Ep. 044 - Renee Robyn: How to Make Cool S___
Ever flattened 50 layers in Photoshop and instantly regretted it? Renee Robyn has—on purpose.
In this episode of Generator, I sit down with digital artist, photographer, and all-around creative badass Renee Robyn to talk about what it really means to make cool stuff. From her roots in the Canadian north to her role as Optics Product Manager at Boris FX, Renee brings equal parts grit, geekery, and genius to the table.
We dig into her cinematic style, her fearless approach to failure, and the wild ride that’s taken her from modeling and locksmithing to placing fourth in the Photographic World Cup. Along the way, we share a lot of laughs and some real talk about embracing the chaos of creativity, pushing boundaries, and trusting your weird.
🎨 What you’ll take away from this episode:
✅ Why failure isn’t just okay—it’s necessary for real creative growth
✅ How Renee mixes photography, fantasy, and tech to create next-level art
✅ The power of experimentation and not taking yourself too seriously
✅ Behind-the-scenes of her work at Boris FX and how tech tools empower artists
✅ The unfiltered journey from locksmith to global digital art icon
Whether you’re deep in the creative trenches or just love watching someone light the whole playbook on fire and build their own, this one’s got inspiration, insights, and probably a few snorts of laughter.
🚀 If this episode hit home, smash that like button, leave a comment, and subscribe for more unfiltered creative stories.
🔗 Watch the Full Playlist:
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwRT3vVIPpVcsizwNbIVqxGqQdeX-irIe&si=14s1NCVU325-RtWA
🌎 Website: https://generatorpodcast.com
📸 Follow Renee Robyn:
➡ Website: https://www.reneerobyn.com
➡ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/reneerobynphotography
➡ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/reneerobynphotography
➡ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@ReneeRobyn
➡ Boris FX: https://borisfx.com
⭐ Like the show? Leave a 5-star review! 🎧 Apple Podcasts
#DigitalArt #CreativeProcess #PhotographyPodcast #PhotoshopFails #BorisFX #ReneeRobyn #GeneratorPodcast
Transcript
When I finish recording an episode of Generator, I usually wait until I transcribe the conversation and then I write some notes about it and then develop this introduction that recaps what we talked about.
Speaker A:But for this week, I'm tossing that whole practice just out the window.
Speaker A:And shooting from the hip, I just had an hour long conversation with Renee Robin.
Speaker A:Renee is truly one of the best digital artists on the planet.
Speaker A:She was just representing Canada and came in fourth overall in the Photographic World Cup.
Speaker A:She's got it like that.
Speaker A:Besides being an artist, an educator, an industry heavyweight, and she'll hate that term, Renee also works with Boris Effects, where she oversees the Optics product line.
Speaker A:Now, Optics is this suite of digital tools that is equally at home in a Hollywood studio making films like Lord of the Rings, or it could land on your desktop where you work on your next piece of art.
Speaker A:It's an amazing set of software.
Speaker A:I met Renee during COVID when I was part of the Artist Forge and we were doing these daily podcasts on Clubhouse, and even though we have a ton of mutual friends, we've never met in person.
Speaker A:So when we were at WPPI recently, we made it a point to sit down and just get to know each other immediately.
Speaker A:I knew she was my type of people.
Speaker A:So for this episode, we really just continue the conversation that we had in Las Vegas, talking about the work that Boris FX is doing, how she she approaches her personal artwork, the importance of failure, and the sheer terror that both of us feel when we hear that someone's flattening an image in Photoshop.
Speaker A:I'm not sure I've ever laughed this hard on a podcast before, but Renee just has this personality that is this mix of self awareness and confidence and intelligence and gallows humor and sarcasm and cultural defiance.
Speaker A:This hour went by way too quickly, so I'm sure I'll have her back at some point in the near future.
Speaker A:In the meantime, get ready because Renee Robin is about to become your new favorite artist.
Speaker A:She had so much to say, so much insight, and I can't wait for you to hear what she has to say.
Speaker A:So let's just get on with the show.
Speaker A:Let's get the business part of this out of the way.
Speaker A:How was WPPI for you?
Speaker A:How was it for like what your, what your goals were for Boris Effects?
Speaker A:Did you just see the people you needed to see?
Speaker A:Did you get the business done you needed to get done, or were you just there to hang out?
Speaker B:I was largely there just to.
Speaker B:Just to see people again because it had been so Long.
Speaker B:Yeah, it was great.
Speaker B:I mean, it's always good to, like, make like, good business connections again and stuff like that and introduce people to the software, because there's a lot of people who just haven't heard of it.
Speaker B:And so, you know, I did.
Speaker B:I did like, demos for people and stuff like that.
Speaker B:Like, like small little pods of people who were like, oh, I'd really like to check this out.
Speaker B:I'm like, well, I happen to have it up in my computer in my laptop upstairs.
Speaker B:Let's go take a look.
Speaker B:But the biggest thing was just being able to see people again.
Speaker B:Because after five years, like, man, I was just so crushingly lonely.
Speaker B:Like, just so, so fucking lonely.
Speaker A:So when it comes to a show, right, you're going to nab.
Speaker A:You're at wpvi, do you feel like enough people are aware of other parts of the creative community?
Speaker A:For example, you got photographers that might not know what cinematographers, filmmakers are doing, or 3D artists, right?
Speaker A:It's very, it's all very insular, these little communities that we find ourselves in.
Speaker A:As you preach the gospel of optics and everything that is bore's effects, do you find.
Speaker A:Do you ever get surprised that people don't know more about the products that are out there and that we all just kind of funnel into the same tools, the Photoshops, the lightrooms and whatnot, that we all use the same tools without doing any exploration of what else is out there?
Speaker A:Do you find that at all?
Speaker A:Does that surprise you?
Speaker B:No, it doesn't surprise me.
Speaker B:Because at the end of the day, we are all creatures of habit and we are also all getting, like, blitzkriegged every single day with stuff constantly.
Speaker B:Um, so you have to filter it out and just like focus on your lane, right?
Speaker B:Cause otherwise you just won't get anything done.
Speaker B:You're just constantly chasing, like, you know, what is the best lens?
Speaker B:What is this?
Speaker B:What is that?
Speaker B:And then you wind up with like this, this crippling, like, you know, oh, my God, there's so many choices, I can't make a decision.
Speaker B:So it doesn't really surprise me, like, at all that people don't necessarily know what is out there.
Speaker B:So that's why people like me exist who are just like, hey, guys.
Speaker B:And just like pie in the face.
Speaker B:I'm like, here's something really cool.
Speaker A:You've been at this for so long, since what, like 97, mid-90s?
Speaker A:Let's call it mid-90s, right there, about 97.
Speaker A:Yeah, 97, right.
Speaker A:I got into Photoshop around the same time around 95, 96 thereabouts after I graduated college.
Speaker A:So I've seen it go through all these different iterations.
Speaker A:As of you, is there this evolution that you're seeing in any of the products that the stuff that we were doing years ago is circling back around trends, styles, usage of tools, anything like that that you' seeing from the early days when you started in fantasy to what you're doing now.
Speaker A:Do trends come and go in some of these tools?
Speaker B:Oh, they definitely come and go, I think.
Speaker B:I mean you, I'd be curious what you think about this too, but I've definitely noticed there's like the cyclical patterns and there's also like, you know, there's even the patterns in like posing and stuff like that and like the, the styles of models that get cast and, and I mean like you see that like all across the board.
Speaker B:You know, like right now I saw an article that came out that said, you know, the ultra thin models are coming back in.
Speaker B:And I was like, here we go again.
Speaker B:It is, it is cyclical.
Speaker B:I mean like the 90s fashion is coming back in again.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:And I mean when I was younger I loved wearing 60s fashion.
Speaker B:So you know, it doesn't really surprise me that you know, we're starting to see these, these throwbacks and stuff like that.
Speaker B:The stuff that I find is really fun is seeing the, the resurgence in, in film in like the younger generation of artists.
Speaker B:You know, they're having a lot of fun with like the tactile experience.
Speaker B:I think one of the, I could be misinformed on this but like one of the best selling cameras ever made, selling right now is like a digital camera that also prints off like these little guys.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:And I think it's a little slightly bigger version of that, but I have one in one of my bags here.
Speaker B:I think that's really fun because like that you can apply these color presets to it and everything digitally so you can kind of like retouching camera, quote unquote or color grading camera and then it spits out this like little print.
Speaker B:So it's, it's very clever and I think that's really fun.
Speaker A:Fuji, if you're listening, Fuji just came out with one of those kind of like a wide instant and they've got that digital screen on the back so you can do some of this work.
Speaker A:And I'm confused by it.
Speaker A:I love it.
Speaker A:I love that tactile thing.
Speaker A:I love the, we're getting this printed.
Speaker A:You get your one shot.
Speaker A:I don't know How I feel about being able to manipulate it before the fact.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:It's kind of like all the stuff with film, but we still get to manipulate it a little bit in camera.
Speaker A:And I don't know how I feel about it.
Speaker B:I'm not against it, I'm not for.
Speaker A:It, but it just weirds me out.
Speaker A:I'm like, are we defeating the purpose or are we clinging to the digital side too much?
Speaker A:I don't know.
Speaker A:Jury's still out for me.
Speaker A:What do you think?
Speaker B:I think it's fun.
Speaker B:I think it's like, you know, it's the best of both worlds a little bit, because you get, you know, you're basically applying, like, these Instagram filters.
Speaker B:They're not.
Speaker B:It's not super hardcore color grading or anything like that, but, I mean, it's just really fun.
Speaker B:I think whoever thought about it was thinking outside the box the right amount.
Speaker B:It's this really great bridge between the digital world and then the print world, like the tactile experience world.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:So I think that's.
Speaker B:That's really fun.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:So whoever.
Speaker B:Whoever thought of that, I hope.
Speaker B:I hope they got paid well for that.
Speaker A:For me, I like the fact that there's intention behind it, that there is that, hey, this is our one shot at taking this photo.
Speaker A:It's going to be great.
Speaker A:We'll print it out.
Speaker A:It's the moment that we just experienced, but with a little bit of tweak, and I made it my style.
Speaker A:I have no problem with that.
Speaker A:I really like the fact that there's now less focus on digital manipulation overall for those little moments, rather than having to obsess.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:Taking the picture, then going home, and then maybe dumping it off your camera, maybe sending it to your friends.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:At least this.
Speaker A:This speeds up that process of creation a little bit more.
Speaker A:So I dig that.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:Just does a really nice job of, like, community building, too, because you get to hold onto this, like, thing that gets to, like, you know, probably live in a box somewhere for the rest of your life.
Speaker B:But, you know, eventually somebody's going to open that box and be like, hey, this is so and so when, you know, 20 or 30 years ago.
Speaker B:And that's.
Speaker B:That's, like.
Speaker B:It's fun.
Speaker B:Whereas, like, the digital world, we lose that.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:You know, like, I just lost my mom a few weeks ago, actually.
Speaker B:And one of the interesting things was finding all these, like, boxes of photo albums, you know, and we had photos from, like, family, you know, from, like, generations ago.
Speaker B:Generations and generations ago, you know, back to even when photography was first kind of invented.
Speaker B:And it's, it's so cool to see that.
Speaker B:And so these kind of like bring that back a little bit, you know, where it's like you get to have something and it's, you know, it might not last forever, it's definitely going to degrade.
Speaker B:But it is really cool that this thing exists from like an entirely different era.
Speaker A:It's always fun to go back and look through some of those shoeboxes or the albums.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:And I've been in this, this process of converting a lot of them to digital.
Speaker A:Are you doing anything like that with all of the stuff that you found?
Speaker B:Yeah, we haven't yet, but we will probably, for sure.
Speaker B:Especially some of the stuff that's, that's, that's, you know, like we're talking a couple hundred years old.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:So, yeah, it would be, it would be a really shame if, you know, if there was like a physical thing, like a, like a flood or a fire or something, and we lost those.
Speaker B:So definitely be looking at getting at least a bunch of them, you know, figured out.
Speaker A:Yeah, let's dig in here a little bit.
Speaker A:Why don't you give me a little bit of a top down about what you're doing with Boris FX right now and optics, what you see with the product.
Speaker A:And then I want to dig in on why there's, and how your creativity is changing over the years from the standpoint of just the listeners.
Speaker A:What's Boris FX doing with optics?
Speaker A:I've seen you all over the place with this.
Speaker B:Okay, so Boris fx optics.
Speaker B:So Boris FX is, you know, they come from, or rather I guess we come from a cinema background.
Speaker B:So basically we make software for people to make movies with and we have really, really, really good tools to do that with.
Speaker B:And we work at a very high level.
Speaker B:There's, we even have effects that, you know, we invented to work on Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter for example.
Speaker B:So we've been in it for a really long time.
Speaker B:There's not a lot of movies that have come out the last 25 years that aren't running at least one of our software on some level.
Speaker B:Everything has to be delivered at like the absolute highest quality level.
Speaker B:And so to skip a whole bunch of, whole bunch of details, essentially they had a bunch of tools that work in cinema and they started building tools for photographers.
Speaker B:They had, they had partnered with Tiffin and created Tiffin dfx, I believe.
Speaker B: and eventually we wound up in: Speaker B:And this was before I was with the company or anything like that.
Speaker B:And I just happened to find by total fluke this software.
Speaker B:And I think it was a friend of mine who told me about it.
Speaker B:I'm not 100% sure.
Speaker B:Lots has changed in five years.
Speaker B:He was like, like, you gotta, you gotta check this.
Speaker B:You gotta check the software out.
Speaker B:And so I did, and I opened it and I was like, that's, that's a lot you can like.
Speaker B:It's, it's.
Speaker B:You could do so much in it in the same way that like, Photoshop does a ton of stuff, right?
Speaker B:And it kind of lit my brain up in the same way.
Speaker B:Discovering Photoshop for the first time when I was 13 years old and, and I was just like, oh, this is very cool.
Speaker B:This is gonna take a minute to figure this out, but this is, this is like, definitely something that I've been missing.
Speaker B:And so I kind of just like fell down this rabbit hole with it.
Speaker B:And I was.
Speaker B:Started to like, implement it into my process.
Speaker B:And then eventually they started bringing me in and, you know, I did some live streams for them, and then a year later they were like, do you want to just manage this?
Speaker B:And so now I'm.
Speaker B:I was like, I don't know if that's such a good idea because, like, you don't know me very well, but I haven't worked for anyone other than me for a really long time, so I'm kind of hard to manage.
Speaker B:But anyway, so now.
Speaker B:Now yeah, I'm.
Speaker B:I'm in charge of.
Speaker B:I'm a product manager for the plugin Vorus Effects Optics.
Speaker B:And basically it is, you know, cinema grade effects put into a plugin for Photoshop Lightroom and as a standalone for photographers.
Speaker B:And it is so nerdy and it is so fun, but it's also like, you know, it can be like, intimidating because you can do so much with it.
Speaker B: ning Photoshop on your own in: Speaker B:Cause like, I taught myself Photoshop, I went and I found the keyboard shortcuts list online from a totally legitimate source.
Speaker B:And then I printed it off and I memorized all the shortcuts.
Speaker B:And that was like how I started teaching myself Photoshop with objects.
Speaker B:Like I said, it because it's capable of so much and it does so many things that no other software is actually doing.
Speaker B:Including Photoshop, that it, it has a way of, you know, you see a tool and you're like, well, I don't really understand what this is supposed to do.
Speaker B:And it's like, well, that's because, you know, let me show you.
Speaker B:Because there just isn't anything else that does this outside of cinema.
Speaker B:So if you, if you open this and you come from like an after effects background, this is going to look super familiar.
Speaker B:You're going to see lots of familiar terms, lots of familiar wording.
Speaker B:The layout is going to seem very familiar.
Speaker B:If you're coming just from photography, you're going to open it up and go, oh, okay, cool.
Speaker B:And then like, I, I dearly hope, and I'm working on making it a little more friendly for users, but like, it is just this really beautiful playground that delivers at like the highest possible level.
Speaker B:I actually just had the best review ever from a photographer that I know.
Speaker B:He had entered his images in a competition and he won.
Speaker B:He got 90 nines, like straight across the board.
Speaker B:And he was just like, I think that is a hundred percent because of optics, because of Boris effects optics, because it is such a, like, it is so detailed and so precise that he was able to get exactly what he was looking for without any compromise.
Speaker B:And that I think is really great.
Speaker B:And exactly where the software like explodes and does a really good job.
Speaker A:There's no better reference or testimonial for a product like that than from someone like that, right?
Speaker A:That's winning, that is scoring high.
Speaker A:That's making the art that they want to make.
Speaker A:I think for someone like me who doesn't get into too much digital manipulation or fantasy or digital art, it is absolutely intimidating for me.
Speaker A:I'll get down with some layers, don't get me wrong.
Speaker A:But watching, I've seen tutorials that you've done and I've watched real digital artists.
Speaker A:You, Anya Anti, Becca Bjorki.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:True digital artists.
Speaker A:And it fascinates me.
Speaker A:There's nothing that I can produce that would even scratch the surface of 20, 30 plus years of experience from you guys working in these tools day in and day out.
Speaker A:So as a photographer, that isn't necessarily a digital artist.
Speaker A:It can be intimidating.
Speaker A:However, the possibilities for me to expand beyond what I'm doing now are pretty much endless with it as someone just starts to learn optics, kind, you know, they're familiar with Photoshop, they're familiar, they're in their comfort zone with digital tools.
Speaker A:What's the gateway drug?
Speaker A:What do they start playing with first to be like Ooh, I can start making centaurs, right?
Speaker A:And I can start.
Speaker B:Start easier than that.
Speaker B:Start easier than that.
Speaker B:Like, literally, the film tools.
Speaker B:The film tools.
Speaker B:The film tools are incredible.
Speaker B:And.
Speaker B:And the filters.
Speaker B:So there's like the blackness filters.
Speaker B:There's like the sub filters.
Speaker B:They basically worked with tiffin to perfectly replicate exactly what those filters are digitally.
Speaker B:Like, they're perfect.
Speaker B:And then, you know, you go into, like, you go into the film effects, right?
Speaker B:You know, you Love your Agfa APX400.
Speaker B:It's exactly what Agfa AP X400 looked like.
Speaker A:Wow.
Speaker B:It's.
Speaker B:And.
Speaker B:But then you can go in and you can manipulate it all.
Speaker B:You can manipulate all of that stuff, all of those filters, right down to the size, texture, and blur of the grain based on the channel of the color that you want to do.
Speaker B:So, like, it's.
Speaker B:It's there for very simple, beautiful, elegant, cinematic color grading.
Speaker B:And it does a beautiful job.
Speaker B:We actually have a bunch of, like, we replicated a bunch of the luts from, like, you know, major motion picture films.
Speaker B:So we have like 300 in there.
Speaker B:We have obviously Harry Potter.
Speaker B:We obviously have Lord of the Rings because we built stuff for them, you know, and so all of those.
Speaker B:Those movie luts that.
Speaker B:They're not really.
Speaker B:They're not the luts, but, you know, it's the.
Speaker B:It's the color grading for style.
Speaker B:The Blade Runners in there as well.
Speaker B:They're all there, right?
Speaker B:And then you can go in and you can manipulate and you can customize.
Speaker B:And then we have, like, incredibly good masking tools because we have a really great rotoscoping tool.
Speaker B:And so we've took that rotoscoping engine and just like plunked that straight into optics.
Speaker B:And so we have great masking tools right in the plugin itself.
Speaker B:So if you're really nervous about it, like, don't worry about chasing down the details and particle illusion or anything like that.
Speaker B:Just stick with the color grading.
Speaker B:And like, the black mist filters and stuff, they print beautifully.
Speaker B:They print so nicely.
Speaker B:That was.
Speaker B:That was the thing that sold it for me, was because I do test prints all the time of my work to check it.
Speaker B:And, you know, I'm just getting like little four by sixes and stuff like that.
Speaker B:And I printed out probably about 250little four by sixes.
Speaker B:And I was comparing the ones that I had used optics on and the ones that I hadn't, and I was like, oh, we have to go back and refinish a bunch of work in order to bring it back.
Speaker B:Up to the, to the new standard.
Speaker B:Because for me this was like, this was a new tool that changed everything for me.
Speaker B:You know, it's like, it's like when I first was getting into Photoshop and somebody showed me blending modes and I was like, like, blew my mind.
Speaker B:I was just like, oh my God, this changes everything.
Speaker B:And then optics was that tool again, where I was like comparing the printed work of the work that I'd used it on versus the work that I hadn't.
Speaker B:And I was like, okay, there is a very clear level up here.
Speaker B:This is incredible.
Speaker B:But now I have to re edit a bunch of work because I'm working on an art book, right?
Speaker B:And so I was like, well, now I have to, I have to level up a ton of work.
Speaker B:And that's okay because I know that it's going to be worth it in the end.
Speaker A:I want to dig into that a little bit.
Speaker A:When you create a piece of art and it's done, it's finished, right?
Speaker A:You're like, this is as good as I can get.
Speaker A:And you put it on the shelf and it's great, you're super proud of it.
Speaker A:Then you see a tool like this and you're like, oh, wow.
Speaker A:Is there a process where you're ever saying, no, I'm not touching this anymore.
Speaker A:That was done.
Speaker A:And at that point in my life, I don't want to revisit it.
Speaker A:Or are you revisiting it from a standpoint of, oh, that can stand on its own, but I want to enhance it more.
Speaker A:I want to add some more of my experience and my life to it.
Speaker A:Is that really where it's coming from?
Speaker A:Or do you just feel like nothing's ever finished?
Speaker A:I can always improve it.
Speaker B:I mean like, it's true.
Speaker B:Like nothing is ever finished.
Speaker B:I definitely just like rip the band aid off of a lot of my work.
Speaker B:Sometimes where I'm just like, nah, it's good enough.
Speaker B:Next.
Speaker B:Even stuff with the art book, I'm just like, eh, it's fine.
Speaker B:No one's gonna notice that last 2% I did a few years ago.
Speaker B: Actually, I think it was: Speaker B: Maybe: Speaker B:I don't remember.
Speaker B: Maybe: Speaker B:Anyways, it doesn't matter.
Speaker B:I rebuilt my website, I redid the whole thing.
Speaker B:So I re edited from scratch over 264 composites because I was like, the concepts here are really cool and these are really good.
Speaker B:But my skills are like, you know, I have 10 years more experience and the technology has got better and you know, all the stuff the software has got better.
Speaker B:So I basically just gutted.
Speaker B:It took me, I think, four months to just go through everything.
Speaker B:And like, at the end of it, what was funny is at like 60%, I was like, still sucks.
Speaker B:Next.
Speaker B:Just like, chucked it.
Speaker B:But there was a bunch of it that was like.
Speaker B:It was given, like, this whole new life where I was just like, this is what I was actually wanting to create.
Speaker B:I just didn't have the skills to do it yet.
Speaker B:And so when I find tools like optics, I'm just like, okay.
Speaker B:And like, other times, you know, like, I don't know what I don't know, right?
Speaker B:So I can look at my work.
Speaker B:It's kind of like, you know, when somebody comes to me and they're like, well, how do I.
Speaker B:How do I make my work better?
Speaker B:I'm like, well, what does better mean to you?
Speaker B:Right, like, exactly.
Speaker B:You know, I need to see examples of work that you think is quote unquote, better.
Speaker B:And then how do we bring you closer to what that attainable goal is?
Speaker B:But you still don't know what you don't know.
Speaker B:And so I found that with my work, and then I started putting it through the paces of the software, and I was going, oh, yeah, okay, yeah, there it is.
Speaker B:Those are the things that I didn't know that I didn't know that the work was needing, you know, and now I'm just so much happier with it.
Speaker A:Were you going layer by layer, object by object, or were you basically saying, all right, in this thousand layer file, these first 500 are fine and I'll just kind of start midway?
Speaker A:Or did you really go from scratch on all the edits?
Speaker A:Like, just re.
Speaker A:Conceptualize it, rebuild it?
Speaker B:The only things that I tried to not have to redo as much as I could was the masking.
Speaker B:And sometimes I had to redo the masking.
Speaker B:Yeah, there was a bunch of it.
Speaker B:Like, even just the whole backgrounds and everything, I just gutted and changed into something entirely new.
Speaker B:And the work looked a lot better as a result.
Speaker A:Is there a part of your process that you find so satisfying that somebody from the outside would look and say, I am bored to tears watching you do that.
Speaker A:Is there any part like you just Zen out in your editing process that, you know, people would never get into?
Speaker B:I mean, everybody has their line, right?
Speaker B:So, like, for example, I love Pratik.
Speaker B:Pratik Naik's work, and he's an incredible retoucher.
Speaker B:He's an incredible guy.
Speaker B:His Dodge and Burn work is great.
Speaker B:Julia Kuzmenko same thing.
Speaker B:Just incredible retouchers.
Speaker B:I hate dodge and burning.
Speaker B:I will do everything I can to avoid dodge and burning.
Speaker B:I will go in and instead of spending like 45 minutes dodge and burning a face, I will go in, I will spend two hours masking out feathers, brushstroke by brushstroke, using textured brushes, custom textured brushes that I make.
Speaker B:That's where I'll spend my time, making sure that that mask is like perfect.
Speaker B:And then I'll get to the skin and I'm like, mask and nothing.
Speaker B:Whereas like, I can acknowledge that, you know, probably my work would benefit from a little bit more time paying attention to the skin.
Speaker B:But also like so I mean, we all have our thing.
Speaker B:We all have a thing that lights up our brain, right?
Speaker B:And I'm so grateful now that the masking tools are getting better because I also don't always want to spend four hours on a mask and sometimes it can take that long.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:I want to be able to just be like, select, refine, done.
Speaker B:If the work has a risk of going for print and historically if my stuff goes for print, it's going to print quite large because I print stuff for like trade shows and conventions and like clients will print the work big for their offices.
Speaker B:Then, you know, I'm going to go in and I'm going to spend the time on that masking because if there's a masking error and you print that thing 40 by 60ft, it is terrifyingly obvious.
Speaker B:Like terrifyingly obvious.
Speaker B:I did a.
Speaker B:I did a print a few years ago for SmugMug.
Speaker B:I did the backstage of the SmugMug booth and it was this.
Speaker B:It's the.
Speaker B:One of the biggest.
Speaker B:My work has never printed.
Speaker B:But they picked this image of this girl and she had this headdress on and it was super gnarly and brambly and everything.
Speaker B:And there was like space shit in the background and stuff.
Speaker B:And oh my God, I went through that file with a fine tooth comb making sure that there was no masking errors.
Speaker B:And I was just anxiety riddled until I got to WPPI and I walked up to the stage and I looked at it and I was like, oh my gosh.
Speaker B:Okay, it's good, we're good.
Speaker B:It's okay.
Speaker B:Because I've had it happen one time, one time where the client really wanted an image and I was like, guys, I made this at a workshop.
Speaker B:It's not going to be perfect.
Speaker B:And I didn't have time to fix it.
Speaker B:They didn't give me the time.
Speaker B:They're like, we need something tonight.
Speaker B:And I was like, just please not this one.
Speaker B:They're like, oh, but we love this one.
Speaker B:And I'm just like, it looks good on Instagram.
Speaker B:It's going to look terrible because they're printing at 10ft high.
Speaker B:And I was like, oh, it's not going to go well.
Speaker B:And it didn't.
Speaker B:And, you know, I went there and I saw it and, like, you know, they had it, like, facing backwards and stuff.
Speaker B:And I was like, I told you.
Speaker B:But, like, now, you know, as an older, more confident person, I would just be like, no, you're going to have to find a different favorite, because this is not going to be your favorite once it gets printed big.
Speaker B:But I was younger and a little bit less confident, and so I was just like, well, if they really want it, it's not worth it.
Speaker A:So that brings up two questions for me.
Speaker A: op having a conversation with: Speaker A: ould look at your Life now as: Speaker A:Do you think that she would have predicted that you're where you are now or producing the type of art you're doing now, or do you feel like there's even been a change between now and then?
Speaker B:I think probably some part of her would be disappointed to be like, where's the Subaru?
Speaker B:We said we'd get a Subaru wrx.
Speaker B:Where is it?
Speaker B:I feel like taxes.
Speaker A:There's still time.
Speaker A:You're going to learn about the government, you're going to learn about taxes, and then you're going to shake your fist.
Speaker B:Yeah, exactly.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:We're going to be like, so there's these government agencies, and if you don't pay them, it goes bad.
Speaker B:Yeah, no taxes.
Speaker B:There probably would be a healthy dose of that.
Speaker A:Not the answer I was expecting, but I'm rolling with it.
Speaker A:So the other question that I.
Speaker A:The other question that I had for you in regards to software, do you feel like people have unrealistic expectations of what the software is going to do for them?
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:They want to go in and click the easy button and have everything perfectly masked without spending four hours in it trying to get every feather strand masked out.
Speaker A:Do you feel like people have unrealistic expectations of what these amazing software producers are putting out?
Speaker B:I think they didn't used to.
Speaker B:I think since the advent of machine learning that people are starting to.
Speaker B:But also there's a lot of really smart PMs and a lot of really smart engineers that are working on those problems at all of these companies.
Speaker B:And, like, let's be honest, if we.
Speaker B:If we saw the masking capabilities of today five years ago.
Speaker A:Yeah, five years, we would have wept.
Speaker B:We would have wept with Joy.
Speaker B:Never mind 10 years ago or 20 years ago.
Speaker B:Right?
Speaker B:Like, just five years ago.
Speaker B:Looking at how far masking has come since the advent of, like, you know, these.
Speaker B:These generative programs and that, like, you know, machine learning is a very complicated topic.
Speaker B:And I can't say that I'm definitely all for it all of the time, but there are so many ways that it has made the mundane stuff better.
Speaker B:Like, how many people do you know?
Speaker B:And, like, there's probably some, because people are people, but there's not very many who are like, yeah, I want to go to VFX school.
Speaker B:I want to spend thousands of dollars and spend a bunch of years, and I just want to cut out somebody frame by frame in a movie.
Speaker B:And that's all I want to do.
Speaker B:There's not a lot of those people.
Speaker B:They're out there, right?
Speaker B:Like, let's be honest.
Speaker B:But, like, you know, same thing with me.
Speaker B:Like, you know, I.
Speaker B:I don't mind spending a bunch of hours cutting out a mask to make sure that it's perfect so that I don't have to do it again, so that I know when I print my stuff, it's going to look exactly how I want it to.
Speaker B:Am I stoked that now that I can one click and it cuts out 80% of the work for me?
Speaker B:Loving it.
Speaker B:Big fan.
Speaker B:So, I mean, like, the thing that I always remind people, if they have these unrealistic expectations, is that it's never going to look worse than it does right now.
Speaker B:Whatever it is that you're looking at, everything right now is the worst possible version right now, because it's only going to get better because there's so many people working on this stuff.
Speaker B:And I think that is, like, a more inspiring way to look at things like that.
Speaker B:You know, when.
Speaker B:Oh, my God, Ben.
Speaker B:I can always never pronounce his name correctly.
Speaker B:He's a Polish artist.
Speaker B:He's a painter, and he did beautiful work.
Speaker B:Unfortunately, he had a very tragic end.
Speaker B:He was murdered.
Speaker B:Long story, but just this incredible, exquisite artist.
Speaker B:And when midjourney, I think it was like two or three came out, all of a sudden I was seeing the machine making work that this human brain had made, you know, 30 years earlier.
Speaker B:And it was exquisite stuff, and it was so interesting.
Speaker B:And then of course, you know, you're watching all the hallucinations and everything and people like, oh my God, this is never going to be good.
Speaker B:And I was like, guys, this is, this is just as bad as it's going to get.
Speaker B:Like it just actually isn't going to get worse.
Speaker B:And sure enough now it's like you look at it now, I mean the acceleration of it has been crazy.
Speaker B:But when it comes to expectations of software, we have to realize that whatever it is that you're stuck on right now, you're probably not going to be stuck on in two years.
Speaker A:Yeah, without a doubt.
Speaker A:There's so much accelerated growth in AI, in machine learning and just the influence of it all right.
Speaker A:Masking for me back in the day was the eraser tools and very carefully going, you know, like that, that was the level of my skill and capability.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A: That was: Speaker A:I was not good, arguably still not good, but better than I was.
Speaker B:And I think your work is great.
Speaker B:What are you talking about?
Speaker B:This self deprecating bullshit.
Speaker B:I've seen your work.
Speaker A:No, photography is great.
Speaker A:The Photoshop work is kind of like mid as the kid.
Speaker B:I got you, I got you.
Speaker A:Like you said, this is the worst that I'm ever going to be.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:Even I'm going to get better going on.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:So it's all experience.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:I mean until, until like the mental degradation happens eventually.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:What were we talking about?
Speaker A:When is the last time you created something just for the hell of it, like zero goals, zero demos, just for you in particular.
Speaker A:When was the last time you did that?
Speaker B:I did it a few months ago.
Speaker B:I'm actually really selfish about that.
Speaker B: cause I, let me see here, in: Speaker B:I've never made that much money in my life ever.
Speaker B:And I realized how much work it is to make that much money and I was like, we are never working this hard ever again.
Speaker B:That was stupid.
Speaker B:We don't need to make that much money.
Speaker B:I also learned that like, cause I, I also burned out super hard because I was just going client job, client job, client job, client job.
Speaker B:And you know, admittedly like when the work is there, you take it because next year you're not necessarily going to be the thing that everybody's hiring.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:So you know, if it's, if everybody's running at you, probably going to take most of the work.
Speaker B:And then of course I burned out and I didn't look after myself in that process at all.
Speaker B:You know, physically, mentally, emotionally.
Speaker B:I just took the work, which is fine.
Speaker B:But since then, I was like, okay, we are going to work things in stages.
Speaker B:So when I was shooting a lot, I always made sure that at least once a month I was shooting something for myself at least once a month.
Speaker B:Just no goals.
Speaker B:Show up in the studio, call a buddy, or even just like, you know, play with myself or like a what a statement?
Speaker B:Play with that, Photograph myself.
Speaker B:Or like, you know, bring in, bring in like a mannequin or something like that.
Speaker B:Or like the cats or like still life.
Speaker B:Right?
Speaker B:Like anything didn't matter.
Speaker B:But I was very, very, very selfish about that going forward from there.
Speaker B:So the last time that I photographed something for myself was actually the last time I was in the studio, which was a while now it was November, mom was dying.
Speaker B:So, you know, it was complicated, didn't have any time.
Speaker B:But anyways, I basically, I called up some friends and I was like, hey, I've got this idea.
Speaker B:And I found a studio that was okay with it, which was shocking.
Speaker B:I think it's just because he didn't realize how destructive it was going to be.
Speaker B:And we did a bunch of powder shots in his studio.
Speaker B:And I was like, are you sure?
Speaker B:Like, are you really sure?
Speaker B:And he's like, oh, yeah, that's fine.
Speaker B:And I was like, okay.
Speaker B:So I booked eight hours of studio time and I only shot three and a half hours.
Speaker B:And I spent the rest of the time cleaning the studio because alcohol powder gets everywhere.
Speaker B:And even still, like, we, we got it pretty good.
Speaker B:And still there's just this fine, fine dust on everything, including my, my gear still.
Speaker B:But it was so satisfying because, like, the dancers would show up and you know, they're just like, well, what kind of, what kind of poses are you feeling?
Speaker B:And I was like, man, show me what you got.
Speaker B:How you feeling?
Speaker B:You just got off stage.
Speaker B:You did a weekend of performing.
Speaker B:Don't worry about jumps.
Speaker B:Let's just keep it groundwork.
Speaker B:Let's just keep it casual.
Speaker B:Let's just have fun and see what happens.
Speaker B:I even use lenses I don't usually use.
Speaker B:I use this, like, really old beat up 50mm 1.4 that I have that is like.
Speaker B:I'm pretty sure it's steam powered with how slow it focuses.
Speaker B:It's steam powered.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:It's not great.
Speaker B:I was just like, I'm just gonna use lenses I don't normally use.
Speaker B:I'm gonna use modifiers that I don't normally use.
Speaker B:I Mean, it might be a total waste of time, but, like, also, to hell with it.
Speaker B:Let's just see what happens.
Speaker B:And so, like, and I love the shots.
Speaker B:They're really great.
Speaker B:I have a bunch more to edit from them.
Speaker B:I haven't had the chance to hop into them again.
Speaker B: ah, I definitely learned from: Speaker B:And so if I was shooting a lot, you know, I always made sure.
Speaker B:I always made sure to make time for myself.
Speaker A:What's a creative hill that you're willing to die on?
Speaker A:Like, what's the one thing that you're like, no matter.
Speaker A:You're never going to convince me otherwise.
Speaker B:That's a tough one because, like.
Speaker B:Like, I thought I had those hills before, and I feel like that is like the epicenter of being young and dumb and Peak Dunning Burger, right?
Speaker B:Is, you know, you're just like, no, it's this way or the highway.
Speaker B:And I've just been proven wrong so many times that I'm just at this point going, like, I have strong opinions about stuff, but I could be totally wrong about all of it.
Speaker B:So I think.
Speaker B:I think the only one that if I was to really pick something would be to take the time to give yourself opportunity to fail.
Speaker B:Like, make sure that you can make work that's bad, that no one's going to see where you're experimenting, where, like, you know, like, high chance of failure stuff.
Speaker B:I think it's just.
Speaker B:It's so important because it also just teaches us how to accept failure as well.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:And, you know, we need to learn how to do that because especially if we're working commercially.
Speaker B:But even if you're just shooting for fun, you know, failure is a part of it.
Speaker B:And if you don't learn how to handle that well, life becomes a lot less fun because the failure is going to happen anyways.
Speaker A:Where did you fail?
Speaker A:That was a big turning point for you.
Speaker B:Oh, my God, there's so many.
Speaker B:There's so many.
Speaker A:Oh, no, I know.
Speaker A:I have to list.
Speaker A:I just want to see which one you would pick off of it.
Speaker B:Oh, my God, there's so many.
Speaker B:Oh, I literally just did.
Speaker B:If you.
Speaker B:If you've ever done.
Speaker B:Do you know who Dave crosses?
Speaker B:He.
Speaker B:He runs the Photoshop Virtual Summit.
Speaker B:And I actually just did a whole lecture on failure, and I totally forgot that Dave didn't want it.
Speaker B:And then I delivered it anyways, and after I sent it, I was like, ooh, so that's a fail.
Speaker B:But I failed on my failure.
Speaker B:I mean, like, there's.
Speaker B:There's this photo that I have of this girl outside.
Speaker B:It's.
Speaker B:Well, it's a composite, and she's outside and she's facing away, and it's in Europe somewhere, and there's all these lanterns floating in the sky.
Speaker B:And I've.
Speaker B:I've done this.
Speaker B:This lecture a lot with this image because it was, like, my most epic Photoshop fail that I actually saved.
Speaker B:And you can.
Speaker B:You can just see how I just make bad decisions and then worse decisions and then worse decisions and.
Speaker B:Have you ever seen Uncut Gems?
Speaker A:Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker B:So this is a Photoshop version of that, where you're just watching it and you're just like, don't make that choice.
Speaker B:Don't make that choice.
Speaker B:This is the wrong decision.
Speaker B:Don't get in that car.
Speaker B:Don't pick up that.
Speaker B:Whatever I did that.
Speaker B:This whole Photoshop file all the way through.
Speaker B:And then I.
Speaker B:I was just.
Speaker B:I finally got to the point where it was so ugly.
Speaker B:It's just, like, unredeemably ugly as hell.
Speaker B:And I just, like, backed away, and I was like, okay, Photoshop, you and I are going to take a breather.
Speaker B:Because, like, holy shit.
Speaker B:And I came back to it.
Speaker B:I don't even know anymore if it was days or months later.
Speaker B:It was a while.
Speaker B:And I was like, okay, we're just going to try this again with a cleaner head.
Speaker B:And then, sure enough, it came together in, like, you know, 10 layers, as opposed to the, like, you know, 40.
Speaker B:40 some layers of just, like, abysmal awfulness.
Speaker B:I have this.
Speaker B:I have this point, and I don't know.
Speaker B:I don't know if you.
Speaker B:If I don't know if you have this.
Speaker B:I find that a lot of digital artists, we have, like, a line when we start to notice that shit's going off the rails.
Speaker B:We swear on this podcast.
Speaker A:For you.
Speaker A:For you.
Speaker B:Okay, we're good.
Speaker B:I've been holding back.
Speaker A:Oh, I know.
Speaker A:I've been very impressed.
Speaker B:So for me, that line is when things start to get crush or not crushed black, but that, like, flat black, you know, where you, like, lift up the black a little bit too far, and then it goes this, like, nasty magenta.
Speaker B:Like, not like a nice magenta of, like, a nice sunset.
Speaker B:It's just like somebody.
Speaker B:Some unicorn is just vomiting magenta rainbows all over my image.
Speaker B:And every now and then.
Speaker B:But I'm working on an image.
Speaker B:Actually, the image on the background of my computer screen right now is these, like, fighting dragons and all this kind of stuff.
Speaker B:And when I was working on it, the first time it started going the magenta way, and I was like.
Speaker B:Like, you know, that.
Speaker B:That Ralph Higgums meme of, like, I'm in danger.
Speaker B:Um, that's my.
Speaker B:That's my warning signal to, like, throw up the white flag and maybe just get off the computer for a bit, have a nap, try again in 10 minutes.
Speaker B:Yeah, those.
Speaker B:The magenta is.
Speaker B:Is my.
Speaker B:My, like, oh, shit line.
Speaker B:And so as a result, though, now I really try to make images with magenta, and 99% of them fail because it's.
Speaker B:It can never make that color palette work.
Speaker B:But every now and then, I make it work, and it's not great, but it's not unicorn vomit.
Speaker A:It's so funny how we all have a place that we get to are like, oh, my God, this is going to be such an epic image.
Speaker A:This is amazing.
Speaker A:And then that little bit more, right, turning it to 11.
Speaker A:We just screw everything up.
Speaker A:And now.
Speaker B:Straight in the ditch.
Speaker B:Yeah, straight in the ditch, right?
Speaker A:And then for some reason, you flatten the image.
Speaker A:Now you can't go back.
Speaker A:Things just.
Speaker B:I don't hate myself that much.
Speaker A:Oh, God.
Speaker A:I heard Pratik one time say it like, you know, it was one of his retouching seminars that I was watching, that he'll go along and they'll flatten certain times.
Speaker A:I'm gonna say he does it all the time, but he.
Speaker A:He had mentioned he's just like, yeah, just go ahead and flatten it.
Speaker A:And there was this collective gasp in the crowd.
Speaker A:Just like, you mean you're gonna have a destructive edit?
Speaker B:And he's just like, yeah, like, I'll merge up.
Speaker B:I'll merge up, but I don't flatten down.
Speaker B:I'll merge up all the time.
Speaker B:I do that all the time because I work in, like, Adobe Camera Raw and then I work in optics and, like, all this stuff.
Speaker B:So I'm constantly merging up.
Speaker B:My PSD files are, like, way too bloated for those reasons.
Speaker B:But, yeah, I never flattened down.
Speaker B:I always.
Speaker B:I know a couple digital artists where they're just like, oh, I just want my.
Speaker B:My file size to be smaller, so I'm just going to merge down.
Speaker B:And I'm just like.
Speaker B:My heart like, oh, God, like, save them.
Speaker A:What do you think?
Speaker B:Yeah, that'd be like, do you understand what you're doing right now?
Speaker B:And they're just like, yeah, but I just want my computer to run faster.
Speaker B:I'm like, save it.
Speaker B:Open a new file.
Speaker B:Start from there.
Speaker B:Never flatten you, heathen.
Speaker A:Yeah, just.
Speaker A:It's it's nothing other than.
Speaker A:I think it's age and wisdom.
Speaker A:All of these gray hairs are lessons for somebody else that I haven't taught them right.
Speaker A:And I just got like, all right, no, you go right ahead.
Speaker A:You flattened that right down.
Speaker A:Let's see what happens.
Speaker A:Go ahead.
Speaker B:Yeah, I'm just gonna watch this.
Speaker B:I'm impressed.
Speaker B:I'm impressed by people who have, like.
Speaker B:Who are brave enough to just be like, yeah, I think I'm just gonna flatten this.
Speaker B:I'm just like, God damn.
Speaker B:Like, do you just.
Speaker B:Do you finish your taxes on time?
Speaker B:Is that also how you're wired?
Speaker B:Like, I'm so impressed by that level of commitment to just be like, yeah, decision made.
Speaker B:We're good.
Speaker B:Just like, God, I don't even have that level of commitment.
Speaker B:Finding a parking spot, like, and you're just like, yeah, I can flatten, like, 10 hours of work, no problem.
Speaker A:Like, I don't have that level of confidence in myself with anything.
Speaker B:Yeah, zero percent.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:Like, I intentionally go out and, like, all the shoes that I buy for winter, I get them resold because 99% chance, whatever I've bought them with are not going to be good enough.
Speaker B:I'm going to wipe out, like, my level of commitment issues with anything straight out of the box, especially flattening, is just.
Speaker B:It's bad.
Speaker B:It's bad.
Speaker B:It's not good.
Speaker A:All right, so removing commitment from this question, moving to.
Speaker A:Before you go into a big piece of work, be it personal or commercial.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:Commissioned.
Speaker A:Do you have a ritual to kind of get you in the headspace for creativity?
Speaker A:Is it making a cup of tea?
Speaker A:Is it sacrificing a small child?
Speaker A:Like, what are the things that you do to kind of get you into that headspace to be the artist that is you?
Speaker B:Not so much of a ritual.
Speaker B:I should.
Speaker B:It probably would make things better.
Speaker B:I usually make a tea of some kind.
Speaker B:That.
Speaker B:That is.
Speaker B:That is usually a thing.
Speaker B:I think.
Speaker B:What the.
Speaker B:When I'm the most effective at making work, I have been thinking about the image or images that I'm going to make for, like, months.
Speaker B:And so they're just, like, bubbling and boiling on the back burner of my brain for.
Speaker B:And some of them for years, realistically, some of them for years.
Speaker B:And I'm just, like, constantly adding these, like, little small ingredients here and there going like, oh, that's really interesting.
Speaker B:You know, like, that piece of software, like, we could do that.
Speaker B:Or like, oh, I met this person, and they would be really good blank.
Speaker B:And I basically have, like, 10,000 little burners in the back of my head that are all bubbling like a whole bunch of ideas all at the same time.
Speaker B:And then eventually one of them, the pot gets full enough, and I'm like, oh, it's time to bring that pot forward.
Speaker B:And time.
Speaker B:It's time to start, like.
Speaker B:Like, you know, playing with it and, like, sticking an immersion blender in there and going and just, like, smash all these ingredients together and see what comes out and see if it tastes any good.
Speaker B:It smells good.
Speaker B:And then every now and then it does.
Speaker B:It tastes like dog vomit.
Speaker B:And like I said, it's a total failure.
Speaker B:But.
Speaker A:But I'm digging the whole ninja fruit blender approach to our, like, really liking the protein version of this.
Speaker B:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker B:I mean, it's.
Speaker B:Yeah, it's like.
Speaker B:Like I said, it's kind of like building soups, you know, it's like I've just.
Speaker B:I just have all of these different pots of different sizes and shapes with different ingredients in them.
Speaker B:And I'm just waiting until I think.
Speaker B:I'm like, oh, I think I have enough ingredients in this one now that we can, like, pull it forward and we can make something of this.
Speaker B:And then so, you know, that becomes the scheduling thing, and then it becomes a shooting thing, and then after the shooting thing, it becomes an editing thing.
Speaker B:And so I try to.
Speaker B:This is one thing that is as much of a ritual as I can.
Speaker B:100% of the shoots that I do, I do my very best to deliver at least one image same day of shoot.
Speaker A:Oh, interesting.
Speaker B:So I won't necessarily make it, like a composite or anything, but, like, you know, coming from the modeling side, I know what it's like to be, like, really excited about a shoot.
Speaker B:And then sometimes it takes a while to get images back, especially if it's like, client work where it's like, oh, this is going to come out in six months, or, you know, like, there's just a million reasons why work takes a while to get back to you.
Speaker B:And so I know what that feels like.
Speaker B:And so I always try to make sure I get somebody, something, even if it's just like, color correction and sharpness, like, same day, so that they have something to be excited about and something to kind of hold them over.
Speaker A:You started modeling when you were, what, 13, 14, thereabouts?
Speaker A:10.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:Did you get out or are you still doing any.
Speaker A:Any modeling?
Speaker B:I still do some.
Speaker B:Very rarely here and there.
Speaker B:But let's be honest, I like my cheeseburgers and stuff.
Speaker B:And, yeah, I'm not In, like, I'm not in peak shape, and I'm fine with that.
Speaker A:I'm not even going down that road right.
Speaker A:So, yeah, really, it's just.
Speaker A:It's got to give you such an insight because you were just mentioning this, right, about the.
Speaker A:The psyche of a model, right?
Speaker A:Someone coming in and wanting to see that end result.
Speaker A:Do you feel like a lot of what you learned in those days of modeling has influenced you not so much necessarily in your art, but in the way that you can act on both sides of the camera?
Speaker A:It gives you that insight that a lot of people don't have.
Speaker A:What are some of the things that you learned from.
Speaker A:From all of that that now influences how you're making your art or working with models?
Speaker B:I think it's more so working with people.
Speaker B:I work really hard to make sure people feel seen.
Speaker B:So, like, for example, I was doing a shoot with a friend of mine, and they are a drag king.
Speaker B:And it's.
Speaker B:It's.
Speaker B:It's so fun.
Speaker B:I love working with them, But I noticed while we were shooting, their energy kind of shifted.
Speaker B:And I was like, interesting.
Speaker B:And the outfit, I thought, looked great and everything.
Speaker B:And I just asked them.
Speaker B:I was like, hey, I noticed your energy shifted.
Speaker B:How are you feeling about what we're doing right now?
Speaker B:Would you like to change anything?
Speaker B:And they're like, oh, no, it's good.
Speaker B:And I was like, are you sure?
Speaker B:Because it's totally okay.
Speaker B:Like, this is just a photo shoot.
Speaker B:We don't have to change.
Speaker B:We don't have.
Speaker B:It's just pictures, man.
Speaker B:We can change it.
Speaker B:Let's change it up.
Speaker B:And they were like, actually, you know what?
Speaker B:I really appreciate that.
Speaker B:I would really like to change it.
Speaker B:Something else, because I thought I was feeling this, and I'm not really.
Speaker B:And I was like, cool, let's do it.
Speaker B:Do it.
Speaker B:Like, I don't care.
Speaker B:They're like, oh, you really.
Speaker B:You're sure?
Speaker B:And I was like, dude, these are.
Speaker B:These are photos.
Speaker B:I was like, I want you to feel great when we're working together.
Speaker B:Whatever.
Speaker B:Whatever that is, whatever it is that we're working with.
Speaker B:I'm also very.
Speaker B:I try to be.
Speaker B:I try to be very careful about how I ask these questions.
Speaker B:But I will ask people straight up, like, hey, when we're working together, are there any parts of your body that you're insecure about that I need to be aware of?
Speaker B:Because if there's something.
Speaker B:Whatever it is, like, let's say they're saving up for a nose job, right?
Speaker B:And they're like, oh, well, you know, I'm not really, you know, whatever.
Speaker B:I'm like, cool, just tell me, I'll work around it.
Speaker B:And I realize I have the benefit of being a woman so I can ask those questions and it comes off a lot less threatening than sometimes it can for other people.
Speaker B:But I'm using that because whatever, life is unfair.
Speaker B:As a result, though, I'm able to be able to be a little bit more blunt with people and just say like, look, I want to make sure that you feel as good about this as possible.
Speaker B:And this is for everybody.
Speaker B:Like, we're talking like pro athletes, pro ballet dancers, right down to like, mom, you just had her third kid.
Speaker B:I'm asking these questions because there's people out there where you know, if I'm looking at them and I'm putting my opinion of them on them, or not necessarily my opinion of them, that's not the right word.
Speaker B:My opinion of my insecurities on them, right?
Speaker B:So saying, like, you know, like, I like to eat a few too many cheeseburgers these days, right?
Speaker B:So like, you know, the abs are kind of not looking the way that I would like them to.
Speaker B:Then my assumption is that like, mom who just gave birth to third kid maybe is feeling a little bit like less confident with that.
Speaker B:But then turns out, and this is a true story, she didn't care.
Speaker B:She was just like, man, I just had third kid.
Speaker B:She's like, that's what it looks like.
Speaker B:Let's do this.
Speaker B:And I was like, like, nice.
Speaker B:Awesome.
Speaker B:Right on.
Speaker B:That's great.
Speaker B:But it doesn't.
Speaker B:I, like, I really work to not assume what, what people's insecurities are.
Speaker B:I really want to make sure that people have the opportunity to feel safe, to express any concern and to change their mind because, you know, like, again, it's just photos.
Speaker B:Who cares?
Speaker A:I try to work with my clients in a similar way to talk to them about the fact that, you know, we are not creating world peace here in the studio.
Speaker A:We're here to have some fun.
Speaker A:We're here to make some images.
Speaker A:At least asking me a question or approaching it and saying, are there any insecurities do you have?
Speaker A:Do you have any hang ups that I just need to be worried about?
Speaker A:Because we're going to be moving quick and I want to make sure that, you know, at the end of this, I don't have 75 pictures that you're just going to look at and hate the way that you look.
Speaker A:I never say, like, hey, I noticed five things about your nose.
Speaker A:Which one do you hate the most?
Speaker B:Don't.
Speaker B:Don't do it that way.
Speaker B:Don't do it that way.
Speaker A:The wrong way.
Speaker B:Worse.
Speaker B:That is the wrong way to do it.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:But I think if you can build that little bit of a connection and ease the pressure off of people, right?
Speaker A:And I'm not even talking models, because a lot of times they are pros, and they are going to be able to work in kind of uncomfortable situations, but they're also good enough to speak up when they need to.
Speaker A:Most Muggles aren't going to do that.
Speaker A:The civilians that walk in and are getting their.
Speaker A:Their branding photos taken for the first time.
Speaker A:It's probably the first time they've been in front of a camera in years and years and years, if ever.
Speaker A:So having that little bit of sensitivity to the fact that, yeah, this is a weird process for most people and that we're here to guide them through it, I think can really help make them feel more comfortable.
Speaker A:And it's gotta be great.
Speaker A:Especially when someone like you, right, You've got all this.
Speaker A:All these accolades, right?
Speaker A:You're winning worldwide competitions, Renee Robin.
Speaker A:I think you are.
Speaker B:I got fourth.
Speaker A:I got fourth.
Speaker A:Fourth out of seven billion.
Speaker A:I think you're doing okay.
Speaker A:So.
Speaker A:But, you know, people see that you're at a certain level in your career, and I think their expectation is going to be, I have to act a certain way, I have to do a certain thing.
Speaker A:I have to do everything that she says.
Speaker A:And I think, you know, especially for someone like you, that can take some of that pressure off.
Speaker A:It can make a big difference in the end result.
Speaker A:And it could also, I would assume, create a more collaborative environment artistically where you start to explore things if they're comfortable that you wouldn't necessarily have gotten into otherwise.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:A really great example of this is I did a photograph of the witch's Sabbath, and it's on my website.
Speaker B:It's basically a whole bunch of naked people flying around this gigantic, huge bonfire.
Speaker A:I know that, folks.
Speaker B:And it was like.
Speaker B:Yeah, it was a lighting nightmare.
Speaker B:It took me, like, actually years to figure out how to do the lighting.
Speaker B:And then I wound up finding, like, the perfect modifier, wound up being a lantern.
Speaker B:And I was like, oh, there's the lighting quality I was looking for.
Speaker A:Nice.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:I basically put a casting call out, and I was like, men, women, I don't care what your shape or size is.
Speaker B:I don't.
Speaker B:Doesn't matter to me.
Speaker B:Just got to be comfortable.
Speaker B:They're going to be naked, and you're going to be jumping, so you got to have, like, joints that are capable enough to hop.
Speaker B:And outside of that, I don't care what you look like, because this is, like, a celebration of humanity.
Speaker B:And so I had.
Speaker B:I had a few people show up.
Speaker B:One in particular, who she had never been photographed in her entire life before.
Speaker B:It was this, like, really great experience because I shot.
Speaker B:I shoot everything tethered onto the computer screen, and I'm just like, look, if there's anything here that you really are not comfortable with, I will instantly delete it, and it will never exist ever again.
Speaker B:No pressure.
Speaker B:And I do that for everybody that I photograph.
Speaker B:If there's ever a photograph where they're just like, oh, God, please delete that.
Speaker B:I'm like, yeah, I got you, because that's why we're shooting Tether, you know?
Speaker B:And then she had a couple of, like, you know, retouching questions for me afterwards.
Speaker B:She's like, you know, like, I'm not really comfortable with, like, you know, how my stomach looks here.
Speaker B:And I was like, yeah, I got you.
Speaker B:I don't care.
Speaker B:Like, this is.
Speaker B:I want to make sure that when you're, like, an element in this image, that you can look at that and be like, hell, yeah, that was me.
Speaker B:That was awesome.
Speaker B:And I love that, right?
Speaker B:And that's.
Speaker B:That's the kind of energy that I was looking for.
Speaker B:And especially for people who had, like, never been photographed before.
Speaker B:Some of these people I'd never even met before, I haven't even seen since.
Speaker B:And I'm just like, hey, show up to the studio for 20 minutes, strip your clothes off, and jump around like a fucking lunatic.
Speaker B:And then, like, you know, I'm gonna composite this stuff together over the course of, like, you know, four weeks.
Speaker B:Hopefully it won't suck.
Speaker B:I really, really, really work hard to make sure that the.
Speaker B:The people who are in front of my lens feel safe and they feel heard.
Speaker B:That is the feedback that I do get back a lot from people, and I'm very grateful for that.
Speaker B:And I hope that if I ever misstep on that, I hope that I've created a safe enough environment for people that they're.
Speaker B:They feel safe in speaking out, saying, hey, I'm not really comfortable with blank.
Speaker B:Whatever that is.
Speaker B:Right?
Speaker B:Or even if they're not comfortable to say it at the time, maybe email me later.
Speaker B:Hasn't happened yet.
Speaker B:But I'm hoping that, like, it never happens.
Speaker B:Obviously, I prefer to deal with it on set, but, yeah, it's never.
Speaker B:It's never an ego thing.
Speaker B:And same thing, like if somebody shows up for my studio shoot, like for that witches Sabbath for example, and we shoot the photos and they're like, just not comfortable with, with the images at all.
Speaker B:I can be like, look, I can just delete all this.
Speaker B:You don't have to be a part of this.
Speaker B:It's totally fine.
Speaker B:Like it's, there's no pressure here.
Speaker B:This is just, again, this is just a photograph.
Speaker B:I guess it's not, we're not solving anything here.
Speaker B:We're just making cool shit that like, you know, hopefully in 20 years they can be like, did that neat, right?
Speaker A:And that's the cool stuff.
Speaker A:Right?
Speaker A:On that topic of ideation, as you're coming up with these big ideas and you're bringing in a bunch of different folks, do you have any sort of like mock up or real rough composite?
Speaker A:Like, hey, we're kind of going for this or is a verbal explanation enough for them?
Speaker B:Yeah, yeah, definitely.
Speaker B:I mean, for the Witch's Sabbath one, I definitely hacked together a terrible, terrible example because I photographed people who trusted me first.
Speaker B:And then I just like very loosely composited and sent it over and was like, this is kind of what I'm thinking.
Speaker B:They're like, oh my God.
Speaker B:And I was like, can I use this to show people, to get more people involved in the process project?
Speaker B:And like, yeah, absolutely.
Speaker B:So, yeah, having the content art definitely helps for some ideas.
Speaker B:And then other ones, people are just like, hey man, I love your work.
Speaker B:Like whatever you want.
Speaker B:Like, yeah, yeah, just see what happens.
Speaker A:You mentioned a few minutes ago, you know, you get these ideas that stick in your head for six months, 12 months, years.
Speaker A:I've heard a lot of musicians say the same thing, that they get these melodies, these little riffs, kind of like they'll walk around with the guitar and they'll just kind of keep playing the same riff.
Speaker A:And they know the good ones because they're the ones that stick around.
Speaker A:Have you had a lot of those ideas that, you know, I'm sure you just see stuff and you're making shit up in your head all the time.
Speaker A:And some of it's momentary, some of it sticks around.
Speaker A:Some of the art that you've produced, that's your favorite work.
Speaker A:Are those the ideas that stuck around for a long time and fought their way to the top or were they flashes of inspiration?
Speaker B:Probably both.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:But I think the work that came together the funnest was the stuff that's been around for a while.
Speaker B:But every now and then, like I, I do get surprised, like like, the.
Speaker B:The image on the back of my computer screen right now is like the three dragons fighting over Antarctica that just came together.
Speaker B:I was just like, I had some stock on my computer that I'd used for another image, and I was like, I wonder if, you know, and just kind of chase that inspiration rabbit and, you know, something came out of it.
Speaker B:And I was like, I like that.
Speaker B:That's fun.
Speaker B:That's cool.
Speaker B:It's not going to win any awards, but I enjoyed making it, and I like that it's on my computer screen, and I'm good with that.
Speaker A:You're still teaching here and there, right?
Speaker B:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker B:Here and there.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:So you just came up with.
Speaker A:This is my words, not yours.
Speaker A:If you were to come up with a masterclass called how to make cool shit and not lose your mind, what would the first lesson in that class be?
Speaker B:Oh, prepare for failure.
Speaker A:We're back to failure, right?
Speaker B:Back to failure.
Speaker B:100%.
Speaker B:Yeah, definitely prepare for failure.
Speaker B:Because part of making cool shit means that, you know, not all of your ideas are good or that you haven't found all the ingredients for your soup.
Speaker B:You pulled it off the burner too soon, and, you know, it's.
Speaker B:It's missing a bunch of stuff.
Speaker B:You know, it tastes like shit.
Speaker B:You got to, like, put it back on to the back burner, let it simmer for a little bit longer.
Speaker B:You know, the meat's not cooked yet.
Speaker B:That's a great title, though.
Speaker B:How to make cool shit.
Speaker B:I might steal that, you know, and feel free.
Speaker A:Cut me in.
Speaker A:I work on low percentage points.
Speaker A:It's easy.
Speaker A:My lawyer Call yours.
Speaker A:So in that, you know, we.
Speaker A:We talked a while ago about the tools being the worst that they are now.
Speaker A:They're only going to get better.
Speaker A:As you make your cool shit, do you feel like you'll go back and re edit some of this stuff five years down the line when the tools get even better?
Speaker A:You got to just reiterate that process.
Speaker A:And do you feel like there's a period where, yeah, 10 years seems about right, rather than every six months I'm changing something.
Speaker A:Do you feel there's a cycle in there for you at all?
Speaker B:There's probably definitely a cycle.
Speaker B:I think what it is is when I look at the work and I feel like something's missing.
Speaker B:This is a weird analogy, but it's the best one I can think of.
Speaker B:Have you ever, like, rubbed the fur the wrong way on a cat and.
Speaker A:They go, yeah, and I have the scratches to prove it.
Speaker B:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker B:So, like, when I'm working out an image or when I'm looking at my work and I get that feeling of like, you know, of like the fur is getting rubbed the wrong way.
Speaker B:Then I start to.
Speaker B:I start to put.
Speaker B:I put that on the burner and I.
Speaker B:And it starts bubbling and I'm like, okay, what do we.
Speaker B:What do we change?
Speaker B:How do we modify this?
Speaker B:How do we make this better?
Speaker B:What does that look like?
Speaker B:And then eventually the pieces will all kind of line up and I'll go, oh, right, there's that missing thing.
Speaker B:Like I said, you know, maybe it's a software thing or maybe it's just like a technique thing.
Speaker B:Maybe it's like finding a cool new textured brush pack where I'm just like, oh, I hadn't thought of that.
Speaker B:That's super cool.
Speaker B:Or just like learning a new technique that didn't exist or I wasn't aware of or something like that.
Speaker B:There's lots of reasons why I'll go back and re edit work.
Speaker B:I haven't done, like a huge overhaul.
Speaker B:Like in.
Speaker B:In the case of redoing my website, the goal was because I was rebuilding my whole website, right?
Speaker B:So it was like that was the reason to like, go through and just like rebuild, you know, a lifetime of work and then see which ones were actually still good enough to be on the website.
Speaker B:I don't plan on redoing my website anytime soon, but I feel like if I scroll down to the bottom, there's like probably four or five images there where I'm like, you probably give that a fresh coat of paint and just see if it's actually better.
Speaker B:Because every now and then also on the flip side, I will re edit an image and it's not better.
Speaker B:Like, the original actually still holds up better than like the techniques of the color choices that I'm using now.
Speaker B:Or I look at them side by side and I'm like, still like the original more.
Speaker A:It's going to feel good like, that you trust your gut, right?
Speaker A:You can look at it and objectively say, yeah, there's nothing I need to do to this image.
Speaker A:It still stands up.
Speaker A:I think that's.
Speaker A:I probably have five or six of those images the same way where you kind of look at it.
Speaker A:Like every now and again you're like, oh, I could probably mask that better.
Speaker A:I could probably change the color tone a little bit more to bring this out.
Speaker A:And then I look at it and go, nah, I'm just gonna put too much salt in that soup and it's just gonna Be disgusting and no one's gonna want it.
Speaker B:Yeah, that's exactly.
Speaker B:That's exactly right.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:So.
Speaker B:And then other times, there.
Speaker B:There's.
Speaker B:There's.
Speaker B:There's one image in particular that I'm thinking of that since I first made it.
Speaker B:And still to this day, I've re edited it probably four or five times, and it still isn't quite where I want it.
Speaker B:I'm still missing something, and I don't know what it is.
Speaker B:It's an I don't know what, I don't know scenario.
Speaker B:And there's something.
Speaker B:There's something about it that I keep it on my website.
Speaker B:I love it, but it's missing something and I don't know what the ingredient is yet.
Speaker B:And the color grading, wasn't it?
Speaker B:Because I've redone the color grading a bunch of times.
Speaker B:I've swapped out the background elements a bunch of times.
Speaker B:I've done a bunch of things.
Speaker B:I still haven't found that missing piece, but so I'm still kind of like, looking for it.
Speaker B:So that's like bubbling in the back there where I'm like, okay, one of these days I'm gonna find that missing element, and then this is gonna look a lot better.
Speaker B:This is gonna look a lot more satisfying.
Speaker A:We talked in Vegas a little bit about music, and I want to start landing this plane a little bit, but we talked a little bit about music.
Speaker A:If you're.
Speaker A:If you or your art had a soundtrack, had a playlist, what three songs would be on loop?
Speaker B:Oh, man.
Speaker B:I'm working on an art book that has a soundtrack.
Speaker A:And I didn't know this, folks.
Speaker A:I had no idea.
Speaker A:So without giving it away, it's exquisite.
Speaker A:Is it?
Speaker B:It is a mix of heavy metal.
Speaker B:The music itself is a mix of heavy metal and cinematic.
Speaker B:And, like, there is this, like, there's these, like, whimsical pieces, these very light, very beautiful pieces.
Speaker B:There's some sorrowful, like, mournful pieces.
Speaker B:There's pieces that, you know, like, they're very joyful and light.
Speaker B:Then there's these, like, incredible industrial pieces as well.
Speaker B:It is like this whole experience.
Speaker B:Yeah, it's a.
Speaker B:It's a long story.
Speaker B:I can't wait to make it live, you know, to start doing the crowdfunding for it and everything and getting it printed.
Speaker B:Because it's an augmented reality book.
Speaker B:At the end of the day.
Speaker B:It's blending the things that I love so much is, you know, with technology and.
Speaker B:And art and like, you know, emerging technology, which is the augmented reality space.
Speaker B:You Know, everybody is talking about AI, AI, AI.
Speaker B:And I'm like, no, no, no, AR is this like monster staring at us, you know, from just over the ledge, just over the next hill, right?
Speaker B:When we stop paying so much attention to this AI stuff, AR is coming down the pipeline at us hard and fast.
Speaker B:And I'm really excited about that.
Speaker B:So, yeah, as far as music goes, I would say cinematic with some heavy metal, a little bit of industrial would probably be where it sits.
Speaker B:But again, there's like these light, whimsical, beautiful moments as well.
Speaker A:So I'm always interested in hearing what people hear in their heads when they're making their art.
Speaker A:So like the cinematic, the Braveheart meets Trent Reznor thing that you have going on in your head I think is fantastic.
Speaker A:I started using crumplepop because you told me about it versus Adobe Podcast.
Speaker A:I wanted to do the comparison.
Speaker A:So I've been doing the comparison over the past week or so, throwing a bunch of different audio at it.
Speaker A:And I have to say, from the standpoint of a Final Cut editor, right, and I know it plugs into a lot of different nonlinear editors, but as a Final Cut guy, the ability to have perfect audio without having to export, go to Adobe, bring it back in, import it, where it's kind of like you get what you get.
Speaker A:Being able to control every aspect of Echo, reverb, noise cancellation, winds, pops, having all of that control is truly a game changer.
Speaker A:So.
Speaker B:Make software for control freaks.
Speaker B:That's the whole.
Speaker B:That should be our tagline, Software for control freaks.
Speaker A:It really should because it did change a lot for me, audio wise.
Speaker B:Yes, Love it to hear that.
Speaker A:Quickly realized that I'm running an M2 Mac mini as my desktop, right?
Speaker A:So I got it.
Speaker A:It was hot shit for like 12 minutes.
Speaker A:They came out with the M3 and then the M4, right.
Speaker A:And I found that it's a little resource intensive, but if I let things render and then listen through everything, sounds great.
Speaker A:So if I'm trying to edit and do background render and process at the same time, just letting people know, it's a resource intensive thing.
Speaker A:But the fact that I was able to cut at least a half an hour, 45 minutes an hour out of my workflow instead of having to do everything through Adobe and back is it's worth its weight in gold.
Speaker A:And for the subscription price, it's a no brainer.
Speaker A:It's an absolute no brainer.
Speaker A:So I've got an article coming out about it, I've got a video coming out about it, and I'm continuing to.
Speaker A:I continue to throw different pieces of audio at it and it has not failed me yet.
Speaker A:Yeah, thank you for turning me on to that.
Speaker A:It really is an awesome, awesome tool.
Speaker B:Oh, incredible.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:We'll have to get a real quote for you for the website.
Speaker A:Yeah, without a doubt.
Speaker A:We're going to talk about augmented reality.
Speaker A:That's a whole nother hour.
Speaker A:I got a lot of thoughts there.
Speaker A:It's already so much part of our lives.
Speaker A:I just really want to see where we start to push it creatively.
Speaker A:What are the things that we can use with it?
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:All right, so moving on to the rapid fire portion of the show.
Speaker A:I don't know if I've ever done this before, so it's really not a part of the show, but I figured I had you and we can just kind of run through some of these questions.
Speaker A:I'm going to read a list of questions.
Speaker A:Give me your succinct answers.
Speaker A:And this is kind of like the, the personality Rorschach test.
Speaker A:I'm just going to throw stuff out at you and see what you see.
Speaker A:All right.
Speaker B:Okay, let's do this.
Speaker A:What is the weirdest or most unexpected place that you found inspiration for some of your work?
Speaker B:Weirdly, probably some very strange rabbit holes on AI stuff every now and then, like, like most art, there's a lot of derivative bullshit out there that's not.
Speaker B:Not interesting at all.
Speaker B:And every now and then, like, do you find, like.
Speaker A:I remember way back and when I was first starting to get into visual arts, I was a deviant art guy.
Speaker A:Do you find, like, some of that's finding its way back?
Speaker A:We were talking about trends at the beginning of this.
Speaker A:Do you find, like, some of that work is starting to.
Speaker A:To come back into the.
Speaker A:The mainstream?
Speaker B:I actually have an idea for a shot that I'm going to work on hopefully in the next few months here.
Speaker B:That is, anybody who looks at it, who is around in those deviantart days is going to be like, oh, there it is.
Speaker B:And I'm literally gonna like, hit that trend as hard as I can in the face.
Speaker A:So it's not just me.
Speaker A:Cool.
Speaker A:Very cool.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:All right.
Speaker A:Do you have a personal conspiracy theory about creativity of the art world that is solely yours?
Speaker B:Probably not.
Speaker A:Do you have any conspiracy theories?
Speaker B:Yes.
Speaker B:Will I say them publicly?
Speaker A:Fair.
Speaker A:All right.
Speaker A:Put a pin in that line.
Speaker A:We'll save that for later.
Speaker A:If you could start your career over completely in an entirely different industry, what would it be?
Speaker B:Fun.
Speaker B:Fun.
Speaker B:I feel like that's what I Did just now, like getting into software.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:No, but you've been in technology for a really, really long time.
Speaker B:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker B:But I mean, like, I, I, I've done the gamut of trades, right?
Speaker B:So like I started out in trade school, so I went to school for locksmithing, so I can like pick locks and shit.
Speaker B:And then I, you know, spent a little time with electrical and instrumentation.
Speaker B:And then, you know, like, I did lots of other stuff.
Speaker B:You know, like, photography was never the plan.
Speaker B:It was got run over and it was the only skill I could do from, from crutches and wheelchairs.
Speaker B:Everything else I needed my legs for.
Speaker B:So this was the kind of like, this was never the plan.
Speaker B:This is the like, oh, shit, life happened.
Speaker B:Now what?
Speaker B:But if I was to start.
Speaker B:So I had this, I had this, this.
Speaker B:Not a simple answer, but I had a dream once that I woke up and I was 16 years old again.
Speaker A:Again.
Speaker B:And the whole life that I had lived was actually the dream dream that I remembered everything.
Speaker B:And then I was.
Speaker B:And I was just like, ah, Christ.
Speaker B:I was like, I was at home living with my mom again.
Speaker B:And I was just like, no, you've got to be kidding me.
Speaker B:I was like, oh my God, no.
Speaker B:Like, I gotta do high school again.
Speaker B:Like, oh, it's the worst.
Speaker B:This is gonna suck.
Speaker B:And I was just like, like, I still remember how to do everything.
Speaker B:I was like, I'm gonna crush the shit out of this.
Speaker B:That's like.
Speaker B: w to move to New York in like: Speaker A:This can wander into pot talk really quickly.
Speaker A:So there's so much in there that I want to just deconstruct.
Speaker A:Like, you pick locks, you're building Linux distributions.
Speaker A:Like, when were you a black hat hacker?
Speaker A: Was that like: Speaker A:Because we'll just set that aside, but secondarily, like the multiverse now we start to get into our dreams, just our way of recharging our body while we visit another universe.
Speaker A: And were you in this: Speaker A:And oh, we could, we could explore this for a long time, but I am not nearly under the influence enough to have it be a coherent conversation.
Speaker A:Yeah, we're going to revisit that one too.
Speaker A:All right, so title for your body of work, I'll give you mine.
Speaker A:For what I see in your work is like building worlds from wreckage.
Speaker A:But if you could have a title for not the art book, but Your body of work.
Speaker A:What do you think it would be?
Speaker B:Honestly?
Speaker B:It would be the title of the book.
Speaker B:It would be Tribute, because it's a tribute and a celebration of all the people that I've had the opportunity to know and to work and collaborate with over the years.
Speaker A:When's the book coming out?
Speaker B:Yeah, hopefully sometime this year.
Speaker B:I mean, it would be.
Speaker B:That would be great.
Speaker B:Yeah, I would love to get it out sooner than later.
Speaker B:I just gotta set aside the time.
Speaker B:I gotta finish taxes first and then, you know, wrap up a couple client edits.
Speaker B:And then once that's done, then it's book.
Speaker B:I'll steam ahead.
Speaker A:So I can't wait to see that.
Speaker A:Because just how you're talking about it kind of gets me excited.
Speaker A:I'm noticing that friends of mine are starting to drop these art books finally.
Speaker A:Right?
Speaker A:It's no longer just, hey, we're using Instagram.
Speaker A:No.
Speaker A:We're going to start publishing Bodies of Work.
Speaker A:And that, to me, is really exciting to watch friends do that.
Speaker A:Nino just did one as well.
Speaker A:He did his book.
Speaker A:It looks amazing.
Speaker A:I can't wait for yours.
Speaker A:You know, there's so much opportunity for us as artists now to self publish.
Speaker A:Not have to wait for a publisher or a gallery to put something out.
Speaker A:And we can do it in the ways that we want to.
Speaker A:I know Parker Pfister sent me one of his books a few years back, and it was beautiful.
Speaker A:Everything was so precise.
Speaker A:Not only the work, but he wrote poems and short stories for every single image.
Speaker A:And there were these graphic elements carried.
Speaker A:No, but I'm just saying, like, everybody's got all these facets, right?
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:So you're doing the same thing with artwork and sound and augmented reality.
Speaker A:So it's.
Speaker A:I love that we're able to create exactly what we want and then get it out in the way that we want without being beholden to corporate overlords.
Speaker B:The only thing that I'm debating is putting out what I want to call the little Book of Grief ahead of time to get it out of the way.
Speaker B:Because right now, like, the book was originally supposed to be a celebration.
Speaker B: d unfortunately, he passed in: Speaker B:And so the project went from like, a celebration of the two of us to like, you know, and the Trinity too.
Speaker B:Like, I'm carrying this project for him now as well.
Speaker B:But of course, in that time then, you know, like, I, like, I lost a lot of friends in Covid and then to like, you know, motorcycle accidents and suicides and accidental Overdoses.
Speaker B:And then, of course, just eight weeks ago, I lost my mom.
Speaker B:So I feel like I need to get that heaviness out of the way so that I can let the book be what it was originally supposed to be.
Speaker B:Right now, it's like, I love the writing that's in it, but it's so incongruent with the artwork that's there.
Speaker B:I feel like I might have to just, like, put out these, like, little tiny essays with, like, little pieces.
Speaker B:Just, like, make a tiny little book.
Speaker B:Nothing, Nothing too crazy.
Speaker B:And, you know, just, like, get all of that sticky black stuff out so that the book is allowed to have the wings that it was supposed to have to begin with.
Speaker A:How do you process slowly?
Speaker A:Do you.
Speaker A:Well, I mean, some people will take it from the creativity standpoint.
Speaker A:They have the idea, they make the thing, and then it's not obsessing them anymore.
Speaker A:It's just they're able to part ways with that idea or that emotion that was driving them.
Speaker A:You're processing of grief, of tragedy, of trauma, of gratitude.
Speaker A:As you process these things into your artwork, do you feel like the saturation of that emotion diminishes over time, or do you feel like being able to put it into artwork allows you to revisit that anytime you want and have that without carrying it around?
Speaker B:That's funny.
Speaker B:Is that I've never put.
Speaker B:Well, I've rarely put my emotions into my artwork, ever.
Speaker A:Interesting.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:I've only ever put it into my blog, and I rarely update that, ever.
Speaker B:I mean, I think the last time I wrote a blog was literally years ago.
Speaker B:The artwork has never been a place for, like.
Speaker B:Like, what I feel to exist.
Speaker B:It's always just been a spot of just like, let's go make some cool shit.
Speaker B:And I like that.
Speaker B:I like that it forever gets to be like the sandbox and the playground, and it doesn't have to carry all this emotional weight.
Speaker B:You know, I'm not.
Speaker B:I'm not Kirsty Mitchell, you know?
Speaker B:And, like, all the respect and love to that woman in the world.
Speaker B:She's incredible.
Speaker B:I have her book.
Speaker B:She's just a gem of a human being.
Speaker B:For me, the visual work has never carried that semi.
Speaker B:So that's why, like, I feel like I need to put out this little book of grief ahead of time so that the art book gets to be exactly when it was supposed to be.
Speaker A:Very, very cool.
Speaker A:All right, last question.
Speaker A:What is a piece of advice you got early in your career that you completely dismissed, but now that you're older and Wiser and smarter and far more accomplished that you look at and you're like, yeah, that was.
Speaker A:That was a pretty badass piece of advice.
Speaker B:Start a mailing list.
Speaker B:I fucked that one up so bad.
Speaker A:Didn't we all?
Speaker A:Didn't we all?
Speaker B:Oh, my God.
Speaker B:Just start a mailing list.
Speaker B:Oh, my God.
Speaker B:Like, I should have done that, you know, because, like, I used to get featured on, like, the daily mail and shit.
Speaker B:And, like, I just should have had a fucking sign up sheet, and I didn't.
Speaker B:And I just, like, I never understood the value of it until like 15 years too late, you know?
Speaker B:And now I have a little baby mailing list.
Speaker B:There's like 500 people in it.
Speaker B:That's it.
Speaker B:You know, I.
Speaker B:I should have.
Speaker B:I should.
Speaker B:That is.
Speaker B:That is the biggest thing that I regret out of everything.
Speaker B:And like I said, there's been a lot of mistakes.
Speaker B:But yeah, definitely the mailing list.
Speaker B:One is one where I would just go back and be like, grab younger me by the back of the head and be like, all right, dickhead, you're doing this.
Speaker B:And I would be like, no, because I'm like, anybody telling me what to do, and I'd be like, oh, no, this is happening.
Speaker B:And just like, head into the water.
Speaker B:Just a bubble.
Speaker B:Stop.
Speaker B:Like, ready now?
Speaker B:We doing this?
Speaker B:All right, let's go.
Speaker A:I'm seeing why you don't manage people and why you've.
Speaker A:Why you've worked for yourself for a long time.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:HR frowns upon drowning of your understudies.
Speaker A:I think it's really funny.
Speaker A:I was talking to.
Speaker A:Who was it I was talking to, Maybe it was Pauline someone recently, about mailing lists.
Speaker A:And the fact that, you know, mine's relatively small too, around the same 500.
Speaker A:But that's the smallest it's ever going to get, right?
Speaker A:Unless there's a mass unsubscribe tomorrow, which I'm hoping there's not going to be.
Speaker A:But it's the smallest it'll ever be.
Speaker A:I look at it as 500 people.
Speaker A:I don't think I know 500 people.
Speaker A:Right?
Speaker A:And this is the amazing thing.
Speaker A:If 50 people were in a room saying, your shit's pretty cool, I'd be overwhelmed.
Speaker A:But having 500 people that I can communicate to is fascinating to me.
Speaker A:I don't know what point you get to with a mailing list where you now realize, I'm going to start sending email to this list every day and see how many people I can get to unsubscribe because it seems like there's a tipping point.
Speaker A:Like, oh, yeah, no, I love hearing, why is she sending me something every single day?
Speaker A:And it's just.
Speaker B:I just don't have that much to say.
Speaker B:That's just.
Speaker B:That's the part that I don't understand.
Speaker B:I'm just like, what, what is.
Speaker B:What is driving you?
Speaker B:I'm fascinated.
Speaker B:I want to know.
Speaker B:Like, I had a talk with.
Speaker B:With Aaron Nace.
Speaker B:Aaron, right.
Speaker B:And I had a chat with him and I was just like, how do you come up with so many ideas for tutorials?
Speaker B:I was like, I.
Speaker B:I can't.
Speaker B:I wrote in my blog, the last time was years ago, because I can't think of anything to say, let alone, like, what I want to do for tutorials.
Speaker B:And I know that it's just a muscle that you flex kind of like, you know, like, you just have to.
Speaker B:You just have to do it more, you know, and the more you do it, the more you're going to, like, you activate your reticular activator in different ways and you start seeing patterns and you start noticing things and it starts.
Speaker B:I know how it works.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:I still don't get it.
Speaker B:I'm fascinated.
Speaker B:I'm fascinated by these people.
Speaker B:The Dave Crosses of the world.
Speaker B:Matt Klosowski is like, all these guys.
Speaker B:Guys.
Speaker B:Christina Shark.
Speaker B:Same thing.
Speaker B:Like, it's just like.
Speaker B:Like, I'm fascinated by how they're able to come up with all these ideas, and they're like, good.
Speaker B:Like, I phone in and on my blog and I write in that thing, like I said, like, once every few years.
Speaker A:You're not wrong with any of this.
Speaker A:It's this mystical art that people have, and I've been trying to deconstruct the same thing.
Speaker A:How do you.
Speaker A:How do you come up with that much content?
Speaker A:How do you say so many things in a different way?
Speaker A:And I.
Speaker A:I think it just comes down to they've developed the skill to look at everything that happens in life or in their business or their art, whatever, and just say, yeah, there's a tidbit in there that I can talk about.
Speaker A:And it might be thematically repetitive.
Speaker A:In some instances, it might seem negligible, but I guarantee you there's somebody out there that's looking for that information, so why not put it out there?
Speaker B:And yeah, that's what I'm talking about with the reticular activator.
Speaker B:That's exactly that part of the brain being, you know, just looking for that kind of stuff and going like, oh, okay, fair enough.
Speaker A:Well, you used big words.
Speaker A:And for me, I need them to be much, much smaller if we're going to understand what you say.
Speaker A:Small, easy to manage, bite sized syllables.
Speaker B:The reticular activator is the part of your brain of like, let's say you buy a Chevy Equinox and you never see Chevy equinoxes, then all of a sudden now that you own one, you see them everywhere.
Speaker B:That's your reticular activator at work.
Speaker A:Is that your dream car?
Speaker A:A Chevy Equinox?
Speaker B:That was the first thing that came to mind.
Speaker A:I don't know what your tastes are.
Speaker B:Like super sbi man, like younger me would be so disappointed that I don't have that car yet.
Speaker B: ll four tires and that's like: Speaker B:And I'm just like, it's too much work.
Speaker A:Were you like a rally chick?
Speaker A:Like did you want to do forest rallies in a WRX or street race?
Speaker A:Was that your thing?
Speaker B:I mean it's just really fun to drive in winter up here.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:And every now and then I love to drop a vehicle sideways on winter roads and nobody else is around and it's kind of a good time.
Speaker A:No, it's, it's great.
Speaker A:I did a rally course, There's a rally racing course in New Hampshire called Team O'Neill.
Speaker A:And I was writing for a magazine a couple of years ago and they sent me to this for a 5 day rally driving course.
Speaker A:It was, you know, like Ford Escorts and then it was rear wheel drive BMWs and it was all wheel drive Subarus.
Speaker A:It was gnarly.
Speaker A:It was the most fun that I've had just whipping stuff around this mountain course.
Speaker A:You'd love it.
Speaker A:You'd absolutely love it.
Speaker B:I'd be totally down.
Speaker B:I would be down to just be a passenger bunny on that too.
Speaker B:To just be like, like hey, pro driver, let's, let's show me.
Speaker B:It was like, I will drive this and you're all gonna laugh at me because like I don't wanna roll your vehicle.
Speaker B:But you know, if I'm, I, I, I think it's so fun if.
Speaker B:I don't know if anybody listening has ever had the opportunity to be the passenger of a professional driver.
Speaker B:It is like the most wild roller coaster you've ever been on your entire life, except there's a chance you could die, which is different roller coasters because most of the time you're not gonna die in a roller coaster.
Speaker A:Well, these guys that were teaching it Were, you know, pro rally drivers.
Speaker A:And they're spinning this, right?
Speaker A:And they're drifting sideways and they're looking at me talking.
Speaker A:You just have to keep your left foot on the brake the whole time.
Speaker A:I'm like, can you, can you focus?
Speaker A:Can you just focus here a little bit?
Speaker B:We are, we are going a direction.
Speaker B:It's super great if your eye weight.
Speaker B:Eyeballs would go the direction.
Speaker A:Great holding the roll cage, just trying to hold on for dear life.
Speaker A:That five point harness, man, it gets you every time.
Speaker A:On that note, where can people find everything that you're doing, both professionally and personally?
Speaker B:For my own personal stuff, it's renerobin.com and some version of Renee Robin.
Speaker B:Renee Robin photo or Renee Robin photography on pretty much everything.
Speaker B:You'll find me there.
Speaker B:And then from the optics side, it's Instagram @boris effectsoptics is us on Instagram.
Speaker B:And then of course, we have YouTube channel, Boris FX channel, which we have all of our motion graphics stuff and audio stuff.
Speaker B:And then of course, all of the, the optics stuff is in there as well.
Speaker B:So, yeah, that's pretty much.
Speaker B:That's pretty much it.
Speaker B:And of course, if you're brave enough to follow my personal page, just know that it is my personal page and it is a dumpster fire, as you well know.
Speaker A:It was wonderful to look through it and I'm gonna.
Speaker A:So cool.
Speaker A:So you're going to NAB next week, you said?
Speaker A:Or is it end of this week?
Speaker B:This week?
Speaker B:This Friday?
Speaker A:Okay.
Speaker A:Should we be looking for anything coming out of NAB that you can tease here, or is it just more of you doing your job and, you know, shaking babies and kissing hands and.
Speaker A:Is that the phrase?
Speaker A:I don't know.
Speaker A:That's not the thing.
Speaker B:That's the phrase.
Speaker B:That's the phrase.
Speaker A:Okay.
Speaker B:No.
Speaker B:Anybody?
Speaker B:Similar to wppi?
Speaker B:I mean, I just, like, I'm just.
Speaker B:I really needed the inspiration.
Speaker B:After the last five years.
Speaker B:I want to see what the technology has done because, yeah, the people have changed, but also so has the technology.
Speaker B:And I can see it online and I can read about it and I can watch, you know, but it's a lot better to be able to have conversations with people face to face and be like, all right, so I haven't worked with intel in a few years.
Speaker B:Like, tell me about.
Speaker B:What are you guys doing?
Speaker B:What's going on?
Speaker B:Like, what, What?
Speaker B:Like, you know, it's been five years since we've had a conversation.
Speaker B:Let's.
Speaker B:Let's do this.
Speaker B:Um, so, yeah, I'm definitely looking forward to those kind of conversations and then just, like, seeing what all is out there.
Speaker B:Like, what.
Speaker B:What's going on.
Speaker B:So, yeah, I'm really looking forward to that.
Speaker B:So, yeah, I am not glued to the booth, which was great.
Speaker B:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker A:That's the best kind of trade show experience, is to not have to be in the booth.
Speaker A:It's the best thing ever.
Speaker B:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker A:Thank you for hanging out with me.
Speaker A:And, you know, it's good to have you back in the land of all of us, to guide us, to teach us, to corrupt us just a little bit.
Speaker B:Right?
Speaker B:I'm here for the corruption.
Speaker B:I'm here for the corruption.
Speaker A:I knew you.
Speaker A:I knew you'd like that.
Speaker A:I knew you would.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:It's a good word.
Speaker B:Good words.
Speaker B:I'm going to add that to my vernacular, my daily vernacular.
Speaker B:Like, how are we going to corrupt people today?
Speaker B:In, like, the best way possible.
Speaker A:I love it.
Speaker A:And how do you make Cool Shit?
Speaker A:I think that might be the title of this episode.
Speaker A:It's just Making Cool Shit with Renee Robin.
Speaker B:Making Cool Shit.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:Making Cool Shit.
Speaker A:All right.
Speaker A:Hey, listen, thanks so much.
Speaker A:Hang out here for another minute, but I'm sure I'll see you on the circuit or on the.
Speaker A:On the TV tubes or something, and hopefully we'll get a chance to talk again soon.
Speaker B:Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker B:Thank you so much for having me on.
Speaker B:I super appreciate it.
Speaker A:You got it.
Speaker A:I'll talk to you soon.
