The Challenger Founder's Photographer: Unusual Lessons You’ve Never Been Told From Jamie Laing, Tom Straker, Reece James

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2:24we go deep into sort of the creative process how to hustle and make your thing your thing which is which is just i love this it gave me so much inspiration for building out hungry um yeah she's just a super cool person and great to hang out with and i really hope you enjoy this conversation uh please do share it please do leave us a review and all that jazz thank you so much

2:55Elspeth, Vincent, thank you so much for doing this. Incredibly grateful. I've been looking and following your LinkedIn avidly. I love your... Well, I think your pictures are fucking sick. They're so unique and different. And you've really crafted out your own style. And one of my sort of things in life is I love people who've got their own style and their own way of doing things. And then was reading all your posts and I was like your story kind of um some of the things you were saying was really resonating with with me um and then obviously I went for beers with Louis and the legend uh James last week and that was when you just done their pictures and I thought oh my god these look sick like the um I think Louis's got his uh yeah Louis was got his long hands out his long arms It's useful for something, isn't it?

3:51Louis was on his hands and knees in a wife beater in the middle of Maer Street Market, repeatedly spilling a pint. Did he have the wife beater on because he knew it was like a fashion shoot? Yeah, he did it on purpose. Really? No, he's going to kill me. No, no, no. I can imagine him just going, right, yeah, I've got to get my hair done on my German barber. He's got a German guy who goes around to do his barnet. And then he gets his wife beater on for Maer Street Market. it um so yeah so it's all it's all all that and then I was just like yeah reading your post that's what I want to hear your story how you got into it so I think where to start is describe the first memory that kind of bubbles up to your mind when you picked up a camera oh yeah um and what were you like taking pictures of and what was that what what did that do to you that you made you that made you think fuck this I'm this is going to be my Elspeth's thing yeah I mean the first time I got a camera I always like taking pictures right my grandparents were wedding photographers I didn't really know much about that at the time I'm from a small island they were like small timey wedding photographers where's the island uh Portland it's on the southwest of Dorset yeah oh oh fucking I thought you're thinking like Portland in the States well that's not an island no I don't sound yeah I was thinking the accent's gone wait so Portland's I don't even know that's a place yeah so it's like a two by four mile island in Dorset not not the particularly nice part of Dorset and um yeah so I was just chilling my little island childhood life yeah my sister was doing photography at college and I was like she was doing all like time lapses of like the sky at night you know and you it looks so cool and all the stars come out and they go in a circle and like she was doing a lot of like HDR landscapes and shit and I was like this is sick like they look so cool I wanna I'm gonna get a little camera I'm gonna beg my mom and dad for a little digital camera at Christmas so I got a little digital camera at Christmas you know like one that's literally like this big yeah and it's like a Samsung whatever like Fujifilm maybe I don't know and I got one and I started taking pictures of my friends and putting on Facebook unfortunately they're still probably all there which is horrible to think about and I'm locked out on my Facebook account so God help me but yeah so I started taking photos every single day when I was probably like 10 right to put on my Facebook account of my friends um to them it was probably really annoying to me I thought they were going in vogue I was like these are incredible photos like I I'm killing it right now they were absolutely terrible and from there it just kind of grew and grew like I got obsessed with this thing I was doing it every single day after school like the only thing I did I had I mean like at first obviously I couldn't really do anything with them I didn't have a computer like we had like the family computer you know back in those days we just had one so like it didn't have any editing software or anything like so they just kind of went onto Facebook as they were then eventually I guess I got a laptop when I was like 13 and I started you know getting editing software I used something called GIMP2 if anyone knows what that is that's a joke I'm sorry like who calls their software GIMP2 I know I know and yeah I started like playing around with like settings and like changing all the same stuff and like I actually kind of still edit my photos in pretty much the same way which is really interesting when I think about it um and yeah I started taking photos of like flowers and stuff and like my friends and but in a slightly more artsy way and like I eventually got a better camera um and I could like save up 50 quid and get a second hand lens and then I could make the background blurry because I had a better lens you know and I I taught myself how to use a camera properly probably by the time I was like 13, 14.

8:22So I was already like, I was just, I was doing it so fucking much. Like I was. Yeah, that's what I'm trying to get. But what was the, because I have the same thing with writing. I can't really explain why I was pulled to it. Like, because to, I have this thing, right? So if you line up a hundred people, right, there's something that happens, whether it's you with photography it could be someone with fucking ping pong or squash there's something that pulls them to do something repetitively yeah like kind of that obsession yeah piece which i've got but like what was it about you know you're putting these pictures on facebook your friends thinking fucking hell you've seen your sister take pictures of yeah whatever but what was like as you said i was doing it so fucking much like what was making you do that i just liked it what was the feeling you got fun fun yeah man it's fun I like having fun.

9:09I'm quite like introverted. I'm not, you know, the most social person. So I think it was just good to have something to do. I mean, before that, I was, I've always been very artistic. Like I was always like very artsy fartsy. I was always like drawing pictures of like anime stuff. I'm really exposing myself right now. What's anime stuff? like I was obsessed you know what anime is no oh like Japanese cartoons I was one of them I don't mean is that the porno stuff not all of it I know but like no no not when I was 12 no no no but that is what that is right that anime not I'm probably revealing too much of myself the subsection that you're thinking about actually has a slightly different name but anyway so Japanese like Pikachu and shit like that yeah I was doing Pikachu I was I was doing that kind of stuff and I was also So I don't know.

10:05My love for like art and art history kind of grew up the same time as my love for photography. So they were both, back in these days, they were incredibly intertwined. And to be fair, they still are. So yeah, I just did it because I loved it. I just did it because it was fun and I felt like I could do it. and it didn't feel you know I didn't feel like I was bad at it uh which I probably felt like I was shit at everything else so yeah that's so interesting and then so then the you said in it should be intertwined the photography and the the kind of the passion for the history of art um what were you like what were you learning in that period or like what inspired you and because I find those two things super interesting, like the artist and then the studying of the art.

11:01I'm obsessed with the Beatles. I fucking love the Beatles. There's a really good podcast about this guy who goes through all the old rock songs. He's based in Stoke or some shit. A bit random, yeah? Well, this is a Beatles track. It's random as fuck. But he goes through all the Beatles songs that you think are super original. um uh like i'm trying to think of one not like hey dude because that is quite original but but and he goes back to all the stuff they were listening to which was all the blues music in like the 40s 50s and you're like oh shit the beatles were inspired by something so i love the the sort of studying period of how they're studying the history of art not in terms of the wanky university course but their history of art and then oh that's how you create the revolver album yeah so then you're taking these pictures with of your mates developing your own style getting good at it but then yeah what are you what's the landscape of learning this side so i think like when i was taking pictures of my mates and put on facebook i wasn't really thinking about any art history i was like 11 i didn't really know what's going on sure um but i probably got into art history stuff when i was like 14 i think i must have been in like year 10 or year 11 when i got really into art like like i'd been drawing and shit before that but i was doing like pikachu at this point i got into drawing like abstract shit that everyone hated you know i was like i was like painting a piece of paper white and like getting an a for it because i could really shit my way around it so well like but like the thing is like i was so wanky about it like i really believed what bullshit i was so so um do you know rochelle canteen in uh there's a restaurant called rochelle canteen i've heard of it yeah and um and then there's a restaurant called St.

12:43John and uh I'm going there tomorrow oh really so it's oh it's banging so Fergus Henderson St. John his wife Margot Rochelle Canteen in Shoreditch yeah they're based like a power couple in food I mean St. John's fucking changed British food Margot's done her own thing Rochelle Canteen it's a gorgeous restaurant and one of the questions with one thing we're talking about is like why why is uh why are artists so allured to St. John back to the white paper piece I mean saint john's all fucking white and there's no there's no um music it's just the clatter of knives and forks she was like well all artists are great at selling their art they're good at like bullshitting their art if you paint a fucking piece of picture piece of picture painting a piece of paper white so what how did you sort of sell that to the teacher being like look it's a piece of paper i've painted it well maybe not that voice but no literally that voice honestly i cannot remember what i said like this is going back like 12 years ew um But I don't know, I just said some bullshit about, you know, like, oh, fuck knows.

13:45I can't fucking remember. It didn't mean shit. Like, I really, I really do respect artists that do that, though. I do think it's funny. I think it's like, I think it's respectable. But like, as long as they know deep down that it is funny, you know what I mean? Yeah. I think most, most artists have a really good sense of humor. um but like they don't like to show it too much I think especially in the past like you had to be pretty serious to be an artist but if you actually look at a lot of their like journals and stuff they were pretty fucking funny such as I'd say like my favorite my personal favorite all-time artist Rembrandt was a funny fucking guy he was so fucking stupid and funny but he was so clever at the same time like every piece of art was like mocking somebody mocking something he would do like a painting for someone that paid for it and the whole thing would be like basically him kind of making fun of them really yeah I can't give you an elaborate explanation right now but yeah he he was really good at it but yeah he was a he was a weird guy yeah and what's what was he painting like presidents or was he just painting like was it just like aristocrats or was it yeah i mean this was like the 1600s so oh fucking hell i thought it was like some uh yeah but i didn't think it was that i thought it was the whole andy warhol kind of vibe oh no i'm going back yeah yeah going back that's hilarious what's the night 14 what did you say 1400s 1600s so what's that is that like there's obviously kings and stuff like that yeah i mean i'm just thinking of 1066 the battle of that and then working my boy back from that it was a lot of like um it was a lot of biblical paintings but he did he didn't he kind of broke that trend i'd say like around that time a lot of what was happening was biblical paintings he did a few of them but he would paint them like really gory or like show someone like with their leg cut off or if someone had an a missing eye he would paint their missing eye you know whereas usually you'd be expected to make someone who was like say they were disabled in real life they would be painted to be like able-bodied usually but rembrandt like didn't do that he just showed real life how it was um and i i've always found that like really interesting yeah it's really respected that So Ren Brandt.

16:19Ren Brandt. Ren Brandt, yeah. Who else was kind of... Because what I'm trying to do is I've seen your pictures like in the last year, right? I'm trying to work back of where... So you've got this guy who's taking pictures of fucking gory legs and... Well, he was painting them. Painting them. Camera technology was a bit basic back then. Yeah, as I said, this isn't going to be in chronological order. so Rembrandt who else was kind of feeding your or stoking your curiosity at that age I'd say this was around the time where I was obsessed with American apparel like most teenage girls that's a controversial statement to make these days because the founder of American apparel turned out to be like either a nonce or like a sex pest or something like that really yeah bad guy bad bad guy but created a really solid brand and had me in an absolute chokehold as a 15 year old like i wanted all everything i wore to be american apparel i absolutely that did not happen i used to get their like little zipper hoodies yeah for like for a gathering i'd go man i need a fucking zipper hoodie rock up like tie it in a bow yeah i was like watching skins and then basically rocking out to a cheek you know do you remember cook from skins i didn't really watch skins so i I mean I was obsessed with it but I used to walk up to a cheeky gath with like two bottles of WKD and an American apparel like that yeah like yeah that's I forgot about that brand yeah so yeah so you're looking at American apparel apparel American apparel I want an apparel spritz yeah sorry American apparel yeah apparel I really struggle pronouncing things I'm gonna cry Yeah, I was obsessed with American Apparel and they had a photographer that basically shot all of their campaigns, who was also a really bad person.

18:14Sex pest, you know, really bad person. However, unfortunately, really did inspire a lot of the way that I shoot. I really liked the visual imagery of that brand. Some of it was a step too far. Some of it was, you know, overly sexual. But I really liked how different it looked to everything else I saw. You know, I hadn't seen any brand do something that captured my attention in the way that that did because I'd never seen anything like it. And I think it was so far removed from how I was growing up and what I saw and, you know, like where I lived. that I was like this is just so hot and sexy and like I've never seen anything like this not hot and sexy in the fact that like the girls in the photos and stuff and like the way it was shot was hot and sexy it was just like captivating do you know what I mean like it was like shiny and new and I'd never seen it yeah yeah yeah and that's kind of like what I when I saw your pictures I was like fucking hell I've never seen anything like that like it's so visually like palpably punches you from all different angles I'm like what the fuck but in a good I mean that in a good way so then talk to me about your life on portland uh two by four mile place like you're looking at you're looking at this this art um rembrandt brandt american apparel yeah yeah um what was that like and then how what was the journey from portland to kind of getting into what was that step so portland like whatever i mean at the time i didn't really have many thoughts on it i didn't know anything else yeah i was pretty keen by the by the time i was about check that camera yeah i'm listening yeah by the time i was about 15 16 i was pretty keen to find a way to get out i mean i just i'd been on tumblr for like three years and i realized that like other places exist and I'd seen you know like oh like London looks cool and like New York looks cool I'd love to go there one day and I I didn't spend a lot of like my teenage years in like actual reality I spent most of it online so I was like obsessed with Instagram at time and I was like this is before the word influencer existed but that's what I wanted to be I was like I'm gonna be an influencer like I want to be like I want to be out there I want to be like I don't know I just wanted some attention I guess I was an attention seeker for some reason probably because I lived on a tiny island where like there was no one interesting and I was like here's my time to shine so I was posting pictures of myself in my like wannabe American apparel outfits and you know I was getting a little bit of traction on Instagram and I managed to build it up to like 50 000 followers i'd say yeah which was quite a lot for the time this was like 2015 yeah so like that's where i was i wasn't really living much in the real world like if i was in the real world it was so that i could go out and take photos and put them on instagram yeah or go out and take photos and whatever like for my for just to have like at this time i was still doing photography but like it wasn't really I think it took a little bit of a backseat for like my iPhone photography that I was putting on Instagram you know like but I was still taking photos all the time like it was just in a slightly different way um what were you taking photos of was it like um obviously now do like their portrait I mean I'm going to try and get up keep up with photography lingo here mate but um so portraits yeah and then uh so portraits lifestyles what were you taking pictures of what other stuff were you taking pictures of was it just people or like i was taking photos of everything everything yeah what were the weirdest shit you're taking pictures of if you can remember i would like my boyfriend at the time i would like get him to dip his hand in like white paint and like i would be i'd get him like holding it up here like this and i'd be like oh so as the paint's like falling down yeah as the paint's like dribbling down and I'd be like let's do like white like you know his white hand with white paint on it with a white background and I'd be like oh my god it looks so cool and then I'd be like let's do it but with black paint and see how that looks you know I was doing all sorts of weird shit just to like I don't know I just thought it was cool like let's be real I thought I was the absolute shit back then I I thought I was, you know, doing groundbreaking art.

23:05You look back at it and you're like, oh my God. It's really bad. But no, I did. I think I took photos of absolutely everything. I would go up to people on the street and take photos of them. I like without asking. I would never do that now. I'm way too shy. But I was pretty ballsy. You know, I would do shit. Like, I didn't really care. I'd take photos of absolutely anything. And I think doing that for like five or six years kind of helped me refine it back down into what I like to do the most. Yeah. And that's what I'm trying to get to is the I love people who like work on their craft, like whether that's a chef or a plumber, but maybe not a plumber.

23:51But, you know, it could be cool. Yeah, yeah, yeah. yeah let's fix your boy this week um the but people who obsess for their crafts so then so you're taking pictures of all sorts ex-boyfriends hand in white paint your mates people on the street yeah how do you then so you take the picture like what's the what's the refinement process like how does that work so like how are you getting better at it do you know what I mean I honestly think it's just that thing of like reps yeah reps you know you know the 10 000 hours thing you spend 10 000 hours at something you're gonna get pretty pretty good at it you're gonna get better than someone that didn't spend that long doing it probably yeah i think that is what happened like i don't know if i've spent 10 000 hours i obviously didn't count them but like i think you don't notice it at the time you know you don't you don't notice yourself getting better you don't it's not a conscious decision to stop taking photos of hands in paint and stuff like that your interest just changes and then all of a sudden you don't want to take photos of that anymore you want to take photos of like I don't know I want to I want to do black and white pictures of like the marching band at the carnival or like I want to go to the beach and like take a really close-up photo of the sand or like I want to go and take photos of the sea and like yeah yeah so you're just following your curiosity yeah amazing no i rate people who do that because i think it can be say what's in fashion which say for example it's american apparel apparel yeah i've been i've been editing the app app app app alora spritz podcast so app rolls on my brain um but the you know you could just say right fuck it this is where the trend is but i think being able to just follow that curiosity of like right I want to do take pictures of shellfish or some shit you know whatever floats your boat um is is super interesting so then so you're in Portland you've got this passion you're taking pictures of all sorts you're getting better what is the route I know we were saying before you hit record you end up in a as like a receptionist what was the path from where you got to the job that you're a bit like oh fuck this and then before you jumped off the precipice to doing this full time yeah I mean that was like the weirdest time of my life for sure and that's the time where shit got real I would say because you know I was very I felt at at the time like a big fish in a small pond at home because I don't know I thought I was the shit because I had a lot of Instagram followers and I I was you know getting good grades in my A-levels with photography and art and I was like oh I think I'm pretty good at this and then I decided to go to uni to study photography I didn't really want to study it but I didn't really want to get a degree in it but how come you didn't want to study it because I just didn't really see the point like I wanted to just carry on what I was doing I wanted to just you know carry on on my own terms but I really wanted to move to London like I and I just didn't know how else to do that because I was 17 and at the time I thought a student loan you like didn't have to like pay it back because no one told me and I was stupid like I didn't know that it was something that like gets interest added on to it I didn't even know what interest was like yeah so basically I went to uni so I could move to London right and as soon as I moved I was like huh this is a bit different like I loved London I loved living you know in in a big city and it was really cool and I finally felt like I was like doing life but I just felt like oh wait there's people my age that are actually you know getting their photos in vogue and shit and I was like I'm literally nowhere near that like I can take a photo they they weren't that good though like they were okay they weren't like as in your picture what was in vogue my pictures the ones in Vogue were obviously really good my pictures were so what's the difference I asked some really dumb questions what's the difference between say that's a Vogue picture and that's your picture what is that difference between your pictures at that time versus what's in Vogue because in my this sounds really you're going to fucking want to kill me but I just think it's a it's just a picture but like yeah I'm going into this like a two year old who doesn't really know much it's hard to like quantify it in words I think right but experience and taste you know it's mainly I'd say it's a taste thing and I I was very probably immature in my taste you know I think I think I had the right intentions I don't think I was executing very well and I think my ego was really big and I thought I was really good and I don't think that was a very good recipe for um for moving to London and realizing that I was actually a lot further behind than a lot of people yeah um so how would you say your so how would you say one your taste was immature and then how would the ego get in the way of that my taste was immature because I was 18 and very very sheltered you know I didn't know anyone that was really good at photography I didn't know anyone that was taking photos and them going in magazines like I could look at them online but it's very different from like being able to speak to someone about it that's done it and there wasn't really like podcasts and stuff at the time so I could watch like an interview on YouTube or something but people weren't very candid about it I think um so yeah it's hard to say but mainly I I was just really young.

29:52And that just leads you to not being as good as people that are older or people that have grown up in a different area, not necessarily money-wise, but more like just with more exposure to stuff. You know, like if you grow up in a city, especially if you grew up in like London, you are sometimes just you have access to stuff like that a little more yeah not all the time I know not everyone to grow up in London you can like become a fashion photographer at 17 but you know what I mean like if you're on an island and you don't know anything about the rest of the world like you really know what's going on it's so yeah such an interesting story how do you think being on the island was actually an advantage in some respects um I think it gave me a lot of time to research art and get really into that and I think at the at the time I probably didn't realize how much that would help me now in what I do and I think that's probably the main thing also like it was beautiful and it gave me a lot of amazing things to take photos of like i was right by the sea there was a lot of cliffs there was a lot of flowers and like the landscape's really interesting and it has a really interesting culture like not a lot of culture a very weird culture but it does have why is the culture weird it's a quarrying island so quarrying so it's where you take stone out of the ground right so like i don't know that's just quite an interesting yeah yeah yeah this is i find this uh have you you know you're talking about malcolm malcolm bladwell's 10 000 hours yeah he's also got another book called uh outliers yeah i've read it which is like i think you know that's when he talks about like the place where people were born and the luck of again back to the beatles i think he talked i think he talks in that book like the fact that both john lennon and paul mccartney's dad sorry mom died at 15 oh really yeah that both their mums died at 15 gave them like a weird unique bond and i think the fact so they he talks about all these weird happenstance happenstances happenstances what the fuck it is that actually when you look retrospectively connect the dots backwards you're like oh shit that makes sense so the quarry yeah the quarry the quarry island is really interesting is like a yeah i just see this this in my head is this this small kind of interior island with this girl with massive dreams who's kind of pouring her ambition and curiosity into this wacky art like it's a fucking good story yeah it didn't really feel like it at the time i guess um it doesn't really feel like it now but that's nice to hear but yeah like portland's interesting portland portland is like portland stone is what like simple cathedral is made out Those buildings behind you are Portland stone as well, out that window.

33:00Right. It's nice. It's reflecting a nice little light onto us right now. We should have done a podcast out there. You're going to kill me with the light. Okay, amazing. So then what are the people like in Portland comparatively to London? How do I say this nicely? You can say it however you want.

33:23Close-minded, maybe. Close-minded. And I knew that at the time and I love to bang on about it. I was really into that. I was like, everyone here is so close minded, close minded. Like everyone. I've got 50 ,000 followers. Yeah, literally like I'm so much better. No. That's amazing. So then you get to London and as you said, your taste was immature at the time. One, because of age. Two, because of lack of exposure. Yeah. When you get here and you're in the metropolis, what are some of the, what were you exposing yourself to that kind of that you think again connecting the dots backwards was like okay now I'm getting to find my thing um I found a lot of like indie magazines and stuff I didn't know existed you know I found like all of these things I just didn't know were there like some were indie magazines some were like big magazines I just didn't know existed because they weren't sold on Portland and I hadn't come across them on Tumblr like that kind of thing like I remember just going into Soho and going into like Wardour News rest in peace don't know when it closed it closed a long time ago it was like a magazine shop that like it was like a it was like an offy but it was like mainly just sold magazines like really cool like fashion magazines and like indie music magazines do you like indie music I guess I did at time I guess yeah like I I had, for some reason, the Klaxons came on when I was on the train up this morning.

34:53I was like, fuck it. For some reason, the Klaxons came up on my own Spotify. You might wonder who put that on. No, genuinely, it was, you know, when you click on a song, basically, I think Block Party at Glastonbury. Yeah. And I was like, I used to go to Block Party gigs. Well, I went to one gig, not like on the reg. But I pressed that and it was like, you know, the famous helicopter. to that yeah that song i fucking love that song and the next thing i'm on the train and it's gone on to like you know you you do the it's like on radio or something yeah radio so now i was picking all these songs the next was like two door cinema club and i heard klaxis i hadn't listened to it generally since i was like 20 yeah and i was on the train like i had my airpods on but i was like i think the old geez next time was like what the fuck is this bloke on but i um yeah so that so yeah indie music's interesting because i think their their pictures as well um that's got a real unique flavor and texture to the way though like you know when I when you say indie magazines I know exactly what it is in my head yeah do you know what I mean so they were pulling you yeah I think so but I was also getting still getting pulled by like the vogues and the and the really polished stuff like I didn't really know what I wanted to do I was freaking out basically I was like oh there's so much more than I thought existed of everything like this is overwhelming and crazy so I was doing photography at uni and I was like you know it like not to sound like an absolute like I'm gonna sound like a horrible person again I don't know how many times I've sounded bad on this podcast so far but my course at uni let a lot of people in on an unconditional offer and we somehow ended up with a class full of people that like no offense to everyone but like we weren't very good like no one was very good at photography and no one really cared about it either like I cared about it a lot and there was a couple of us on the course that kind of like you knew we were really hustling for it and we were really really trying for it but there was like most of the people on my course were like they didn't really care about it very much and it was like why are you here like I came here with the hopes of like you know making this my whole like life yeah like I I know I said I didn't really want to go to uni but by the time I came around to it and did it I was like well if I'm here I'm gonna absolutely send it like I'm gonna absolutely give it my all and I remember there was probably only like four of us in that class of like 30 or 20 I don't know how many people there was but like everyone else was just a fucking dickhead and they were just like shit no offense they just weren't good yeah and like it's not like they were trying really hard and they weren't good they weren't trying and they weren't good like so it was like a weird weird environment to be in um like I was just like what's happening like I have so much drive and I have so much inspiration but I feel like I can't do anything about it because I feel so like I don't know I was just like I was just confused I was just so like all over the place and it that carried on I'd say for like the first two years of my course it was a three-year course I think I only really found my feet by the third year how did you find your feet there was a girl in the year above me at uni called Hanina she's a very uh famous photographer now actually Hanina Hanina yeah h-a-n-i-n-a Hanina and what does she take photos of last time that's a bit crass but like what does she take photos yeah she does like um she does massive campaigns she does billboards she does billboards for pepsi she does like she did the latest pepsi out of home campaign like she does that she did like the extra campaign like wrigley's extra like any big campaign you see that looks amazing photography wise probably hanina did it like she did doc martens um her work's like gone up in like Times Square and stuff that's mad yeah yeah so I met her she was like asking around for someone to help assist her on jobs um at uni and I was like yeah like please let me in like I need to learn from someone um and she was smashing it even then like she was miles ahead of me and this is what like this is like who I would compare myself to people like her who were like just better than me like and I say that like I mean it like that's not me being humble like she was better than me she had miles more experience than me like she just got it more like and I was like oh my god like what do how can I get here like how can I get here I mean I'm still not like that now but like I'm also not trying to be anymore but um yeah so I started assisting Hanina and like just learning from her and I think it kind of got me to a point where I really understood how a shoot works and that sounds stupid but like how does a shoot work like a professional professional studio shoot like I know what goes into it I know that it's like I know how many people are there I know what the client is gonna say I know what the what prep goes into it I know how to do studio lighting now like I know how to do studio lighting for like to make the background look nice and clean and white and the personal evenly lit and there's no shadows anywhere and it all looks amazing and glossy and shiny like I finally understood how to do it and I saw it in practice and also Hanina had an amazing way of lighting stuff that was really unique to her um and it was interesting to see someone working in like a sort of signature style and that like which I'd always been really interested in throughout my art history stuff like I always liked people that worked in a in a style what's the way she would light a room up like not not as in she walks in like I mean she does that as well she's a great person but um but as in she the way she lights like the thing her work is like it's like evenly lit but really bright and really like it's hard to describe it like without it's like got quite a lot of contrast and it's quite bright and it's but it's even like there's not a lot of shadow and there's not I might be bullshit and I don't know exactly what she's doing these days but at this time this is what she was doing and it would be it would just look good and it's really hard to pinpoint it like sometimes you just don't really know why it looks great but it always did and she would like the way that she'd interact with the models was really interesting and I picked up on how to you know like direct a shoot a little bit better and direct a model to to you know let them know what you want from them and how they should be posing and stuff like that and like getting like a really nice movement in the shot I still wasn't very good at it back then though like I was trying to pick up on it and my work was getting better but like you look back on it now and you're like yeah it looks like not good like it hasn't stood the test of time kind of thing if you know what I mean like I think with a really good photo it looks good at the time you took it and then it will still look good in five years whereas with a lot of pictures that I look back on of my own work and sometimes other people's work like if you look at a camp I guess it's the same with like a campaign like if you look at it the day it came out and you're like yeah looks good and then you look at it again in five years and you're like it looks very 2018 or whatever you know yeah timeless and i sound like an arty farty wanky guy here but like timeless art is interesting like it's i interviewed the founder of the devonshire and the booth of the devonshire in soho like unbelievable pub and they've got loads of art in they've got this we did the podcast and thing called the green room which is basically splattered with art like not licked like loads and all the art was like felt really timeless and that's and then we started talking about timeless um everyone's like pardon the pardon like what's in vogue or what's on trend but and everyone's like oh what's the next trend gonna be in the next five years what's cbd gonna do what's fucking yeah pre-biotic soda gonna do it's like well what and he was like well actually what's timeless yeah what's not gonna like andy boho yeah it's timeless yeah um yeah what are other timeless pieces of art do you think or like photos that are just like vam vam so i'm german i don't know i don't know how to like i don't know what examples to give but like sometimes i don't think it's about it looking timeless it's just about it's still looking good like yeah i don't mind if you can like i'm contradicting myself i don't mind if you can tell that it was shot in like 2012 as long as it's really owning it you know i think it's like it's like a it's like is it clever is it confident is it is it holding its own you know like it's a feeling i don't know how to explain it in my words yeah yeah yeah yeah no but still it's i completely get where you're coming from it's um like even even those artists were talking about block party klaxons like it feels 2012 yeah american apparel feels 2012 yeah but like it's still in some respects timeless if that makes sense yeah um so you're with um hena hanina hanina yeah and um she's teaching you i think what you said there about getting an artist to or like a model to open up and be kind of yeah i find that interesting i'm asking myself because a lot of the stuff we do where we kind of cross over is making people make making people feel comfortable um helping them open up like how did you how do you do that what did she teach you about that I think I don't know like it was more just like I just watched I just watched and I can't say any specifics that I picked up but and I probably only assisted her like between five and ten times like it wasn't a lot it was not something I was doing every day like but it was just enough for me to learn what was going on and how how I'm how I would be expected to be on a on a shoot and to be honest I'm the wrong person to ask about how to make someone feel comfortable on a shoot because I don't know how to do it like apparent like most of my feedback is that I felt really comfortable I just don't know what I've done I just don't know like I say that I learned that I don't know how it happens like that's not me gatekeeping either like I genuinely just don't know like because I feel awkward sometimes like I said I'm not very social I'm very introverted and most of the time when I'm meeting someone on a shoot for the first time I feel a little bit shy I feel a little bit awkward yeah and I'm like I think the thing is though I just start taking photos and they don't really have any time to think about it yeah no it seems um one thing you've kind of i'm picking up like is it seems like you're you're constantly set and i relate to this a lot it's like i'm not as good as that person i'm not good enough or it needs it needs to i think needs to be improved i haven't done that yet and i think a lot of and i think i've read a post you put up about uh freelancers and kind of like the insecure brain and like the the kind of constant berating yourself that the work's not good enough and i think i think there's a seth godin quote which is like the amateur is sorry the professional is hard on themselves the amateurs kind to themselves and it's like if you want to get really good at something you have to be relentlessly hard yourself because it forced you to get better like some of your stuff that you've done you should be kind to yourself because you look like i'm you've interviewed i'm not in if you've taken pictures of all these fucking sick founders, been to LA, been to New York, got your own podcast, you should be kind to yourself.

47:03But how has your internal critic, how do you, I'm asking this selfishly, begin to kind of temper that down a bit? Or do you? I don't. You don't? I don't. So you think you look at your work and like that shit?

47:23Sometimes. times so how do you know when it's like i'm trying to think of an example here so i think i think the picture you took of tom straker and did you do toby as well yeah yeah yeah they're both legends yeah i really like really like them and so that that i think both of them are pretty iconic pictures like how did you get to a place where you were like right i'm happy with that did you know what i mean i'm trying because i have this with this so i put one of these out i have to listen to it I'm like that is fucking awful yeah what are you doing like you can't pronounce that I think a lot of the time when I get a photo that I like I think it's more to do with the person in it than what I've done so I really like that photo Tom Straker as well but it looks like you don't look at that photo well I don't I don't look at that photo and think that's a really good photo I look at that photo and I think that looks like he looks like a really interesting person like from that I think yeah like when I like my work it's usually that that I like about it I like that they look so interesting you know when they when a person really looks like themselves or they look I don't know they look just cool or they look like it catches your eye like that photo of Tom Straker like he's like staring out with a spoonful of butter and he looks really pissed off and he looks all like attitude and he looks like he looks like how you want uh like chef to look you know yeah yeah yeah but like i don't think i did anything there i think that was all him but then how do you again you may not know the answer to these i'm just asking out of sheer curiosity like how do you get them into a because i think again you've been talking about before we record it's like we don't you don't use too much kit because otherwise people are like oh oh my God, I'm on a fucking shoot.

49:14Yeah. Like, having kittens. Yeah. You said it's about getting the kind of, I think the other one which is sick is Rich from Moju. That picture looks so sick. Again, because I've met both those people, I'm like, that is who they are. But I'm trying to get, how do you get them to be like, right? I just don't say much. And I think they feel awkward. And I think, I don't know. I don't know. Like with Tom Straker, like it was very much, we didn't have that long. I had even less time actually with Rich from Moju. I think with Rich, I think I had 15 minutes, which was not long. And I was just like, okay, let's talk about Rich.

50:04Like I thought they wanted something quite, you know, standard and professional, but I was kind of hoping to get something fun on that day so I was like oh by the way Rich I brought my fisheye lens and he was like oh that's sick it's gonna look like Frasher magazine or something and I was like yes yes and that was just serendipity that he also was on my wavelength so I just found a corner of the office I thought looked good they had like a little moju vending machine or something it was like a moju fridge like full of little moju shots and they had a big moju sign above it and I was like that's gonna look good like there's a big red wall behind you or was orange but a little red in the picture or something but like it looked sick and i was like all right i just want to take some photos of you here and whatever and i think we were referencing a different photo that i'd already taken for mash gang and liquid death so i took a photo of the founder of mash gang co-founder yeah what's his because um he yeah he listens to this podcast um and i've wanted to get him on messaging about getting him on it talking about jordan yes that's my mentor oh really that's my best friend oh really that's because i've been meaning to reach out to him for ages i have corresponded with him on linkedin yeah and then it's just trying to get the stop the eyes cross the ties he also lives in wales um yeah so i took a photo of co-founder of mash gang uh alex love day at a beer festival holding a can of mash gang stoop and a can of liquid death and like it was like all spraying out the top of the cans like he was like squeezing the cans and they were both going crazy and we were kind of referencing that we wanted something with that like energy with rich and i don't know where it came from i don't know if i said it or he said it but he was like he just chucked it and i was like okay do that again but like do a bigger face i think that's all i said and that's how we got the photo of him like with the mojo shot in the air and his mouth is open yeah but what i'm learning from you is it's like you you get that one moment because you've done the 10 000 hours and you've taken all the pictures of the weird hands and the crabs and all that shit so when when it when it's time to strike it's like it's like i mean we're recording this off the euros well during the euros i'm gonna go and watch the game after this but do you like football i am watching it you're kind of watching yeah i haven't i don't like i don't know i don't know anything but I am not gonna watch it.

52:27We're shit at penalties but we absolutely fucking nailed the penalty round last in the quarter finals. Yeah. And all of them were so confident. One bloke rocked up and just didn't even look at the ball. That's the sort of confidence he had. Ivan Toney just literally looked say you're the goalkeeper looked him straight in the eye and just like hoofed it like that. And it went straight into the back of the net. And at the end they're like yeah we've done so many reps. Yeah. And I suppose that picture of of um that serendipitous moment of straker or serendipitous moment of um rich is like well you've done the reps it's like that's you taking the penalty it's like bang i know what i'm doing and i think it's reassuring for me because it's like if i just keep doing the fucking reps of this when it gets to a big podcast or someone really scary it's like i know what i'm doing yeah and i think um yeah i'm asking all these questions selfishly because i think there's a lot of parallels the um so then talk to me about so you said you're freaking out in london you didn't find your feet until you were in year three of uni with her nina and what is it and nina i'm so bad at pronouncing things honestly i don't know what's wrong with me and um so so so she sort of shows you how to do the picture stuff photography yeah and then uh and then how did you end up in we work as a receptionist because like where how did the dreams begin to kind of melt slightly and how did you re-galvanize them yeah so i got to third year of uni i i mean i'd been working in retail throughout the whole thing right retail weekends you know how it goes whistles oh yeah fancy my mom's like 40 year olds yeah well my mom's a bit older than that yeah yeah yeah that gaff I know the gaff like 40 plus yeah yeah some some dress from whistles some people younger than that like it so I don't want to offend anyone but it's you know that was a general demographic I was working there and third year came about I was like found my feet a little bit more but I was very insecure you know I wasn't I I don't think I'd ever been like that insecure in my work in my life like in myself in my work in like everything I was also like 19 20 year old girl like shit's hard like shit is difficult like you've got all sorts of things that people are telling you and like what you should look like and what you should be doing and I've wanted to be really successful but like the more you like put pressure on yourself about not doing that like I think the harder it is like to figure out a way to do it yeah so yeah I wanted to be an overachiever but I absolutely was not overachieving like I was underachieving well I say that I maybe I wasn't but like I wasn't doing what I wanted to do like third year came and went whatever uni's over I need a job I got a first by the way just want to flex that I got a first happy day yeah I really wanted that I would have like been so fucking insufferable if I didn't get that I had the other fate I was like I was so basically I was like I'm getting first there's no two ways about it and there was this bloke I did all my uni with like not yeah we basically went around he was like way cleverer than me and um I was like I'm gonna get first I don't know why I had it in my head that I was like same thing insecure dropped out of born with uni went to Manchester yeah I was like fuck you lot I'm getting a first obviously a bit natural thick so I had to work extra hard.

56:05Anyway, so I was delivering cheese around London. Okay. Yeah, when we were waiting for the university results and I was like in this fucking van like in Bermondsey and my mate Ted texts me and he goes, yeah, I got first. And I was like, I was like, oh mate, do you mind just checking what I got because I was in the van. He goes, mate, sorry, it's a 2-1. I was like, fucking hell. Lit up a ciggy. I was like, for fuck's sake. but yeah so i know i've uh but anyway so you got your first um yeah which yeah flex that first all day long bro and yeah so then what then i was out in the open you know i was out in the world and i was like shit what do i do like i loved photography right but i kind of didn't love it as much anymore I still liked it but uni how did you how did it wane how did your passion wane I don't like being told what to do and I just spent like three years being told what to do at uni like what you should take pictures of like no you have to do it this way like this is the brief and I would fucking hate the brief and that was that and I was like oh well if this is what it's gonna be like if this is actually what it's gonna be like I can't do that and I know that like a lot of really successful commercial photographers are happy to do that like they're not as stubborn as me they don't have a fucking mental block they're not like brain damaged or whatever is my problem like I just can't fucking take instruction so I was like unfortunately that's that are not going to work.

57:45I'm not going to be able to do it. But I was still like, ooh, what else am I going to do? So I was like, okay, well, maybe what I need to do is get a job in an in-house creative team. Even though I knew I wouldn't enjoy that because I'd done an internship at Mulberry in my third year and I hated it. And it was like Devil Wears Prada. What do you mean Devil Wears Prada? Well, have you seen the movie? No. well then the reference isn't for you everyone else will get it yeah for listeners what so when you say what was what was so heinous about it um i mean i was an unpaid intern doing 40 hours a week also doing my uni work also doing my whistles job my retail job so that was probably the main issue right the second issue was that everyone was kind of mean like everyone was kind of mean and not very nice um I just didn't like the vibes I didn't like the I didn't like the industry very much but it I was like maybe it's just that place maybe it's just that place so I was like left uni I applied for about I genuinely applied for about 100 jobs um in photography and in studios in in in-house teams on with fashion brands big small whatever I applied for everything on LinkedIn on Indeed anything I could find I scoured websites for like jobs I was pretty shit at applying I wasn't very good at knowing what to write I'd never didn't really know how to get a job I'd only ever worked in retail so I didn't really know what to do there like my nothing on my course ever taught you how to like get a job really even though they said it was an industry focused course it was really taught you how to be good at the job when you were doing it didn't teach you how to get the job um so I I didn't hear back from any of them and this was within like I guess like a four five month period so I graduated in the summer and then like December came around and I was like I'm still working in retail full-time now like that's all I do and all I do is work in work there and then go to the pub like I'm a geezer like what am I doing like why am I like why am I just going and drinking seven pints every night like it was it was fun but like I was like wait a minute like I'm not doing shit with my life this carried on for years like I didn't know I just had no fucking clue what to do like I I anytime I saw a job that looked good I would apply for it I wouldn't hear back eventually I heard back from one it was like my dream job I really really wanted it I got an interview I got a second interview the night before my second interview I was living on Whitechapel Road at the time it's a very very loud place to live on the junction by the hospital and the pub and I got like two hours of sleep the night before because there was like car alarms and ambulances and all sorts of bullshit going on and I just absolutely like it went so bad like the interview went terrible and I went so who was it with and what went so bad about it it was with whistles the the place I had been working with I actually had a different job by this point I was working as a receptionist at co-working space uncommon not we work maybe I shouldn't have said that because I might want to bullshit on them oh well I don't care um nothing they haven't heard um yeah it was with whistles and it was for a creative position on the on like the photo team so they had a really small team I think they had like two or three people on this team and one of them was like getting a promotion or leaving or something so they were hiring someone to fill their place and it would be like the assistant that helps just organize everything and get everything going and whatever like pretty entry-level role they'd probably literally pay me like 22k or something ridiculous but at the time I was like whoa that sounds great I'd never been paid anything more than that so I was like cool um and yeah I didn't get it and it really did want over on me like I was just I just lost all hope in the world like so what how did it what how did you what describe the feeling of losing hope I was just like what like you just feel like shit like you just feel like nothing like you're just like I wasn't thinking about photography I wasn't thinking about anything like I was just like I have no idea what to do like I have no idea what I'm good at like I don't feel like I'm good at anything like this this feeling lasted for like two years yeah I just didn't really know what to do with my life for like two years i was working at this co-working space for about two years so this was between 2020 and 2022 um well that was a barrel of laughs with fucking covid yeah i have that that would be a whole different fucking story yeah about that because they fucking fucked me over big time but i made it through how did they fight you over they didn't pay me furlough after after they just hired me so I'd quit to my other job yeah I was due furlough and they were like you just joined slightly too late to qualify for furlough but like you can't work but also like don't quit and I was like well no like that's not um that's not gonna work out for us so eventually I managed to get them to pay me that was a whole fucking thing that was a whole thing but yeah I was working is co-working space and this is where it gets interesting.

1:03:34It finally gets interesting after I've been talking like four hours. Yeah, co-working space. There's a lot of founders there, right? There's a lot of people that are owning their own business at a co-working space and I was chatting with all of them. I was, you know, making friends with them. I was having bands with them. I hated the job but it was quite fun to meet people that were interesting and people that actually liked what they were doing which I hadn't really seen before you know I hadn't seen that many people that were working and enjoying it you know it's a pretty common theme for everyone I knew to hate that job and then I met these people that didn't hate it and I was like okay so they're either lying or they know something that I don't I need to get to the bottom of it so I just started asking them questions and just started like picking their brain a little bit kind of about knowing it and I was like okay maybe I want to start my own business yeah unrelated to photography at this point photography wasn't even a thought in the back of my head I was like I so turned against it after getting rejected from that job I was like okay well I'm shit and you know photography is just not something I'm ever gonna do I was a little bit bitter um so yeah I was like okay well I'll start a business I'll I'll I'll do something incredible you know I was like reading biographies about Steve Jobs and shit and I was like well I'll what was something what did you what were some of the ideas was it to go into fashion or what was the fuck knows man there was no like it was you there was you just kind of There were so many that most of them I can't remember.

1:05:24Then I had one ridiculous idea that I was going to do with my friend who worked at the co-working space. Well, one of the members of the co-working space I'd become friends with. We were going to, he already had a recruitment business. And he was like, I actually really do want to start a second business. He would have been a really good person to go into business with because he knows what he's doing. And we were going to start some kind of like, because I hated my job so much. and I always hated like HR and I always thought like company benefits were really shit we were going to do something in that sort of world we were going to you know make employees lives like not quite so shit so kind of like a rewards program very good I didn't do that because I don't I have no fucking interest in it but at the time I was like anything to get me out of this like this sounds cool and I'll like whoo like how exciting no didn't happen um for one reason or another and so yeah like it just all kind of built up in the backgrounds and I was hanging out with people that were founders I was spending honestly most of my time around these people in work and out of work as well so when you're surrounding yourself with people like that you become like it right like what is it you're the average of the five people you spend the most time around fucking marcus aurelius or someone said it i know exactly what you're saying one of the one of the great philosophers yeah no i i agree with that and it's so it's interesting obviously again i spend a lot of time with founders um yeah fucking loads of time i speak to them all the time what do you think if you could thread the needle through like founders as kind of a breed in of themselves and i i don't know the answer to this i'm just teasing it out it's like what do you think what's so unique about them if you could pinpoint it to something i don't want to say something mean go for it say what you want yeah i like people who say what they want to say you have to have a lot of self-belief that's not mean that's the truth though and I think I think you you don't go down that path unless you have something that you think is that has worth and you believe in enough to actually do it because it's not easy for most people for most people it's a lot harder to start a business than it is to have a nine-to-five job and I think that was the main threat that I saw through everyone at this obviously there was a few of them that were just there because like whatever like it was easy and they had a lot of money and they were just like doing it because that was what they could do and they didn't have to work a job but for most people and for all people I really liked spending a lot of time with they all had a lot of self-belief and they all knew that they could do it and that's the reason they were doing it and I was like oh I don't really have that um I think you need this what from people I've spoken to is I interviewed a guy so you need self-belief and you almost need some sort of like bitterness or setback I had that a lot people just saying you're not good enough I'm actually fucking weirdly addicted to people saying you can't do that like and I'm like okay mon son let's go yeah um you had you said I had bitterness towards whistles yeah my voice I had bitterness but all this bitterness to not being as good as Hina whatever her name is oh I'm not bitter with no but no sorry no but like as in I'm not saying bitterness but like there's always this that's not bitterness that's that I'm not good enough yeah and I always think founders and it's different levels for each person but they often and it's not this is this is a blanket statement so I'm I'm being um I'm generalizing massively here but you have a huge amount of self-belief and a huge amount or a healthy amount of someone told me at one point i wasn't good enough and a guy interviewed this guy called charlie mcveigh who did he built like like eight or nine pubs and then sold it to brew dog really interesting guy and he says it's the messiah versus imposter complex and i've got that so one minute i'm like i can literally go and i can walk through that wall piece of piss the next minute i'm like who am i to be doing this yeah this is all going to peak tong this is and i found like it feels like you've got elements of those but it feels like you were saying that you had didn't have self-belief you're in this co-working space and then suddenly you're with these five founders average of marcus rellius quite whatever that they give you that self-belief and then so how did that begin to sort of change because it feels like now you've built this that what you're doing now so the the self-belief from those founders rubbed off in you yeah right yeah and then I think what really pushed me to the next thing was uh some bitterness actually at uh ex-boyfriend I guess a guy I was seeing shall we say and um I don't know what like he just pissed me off so much and I just wanted to like be better than him how did he piss you off because he was an idiot i won't go into details of that but yeah he was a bad person i'm happy to say that on air no i don't think anyone knows who he is yeah don't worry we'll keep that off yeah he was a bad person but like yeah i um i just wanted to prove myself i guess and and become

1:11:10better let's not have any of that in because I seriously can't sound like that but it is true but basically one thing led to another and I quit my job and moved to New York right for three months because I wanted to get out of London I wanted to get out of where I was I wanted a challenge I wanted to be somewhere new I had spent the last six months reading self-development books. What an interesting thing to do. What were you reading? All of them. All of them. What wasn't I reading? What was I reading? That's a great question. I was reading books about like emotional intelligence. I was reading like, God, name a self-development book.

1:12:00I can't think of any. But like all the big ones. yeah there's one i read which is tony robbins who's the like he's the guy's like let's let's get guys let's fucking smile and i can't go near tony robbins i mean too much yeah yeah he's like awaken the giant within brother no not brother awaken the giant within and i was like i was like i was probably 19 when i was in this i was like wake in the giant within wake up you little fucker but the um that's probably the only one yeah i mean i think that's a lot of waffle that bollocks like I think the way to get self-development is to actually do shit you can't read a book personally that's what I think I think you get self-development from autobiographies yes because then you're like you know and obviously Tony Robbins is he's done a lot of interesting things but a lot of them are peddling the same kind of whiffy nonsense whereas okay I want to learn how Steve Jobs got through you know his computer crashing for example he went for a bit more than that actually i'm joking no no yeah yeah he rebooted it he rebooted it but uh yeah that's so you're reading all these books yeah fuck off to new york for me the books were very very important because i was actually such an idiot like i can't stress how stupid i was i can't stress how how like underdeveloped and fucking smooth my brain was i was smooth brained as shit like I was very reactive I wasn't good at handling my emotions I was not good at like just staying calm and like not blowing everything out of proportion so I needed books to tell me like okay don't don't be a fucking idiot right now like it's okay like just don't don't get angry because someone said this to you and like just because things aren't going your way like don't fucking go insane because i actually needed someone to tell me that because it didn't come naturally um so i read you said you were going insane like if things weren't going your way i mean not really that was just me exaggerating i just didn't like it you know yeah that was the bitterness part right yeah so basically what helped was like oh i sound like a fucking bro reading books on stoicism I love stoicism yeah I know and I'm it's just such a bro thing right I don't know what do you mean by bro no I think it's like there's a book called oh my god Handbook of Stoicism great read fucker goes through everything right it does have all the hard work for you it's one book you've got like you've got Seneca Marcus Aurelius God the rest of them have you got that Montague guy Montague yeah he's got some really good quotes but there's a book called um the handbook of stoicism and basically it's all there right chapter one anger the fucker does everything for you yeah chapter two fear does it all for you get that book it will change your life i was basically the book i was reading sounds very similar to that i was reading a guide to the good life um which is basically that by a different author I'm guessing yeah um and it like it absolutely changed my life like I went from feeling like when I say I felt insane I felt helpless I felt like everything in my life was out of my control and then obviously the whole point like the main point that stoicism makes is that there's two things in the world it's things that you can control and things that you can't and the things that you can't control you can't control them so don't pay attention to them and then just focus on the things that you can control and be very intentional about it and that's how I managed to slowly start making actual decisions myself rather than just being swept along by whatever happened to me I listened to I don't know where the podcast was the other day but the guy said um kind of a maxim is to accept you control nothing but you influence everything and I yeah I mean I'm gonna have to get that tattooed on there but like I was like I was like yeah yeah yeah like feng shui baby but the uh that that I think that's the thing so so you you accept that you can't control so much but then you have the agency yeah and the cojones to say fuck it I can influence this I can influence what I'm trying to do so you go to New York and And yeah, that place is wild.

1:16:26Like what happens there? Not much. So I went to New York. Why? Fuck knows. I just wanted to do something. I was unemployed. Like I didn't have a job. I started a podcast like a week before I went or something called I Wish I Was You, which I don't do anymore. I did it for about eight months. And it was basically a guise to be able to speak to people that had their shit together so that I could potentially, you know, climb out of the little hell hole that I was living in of not knowing what to do with my life. Like it was really all consuming. Like it was really, it was really scary for me at the time because I was 24 and I was like, obviously as most 24 year olds think, I was like, God, I'm getting old.

1:17:11Yeah, which is crazy. Like I'm, I'm really getting on. Like I was meant to be like a millionaire by now. What's happening? Like, like I need to really, really get my ass in gear right now. So started speaking to people on that. Whoever I could find, really, whoever I thought looked cool. Most of them were founders of businesses. Some of them weren't, but most of them were all sorts of different businesses, but mainly creative businesses, because obviously that's just naturally where my interests have always lie. So I was doing that in New York. And I also, this is around the time I started posting on LinkedIn.

1:17:49What a what a time to be alive. And I kind of just did a LinkedIn post, like, hi, guys, I just quit my job. And I'm going to New York. And I don't have any money now. So like, if anyone has any odd jobs, you want me to do like, this is what I can do. I can like help you produce your podcast, or I could like do some copywriting for you, maybe. Actually, I didn't even say about copywriting because I didn't even know what that was but I ended up doing some copywriting from that post because apparently the writing was good which it wasn't but yeah so I think two people reached out to me someone was like can you produce my podcast and one person was like can you do some copywriting um so throughout the summer I did those two things I think I made like 500 quid a month luckily I was staying with a friend for free in New York and all I had to pay for was food and I'd saved up a little bit over the last few years somehow.

1:18:51So I think I had like£3 ,000 in my bank account. Which is New York's fucking... I didn't do anything. No, I didn't do anything. I didn't go out for dinner. I didn't have any friends there apart from the one I was staying with and she was unwell most of the summer. Sounds like a great trip. Do you know what? As I said, I'm introverted. I like being by myself and I really needed a lot of time by myself as well because I needed to get comfortable with it and I liked being by myself but I also struggled with feeling lonely so I kind of wanted to force myself to just kind of like go the girl version of like monk mode and just like not and just like see what I like doing and what what I what happens to me when I'm not seeing other people you know like when I'm not influenced by anyone else how does my brain work like what am I doing like I felt like I was always being swayed by other people and I've always been influenced by other people so a really high degree and I just wanted to see what it's like when it's just me so I spent most of the summer just walking around Manhattan and writing really shitty poetry in a little book and reading and listening to music and that's it and that's all I really did for like two months and I did a little bit of copywriting and bullshit like that and so you go into girl monk mode yeah in Manhattan yeah you're walking around Manhattan you said you needed time alone you needed to understand how you could be on your own yeah what a wanker no not at all you need to stop being so harsh on yourself fuck me Jesus Christ I thought I was bad I can hear it your thing i'm like you know i was like that fucking hell um what in that sort of solidaritary period what how what changed when you kind of came out of the manhattan cocoon i was going to say how did you blossom into a butterfly but thanks um do you know what i came home and i was like nothing's happened you know at a time i felt absolutely nothing's happened and by this point i had no money i was you know it was like the last day of my trip and i was like i have nowhere to live in london i had to get on spare room and be like i need i need a flat like i need a flat i managed to get a flat living with some like fucking like city warrior lad in fulham for like 800 i used to live in fulham where about some near Putney Bridge yeah I was on Gerond Road I can't remember where I was Burlington place sounds fancy it was not actually very it was obviously fancy it was Fulham but you know what I mean it wasn't like Fulham I find Fulham such a dead place it was not it was the worst place I've ever lived anyway I managed to get that place I moved in from Heathrow Airport with my suitcase from New York and I was like cool I live here now like this is my home I'd never met this man didn't you say on LinkedIn one of the one of the blokes living there had like a gap problem or something like that that was probably just me being quite mean okay well he did a lot of like parties obviously he was on drugs so he was clearly taking I would say this is the kind of Wall for Wall Street bloke or wannabe he would love that yeah yeah I don't think he's quite on that route yeah yeah I'd say wannabe yeah yeah yeah I mean I saw a bloke when I was walking in here today yeah i came out of bank station and he had um he literally walked across like he had his suit on he had it was great it was fucking raining yeah he had his sunglasses on my eyes like that i was like literally looking at him like this is a joke i was like this is actually real do you know what i was like i was like it's like you've oh it's making me like physically cringe yeah oh my god i was like i was literally laughing i was like what the actual fuck it was like yeah this sonny's on he's like yeah i'm going to salad project um yes i know the type but um yeah so you're living with this bloke in fulham yeah just hating my life right now yeah potentially one of the the lowest moments of my life i keep saying that but like it got quite bad before it got good that always does yeah like shit got pretty real at this point because i uh had no money you know I had no money I hadn't earned any real money since like June which was at the last month at my job and I was earning 24k then so even that like you don't get very fucking much from it um so yeah I'd been in New York obviously I'd been living pretty on on a very tight budget but you still have to buy shit like you still do have to spend some money so I had like a grand to my name my rent was 800 quid luckily bills were included it didn't take long for me to actually have no money like at all and I was like right I need to fucking figure this out and it's not even a joke now like i don't have any money what year was this 2022 autumn recently then yeah yeah yeah yeah okay so then what do you do to uh like yeah climb out of i think you said hell hole earlier like how do you climb out the hell hole and how do you climb out the hell hole really really good question i didn't know at the time it just kind of happened i was just forced i was literally just forced to and I was like I just sat down I spoke to some people about it I was like I just don't know what to do I just don't know what to do and they were like you need to think about what you're good at and what you love doing and what you can make money from so I guess like ikigai if you want to go I was literally about to say that yeah I don't want to fucking chat about that sorry no offense everyone yeah yeah my mates my mates just reading it and he uh got a fucking tofu ramen from wag one was the other night i was like leave it out mate come on read that it could go i got book yeah i never really like he's doing cold crunches at the david lloyd i was like i will say like looking back that's what i that's what there's a truism in that and you are doing that though but i didn't really i i didn't sit and read a book about it i didn't need to like really think about what i was doing about it i just thought all right what am i good at all my blah blah and i asked my mates i was like what am i good at and they're like oh you're really good at doing your podcast like blah blah blah and I was like okay cool why didn't you want to pursue the podcast what was the because I remember you said like what how I didn't like it enough really yeah I didn't enjoy doing it what did you like do you enjoy doing about it I didn't hate doing it yeah it just didn't like set my soul on fire you know and that's what I want to be doing with my life I cannot stand doing things that do not bring me like an immense passionate joy like I need that I need that in everything I do I need that every single day otherwise I am depressed I'm the same yeah I'm the same but that's what I'm asking to me this like this sets my soul obviously there's a lot of a lot of fucking the editing is long as fuck but like well I don't really edit much but like all the whiffy shit around the other side that is long but this bit I really this sets my soul on fire the conversation the meeting people so I don't yeah what I'm trying to understand is so you just didn't enjoy that as much It wasn't for me.

1:26:33Interesting. It just wasn't for me. Yeah. So I was asking all my friends and family, what am I good at? What am I good at? No one said photography. That's crazy. No one said it. And I was like, the way my brain works is that if I've been told to do something, I'll do the opposite. Or if I haven't been, like if someone's, do you know what I mean? I'm just a pain in the ass basically. So I was like, all right, well, I guess I'm going to do photography then. Seeing as no one thinks I'm any fucking good at it. yeah here's your point again right like everyone thinks I'm shit I need to fucking prove them wrong and then they were like oh my god you can't do that like how are you gonna do that like you're gonna you're already broke as shit well they didn't actually know that at the time because obviously I'm not gonna tell anyone because I've got big pride and it would hurt me a lot obviously eventually I'd tell them I was broke because I couldn't fucking go out and do anything with my friends because I had no money but yeah I was like okay got on LinkedIn hi guys like I um I'm a photographer now here's like a picture that I took let me know if you want me to take some photos of you and your company for free I just need to like get some experience right now and I need to get like a portfolio together obviously I had a lot of experience but this is different I need to make a living out of it now so I was broke and I was working for free and I see a lot of people shitting on working for free and saying that you should never do it I couldn't I couldn't agree less I think if I hadn't done a shoot for free um I would not have got anywhere like I would not have managed to get my first clients that basically paid my rent most months there was a couple of months where i skipped it fuck it declan came for me eventually

1:28:28so so you're fueled by passion at this point you're only as you said you feel a bit depressed if you're not doing what's i was fueled by an absolute dire need yeah to do something and an absolute refusal to do something that i didn't want to do yeah that's exactly that's exactly the same as me that's and actually what you the bit you said about you get depressed doing things if it's not if it don't like it's it's so interesting because it's like so today like there's some days where you can just work and like it just yeah i'm like today will be one of those days where it's like hours and hours and hours without even realizing it but but then like if i'm doing something menial i'm just like i go i go literally nuts i'm like fucking fuck this like oh my god but it's just interesting how you yeah and then so you've you've doubted yourself a lot like way too much because you're absolutely smashing it in my opinion are you better have you got a better relationship with yourself now or are you still fueled by some bitterness some passion i'd say it's easier now because i'm more financially stable that's why it's easier yeah but I still I'd be lying if I was like oh I think I'm doing good I don't think I'm doing good I think I'm nowhere near where I want to be where do you want to be I don't know but not where I am now that's so interesting how did you find pricing yourself with the imposter syndrome again I've got that issue as well so and also that i like people pleasing so i'm like i want everyone to be happy you know so it's like it's um whereas now i'm trying to be a bit more bolshy with it and be like trying to see myself as separate from it yeah pricing was something that i struggled with a lot for the first eight months yeah i think i was charging two quid and i'm like a hundred pounds or something for a shoot which was that's the full shebang yeah yeah that was like editing you got loads of photos for it everyone my clients now are going to be like fuck where was I then like at least you've got to put you've got to charge what you're worth that's that that's really what I was charging and in order to make well just think about how many people I would need to be taking photos of to even make like a grand a month like that was a lot of work and it just wasn't promoting quality right if something's that cheap what like why would you expect it to be good like that's way too cheap for any sort of quality for it so I spoke to a few friends that I'd made along the way through like LinkedIn and stuff and through posting like obviously I was charging not a lot so I wasn't making much money but I was actually shooting relatively often so it's I was working I just could never make enough money because I wasn't charging enough yeah yeah no matter how much I did it like I'd have to be working 24 hours a day to make enough money to like for it to be you know properly a thing a thing yeah so I spoke to a few friends I spoke to a good man you will know of called Hugh Thomas you know Hugh yeah yeah I'm having a massive brain bank.

1:32:01He did ugly drinks and now he does top of the morning coffee. Yes, yes, yes. Sorry. And he also does Giants Coffee and he's about to launch a new one as well. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Shout out Hugh. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, that's not. Sorry, I get this thing about now, about four, where I just... Coffee crash. Yeah, coffee crash. My brain's going into meltdown. Yeah, anyway, yeah. and Hugh was basically like you need to put your work into packages like you need to package up what you're doing into like two or three packages that founders can look at and go I want that one obviously he's a founder I want that one I want that one little Britain exactly as most founders you know that's what they're all like anyway and I'm joking yeah that's yeah go on yeah and he was like he's a founder he knows what how it works like he knows what what their brains are like i what i didn't i'd spent a lot of time around them but i hadn't been one yet really so like i was like okay yeah you're talking sense and he was like also your prices are just insane like insanely cheap insanely low like you should he said i should like triple them he was like you should be charging so much more than that and i was like i absolutely cannot like i am in so I am in such a desperate need for money like I can't risk it being too high and not making any like at this time Declan had come I just moved out of Declan's house thank god I moved into a new flat and Declan came chasing me for all the rent I'd missed so I just saved up a little bit of money and I had to give it all back to Declan so we're about one year ago from today and I probably had about 15 pounds to my name yeah I've really been I've really been through it man like recently um but yeah Hugh was like fucking put your prices up but when you speak to people that have money and they say shit like that you're like okay that's so easy for you to say but like why should I believe you like you can you even remember what it's like to have like I feel like there's a bit of guilt when you're trying to monetize your passion yeah that's what I've had and now I'm trying to sort of see it as Hungary is a media company yeah and so you're just and I don't know about I don't know I'm not again I'm asking this selfishly it's like almost like well it's just tricky because your name's like on the front door quite literally um but I think that having that separation from you the work is what you're paying for and not like yeah i don't know if i don't know if that's helped being the ceo of your own work you know ryan holiday yeah stoic geezer he's got a great book called um perennial seller oh i haven't heard i haven't read that one you need to read that i've read a lot of his other ones yeah perennial seller is like a random book he wrote about like what makes great art and like ryan holiday used to work at american apparel yeah he was the martin's yeah yes he's he i didn't even know it he was my icon yeah yeah he's a g absolute g and he um he was saying that uh yeah there's a part in that book that he says like be the ceo of your own work and like so so you're not like because i always always felt like i'm my passion my passion oh i can't charge much for my passion but it's actually no it's the value you're giving i don't know i don't know how you've kind of worked with that i don't know if i had that problem to be completely honest but I definitely had a problem about like not thinking it was good enough to charge a lot of money for it and also just having absolutely no idea what was normal to charge for it because for some reason I had an absolute aversion to looking at what other people were doing like in the first year of doing this I didn't look at any other photographer's work because I was so prone to comparing myself to it in a really negative way so I just didn't look at so I just built everything how I thought it would be good and just hoped it worked yeah and actually I think it was an all right way of doing it because now I don't think most of the time according to my clients that I've worked with I don't get compared to other people now you know like it when I ask I usually don't hear like oh we were weighing you up against this photographer you've got this this thing is what I said at the beginning is have your own style and I like that's what I'm trying to that's what I'm trying to learn from you and I am learning from you is this is this like have you learned anything yeah no no I'm loving this honestly it's um yeah i think i mean comparisons the thief of joy is another i mean i should just be pulling stoic quotes up my ass today but um it is yeah i don't know which one said it there's so many fucking stoics but but it's really interesting how yeah you weren't comparing yourself to others that forged your own style but then when it came to monetizing that style you didn't have a benchmark and be like well hang on how am I pricing yourself yes it's an interesting kind of paradox yeah so I just had to ask like Hugh and Jordan from MASH gang who became my mentor like a little bit after this but we were chatting as friends because he was one of my first clients um and yeah just came to a conclusion on what I should do about it and then I started charging 300 quid or something or like no maybe 200 quid or something but it was like and this is how many photos you get for that rather than it being like I don't know like oh you can have an extra few or whatever like no like you get this many pictures you get three images um it's 250 quid or whatever I put I can't remember um or you can do this one which is this many images and this much money or you can do this one which is this many images and this much money like and then that as soon as I did that as soon as I did it I immediately got busy I and I think that was a combination of that and also the fact that I'd been posting my work really regularly on LinkedIn like those two things together from like this time last year it's like a switch just flipped like and it was steady and it has been like climbing since and it's just like i was fucking mind blown like being from like having like 15 quid to all of a sudden you're really busy and like you make a few grand you're like what sheesh baby yeah because like literally at that time any amount of money is like really really exciting yeah especially when you're doing anything yeah that's the biggest buzz in the world yeah it's like it's fucking addictive like i love it but the um so then how long does it take you to like so you get those pictures so let's use our boy louis and ham hamers i don't know why i call him hamers james he does look a bit like the geezer from um the mummy you know the mummy we can't bully james because i bullied james throughout that whole shoot and we're like not friends anymore No, he looks like the guy out of Tarzan.

1:39:19Whatever his name is, he's joking. But those pictures, like what's the process for that? Other than, you know, Louis making sure he's got his barnet sorted and he's got his wife beater for the Mare Street Market. What do you mean what's the process? So like how long does it take? So for example, people ask, and I think you put a post out about it the other day, which was like people say, oh, is this your real job? Like, is this all you do for a living? Or is this your real job? I think people with this just think, oh, it's rock up. Have the conversation. I'm just walking. I'm talking to people all fucking day.

1:39:52It's not that at all. No, you've got. And it's like people must think, oh, you know, going to Mare Street Market, having a jolly blah, blah, blah, taking the pictures. Like, what's the work people don't see? Do you know what I'm trying to get to? Oh, man, I wish I could tell you there was a lot of it. I'm not sure there is. Like, I'll be real with you. So you're just taking pictures all day, pretty much? yeah I take pictures and I edit them and that's it and I really like doing both of those things on Mondays I take calls with potential clients yeah convert most of them you know and I mean I don't do any outbound stuff like I only do inbound so just because my work is very particular it's very specific I've never done any outreach like I hate doing it I don't like it and I don't I hate when people do it to me, to be quite honest.