photographers are listening to this.

Remember this every picture, if you've created an experience around it, that picture. We'll hold memories for that client of yours. And it's true for me too. This experience was amazing. We're still in touch with Christine. She's desperate for us to go out and visit her in Texas. Um, but it was such a privilege, such a pleasure.

So much laughter and that every time I open that page in the book, that's what it takes me

it. I

I'm with

I love the colors, I love everything about it. And it's nice that it's such a lovely story too.

crazy story.

Sarah: So who do you think the book is for? Who do you think we'd pick it up and find useful?

Paul: Well, I'm hoping another 50,000 people will be. I've, I don't, I don't have total control over that. Um. It's really this, I think there's something for almost any portrait interested photographer in there. Um, if you are already a pro, you're probably not gonna pay a lot of attention to the kit chapter at the beginning. That won't be your shtick. Um, but there will be stuff on posing and interactions and some of the post-production might be of interest.

Um, if you are ready. You know, a supremely experienced photographer, you might like it simply 'cause the pictures are really beautiful. I still buy photo books because I will pick them up, look at the pictures and think, do you know what? I'm gonna use that idea. I'm gonna meld that into something else I'm doing because I like, I love seeing.

Great photographs. If you are truly a beginner, there's enough in there to get you going. And some of the techniques are a little bit further out there, but mostly it builds on this idea that you have a camera, you have a client, you have your subject, and you're gonna create an experience. And then from that experience, great pictures.

So I think it's broader than possibly the mastering portrait photography title gives it. Um, but it covers a little bit of all bases. And it certainly has enough in there to say, actually there's, there's stuff in there that if you do this, it really is quite, um, sophisticated.

Yes. Do you, we don't know at this stage in terms of whether it'll be translated into other languages that that usually comes a year after, doesn't it? After the, you

last time, say. It was only when I started getting emails in Italian.

Yes. Um,

that I noticed what happened. And we didn't know if you remember that it was in Chinese and Korean

no.

we started to put the marketing together for this book.

Yes. And we asked the publisher AB, in absolute terms, how many copies have you sold?

Yes. And they

back with different language versions that we never knew about. Yeah. So, you know. Been

been a, a journey of discovery,

a journey.

a journey.

Yes. So, yeah, who

knows? I, I really hope they do, uh, create some, uh, different language versions of it.

'cause there's nothing quite like seeing your work in Italian,

Yes. So, And, and Chinese, I think that's the one I find the, the most intriguing.

Sarah: So the book is officially launched next Tuesday, I believe.

Is the 28th. The 28th. Um, so what, what's on the horizon next is what, what are you gonna be doing with the book and

knows? Um, I mean, obviously the first thing we've gotta do is get through the launch of the book.

Yes.

Um, which is exciting. And obviously us two have been walking the studio trying to figure out how to tidy the whole place up. 'cause we haven't done a full on party probably since the last book. No. Or thereabouts.

So we've we're inviting. Everybody who's featured in the book Yeah. Um, to a, a launch at the weekend. Yeah. Um, and we are refreshing all of the pictures in the studio, uh, to reflect the pictures that are in the book as well. And it's just, it'll be such a lovely thing to do and it's, I can't wait to see everything when it's up.

Yeah. So that's, but next week's gonna be a bit fraught

It's 'cause in the middle of all that, I think I've got five shoots to work my way through.

Right. I don't sleep much. I

a challenge.

Yeah. I'm not, I'm

I'm not being super,

thankfully. Um, so there's that. And then, you know, once that gets rolling, of course I go back to our regular job. I'm judging for the British Institute. Professional photographers print competition straight after. So we've got.

A big bash on the Saturday night. Yeah. Uh, for all of our, all the people in the book on the Sunday, we're inviting anybody's around to come and a studio

open day, studio

open day in the afternoon. And then at some point in that afternoon, I have to go all the way up to Preston Salubrious, uh, Preston, to go and begin the process of judging the print competition for the 2025 print masters.

So a lot going on.

And you're gonna be busy signing books as well.

yeah,

It's been a

while since I've had to sit and do a big a book signing, but there's a load of that going on. Yeah. Uh, it's just lovely.

exciting. It really is. Well, I think that just about brings us to the end of everything. So I've enjoyed being on the other side of everything.

Sarah: So I'd just like to say, Paul, thank you ever so much for letting me do that and sitting on the other side of the mic today, um. We have got a limited number of copies here at the studio that Paul can sign, but they will be available at all. Good bookshops, um, with water zones. I think there's some competitions going where they will be with Graphistudio and with.

Um. A professional photo. Yeah.

Yep.

So there's, there's lots of ways for you to get your hands on it and uh, we'd love to know what you think of it and um, especially if you've got the first version and seeing the second version, we'd love some feedback 'cause we are so proud of it. And especially with the pictures in there, and if you can tell us what's that, what's the picture in there that, that haven't been changed? That will be even better.

There's no prize.

So, no, thank you. Thank you very much. Well,

it's a pleasure. And you know what you've gotta say now, don't you? What's

that? If you've enjoyed this podcast, is it? No.

If you've enjoyed this podcast, please head over to mastering portrait photography.com, which is full of articles.

And as it happens, I'm doing all of the behind the scenes diagrams and stories for the images that are in this book. It'll probably take me 10 years to get there, but there's a couple of hundred of those. Uh, and of course, whatever else you do.

be kind to yourself.

Take care guys.

 

EP166 Interview With Mark & Simon From Elinchrom UK

I sit down with Mark Cheatham and Simon Burfoot from Elinchrom UK to talk about the two words that matter most when you work with light: accuracy and consistency. We dig into flash vs. continuous, shaping light (not just adding it), why reliable gear shortens your workflow, and Elinchrom’s new LED 100 C—including evenly filling big softboxes and that handy internal battery. We also wander into AI: threats, tools, and why authenticity still carries the highest value.

 

Links:

• Elinchrom UK store/info: https://elinchrom.co.uk/

• LED 100 C product page: https://elinchrom.co.uk/elinchrom-led-100-c

• Rotalux Deep Octa / strips: https://elinchrom.co.uk/elinchrom-rotalux-deep-octabox-100cm-softbox/

• My workshop dates: https://masteringportraitphotography.com/workshops-and-mentoring/

Transcript:

Paul: as quite a lot of, you know, I've had a love affair with Elinchrom Lighting for the past 20 something years. In fact, I'm sitting with one of the original secondhand lights I bought from the Flash Center 21 years ago in London.

And on top of that, you couldn't ask for a nicer set of guys in the UK to deal with. So I'm sitting here about to talk to Simon and Mark from Elinchrom uk.

I'm Paul and this is the Mastering Portrait Photography podcast.

Paul: So before we get any further, tell me a little bit about who you are, each of you and the team from Elinchrom UK

Mark: After you, Simon.

Simon: Thank you very much, mark.

Mark: That's fine.

Simon: I'm, Simon Burfoot. I have, been in the industry now for longer than I care to think.

35 years almost to the, to the day.

Always been in the industry even before I left school because my father was a photographer and a lighting tutor, working for various manufacturers I was always into photography, and when he started the whole lighting journey. I got on it with him, and was learning from a very young age.

Did my first wedding at 16 years old. Had a Saturday job which turned into a full-time job in a retail camera shop. By the time I was 18, I was managing my own camera shop, in a little town in the Cotswolds called Cirencester. My dad always told me that to be a photographic rep in the industry, you needed to see it from all angles, to get the experience.

So I ended up, working in retail, moving over to a framing company. Finishing off in a prolab, hand printing, wedding photographers pictures, processing E6 and C41, hand correcting big prints for framing for, for customers, which was really interesting and I really enjoyed it. And then ended up working for a company called Leeds Photo Visual, I was a Southwest sales guy for them.

Then I moved to KJP before it became, what we know now as Wex, and got all of the customers back that I'd stolen for them for Leeds. And then really sort of started my career progressing through, and then started to work with Elinchrom, on the lighting side. Used Elinchrom way before I started working with them.

I like you a bit of a love affair. I'd used lots of different lights and, just loved the quality of the light that the Elinchrom system produced. And that's down to a number of factors that I could bore you with, but it's the quality of the gear, the consistency in terms of color, and exposure.

Shooting film was very important to have that consistency because we didn't have Photoshop to help us out afterwards. It was a learning journey, but I, I hit my goal after being a wedding photographer and a portrait photographer in my spare time, working towards getting out on the road, meeting people and being involved in the industry, which I love.

And I think it's something that I'm scared of leaving 'cause I dunno anything else. It's a wonderful industry. It has its quirks, its, downfalls at points, but actually it's a really good group of people and everyone kind of, gets on and we all love working with each other.

So we're friends rather than colleagues.

Paul: I hesitate to ask, given the length of that answer, to cut

Simon: You did ask.

Mark: I know.

Paul: a short story

Mark: was wondering if I was gonna get a go.

Paul: I was waiting to get to end into the podcast and I was about to sign off.

Mark: So, hi Mark Cheatham, sales director for Elinchrom uk this is where it gets a little bit scary because me and Simon have probably known each other for 10 years, yet our journeys in the industry are remarkably similar.

I went to college, did photography, left college, went to work at commercial photographers and hand printers. I was a hand printer, mainly black and white, anything from six by four to eight foot by four foot panels, which are horrible when you're deving in a dish. But we did it.

Paul: To the generation now, deving in a dish doesn't mean anything.

Simon: No, it doesn't.

Mark: And, and when you're doing a eight foot by four foot print and you've got it, you're wearing most of the chemistry. You went home stinking every night. I was working in retail. As a Saturday lad and then got promoted from the Saturday lad to the manager and went to run a camera shop in a little town in the Lake District called Kendall.

I stayed there for nine years. I left there,

went on the road working for a brand called Olympus, where I did 10 years, I moved to Pentax, which became Rico Pentax. I did 10 years there. I've been in the industry all my life. Like Simon, I love the industry.

I did go out the industry for 18 months where I went into the wonderful world of high end commercial vr, selling to blue light military, that sort of thing. And then came back. One of the, original members of Elinchrom uk. I don't do as much photography as Simon I take photos every day, probably too many looking at my Apple storage. I do shoot and I like shooting now and again, but I'm not a constant shooter like you guys i'm not a professional shooter, but when you spent 30 odd years in the industry, and part of that, I basically run the, the medium format business for Pentax. So 645D, 645Z.

Yeah, it was a great time. I love the industry and, everything about it. So, yeah, that's it

Paul: Obviously both of you at some point put your heads together and decided Elinchrom UK was the future. What triggered that and

why do you think gimme your sales pitch for Elinchrom for a moment and then we can discuss the various merits.

Simon: The sales pitch for Elinchrom is fairly straightforward. It's a nice, affordable system that does exactly what most photographers would like. We sell a lot of our modifiers, so soft boxes and things like that to other users, of Prophoto, Broncolor. Anybody else? Because actually the quality of the light that comes out the front of our diffusion material and our specular surfaces on the soft boxes is, is a lot, lot more superior than, than most.

A lot more superior. A lot more

Mark: A lot more superior.

Paul: more superior.

Simon: I'm trying to

Paul: Superior.

Simon: It's superior. And I think Paul, you'll agree,

Paul: it's a lot more,

Simon: You've used different manufacturers over the years and, I think the quality of light speaks for itself.

As a photographer I want consistency. Beautiful light and the effects that the Elinchrom system gives me, I've tried other soft boxes. If you want a big contrasty, not so kind light, then use a cheaper soft box.

If I've got a big tattoo guy full of piercings you're gonna put some contrasty light to create some ambience. Maybe the system for that isn't good enough, but for your standard portrait photographer in a studio, I don't think you can beat the light.

Mark: I think the two key words for Elinchrom products are accuracy and consistency. And that's what, as a portrait photographer, you should be striving for, you don't want your equipment to lengthen your workflow or make your job harder in post-production.

If you're using Elinchrom lights with Elinchrom soft boxes or Elinchrom modifiers, you know that you're gonna get accuracy and consistency. Which generally makes your job easier.

Paul: I think there's a bit that neither of you, I don't think you've quite covered, and it's the bit of the puzzle that makes you want to use whatever is the tool of your trade.

I mean, I worked with musicians, I grew up around orchestras. Watching people who utterly adore the instrument that's in their hand. It makes 'em wanna play it. If you own the instrument that you love to play, whether it's a drum kit a trumpet a violin or a piano, you will play it and get the very best out of your talent with it.

It's just a joy to pick it up and use it for all the little tiny things I think it's the bit you've missed in your descriptions of it is the utter passion that people that use it have for it.

Mark: I think one of the things I learned from my time in retail, which was obviously going back, a long way, even before digital cameras One of the things I learned from retail, I was in retail long before digital cameras, retail was a busier time.

People would come and genuinely ask for advice. So yes, someone would come in and what's the best camera for this? Or what's the best camera for that? Honestly there is still no answer to that. All the kit was good then all the kit is good now. You might get four or five different SLRs out.

And the one they'd pick at the end was the one that they felt most comfortable with and had the best connection with. When you are using something every day, every other day, however it might be, it becomes part of you. I'm a F1 fan, if you love the world of F1, you know that an F1 car, the driver doesn't sit in an F1 car, they become part of the F1 car.

When you are using the same equipment day in, day out, you don't have to think about what button to press, what dial to to turn.

You do it.

And that, I think that's the difference between using something you genuinely love and get on with and using something because that's what you've got. And maybe that's a difference you genuinely love and get on with Elinchrom lights. So yes, they're given amazing output and I know there's, little things that you'd love to see improved on them, but that's not the light output.

Paul: But the thing is, I mean, I've never, I've never heard the F1 analogy, but it's not a bad one.

When you talk about these drivers and their cars and you are right, they're sort of symbiotic, so let's talk a little bit about why we use flash. So from the photographers listening who are just setting out, and that's an awful lot of our audience. I think broadly speaking, there are two roads or three roads, if you include available light if you're a portrait photographer.

So there's available light. There's continuous light, and then there's strobes flash or whatever you wanna call it. Of course, there's, hybrid modeling and all sorts of things, but those are broadly the three ways that you're gonna light your scene or your subject. Why flash? What is it about that instantaneous pulse of light from a xenon tube that so appealing to photographers?

Simon: I think there's a few reasons. The available light is lovely if you can control it, and by that I mean knowing how to use your camera, and control the ambient light. My experience of using available light, if you do it wrong, it can be quite flat and uninteresting.

If you've got a bright, hot, sunny day, it can be harder to control than if it's a nice overcast day. But then the overcast day will provide you with some nice soft, flat lighting. Continuous light is obviously got its uses and there's a lot of people out there using it because what they see is what they get.

The way I look at continuous light is you are adding to the ambient light, adding more daylight to the daylight you've already got, which isn't a problem, but you need to control that light onto the subject to make the subject look more interesting. So a no shadow, a chin shadow to show that that subject is three dimensional.

There are very big limitations with LED because generally it's very unshapable. By that I mean the light is a very linear light. Light travels in straight lines anyway, but with a flash, we can shape the light, and that's why there's different shapes and sizes of modifiers, but it's very difficult to shape correctly -an LED array, the flash for me, gives me creativity. So with my flash, I get a sharper image to start with. I can put the shadows and the light exactly where I want and use the edge of a massive soft box, rather than the center if I'm using a flash gun or a constant light. It allows me to choose how much or how little contrast I put through that light, to create different dynamics in the image.

It allows me to be more creative. I can kill the ambient light with flash rather than adding to it. I can change how much ambient I bring into my flash exposure.

I've got a lot more control, and I'm not talking about TTL, I'm talking about full manual control of using the modifier, the flash, and me telling the camera what I want it to do, rather than the camera telling me what it thinks is right.

Which generally 99% of the time is wrong. It's given me a beautiful, average exposure, but if I wanted to kill the sun behind the subject, well it's not gonna do that. It's gonna give me an average of everything. Whereas Flash will just give me that extra opportunity to be a lot more creative and have a lot more control over my picture.

I've got quite a big saying in my workshops. I think a decent flash image is an image where it looks like flash wasn't used. As a flash photographer, Paul, I expect you probably agree with me, anyone can take a flash image. The control of light is important because anybody can light an image, but to light the subject within the image and control the environmental constraints, is the key to it and the most technical part of it.

Mark: You've got to take your camera off P for professional to do that. You've got to turn it off p for professional and get it in manual mode. And that gives you the control

Paul: Well, you say that,

We have to at some point. Address the fact that AI is not just coming, it's sitting here in

our studios all the time, and we are only a heartbeat away from P for professional, meaning AI analyzed and creating magic.

I don't doubt for a minute. I mean, right now you're right, but not

Mark: Well, at some point it will be integrated into the camera

Paul: Of course it will.

Mark: If you use an iPhone or any other phone, you know, we are using AI as phone photographers, your snapshots. You take your kids, your dogs, whatever they are highly modified images.

Paul: Yeah. But in a lot of the modern cameras, there's AI behind the scenes, for instance, on the focusing

Mark: Yeah.

Paul: While we've, we are on that, we were on that thread.

Let's put us back on that thread for a second. What's coming down the line

with, all lighting and camera craft with ai. What are you guys seeing that maybe we're not

Simon: in terms of flash technology or light technology?

Paul: Alright. I mean, so I mean there's, I guess there's two angles, isn't there?

What are the lights gonna do that use ai? What are the controllers gonna do, that uses ai, but more importantly, how will it hold its own in a world where I can hit a button and say, I want rebrand lighting on that face. I can do that today.

Mark: Yeah.

Simon: I'm not sure the lighting industry is anywhere near producing anything that is gonna give what a piece of software can give, because there's a lot more factors involved. There's what size light it is, what position that light is in, how high that light is, how low that light is.

And I think the software we've all heard and played with Evoto we were talking about earlier, I was very skeptical and dubious about it to start with as everybody would be. I'm a Photoshop Lightroom user, have been for, many years. And I did some editing, in EEvoto with my five free credits to start with, three edits in, I bought some credits because I thought, actually this is very, very good.

I'll never use it for lighting i'd like to think I can get that right myself. However, if somebody gives you a, a very flat image of a family outside and say, well, could you make this better for me? Well, guess what? I can do whatever you like to it. Is it gonna attack the photographer that's trying to earn a living?

I think there's always a need for people to take real photographs and family photographs. I think as photographers, we need to embrace it as an aid to speed up our workflow. I don't think it will fully take over the art of photography because it's a different thing.

It's not your work. It's a computer generated AI piece of work in my head. Therefore, who's responsible for that image? Who owns the copyright to that image? We deal with photographers all the time who literally point a camera, take a picture and spend three hours editing it and tell everyone that,

look at this. The software's really good and it's made you look good. I think AI is capable of doing that to an extent. In five years time, we'll look back at Evoto today and what it's producing and we'll think cracky. That was awful. It's like when you watch a high definition movie from the late 1990s, you look at it and it was amazing at the time, but you look at it now and you think, crikey, look at the quality of it.

I dunno if we're that far ahead where we won't get to that point. The quality is there. I mean, how much better can you go than 4K, eight K minus, all that kind of stuff. I'm unsure, but I don't think the AI side of it. Is applicable to flash at this moment in time? I don't know.

Mark: I think you're right.

To look at the whole, photography in general. If you are a social photographer, family photographer, whatever it might be, you are genuinely capturing that moment in time that can't be replaced.

If you are a product photographer, that's a different matter. I think there's more of a threat.

I think I might be right in saying.

I was looking, I think I saw it on, LinkedIn. There is a fashion brand in the UK at the moment that their entire catalog of clothing has been shot without models.

When you look at it on the website, there's models in it. They shoot the clothing on mannequins and then everything else is AI generated they've been developing their own AI platform now for a number of years. Does the person care Who's buying a dress for 30 quid?

Probably not, but if you are photographing somebody's wedding, graduation, some, you know, a genuine moment in someone's life, I think it'd be really wrong to use any sort of AI other than a little bit of post-production, which we know is now quite standard for many people in the industry.

Paul: Yeah, the curiosity for me is I suspect as an industry,

Guess just released a full AI model advert in, Vogue. Declared as AI generated an ai agency created it. Everything about it is ai. There's no real photography involved except in the learning side of it.

And that's a logical extension of the fact we've been Photoshopping to such a degree that the end product no longer related to the input. And we've been doing that 25 years. I started on Photoshop version one, whatever that was, 30 years More than 33.

So we've kind of worked our way into a corner where the only way out of it is to continue.

There's no backtracking now.

Mark: Yeah.

Paul: I think the damage to the industry though, or the worry for the industry, I think you're both right. I think if you can feel it, touch it, be there, there will always be that importance. In fact, the provenance of authenticity. Is the high value ticket item now,

Simon: Mm-hmm.

Paul: because you, everything else is synthetic, you can trust nothing. We are literally probably months away from 90% of social media being generated by ai. AI is both the consumer and the generator of almost everything online

Mark: Absolutely.

Paul: Goodness knows where we go. You certainly can't trust anything you read. You can't trust anything you see, so authenticity, face-to-face will become, I think a high value item.

Yeah.

Mark: Yeah.

Paul: I think one problem for us as an industry in terms of what the damage might be is that all those people that photograph nameless products or create books, you know, use photography and then compositing for, let's say a novel that's gone, stock libraries that's gone because they're faceless.

Simon: Mm-hmm.

Paul: there doesn't have to be authentic. A designer can type in half a dozen keywords. Into an AI engine and get what he needs. If he doesn't get what he needs, he does it again. All of those photographers who currently own Kit are gonna look around with what do we do now?

And so for those of us who specialize in weddings and portraits and family events, our market stands every chance of being diluted, which has the knock on effect of all of us having to keep an eye on AI to stay ahead of all competitors, which has the next knock on effect, that we're all gonna lean into ai, which begs the question, what happens after Because that's what happened in the Photoshop world.

You know, I'm kind of, I mean, genuinely cur, and this will be a running theme on the podcast forever, is kind of prodding it and taking barometer readings as to where are we going?

Mark: Yeah. I mean, who's more at threat at the moment from this technology?

Is it the photographer or is it the retouch? You know, we do forget that there are retouchers That is their, they're not photographers.

Paul: I don't forget. They email me 3, 4, 5 times a day.

Mark: a

Simon: day,

Mark: You know, a highly skilled retouch isn't cheap. They've honed their craft for many years using whatever software product they prefer to use.

I think they're the ones at risk now more so than the photographer. And I think we sort of lose sight of that. Looking at it from a photographer's point of view, there is a whole industry behind photography that actually is being affected more so than you guys at the moment.

Simon: Mm-hmm.

Paul: Yeah, I think there's truth in that, but. It's not really important. Of course, it's really important to all of those people, but this is the digital revolution that we went through as film photographers, and probably what the Daguerreotype generators went through when Fox Tolbert invented the first transfer.

Negative. You know, they are, there are always these epochs in our industry and it wipes out entire skillset.

You know, I mean, when we went to digital before then, like you, I could dev in a tank.

Yeah. You know, and really liked it. I like I see, I suspect I just like the solitude,

Mark: the dark,

Paul: red light in the dark

Mark: yeah.

Paul: Nobody will come in.

Not now. Go away. Yeah. All that kind of stuff. But of course those skills have gone, has as, have access to the equipment.

I think we're there again, this feels like to me a huge transition in the industry and for those who want to keep up, AI is the keeping up whether you like it or not.

Mark: Yeah. And if you don't like it, we've seen it, we're in the middle of a massive resurgence in film photography,

which is great for the industry, great for the retail industry, great for the film manufacturers, chemical manufacturers, everything.

You know, simon, myself, you, you, we, we, our earliest photography, whether we were shooting with flash, natural light, we were film shooters and that planes back.

And what digital did, from a camera point of view, is make it easier and more accessible for less skilled people.

But it's true. You know, if you shot with a digital camera now that's got a dynamic range of 15 stops, you actually don't even need to have your exposure, that accurate Go and shoot with a slide film that's got dynamic range of less than one stop and see how good you are.

It has made it easier. The technology, it will always make it. Easier, but it opens up new doors, it opens up new avenues to skilled people as well as unskilled people. If you want, I'm using the word unskilled again, I'm not being, a blanket phrase, but it's true. You can pick up a digital camera now and get results that same person shooting with a slide film 20 years ago would not get add software to that post-production, everything else.

It's an industry that we've seen so many changes in over the 30 odd years that we've been in it,

Simon: been

Mark: continue

Simon: at times. It exciting

Mark: The dawn of digital photography to the masses. was amazing.

I was working for Olympus at the time when digital really took off and for Olympus it was amazing. They made some amazing products. We did quite well out of it and people started enjoying photography that maybe hadn't enjoyed photography before.

You know, people might laugh at, you know, you, you, you're at a wedding, you're shooting a really nice wedding pool and there's always a couple of guests there which have got equipment as good as yours. Better, better than yours. Yeah. Got

Simon: jobs and they can afford it.

Mark: They've got proper jobs. Their pitches aren't going to be as good as yours.

They're the ones laughing at everyone shooting on their phone because they've spent six grand on their new. Camera. But if shooting on a phone gets people into photography and then next year they buy a camera and two years later they upgrade their camera and it gets them into the hobby of photography?

That's great for everyone. Hobbyists are as essential, as professional photographers to the industry. In fact, to keep the manufacturers going, probably more so

Simon: the hobbyists are a massive part. Even if they go out and spend six or seven or 8,000 pounds on a camera because they think it's gonna make them a better photographer. Who knows in two years time with the AI side, maybe it will. That old saying, Hey Mr, that's a nice camera.

I bet it takes great pictures, may become true. We have people on the lighting courses, the workshops we run, the people I train and they're asking me, okay, what sessions are we gonna use? And I'm saying, okay, well we're gonna be a hundred ISO at 125th, F 5.6. Okay, well if I point my camera at the subject, it's telling me, yeah, but you need to put it onto manual.

And you see the color drain out their faces. You've got a 6,000 pound camera and you've never taken it off 'P'.

Mark: True story.

Simon: And we see this all the time. It's like the whole TTL strobe manual flash system. The camera's telling you what it wants to show you, but that maybe is not what you want.

There are people out there that will spend a fortune on equipment but actually you could take just as good a picture with a much smaller, cheaper device with an nice bit of glass on the front if you know what you're doing. And that goes back to what Mark was saying about shooting film and slide film and digital today.

Paul: I, mean, you know, I don't want this to be an echo chamber, and so what I am really interested in though, is the way that AI will change what flash photography does.

I'm curious as to where we are headed in that, specific vertical. How is AI going to help and influence our ability to create great lip photography using flash?

Mark: I think,

Paul: I love the fact the two guys side and looked at each other.

Mark: I,

Simon: it's a difficult question to answer.

Mark: physical light,

Simon: is a difficult question to answer because if you're

Mark: talking about the physical delivery of light.

Simon: Not gonna change.

Mark: Now,

The only thing I can even compare it to, if you think about how the light is delivered, is what's the nearest thing?

What's gotta change? Modern headlamps on cars, going back to cars again, you know, a modern car are using these LED arrays and they will switch on and switch off different LEDs depending on the conditions in front of them. Anti dazzle, all this sort of stuff. You know, the modern expensive headlamp is an amazing technical piece of kit.

It's not just one ball, but it's hundreds in some cases of little arrays. Will that come into flash? I don't know. Will you just be able to put a soft box in front of someone and it will shape the light in the future using a massive array. Right? I dunno it,

Simon: there's been many companies tested these arrays, in terms of LED Flash,

And I think to be honest, that's probably the nearest it's gonna get to an AI point of view is this LED Flash.

Now there's an argument to say, what is flash if I walk into a living room and flick the light on, on off really quickly, is that a flash?

Mark: No, that's a folock in

Paul: me

Mark: turn, big lights off.

Paul: Yeah.

Mark: So

Simon: it,

you, you might be able to get these arrays to flush on and off. But LED technology, in terms of how it works, it's quite slow.

It's a diode, it takes a while for it to get to its correct brightness and it takes a while for it to turn off. To try and get an LED. To work as a flash. It, it's not an explosion in a gas field tube. It's a a, a lighter emitting diode that is, is coming on and turning off again. Will AI help that? Due to the nature of its design, I don't think it can.

Mark: Me and s aren't invented an AI flash anytime soon by the looks of, we're

Simon: it's very secret.

Mark: We're just putting everyone off Paul,

Simon: It's alright.

Mark: just so they don't think

Simon: Yeah,

Mark: Oh, it's gonna be too much hard work and we'll sort it.

Paul: It's definitely coming.

I don't doubt for a minute that this is all coming because there's no one not looking at anything

Simon: that makes perfect sense.

Paul: Right now there's an explosion of invention because everybody's trying to find an angle on everything.

Simon: Mm-hmm.

Paul: The guys I feel the most for are the guys who spent millions, , on these big LED film backdrop walls.

Simon: Yep.

Mark: So you can

Paul: a car onto a flight sim, rack, and then film the whole lot in front of an LED wall. Well, it was great. And there was a market for people filming those backdrops, and now of course that's all AI generated in the LED, but that's only today's technology.

Tomorrow's is, you don't need the LED wall.

That's here today. VEO3 and Flow already, I mean, I had to play with one the other day for one of our lighting diagrams and it animated the whole thing. Absolute genius.

Simon: Mm-hmm.

Paul: I still generated the original diagram.

Mark: Yeah,

Paul: Yeah, that's useful. There's some skill in there still for now, but, you gotta face the music that anything that isn't, I can touch it and prod it. AI's gonna do it.

Mark: Absolutely. If you've ever seen the series Mandalorian go and watch the making of the Mandalorian and they are using those big LED walls, that is their backdrop.

Yeah. And it's amazing how fast they shift from, you know, they can, they don't need to build a set. Yeah. They shift from scene to scene.

Paul: Well, aI is now building the scenes. But tomorrow they won't need the LED wall. 'cause AI will put it in behind the actors.

Mark: Yeah. Say after

Paul: that you won't need the actors because they're being forced to sign away the rights so that AI can be used. And even those that are standing their ground and saying no, well, the actors saying Yes. Are the ones being hired.

You know, in the end, AI is gonna touch all of it. And so I mean, it's things like, imagine walking into a studio. Let's ignore the LED thing for a minute, by the way, that's a temporary argument,

Simon: I know you're talking about.

Paul: about today's,

Simon: You're about the.

Mark: days

Paul: LEDs,

Simon: we're in, We're in very, very interesting times and. I'm excited for the future. I'm excited for the new generation of photographers that are coming in to see how they work with what happens.

We've gone from fully analog to me selling IMACON drum scanners that were digitizing negatives and all the five four sheet almost a shoot of properties for an estate agent were all digitized on an hassle blood scanner. And then the digital camera comes out and you start using it. It was a Kodak camera, I think the first SLRI used,

Paul: Yeah.

Simon: and you get the results back and you think, oh my God, it looks like it's come out of a practica MTL five B.

Mark: But

Simon: then suddenly

the technology just changes and changes and changes and suddenly it's running away with itself and where we are today. I mean, I, I didn't like digital to start with. It was too. It was too digital.

It was too sharp. It didn't have the feel of film, but do you know what?

We get used to it and the files that my digital mirrorless camera provide now and my Fuji GFX medium format are absolutely stunning. But the first thing I do is turn the sharpness down because they are generally over sharp. For a lovely, beautifully lit portrait or whatever that anybody takes, it just needs knocking back a bit.

We were speaking about this earlier,

I did some comparison edits from what I'd done manually in Photoshop to the Evoto. Do you know what the pre-selected edits are? Great. If you not the slider back from 10 to about six, you're there or thereabouts?

More is not always good.

Mark: I think when it comes to imagery in our daily lives,

the one thing that drives what we expect to see is TV and most people's TVs, everything's turned up to a hundred.

The color, the contrast, that was a bit of a shock originally from the film to digital, crossover. Everything went from being relatively natural to way over the top

Just getting back to AI and how it's gonna affect people like you and people that we work with day to day.

I don't think we should be worried about that. We should be worried about the images we see on the news, not what we're seeing, hanging on people's walls and how they're gonna be affected by ai.

That generally does affect everyone's daily life.

Paul: Yeah,

Mark: Yeah. But what

Paul: people now ask me, for instance, I've photographed a couple head shots yesterday, and the one person had not ironed her blouse.

And her first question was, can we sort that out in post? So this is the knock on effect people are becoming aware of what's possible.

What's that? Nothing.

Know, and the, the smooth clothing button in Evoto will get me quite a long way down that road and saves somebody picking up an eye and randomly, it's not me, it's now actually more work for me 'cause I shouldn't have to do it.

But, you know, this

is my point about the knock on effect. Our worlds are different. So I didn't really intend this to be just a great sort of circular conversation about AI cars and, future technology. It was more, I dunno, we ended up down there anyway.

Simon: We went down a rabbit hole.

Mark: A

Paul: rabbit hole.

Yeah

Mark: was quite an interesting one.

Simon: And I'm sorry if you've wasted your entire journey to work and we

Paul: Yeah.

Simon: Alright. It wasn't intended to be like that.

Paul: I think it's a debate that we need to be having and there needs to be more discussion about it. Certainly for anybody that has a voice in the industry and people are listening to it because right now it might be a toddler of a technology, but it's growing faster than people realize.

There is now a point in the written word online where AI is generating more than real people are generating, and AI is learning that. So AI is reading its own output. That's now beginning to happen in imagery and film and music.

Simon: Well,

even in Google results, you type in anything to a Google search bar. When it comes back to the results, the first section at the top is the AI generated version. And you know what, it's generally

Paul: Yep.

Simon: good and

Paul: turn off all the rest of it now. So it's only ai.

Simon: Not quite brave enough for that yet. No, not me.

Mark: In terms

Paul: of SEO for instance, you now need to tune it for large language models.

You need to be giving. Google the LLM information you want it to learn so that you become part of that section on a website. And it, you know, this is where we are and it's happening at such a speed, every day I am learning something new about something else that's arriving. And I think TV and film is probably slightly ahead of the photography industry

Mark: Yeah.

Paul: The pressures on the costs are so big,

Simon: Yes.

Paul: Whereas the cost differential, I'm predicting our costs will actually go up, not down.

Whereas in TV and film, the cost will come down dramatically.

Mark: Absolutely.

Simon: They are a horrifically high level anyway. That's

Paul: I'm not disputing that, but I watched a demo of some new stuff online recently and they had a talking head and they literally typed in relight that with a kiss light here, hairlight there, Rembrandt variation on the front.

And they did it off a flat picture and they can move the lights around as if you are moving lights. Yes. And that's there today. So that's coming our way too. And I still think the people who understand how to see light will have an advantage because you'll know when you've typed these words in that you've got it about right.

It doesn't change the fact that it's going to be increasingly synthetic.

The moment in the middle of it is real. We may well be asked to relight things, re clothe things that's already happening.

Simon: Yeah.

Paul: We get, can you just fill in my hairline? That's a fairly common one.

Just removing a mole. Or removing two inches round a waist. This, we've been doing that forever.

Simon: Mm-hmm.

Paul: And so now it'll be done with keyword generation rather than, photoshop necessarily.

Simon: I think you'll always have the people that embrace this, we can't ignore it as you rightly say.

It's not going away. It's gonna get bigger, it's gonna feature more in our lives.

I think there's gonna be three sets of people. It's gonna be the people like us generally on a daily basis. We're photographers or we're artists. We enjoy what we do. I enjoy correctly lighting somebody with the correct modifier

properties to match light quality to get the best look and feel and the ambience of that image. And I enjoy the process of putting that together and then seeing the end result afterwards. I suppose that makes me an artist in, in, in loose terms. I think, you know, as, as, as a photographer, we are artists.

You've then got another generation that are finding shortcuts. They're doing some of the job with their camera. They're making their image from an AI point of view. Does that make up an artist? I suppose it still does because they're creating their own art, but they have no interest 'cause they have no enjoyment in making that picture as good as it can be before you even hit the shutter. And then I think you've got other people, and us to an extent where you do what you need to do, you enjoy the process, you look at the images, and then you just finely tune it with a bit of AI or Photoshop retouching

so I think there are different sets of people that will use AI to their advantage or completely ignore it.

Mark: Yeah. I think you're right. And I think it comes down, I'm going to use another analogy here, you, you know, let's say you enjoy cooking. If you enjoy cooking, you're creating something. What's the alternative? You get a microwave meal.

Well, Paul

Simon: and Sarah do.

Mark: No.

Paul: Sarah does.

Simon: We can't afford waitress.

Mark: You might spend months creating your perfect risotto.

You've got it right.

You love it. Everyone else loves it. You share it around all your friends. Brilliant. Or you go to Waitrose, you buy one, put it three minutes in the microwave and it's done.

That's yer AI I Imagery, isn't it? It's a microwave meal.

Paul: There's a lot of microwave meals out there. And not that many people cook their own stuff and certainly not as many as used to. And there's a lesson.

Simon: Is,

Mark: but also,

Simon: things have become easier

Mark: there

Simon: you go.

Mark: I think what we also forget in the photographic industry and take the industry as a whole, and this is something I've experienced in the, in the working for manufacturers in that photography itself is, is a, is a huge hobby.

There's lots of hobbyist photographers, but there's actually more people that do photography as part of another hobby, birdwatching, aviation, all that sort of thing. Anything, you know, the photography isn't the hobby, it's the birds that are the hobby, but they take photographs of, it's the planes that are the hobby, but they take photographs.

They're the ones that actually keep the industry going and then they expand into other industries. They come on one of our workshops. You know, that's something that we're still and Simon still Absolutely. And yourself, educating photographers to do it right, to

practice using the gear the right way, but the theory of it and getting it right.

If anything that brings more people into wanting to learn to cook better,

Paul: you

Mark: have

more chefs rather than people using microwave meals. Education's just so important. And when it comes to lighting, I wasn't competent in using flash. I'm still not, but having sat through Simon's course and other people's courses now for hundreds of times, I can light a scene sometimes,

people

are still gonna be hungry for education.

I think some wills, some won't. If you wanna go and get that microwave risotto go and microwave u risotto. But there's always gonna be people that wanna learn how to do it properly, wanna learn from scratch, wanna learn the art of it.

Creators and in a creative industry, we've got to embrace those people and bring more people into it and ensure there's more people on that journey of learning and upskilling and trying to do it properly.

Um, and yes, if they use whatever technology at whatever stage in their journey, if they're getting enjoyment from it, what's it matter?

Paul: Excellent.

Mark: What a fine

Paul: concluding statement. If they got enjoyment outta it. Yeah. Whatever. Excellent. Thank you, Mark, for your summing up.

Simon: In conclusion,

Paul: did that just come out your nose?

What on earth.

Mark: What

Paul: what you can't see, dear Listener is the fact that Mark just spat his water everywhere, laughing at Si.

It's been an interesting podcast. Anyway, I'm gonna drag this back onto topic for fear of it dissolving into three blokes having a pint.

Mark: I think we should go for one.

Simon: I think,

Paul: I think we should know as well.

Having said that with this conversation, maybe not. I was gonna ask you a little bit about, 'cause we've talked about strobes and the beauty of strobes, but of course Elinchrom still is more than that, and you've just launched a new LED light, so I know you like Strobe Simon.

Now talk about the continuous light that also Elinchrom is producing.

Simon: We have launched the Elinchrom LED 100 C. Those familiar with our Elinchrom One and Three OCF camera Flash system. It's basically a smaller unit, but still uses the OCF adapter.

Elinchrom have put a lot of time into this. They've been looking at LED technology for many years, and I've been to the factory in Switzerland and seen different LED arrays being tested. The problem we had with LEDs is every single LED was different and put out a different color temperature.

We're now manufacturing LEDs in batches, where they can all be matched. They all come from the same serial number batch. And the different colors of LED as well, 15 years ago, blue LEDs weren't even possible. You couldn't make a blue LED every other color, but not blue for some unknown reason.

They've got the colors right now, they've got full RGB spectrum, which is perfectly accurate a 95 or 97 CRI index light. It's a true hundred watts, of light as well. From tosin through to past daylight and fully controllable like the CRO flash system in very accurate nth degrees.

The LED array in the front of the, the LEDA hundred is one of the first shapeable, fully shapeable, LED arrays that I've come across and I've looked at lots.

By shapeable, I mean you put it into a soft box, of any size and it's not gonna give you a hotspot in the middle, or it's not gonna light the first 12 inches of the middle of the soft box and leave the rest dark.

I remember when we got the first LD and Mark got it before me

And he said, I've put it onto a 70 centimeter soft box. And he said, I've taken a picture to the front. Look at this. And it was perfectly even from edge to edge. When I got it, I stuck it onto a 1 3 5 centimeter soft box and did the same and was absolutely blown away by how even it was from edge to edge.

When I got my light meter out, if you remember what one of those is, uh, it, uh, it gave me a third of a stop different from the center to the outside edge. Now for an LED, that's brilliant. I mean, that's decent for a flash, but for an LED it's generally unheard of. So you can make the LED as big as you like.

It's got all the special effects that some of the cheaper Chinese ones have got because people use that kind of thing. Apparently I have no idea what for. But it sits on its own in a market where there are very cheap and cheerful LEDs, that kind of do a job. And very expensive high-end LEDs that do a completely different job for the photographer that's gone hybrid and does a bit of shooting, but does a bit of video work.

So, going into a solicitor's or an accountant's office where they want head shots, but also want a bit of talking head video for the MD or the CEO explaining about his company on the website. It's perfect. You can up the ISO and use the modeling lamp in generally the threes, the fives, the ones that we've got, the LEDs are brilliant.

But actually the LED 100 will give you all your modifier that you've taken with you, you can use those. It's very small and light, with its own built-in battery and it will give you a very nice low iso. Talking head interview with a lovely big light source.

And I've proved the point of how well it works and how nice it is at the price point it sits in. But it is our first journey into it. There will be others come in and there'll be an app control for it. And I think from an LED point of view, you're gonna say, I would say this, but actually it's one of the nicer ones I've used.

And when you get yours, you can tell people exactly the same.

Paul: Trust me,

I will.

Simon: Yes.

Mark: I think

Paul: very

excited about it.

Mark: I think the beauty

of it as well is it's got an inbuilt battery.

It'll give

you up to 45 minutes on a full charge.

You can plug it in and run it off the mains directly through the USB socket as well. But it means it's a truly portable light source. 45 minutes at a hundred watt and it's rated at a hundred watt actual light output. It's seems far in excess of that.

When you actually,

Simon: we had a photographer the other day who used it and he's used to using sort of 3, 2 50, 300 watt LEDs and he said put them side by side at full power.

They were virtually comparable.

Paul: That is certainly true, or in my case by lots.

Simon: I

seem to be surrounded

Paul: by Elinchrom kit,

Which is all good. So for anybody who's interested in buying one of these things, where'd you get them? How much are they?

Simon: The LED itself, the singlehead unit is 499 inc VAT.

If you want one with a charger, which sounds ridiculous, but there's always people who say, well, I don't want the charger. You can have one with a charger for 50 quid extra. So 549. The twin kit is just less than a thousand quid with chargers. And it comes in a very nice portable carry bag to, to carry them around in.

Um, and, uh, yeah, available from all good photographic retailers, and, Ellen crom.co uk.

Paul: Very good. So just to remind you beautiful people listening to this podcast, we only ever feature people and products, at least like this one where I've said, put a sales pitch in because I use it.

It's only ever been about what we use here at the studio. I hate the idea of just being a renta-voice.

You it.

Mark: bought it.

Paul: Yeah. That's true. You guys sold it to me.

Mark: Yeah,

Simon: if I gave you

anything you'd tell everyone it was great. So if you buy it, no, I've bought

Paul: Yeah. And

then became an ambassador for you. As with everything here, I put my money where my mouth is, we will use it. We do use it. I'm really interested in the little LED light because I could have done with that the other night. It would've been perfect for a very particular need. So yes, I can highly recommend Elinchrom Fives and Threes if you're on a different system.

The Rotalux, system of modifier is the best on the planet. Quick to set up, quick to take down. More importantly, the light that comes off them is just beautiful, whether it's a Godox, whether it's on a ProPhoto, which it was for me, or whether if you've really got your common sense about you on the front of an Elinchrom.

And on that happy note and back to where we started, which is about lighting, I'm gonna say thanks to the guys. They came to the studio to fix a problem but it's always lovely to have them as guests here. Thank you, mark. Thank you Simon. Most importantly, you Elinchrom for creating Kit is just an absolute joy to use.

If you've enjoyed the podcast, please head over to all your other episodes. Please subscribe and whatever is your podcast, play of choice, whether it's iTunes, Spotify, YouTube, or a other. After you head, if you head across to masteringportraitphotography.com the spiritual home of this, particular, podcast, I will put in the show notes all the little bits of detail and where to get these things.

I'll get some links off the guys as to where to look for the kit. Thank you both. I dunno when I'll be seeing you again. I suspect it will be the Convention in January if I know the way these things go.

Simon: We're not gonna get invited back, are we?

Mark: Probably not. Enough.

Paul: And I'm gonna get a mop and clean up that water. You've just sprayed all over the floor.

What is going on?

Simon: wish we'd video. That was a funny sun

Mark: I just didn't expect it and never usually that sort of funny and quick,

Simon: It's the funniest thing I've ever seen.

Paul: On that happy note, whatever else is going on in your lives, be kind to yourself. Take care.

This one starts with a dodgy lane choice, a Starbucks coffee, and a misjudged underpass. As always.

I’m back in the Land Rover — which might be its final podcast outing before it finds a new home — and today’s episode is a rambling, reflective road trip through customer service, creative resilience, and the rapidly growing presence of AI in our industry.

The day started badly. Cold shower (thanks British Gas), broken editing software, and a head full of terabytes. But it ended with a reminder of why kindness, craftsmanship, and conversation still matter. A haircut from someone I’ve known for 18 years. A deep chat with the owner of Michel Engineering while he lovingly took apart my ancient-but-beautiful record deck — the very same design featured in A Clockwork Orange and owned by Steve Jobs, no less. And then... a disappointing interaction with a distracted barista and a headset-wearing drive-thru operator. Same building, worlds apart.

Customer service, it turns out, is alive and well — just not always where you'd expect it.

But the main theme of this episode is AI. Not the doom-and-gloom kind, but the real stuff: the tools I’m already using, how they’re reshaping our workflows, and how they might be reshaping entire economies. It’s not AI that’s coming for your job — it’s the photographer who learns to harness it.

We talk about:

• AI tools I already use (like EVOTO, Imagine AI, ChatGPT, and XCi)

• Using AI as a teaching assistant, sub-editor, and productivity coach

• The real-world implications of AI-generated ads, coding layoffs, and what it means for creatives

• Plans for a new AI section on masteringportraitphotography.com

And if you hang in there until the end, I’ll tell you about a girl named Dory, a gutsy 12-year-old contortionist, and the new edition of Mastering Portrait Photography — complete with fresh images, a decade of stories, and a very special launch offer.

So pop on your headphones, admire the wheat fields if you’ve got them, and come along for the ride.

Spoiler: there’s C3PO’s eye in here too. Yes, really.

 

🛠️ Mentioned in this episode:

• Michel Engineering (Turntables) – michelengineering.com

• EVOTO.AI – AI portrait retouching evoto.ai

• Imagine AI – Smart colour-matching editing imagine.ai

• XCi (Excire) – AI-powered image search: excire.com

• ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini – AI tools for writing, reasoning, and workflow

• DaVinci Resolve – Subtitle generator and video editor: blackmagicdesign.com

• ACDSee – Image management software: acdsee.com

---

📘 Book Update: Mastering Portrait Photography (Updated Edition)

• Publication date: September 14, 2025

• Pre-order now with 25% off at Waterstones: Waterstones Offer Link (search "Mastering Portrait Photography Summer Offer")

• Signed copies: Will be available via masteringportraitphotography.com

---

🎓 Workshops & Mentoring

• Workshops now back on Mondays (not Fridays!)

• One-to-one mentoring now available — contact the studio for more info

• Explore workshops: masteringportraitphotography.com/workshops-and-mentoring

Transcript

Introduction and Setting the Scene

Well, as you can probably gather from the noise going on in the background I'm back out in the Land Rover, uh, for one more podcast out on my travels. Um, you'll have to bear with me as I navigate the carpark away from Starbucks. Uh, it's been an interesting day in so many, so many ways, and I will talk about all of that.

 

Uh, where do I, where do I start? Right? Well, I'm back out on the road. Maybe one of the last ones. 

 

Memorable Cars and the Land Rover

 

The Land Rover is, as many of you know, now up for sale and not because I don't absolutely love this vehicle. It is by far, by far and away my favorite car that I've ever owned, and I've owned some cars that I have truly loved.

 

Of course, my first car, an Austin Allegro affectionately named nicknamed Benny, as in Benny from Top Cat. Um, because it's small, bubbly, and round. Um, I owned a Mark two Ford Escort with a steering wheel so small you could touch your thumbs across it, but an engine so small that it really wasn't a sports car, but that was just a beautiful thing.

 

I've owned a Lexus IS 200, which. From a speed freak point of view is a lot more lively than even this Land Rover is, but in the end. This four wheel drive farmer's vehicle has traveled with me all over the uk from job to job, from client to client. And even today as I was visiting, uh, a place to get my record deck repaired, which I will tell you about, the guy that owns the company came out and all he could do, in spite of the fact we're looking at one of the rarest record decks around.

 

In spite of that, all he could do was talk about the Land Rover. I'm Paul, and this is the Mastering Portrait Photography  📍 podcast.

 

 Oh, do you know what I've just done? You know, when you get in a lane, because there's a roundabout coming that I have to turn right at. So I got in a lane and now I'm in an underpass going underneath the roundabout. That I needed to turn right at. How that's really frustrating. I hate it when that happens.

 

However, I'm up in Hichin, uh, Stevenage way, um, in the southeastern ish corner of the uk. Weirdly enough, I've been here before. I thought I recognized it. This is where I photographed Kevin Fong in the, um, British Aerospace. It looks like it's now Airbus here. I've just driven past the lab where we photograph Kevin Fong on the moon, on the Mars Lander.

 

A test area. So they've built, it's like the size of a football pitch or two. It's huge. This huge great expanse of sand and rocks, and they've lit it like the light would be on Mars. I don't know. Why that would be important if you are testing Moon Lands or Mars lands. I haven't a clue. Uh, but it's where they tested, uh, or at least the British scientists tested their parts of the Mars rover and things.

 

I've been here before. I photographed here. Uh, that's not why I here this particular moment. Uh, but I wanna start. Oh, there it is. Look at that. How cool. Sorry. This is way Yeah. Home of the exo Mars rover. I've been in there. Wow. Some days, some days ev well, every day is an adventure. Some days more than others.

 

Right? Now, let's see me, let's see if I can get into the underpass the right way around this time, having turned around to head back home, mop it. 

 

Navigating the Day and Customer Service

 

Um, I wanted to talk about a few things today, but one of the things that came up, which wasn't meant to really, so this is now gonna be a two part podcast. Let me talk about customer service first.

 

And it starts yesterday. Really, let me tell you a bit of my day yesterday. Not if I'm honest, my best day and we all have them. So the upshot is, everything worked out and I have the photographs I needed or I need, but getting there proved trickier than it does normal. And that's in spite of the fact that I talk in.

 

Very good story ab about being present and giving it your all. So the day started fairly badly with a cold shower. The boiler broke, well, it broke the night before. Actually it broke on Sunday night. So I got on the bike, did some exercise, sweated a lot, went to have a nice, warm, refreshing shower and had, well, it was a refreshing shower, but a cold one.

 

It was, I mean, I know they say a cold shower is meant to be good for you, not for me. Alright. It left me in a crappy mood and knowing I had to get in touch with British gas, um, the week before British acid service, the boiler, now it's broken. So you can imagine, as much as I'm trying to be stoic and sensible about these things, I'm really quite cross.

 

Uh, I try my best not to take it out on those around me. I took it out on those around me, uh, and to all those people around me, I do apologize. And by that I mean predominantly Sarah, who takes the, the brunt of all of my crappy moods when they happen. Uh, thankfully it doesn't happen too often, uh, but when they happen, it is always Sarah that's in the firing line.

 

So, um, after trolling through the website and trying to get an engineer booked, that was no good. They couldn't bring, couldn't send anyone out till. Tuesday or they said they couldn't send anyone out to Tuesday. Let me just navigate this Range Rover that's creeping on my inside. Thank you. Um, so, uh, yesterday morning, Monday morning, um, I got on the phone to talk to someone.

 

I thought, do you know what I'll do instead of trying to use computer systems, I'll talk to someone. Well, uh, I talked to a computer. I said, yes, no, no, yes. And, uh, punched in my credit card details because in spite of the fact the engineer probably broke the boiler. Um, we still have to have a credit card ready for any excess.

 

Now, the upshot is quite a good one, is that by calling in, I did mostly get a, an appointment far earlier than I could do on their website, which doesn't really make any sense given that on the website, I'm assuming it is plugged into exactly the same. Booking system that the automated voice was in case you in any doubt?

 

No. I didn't get to speak to a human. I got to speak to a very, very poor AI or automated something or other. Anyway, so that was the start of the day. Then in the office, Katie's machine running Da Vinci stopped talking to Frame io. Now for those of you into it, da Vinci is our editing suite, any videos and Frame io is where we store our assets.

 

Now this isn't ideal if the editing suite can't talk to the asset store. That's the end of a day's work, really. So that put me in a fairly bad mood. And then we're gonna be photographing three amazing kids. So we're doing a video on siblings. Why you photograph them, how you photograph them, the laughter involved in photographing them.

 

And we've got this amazing family, three teenagers and uh, they were due in and sure enough, they arrived and I still had my head inside. What do I do if Da Vinci no longer talks to Frame io? We're gonna have to re-license a load of stuff. I'm gonna have to move a couple of terabytes of assets around, which as anyone who's done it knows it's.

 

Probably, you know, a week's worth of work for me. Um, everything was just piling up and I was struggling to get my head into it. And of course they're teenagers and they're excited about coming into the studio, and I wanted to give them the best. Experience. I can, even though they're not here as a client, they have been as a client before, but they're not here as a client.

 

They're here because I would like to create a video about photographing siblings. So I owe it to them in so many ways to give the very best of me. And I was struggling. And I think in reality, probably for about an hour, I struggled to get myself into that zone where you are creating. Beautiful pictures.

 

The light wasn't light, I didn't feel great. My head is spinning because I think I've got days of work ahead of me to fix something else. Um, got there Eventually we did get both the photographs and the video ready to create, uh, another one of our mastering portrait photography videos this time on photographing siblings, how to approach it, what to look for, things you can do.

 

And then on top of that, some top tips for top Tip Tuesday on our socials. But it's really important when it comes to the service levels. At the end of the day, their customers and I offer our customer service, and that has an interesting run on into today. So today, so far, what time is it? It is quarter to one.

 

I've been on the road since about quarter past eight this morning, so I went for a haircut first. Our reg, my regular hairstylist, who I've been going to for 18 years, we worked out this morning. I photographed her wedding 18 years ago, and I'd known her a little bit before then when I pitched for the work and did a prew wedding shoot.

 

So 18, 19 years, I've been going to cap for a haircut and we chat shit. I mean, we just. Laugh and talk nonsense sometimes. Sometimes really serious stuff. 'cause she's got kids. I've got kids different ages, but you know, we've lived through similar things. I've watched her business grow and change over the years.

 

She's worked with me, I've worked with her. And I would say that her customer service is some of the best I've ever met. There's only her now. She did run a multi, a multi station, um, uh, salon for ages, but in the end decided that she would rather just work on her own, have a nice, steady, um, client base, um, who she knew and does very well, that which has a client at home.

 

But in spite of that, or maybe because of that, her customer service is absolutely brilliant as long as you don't try to text her late in the evening. We might get quite a short answer. 

 

The Record Deck Repair Adventure

 

And then today I've been over to get my record deck serviced. Now the kids have been on at me for about, about this for a few years now.

 

It's been broken. Um, and it came to a head this Father's Day when they said, what would I like? And I thought, well, find me a record or something. And they both went, no. And I'm like, sorry, what? They said, we're not buying you anymore records until you fix your flipping record deck because it's been broken for so long.

 

And you'd said you're gonna get it fixed and you haven't. So we're no longer buying your records. Now that's not to say I didn't get some really cool gifts from them, but it did sort of, okay, I take your point. Let me go get this sorted. So I rang in to the company that originally made it so a bit of history.

 

The record deck is a transcripter hydraulic reference turntable. The company was called Transcripter. Um, it's the same age as I am. It's a beautiful, beautiful thing. It's glass and aluminum and big brass weights, soft belt drive. You can still get from the same company. A record deck that is derived from it called the Gyro.

 

It's worth thousands and thousands of pounds. Um, their decks. This deck isn't worth anything until it works. And then. Probably is worth a thousand pounds. If anyone has watched Stanley Kubrick's Clockwork Orange, then he will recognize the deck because it's that record deck. He won a design award in about 1967, I think, and he's still got the little British Design Award sticker on the lid, on the, the plastic, sorry, the Perspex cover.

 

It's all original. It was built by the company. I've just visited Michel Engineering and they make these most incredible, beautiful record decks. Now, I rang in a couple of weeks ago and they said, look, we haven't got any slots for service for a few weeks. Um, ringing again on the 24th of July, which I did.

 

So I rang on the 24th. Um, as it happened, it was Steven who owns Michel Engineering now, um, who picked up, I chatted to him and he's. When can you bring it in? So I said today, um, I'm on the road. Um, so why not bring it in on today, Tuesday? So, um, I brought it in, um, the most incredible service. Uh, I obviously, I didn't carry it to the door 'cause I didn't really know which one of the industrial units I was headed to.

 

So I buzzed it as it happened. It was Steven, um, opened the door and I told him who I was and he said, oh, put you in. And I said, oh great. And he said, no, no, I'll come with you. So we went over to the Land Rover where I parked up. First thing he does, I admire the Land Rover, which always makes you feel good.

 

Um, which followed up quite quickly with me by saying, it's you, it's up for sale. Um, and a chat there about pricing. Who knows? You never know, do you? Anyway, he admired the Land Rover, so I'm feeling better already. So I opened up the boot and there's obviously my record deck, this transcript, uh, hydraulic reference to the table.

 

And he's obviously seen a few of these, but he said, oh, that's a, that's an old one, that's an original. And I went to pick it up and he said, no, no, I'll carry it. Don't worry. So he picked it up outta the Land Rover and I locked it up. We took it into the service lab where it sits now amongst a few similar ones, some newer ones, well all newer ones.

 

Um, we took it apart or he took it apart and had a look at the different components. Um, puffed his cheeks out a little bit, which is always good when you're talking to an engineer. It's a bit like when you take your car into a garage and they go, oh mate, ah, your rings. But he was very affectionate, very respectful of the record deck, and it was built pre 1972.

 

And the way he knows that is there's no serial number on it because before 19. 72. They didn't put serial numbers on him, so he's got this very old turntable that my dad bought in. I think it was about 19 81, 82. He paid 15 pounds worth 15 of your British pounds at a jumble sale. Well, this deck is worth anywhere between 1500 quid and two and half thousand pounds of today's money secondhand.

 

Um, so my dad actually did pretty well. Uh, I dunno if he realized what he'd bought. It didn't work, which is why it was only 15 quid. But my dad attacked it with a soldier line. Probably the same things I've now got to have repaired this time. But he took all the bits off and he showed me how it worked and he explains it in detail.

 

And we just got chatting. We got chatting to the point where when I come back to pick up the record deck, Steven has very kindly agreed to come on the podcast because we talked about quality, we talked about the love of vinyl, which to an extent, I, I have a nostalgia for vinyl, but I don't have a particularly sophisticated, um, sense of hearing.

 

So I can't pick out the details that probably their guys can. But I appreciate the engineering and of course it was my dad. So now somebody who cares about it probably as much as I. Who is looking after it is gonna fix the bits that are not right. And given it was a gift from my dad to me for my 40th birthday, it was built around about the same year that I was born.

 

My dad bought it for 15 quid and absolutely loved it. And now it's in the hands of the company who built it. The very first company though, is his father who set up the company. There's this whole set of layers to the story that are gonna add even more love to it, even more passion for listening to records that the kids have bought me on it, and the service that they offer is so personable and so knowledgeable.

 

I couldn't help but just get excited. I got excited just walking in. By the time I left, he showed me this room. They've got a room downstairs with some of their legacy, Michelle. It's called M-I-C-H-E-L-L, Michelle Turntables and Michelle. And they've done all sorts of things over the years, not least of which is to create C3 PO's eyes.

 

No kid, you not, uh, my joy hit the floor when he was telling me he said, yeah, you know, it's based on some stuff we already had in some odd bins. And because it was all made round here where I'm driving the original Star Wars was actually filmed all around this area, Borum Wood, um, and Stevenage in West London.

 

And so the guys who were doing the special effects used to just hunt round OddBins around all the industrial states. They found some off cuts of something that was, I dunno what it was, a bit of a record deck I think. And hoed them out and modified them and they became C3 PO's eyes. I've literally just been eye to eye with one of C3 PO's eyes.

 

Um, also lots of stuff for Stanley Kubrick. Um, uh, Steven was telling me that his dad built, uh. Spaceship from Space Odyssey, the model of it. Um, you just, I dunno, you just get this sense of history and passion and just a love of engineering. Beautiful old school British engineering and. As part of that conversation, we talked about so many things.

 

I cannot wait to get him on the podcast. I think you'll find him hopefully as fascinating as I did, at least those of you that enter a little bit of media, his history, a little bit of film history. Also, if you're into your record decks, the record deck that these guys make, the the Michelle M-I-C-H-E-L-L, I will put a link in the, in the show notes so you can go and have a look at the things they they made because they are stunningly beautiful.

 

And if I was in the market for that kind of high fire, I'd have one. There's nothing like it. You've seen it in a million films. Steve Jobs owned one. This is how good it is. And I've just been chatting to the guys who made it off the back of that. I ended up talking about ai, which I'm gonna come back to, but let me take the story of customer service forwards just a little bit.

 

So I've left there. We've talked about all sorts of things. We've talked about his love of Laua, for instance, where I work regularly and I'm forever telling people they are the exemplar of customer service. They are the epitome of it. They are the very best of the very best. And I've been lucky enough to work all over the world with all sorts of companies and all sorts of places.

 

Um, LA Manu is the benchmark for how, in my opinion, customer service can be and should be done. He agrees. We've talked at a length about it, um, and. What a, a wonderful conversation it was. So I left there really buoyant and I thought, do you know what I'll do? I'm gonna nip into Starbucks, which is just on the same complex where they're based.

 

Um, write some notes for the podcast 'cause I'm driving so I've got some broad notes written on the back of an envelope so that I gotta take my eyes off the road obviously. And I, um, went to get a coffee and here's where customer service broke down. I don't think the lady who's served me, lemme just get past that car I was trying to pull in.

 

I don't think the lady who served me could tell you now who I was. I don't think she really made eye contact. Um, the guy that actually made my coffee lovely. I mean, just served it. He made it with passion. It's got a love heart on the top. Um, maybe he's telling me something, I dunno. Uh, gave it me with a huge smile and told me to have a nice day.

 

She barely looked at me to take my money. Now I don't think that's her fault when I actually watched, 'cause I love watching customer service and figuring out why things work or they don't work. She had a Bluetooth headset on and at the same time she was serving on the till, she was taking orders from the drive through.

 

Now I defy anybody to do those two jobs at once and do them both effectively. Dear Starbucks, you've ruined it because you've cut your costs so low that the customer service bit the element, that is the only element that can set you apart.

 

Your coffee's not that great. Your cakes are not so great. And go somewhere else. There has to be about the atmospherics. It has to be about customer service, a smile or two, the way they deal with people. That's what makes any customer service based organization stand out because you can get coffee anywhere, you can get cake anywhere.

 

You can get a seat in most places. I want somewhere that was clean, had some atmosphere. As much as a Starbucks ever has atmosphere, I accept that. Um, and if I'm gonna pay, you know, what is it, six quid, I think it was my coffee, then I'd really quite like it delivered with a smile. And the guy, the barista did, but the customer service, the person on the tilt did it.

 

And I think it's because she was trying to do two jobs at once. And that's not something that you can do, I don't think to the best of your ability, um, when you've got one voice in your ear and another voice over the front of the counter. However, that's the end of my rant about customer service because I've had two of the three.

 

I've been standout. One single person company just cuts hair, but she's so much more than that. She always has a smile, always has something to chat about. After 18 years or 19 years or whatever it is, we still don't run outta conversation. We still laugh about life, kids, business, you name it. And then going to Michelle, Michel, Michel, I, I've gotta work out how to pronounce it 'cause it's Michelle without an e.

 

Um, Michel Engineering. And honestly, I have skipped outta there with the biggest smile. And then to be somewhat deflated. Why is that the right word? It's not deflated. Somewhat energized by some, fairly average at best customer service from Starbucks. It brings the other two into sharp relief, shows you what can be done, how good customer service can be.

 

And it's nothing more, in my opinion, at least in this country, about being friendly, taking time and making someone feel valued. And as photographers. That's a really important message, though. It's not what this podcast is really about. 

 

AI and the Future of Photography

 

This podcast was meant to be about and is about to be about ai artificial intelligence.

 

Yeah. I can hear a few of you blowing your cheeks out and do I need to worry about this or, oh God, it's just awful. All of these. Things. But let me kind of try and put it into context, and I'm gonna start with what I believe is going to be the headline for all of us as an industry. Now, I'm a portrait photographer, as are many of you not a landscaper.

 

I'm not a fine artist. I have my moments. I'm a portrait photographer. If I'm shooting weddings, I'm still a portrait photographer. I'm just shooting your wedding guest's fine art, as sorry as beautiful portraits. AI is coming now. AI in itself is not gonna take our jobs. However, another photographer who's using AI is going to take our job.

 

I don't think there's any doubt about that. AI's not gonna take your job. A photographer with AI is gonna take your job. Now, this week's been an interesting. Weak. I keep an eye on the headlines and I'll come to, to that in a little bit about how I'm thinking of creating some resources to help all of us.

 

But the headlines this week, there have been two that caught my eye, both within a couple of days of each other. The first, and one I hope you've all seen is that Vogue published an ad for guests who I, I Fashion house, I guess retail. Dunno. I actually, I, I, I don't know. I should know, but I don't. But they published an advert for Guess.

 

That was fully generated by ai. No model involved. It's a beautiful image, no question about it. And the model in it is beautiful. So beautiful in fact, that supermodels have come out and said her look is unattainable. It sets the standard that no one can achieve. Now I think there's a little bit of irony here, just a small amount, um, when supermodels are saying that, look, if someone is unachievable, something is awry.

 

Now this is a, obviously, I mean, that's a complaint that's been land lauded around the fashion industry for as long as I can remember. And in some weird way, maybe just maybe having unattainable synthetic models is maybe healthier than having unattainable. Actual human models because in the end you can always say, well, there's no way I could look like that.

 

In fact, there's no way that anyone could look like that 'cause it isn't real. So there's an interesting spin on it, I suspect. Guess the company obviously have had some really good publicity out of it, or at least they've had publicity outta it. Um, but of it highlights where we are headed. The little agency that created it, they're a five person team.

 

They charge anywhere between. Five and low six figures for creating one of these ads. So there's still money in it, but not money for photographers, money for models, money for location scouts. In fact, there's no money for anyone at all except for the agency, possibly the clothed designers. But I'm gonna guess that AI is eating into their world.

 

Two, that's not my world, but I'd be surprised if it wasn't given. It's eating into everything. The second article I read, which I, in some ways is slightly more alarming, is that Tata or Tarter huge, a huge multinational company in India. In their IT division, they're laying off 12,000 coders and middle managers 12.

 

Thousand 2% of their workforce because the focus is all on AI doing those jobs. 12,000. There are commentary and opinion pieces around talking about how that will rip out the heart of Mumba. Middle class wealth. That's how, that's how impactful this is. Real estate companies are saying that the market has dropped retail luxury items.

 

The middle class is being torn apart because those were middle class jobs for people who were smart, gone 12,000 jobs, 2%. And this is just the beginning. By the way. As fast as AI develops, people will find ways of either and or cutting costs and increasing productivity for the same or lower manpower.

 

That's where we're headed. Um, there doesn't appear to be any graduate jobs around at the moment, if I've read the headlines correctly, because companies, and this is the right strategy, by the way, are waiting to see quite what's gonna happen with ai. Would you take someone on who under employment law is difficult to get rid of if you are thinking well?

 

I wonder whether AI is gonna add productivity in a way that people might not. So AI is absolutely here and it's getting better. I think. GPT five, we've been talking about chat GT four, forever Chat. GPT five I think is due out in August. So we are right on top of that. If you're listening to this layer in the ear, it's already here.

 

And I can only imagine having used Chatt PT four extensively, how good five is going to be. So it's upon us and it's gonna be increasingly necessary if we wanna survive that. We don't just accept ai, we embrace it, we find out how to use it, we compete with it, not against it, 'cause you can't beat it. I've got no intention of going anywhere.

 

We are gonna use AI in any way and shape and form I can to do everything we do better. I don't have a focus on reducing my team. I love my team, I love being part of a team. But AI allows us to do some things and will increasingly allow us to do some things that either was specific to my time, that now can be distributed around the team, or allow me to do things faster so I can do more of it.

 

How many podcasts have I started by saying I'm snowed under? I'm so busy, I just don't have the time to do everything I need to do. AI is an enabler in that regard. So for instance, the other day I wrote an article for Professional Photo Magazine. I love writing. I really enjoy writing. There's value in writing.

 

I love, I loved more when professional photo was in print. But it's not anymore. Um, but I still write for it. It's online. You can read the latest article and we use ai and everyone's like, oh, you're using AI to generate your article. No, I'm not. I sat and wrote it like I always do because it was my story, my experience.

 

I was there. But what I did was I hopped onto chat, DBT, and in this instance I used O three, not. Chatt PT four oh, um oh three. They have different models and I'll talk a little bit about that in a minute. So I used O three and put in my finished article and said, can you help me subedit this?

 

So for those of you who worked in print and media, you'll know a subedit. The journalist will submit the article, it goes to the subeditor who'll do the final cut. And then it goes to the editor for once over, uh, maybe a review or two before it goes out into the publication. It's a subedit is a role subeditor.

 

So I said to, uh, chat GPT-3. Oh no, hang on oh three. Get it the right way round. Help me subedit. And it was brilliant. It helped me work out the threads of the jokes if they're, as much as they're jokes, so much as just light humor. Um, it helped me, uh, reduce repetition. It helped me get the tone of it about right for, um, a readership.

 

I explained to the readership was likely to be. It did all of those things. Um, and it just gave me ideas and said, maybe you want to just shorten this paragraph length in that one. You've mentioned this at the beginning. You might wanna close it out at the end. Those kinds of things. And then he said, and then he did a second review that said, that looks about perfect.

 

But you have said you love this. Three times, and maybe you wanna just turn that down a bit. Brilliant. It did something that would've taken me hours to do, just going over and over and over refining it because I don't have a subeditor. Um, I'm assuming professional photo. The website probably does, but whenever possible, I like what I deliver to be finished so that, um, it goes out and goes onto the website, their website as I intended it to, as much as that's possible.

 

And I love that it does things that make my life faster and more efficient and actually pro increase the quality that I can produce. Of course, the obvious stuff for photographers is on the retouching side. Voto, I've banged on about Voto forever. They're now increasingly more competitors to that. But in my opinion, Voto is still, EVOTO.AI is still the best.

 

Um, imagine ai, A-M-A-G-E n.ai is brilliant for coloring, for instance, it learns your colors and delivers 'em every time. Um, AI sharpening is really useful where you've got soft images, oh, the list goes on where we can now do things using AI that make my life, it makes it possible for me as a single camera.

 

I'm the only editor in the, in the studio, only post producer in our studio. So it allows me to do things to a standard I couldn't do without ai. Now, on top of that, we are starting to explore other avenues for ai agent ai. Which you can use to do things like, what did I see the other day? A brilliant article from someone with A DHD who uses ai.

 

And this is a very simplistic view of what they do, but this is quite clever for those of us who have a DHD tendencies. Um, you will know as I do that there are days when I can be super productive. I mean, do the work of 10, and then there'll be nine days where I do the work of none. It evens itself out, I grant you, but knowing your own mood and knowing what tasks suit that mood would be a really useful skill.

 

And so what this article said was how this guy had developed an agentic ai. So Agen AI is where you use AI to control ai. So it's a multi-layered ai. Approach and every morning one of many things he does, and this is just a small component of it, but I thought it was kind of cute, is he describes his mood.

 

And if you've listened to the podcast with Helen May, I think I did a few years ago, she talks about this. She talked about knowing what mood she was in, and she talked about knowing what mood she needed to be in. 'cause she talked about when she would take the drugs and when she wouldn't. And there were days when she had to be productive.

 

And days where it didn't matter. So if you can identify whether today's gonna be productive or not, you can. This guy had programmed the system to do this. 

 

AI as a Productivity Tool

 

He would tell the ai, I'm in a productive mood. I'm not in a productive mood. The AI agent would then go off. And talk to other AI agents about all the tasks that were in this guy's world that needed doing and deliver back tasks that suited the mood the guy was in.

 

So it's sort of like having a very intelligent team member alongside you, who knows your mood, knows what you've gotta do, figures out how to distribute that. This is just a tiny example of how AI can be super helpful, and I think that's how we have to view it. We have to view it as a tool for helping us do our job better.

 

A tool for helping us compete with other people who are using these tools. Now we're all gonna keep coming back to that theme because if they're using the tools, we need to use the tools. Now we are using all sorts of AI in the business now to do all sorts of tasks. 

 

Exploring AI Software: Xci

 

Incidentally, actually, while I'm at it, there's a great bit of software I found called Xci, E-X-C-I-R-E.

 

I've no idea if I've mentioned it before. It's worth a look. It's a bit like. ACDSee, which I love too. But it has an AI component in it where you can do a search saying, find me all the images similar to this one, but it uses AI to do it and it's pretty good, which is really useful when you are building, if you're doing, uh, a themed post on, let's say you're like, we are, I'm doing a thing on siblings, I can say, I can get a picture of two siblings and say, find me a load of pictures like this one, and it'll find all the pictures with two people in it.

 

They probably won't figure out that they're siblings, but at least you're halfway there. X-I-E-X-C-I-R-E. It's got a, there's a trial on a website. Um, it's not cheap, but it's a one off license. When see decided, I think it's about $250, something like that. So AI is very much here and now and it's not gonna be long before.

 

It's a whole different world. 

 

AI in Portrait Photography

 

So one of the ideas I have, and I'd love to hear. From you, if you think this would be useful, I think I'm gonna do it and just test it anyway, is I'm gonna set up a section on mastering portrait photography that just has short articles on ways to use ai. Little things we've found that techniques prompt engineering.

 

Um, we can talk about what we are doing, um, because I'm doing it, we're doing a load of stuff behind the scenes. If you thought it's going a little bit quiet on MPP, just for a moment. That's why, because I'm trying to figure out how to really harness the tools that are here today and the tools that are coming tomorrow.

 

Now, of course, you know, I accept, I do accept, as a slight caveat, my PhD is in ai, so there is a fascination with what's going on in this sector that many of you probably or possibly don't have. And I, I do accept that. Of course, I accept that. My, my, my fascination with where the tools and techniques that we were part of decades of developing are now here.

 

And, and this is, you know, by the way, this is why I say that it, you know, we have a toddler, I've said this a lot, we have a toddler of an AI world right now, and it's growing up is because 30 years ago we were saying the same thing. Then, you know, imagine what the scientists are gonna do in 10 years, 20 years, 30 years.

 

Imagine that now what scientists are gonna do in the next 10 or 20 or 30 years. So yes, I accept, I have an enthusiasm and an excitement about AI that maybe you don't share. But equally, there's lots of little things you can do, like product engineering, like setting up memories if you use chat, GPT, like setting up product knowledge.

 

If you use Claude, like understanding how things like Gemini. Vo flow. These create more creative tools from Google, possibly can help you in your everyday work. These are all so useful and so right here, a, a, a great example. 

 

Using AI for Workshop Transcripts

 

Now, when I run a workshop or a one-to-one or I do mentoring is I'm aware of this same microphone that I'm recording now.

 

One of the roads, whatever they're called, uh, something or others. Um, I just record it and record all the audio of my voice when I'm running a workshop. That's all it needs. Just what did we talk about from my point of view? Ideally everyone would have microphones on, but it gets really quite complicated really quite quickly.

 

So for now, it's just me with a mic. I take that audio. Let's say there's 10 hours of audio from a day. I take that audio and I put it into Da Vinci. Why Da Vinci? Because actually the AI tools won't deal with a very long audio file yet. They're just not there yet, but. And I could put it into Descrip, which I use for the podcast, but you pay quite a lot of money for a 30 hour per month transcript.

 

And taking 10 hours of that just to do each workshop. And I do a couple of workshops a month is not ideal. It goes into DaVinci, which has a subtitle generator. So it takes an hour to go through 10 hours of foot of video, of audio, sorry. And it creates a transcript, subtitles, I take the subtitles and I put those into usually chat, TP, T oh three or four oh, and I can then interrogate the transcript and do different things.

 

So, great example, uh, chat, DPT. I enter something like, uh, this is a workshop I ran with five delegates and me, the voice you will read is mine. These are my words.

 

Teaching a subject title to them. Whatever the workshop is. Let's say it's mastering studio lighting, I dunno. So these are all the things I talked about in response to questions or self deduced. I want you to give me useful information that. I can send back to the delegates that are the key bullet points and details that they might find useful.

 

And then at the end of that prompt, I put the following, ask me whatever you need to be 95% certain of delivering this task to the best of your ability, or something along those lines. It will then ask me a series of questions. It'll say things like, what was the purpose of the workshop? What did you think delegates have done?

 

Again, out of it, were there any questions that delegates asked to you before the workshop that are not answered here, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. You answer those and then it will feed you useful information. It will obviously, and here's a really interesting difference. I love chat. GT 4.0, all four one.

 

They're great. It will say things, if you put this into chat GPT 4.0, it will say, oh, Paul, oh Paul. That was not just a workshop. You did not just educate them, you inspired them. You are incredible. Oh, I love your work. Here's some ideas. Oh my God, they're gonna find so useful. Here's ba blah, ba ba, and they give you a load of things to send back.

 

And it will say at the end. And if you ask it, if you're very smart, what you actually do is you also ask it, how could I improve the workshop? And it will say, I don't think there's much you could change, but here's some ideas. And these might just help you deliver more, uh, I dunno, more, more clarity or more information or help the help certain types of, uh, delegate understand more.

 

It's really useful as a coach for me too. If you do the same exercise with O three, which is a reasoning engine, it works slightly differently. It's not just about language. It's now reasoning. It might say, well, you did these points, here's some useful information. Here's some ways you could do it better.

 

It's like having a very blunt, best friend with no filter. It's a lot more useful in so many ways. But nowhere near as much fun as camp GPT. Oh, Paul, you're amazing. I love it. I'd dread them taking that side away. Uh, Claude is even, by the way, if you use c Claude ai, it's even more, I sometimes wonder whether it's, it's in the name Claude.

 

It, it feels like it might be quite rude. It just tells you, these are the things you didn't do very well. You should do this better. Okay. 

 

AI Tools for Photographers

 

Anyway, point being, we're using AI to gather more value outta what we're already doing. We're not trying to make things. Um, streamline things or make things, uh, it's not a race to the bottom.

 

If anything, it's a race to the top. So we're using AI throughout. Uh, so I'm gonna set up a section of MPP that's all about ai, little tips and tricks, information I'm reading about engines, AI engines, et gentech ai. Things like zapier make.com, if this, then that where they've now got AI baked into them. So you can do clever things if you have, you know, just a spreadsheet, for instance, you can tell, um, things like make.com without ai.

 

If you are good at code, you can tell it what you want it to do in terms of maybe posting stuff. Um, if you are good at coding, that's great. If you're not good at coding, you can use AI to help you with the coding. It's not brilliant, but it's not bad. And you can get prototypes up and on their feet really quite rapidly.

 

You can get it to give you layouts of websites, just ideas. You can get it to design logos, just ideas. Now, yes or right, if you make your living on five or designing logos, maybe that's not a great thing to do. But actually when you boil it down as photographers, how many of us actually use Fiverr more than once or twice?

 

I've used it a couple of times in the entire time, and frankly, I've been disappointed. Might be strong a word, but certainly not thrilled with what I got back. Whereas with ai, yeah, all right. I might not be thrilled with the first one or the second one or the third one, but eventually I'll get there by tuning the prompt and getting it to refine what it's doing.

 

Um, I dunno if anyone else has done this. You say please and thank you. Um, I do, and then I feel guilty if I need to correct it, but you do need to correct it. And I'll, I'll publish some articles on these, all these little bits on a section of MPP to try and make it, uh, to try and it's, it is now so much a part of a portrait photographer's life.

 

That not having a section on it feels kind of weird. Um, and so look out for that in the coming weeks as I figure out quite how to, uh, get that information on there, uh, quickly enough and without it distracting from the things I'm already finding difficult to find time for. So that was my little thing of ai.

 

And if there's a footnote here, of course, it's, uh, from Michelle this morning, the record deck, my turntable, um, Steven and I were chatting and we got chatting a little bit about ai and he said, oh my God, we use it a lot. And introduced me to James, who is. His son-in-law, I think he said, and I had the opportunity.

 

We went back in, actually, we'd been sit, stood on the doorstep for an hour chatting. I went back in at Stevens behest to go and talk to James. Actually, it was to show me C3 PO's eye and then go talk to James. So I went to talk to James about how they're using ai and I won't. I, I, I, he never said there's anything confidential about it, but I'm gonna treat that with confidentiality.

 

But it was really intriguing what they're doing with ai because some of what they're doing, I didn't know. It was possible. So I'm gonna take that information now and have a look at how you can use things in a way that I was unaware was yet possible. It feels like certain areas are already possible ahead of what I was aware of.

 

Um, well, that's it. Let me retract that. That's stupid. Of course, there's a ton of stuff that's possible that I'm unaware of. Um, I meant more mainstream, just simple stuff. Just ideas of how to use things. Absolutely brilliant. And that's where we are. AI is not gonna take your job, but another photographer using it.

 

Well, that's a whole different discussion. Uh, I hope this recording's working all right. I hope it's not too noisy. Um, I'm now stuck in a 20 mile an hour queue behind a lorry because they've, uh, resurfaced the road. So there's a, uh, grip kind of, you know, a grip warnings everywhere for stuff flying up. So we're all traveling nice and slowly.

 

Skid risk gets in. I'm not gonna ski anywhere. Um, so what else do I just want to mention? Uh, right. 

 

Mentoring and Workshops

 

We have workshops running. Uh, we learned our lesson by the way, uh, everybody said that. Uh, yes. Workshops on a Friday. Great. So we asked you workshops on a Friday. Great. Um, and then we put workshops on a Friday.

 

Much harder. Thank you for that one. Uh, all of our workshops are moving back to Mondays, which in the end when we spoke to everybody yeah, everyone said, everyone who said, yeah, Fridays are fine. When we went back to Mondays he says, oh great, it's back to Mondays. That's much better. So Mondays, the workshops are back on Mondays as a whole series.

 

I can't remember 'cause I'm driving what they are. Uh, but please do head over to mastering portrait photography.com and find the section on workshops and, uh, they're all listed. We'd love to see you. Uh, we are doing a lot of one-on-one mentoring now, which is lovely. Some of my favorite things. To do is to actually spend time sitting and well, I mean, I have to hope we impart some knowledge, but there are days when I think I'm just enjoying spending time with photographers, um, and discussing, uh, their work.

 

So if you fancy that details, give us an email, drop us an email and find out what we offer because we do, uh, what else was, I'll just finish judging. Uh, or I've got one. I've done my first cut of judging. So the way I like to judge is to do everything. And by the way, the deadline is Wednesday, Thursday. Um, and you might think it's a little bit last minute.

 

It's last minute because my monitor blew up. Um, I've had this Ben Q monitor for years, a decade, and it decided to pack up. Um, my eye mark. The colors I've known for a while, the colors are wandering and no amount of, um, calibrating. And I always calibrate. No amount of calibrating is gonna fix that because it's got magenta areas turning up.

 

On the corners, the middle's all right, but the rest is awful. So there's not a lot I can do about that. So I had to buy, I had to shell out for a new Ben Q 4K photographer's monitor. It is stunning. Oh my God, it is so nice. It's all calibrated Spider Pro. Um, it turns out that Ben Q's own calibration software does an unbelievable job of calibrating itself with a, with a spider pro that I've got.

 

Um, so the colors that are absolutely gorgeous, they look well, I say gorgeous, they're accurate, which actually is not necessarily the same. Thing. Um, but of course you can't judge a competition until your monitor's calibrated. So I spent many hours yesterday judging now the monitor's in and on. Uh, it's such a privilege to do what I do.

 

Um, mentoring, judging, coaching, you name it. You know, when I started this business or I started out as a photographer two years ago, I never, well, and I nearly said I never dreamt. I did dream of doing the things I now do, and here I am doing it. And it's no less of a dream now that I'm doing it, uh, than it was back then when I imagined doing it.

 

It's brilliant. It's one of my favorite things to do. Uh, so yeah, I was judging. Week. I can't remember how I got into this. I, I've lost. Oh, mentoring. I'm talking about mentoring and coaching. What a privilege and a pleasure. So if you fancy bit of that, uh, we do offer it now. Uh, one of the reasons I stood down after three years of being the chair of judging in awards for the BIPP was to give me a little bit of bandwidth and the political space to do more coaching and mentoring because you obviously, it's difficult to mentor if you are the chair of the association that now assesses the people you are mentoring.

 

That's a little bit of a conflict of interest. So I never did any mentoring, uh, while I was chair with, see I do now. Uh, what else? 

 

Mastering Portrait Photography Book

 

Oh yeah, his news. Most of you may have heard this 'cause we've had various social posts out about it. The book, mastering portrait Photography, the book, which is where it all kind of started 10 years ago.

 

10 years it's been out, it has sold 50,000 copies. It has been translated from English into American English. Do you know what? There's a complaint on Amazon. One of the very first reviews, it gave it four stars. They knocked a star off because we used American spellings. I mean, you do have to ask yourself, I'm sorry.

 

It was never published in British English. It went straight to American English because do you know it's a bigger market? I'm sure the publisher knew exactly what they were doing. Um, and so they only published it in American English, so apologies to the British English fanatics. It's in American English this time as well.

 

So it's been translated from American English into, uh, Italian twice. There's a normal copy and what's called a kiosk copy. They were both done by National Geographic. It's been translated into German. It's been translated into Chinese, and it's been translated into Korean. Now. Those last two we knew nothing about.

 

It's only when we were doing the audit a couple of weeks ago that Sarah drilled into it. And found them. We actually have a picture of the Chinese copy 'cause we have some Chinese clients who very kindly sent us some pictures, um, from, uh, Hong Kong. Uh, if I, if anybody's listening to this from Korea, I don't know if there is, but if any of my clients have Korean contacts or Korean family, or are Korean, is there any chance you could send us a picture of a book cover of our book cover Mastering Portrait Photography by Paul Wilkinson and Sarah Platon in Korean.

 

Um, that would be super valuable. Uh, at some point I try and get a copy of it, but even our publisher doesn't have copies. It must have been done locally under license, but it's out there. 50,000 copies translated into four languages and a decade later we were asked to produce an updated edition. Um, you will know this 'cause I've talked about doing the process.

 

It is done. I have one copy sitting in the studio, one copy of mastering portrait photography, the updated edition, and I have changed every single picture except one. There's one picture in there that's exactly the same as it was 10 years ago. Uh, we may yet run a little competition to see if you can spot it.

 

It will be on sale or it's already on sale. Pre-ordering. It will be on sale I think on the 14th of September. The original date was the 9th of September, but it's been pushed back a little bit by the publisher to allow distribution. We should get copies in the studio. We'll order a couple of hundred to be able to do signed copies and get them out to anybody.

 

Um, we're holding a launch event, um, for anybody who's in the book. Anybody involved in the book sometime in, uh, October. We will let, we'll give you details about that once we've got them finalized. Um, right. Hang on a minute. I'm gonna take a back road 'cause this road's been really noisy, so I'm gonna go cut through the back roads, which are quieter.

 

Uh, and, um, it's, it's out and about for pre-orders. Yeah, I do apologize again if this, if this podcast is a little bit noisy, I do apologize. But like I said, it's a podcast on the Land Rover, uh, right. Roundabouts. Hang on, let me just concentrate on traffic. It was good. Okay. Um, however, I want to just, I will try and get this podcast, Eric, today, which is Tuesday, the 29th of July, 2025.

 

Um, why? Well, because Waterstones in the UK have an offer on the book. They have an offer 25% off pre-orders. It's being promoted by Waterstones. Um, I'll put the link in the show notes, but if you Google mastering portrait photography, summer offer Waterstones, you'll find it, um, if you pre-order it, uh, before the 31st of July.

 

The offer only started yesterday. Um. Then you get 25% off the, on the offer. I promised the publisher we would promote it. So that's, um, out in September and I am beyond excited about it. Um, I talk about this quite a lot and, and I think we'll update mastering portrait photography with the stories behind some of these images.

 

But every one of the images is in some form a client, a friend, someone we met, someone who stood in to do a photo shoot, you know, people like Barbara and say Hi, working on Crystal Cruz's, just the most amazing people who stepped in to allow me to demonstrate certain techniques. Our normal clients, our son Jake, and our daughter Harriet, who are both in there with their permission.

 

But broadly speaking, it's our clients. It's the people who we photographed along the way. There's so many in there. I can tell you a story about every single image, every single moment, every single client, and on the back cover. So the front cover is Dory, who we met. She was serving US food in a really lovely Thai restaurant in the Crazy Bear.

 

And I asked her, I met her and with, I mean I was with Sarah and um, we were chatting and I said to Sarah, I think she'd photograph really well. And Sarah bless her because you don't have to do this when there's just a couple of you having a nice romantic meal and you start talking about whether someone would photograph well, there's every opportunity, uh, for that to go wrong.

 

But Sarah is the most incredible human being, and she too realized that Dory would photograph well. And so I asked her, I said, with Sarah said, go and ask us. I asked her and I said, would you be photographed? Would you be willing to come and be photographed? I think you'd photographed beautifully. And she said, no.

 

She looked at me, shook her head, said No. Walked away. Now, luckily we weren't on the final course, so she had to come back and I wrote on a paper napkin. I wrote, uh, my web address, my email and said, look, go and have a look. Um, I dunno why I thought, I have no idea. I just assumed, I dunno, I'd call it arrogance.

 

I thought, well, if you see my pictures, you'll want to be photographed by me, people in a rare moment of super confidence. Um, so anyway, I gave her that and she walked. And last night I thought, we'll never hear from her. At four o'clock that morning, the next following morning, there was an email came in that said, yes, please, I've looked at your website.

 

I would love to have my photograph taken. And that has started a friendship that goes on today. Uh, Dory is still this most incredible person to photograph. She is lovely. She is funny. Um, she is, well photogenic, doesn't really begin to describe it. She has the most beautiful daughter, the most incredible husband.

 

Um, she now has done some modeling off the back of it, and it's her picture from that from.  First session that we filmed actually for mastering portrait photography. We filmed it specifically to go with the website to support some of the ideas in the first edition of the book way back. And it's her face on the cover. One of our first, one of the first times I approached someone to model, and on the back cover is Jess.

 

Now, I first met Jess a few years ago, age 12, and she came to the tame food for. Where we had a, you know, popup stand selling vouchers and our wares, and she approached us and said, how much would it be to do some portraits, some photographs of me doing contortion, contortion, contortion being a contortionist, and she's 12 years old.

 

And what am I gonna say to a 12-year-old who is gutsy and asking about being photographed? She was there with her mom. You know, this is no. Our conversation that I would have with a 12-year-old obviously. So I had the conversation with her and our mom and I said, well, look, one of the things we do a lot of is we create videos and we run workshops and mentoring.

 

And I'm always looking for people that we can point in front of the camera who are interesting, have ideas, um, we can create really beautiful pictures off the back of, um, so why don't I trade you some time? So if you come. To the studio and I'll do some pictures for you as a client as long as you come back as a model and let us just take whatever pictures my delegates need and we're always looking out for models like this.

 

Um, and she said, yes, she agreed. I said that way, I don't need to charge you, but I get something in return that is really valuable to me too. So she came for the first contortionist. Photo shoot. She's a gymnast and a contortionist and a dancer. And um, over the years we've continued to work with her. She has now got a modeling contract.

 

We now help her with that too. I was writing my instincts that she would photograph well. Um, more importantly, she came to a workshop, I think. I'm sitting in the Lounge Rover. If I sit in my microphones in the studio, I'll tell you exactly the title of the workshop. I think it was Advanced Studio Lighting, or it might have been a avail, it might have been mixed.

 

I, I think it was Advanced Studio Lighting. And towards the end of the workshop, a couple of the photographers, we'd done a lot of freezing movement. Hang on, let me just let this guy out. We've done a lot of freezing movement. 'cause of course, you know, one of rom's brilliant features. Um, is that you can read on the back of the lights.

 

The pulse width, so that how the duration of the photo of the light pulse on the strobes. And so if you're freezing motion, as long as your pulse width is, is you know, ideally three thousandths of a second, but a couple of thousandths of a second or faster, you'll on the whole freeze motion. So we'd done that all day and a couple of the guys said, can we do something capturing movement?

 

Now, if you. Saw the work I did at the Society's convention this year. You'll see this kind of technique in action, and what we did is we lit her with two light sources. We lit her with LED, quite a lot of LED actually, and slowed the shutter down so that we could capture that movement in light. And then we fired a fast pulse at her face and her hands to freeze that bit.

 

And then we practiced some, uh. Um, sort of dance moves really of her flinging a dress around a ball gown and caught a couple of images that do both. They both strobe, they both freeze her hand, capture her movement, and when you get that stuff right, there's something really magical about it and we got it right.

 

At least I say you get it right, if that's, did I get it perfectly? No, of course there are things I'd change. There's always some. Thing you'd change? No, no image is perfect. But I think we did pretty well and I would happily do it all over again. Well, that picture's on the back cover, and we didn't know this.

 

We knew about the front cover because we'd sent over probably 50 or 60 full face portraits for the designers of the book to pick, and they pick Dory, which fills my heart with joy and on the back cover unknown to us 'cause we never saw it in advance. They've put Jess, who you know, was a 12-year-old gymnast and contortionist who had the guts to ask how much would it be to come and have a photo shoot.

 

And so I'm thrilled for both of those people, both clients that, you know, for the next 10 years we'll be talking about the book with them on the front and them on the back. Uh, it's out there, it's on Amazon, or you can wait. Until we get our copies and we'll send out signed and mounted copies. Um, sorry, signed and signed copies not signed and mounted.

 

You get into a rhythm with these things don't you? Signed and mounted prints obviously, but signed copies of the book. Um, we'll put that onto, uh, our website in the coming weeks once we know when we are getting our stock of them. Uh, apparently the print run is now done. It's now all about warehousing and distribution, logging, all of those kinds of things.

 

So that's coming out in September. Waterstone's, just a reminder, they have a 25% offer right now that if you pre-order it, uh, on their website, you get 25, uh, percent off. And I'm selling it for full price, which is 20 quid. Alright. Just so you know, uh, I'm gonna sign it. Um, send it out. But it will, um, it will be the full price.

 

Uh. Uh, no discounts. You can get it from, if you want it cheap, go to Amazon If you want it signed, come to me. Oh man. I've brought us round a back route. Oh, that pub's open again. Wow, that's good. That pub closed. It's reopened. Um, and on that happy note, as Irun my way back through bucking shirt, Buckingham, she's back lanes.

 

I was laughing with someone the other day, just how beautiful this bit of the world is. You forget because it's familiar. You forget it's your doorstep. You. I've traveled across the world to go to places that don't look that dissimilar to where I live and sat in admiration of these locations when it, you know, sometimes it's not a bad idea to sit and admire my own back door.

 

It's absolutely beautiful out here. Um, though the roads are in need of a little bit of repair.

 

Conclusion and Final Thoughts

 

So on that happy note, please do head over to mastering portrait photography.com, uh, which has, as ever, tons of articles and is the spiritual home of this podcast. If you've enjoyed the podcast, uh, please do subscribe wherever it is that you get your podcast. It's on iTunes, it's on Spotify, it's on YouTube, uh, wherever it is.

 

Please do subscribe if you have any questions. Uh, who knows? Maybe you do. Uh, please do email Paul at paulwilkinsonphotography.co.uk co uk. Uh, people do email in now. I think. Uh, I'm trying to remember the name. I saw the email come in. I think it's John. I think John, thank you for your email, John, uh, who wanted to know about the type of paint we use in the studio.

 

'cause I've spent ages trying to get it right. Got it. Right. This. Time, uh, got it right on two counts. I can't remember what it is. By the way, if you wait, if you're hanging on waiting to find out what it is, um, I can't remember what it is. Uh, Sarah emailed, uh, this morning the answer. I've got a top of it sitting in the studio.

 

Uh, a white paint for the wall that is broadly speaking, the same white as a white calibration chart. It's also super tough and super white clean, which is great for any of the posing boxes we have because we've forever putting coffee on them and leaving coffee stay. Well now it cleans off. It doesn't stain the paint.

 

It's absolutely brilliant. Uh, the point of the story is somebody emailed in and asked me if you have any questions, please do so. Uh, so until next time, whatever you're up to, wherever you are, and I hope. The view as you drive along is just as stunning as this is. I've turned the corner. It's just wheat field after  📍 wheat field and hedges and hills.

 

It's like a postcard. Oh my goodness. It's lovely. I hope like me, you're enjoying where you live and until next time, whatever else, be kind to yourself. Take care.

Join me in the foothills of the Dolomites for a warm, funny, and surprisingly philosophical conversation with Mauricio Arias — Graphistudio’s strategist, storyteller, and, as I’ve dubbed him, their “Product Philosopher.” We dig deep into why printed work still matters in a digital world, how to make your images sing in print (and what that print will brutally reveal), and what photographers need to believe if they want clients to invest in heirlooms, not hard drives. There’s laughter, there’s wine (not during the recording, I promise), and there’s a lot of heart. This one’s for anyone who’s ever asked: does my work really need to exist on paper? (Spoiler: yes. Yes it does.)

Links:
Graphistudio: graphistudio.com
Mauricio Arias: mauricioarias.art

 

What Graphistudio Can Teach Us About Craft, Confidence, And Creating Heirlooms

Featuring Mauricio Arias – from Episode 165 of the Mastering Portrait Photography Podcast

This summer, I found myself at the foot of the Dolomites, tucked inside a sun-drenched meeting room at Graphistudio HQ, chatting with the wonderfully philosophical Mauricio Arias. He’s part strategist, part designer, part storyteller—now officially dubbed (by me) the Product Philosopher of Graphistudio.

We’ve used Graphistudio products for over 15 years. Our clients love their albums and wall art. We love their consistency, their craftsmanship, and their beautifully obsessive attention to detail. So when Mauricio and I sat down for a conversation, I had one question in mind:

Why does print still matter in a digital world?

Mauricio’s answer was simple and heartfelt: because photographs are meant to be held. He spoke about growing up with albums on the coffee table and family portraits on the wall—how physical images root our memories in something real.

But what stuck with me most was this: "Printing reveals both the beauty and the flaws." A great print will elevate your best work, but it also exposes any cracks in your post-production. It’s humbling. And it’s powerful motivation to keep improving.

We talked about calibration (yes, you need it), about photography as an emotional craft, and about the importance of believing in what you offer. Because if you don’t believe your work belongs in an album or on a wall, how will your clients ever believe it?

We also touched on the future—on AI, on trust, and on the rising value of human, handmade, tangible things. Heirloom prints are becoming more important, not less.

🎧 Listen to the Full Conversation

Listen to this episode to hear the full interview with Mauricio Arias. There’s laughter, insight, and plenty of inspiration—especially if you’re in the business of turning moments into memories.

📬 Want More Like This?

Subscribe to Mastering Portrait Photography for access to videos, articles, and behind-the-scenes tips to grow your photography business. Whether you're just starting or refining your craft, there's something for everyone.

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Written by Paul Wilkinson · Photographer, Educator, and Portrait Philosopher-in-Chief

This week, I’m recording late in the lounge with a glass of Irish whiskey, reflecting on the usual mix of chaos and joy in a photographer’s life. Some good news first: the Mastering Portrait Photography podcast has landed in the Top 100 Photography Podcasts, Top 10 Portrait Photography Podcasts, and Top 35 UK Photography Podcasts—all thanks to FeedSpot. A massive thank you to everyone who listens, emails, or stops me at events to say hi.

The charts can be found here:
https://podcast.feedspot.com/photography_podcasts/
https://podcast.feedspot.com/portrait_photography_podcasts/
https://podcast.feedspot.com/uk_photography_podcasts/

 

I share stories from a beautiful small wedding at Le Manoir, talk about how AI is both transforming and disrupting our industry (and how I’m using it to write useful code for the studio), and confess to completely changing my Instagram strategy so it actually makes me smile—feel free to check it out @paulwilkinsonphotography.

The highlight? Racing through three days of corporate headshots in London, where the CEO arrives and my flash promptly refuses to fire—just classic timing. A reminder: knowing your kit inside-out and keeping calm is what clients are really paying for.

If you fancy joining me in Oxford for a day of portraits, stories, and good company, there’s still a spot on our next Location Portraits Workshop.

https://masteringportraitphotography.com/resource/mastering-portrait-photography-on-location-in-oxford-9th-june-2025/

As ever: trust yourself, enjoy the process, and be kind to yourself. Cheers!

 

Transcript

 

Introduction and Setting the Scene

Well, it's been a while since I've recorded a podcast quite like this, but I'm sitting in our lounge. It's late. I've got a glass of Irish whiskey for a change, which is just beautiful. All of my whiskeys have been bought by someone and I love that. I love sitting and thinking of someone, a family member or a friend.

'cause I enjoy, well, the smell and the taste. There's some, I dunno why I like whiskey so much. Um, I just do, there's something, I think it's 'cause my mom and dad liked it. And possibly because of that, I find there's something really magical about the smell and the taste and the color and just, I don't know, something that sat in a barrel for a decade or more just appeals to me, and it has been another busy week.

It's Wednesday as I record this, and yet it feels like it's been the end of a week. Um, it's just, it always feels like I'm playing catch up, but I think that's just the nature of the job. When I worked at Accenture all of those years ago, I quite liked the project mentality. Although we were busy, we ramped up and up and up and up until eventually we got to the delivery date.

And then of course, once it was delivered, you've got a week or two off all of that pressure built and built and built. It was to an end point. And I don't think, as a photographer, I felt like that since I left that world now it's just a constant churn of to-do lists, retouching shoots, being energized, even things like recording this podcast.

You have to be really in the mood to do it, and I'm not always. There have been plenty of times when I've sat down to record something and even a large glass of 15-year-old single molt doesn't do it. However, I am here, it is late. So forgive me if I sort of tumble over some of my words, but I really wanted to get, um, an episode out.

I'm Paul and this is the Mastering Portrait Photography  📍 podcast.

 

Podcast Achievements and Listener Appreciation

So before I get into the main body of, uh, the podcast this week or this episode, I wanted to give a little bit of good news. We have been voted by we, I mean the Mastering Portrait Photography podcast has been judged or voted, or I don't know. I don't exactly know how it's assessed, but we have been given three really cool things by the guys at Feed Spot who list and assess, uh, podcasts from all around the world.

I. So we are in, uh, for photographers, we're in the top 100 podcasts for photographers globally. We're in the top 10 portrait photography podcasts globally, and we're in the top 35 UK photography podcasts on the web. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much to everybody who listens and everybody who's made this thing possible.

We are ranking right up there with some really big commercial podcasts and at the end of the day, it's just me, a microphone and I suppose 20 years of experience of being a photographer. But nonetheless, it's an absolute thrill that we are getting recognized. Um, so thank you to all of you who listen.

Every one of you sends in emails. Everyone who, uh, stops us at the conventions and the shows to say that they like listening to it. Uh, so what have we been up to other than celebrating, uh, a major success. By the way, you can head over to Feed Spot. I'll put the links in the show notes if you're gonna go see the lists of everybody else Tell I listen to, there are some great podcasts on there.

And of course my target is to be higher up the list, not just one of the top 100 we wanna be. The one, but yeah, I dunno whether we'll ever get to that given it really is just me and a microphone. Uh, but I'll do my best, uh, last week. 

Recent Photography Projects and AI Innovations

Over the past week or so shot the most beautiful tiny wedding at Le Manoir. I lo I love these little weddings.

35 people, the nicest bride and crew who were so excited. Uh, they had family from all over the world, from India, from Austria, Switzerland, the uk. Why Europe? Brilliant. Brilliant, brilliant. The weather. Stunning. We had loads of time. We relaxed, we had, oh, it was just the best day possible. Uh, what else? What else?

Uh oh, yeah. Um, one of the things, um, sorry, that's, that's another subject jump. Um, I've got notes. Obviously. I sit here with a screen of notes and these are the things I wanted to cover. One of the things I wanted to cover is some other focus of what I'm doing at the moment and what we are doing in the studio.

And one of the things that's right front of mind at the moment has been ai, and I'm guessing from everything I'm reading and everything I'm studying is that AI is gonna stay at the front. And it might just be the last thing standing if I've understood it all correctly. So I've, I mean, those of you who know me know my PhD is in neural networks, which is the backbone.

Um, of AI 30 years ago, so of course I'm well outta date, but that hasn't stopped me being really quite curious and I guess I've got a natural, uh, sort of a natural aptitude for it in spite of the fact that it's advanced so far on the whole, I'm getting my head round. Most of it. Some of it's really daunting, some of it is frankly terrifying, but some of it is exhilarating.

So I'll give you an example of some ways we're using AI here at the moment. Um, one of the things I'm doing is I'm using it to help me code some really useful add-ons, scripts and plugins for things like Lightroom, Photoshop. And some general stuff behind the scenes, um, which we will be able to release as commercialized product.

Um, I'm not a terrible coder. I'm not a great coder, but I have enough knowledge to be able to know how to specify what I want, understand the problems I'm trying to describe. And now that I have all of these AI tools beside me is it's just opened up a huge wealth of opportunity to make our life in the studio simpler and faster.

And more productive. And while that, you know, all of that's really good, of course the downside of AI is it is gonna tear through the job market in every single industry. And of course our industry is particularly susceptible to it. If you think about any photograph you can imagine, um, where the subject is irrelevant, it as in, it doesn't have to be a named face.

It could just be. A nameless detective, um, a doctor, a medic, a firefighter, a parachutist, a pilot, a family, a child, a dog. As long as it doesn't have to be that dog, that person, that pilot, that firefighter. AI does it today. And this is just an early version chat. GPTs photo generator is off the top of the scale.

Good. Um, I've actually written. Some stuff where it's taking, so, you know, automated some scripts that are taking my pictures, generating the prompts to generate those pictures, and then generating more pictures. And I'm doing it as an experiment just to test where we are and honestly. Yes. Not perfect, but we are right at the beginning of where we're headed.

So, you know, if I was gonna be slightly gloomy, I suppose if, if you are a stock photographer, well, you know, that's gotta have limited legs unless you do wildlife or landscape where it's really important. That the location is key. I'm looking at um, I've got an Amazon fire stick in our TV here in the lounge.

Um, obviously it's gone onto a screensaver 'cause I'm recording this and it's showing pictures of real places in the world that's never gonna go anywhere. You are always gonna need that. But if it's just generic photographs, generic imagery than AI is already eating into those markets. But I'm still throwing myself into it.

Social Media Strategy and Personal Reflections

One thing I have done, um, on our Instagram account is I took a long hard look at social media. And again, for those of you who know me, you'll know I'm not the biggest fan. I know we have to use it. It's a necessary evil, but I am one of those doom scrollers. I spend my life scrolling down thinking everyone else is having a better time.

Everyone else is a better photographer. Everyone else has got a better business. You name it, I think it, I'm just wired that way. I'm also wired.  I can't resist it 'cause it's there. And so the longer I spend on on social media, the less inspired and the less energized I am. I really do have to stay away from it.

But one of the things I've done in our studio is my screens, in particular on my laptop and on my workstation. Whenever the screensaver kicks in, it's pointing at a portfolio of our images, our clients, our friends, the people, the photographs, the moments, the memories from our life. And so whenever I pause, I go make a cup of tea or something, and I come back.

All of these screens are showing. My favorite pictures from 20 years, sorry, I stumbled over the word 20, getting emotional, uh, of 20 years of working as a professional photographer, and I decided what might be nice is to use Instagram like that. So I've changed the way I'm working on Instagram. Stopped trying to show just current work and trying to do the whole kind of, you know, social sort of networking side of it.

And I've decided I just want it to make me smile. That's it. That's all I'm gonna do. So I've hauled together, I've written some code. It's got a little bit of an AI in there to help me. I. And it just goes back and picks out images from different parts of our portfolio and tells me what to post. I then just post it.

Simple as that, because if I sit for hours looking at my portfolios, I spent ages. Becoming really paranoid that my work's no good. Oh no, I can't post that. I posted something similar to that. Oh, no. Will people like it? And I've stopped that. It's just a hard list. Here's what you're gonna do today. Here's what you're gonna do tomorrow.

And I'm just posting these pictures exactly the same pictures that my screensaver connects to. So it has, it's giving me now the same joy seeing these pictures come up. Some are recent, some are from quite a long way away, a long way ago, rather. Some are landscapes. There's some stuff in there from some landscapes where we've been traveling, not many.

And of course, all my landscape friends, all my, you know, friends in the industry can happily laugh at me. I'm not a landscape photographer. But I am loving every single second of it, and it's really given me some of the joy I think I used to have with social media. It's become a portfolio of people, of memories, of moments, of my history.

You know, some of the pictures come up and I cringe. It's like, really? Did I really do that? But some of the old pictures come up and I can really see. The foundations of where I came from. Yeah, right. I shoot things differently now. Of course, we all do. I've learned techniques, new techniques, new post-production, new finishing grading.

The resolutions on the cameras are different. The lenses are different. Even for me, you know, one weakness I was talking to with the videographer the other day is that. On the older cameras, I didn't dare shoot below about F four because if I focused on the eyes focus, recompose in the recomposing, I had to move.

And in moving the eyes would go out of focus. But now of course with eye tracking, I could shoot at F1 0.8 and every time the eyes are pinned, sharp, and. It's weird that technology can fundamentally change my aesthetic because I always wanted to shoot at 2.8 or 1.8. I just never had the technique for it.

One of the things I'm very good at is working quickly. I work fast and I catch those moments, but unfortunately the trade off is I don't slow down and really concentrate on things like the focusing and that's problematic. But now the technology's helping me. And here similarly, you know, I'm using a little bit of AI to identify pictures, written some bits of code to do it, and it pulls the pictures from the catalog to make sure that there's a nice variety, that it's across all of our clients, all of our work.

It's not just one style, which is what tends to happen if, um. I do it on my own. So it's just lovely. And there's, you know, I've written here, it's a bit like a treasure hunt with a robot sidekick. The robot being the ai, I hope the robot's not me. I don't think it's me. Maybe it his, maybe that's the way around the AI is having the treasure hunt and I'm the robot.

But if it's me, I'd only pick things like pictures that I thought might do well in awards or pictures that other photographers would like. Whereas I've stopped that by doing this. The code tells me what I'm gonna. Post. I post it and then I can just smile and enjoy the memory. And I've long since stopped worrying about whether the algorithm rewards me, it ain't going to.

So if you've answer having a look, you can see what we're doing. Um, at some point, if anyone comes to the studio, I'll happily show you how I've done it, um, and what we're doing. Uh, what else do we do over the weekend? Oh, Sarah and I, um, we had to record our own a roll, uh, Katie. 'cause I was, I've been working Friday, Monday, Tuesday.

I. Out in London. Um, I knew we had to get the, a roll for video ready for Katie to be able to do something with it on Monday. Unfortunately, that meant Sarah and I doing it on our own, which is great. I mean, Sarah and I, we have all of the kit, the kit's, hours, um, I. It took a little bit longer than the setup.

It took me two hours to rig the studio for the video, which is way too long. Um, it was also quite a lot more disciplined when it was just Sarah and myself much less messing around. Mostly I think because I'm slightly scared of her. There's no getting around it. Sarah wanted to crack on, so we cracked on.

Um, I dunno if the video's gonna be any good, but it's certainly. Succinct and to the point. Um, so, uh, I'll let you know when that one comes out and see if you can tell the difference when, uh, it's Katie directing or whether it's Sarah, but it was a lot of fun and you will get to see it. 

Corporate Headshots and Technical Challenges

So, uh, moving on to the boardroom and this episode's point.

So over the past three days or so, Sarah and I have been ensconced in a room in an office in London and one of the world's biggest companies, and we were brought in to create headshots of senior execs, board members, CEO, CFOs, C-C-O-C-M-O, all of these people, C-level execs. And they'd approached us to do it as part of a bigger package.

There's some marketing going on. I can't talk about what the company is and I can't talk about what the product is. But the broad brush of it is there's some new product coming out. It's being sponsored by the entire board. Each of them was gonna record a video, and they also needed some stills to go out and posters and social media and things like that at the same time.

We were gonna create additional headshots, uh, just for general purpose. So right up my street. I love headshot. I love corporate work, smart people. Being smart is never a bad thing to photograph. I really enjoy it. But slight, slight challenge with this particular gig is that the predominant job was for them to record video.

Each slot was about 30 minutes, and these execs really had no time. They're close to a launch. There's a lot going on. It's a huge company, and half an hour in an exec's diary to record a video, as you can imagine, although they wanted to do it because they know it's important, they were also thinking about the next meeting and the meeting after that.

So. They'd come in, they'd spend half an hour in front of the video cameras and the green screen. And do their job brilliantly with a teleprompter and the scripting and everything. And then just as they thought they were gonna leave, um, the head of marketing would say to them, no, no, we just need to get a few headshots of you.

And I was given about 30 seconds to create these shots. It will have a lifespan of probably like five years, because you know what it's like with headshot? No one ever refreshes them. So we go from sitting around doing very little. To a hundred miles an hour. There's no warmup, there's no tea, there's no small talk.

It really was literally the head of marketing said, wait, uh, here's Paul. He's here to take some headshot. Go. And I would say hello, trying to get energy into a shoot like that. And of course the first person up was the CEO. And he walks over. Everything's set. Sarah and I have rigged, and we've, luckily it's a secure building.

Um, so we can leave all of the kit rigged overnight. Anyway, so we've decided, right, we've got, we've taken as much kit as we can spare 'cause I'm also working in the gaps back here at the studio. So we've got the lights, got the backdrop. Nice small. You've seen the videos we've created on doing this kind of stuff.

It's, there's, it's enough kit to do the job, but it's still small enough that Sarah and I can lu it in on the train. So a backdrop, a couple of rom threes with some soft boxes, and actually everything's pretty good to go. But the kit has been sitting here now for about four hours. And what I would normally do if I was about to meet someone and do studio style shots with a studio lighting is I would fire the lights a few times and make sure everything's perfect.

Slight wrinkle, we're in the same room as the video filming. So we can't do any of that. All I can do is check that nothing's gone to sleep. I can't, I didn't do anything because of the noise of the, um, beeps on the lights 'cause I use those to make sure everything's fired. And the flashes, of course, are gonna bleed into the video recording, so I can't do anything.

So of course the first person is the CEO, the most important person in the entire process. He's my subject. He does his video, it's very good. He comes off, but he's clearly tired, um, and has a lot on his mind. He walks in front of over to me, head of marketing. This is Paul. Really nice to meet you. Um, you know, normal kind of stuff.

Please stand there in front of the lights. How do you normally stand? And I'd watch him. And the great thing about watching people filming is you get to see how they naturally sit, how they naturally stand. And these were all to be standing portraits. And I kind of started, got chatting, going where I wanted it.

We'd mark the tape, mark the floor where I wanted him, got the lights, the same height. 'cause of course, everybody's a different height. We could do most of the work, but I can't set the height of the lights until I meet the subject. Pick up my camera, I focus it, I hit the button. Nothing. I mean silence. So I kind of talk my way through it.

Sarah knows what's happening, but because of course, the Z nine doesn't make any noise at all. I don't think anyone realized it hadn't fired. Sarah knew I knew, so I kind of carried on chatting, refocused, hit the button. Again, nothing. I mean, silence. Now, fortunately, I'm used to the fact that. When you are working with any kind of wireless technology, there's always connection, challenges.

Um, and so I kind of took a breath, paused to check that all the lights were up, checked the controller was seated correctly into the hot shoe. Third time's a charm, blink off. It went flash, the flashes flood, and I literally, I watched everyone in the room sort of breathe a sigh of relief. Even they, even though they didn't know.

It wasn't firing. They thought I was taking way too long to get this first shot. And if you've ever had that moment, you've ever had that moment where Kit just doesn't do what you expect, it goes on strike at exactly the wrong moment. You know that sinking feeling. And there's nothing I could do. I couldn't have pre-fire it.

We checked everything until they started filming, and then it, it just lost its connections. And once it happened, it all started rolling. Three days, amazing portraits. And we've had the most wonderful, wonderful feedback from the client, from the people. The pictures look great. We're really happy. But over those three days, I think I've, I'm estimating the actual amount of time I had a camera in my hand with a client in front of me.

15 minutes tops. That's not a lot of time. And we are obviously charging for those days 'cause that's days I'm not earning anything in the studio here. So you have to wonder, you know, why they pay people like me to come in and do that job. Well, I can tell you why. It's because in those 30 seconds for each of those people, we created magic.

We got them to laugh just by chatting really. Or maybe, maybe people just look at me and giggle. I have no idea. But they looked engaged. We took the lighting, of course Crumb, beautiful lighting. So the lighting is on point. Um, I know the camera, I know the lights. I also know my post-production. So I knew when I could compromise and I knew when I couldn't.

So things like, uh, nearly everybody wore glasses and you could spend as the videographers did hours trying to figure out how to get the reflections outta glasses in our studio. I would spend a bit more time doing it, but here, there was no way I could do it. So I lit, I drifted the light across and I knew when I was seeing blue or green reflections.

The Voto, the EVOTO.AI package, its glasses. Reflection cleaning button is a thing of weird genius. It just works. So there's lots of little bits to the puzzle, but broadly speaking, it's a lot of experience. It's a lot of energy, it's a lot of being totally present and in that moment so that you are subject, no matter what they're feeling, it's gonna get swept along with it.

And there's an awful lot. Of me knowing the kit, having bought great kit, knowing the kit and knowing that, okay, it didn't fire a couple of times, but it will, it's just gonna take a second for everything to just talk to each other and get rolling. And apparently this is all true because they've asked us to come back.

So in spite of the wobbly star and the crumbs, um, and the fact actually the hardest bit wasn't that, the hardest bit is that you've been sitting around for ages waiting. And you go from naught to a hundred miles an hour in a heartbeat, and that's really, really tough. But it is a huge amount of fun. And I, like I said, I absolutely love corporate headshots.

So get really good at what you do. Trust yourself. Buy good kit and know how to use it and trust in it even when it stutters. And ultimately, your client is not paying for your ability to press a button or connect things your client. Is paying for your ability to be calm, to be present, and to know what you are doing no matter what hiccups, uh, come your way.

Right. I'm gonna close out this, uh, happy little podcast for a moment. You can hear, Hey, fever is bad. I dunno if you can hear it or not, but my nose is blocked in spite of my whiskey. Uh, one last quick plug. Um. 

Upcoming Workshop and Closing Remarks

Is that, uh, we have had a last minute somebody's dropped out of a workshop. We are running in Oxford on Monday.

This Monday coming. I'm recording this Wednesday night, and on Monday the 9th of June. We are running our location portraits workshop in Oxford. We meander through this most incredible city. It's beautiful. Oxford is just stunning taking pictures, uh, creating portraits, looking for light and shape and form telling stories, uh, lunches provided.

Um, we have a space, somebody suddenly dropped out and it'd be lovely. It'd be lovely if we could fill that space. If you fancy it, head over to mastering portrait photography.com, uh, and look for the workshops and mentoring section. Uh, and you'll find a workshop in there. It's the Oxford, uh, location portrait photography.

It's honestly, it's my favorite workshop of the year, although, to be fair, the bootcamp, the bootcamp is coming close. I really enjoyed the bootcamp. This last one, our inaugural bootcamp was brilliant. The two day workshop was brilliant. Um, however, walking around Oxford, this glorious architecture, um. Uh, it is just amazing.

So if you fancy that here, if you fancy that, head over to our workshop section. Have a look and see what you think. We'd love to see you there. And that is me. I have a glass of Irish whiskey sitting beside me. The TV has now gone to a blue  📍 screen. Um, I'm gonna fire that back up while I do the edit for this and whatever else.

I hope your kit doesn't stutter. I hope it fires first time and whatever else. Be kind to yourself. Take care.     

In this episode, I dig into a question that’s always lurking in the back of a portrait photographer’s mind – what really makes light flattering? It’s a term we all use, but what does it actually mean? Is it just about soft shadows and low contrast, or is it more about the connection between the subject and the photographer?

I talk through this while reflecting on a busy week – from a stunning wedding at Head Saw House to a corporate shoot for Barclays, and a spontaneous portrait session that reminded me why I love this job. I also share some thoughts on the updated Mastering Portrait Photography book, which hits shelves in September, complete with fresh images and a whole new chapter on AI post-production.

If you’ve ever wondered what makes a light truly flattering – and why it’s about more than just the gear – this episode is for you.

And as always, wherever you are and whatever you’re doing, be kind to yourself.

Cheers
P.

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If you enjoy this podcast, please head over to Mastering Portrait Photography, for more articles and videos about this beautiful industry. You can also read a full transcript of this episode.

PLEASE also subscribe and leave us a review - we'd love to hear what you think!

If there are any topics, you would like to hear, have questions we could answer or would like to come and be interviewed on the podcast, please contact me at paul@paulwilkinsonphotography.co.uk. 

 

Transcript

 ​

 Well, as I sit here in the studio, the sun is shining in through the windows and it's been a beautiful, beautiful week. I started it with a trip down to Devon with the in-laws. One great thing about being married to Sarah, whose family are from Plymouth, there are many great things about being married to Sarah.

But one of the ones, in terms of geography, at least, is her family still lived down in Plymouth, in Devon, by the sea. So it was absolutely glorious to spend a couple of days down there walking the dog, drinking a beer, enjoying the sunshine, and the sun is still shining here right now. And on that happy note, I'm Paul.

I'm very much looking forward to a barbecue, and this is the Mastering Portrait  📍 Photography podcast.

  📍  📍 So what did we do over the past week or so since I recorded the last episode? Well, Sarah and I went off and photographed the most beautiful wedding at a location called Hedger House, which is sort of in between us and London, give or take a bit. Um, and you'll have seen many, many Hollywood films, uh, that were shot there.

None of which I can remember. There's a couple of James Bond films, a couple of Dustin h Dustin Hoffman films. I don't know, I should have paid more attention, but it is the kind of venue that you can imagine. Downton Abbey, uh, being filmed in. As it turned out, it was Abby and Rob's wedding. Um, beautiful.

I've worked with the family for many years, photographed her brother's wedding, uh, a couple of years ago, and so we've been looking forward to this day enormously. And when Sarah and I work together, it is a great privilege. It's not just that Sarah, uh, Sarah's family are from the sea, but she's a fantastic photographer.

Um, not that we've ever really used that talent, but if you think about it, it makes sense given that she must see. Well, I dunno how many hundreds of thousands of images every single year go past her screen. 'cause she does all the selections, but also she knows exactly, exactly what's required to design a great album.

Because at the end of the day, I. It's Sarah designs them. So it was a real beautiful thing to be able to do. Sarah has created some wonderful imagery. We've also had a couple of portrait shoots, three or four this week, which I've really enjoyed today actually. We've had one came in for a reveal and one came in for a shoot.

Two lovely families, and at the end of the day, that is still what this business is about. There is so much going on out there in the news about ai, about technology, about the economy. But in the end, the bit of the industry that I sit in, this bit here is all about families. It's about memories, it's about real people doing real things.

So it's been absolutely brilliant to be. Uh, photographing families, uh, and also selling, uh, a beautiful frame. This morning. It was absolutely lovely, big layup of multiple images, uh, to go on the wall. Uh, also this week, um, I took a trip into London to photograph the Barclays bank. A GM set up quite specifically the setup.

The brief actually said, do not include people where it's possible. So that's fine. I was there to photograph, um, for the, um. The production company that do all of the work behind the scenes. They create all the staging, they create all of the film work. My job was quite literally, quite literally, to be there and make sure that was really well documented, which I did.

But of course, because it was such an early start, I had my, um, original call in time at the venue in the security on this. As you can imagine, this is Barclay's, the A GM. Um, I've never seen security like it, and I've actually photographed this event probably 10 years or so now. I never seen security quite like this one.

And with a seven o'clock start, I had to, uh, stay over in a hotel the night before, which was great. I mean, it's no problem. There's plenty of hotels in London, but it did mean I got to go out for the evening with Harriet, our daughter. So the two of us met up the night before, um, had pizza, margaritas, a beer, a glass of wine or two and more or less.

Gassed just gossiped, um, all the way through until it was time for both of us to part our ways, me to go to the hotel and for her to head home. And there was really something really special about getting to spend time with your kids as a dad. It is the greatest pleasure. As you watch your kids grow up, you watch their confidence increase, you just, well, I do anyway.

Absolutely love spending time, uh, with both of 'em. So that was really, really nice. Then of course, the next day, um, I went and photographed all of the bits and pieces for the A GM. And then at the end of that took the opportunity to go and meet a prospective client that we are planning a shoot for a big client.

Um, and they want to create over two days, sort of 50 unique portraits of different people with different backgrounds, but all looking like their shot in their place of work. But they're coming from all over the uk so we're gonna do it in one location, a mix of the street, a mix of different offices, almost like, um, filming really, it's a bit like putting together, um, a film or a documentary where you use different backgrounds to tell different stories.

So I met up with a client, um, a marketer and a graphic designer, and it was. It was actually quite a laugh because I didn't think I was only really there to help them shape the job, help them figure out how we're going to do it. But of course, I had all my cameras with me from the job I was doing in the morning, and so I dragged one out, dragged a lens out, um, and we sort of barreled around the building, taking portraits of them, um, having a look at how the different backgrounds might work, discussing lots of little details, you know, the things that people miss when you're working on location.

You can't, for instance, assume that you're going to be able to use strobes because much of this building is an open plan, and us firing strobes while we're doing portraiture probably isn't gonna work because it's distracting for everybody. Now, if we're in a closed room, that's fine, but if we're out in an open plan or in the atrium, or in the restaurant, or in the library.

I'm gonna guess that's gonna be majorly distracting. So things like allowing for the fact that we are probably gonna be using continuous lighting, probably gonna be using LEDs, which is fine. There's no problem with that. But that has other knock-on effects because it's slightly different equipment and it will work when the light levels are reasonably low.

But you can't overcome things like direct sunlight or you can balance to a degree, but it gets very bright very quickly. And we are not a film studio. I'm not gonna go and set huge great shadow boxes and things over the windows. I'm not gonna have a tunnel lighting. I'm gonna have a very simple portrait photographers lighting set up.

But it was a huge amount of fun, and the pictures have actually come out pretty well. I'm quite pleased with them. Even though we were working off brief, we were just sketching. But of course, as a portrait photographer, that's your job. And when you do this at weddings, people expect that of you. But when you're working on the commercial side, I think it surprised everyone that it was well, that easy.

I don't mean I'm not playing this industry down, but taking a portrait is mostly about understanding how light works and then understanding how to read. And manipulate characters, how to be a people person with great light. Actually, that could be the topic of a podcast. All and of its all, all in and of itself is, you know, portrait photography is understanding light.

I. And how to manipulate people. And once you're there, there's not an awful lot left, uh, to do. So that was, that was a real blast. Um, I'm looking forward to doing the actual gig. We sort of got our heads around the scope of it now and that couple of hours we spent really did illustrate the best way to plan the shoot book people in, and generally approach him.

Uh, also this week we spent a day, uh, Sarah, Katie, myself and, uh, Abby, one of our regular models. Um, the video we're recording for the mastering portrait photography website. This time round is going to be all about those lighting patterns that have names, the eight or so. Um, lighting patterns, uh, single light lighting patterns.

Lighting patterns with one light, maybe that sounds better, where, um, they're sort of lighting patterns for me. I, I didn't really understand or didn't know, rather, the lighting, the names of lighting patterns until I started to teach. And still, in fact, we wrote the original mastering portrait photography book because although I knew them.

I didn't even know they had names. I'm not in that regard, a formal photographer, but it's really useful to know them because you can jump straight to that starting point. It's a little bit like learning your scales on the piano or maybe learning your rudiments as a drummer. To me, certainly. I mean, I've done both of those things and to me they were the est, most boring, mundane things that you had to do, but you had to do them as a piano player.

You had to get your fingers to have muscle memory so that if you needed to move around certain notes, you could get there. You needed to know in certain keys what notes went together. Similarly, as a drummer, you had to get your wrists loose and your fingers loose. And be able to move around the drum kit fluently, fluidly, and fluently, and the only way of doing that is repe repetitive practice.

It's repetition, doing it over and over and over again. Much as I didn't enjoy it, it paid dividends when I found myself on stage or in a recording studio. Then all of those hours spent at a practice pad or. As a piano player learning my scales suddenly came to fruition. And just for clarity here, I was an awful piano player.

I hated the scales and I had very little talent. I, I could play a bit, I could play enough to, you know, Russell Une, if I really thought about it, um, was not a great piano player. However, as a photographer, the value in learning these named lighting patterns isn't about the names and the lighting patterns themselves.

It's learning why they're called what they are and how to do them and be able to recall them if you need to, and certainly when, for instance, as a mentor and as a trainer. It's so much easier if we can talk about lighting patterns by name. You know, I can, we can talk about this shot would've been better lit short or lit narrow.

I think this face shape might have looked better lit. Broad maybe. Um, you know, Rembrandt lighting is very theatrical actually. Rembrandt light is one of those really obscure lighting patterns that everybody knows about. Every photographer, loves and can name and can create the triangle on the cheek. But that's usually done with a hard light source.

But if you really want to use it, you've gotta use a soft light source. But knowing where the light goes so that you can create that beautiful, gentle roll off across the top of a cheekbone is a practice thing. So anyway, we spent the day. Recording all of these different lighting patterns, and they're gonna look really beautiful.

I mean, Abby's a beautiful model. Um, we shot it really clean, so every picture you'll be able to see precisely what we're talking about. So we shot each one with a hard light so you can see exactly where the light lands, where it falls, and then we shot them with a soft light. So you can see how might, how you might use exactly the same positioning of the light to create great portraits.

So I'm looking forward to finishing that video up, which we'll do, uh, I'm gonna guess Wednesday next week. Um, and that will go out onto MPP. That'll be this month's, uh, video. Uh, a lot of fun. Um, today, uh, like I said, a reveal. All the cookies have gone. The kids needed chocolate. Um, so I'm sitting in the studio thinking like, quite fancy a cookie and nope, they're all gone.

Um, but the sun has been beautiful and so what a lovely, a lovely thing to do. Uh, some big news. Now, this has actually been rumbling on since, uh, January, I think. Um, but it's now, um, out of embargo is that we've, Sarah Platon and myself have been asked to revise the mastering portrait photography book. Um, the reason the website is called Mastering Portrait Photography is 'cause we produce the book.

The publisher have asked us to rework it. And so I've actually just spent a few months, um, reworking every single portrait. Except for the one of me, you can't really see that it's me. I dunno when it was shot. I look like, um, I've been dragged through a hedge backwards, and I've left it well alone because it makes me laugh.

So there's still a shot of me holding a camera in there that hasn't been revised. But every other portrait in there has been, they're my clients. Every single one of the people in that book is a client of ours, or it's from a job where we're doing a workshop or a masterclass or something. I can tell you a story about every single picture, and it's been such a pleasure.

It's 10 years old this year. The book, it came out around about, I think it came out in May. Well, I could look the dates up in, um. 2015 and it's gonna come out is, I think the launch date is the 9th of September this year, 10 years. 10 years ago we first created it, but we've reworked all of it bit by bit by bit, picture by picture, by picture, um, so that it's still the same book.

Um, it's definitely a second revision. We haven't changed all of the wording. We've revised some of it. And the post-production chapter, I've reworked to be mostly about. As it happens, ai, so the mix of Lightroom, Photoshop, and then uh, tools like Voto. I should, again, for clarity. Uh, I'm not sponsored by any of these companies.

These are tools and apps that I pay for. I wish I didn't. If, if a Voto are listening, feel free to b me a sponsorship. But no, I pay for it. Um, I pay for it because it's useful, makes my life easier. Um, it polishes images at a rate that I could not have kept up with. Photoshop, not. In this market. Now, if you are a high-end fashion house doing fashion photography, maybe you could beauty shots on the covers of magazines.

Yeah, maybe you could. But to, we can produce, you know, to a level of about 18, maybe even 90% of that level of detail. And you can do it in a heartbeat. So things like a Voto, the last chapter in the book, the post-production, uh, chapter, has been completely rewritten to include. How we now use things like ai because if this book, let's say this book has another 10 years on a shelf before it needs revising or taking off ai, I think would've completely changed.

Not just this industry, but every industry and the most valuable things will no longer be how good you are with a computer or how good you are as a coder, or even how good you are as a writer. All of that will become. Commoditized. You can simply tell a machine how to do it. The value will be, I think, in your intellectual capacity to imagine things.

Now, I know you can go into Mid Journey and type a bunch of keywords in, or you know, Firefly or Dali or whatever, but in a very real sense. That's not art or creativity, it's just the computer spitting stuff back at you. And the same is true when you're doing creative writing, but if you truly have interesting and original ideas and configure out how to articulate those, AI is gonna be sitting alongside you every step of the way.

And what's left? What's left when. Those kinds of tools become just the heartbeat of your work. Whatever's left is the personal contact. It's the people to people, the human to human, the character to character, the very physicality of being in the same room as someone, hence the. Why I get so excited about doing portrait shoots.

I've done that all my life, and I still feel that way, that when I'm face to face with a client, yeah. All right. I mean, I know I'm an idiot and I am loud and I laugh a lot and you know, every time I have a a, an adrenaline rush, when I'm working with a client or I meet new people afterwards, I will forever beat myself up for being.

I guess embarrassing, but that's the joy of being human. Um, the tooling, the behind the scenes stuff, the management, even social media. You don't have to go onto social media for very long before you start to see AI generated videos, AI generated images. Um, and the truth of it is, I'm not sure I can tell the difference anymore, but the, the days of six fingers to three hands funny necks, they're gone.

These, the AI tools that are appearing now are super realistic. Um, and if you can do that with words, imagine what you can do with a photograph as your reference point. So anyway, the book will be out. Sorry, I've digressed slightly. The book will be out on the 9th of September. It's called Mastering Portrait Photography.

Um. Um, it's already available for pre-order on Amazon, which means I can now, um, share details of it. We've been under embargo up until this point, but, um, the rework has been done. Now looking forward to, um. Seeing the actual printed, but I've got some proofs sitting here beside me that arrived this morning.

Uh, that, uh, I just wanted to confirm some of the colors were are spot on because one of the great things I think about Amini to produce this book is their color work. That printed work is just beautiful. The prints look like competition prints in the book. It's a proper, it's, I mean, for us it's a training book.

It's a kind of a walkthrough. Things you should think about as a portrait photographer, but actually. As the photographer. It's a coffee table book of some of my favorite work, so that'll be out 9th of September. You can google mastering portrait photography. The book is available on Amazon, and of course we'll announce details of, uh, signed copies.

Uh, we're gonna have some kind of launch bash, I'm sure of it. Uh, I cannot, absolutely cannot wait. Uh, and then onto, I think what I intended to talk about today, which is linked to the lighting patterns I talked about. But it is simply this question, what makes flattering light? And I see titles of videos, how to use flattering light, how to use this light, how to use that light, and nobody really explains.

What do you mean by flattering? You know, Rembrandt pioneered. Well, did he pioneer? That's, no, he didn't. He put his name to an observed lighting pattern that created a triangle of light on his cheek. Um, is that flattering? Well, it created a very effective, very gloomy portrait, the way he painted it Anyway.

Is it flattering? I dunno. I mean, certainly it looks great. What about soft light? The thing about soft light is we all always talk about soft, flattering light. I mean, if you ever hear the word flattering light, you're probably, it's probably prefixed by the word soft. And what do we mean by soft? Well, usually soft.

We talk about soft edged shadows. That's normally what we're talking about. But of course, contrast ratios are supremely important, too soft. Edged shadows and low contrast tend to give forgiving light. They tend to reduce wrinkles or they reduce the amount of modeling that might be across a part of someone's figure or face, um, that makes it harder to discern.

Lumps, bumps, textures, hard light, hard edged shadows tend to reveal. I tend to reveal light. That's a shape more than soft light. But what if you want to, for instance, reduce the perception of somebody's width? Is soft, light, soft edge shadows, low contrast, light better, or is it better to have. Very contrasty.

Light, dark, dark shadows where everything disappears into the gloom and hard edge shadows where when it's wrapping around a curve around a body, for instance, the lip part is gonna be slightly narrower than if you lit it with a soft edged light. Well, no one can answer that. No one can tell you which is the most flattering, only the subject and the creator can tell you the people actually there in the room.

The interaction between the subject. And the creator, you the photographer. So when we talk about flattering light, what really do we mean? And I think what we mean and what we have to agree to mean is flattering light is the light that creates a picture that you love and a picture that your client loves.

If that's hard light, if it's contrasty light, if it's soft edge shadow light, if it's low contrast light, it doesn't really matter. Your ability to read your subject, your ability to read, shape and form and textures, and how to either exaggerate that or reduce that. Well, that to me is what creating flattering light is all about.

Anyway, uh, that was not, which I, I dunno why I thought that would be a topic to talk about, uh, today. And the last thing, um, I'm just, before I sign off, I've, I'm just, so I'm gazing round our studio as the sun is going down. I have to do a big tidy up tomorrow. That's my job tomorrow, is to absolutely sort this studio out so it's nice and tidy for our very first, uh, inaugural two day bootcamp, which is Monday and Tuesday next week.

Now, you may be listening to this podcast after that's been done, um, but I will give you an update. Next week as to how it has gone. So it's two days, a maximum of 10 people. Um, a mix of being here at the studio out on location round our amazing village. Um, we've also rented, um, a hall in a local church, which will give us a ton of room to really play and explore lighting.

Our studio here is incredible. I love it. It creates the pictures that I love and pictures that clearly our clients love. But putting 10 people plus me plus models into it is just. I'm gonna be a little bit tight if I want to move the lighting around. So we're gonna have, uh, spend some time over at local church hall, which is always funny, um, because it's very real for most people who don't own a studio.

Being able to show how to rig and use studio lighting in any space you are in and all the considerations that go with it. For instance, we've been around there and, um, the, um, lots of the pin boards around the room have bright colors because they use it as a crash. Well, bright colors get bounced back. So you're gonna get yellows and pinks coming back off your light.

So learning how to work with that and how to reduce the colors of light. You don't want an increase of color, of light you do want. Those are gonna be part of the topics. We've got two days in the evening between the two nights, uh, pizza, lots of chatter about portraits. Um, and then on the Tuesday, a wrap up.

Uh, more photography and in the afternoon looking at, uh, technology, looking at, uh, Photoshop, Voto, imagine all of these tools that you can do things with. So I'm really, really, really excited about it. And that's, tomorrow's job is to go through the studio. You can see it, if you can see the edges of my desk, I'm kind of glancing around.

It's, there's so much stuff here. Uh, I collect stuff. I can't help it. Sarah keeps trying to get me to either sell it or throw it. Um, and at some point, of course. I will, but in the meantime, in the meantime, if you fancy coming on one of our workshops, please do head over to mastering portrait photography.com and go to the academy section.

All of our workshops are listed there. A bit too late, obviously for the bootcamp. Uh, that is Monday, Tuesday this week and it's sold out. Uh, but coming up, uh, our various workshops throughout the summer ranging from our on location in Oxford Workshop, which might be, and we haven't done the two day, uh, two day bootcamp yet.

This might turn out to be my favorite, but working in Oxford for the day, just taking pictures on the street using whatever light we can find. And our client, oh, sorry, our models this time. Uh, one of our wedding clients, the beautiful people who I photographed at the Manir, the most unassuming and gorgeous couple.

So I think that's my favorite. That's, uh, on our website. I don't, I think there's a space left. And then of course, there's a whole load of other workshops and opportunities for if you would like to come for some mentoring, like to come for training. Um. One-to-one, whatever it is. If we can help, we will. So if you fancy any of that, head over to mastering portrait photography.com and uh, go to the academy section.

And on that happy note, I'm gonna go brave some hay fever. 'cause it's the evening the sun is set. I feel there might be a barbecue in the offing. My nose is ever so slightly bonged up with hay fever. In spite, in spite of the drugs. So I'm gonna head away. Uh, hope all is well with all of you and whatever else on this beautiful, sunny Saturday evening, be kind to yourself.

Take care.

It’s a late Sunday afternoon, the sun is shining, and the smell of freshly cut grass (and the inevitable hay fever) is drifting through the studio as I sit down to record this episode. After a whirlwind few months — including seven incredible weeks photographing on Crystal Cruises — it feels good to be back behind the mic, even if I’m a little sniffly.

In this episode, I’m reflecting on the magic of authentic portrait photography, the rapid rise of AI in our world (and our inboxes!), and why the human touch still matters more than ever. Plus, there’s news about upcoming workshops, a few tech tips for cleaner files and faster edits, and a good-natured rant about AI-generated podcast pitches. As always, it's a mix of stories, laughter, tech, and a reminder to stay creative — and stay human.

Cheers
P.

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If you enjoy this podcast, please head over to Mastering Portrait Photography, for more articles and videos about this beautiful industry. You can also read a full transcript of this episode.

PLEASE also subscribe and leave us a review - we'd love to hear what you think!

If there are any topics, you would like to hear, have questions we could answer or would like to come and be interviewed on the podcast, please contact me at paul@paulwilkinsonphotography.co.uk. 

 

Transcript

 

Introduction and Podcast Setup

So it's Sunday afternoon, the sun is shining, and here I am late on Sunday recording this podcast and I'm recording it with the smell of freshly cut grass, uh, wafting in through the windows, which is gonna trigger my hay fever one way or another.

Um and also the reason I'm recording it quite so late at this stage of the day. It's 'cause my neighbors have been cutting their grass and they do have the loudest petrol mower in the world. I'm Paul, and assuming I can get through this without sneezing, this is the Mastering Portrait Photography  📍 podcast.

 Now, there is a lot going on at the moment. It is really good to be back. And of course, those of you who have been over the years, regular listeners will know this has been quite a long gap. 

Recent Adventures on Crystal Cruises

And the reason for that, as I may or may not have alluded to before we went away was Sarah and I spent seven weeks working for Crystal Cruises, working on onboard ship as a portrait, uh, photographer.

It is one of the best gigs in the world. I get to travel all over and this time around we were traveling around South America from Valparaiso in Chile all the way around the southern tip through re, which is just stunning. In Argentina over to the Falkland Islands, and then up through Brazil, across the Cape Verde and then finishing up in of all places, uh, grand Canaria.

It has been an incredible experience from start to finish, photographing the most amazing people I photographed. Interesting, funny, erudite professionals, creatives, musicians, authors. Oh, you name it, we did it. It was. An absolute, uh, blast. But of course that seven week gap has meant we've come back and life is incredibly busy here now two, and there's an awful lot going on at the moment.

Upcoming Workshops and Studio Updates

Tomorrow I'm doing one of my favorite things, which is to run a one-on-one workshop, which is part of an annual mentoring, uh, program. We run this program, um, for photographers, for portrait photographers. I should be clear, I dunno very much about landscaping at all. Uh, but certainly for portrait photographers.

And over the ki the course of a year, we set some targets, uh, and then work steadily towards 'em, and I absolutely love it. Honestly. I always come across, I always come outta these, uh, sessions buzzing with energy and ideas. Probably as many as our delegates do as well. So I'm really, really looking forward to that.

The studio is all clean and tidy, Sarah and myself. Painted it. We donned our overalls, um, and spent an entire day cleaning it all out and painting the white wall white. Again. It hasn't been done for a little bit. It. And for some reason this time round I've managed to pick the right white. I know that sounds kind of ob obtuse, um, but there are lots of different tones of white and this particular one is almost exactly, uh, the same as the ISO standard for a reference white, which is really nice.

So all of the images now have this really lovely clean look. I dunno what I picked last time, it clearly wasn't quite the right white or I didn't note at the time, but this white is perfect. So I have the reference numbers, if anyone's curious. I can tell you what it is and it seems to work really, uh, really well.

And if that wasn't enough of all the things that are going on, we've also released a whole stack of new dates and a couple of brand new titles for our workshops, which I will share with you at the. End of this podcast, if you fancy, uh, joining one of those. Uh, and alongside everything else we've been photographing with the hearing dogs.

We've been photographing with all sorts of commercial clients. Um, the diary is absolutely solid and somehow today I've had to squeeze in and find the time to sit and clear my head and figure out the planning for our upcoming bootcamp, which has been on the diary for a little bit. Now, it isn't a new workshop though.

This is the first time we've run it, so I'm having to figure out exactly. What that's gonna look like. Two days of intensive portrait chat, technique and practice. Um, all about portrait photography. But we have over two days the time to spend really exploring different ideas. And of course we have the evening in between the two days when if people wanna put some of what we've gone through into practice or start to shape what we'll do the next day, we have the opportunity to do it.

It's absolutely packed. We've got people coming from all over, all over Europe for that one. Uh, which I'm really excited about. I think there might be one place available. Gome, I should have gone and looked, uh, to see if that've gone, but I think there's a place available if anyone fancies it. It's on the 12th and 13th.

12th, can't even say it. 12th and 13th of May, and it's going to be a blast. So if you fancy that, I think there's, uh, a date available. Again, I'll give you, uh, details of where to find those things at the end. Anyway. Here's a question for you. 

AI in Photography: Tools and Trends

Has anyone else noticed a steady stream of emails lately that sound human, but simply because you get so many, you just know they can't be.

There's something about not just the email, but the number of them that I get that all have a very similar wording. I mean, maybe it's just me. Maybe it's because of this very podcast. Um, and I get a lot of emails, a lot of agencies and things offering me the opportunity. Here's the opportunity to have a guest that I'd never heard of, um, on the podcast.

And there's something about the way that these emails feel that a suspiciously well. Polished. So the question is this the future now? I mean, AI is brilliant for certain things. Evoto, for instance, is mind blowing. I love this application. Um, it's a retouching suite. It's from Singapore, a team in Singapore, and it's as close as I've seen yet to having.

Real craft finished retouched portraits. It is getting that good. It's not quite there. There's still a lot to be said for the hand finishing the final touches, the little bits and pieces, tune in the colors and the little things that I. Probably AI will never get because it's all down to you and you alone.

So AI will do the bulk of it, but when it comes to your personal little taste, your little tweaks, maybe it won't get there, but it certainly gets you 90% of the way there. I'm playing right now with the beta version five, and it is impressive to put it mildly. It is really, really, really good. Um, similar vein, you know, uh, in terms of.

Uh, prepping files. I love PureRAW5 from DXO optics. Um, it's just this plugin in Lightroom. I don't use an awful lot of its power, I suspect, but it's great when I have a slightly dirty file, something where maybe the noise has come up a little bit or I'm having trouble, maybe it's just, I dunno. There's something where it isn't quite right. It's very, very good for giving you beautifully clean files with no pin cushioning, no aberrations. Really nice, really nice if you like, a lovely clean file. So that's worth checking it out. I don't know, actually if, uh, PureRAW5 is yet in its public release.

Um. Uh, I'm a, I'm on the beta list, so I get to see it a little bit early, but as soon as it comes out, I suggest you get a hold of a, of a trial copy and have a play. And then of course, on top of that, if there wasn't enough AI floating around with, um, competitors. Adobe themselves, the king of the crop, the, the, the big, the biggest, uh, I guess the biggest name.

In photography, retouching and post-production. Um, Adobe have their own AI magic from generative fill to those ridiculously good subject and sky selection tools, which are probably the best thing about all of the ai as far as I'm concerned. The ability to hit select subject and there is, and of course, the remove tool for getting rid of people that you don't want in the background.

All of these things are saving hours on editing, and it's a joy, particularly if you keep a control of it. And you get it to do what you want it to do, but, and this is a big, but it's there to assist, but it doesn't create without me steering it. These emails though. Now you can tell they are AI generated.

Let me read you one. Let me just fix my email. Here it goes. Hey, Paul. It's always a good start. Hey, Paul, listening to your latest episodes really struck a chord, especially as you reflected on judging for the British Institute of Professional Photographers. Your thoughtful musings on stepping down from your role as chair were both insightful and inspiring.

Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. A visionary storyteller and celebrated director of photography would resonate with your audience's. Love for artistic narratives with an impressive track record working with global brands like Coca-Cola and Microsoft. He brings a wealth of experience in visual storytelling worthy of your podcast, and blah, blah, blah, blah, is not only a celebrated photographer, but also an accomplished musician and digital media artist.

His vibrant Tales from behind the lens, combined with his academic honors from Harvard and the Global Cinema Cinematography Institute would add depth and intrigue to your conversations. What makes blah, blah, blah, blah, an ideal guest. This content connects with a thriving community of 15,000 entrepreneurs, photographers and marketers, eager to explore the captivating world of photograph of photography and digital media.

Let's create something memorable together. Best, blah, blah, blah, blah's team. Now, in and of itself, I think I'd spot that as an um, ai, um, as an AI email. But I've had quite a few of those from different people, different photographers, different teams, different everything. But somehow your classic tale of the Land Rover, your classic tale of photographing on a beach, your classic tale of.

They all have a tone about them that clearly AI can now understand, or at least I say understand. Of course, we're delving into the definitions of intelligence here, but clearly understands what it's saying. It clearly understands it's, it's either listen to the podcast or it's read the transcript or both.

It's come up with some set of lines that make it sound like it's a human writing it, but it's not a human writing it. That's ai. So I've now got AI emails being sent to me to ask me to feature. I'm hoping a real human, though. I'm not going to feature him because he's using AI on my podcast. So should I set up an AI bot?

To respond to the AI bot, and then maybe the AI bot at the other end could schedule the guest. Or maybe an AI guest. And an AI guest. Maybe they could record, script record and publish a podcast that yet more AI will listen to. 

The Future of AI and Human Interaction

So the question is, at what point do we stop being involved? Maybe the AI should just talk to itself.

Are we gonna end up in a world where AI is talking to ai? And I suspect the reality is that yes, that is exactly what's going to happen because I today, I could download a chat bot that will respond to all of my emails. So would the email then be responded to by another chat bot responding to the ai?

Maybe the only thing that's gonna listen to the podcast will be ai, and maybe the podcast will all be about having a human context inside ai. But the only things listening to it. Are the AI bots curious? Huh? I wonder where we're gonna end up now. I'm a huge, huge fan of ai. I just, I love what it can do. I love what the future holds.

I have a PhD in it, so you kind of expect that from me. But my thought was always that it would make life easier. Not that it would remove life from the equation, but I'm not quite as certain as I was. Evoto, Imagen, Adobe and a plethora of incredible tools out there are gonna help us as photographers.

They're gonna enable us to do things that actually were not accessible unless you had a cast of thousands, you had models, you had assistants, you had venues. It's gonna allow image creation to a degree. That probably wasn't possible, but having just done three incredibly beautiful portrait shoots with lovely families over this weekend where the emphasis is on the authentic, not the synthetic, on creating reality and documenting it, not creating a fantasy and getting something else to write about it.

I think there's still space for humanity in all of this, but I do think we have to be careful. I do think we have to retain and hold onto the reality and let AI do what AI can do, where it helps us, where it makes things faster, where it makes things more efficient. But let's keep an eye out for these crazy emails and the different things that are just so clearly not real.

Anyway, that's enough of my rant. Sorry. A quick footnote. I mention all sorts of companies while I'm recording these podcasts, but I always make it clear if a company is sponsoring me. None of the companies I've mentioned today are. Uh, I'm not sponsored by DXO. I'm not sponsored, uh, by Imagen I'm not sponsored by Adobe.

They're just the tools that I use. In fact, I pay for the use of all of those tools. Um, but they happen to be incredibly useful. And if any of that has inspired you to pick up your camera and, uh, I always hope. You know, maybe it has, let's go and do something that isn't based around artificial intelligence.

Workshop Announcements and Closing Remarks

Here are the dates I promised you for our up and coming workshop. So there's, uh, five or six of these. Uh, number one, mastering ordinary to ordinary workshop. This is that one where we take a very standard small space and just create some beautiful images in it, to be honest. Uh, whether it's, uh, using strobes, using continuous light that's on the 27th of June.

Uh, this year. Uh, so actually if you're listening to this in a year's time, these are all in 2025. Uh, then there's mastering environment, uh, sorry, mastering Environmental Portraits Workshop, which is on the 18th of July, which is everything you need to tell stories through and using the location. Um, still planning that one out.

I had a brilliant one-on-one recently where we went out into location to a sculptor and to someone on their allotment and just created. Pictures. It was magical. It was beautiful, it was a great experience. But we're just trying to work out how five people, which is the theoretical maximum of the workshop, uh, would be able to do the same.

So, uh, I'll have a plan for that. So that's on the 18th of July. It's gonna be amazing. 

Then we've got mastering family photography, workshop one we've worked before. That's a maximum of four delegates in this one because obviously we have families and kids around, so we reduce the numbers. Uh, usually it's five. This one's four. Uh, that's on the 1st of August, 2025. Uh, a load of chaos, basically kids chaos.

What a hoot. Uh, exactly what family photography should be. Uh, then there's mastering dog photography. This is the from shutter to print version, uh, which is on the 12th of September, where we photograph dogs in the morning and then go through the techniques for prepping those files for great prints in the afternoon.

That's one of our most loved it. Always books it really quick. Uh, and then finally of this tranche is the mastering high-key and low key Studio lighting workshop, where this is an extension of one. We've run at the societies very successfully. Um, the society, we've done over a couple of hours. This is for a whole day.

Where we push to the extremes. We go as bright and as high key as we can, and then we swing it the other way and go as dark and as moody as we can. Um, just lighting, talking about lighting composition, talking about the mood, all that kind of thing. That's on the 26th of September, which will take us. To the end of the summer.

Uh, and then we'll have another set, uh, available. So just a quick footnote. Uh, all of the podcasts up until this one have said, go across to paulwilkinsonphotography.co.uk to find details. Those details are on there, but all of the workshops now have moved to masteringportraitphotography.com, along with our mentoring and our workshops and any of the education side.

That's all over on masteringportraitphotography.com, under the Academy section. Uh, so that's, uh, masteringportraitphotography.com. Um, it's all over there. We always said we'd move the education and all of the trainings, mastering portrait photography. Um, and one of the many things I've been doing over the past couple of months is precisely that is shifting all of the workshops and all the bookings across to MPP.

And so there we have it. We have a little bit of sunshine, an awful lot of portraits, some AI musings, and a few workshop announcements thrown in for good measure. It's funny, really, we live this, we live in this incredible time where technology can do and does do so much for us, but I still think the real magic happens when we stay human in the middle of it all. Now, whether that's crafting an image, having a conversation, or just sneezing, you can hear I've got a blocked up nose or just sneezing away through a freshly cut lawn. It's the human bit that matters most.

So if you're interested in joining us for an upcoming bootcamp, as I said, or any of the other workshops, there's still time and we would love to see you there. And that is it for me or from me for today. I. It's time to go and have a glass of wine in the sunshine and pretend that the smell of, of fresh cut glass is actually a fresh cut grass, rather is actually  📍 romantic rather than just mildly annoying.

 

So thanks as always for being part of this little community. Wherever you are, whatever you're up to, take care, stay creative, and as ever, be kind to yourself. Goodnight.

Well, it's the day after The Socieities Of Photographers Convention in London.  What a blast! 

Judging, laughing, making friends, presenting workshops, representing Elinchrom Lighting and Evoto Ai, learning, exploring, creating and very little sleeping! The Convention is quite something to be a part of!

In this episode, I try and explain what it feels like to be a small part of it whether judging the print competition, presenting or mixing with the trade - the various stages I pretty much always go through from fear to elation and everything in between.

Enjoy!

Cheers
P.

---

If you enjoy this podcast, please head over to Mastering Portrait Photography, for more articles and videos about this beautiful industry. You can also read a full transcript of this episode.

PLEASE also subscribe and leave us a review - we'd love to hear what you think!

If there are any topics, you would like to hear, have questions we could answer or would like to come and be interviewed on the podcast, please contact me at paul@paulwilkinsonphotography.co.uk. 

 

Transcript

Introduction and Post-Convention Exhaustion

So late last night, we returned from the societies of photographers convention in London, and you can hear him. My voice. I'm exhausted. The convention is such an incredible thing. 3 4, 5 days. Of mixing with the trade running workshops, attending workshops. And one of the most important print competitions in the industry, and that is anywhere. In the world, it's been a blast. You can hear just how tired I am.

But in this episode I thought I'd battled through the fatigue and talk to what it's like to be a judge, a presenter, and a delegate. At this incredible convention firsthand. I'm Paul, and this is a slightly weary. Mastering Portrait Photography Podcast.

Well, hello, one and all. I hope you're all. Well, it's been a busy store to January.

If I'm honest. Uh, we were hectic all the way up to the convention. And even today, the day after it's all over, I've just been photographing a family.

Roles and Responsibilities at the Convention

Uh, this year at the convention, um, I was a print judge, a presenter, and an ambassador for Elinchrom Lighting. Uh, the company that I just adore using their products.

And so to everybody who I've met, everybody, I've talked to everybody who I've laughed with, shared a drink with shared an idea with. Maybe argued over print score with thank you. Thank you for making the Convention such a pleasure. However, as I was sitting on the train coming home, it struck me. That there are definitely stages stages to how you feel. When, at least in the role I have. Uh, your attending. The convention.

The Nine Stages of Convention Experience

Um, sort of like the five stages of grief, I suppose these are the nine stages that I go through each and every time I attend the convention.

It's the thought processes, it's the things that make me tick. Uh, it's how I feel. It's how I feel before is how I feel through it, doing it in this, how I feel afterwards. So let me step through them. Um, as usually when I come to the end of a judging process, I'll talk to all of the things I heard during the judging and give tips on producing. Uh, competition level prints, but I've done that so many times, this year, I just thought I go through the emotions, the various stages. Did I feel every time. Um, I attend the convention.

Stage 1: Excitement

So let's start with the obvious stage one. Excitement.

This kicks in the minute that, uh, the convention confirm. That you're going to be attending. They confirm that you're going to be running some talks. They confirm that you're going to be a judge.

Um, there's a real kick, a real thrill when that comes in. And then you start to think about what you'll do you start to, you've already had to put some ideas in, so those are going to be the titles of the talks, but you start to really plan out what that might look like, and that's six months out. We will start to put in, um, our applications for the 2026 convention in the next few months.

So you have big ideas. You clear the diary. Of course, you make sure that those dates are available. And at that stage, there is nothing more than excitement. Obviously a little bit of pressure to get some social media out and tell the world you're going, but it's all about the excitement. And then you roll up closer and closer and closer to the day.

And you're sitting on the train, heading into London, stage two.

Stage 2: Nerves

Nerves.

I don't know if everybody goes through this. But I do. I start to worry that I've got all of the kit. I need that. I've got enough of a plan of what the workshops and presentations are going to be. I start to worry about that moment you walk into a room full of people that for some reason, in my mind, I assume I'm not going to know.

Of course it's never like that, but that's how it feels. Um, also there's a really important to this year. It was a three o'clock deadline, you have to be in the judges room by three o'clock. Don't turn up. You're not judging and that's an Intuit. You have to be at the judges. Briefing. Meeting. And Terry Jones from the societies, she will talk through all of us as judges as to what she's expecting, how are we going to be. Uh, scheduled, what the runtimes are, what sort of language it's, uh, just an update and refresh on a language we're going to use how it's going to work.

And if we're not in that room, You're not judging. And of course, the bit where I get the most nervous is as I walk in now I'm an extrovert. I love being in a crowd of people, but I've always had this fear of walking into a crowded room and not knowing anyone and having to sit in a corner. Uh, sort of minding my own business, finding people to talk to not being certain of myself.

Now, luckily for me these days, I've been in the industry for so long that I know probably two thirds of the people in the room. Um, so it's not as bad as it used to be, but I used to be terrified and I'm still nervous. I'm still trepidatious. I'm still uncertain of myself. Um, but I walked in this year and of course it was just brilliant.

And that brings me on to, I think, Uh, stage number three.

Stage 3: Sense of Belonging

A sense of belonging,

a sense of being part of the family. There were so many hellos and handshakes and hugs and laughter and faces. I recognize some, I don't. I was introduced to new people. There's just this wonderful sense of coming back home.

I love the convention for that. Of all the things that it brings, I think to all photographers. There's a sense of being part of something bigger. I think there are about 50, maybe 60 judges in the room, plus the print and handlers and all of the teams around us. And it is the most incredible feeling of belonging and for the next sort of 12 hours or so, um, after the briefing, there'll be socializing some food, um, maybe have a drink with a few people.

It's a real sense of family. But then we come on to stage four.

Stage 4: Pressure of Judging

We're walking in to begin the process of judging the next morning. So this is the premier print competition in the world. So stage four is pressure.

And even though I've been doing this a long time, I've been a judge. I can't remember how many years it is now. Probably 15 years. Um, there's still this sense. Of responsibility. Because each and every print, we will see hundreds of prints. But every single print is unique to the author.

Every author has put everything they have into it. And trust me, you do not enter a print unless you think it stands a chance of winning? You might not say that to people you might say, oh, I don't know. I just thought he might try my arm, but you haven't entered a print. You haven't paid for it to be printed mounted and then the entry fees. For you not to think it stands a chance of winning.

And as a judge, you really do feel that sort of pressure. You feel the responsibility as you sit there, the print comes up and you have to go through all of the elements, the 10 elements that were giving us, given us judges. Um, Um, on which to base our assessment and ultimately a score.

And there are five judges on every panel. And these are some of the best. Photographers in the world. So if you put in a score and it comes on the screen, And you're wildly different to the other judges. Of course you feel that moment? Have I got that wrong? And there's a process for this as the challenge process. Um, and each of us know how to do it.

Each of us have our own particular way of doing it. Uh, I had to run a few challenges this year. Um, and you're looking at the scores and there was one in particular where it was quite a long way out of line with the other judges, my school was higher and I'd seen things in that image that at least based on my assessment of it, my experience warranted a higher score. And every judge by the way has had exactly this happened to them.

This is not just me. But I'm sitting there looking at the scores and I'm thinking. How hard have I got to work to try and get the other judges to see what I see, to feel what I feel, to evaluate the image in a similar way to me, or at least come closer to where I am. And these are photographers that some of them I've never met before.

Some of whom I have met before everyone has their own style and their own way, but you then have to talk to the image and talk to the other judges. And see if you can convince them. That possibly there are things in the image that this time round, they may have missed that you, um, have seen. It goes the other way as well, by the way.

So if somebody else puts in a score and minds lower. The same process will happen. But now it's me trying to listen, trying to understand where maybe I've missed some key factors in an image and that's particularly important when images come up, that aren't in your wheelhouse things that you don't specialize in when it comes to portraiture and weddings, or maybe photographing dogs. I of course know what I'm looking at.

I understand that process really well. That doesn't mean I will always have seen everything, but it does mean that probably I'm in the right ballpark, but sometimes you get an image that challenges you tries, you tests you, it forces you to think in a different way. And while I might understand the print process, I'll understand the creation process, I'll understand the presentation, there may be things about that moment or about that imagery or about that style of photography that I might have missed. And so I'm eagerly listening to the other judges to see if it's something where I've just mostly get my score a little bit out and I need to be. Um, come a little bit closer to the overall score that's been, uh, the first round score that's been calculated or maybe just maybe I'll hold my ground and say no. I hear you. I understand what you're saying completely, I just feel for these reasons I've got my score about, right.

So can you imagine the pressure when you raise a challenge or you're involved in a challenge with really well-known photographers from all corners of the world, um, the pressure is immense. It really is at that moment, the most important job in the world. And on top of that, we've got a live audience.

So it's not even just that you're having to do. Um, or having to think on your feet and figure out your scoring, but you also then have to articulate that in a way that is clear. It's polite. It's respectful to the print, new author and the rest of your judges, but it's also educational, interesting entertaining, maybe because to hold an audience in the room, as judges we have, not just the responsibility. Of creating the right scores or appropriate scores for the images and bear in mind. Bear in mind, if you have a different judge on a different day, the chances are you going to get a slightly different score?

So don't think that these are absolute objective. We feel all the time, the pressure of that. But during that process, we are also for the people in the room, entertainment. With air to be interesting, as well as educational we're there to help them understand, but also for them not to be asleep. In the room, the rooms are pretty dark because of course we've got the prince lit at the front. Um, We have a microphone, but our backs are to the audience.

And somehow we have to be not only knowledgeable and skilled and respectful, but also to a degree entertaining. There's a lot of pressure on it. And it's not just the pressure of judging the prints because of course. Um, for me and most of the judges. I was also running two workshops or two masterclasses, and doing presentations on the Ellen Crum lighting stage.

So during the rest of the convention, even once the judging is done. I'm still feeling a huge amount of pressure to be the very best I can be to represent Elinchrom and the brand, to the best of my ability. And again, that's part education, but mostly entertainment. If you're stood on the stage, creating pictures, it's not really about the technicals, that techniques, that care moonlighting modifies.

It's really about being interesting and entertaining and giving people things. To go home and try themselves. And the workshops are almost exactly the same, just on a much longer format. So you really do feel the pressure to make sure everything's working, and when the audience are in there, that you give the very, very best of yourself.

Even yesterday, I had what we euphamistically called the graveyard shift, which is the last set of presentations, not just of the day, but of the whole convention. The trade show by now is closed. There's nowhere else for delegates to go, except home. And nearly everybody you speak to is like, right.

It shows done. I'm going to go catch my train. So you rock up to a room and I had, for the final session, I had the biggest workshop room. There is, um, I don't know how many people it can hold. But I was expecting two or three people to stay behind, maybe. Uh, we've got the last, uh, workshop I ran. This year was on high-key and low-key, uh, studio lighting, um, and going through the process of how you think about these things, how you evaluate. Um, the person in front of you, how you react to them, how you decide what you're going to shoot and how you then go through the stages of shooting it. I'd put together. A pretty good idea. And I assumed I'd be presenting it to two or three people who are going to brave the last trains home and stick around, even though there's a gap after the trade show, closing and the workshop starting.

Well, the room was packed. It was an absolute thrill to be there. And the last few. Minutes or hour the hour and a half of the day, with a full room and incredible model. Uh, Eloise Hare was our model and playing with these beautiful Elinchrom lights and just showing different ideas and not just with a full room, but it's a room full of people who really interactive, really engaged.

And so thankfully all that pressure I'd felt throughout the five days. Uh, dissipated in the last workshop.

Stage 5: Elation

And of course at the end of that, you get to stage five, which is elation.

And that for me, at least a sort of celebration, um, uh, almost a euphoria. Um, I've been meeting people and I'm an extrovert, so being around people really recharges me. I've been talking sharp. I've been talking photography. I've been talking lighting. I've been catching up with people's businesses. And we've been creating images and I've just been feeling like I'm at home. These are my people. Every minute of every day, it's just a sense of recharging.

It's a sense of, um, joy and conversation. It has been absolutely brilliant. And that's that sense of elation and you close everything down. You finished your last presentation, you put everything into its bags and then you get to stage six, which for me.

Stage 6: Regret and Insecurity

Is sort of, I've called it regret. It's a sort of insecurity, a paranoia.

That's always been with me. I've never got rid of it, which is where I panic about all the things I've said that possibly I shouldn't have. The people I wished I'd had a chance to say hello to, but I only waived. Waved over a room. Um, You know, there are always people at the convention. I just would, I went there thinking I'm definitely going to see them.

And the closest I got was to wave at them across a bar maybe. And I regret not having had enough time to see everybody, but that isn't enough time to see everything or everybody. I regret that maybe. I didn't give the best to me. I've given everything I can every single moment, but there's still that slight insecurity that maybe I didn't quite get to everyone. And maybe of course my scores of the images were off.

Now, of course, when you're judging. You have a panel of five people, um, and that's there deliberately. That's there. To stop it, any outliers, really railroading and the show. And that's really, really good. It means that even if I'm one image, I scored it. S off slightly too high, a slightly too low. Maybe there are four other judges to make sure that that doesn't really matter, but you still worry about it.

You worry about whether when, um, the chair of judges is looking at you. Uh, whether the person who created the images, looking at you, or whether the people that run the competition are looking at you, they're thinking. Oh, Wilkinson's a bit off this year. Isn't it? You worry. And that's always part of this. Sort of coming down from the, all of the energy and the adrenaline. Um, and then the fatigue and the grief regret, start to really kick in.

And that leads us on to state seven.

Stage 7: Fatigue

The fatigue, the utter tiredness.

And you can hear that. in my voice. I can hear that in my voice and it kind of speaks for itself. Um, I got home, I think at about 10 o'clock last night, I was in bed by 11 I was asleep by five past. And Sarah myself. Woke up at about 11 o'clock this morning. I don't remember being quite so tired. I was so tired.

I am still so tired. And of course today I've had a family in the studio and I've had to go back to giving a hundred percent and all that meant is now I'm even more tired. The fatigue is part of it.

And yet that's not the whole story because there's also now beginning to, to kick in a sense of stage eight, which is opportunity.

Stage 8: Opportunity

I've made new friends, some incredible friends. Um, Chris and mark in particular. Uh, really made me laugh.

If they're listening, they'll know exactly who they are. Two monumental photographers from Australia, monumental creators, monumental. Um, intellects and I've loved sitting on the panel with them and listening and learning from them. It's refreshed existing friendships. It's refreshed all old friendships. Um, we've had new ideas, new thoughts. Um, new challenges, new things to think about new ideas for creativity.

And of course, being a judge, I get a double pronged chance at that. I get to not only mix with the most knowledgeable and in pressive photographers in the world, but also to see images, competition images up close and personal from some of the greatest. Um, talent's there to the people that have entered in. Not necessarily people I never get to meet by get to see their images. And that in itself gives you new ideas and new things to test you.

Today, in my family shoot, one of the four people, it turned out through chatting with them that they heavily into steam punk. I did not know this what a brilliant idea. And she's quite keen to come and do some photography she's into cosplay, um, and steam punk. And she would like me to create some pictures for her too.

But that really is it a development of some of the images I've seen over the past four days.

And that leads me on to what I think is the final stage.

Stage 9: Energy and Optimism

And that's a sense of energy.

Now for me. I'm an extrovert. So being in this huge crowd energizes me on its own, but being in the judging, seeing these images, seeing these photographers, talking to the other, the other judges, um, just being in that space. Is energizing for me.

And there's enough energy out of the convention. Every January to last me a good six months it'll fade. Of course it'll fade. This is a tough industry, right? We all know that. 2024, I think was brutal. Um, I don't know if anybody feels the same way as me, but that's how it felt. We hit our numbers just about, um, our revenue figures, but of course, Our costs have gone up. And so we really had to battle. To, um, get the numbers in and get our clients in.

Um, 2024 is a year that I think on the whole I'm. I'm not glad it's gone. You should never, ever be glad that at the passing of time, but let's just say that 2025. Is a whole new year brand new, fresh. Um, full of opportunity, full of optimism. And the energy that I get out of the convention, having met all these incredible people will drive me for a good six months.

And that's really important. Uh, Sarah and I are about to spend. Seven weeks working for cruise company. Uh, around south America. So at the end of this month, um, we leave half the team running here. And myself and Sarah will go and, uh, travel abroad. Um, and so I need the energy. I need the optimism.

I'm going to need the drive because even though that is the opportunity of a lifetime to spend seven weeks traveling, including five days, uh, attending and working at the, um, Working on the cruise ship while it's docked at the Rio de Janeiro. Carnival is, um, just the opportunity of our lifetime. Um, but I'm going to need every bit of energy I can find because we've had to clear the diary for those seven weeks or at least reduce the amount of work in it and had to do an awful lot of work in the run up to it.

And I'll have to do an awful lot of work. Um, when we come back from it and particularly on the customer side, but also a Mastering Portrait Photography, still creating the videos and the articles. But that stage nine, is that sense? Of energy. And then before I know it, it'll be back to the sense of excitement when we're trying to, um, get our talks and our workshops booked in for next year, 2026.

Conclusion and Gratitude

So to everybody who I've met, everybody who I've talked with, everybody who I've laughed with, it has been the most incredible five days.

The first two, I was on my own. And then Sarah thankfully joined me, um, for the, the, the end of it. As no fun. Sarah being though, when we're judging, we are literally down in the basement, um, judging for from nine o'clock. I did the one day we'd judged from nine o'clock, till seven o'clock in the evening, nine in the morning to seven in the evening. Um, it was the thrill of a lifetime, not just to be judging the rounds. Um, but this year I was one of the judges I'm looking after the final, final selection, um, which is such an honor.

But it was no fun for Sarah, if she was. L on our own. Um, and so she joined me for the last, uh, few days. Um, thank you to everybody that made it such a joy, made it such a thrill. Thank you to the Societies. And of course, in particular, To Terry Jones and her team on the competition side. But everybody on the trade show, everyone at Elinchrom. Everybody who I met every delegate, every single delegate, those of you that came and were quiet.

And didn't say word those of you who came constantly ask questions. Um, all of it. Just made me laugh too. The two models I worked with. Um, to Marissa and Eloise. Thank you for just being beautiful, not just photogenic, but beautiful as souls. Um, thank you to every single one of you. And on that happy note, it's a Sunday night.

Apparently I've got some cottage pie waiting for me back at home. So I'm going to round this. round this. podcast off, and wish you all well for the coming year. And I hope. I hope. you're as energized as I am for the coming 12 months. Take it easy and whatever else be kind to yourself. Take care.

Imagine that every person had exactly the same fashion taste. Imagine if each of us had the same clothing or the same hairstyle.  Imagine that everyone was the same height and build.  Imagine that everyone had identical makeup.

Just imagine.

Of course, it's a nonsense - different styling suits different people. Short, tall, thin, round, dark-skinned, fair-skinned, red-heads, blondes, straight haired, curly haired: everyone looks for something different to bring out their best.

So why do so many photographers light their subjects using the exact same lighting pattern without adjusting for the variety of life? Why?

I can't answer that but I do have a view!

Cheers
P.

---

If you enjoy this podcast, please head over to Mastering Portrait Photography, for more articles and videos about this beautiful industry. You can also read a full transcript of this episode.

PLEASE also subscribe and leave us a review - we'd love to hear what you think!

If there are any topics, you would like to hear, have questions we could answer or would like to come and be interviewed on the podcast, please contact me at paul@paulwilkinsonphotography.co.uk. 

 

Transcript

 Well, it's the end of an incredibly busy week and an incredibly busy day. And today the temperature hasn't. Risen above freezing. It's so cold that our shower at home has frozen. The Landrover won't start. And the two clients, the two families I've had in today who desperately wanted to go out. And take pictures in the wintery Wonderland were sadly disappointed when even they couldn't last more than about 10 minutes at a go. 

So we've been based in the studio, which is where I am right now. I'm Paul. And this is the mastering portrait photography  📍 podcast. 

 

   So hello.  how are you all doing? I must apologize. I spent quite a lot of the year with this ambition. I'm going to record. A podcast every week or every other week. And in fact, I haven't looked, but I think. Apple. Uh, quotes, the masteringportraitphotography.com podcast is being monthly.  It shouldn't be monthly. 

It should really be weekly, but it's been such a busy year. It's been a kind of a year that I'm glad if I'm honest. That we're at the end of it, where it's a new, fresh, shiny new year.  2024 has been reasonably successful on many fronts has been incredibly successful, but it has also been brutal a grueling year, I think, by any measure with not an awful lot of good news around. Um,  You know, Uh, various things happening. But we survived it. 

We hit our numbers, but we've had to work so, so hard to do it. And I think I careened into Christmas. Like one of those videos of cars on icy Hills, much as I fought it. There was nothing I could do. To stop it. So.  We're here. It's 20, 25 it's January. And once more, I'm sitting. At the microphone, today's been a busy day. 

We've had a couple of family shoots and yes, they wanted desperately to go out. Into the frost, but when we stepped out there, they didn't last any more than 10 minutes. Uh, piece and that's not that much of a surprise. So we already had the studio nice and warm.  And we've been working in there. But one of the things that's happening at the end of this month is Sarah and myself are heading off working with crystal cruises for seven weeks. 

That's a long stint of working, but it does also mean that we've had to clear a hole in the diary and all of the work that it would normally done normally be done in those seven weeks. Has had to be done either prior or after we get back.  Which has meant that we have been running at a hundred. Miles an hour with back-to-back shoots even yesterday. Um, one of my favorite gigs of the year, as , I know, you know, because I've talked about it. 

Incessantly is the Royal institution. Uh, Christmas lectures. Now at the end of last year, I photograph the three lectures. And for those of you who are in the UK, you can watch those on the BBC I play. They will with Chris fan, Dr. Chris van  Uh, talking about big food, talking about ultra processed foods. How it works and how it affects, uh, in particular. Our kids.  A really, really interesting and exciting set of lectures. 

And we usually shoot the PR. For these, the BBC lectures sometime around July or August. Um, but this year, this year we've had to do it slightly differently. So we were in London yesterday. I can't tell you who the lecturer is or what the topic is. But I can tell you that we were in London yesterday with the Royal institution photographing this year's publicity photos they'd been brought forward incredibly early. Uh, for not just because of our diary, but because of the presenter's diary to.  And so instead of doing it in July, we've done it in the first couple of weeks of January, but that's been on top of everything else. We're doing so it's been a hell of a week. 

And then today, if I'm honest, I'm quite tired. It's not also been the best. Start to the end that we've had a few bits fail. I've just had a monitor fail. If anyone has a great alternative to my Ben Q my trustee, Ben Q 27 inch. Something or other. Um, it just stopped working. Uh, it flickers on and off, and it doesn't seem to be anything. I can do to stop it.  I have tried. Every test I can think of, but no, it looks like. It looks like the monitor has died. 

 So I've had to replace it with a monitor that our son left lying around. Uh, which is to be fair to Dell. It's not an awful monitor. Um, I calibrated it and it's reaching about 90% of Adobe RGB, which isn't half bad. Uh, but I'd quite like to get back to my hundred percent. Uh, Adobe RGB coverage, because when you're doing color correction, you really do want to know that your images are a color-correct.

I could do with it. My second monitor. I love my iMac. Uh, but I don't trust the iMac display to give me accurate colors. So I've got a second monitor. That's always calibrated with it alongside. Um, to show me exactly how the colors will be in that one has suddenly died. But anyway, how are things with all of you? 

How was your year? How have you been.  Uh, I hope it was a good year. I hope you had a really good break. Over Christmas. And I hope you've started the new year full of ideas, full of inspiration. Um, and full of energy. Um, next week is the society's convention in London. Which historically has been such an incredible start to the year. 

I always love it.  It's back in its slot in January. Uh, and that is for me, at least the perfect place for it because you get to do a few days judging. You get to do a lot of socializing and I get to present masterclasses. And all of these other things. And so the whole thing is just the best. Energizer for the year.  And spending time with so many incredible photographers and friends of ours across the industry, whether it's on the photography side. Or whether it's on the trade side. so many amazing, amazing people cannot wait.

 

So if you're around in about next week, please do come and say hello. I'll be there all days. I'll be there Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. Uh, I'm on stage on Friday and Saturday, 

 

 I'm doing a couple of stints, um, at the convention this time round. Uh, I'm onstage on Friday and Saturday. Uh, I'm doing a masterclass.  Uh, called, uh, creating the coolest composites on Friday from four 30, till six. And that's all about bringing multiple images together, whether it's, um, family groups, whether it's corporate, where you photographing individual headshots at different times, or they're doing something cooler. Where, uh, your taking multiple images or acceptive images and place them onto new backgrounds. 

All of these are composites and there are techniques and ideas. For shooting that make all of that seamless, whether you're using. Um, playing backgrounds, whether you're using hand-drawn backgrounds or whether you're using, um, AI of course.  And so this will be. Uh, that's on Friday at four 30, till six. 

I think that's the last slot people, the drinks. So, uh, I might be doing it at a pace to make sure everyone can get out of the room, get into their posh togs and go down to the awards. So many and then on the 18th, Uh, on the Saturday.  We're doing high key, low key, which is a variant of some videos we've done before, but it's all about pushing to the extremes. Um, using very simple lighting to create incredible high key, bright white, uh, images, and equally going to the other end of the spectrum. Um, and shooting those dark moody sumptuous, um, low key images. That's on the Saturday from four 30 to six. I'm also going to be presenting on the Ellen. From stage. Um, throughout the convention.  I can't remember exactly what times. Uh, I'm there, but if you look it up on the schedules, Uh, Alan Crum schedules, you'll be able to find me and we're just doing mastering portrait photography. 

So we're just going to create incredible images with what I consider to be the best lighting in the business. So that's next week. That's the convention in London.  So please do come and say hello, whether it's to one of the two master classes. And if you have a convention pass, they're both free. Um, or if you want to come in. Uh, have a play or what you're saying, having a play, I suppose, on the Ellyn Crump state, then please do come and say hello.

 So I'll have to be honest. Um, this podcast is one of my unscripted. Sit down at a microphone and see what happens, sort of podcasts. I do apologize. It's just been a very long week, a very busy week. Um, and.  Sometimes it just Wells that way. And I just ended up sitting here thinking, oh, w w what should we talk about? 

Well, let me talk about a workshop. We ran this week because some points came up during it that I think. Are quite, uh, interesting now the master class or workshop this week. Was, um, booked as a one to one. And one of the things we are in a lovely position to do at our studio is we can run our scheduled workshops and they're an absolute blast. 

And people love having a fixed date. They can book in, turn up one of a crowd.  Um, and those are hugely popular, but equally we have people come to us to do one-on-one. So you get to pick your topic, we've sourced the models. Um, you can spend the entire day dedicated to whatever it is. That you feel you need. 

And so this week, um, a few guys came down.  Uh, from a camera club in the Midlands. And instead of it being one of our pre scheduled. Workshops. It was a masterclass, a one-on-one, but they booked. Extra places. So the three of them. Could come now, this works really, really well. If all three of you or all three of the delegates or 10 DS. Ah, of broadly the same standard and have the same interest and have the same goals. Because if you all do then. Even though it's a, um, a group think style workshop. It can be done in the style of a one on one, because we are showing it, going to teach the topic and everyone. Gets to S two. Explore it and play with it. And everyone, no one feels left out and no one feels like someone else is taking too much time because they're all doing the same thing or wishing to learn the same thing.  Um, and this particular one-on-one was all about. Getting the most out of lighting. 

Now, when we hear that, when we read the brief, we get the emails, people contact us. Whenever entirely certain. What it is that they really mean, and also what it is that they don't know because of course, people don't know. I mean, this is the Rumsfeld paradox is that people don't know what they don't know.  And so as a trainer, as a, as someone running a workshop, Um, part of the role is to try and figure out what would be useful. 

And so when they leave, it feels like you've answered that question. And I think from the feedback we got, we did do this, but it's always a bit of a puzzle. Um, and it, it was really interesting and. I think this was one of my favorite one-on-one workshops that we run this week in the morning, we had Abby who came so that we could just do simple portraits, simple light setups. Um,  And talk through how you develop the lighting and then in the afternoon, Uh, Jess and other one of our regular models came. And Jess is a gymnast and a dancer. 

Um, and so, uh, they wanted to learn, the guys wanted to learn how to light. And, uh, uh, capture dance and movement. So those are the two sort of ends of the spectrum and they're actually quite different things. To do. And I'll post some of the images up with some lighting diagrams.  Uh, onto the masteringportraitphotography.com. Uh, website at some point. 

Um, but it's been, it was an absolute through, but what surprised me? I think juring the masterclass and it didn't just surprise me. It saddened me. Was that the guys had been regularly going to a studio where everything is pre-set. So the lights are at the powers. They are they're in the positions. 

They are, you can do what you like in the middle, but you not to change. The lighting and I don't think I've ever taken three pictures of the same person without changing the lighting each time. So to hear this from the guys broke my heart a little bit. I think.  Now I can take. Take you back to 2008 when, um, I first joined the MPA, the master photographers association, which is now sadly. Uh, disbanded, but back then in 2008, when you joined,  um, you had to, or you didn't have to, but you went to an induction day. You, I had no idea what to expect. 

I had not long turned full-time as a pro. And so I rocked up to a conference in the middle of, in the Midlands, in, in England. And sat and went and listened through a whole series of seminars on different things, different aspects of, I dunno, portrait, photography, wedding, photography, studio, photography, lifestyle, all sorts of things. 

It was actually a very, very, very productive day. It was the day that I first met the person that was going to become, uh, my incredible mentor, Kevin Wilson.  And it was also the day that I nearly threw the towel in and left the MPA. And it was because one of the presenters stood up. And he started talking about lighting and he talked about lighting studio lighting. In a way that was so dry was so technical. 

So mathematical.  That I couldn't believe that something is creative as taking a photograph, particularly when you have control over the lights had been boiled down. To a whole series of numbers.  One stop on this half a stop later on that two stops later on those two. And you've got your picture. And that was literally the process.  Now I do understand. And in fact, not just understand, but love the fact that studio lighting can be technical. 

I absolutely adore the fact that this technical I'm a geek. I love all of that stuff. Um, it's one of the reasons I've gone back to Allen Chrome is because I love what they're doing with the technology. I adore it. But it's not, that's not creative. That's not how you. Produce beautiful art. That's not how you engage a client. 

That's not how you capture the mood of a moment. You don't do that with numbers. You can't do that with numbers now, I suppose. You could argue that if your lighting is secured and you're not worrying about that, then you can concentrate on your subjects. Okay. I'll take that as an argument. I do understand that might be. Where people are.  But let me put it a different way. What if we said, I don't know.  Jeans and a t-shirt or a suit and a tie. Our perfect uniform for everybody you photograph, let's do it that way around. Let's just assume that clothing. Is exactly the same for everybody. 

Now, the minute I say it, you can hear how stupid that sounds. So why would light. Be the same for every subject clothes, the same clothes don't suit everybody. Nor does the same lighting. If you have around figure around face, then you use the lighting, maybe. Two. Change that into something that the client would prefer. Now, obviously you have to tread a very gentle game and not so clients. One thing, different clients want different things. 

So maybe you have to shoot narrow. Maybe you have to shoot broad, maybe have to shoot with the softest light you've ever shot. Maybe you have to shoot with the hardest light. You've ever shot.  But not changing the light for every single subject. And in my case for every single image.  Doesn't make any sense? 

Why would you not change it? So when a guy said that, It really? It did surprise me. I'm honest. I wasn't expecting that. Um, and it saddened me because it was such an opportunity. Last, I think, um, that they're going into a studio and not able to change everything. So we spent an entire day, an entire day. Moving the lights we set in the lights.  Changing staff. Uh, we use some color lights. 

We did RC in the end. One of the things one of the guys wanted to learn. With how to combine movement. So dragging the shutter.  How to combine movement along with the studio strobes. So you get that. Sort of, um, it's a really beautiful effect. It's not one that I go to very often. Where you have a blurred image and at the end you have pop of the flash and it freezes just the end of the movement. Um, so Jess very patiently. 

She danced. She swerved. She spun.  She did all of these things so that we could practice or they could practice with, uh, dragging the shutter.  And it was. A really liberating day, just going through the principles of lighting, because with all of this stuff, if you understand.  

Why things work? Why you do certain things? Why, why you have a wide open? Sorry, why you have a long shutter speed too, to capture movement, but why the pulse of the light then freezes that movement at the last second. If you have rear curtains sink, if you understand all the bits of the puzzle. Um, you can piece it together for almost anything. Um, and so we spent the morning creating beautiful portraits of Abby and we spent the afternoon creating well havoc, basically lots of movement. Lots of color, um, with Jess. 

And I think there's the rub is that. When you're working in the studio. Every time you press that shutter button. Every single time you press that shutter button. It really should be not just a unique experience between you and the setter. Not just a unique moment in time. But you should have lit it. Like it's a unique moment. It's not just same old, same old. Don't just stick the lights on the wall.  Or in a high glider on their tripods. I love them at their regular settings. Take a look at your client is their skin shiny. In which case will you put the lights in the same place system on who's got very matte skin, um, are their clothes, clothes absorbing light? Because white. Tee shirts and white blouses. I create kicker light under the chin. 

Whereas black clouds don't.  Would you like them? The same? Is that the effect you're looking for? Um, Do you have a client with blonde hair or dark hair, because that will give you slightly different lighting patterns in the hair. Um, do they have a wide face or a narrow face or more importantly? How do they want their features to look. Because if you've got someone wearing contoured makeup and deep foundation, the chances are that person would quite like their skin to look smooth and their cheekbones and her jawline. To have shape. Whereas, if someone's just wearing, let's say the minimal amount of foundation.  Um, they may just want their face to look exactly the way. Um, it does naturally, without any shadows on it, you need to talk, you need to listen and you need to observe. And when you do that. Then, if you have the knowledge of why you like things in certain ways to do certain things, You can then piece that together, but you certainly never leave the lights. The way they are for every single image. 

And if I've one pet peeve and I'll finish this slight runs, it's not meant to be. And I don't know how I got here. Um, I was just thought I'd sit down and record a podcast. Cause it's been way too long. And to Paul from Chester. Um, I do apologize it. Nice comment on Instagram. We have something along the lines of, when will I find a moment to sit and record? Another podcast cause he enjoys them. 

So here GoPro, here you go. Paul. Here's that moment, but I haven't scripted it and I haven't really thought about it and I've ended up tub thumping a little bit.  Um, But I guess the point I'm making is spend the time understanding why you do what you do.  Um, why you play slights, why you post people and then use that knowledge you use that. Process. Two. Create the very best for each and every one. Of your subjects. 

Um, that's anyway, that's my thought for the day. So on that happy note, I'm going to go and have cottage pie. Uh, Sarah has been to, uh, Waitrose in town and has bought the stuff to make cottage pie. And I love it's my favorite meal. I think I know that's a bit prosaic and I don't know why it's my favorite, but it is. 

I love cottage by. Um, there's something really beautiful about it and given just how cold it is at the moment, it'll be wonderfully warming.  So for those of you around next week, we'd love to see you. Uh, for those of you cursed by our workshops. I think we have one workshop. We have one place on one workshop left. Uh, before we head off to work, uh, abroad for seven weeks.  And that's, uh, on mastering off-camera lighting. Uh, it's a workshop on, he says looking it up. 

It's a workshop on January, January the 20th. So just to just over a week away. Well, I think we've got one place left and we're going to explore assay many of the topics. That we did on the workshop this week, where we balance, um,  Uh, available light with, uh, off-camera flash off camera, tungsten notes, eyesight tungsten showing my age off-camera led people. Uh, I don't think we ever either. 

Remember the last time I used the tungsten light or a halogen light for anything. It's all absolutely led these days. So it's going to be a brilliant day. Um, exploring light lighting patterns. Um, Different ideas and showing how you can do everything from creating the most natural light all the way through to the most complex.  Uh, on that note as well on off-camera flash. Uh, look out over the next day or two for a video on exactly this off-camera flash, which, uh, Sarah, myself and Katie put together. Um, a few weeks ago, I've just finished the edits. 

I finished the edits for that last night. Um, and that will go up onto mastering portrait photography. For those of you who are members. Uh, it's a 30 minute video all about this very topic. So if you fancy having a look at that, please do. Become a subscriber. Where you can not only find tons of videos, tons of articles and lighting diagrams, but also get access to our Facebook page, our Facebook community, where you can ask questions and get answers from a really positive, energetic crowd. 

And I should say hi to all of the guys who are already in there. There's just a joy. I'm on that group.  Has never a negative word said everyone's really positive and enthusiastic and it will stay that way because we make sure. It stays that week  📍 stays that way. Sorry. So on that happy note, I'm going to go and fill it with some carbohydrate, a glass of wine, and have a nice cozy evening in front of the tele.

Um, and until next time, whatever else you do  be kind to yourself. Take care.       

So after three days of judging images for the British Institute Of Professional Photographers, it's time for me to step down from my role as Chair Of Awards And Qualifications.  I have been in the role for three years and it is time for someone else to pick up the reins and run with it (if that isn't a mixed metaphor.)

I have loved doing this and if it weren't for a million things I have to go on and do, I think I would do it forever!  So as I drive home from my last round of qualifications - possibly the best one I've ever been involved in - here are a few musings of things I have spotted.

This is a 'Tales From The Land Rover' edition so please forgive the audio quality and any mild road rage!

Enjoy!

 

Cheers
P.

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If you enjoy this podcast, please head over to Mastering Portrait Photography, for more articles and videos about this beautiful industry. You can also read a full transcript of this episode.

PLEASE also subscribe and leave us a review - we'd love to hear what you think!

If there are any topics, you would like to hear, have questions we could answer or would like to come and be interviewed on the podcast, please contact me at paul@paulwilkinsonphotography.co.uk. 

 

Transcript

EP158 Heading Home From The Awards

Introduction and Event Recap

[00:00:00] Paul In The Defender: So for those of you who love the Land Rover episodes, you'll be thrilled to hear that I'm just leaving the BIPP, the British Institute of Professional Photography Awards, uh, event 2024 25. Uh, why do we call it 2024 and 2025 is because if you get an award at the end of a year, it's a real pain from a marketing point of view if you can only say you have an award for 2024. So we call it 2024 slash 25, uh, just to extend the marketing value. So you're, you hold the titles for a year, , so why wouldn't we? Anyway, that's where I've been. I've just spent an absolute fortune on some fuel, uh, because I hadn't got a lot of choice but to fill up at a service station.

[00:00:47] And I am just pulling in to traffic. He says, concentrating on driving.

Driving and Multitasking

[00:00:52] Paul In The Defender: I had a lovely, uh, lovely email from someone this week. , sorry I'm driving so I can't, uh, look up your name. I'm so, I think it was John McCarthy. I'm gonna go with John McCarthy. , who said, amongst many other things, uh, he doesn't know how I drive and record a podcast at the same time.

[00:01:09] Well, the answer to that is I drive. And chat. Uh, there's not a lot of structure to it, , and a few people have said this week they like the podcast like that, uh, because, uh, they find it interesting to hear me ad libbing. I don't know whether that's, I don't know whether there's merit in that, but yeah, I am ad libbing because driving is the priority.

[00:01:30] They also said, uh, John said, I'm sure it's John McCarthy. I hope it is, if not, uh, I'm crediting somebody who's a fictional character. , he also said that uh, he can hear in everything we're talking about just how busy we are here at the studio. And it must be hard to find the time to fit in to do the podcast, and it is, which is why, uh, I am recording while driving.

[00:01:52] , but he did also go on to say, he loves it when we do them. Uh, they are really valuable. They don't just disappear out there into the ether. There are lots of you out there in the photographic community listening to, uh, hopefully enjoying, uh, at least to a, a greater or lesser degree, the podcast.

[00:02:10] So here we are. I'm Paul, and this is the Mastering Portrait Photography Podcast. Well, hello one and all. Uh, I am in relatively. Reasonably slow, fast ish, medium paced traffic, which is not good for me getting home quickly. I've got about an hour and a half of driving, but it is good from a road noise point of view 'cause at this speed, the road noise in my Land Rover isn't quite as, uh, intrusive as it would be. I see. It's not so much the road noise as the wind noise in this thing. I'm just looking at the other side of the motorway and thinking, I'm glad I'm not going that way 'cause it's must have been an accident.

[00:03:01] It's absolutely log jammed.

Reflections on a Photography Career

[00:03:04] Paul In The Defender: Uh, so what have I been up to? Well, it was the awards. It was the British Institute of Professional Photography International Awards yesterday in, uh, Bromsgrove, which is in Birmingham, in the Midlands, in the heart, in the heart of the country. Uh, an absolutely wonderful event.

[00:03:20] Lots of our friends and lots of colleagues, lots of photographers, uh, having a drink, having a laugh, and celebrating some of the very best images. That you can, uh, possibly imagine is absolutely brilliant. Uh, I have to say it's my last formal event as chair, uh, of qualifications and awards of the BIPP and I.

[00:03:41] I guess I have to just say a quick thank you, uh, to Martin Bains and the guys at the British Institute for asking me to take on the role. It has been the honor of a lifetime. You know, when you start out in photography, I, I was just a kid with a camera. Actually, to be fair, I still probably am, uh, just a kid with a camera.

[00:04:02] I've just grown quite a lot older and now earn my living from it. But the enthusiasm and the awe and wonder of what you can do with this gadget hasn't diminished at all in the time since I first picked one up at age, sort of, seven or eight or whatever age I was when my grandfather's, uh, Kodak Brownie.

[00:04:21] So to be. Chair of Quals And Awards for the oldest photographic association in the world has truly been the honor of a lifetime and when Martin asked me if I'd take that on three years ago, I think I might have been a bit reticent because I wasn't quite sure whether I could deliver what he needed, but hopefully we've gone on to answer the question.

[00:04:42] That was an emphatic yes and he, he and the board let me create a program and methods and standards That I think we can be really proud of. , and at the end of the, uh, sorry, at the beginning of the awards yesterday, so it's the end of my tenure. It's my last one as chair. So it is a, it is a sort of a bittersweet moment for me 'cause I've loved it.

[00:05:01] Uh, I'm only stepping down because I desperately need to find time to do a load of other things. And now is the time after three years, all the work we've done, uh, you know, on the, on the judging side for me, but particularly on Sarah. Putting in processes and making sure you can get judges when you need them.

[00:05:18] , so I'm gonna say thank you to Martin, thank you to the B-I-P-P-A huge thank you to Sarah. And thank you to all the judges who've judged with me, , who've been part of the team. , hopefully over the coming years I'll be able to stand back on the other side of the line and judge alongside the judges that for the past few years I've been sitting in front of while chairing.

Honorary Fellowship Award

[00:05:38] Paul In The Defender: , the other thing that happened last night, , so forgive me, this is a very personal. It's one of those things where I don't know quite how to do it, but I'm so chuffed I'm going to tell you anyway. I was awarded an Honorary Fellowship of the BIPP. So, if you're not in the industry, I guess it's hard to articulate just how rare these things are and what an honor they are.

[00:06:04] There's only 26 or 27 Honorary Fellows in the industry. And as of now, I am also one. I already had my Fellowship. I got that in 2011. , Uh, but I now have an Honorary Fellowship, which is, it's been given to me. It's engraved on the thing is for services to the BIPP, which I rather like it. Uh, so it's just a real privilege to be given that, , I never, you know, just being chair of quals was to be honest, gratitude enough but it is still a lovely thing to be presented with. And that will carry with me for the rest of my life, you know. You keep that title, , and I'm so proud. I was so surprised and pleased last night and so proud now.

[00:06:50] But I must also just put out there that, although it is me because I'm the photographer, it's my letters. , actually, this particular one has to be 50 percent Sarah. It's Sarah that coordinated the judges. It's Sarah that managed things and runs me. It's Sarah that manages my time. It's Sarah, and even last night, several of the judges were telling me they were sad to see me step down, but actually, , it's Sarah they're really gonna miss.

[00:07:16] So, uh, this goes to Sarah more than anybody else. Uh, so that's a huge, huge thank you. Right, traffic's all braking. Good job I've left lots of gaps, that's nice. Right, so, what was today's topic?

Key Ingredient for Great Portraits

[00:07:31] Paul In The Defender: Today's topic is, , based on a question that a client asked me the other day. So I was photographing a beautiful family, mother, father, nine month old baby,

[00:07:42] The weather? Horribly unkind. It was cold and raining. Your perfect blend of the two types of weather that you don't really want to photograph a baby in. However, we did some studio work and the little girl possibly got a little warm and a little bit grouchy, and so we stepped outside just to see if we could get anything and it turned out, actually, just going out into the cool air, uh, sort of, she, completely cheered up so i think she might just have been a little bit warm or she just didn't like being in the environment of the studio i don't know which but out in the cool air so her mom's holding a huge umbrella over her she sat on one of my our doormats from the studio and scattered the front edge edge with leaves so it looks like the little girl is sitting in this beautiful sort of array of leaves but she's actually sitting on a dry mat in the middle of our lawn and beautiful light and of course when you have water around and Those sort of gloomy bluish tones from a cloudy sky actually the colors pop, you get these oranges and greens that are really interesting.

[00:08:45] So we got these incredible pictures and, and afterwards we're sitting chatting and it was the, it was my client, it was the dad said, so what is it? He said, what is it that makes, what's the, the one thing you have to have to make a great portrait? Ah, well, you know, you don't ask someone like me to talk about stuff like that, or at least you don't if you want a short answer.

[00:09:05] Uh, so of course the obvious answer, , I'm a lighting specialist. , I love portraiture, but I've always been fascinated by light, its qualities, its colour, the, the shadows that it creates, and I think light obviously is a key ingredient, and I think if you were being Purely pragmatic, you'd have to say the one thing you need to create a great photograph is light.

[00:09:31] There has to be light because without it, it's dark, and if it's dark, you've not got a picture. So, that's a really pragmatic answer, but it's a bit dull and a bit obvious. And as I'm a portrait photographer, and during that day, I was taking his baby's portrait, and I've taken their portraits before now. It got me on to think, what is it?

[00:09:48] What is that primal? Thing that absolutely makes a portrait. And I think it's a relationship. That is my answer. , it's the relationship you form. Oh man, we're in a rolling roadblock. , that's what's going on. , so there's a slow moving, uh, police car or two.

[00:10:06] At the front of, , this particular traffic jam, so we're now travelling at 10 miles an hour. Uh, if we, if we carry on travelling at 10 miles an hour, I'm assuming we won't, but if we do, uh, I'll still be travelling home tomorrow. It's going to take us a while. I'm going to assume up, up ahead, somewhere, they're having to clear an accident, and so all of the traffic, we're sitting straight behind, , a police vehicle.

[00:10:28] Anywho, uh, let's talk about the relationship. If you're creating portraits, the one ingredient that you cannot get away without to create a great portrait is a connection with your client.

[00:10:43] When you connect with your client, when you create that magic between you, , then something happens and yes, you need beautiful light, of course you do, but in that moment, that split second when they look down the lens and you, uh, fire the shutter, if you have some kind of connection with your client, people who see that picture later will feel it.

[00:11:08] It's a really subtle thing, but it's all about what happens when somebody else sees the picture. Because remember when you're holding a camera and you grab that shot. The ultimate consumer of the image isn't you. Yes, all right, you've got the camera, there's that moment, you can show the client if that's your particular workflow, , all of these things, but what you're doing is , you're going to show that image or the image is going to be shown by your client to somebody else.

[00:11:34] Normally, that's how it works.

[00:11:36] And if you've got that magical connection between you and the person in front of the camera, that connection seems to flow out to someone who views the image later. That's where the magic happens, and you really have to do it fast too. , when people come into our studio, we have an entire workflow that is based around getting our client to relax, getting them to feel comfortable.

[00:12:03] And we are starting to create a very temporary but very powerful relationship. It's not, it's not a love affair, but it is that sort of some kind of rapport. Where. You can have a conversation, you can laugh, you can maybe learn a little bit about someone, which is always lovely. And when you do that, when you pick up the camera, you, that sort of momentum of that relationship carries through.

[00:12:28] So if you tell 'em to look down the lens, it has a, a magic to it if you're tell, even if you're telling them to look slightly to the side or down, that still has a body language to it that feels comfortable. So for me and the kind of portraiture that I love, it's that. relationship that you build, that connection in the moment you hit the button, and that is the most important thing about a portrait, and it's beautiful.

[00:12:53] And I said this to my client, and I really hope he sort of thought, oh, okay, that's a, that's a, you know, useful answer. I don't know whether, , I think he might just be making chit chat, same, because it was, he's the client, and so that's the rapport, right? So instead of me asking the questions of it, he was asking questions, , of me.

[00:13:11] Anyway, there you go. Key ingredient other than light is a relationship, the connection with your sitter.

Masteringportraitphotography.com Launch

[00:13:19] Paul In The Defender: I know this is a short one as I'm pottling along, but I also wanted to take the opportunity in this podcast to formally, as much as, you know, anything is formal with me, to formally launch masteringportraitphotography.

[00:13:33] com. Now of course the website has been there for an eternity. It's been there pretty much ever since we launched the book. Actually on the book there might be some news coming, but I'll keep you posted if and when contracts get signed. , But the website's been there, it's had sort of content, but we've really only used it primarily for the podcast as its spiritual home.

[00:13:58] Yes, there's lots of articles, there've been tons of articles, , but we've never really used it as our first and foremost focus.

[00:14:14] Mastering Portrait Photography is now very much in our viewfinder, if you like, if you like the metaphor, and we are pushing a huge amount of energy and content into it. So every month there will be a long form video. By long form I mean half an hour. Video, uh, talking about something, uh, I think the ones that are up there at the moment, like I said, I'm in the Land Rover, and while I did make some notes, uh, prior to clipping on the microphone, I didn't make all of them, so I think there is how to structure a shoot is on there, uh, I think there is how to work in harsh sunlight in there, , I know the one that's on the editing screens at the moment is five ideas for off camera flash, oh, we're all speeding up again now.

[00:14:57] We're So it's about to get a little bit more background noise. They must have rescued whatever vehicle it was. , and so, uh, you get one long form video a month. There will also be an article a month, or every couple of weeks, with a lighting diagram. On top of that, there are the frame, room, whatever you want to call them, mock ups, where they are photorealistic Photoshop files that you can drop your own image into, and it just looks like that's how the image was put on a wall. Why do we do those? Well, originally it was to help sell, , wall art to our clients. Because obviously as a business, I need ways of getting them to visualize the, uh, the wall art that I'd like them to have. And the closer I can get it to photorealistic, the better it is.

[00:15:50] Because they'll, they can't touch it. Because. That we haven't made it yet. And the old adage in sales, if they can touch it, they'll buy it. , we can't quite get there, but we can certainly visualize it. So that's really good. , and that's why we built them. I built them for my own team and everything about the website, Mastering Portrait Photography.com is of and for us, I built it or we built it to support us as a business.

[00:16:17] The articles, some of it came out of the book, but then much of the rest of it. It's been to help train people, it's been to help train my own team when we've got assistants in, , the room mock ups or the art mock ups are entirely built for us. They were built for us to be able to improve our sales, and that works.

[00:16:38] Make no bones about it, they work. You can see them, there's hundreds of them, we're building more all the time, , Oh, this bit's bumpy. The thing about recording in a Land Rover is if the road, the M40, as it is, has a rubbish road surface, which it does at this particular bit, , then it gets a little bit shaky.

[00:16:56] You can hear everything rattling around. And so we built them to be photorealistic. We built them for us. There's tons of them, but there's actually a by product which I didn't necessarily anticipate. So while I'm building these things, I drop images into them all the time. I go back to my sort of stock of portfolio images, some of my favorite images, my favorite clients over the years.

[00:17:17] And I drop them in, , to create, , thumbnails that when you browse the site you can have a look at. , but actually what I've learned, or I'm learning as I go, is how different styles of image work in different types of frame. So certain images work great big on a wall. You know, I think as photographers We're drawn towards the idea of the Mona Lisa type portrait photograph, or at least I am.

[00:17:43] I love a headshot. I love a clean, big, bold, you know, almost as if it was an LP album cover. Uh, I think, you know, Bruce Springsteen or Peter Gabriel, that's I'm sure my age, I suppose, , on an album cover, something like that, I think would be just brilliant. But would my client really put that huge on their wall?

[00:18:04] Well, they might if it's Bruce Springsteen or Peter Gabriel. They're unlikely to if it's them. Now, they might if they have an only child and they might if it's a picture of a dog. There's some amazing photographers out there doing pet photography and I can, and certainly when we do it too, you know, I can visualize how one of our dog photographs, for instance, might appear in a big frame on a wall.

[00:18:28] I was with a client and an old friend of mine the other day and they had a A picture on the wall. It's one of Randall Ford's pictures. , and I know the family and their dogs and, and, uh, the dad. And I just think I could do exactly that with, uh, his dogs and his family. , something big and bold. A couple of frames lined up across the wall, but on the whole, if you are gonna sell big frames, single big frames, you probably want groups in there.

[00:18:56] Now, if you've got clients with huge walls and. You know, a couple of kids, you might be able to put individual headshots into individual frames on the wall, and I do have clients like that, and they look stunning, my oh my, do I love it. Uh, but they're not the norm, they're not the norm. The norm is a normal sized house, with moderate sized walls, and if you put a big frame up on the wall, it's either got to be something like a fine art piece, where, let's say, The couple are silhouetted against the wall, small, but there's a big sky or something, , or a picture of a dog, or a picture of, you know, the two kids, or the whole family.

[00:19:35] It's highly likely that they're going to want something full of joy and laughter, because that is something that would be appealing at that size on a wall. Similarly, if you're laying up three frames, you can tell a story across them. You can use a different star a different type of image. You can use individual shots in a different way.

[00:19:52] For more information visit www. paulwilkinsonphotography. com , if you put three acrylics on a wall, you can triptych across it, so you have one picture that's spread across the three acrylics, and that could look super creative, uh, really, really interesting way to do it, , and all of this, my understanding of this side of it is increasing all the time, because I'm laying out using these mock ups, so on top of them being brilliant as a sales tool for you and for your clients, they're also a really creative thing to play with, just trying different ideas, And seeing how they look.

[00:20:25] So that's the room mockups on the website. There's also, of course, the podcast, this very thing that you're listening to, that's the spiritual home for it. Even if you're listening to this on iTunes or on Spotify or on YouTube. The spiritual home for it is masteringportraitphotography.com.

Upcoming Workshops and Events

[00:20:43] Paul In The Defender: And then the final section, or the main section is the academy.

[00:20:47] And this is now where all of our workshops, , are going to be. So, uh, while I'm on that topic, I'll just reel off the workshops that we have already got, uh, to book in the diary. Now these have got, uh, people have already started booking on them, , we only put them up a week or two ago. Uh, so on January the 20th, January the 20th, we've got an Off Camera Flash Workshop.

[00:21:14] Uh, funnily enough, one of the toughest topics to teach, uh, but also one of the most rewarding techniques to learn. , so we did, uh, we are in the process of releasing a video on it that will go on, a long form video that will go onto the website, uh, and that is a deep dive into some ideas of what you can do with off camera flash.

[00:21:33] I think people are a bit afraid of it because it's, , a little bit technical, but once you get your head around it and what you can do with it, you can do anything from create really natural, almost available light portraits but with stunning light wherever you are all the way through to theatrical halloween images with smoke machines and all of the paraphernalia and they're all in this video and the workshop on january the 20th is going to cover that ground it's Off Camera Flash we may or may not include some continuous lighting but at the moment the plan is for it to be Off Camera Flash but if the delegates ask to also cover continuous light then we could do Some of that because of course every workshop we run we tune it to the delegates We tell you broadly what the topic is going to be and then through the feedback we get in the Early forms that you submit and we can tune it if you want to

[00:22:27] It's the joy of having a studio. I guess we can do anything we want to as long as everybody's happy with that on March the 31st, we have a Mastering Headshots Workshop, so As it says, it's all about headshot. It's all about, uh, the, uh, for me, I think one of the purest, most beautiful forms of portraiture. I love doing headshot. They're my favorite, uh, thing to do.

[00:22:51] I think it, I dunno why I, maybe it's 'cause I've always been fascinated with faces and a headshot is simply an excuse to photograph a face. So that's headshots on, uh, April the 14th. So the headshots is March the 31st, April the 14th. We have got dogs and owners. We're photographing dogs with their owners for a day.

[00:23:11] , Of course, during that we will take some pictures of the dogs on their own. We will also take some pictures of the owners on their own. But primarily it's targeted at how to photograph dogs in conjunction with their, uh, their owners. Why do we do that? Well, most of our clients would wish to have a shot with the dog.

[00:23:32] That's the best shot you can get. , not all, we have plenty of clients that just want the dog photographed, but we also have plenty of clients, one in particular of the day, brilliant, oh man, one of my favorite sessions, Vivienne, who has given me permission to talk about and show the shoots. Vivienne came with her dog Dodie, tiny little West Highland Terrier, who contrary to my Nan's West Highland Terrier that used to bite my toes, this dog was the best behaved dog in the world.

[00:23:59] PAULWILKINSONPHOTOGRAPHY. COM , followed her everywhere she went, but also would just wander off and get inquisitive and then immediately return. A beautiful dog, beautiful shots, and she booked us specifically for one thing. She said, I can find people who shoot their dog on their own, I can find plenty of portrait photographers, only one photographer came up who quite openly and on the website said, yeah, we can photograph a dog with their owner, and I do it all the time with the hearing dogs, why wouldn't I?

[00:24:25] , I think it's a really lovely thing, and the shots of her. They're off the top of the scale. So that is April the 14th, Dogs and Owners. Uh, and then, this is a completely new thing. On May the 12th and 13th, we we have a two day bootcamp Now what's a bootcamp? Well, basically, it's as much stuff as we can fit in over two days. And we get the chance in the evening to have some food, maybe have a drink, have a chat, be together as a group. , We don't have accommodation at the studio, uh, but we certainly have plenty around us. So that will be, uh, two days, , either at our studio or somewhere local.

[00:25:06] , depending on what we decide exactly where it'll be. But it will certainly be within a mile or two of, of where we are based two days. That's two days back to back a maximum of 10 people. So it's a few more than our normal. Uh, workshops, but it'll be pretty intense. We're gonna cover all sorts of ground, , using available light, using studio light, using off camera flash, maybe a bit of post production thrown into the mix, again, depending on what the delegates, the delegates would like to cover.

[00:25:34] It's gonna be an absolute blast, cannot wait for that one. It's the first time we've run it, , and it's such a smart idea, it's Sarah's idea to do it. , as always, the smart ideas come from Sarah, uh, and, uh, looking forward to that one. That's May 12th and 13th. And then the final one that's available at the moment, right now, is June the 9th.

[00:25:52] We are doing our regular jaunt, uh, we're gonna dance to the weather, see what we get, uh, on location in Oxford. Now this workshop, I think, might be, might be my favourite, because it's just me with a camera, with some people to photograph, on a location. That's it. We don't carry a load of kit, don't carry particularly reflectors and lights, we just go and find locations, find light pools and patches, find stories to tell.

[00:26:24] We just go and photograph our models in Oxford on location. So that's on June 9th. And all of these workshops are now home, housed, ha ha, can't even say it, are now located, let's try that, are now located on masteringportraitphotography. com. We've moved everything over because that was always what we were building with the workshops.

[00:26:50] , originally it was under Paul Wilkinson Photography, uh, but we always knew, , and had, and had a reasonably openly talked about this, Always knew that we'd be moving it across to Mastering Portrait Photography. 'cause that's the place that's all about learning, all about teaching, all about enjoying and exploring portrait photography.

[00:27:10] So if you go to mastering portrait photography.com, there's a, a section called the Academy. So there's all these sections. There's The Visual Vault, that's all of the articles. There's The Podcast, there's, uh, The Resources, which is, , the mockups and , tools, Photoshop downloads and things. And then there is the, uh, Academy.

[00:27:31] And this is where you'll find the workshops. Exactly the same booking process as before. Everything's as it was, it's just now hosed, ha ha ha, it's just now located on masteringportraitphotography. com. Now, for the articles and the videos and the mock ups, at the moment the mock ups are 9. 99 each, uh, which is already a bargain, there's a few free ones, just so you can get an idea, uh, so they're about a tenner each, , there's a few backgrounds, I'm working on building more backgrounds as I need them, but mostly it's the mock ups.

[00:28:02] So they're a tenner, which is a bargain, you can create them, you can put them in magazines, you can use them on your website. It just shows your prospective or your existing clients how their images might look. A tenner. Bargain. However, there's a bigger bargain. I suddenly sound like a salesman. So sorry, it's because I'm driving.

[00:28:21] And I want to give you not one, but two bargains. It sounds like that. Anyway, if you become a subscriber of Mastering Portrait Photography, you get access to the videos. , and you get access to the downloads. And you get access, well, to everything we put on there, except the workshops. We charge separately for those.

[00:28:39] But you get access to all of the resources for 6. 99 a month, which is an even bigger bargain. So even if you only want to download a few of the room mock ups, it's still better to keep a subscription going at 6. 99 a month. It's less than an expensive cup of coffee. And, uh, we will keep the mock ups coming, we will keep the articles coming, we will keep the videos coming, so you'll always have value for money for your 6.99. If you're feeling a bit more, you know, a bit, you have a bit more conviction, then it's 69 quid, or 69. 99 a year, so that's 12 months for the price of 10. Uh, 10 percent saving, or whatever that is, 2 out of 12. Is it a 10? Yeah, it's a 10 percent saving. Is it? No, it's not. It's, I don't know what it is. It's two twelfths.

[00:29:25] There you go. It's one sixth. No! Which is a great saving. My maths isn't good enough, uh, while I'm driving. I can't concentrate. I'm concentrating on the road, as I should be, by the way. Uh, so it's 6. 99 a month, , or 69. 99 per year. So head over to masteringportraitphotography. com, , and we promise, we promise we'll make it worth your while.

[00:29:48] Oh, sorry, all of our members also. Uh, you get access to our Facebook community. Which is hidden and private. You can't get onto it any other way. , only people who are part of our community can be in there. And that way people can ask for critiques. People can ask for advice and tips is where we put discount codes for things.

[00:30:07] , like software where we have, uh, access to discounts from suppliers, those kinds of things. They all go onto the Facebook community. I know a few of you aren't on Facebook, and if I'm honest, it's not my favorite thing. Because I'm just a dopamine idiot when it comes to social media. Once I'm on it, I can't get off it.

[00:30:26] , however, it's the best way to do this to be, so you don't have to log into multiple places to find information. It's on our Facebook community, uh, and most of us have a Facebook account. So you see the, , the alerts come up when things, uh, are uploaded. So that is masteringportraitphotography. com. If you want to find the workshops, Head across there and go to the academy.

[00:30:47] You can Google Mastering Portrait Photography Academy or mastering portrait photography workshops. , they're a little bit lower down the rankings at the moment because obviously I've spent my entire life saying just Google Paul Wilkinson Photography workshops and everyone heads over there. So, uh, you might just have to scroll down, uh, one or two line items and we'll be there.

[00:31:05] Uh, that will change more and more of you. Uh, search for it and click on the link. So search for mastering portrait photography workshops or Mastering Portrait Photography Academy and you will. Find us.

Conclusion and Final Thoughts

[00:31:15] Paul In The Defender: And that's it for me. The traffic is free flowing. There's cars going everywhere. The light is dimming.

[00:31:20] They're salting the roads. They must be expecting some cold weather. It's a beautiful, beautiful afternoon. It's been a wonderful evening of celebrating photography. I am thrilled, thrilled to bits that I've rounded off my three years with setting up the most incredible monthly photo competition and also, of course, the surprise and honor.

[00:31:46] So on that happy note, I hope you're all well, I hope things are treating you nicely, and until next time, whatever else, be kind to yourself. Take care. P. S. Sorry if this sounds a bit shouty, but when you're driving a Land Rover, it's really loud, and I forget that although I'm mic'd up, or I forget rather that because I'm mic'd up, it might sound weirdly, like I'm simply yelling!

[00:32:27] That's because I'm traveling at Sixty mile an hour in a Land Rover Defender, so apologies if I'm shouting. Be kind to yourself. Take care. Bye.