In short
Liz Seabrook discusses matcha fatigue, style confidence in East London, cycling near-miss anger, and creative career strategy. She also shares how she creates “being seen” through photography, plus advice on side hustles, creative skills, and community workspaces.
Guest background
Liz Seabrook is a people-centric photographer based in East London. She works from a shared “fieldwork facility” studio with multiple creatives (including a director of photography, menu/food concept designer, and a stylist-influencer brand team).
Key claims
Side hustles can slow creative momentum; better to save cash and go full-time when ready. Creative success depends on patience and iterative testing (like graphic designers). Her work’s purpose is to make subjects feel safe and truly seen.
Notable examples
Matcha as an overhyped trend; “queer country” drag/country night outfits; near-van bike incident; Guardian photographer Jane Bowne’s minimal lighting approach; legacy of a supportive yoga teacher friend.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Chapters
Tap a time to open that second in VOHorror Films and Personal Stories
0:45 to 3:00
The hosts discuss their aversion to horror films and share personal anecdotes about scary experiences.
“And when I get angry, I go in the poshest accent and I don't swear.”
Cycling and Confrontation
3:00 to 5:00
A conversation about cycling incidents, aggression, and reactions to dangerous situations.
Expressing Anger on the Road
5:00 to 8:00
Exploring how anger manifests during cycling incidents and the different ways people react.
Fashion Trends and Self-Expression
8:00 to 11:30
Discussion on current fashion trends, personal style, and the freedom of expression in East London.
Work-Life Balance and Home Environment
11:30 to 14:00
Talking about the importance of personal space and the impact of solitude on productivity.
“Yeah, I want to say that was maybe diesel.”
Navigating Creative Space
14:00 to 14:32
Learn how to balance personal space with creative collaboration.
Advice Against Side Hustles
14:32 to 16:30
Understand why full commitment is essential for success in the creative industry.
“And sometimes I'll just do like a little dance around the house when he's gone.”
The Importance of Community
16:30 to 18:59
Explore the benefits of working in a creative community and its impact on growth.
“Now, if you could skill one steal, which is what I was about to say, if you could steal one skill from another creative discipline overnight, what would it be?”
The Role of a Director of Photography
18:59 to 21:05
Gain insights into the responsibilities and importance of a DOP in creative projects.
“and a florist called La Trulapana, something like that.”
Legacy and Being Seen
21:05 to 24:33
Reflect on the importance of legacy and creating safe spaces for individuals to be seen.
“I'd love to go to one of those shoot days, you know, and see what they get up to.”
Show all 11 chapters
The Art of Intimacy in Photography
24:33 to 27:05
Discover the intimate nature of photography and the empathetic skills it requires.
“Yeah we want to be remembered as kind and generous.”
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:03Liz Seabrook:We are back with the wonderful, the delightful, the nuanced Liz Seabrook. Do my best. We are. We're having a nice time, aren't we? We're having a nice catch up and you very, very patiently have allowed me to record this again because somebody didn't have their correct microphone on and that someone was me.
0:28The Creative Boom Podcast Host:It wasn't me. it wasn't me that's a shaggy song if i ever heard one yes it is yeah we we had a nice nice old chat
0:37Liz Seabrook:we were talking about all sorts of stuff botox and fillers and faces that don't look anything older than 35 nothing wrong with that you know if that's if that's your bag then brilliant then go full demi moore go full i mean she does like yeah i mean did you see that amazing film the substance
0:59The Creative Boom Podcast Host:no I refuse to watch anything horror or horror adjacent oh why I'm interested in this why because I don't like horror films but I watched it because my nervous system is already frazzled enough without adding to that load uh the last thing I saw was hereditary which I got tricked into seeing because I did I kind of tricked myself into seeing it because it had tony collette in it and i love tony collette i love tony collette and i was like if tony collette's in it it must be good and um we saw it at cinema in islington and i came out and a van was on my bike and a van came within like a couple of inches of my handlebars and i sprinted it down for like the length of upper street and caught up with it at the end when it was at the lights and just sat there like what do I do now so yeah it just um it just puts me way like horror films just put me way too into my fight and flight for like anything good to come of it I'm chuckling
2:03Liz Seabrook:and not at your horrible dilemma but I did something similar some stupid van nearly ran me off the road when I was on my road bike once and I chased him down but I actually when I got caught up with him I went on the inside of him which was very naughty because he was about to turn left and I sort of twatted the van really and then wobbled, wobbled past while shouting at him. And when I get angry, I go in the poshest accent and I don't swear. I don't, I just go, how dare you? It'll serve you right. And then cycled off.
2:41The Creative Boom Podcast Host:I can firmly say that I go the opposite way and become an extremely obnoxious like Cockney
2:46Liz Seabrook:urchin i love that we couldn't we can i can be the posh one you can be the kind of you know what is
2:53The Creative Boom Podcast Host:it go on my son yeah well yeah slightly stronger language than that but i just always think about one of my friends um a car full of like kids drove past him when he was on his bike i mean i say kids say probably like 17 18 scary spat in his face when he was on his bike and he is massive like he is not to be trifled with and uh at the next set of lights he got off his bike and just lobbed his bike at their car oh gosh so that's all i'm always slightly wishing that i could be that
3:33Liz Seabrook:ferocious but i'm just not cycling's one of those weird things isn't it you have to remind yourself you don't know who these people are you don't know what they're capable of you're very mortal on a bike yeah and you've got to i've got to remind myself casey you're a you're a woman you've got no muscles you might be six foot but you if somebody came at you you wouldn't know what to do you do have a bike to wield though that's true yeah but i like my bike i don't want waste it it was a gift to hand me down from my late father-in-law so i don't want to like
4:10The Creative Boom Podcast Host:waste it on well if it's carbon you probably shouldn't no it's a pinarello
4:16Liz Seabrook:no although my brother keeps telling me off he's like why like it's a lovely bike but it's a really old bike and don't you know that all of the technology and everything is is just so much better for women now like the seats are better for women and you're like using a uh hardened man's seat that's about 20 years old and out of date compared to what you can get now and i'm like it might be perfect for your sit bones rule number five baby rule number five what's that oh my god i thought you were like totally looking at me then i thought we were having a moment i
4:47The Creative Boom Podcast Host:thought you knew what it was i just thought mambo number five to be honest and it was quite pleased in cycling rule number five is harden the fuck up yeah it's very much a bloke thing toxic masculine
5:01Liz Seabrook:bullshit yeah in hindsight i feel like if i hung around with you a bit more liz i would become a better person maybe just slightly more uh aggressive towards the pink striarchy yeah but um you know i did i did hit the van with my bare knuckles and gave him a good telling off i was not my proudest moment yeah not my proudest moment but also potentially my proudest moment you know i'm not going to take any you know i always like to sort of shout things like you know metal it's getting bonds metal and then like that putting my finger on my template looking at them going think i also um i found as i've got older especially if i'm on my period i'm like get to a junction if it's raining and there's cars i just walk out in front and then mutter under my breath at them like while shaking my head it's raining it's raining you're in a car and i'm walking it's raining i'm going i think that's totally fair i think so i think so right this is the spark this is where we have a little bit of fun me getting over a cold and you i don't know what's your excuse today what i've been grumpy yeah honest i mean if i'm being honest and bringing the mood down uh grief oh no oh god now i feel bad because i feel like i know you a little bit because we've worked together haven't we and we've we've chatted on socials for many years and i'm so sorry for your loss well you know it's not been great but these things happen i did wonder you know you weren't your usual sparky self you want to talk about it or are we moving swiftly on okay all right so we'll have a subdued spark episode i do my best yeah i'll try and i'll be as sparkly as i can we don't have to force ourselves to be anything now you chose these questions last time um so we're going to dive in i wonder if my answers will be different oh yeah that's a good point actually okay so what is a trend you're secretly over but everyone else
7:14The Creative Boom Podcast Host:seems to love matcha matcha matcha what the green tea everyone is like you can't you can't look left without seeing a matcha here all right everyone's got a matcha everywhere oh it's it's everywhere and they're just i mean i i just don't know who actually likes it who actually likes matcha there's a difference between liking matcha and liking like strawberry syrup with like a hint of matcha in it and it's all just i just think it's nonsense where do you live i mean not that like not the historic beautiful tea ceremonies of japan and china they are not nonsense or bullshit in the slightest i live in east london oh well there you go then
7:59Liz Seabrook:the epicenter the epicenter the wasp's nest whenever i go down there i'm like i need to improve my wardrobe and live a better life
8:11The Creative Boom Podcast Host:anything so once um i think when i was i'd been in london for like a year maybe maybe not even and i was really figuring out like the fact that anything goes absolutely anything goes you can do whatever you want in east london and people will like barely look twice at you and so i put my ponytail at the front of my head and put it through my cap which I had on backwards and walked around for like an hour went into shops bought some things and no one even like blinked at me and I was like okay this is where we're at anything is possible so when we finally meet in person can I
8:51Liz Seabrook:come down and we'll just both dress up in the craziest shit and just go around Hackney or
8:58The Creative Boom Podcast Host:shortage and we'll just see what happens we will be overshadowed within minutes love it love it i
9:03Liz Seabrook:love sitting in the owl and the pussycat and watching people watching i was there with a friend the other day and we were just i said right we're gonna we're gonna do something completely which i don't normally do but we're gonna assess everybody's outfits and we're gonna be either complimentary or bitchy right that's the brief let's do it so pints in hand we just sat there and we watched and actually i was quite surprised there weren't that many people that stood out and had like really good style but those that stood out definitely were out there and then they
9:34The Creative Boom Podcast Host:they pulled it off i was impressed yeah yeah this is i was talking to a friend the other day because me and my friend had so my friends got really into queer line dancing okay which is amazing i've been with her to that and it's uh so much fun um but we went to there's a thing here called queer country which is spelt with an x right and no o um brilliant and we went to that and there was um like a country band on stage of like performers of various like genders queernesses outfits binaries non-binaries like you know everyone represented and the mc was a drag queen wearing this huge enormous like black tulle dress there was also someone dressed as a like drag queen cockerel um but yeah the like compere wearing this like huge dress which is the kind of thing that like as a like cis het woman i would reserve for like the glitziest of like red carpets and then they're just there wearing it in a brewery in walthamstow on a friday night and just being like it's like it's it's really interesting watching like or kind of observing the the drag scene and this like hyper hyper femininity that exists and is like completely accepted and completely like lived in and embraced and as like a cishet woman being like oh I wonder what that's like yeah and I think they're great because they're super confident and they're into it and you know they they look fab because obviously they're wearing like this incredibly like ostentatious ball gown but um yeah it's just having the like confidence and the like
11:26Liz Seabrook:the vibe to pull it off it must be fun just like playing dress up when we were kids super fun yeah i'm getting into clothes again at the moment and it's just it's great it's it's being creative it's having the confidence to do it it's like oh am i gonna walk out with my balloon pants i had a friend pop around the other night i haven't seen him for ages because he's moved to northern ireland and it took me ages to get down the stairs because i was wearing my parachute pants and they kept getting caught on my my feet and i was like going down the stairs
11:56The Creative Boom Podcast Host:like this and open the door so many times recently that i've nearly fallen over my trousers on chutes they're so dangerous you have to be so careful i know and i'm now devastated that skinny jeans are coming back into fashion after i've taken so long to rehabilitate myself from wearing them
12:12Liz Seabrook:oh come on you don't have to wear skinny jeans don't tell me skinny i've just got into parachute
12:17The Creative Boom Podcast Host:pants i can't go back to skinny jeans this is the problem this is where we're at no they are very
12:23Liz Seabrook:efficient for day-to-day living love them i love them i'm wearing some north face hiking trousers today there's no way i'm going back not no skinny for me no way do you remember that campaign when was it um was it for a kind of denim brand where they like basically spray painted skinny jeans on it.
12:42The Creative Boom Podcast Host:Yes, I do remember that.
12:43Liz Seabrook:That was a long time ago.
12:45The Creative Boom Podcast Host:Yeah, I want to say that was maybe diesel.
12:48Liz Seabrook:Might have been, yeah. Yeah, you could have pretty much in some cases, it could have looked like you were wearing paint and not jeans. The pains that we used to go through to get them on and off.
13:00The Creative Boom Podcast Host:Oh, the jeggings. Oh, no.
13:04Liz Seabrook:Not leggings. I've never worn leggings. No. I prefer yoga pants. well they are leggings still well harim pants so just nice and sort of floaty and baggy i wear them in bed i've got one pair that have got about five holes in them i just don't want to let them go i love them you don't have to i'm not going to um what is a what is the smallest thing that
13:30The Creative Boom Podcast Host:instantly improved your work day adam not being at home oh yes having the house having the flat to myself preferably the dog also not being there just a Monday of like complete just me for the morning potting around doing my life admin doing bits and bobs and then also like just having the space to think about like what my week looks like what I need to get done what I'm gonna do just in peace and quiet oh brain space yeah it's when they turn around when you're expecting them
14:04Liz Seabrook:to go and they say well actually i'm not going to go in again now i'm going to stay at home i'm going to be with you and you're like oh no go away oh we love them but it is wonderful like as soon as they go and he comes back sometimes when he's forgotten something and i'm like at my desk looking at the ceiling like this well you just go i love you but fuck off i need my space i need my quiet Yeah. And sometimes I'll just do like a little dance around the house when he's gone. He doesn't know all this and he would never listen to this podcast. I mean, not that he doesn't love what I'm doing. It's just I think he would hide under the table and cringe if you heard me on the podcast.
14:48Liz Seabrook:You know, poor Tom. And now I'm on YouTube as well.
14:53The Creative Boom Podcast Host:Inescapable.
14:53Liz Seabrook:I know. And it'll pop up now and again and he'll go, there's no way we're watching that. And I'm like, look, it's me.
14:58The Creative Boom Podcast Host:Absolutely.
14:59Liz Seabrook:There's no way. look mom i'm famous i know oh my god my wrinkles mom anyway um what's one piece of advice you'd ban from the creative industry for ever side hustles yes or at least not side hustles full
15:17The Creative Boom Podcast Host:stop side hustles as a means to get into it to get into the creative industry because i think you need if you're serious about making something work obviously it's not financially viable for like some people to leap straight in but if you want to like get into the creative industries and get going like hit the ground running have a solid start quit your job and make it happen don't do the side hustle thing because it just slows everything down yeah save up a bit of cash
15:52Liz Seabrook:first and then see what happens buffer zone give yourself three to six months maybe sacrifice you
Read the full transcript
16:00The Creative Boom Podcast Host:know luxuries I mean loads sacrifice loads you won't have to do it for very long no you won't
16:07Liz Seabrook:because once you get going once that momentum builds it's true I mean I did I did creative beam as a side project for years and it was only 12 years in that I said right I'm going in full time and I I definitely noticed a massive difference because I was like right I've got to make this work I've got to like turn this into a commercial business and yeah here we are so I think I would agree. I would absolutely agree. Now, if you could skill one steal, which is what I was about to say, if you could steal one skill from another creative discipline overnight, what would it be?
16:44The Creative Boom Podcast Host:I also remember my answer to this, which was the patience of graphic designers, of the ability to look things critically after you've experimented with something a bunch of times. Tilia is about to walk up the stairs now and she I watched her and Robin developing ideas for the projects that they're working on at a fieldwork facility and it's so interesting and inspiring watching them like figure stuff out with like materials or whether that's typography and that's the size of things and like you know they've always got like bits and bobs printed out on the wall and they're standing and looking at everything and I'm so bad at just being like I know what the final thing is I'm just going to make it and then skipping all of the testing process so that's something that I'm actively trying to develop at the moment and watching these two has been really useful for that do you share a studio with other creatives then I do yeah that must be nice it is nice I've got a fieldwork facility opposite me so that's and robin and then arabeshi de latte which is francesca who's like i'm still not 100 on what she does but she basically like designs menus and food related stuff for fashion events and like the biennales and all sorts of things so she's kind of a food stylist concept maker extraordinaire and then downstairs we've got Ali who's making this brand MIM which is connecting like stylist influences so whether they're like interior stylists or stylists fashion stylists to their audience so you can kind of pay to have sessions through MIM with your like favorite creators um for them to give you advice for certain things we've got Stephen who's downstairs who's currently also chatting away, who does things in the restaurant industry.
18:48The Creative Boom Podcast Host:We've got... Sounds great. And is this all in East London? It is. We're in Dubofar. I think there's like 15 desks here and then we've got a cafe called Lee's downstairs and a florist called La Trulapana, something like that. You are living the dream. But it's very nice. It's nice to kind of, yeah, be around people doing different things. And community. Community.
19:11Liz Seabrook:that's what we need more of more real less kind of fake more in real life stuff it's always um always a comfort i think that is something that's definitely come out of the last couple of years with all these technical technical shift technological god wait until you get to my age you just start forgetting very basic words and mumbling over words and phrases and forgetting
19:37The Creative Boom Podcast Host:why you've gone into rooms that's my life well me and my housemate who i lived with when we first moved to london just mumble at each other and don't finish sentences when we talk to each other because we know what we're talking about anyway and one of our friends moved in and for the first few months she told me this like several years later she thought she'd gone deaf
19:58Liz Seabrook:that is so cute though that you got to know each other so well that you didn't have to finish sentences.
20:05The Creative Boom Podcast Host:Yeah, just mumble along as two little kind of forest creatures wandering around. Cute. Is she doing well? Is she all right? He is an incredible, very talented DOP. He's called Ben Marshall and he does lots of DOP work in the fashion industry. DOP? He's very technical and loves if someone allows him to have a crane or a robot on set to do things.
20:31Liz Seabrook:What's DOP? I'm being stupid.
20:34The Creative Boom Podcast Host:Director of photography. Oh, of course. Right. Okay. So all the like camera and lighting design for commercials. So same as the cinematographer in like features.
20:43Liz Seabrook:Yeah. Do you think his job's safe?
20:45The Creative Boom Podcast Host:Yes. Thank God. That's good to know. Well, because he's like the, he's the, he's the duo with the director. Yes. Yeah. He's the instigator. He's the like, he's the director's the like ideas man and he's the making it come to life. Hmm. Yeah. People versus technical.
21:04Liz Seabrook:I love it. Love it. I'd love to go to one of those shoot days, you know, and see what they get up to. Bonkers. Who's your creative hero, past or present, and what have they taught you without even knowing it?
21:17The Creative Boom Podcast Host:Jane Bone or Bowne, B-O-W-N, I'm not sure how it's pronounced, who is a photographer, staff photographer for The Guardian. And she shot mostly in black and white and portraits. And would turn up with a shopping bag with a desk lamp in it as her lighting in case she needed additional lighting inside. Amazing. And my general thing is that because I ride my bike as much as I can. I like having kit that all fits in my backpack for when I'm riding my bike. so I think she kind of remembering how the work that she created and the longevity at which she created that for with like such minimal kit has been really useful to me in reminding myself that like for me as someone who's like a people-centric photographer rather than sort of tech and gear first that it's okay because she made it work time and time again I thought it was the equipment that made the photo liz should i tell you my good story which i'm not sure is an urban legend or is a real thing of a um photographer who goes to a dinner party and someone the host says oh it's so lovely to have you here you're such a wonderful photographer you must have a really exceptional camera and the photographer's like yeah sure and then at the end of the meal goes oh that was an
22:42Liz Seabrook:absolute exceptional meal we must have an absolute cracking oven brilliant very very well played love it now we do a chain reaction question the previous guest was jesse mcguire from thought matter and she wants to know what do you want to be remembered for not the angry bike not the angry
23:03The Creative Boom Podcast Host:well i don't know maybe that would be quite cool um no this is i mean this feels quite like maybe more pertinent and relevant than last time we spoke because I've lost a friend since and just seeing the what he has been what he is currently being remembered for and that was being like incredibly supportive and just this kind of warm light of a human who showed up for people and was always there for like he's a yoga teacher amongst other things but showing up for like new teachers first classes in the studio and like always being there for advice and making his students in the class feel safe and supported and cheerleaded to do different things and push themselves and reminding them that if you fall over you just get back up again um and really like that's a pretty that's a pretty amazing legacy to leave behind yeah and so I think and for me I think with my work or it's always been about like seeing the people in the middle of it and allowing people to be seen and to be heard and even if that's like the one time in that week or you know whenever that they feel like they have like everything's stopped and they've been truly seen and heard and I have something that represents them as they feel themselves to be that's kind of what I would hope I'm able to offer.
24:33Liz Seabrook:Yeah we want to be remembered as kind and generous.
24:38The Creative Boom Podcast Host:Yeah yeah but also as a space for people to feel safe and to be themselves.
24:42Liz Seabrook:Yeah.
24:43The Creative Boom Podcast Host:Because I think we spend a lot of time not feeling safe in this world.
24:46Liz Seabrook:Yeah we do you certainly do that I've seen you at work and I think that's the the part of being a photographer that is often overlooked. It's about being a people person and having empathy and being able to pick up on the vibe of the room and it's a very intimate thing that you do actually um having gone through it myself with this lovely jason moore photographer on saturday it was um you end up having this kind of back and forth and you don't realize before the shoot just how much how intimate that is you know you he's got a job to do to get a a bunch of photographs out of you to show the real person so as part of that you have to sort of draw that person out and it was fascinating to watch him at play quite disarming but in the end I guess what I showed and let out was somebody I'm now quite proud of so it was okay which is
25:47The Creative Boom Podcast Host:amazing thing to offer you yeah and to like create the space for that to be yeah 100 % which but you
25:54Liz Seabrook:know newfound respect for photographers and and uh all the people in this amazing industry because it's uh a very very difficult very challenging job but probably very rewarding from what i what i saw yeah now you have a question for the next guest would you like me to remind you what it is or
26:15The Creative Boom Podcast Host:can you remember i remember it was um what do you feel like you should be doing and why are you not
26:22Liz Seabrook:doing it perfect so we will put that to the next guest next week lucky guest yeah it'll be really interesting what are you not currently doing you're not going to answer that are you outreach outreach okay marketing well you know podcast episode yeah did one effort did one uh did my
26:45The Creative Boom Podcast Host:first sub stack a few weeks ago and have not thought about it since i mean there have been
26:51Liz Seabrook:reasons for that yeah yeah of course you've had had a sad time yeah well thank you liz this has been truly lovely and thanks for being such a generous soul and sharing sharing your time with us today well thank you thanks to adobe acrobat studio for sponsoring this episode if you're curious about what it can do for your workflow head to the link in the show notes to find out more
27:21you
From the publisher
Photographer Liz Seabrook is back for The Spark. Slightly subdued, a little chaotic, but still brilliantly honest.
What starts as a playful chat about matcha and East London fashion quickly becomes more reflective. There's talk of cycling rage, parachute pants, and the strange freedom of dressing however you want. But underneath it all is a deeper thread about identity, confidence and finding your place in the world.
Liz shares the small things that make a big difference to her day. Quiet time. Space to think. No distractions. A reminder that creativity often needs stillness, not noise. There's also a refreshingly direct take on side hustles. If you're serious about building something, she says, at some point you have to go all in—no half measures.
She talks about the skill she envies most. The patience to experiment, to sit with ideas, to not rush straight to the outcome. Something she's actively trying to learn.
And then the conversation shifts. Asked what she wants to be remembered for, Liz reflects on the recent loss of a friend. What follows is a quiet, powerful moment about kindness, presence and showing up for others, not just in life, but in her work as a photographer.
Because for Liz, it's never just about taking a picture. It's about creating a space where people feel safe enough to be themselves.
A gentle, thoughtful end to the episode. And a reminder that, in a world that often feels anything but, being seen and being kind still matter most.
