Lessons

Lesson Info

Progression to Adventure Photography

My favorite subject it's the only time I used the flashy thing in the presentation we're gonna talk about me and how I became a photographer and kind of where my roots were from and uh it's kind of an interesting path you know, it's I don't think uh everybody gets to kind of follow my path but again you don't need to follow my path to become successful either I think it's really truly based on your drive and your ideas so uh right there is where I grew up uh thirty miles from there actually off of interstate eighty in new jersey and you know, this is but one of the largest is that the largest city in united states I think you're kind of at the center of the world so to speak east coast, the united states and not a lot of nature there is there no commonly referred to as the concrete drunk jungle I had never camped in my life until I was twenty two years old. I uh I grew up in an environment that wasn't quite as sparse in in the zone of nature because I was in the burbs and but I where m...

y mom still lives is the house that I grew up in and it is completely different from when I was a kid there there there are a lot less trees and a lot more homes now but s o it it does have this kind of different aspect to it and now when I go back it's kind of interesting I I see nature everywhere there and when I was a kid I never saw nature so it's kind of interesting that there's all these houses now but there's all this nature too and I don't know if it was as a kid I wasn't noticing it or if the national environment has just kind of come back in like well, you got great tulips I'm going to eat those you know in spring kind of thing. So anyway so I grew up there look at this guy this is the college this is my freshman year in college and this is where things change, right? Look at that mullet all business in the front party in the back, right and the case of beer I probably drink the six pack out of that thing myself I love look at the technology no flat screens there we took an entire room to build the tvs and in those days but this truly was where I kind of changed college was where I changed my parents said to me, you know, you should become an architect because you really like doing those kind of engineering drawings and things like that and we think you would be good at that, right? You would be also not producing this kind of stuff and what's funny is that neither they nor I realized that this is the last component to being an architect you don't do this until that thing is ready to be built it is a complete design and creative process to get to that point and that was the eye opener for me I get to school and the first thing we learn about is the history of architecture in the history of art and then how to graphically communicate a design concept and and all these weird things and I'm like well I came here for this like that's what I'm supposed to do right so the I opener truly came when I was exposed to the works of like jackson pollock you know this is I took this photo with my iphone at moma when they had a jackson pollock uh of expo ends a lot of people look at that and go yeah I don't get that and I was just totally enamored by this stuff how does he do that and how come his thing is on a wall how do I get my thing on a wall you know how how does this all work and why is he so famous? So I start exploring these different artistic avenues in architecture school which in fact led me to creative writing because I hated kind of researching things I liked it I liked kind of just writing from the hip of you know creating a story or an idea and so I kind of started taking a lot of writing classes in this architecture program as well and the two kind of simultaneously turned me into a creative guy so my parents even though they kind of steered me into this architecture career thinking, you know he's going to do these graphic design drawings this whole life and you know, that's kind of he's kind of an engineering based guy and that's kind of his career path and loan behold to stay flipped a switch a big one it's changed me forever. So jackson pollock pablo picasso my two famous painters I love them absolutely love their work they think outside the box and what's pretty crazy when you learn about the history of these two guys, you quickly realize that yeah, they knew how to do this, but at the same time they could paint a portrait and nobody really knows them for their portrait ce but they're out there if you look for him. So if you're an artist and you create something as abstract and wild is this well, then you can come full circle and come back and create something that is very tangible to human as well ok, let me jump in with a question I thought this was a really solid one um how could a photographer with no artistic training develop vision any any? Because, you know, certainly picasso, jackson pollock, those types of artists, you know? Yeah, yeah, it inherently come to the table with something, but do they, uh, gets the question right now? Do they? That's that's kind of been my job over the last fifteen years of my photo career is to figure that out in a lot of the workshops that I teach, I have a lot of really intelligent people there. What is it? Is left brained let's forget this is left brains, engineering based and right brained artistic brace? Or is it the opposite? I'm not well, anyway, there engineered rice, right? Brain is engineering left ring is artistic is artistic my understanding. Okay, I'm going to go with it so I have a lot of right bring people. I have people who work for boeing and people who work for elektronik ce companies and things like that and they're they're very right brain driven and they don't think their creative whatsoever and what's pretty funny is they truly are they're very creative and they just haven't been exposed to that. They haven't been inspired by that stuff yet. So I think if you are, if you consider yourself a non creative person, I think you need tio we're going to talk about this to in the future is you need to think about where you came from and when I say that I mean, you need to think about when you were a kid and my daughter became a huge inspiration and was a kind of a tipping point for me to realize that I remember doing that kind of stuff in grammar school I had art in school and I know nowadays are programs are getting cut out of a lot of educational programs and I there's actually a new article that I cite and a lot of my workshops there was in newsweek about the creativity crisis and I think it was published in two thousand nine, but it a lot of people don't have that creative training now and I had it in school, I had exposure to art when I was six years old, seven years old, eight years old, etcetera and a lot of people don't have that now, so they truly believe they're not creative and I think it's just exposure I think they need to go back to kind of the routes taken our class take a sketch class, take take a painting class you know, learn how to create something abstract lee as well azaz learning maybe how did to actually paint a portrait? You know what, picking up, picking a pick around go do pottery go do weaving all these different kind of creative outlets there truly artistic base they think or more artistic based uh maybe then photography and that has the potential actually opened the doors to people I think okay, so I wasn't allowed to use a calvin and hobbes, but I put the water sins name in there so I talked about it at least um bill watterson did the cartoon calvin and hobbes and when I was in college alongside learning about picasso and jackson pollock and other truly amazing architects like frank lloyd wright and lucy a I was exposed to the calvin and hobbes comic strip because of friends it kind of became this kind of cult following where the next waterson book that came out of cartoons was kind of like something that we would trade off and on between each other. And I kind of realized that there's a connection between calvin and hobbes and myself, this kind of kid who had stuffed tiger who uh had an imagination and the cartoon that I highlighted was one about calvin's at the bus stop with both legs in one pant leg and the tigers asking him, you know, how do you manage to pull that one off and he's like it wasn't that easy and he's like maybe you should start thinking about this again and he's like, what are you talking about? What do you mean? And that kind of was my life was I'm just going to go do this stuff without having any kind of meaning behind it and at the end you know like throw the hand grenade in the room and let's pick up the pieces later kind of attitude and as I got more and more into it and started creating more and more images that had kind of meaning to me uh I started realizing that I needed to have some meaning, you know? I needed to have kind of justification and I learned that in school I just forgot about it so I didn't in architecture school, I had to design anything that I designed had toe have reason hands when I started taking very dynamic photographs, I realized that if I treated that photograph with reason and intent in my mind nine times out of ten, my viewers saw that so they're seeing it and they're kind of catching where I'm coming from. Now all of a sudden I'm like, oh, I've got to be a translator I've got to start thinking about this more on a kind of less shoot from the hip idea and more okay there's a process to this? How do we go about this process now at the same time? We're still we're still in the mullet days? All those photos shot last year were still in the mullet ease with with who I am and I was never this athletic guy never I couldn't hit a baseball if you pretty much put it on a tee and gave me the bat you know I was missing the whole thing or I was hit in the freaking t that was holding it in the ball is on the ground you know that was me couldn't catch a football it's just going to hit me right in the face and so I was never this kind of team sports player guy because I would just I just couldn't do it I don't know why I just didn't have this hand eye coordination thing going and at the age of fifteen a friend took me scheme and another huge turning point in my life I was like ok so I spent an entire day going from the top of an eight hundred foot vertical drop ski area in the poconos of pennsylvania to the bottom trying to make one term it took me all day to get down get up on the skis fall over get upon the skis follow her get up on the skis fall over at the last minute I was like oh my god I could make a turn I could do it I can do this thing and it changed my life forever true and so fifteen years old spring forward to eighteen years old and in college freshman break in a school in college is awesome because you get like six weeks off for christmas you can do anything you want for the most part and I I was totally into skiing at the time and I had never traveled anywhere and the first place that I got to go was jackson family so where I live now has kind of been this thirty year progression of lusting after some crazy place that I visited thirty years ago right? And I again never stopped never never never stopped there's going to be a way you know where there's a will there's a way you couldn't keep going get a move forward going to do this going to get better etcetera, etcetera and now we live there so it's kind of cool but so skiing became a big part of my life and that doesn't really work with architecture either because unless you're designing ski resorts and there's not a lot of those going in at this point. S o I automatically became enthralled with the outdoors and had you know, now I had something I could get better at because I could do it I didn't I didn't miss the ball I could actually make a turn even though was a poor term I could learn how to make a turn and I could essentially perfect my craft right? So I fell in love with skiing and simultaneously freshman year in college, no car needed a bike got my first mountain like that was the big thing then uh this is some eighty, thirty years ago you know here comes kind of the first hit of production mountain bikes beyond the years of mount tam and marin county and this is the's those guys have essentially created something that the general public a buy this is a cool sport get my first mountain like you know I wrote it on pavement for two years or whatever before I started realizing this is about dirt so now I have this winter sport that I really love this summer sport that kind of takes takes its place in in the summertime and so the out of those two passions it kind of this photography adventure, sports but everything group right? So we talked about that first visit to the tetons the dramatic sunrise in winter the shortest day of the year that sun comes up so slowly it's blustery cold we get a lot of snow you know, this is skier's paradise at the same time what's going on here now not biking we have some of the greatest trails in the country and I'm spoiled rotten I go to places like thailand and I'm like yeah trails you're not so good I miss my berms and a big jumps like perfectly set up for takeoffs and landings and you know, writing, writing curved elements there's so much flow to the trails we have in jackson is like so perfect and then you have to realize that take a step back and not really complain when I'm in thailand right uh so anyway I get to go here at eighteen years old as a skier fledgling skier and fledgling mountain biker and truly inspired by my environment I remember when I was there at eighteen population of the town thirty, five hundred and the big kind of claim to fame for them when I was eighteen was in the winter the elk population like quadruples the town population in in the valley because all the animals come down to the valley now it's not so much a little bit more of a fight between the two of us but uh so this is an environment completely different from where I grew up, right? I mean completely different if if there's something out there that is truly inspiring it's truly something different than you're used to right it in turn made me move to vail, colorado after graduating college and I lived here for eighteen years I met my wife in colorado both kids were born in vail uh simultaneously built a photography career invalid while being an architect in a builder I built a million dollar homes for very wealthy people and I loved doing that but I also loved being out here so being out here part just started pulling and started pulling on me I wanted it more and more and more it was cool to me. You know, kid growing up, concrete jungle, never camping. Well, now I was camping every weekend. I was experiencing these crazy places that I had never seen before. Big mountains, big vertical drops your snow in the winter cold temperatures. I never got that new jersey. Yeah, yeah, we've got blizzards and we got snow every now and then, but typically turn kind of the rain or, you know, this snow is on the ground from november to may that's that you're living with snow, you get used to it. And but look at these peaks I wanted to climb these peaks I wanted to go into the zones and see environments that I had never seen living at sea level so truly became enamored with what I did well, what I was seen and that made me by my first camera. So twenty years old get my first camera, and all I wanted to do was take pictures of this kind of stuff to send back home to all my friends, like they had never seen it either. For the most part, you know, we're like kind of clueless and I as I progressed, I started seeing more and more things like this, just camping this's a rock in my campground. And just the way the clouds and the sun were being illuminated like I got so inspired that I was like, if I can make this happen if I can make this become my career, I'm going to do it and I'm not gonna let anybody tell me, but I can't okay, so this is kind of the start now, right about this point ah, girlfriend gave me a book was called light on the land and it was done by our wolf who's, a very well known local seattle photographer and his background is truly painting. He was he's, a painter by trade by by school education, and then he kind of picked up a camera because it was easier to take photographs of his environments, a supposed to standing there painting them and this book kind of highlighted that start, and when I saw the photographs that were illustrated in this a book, I was like, if I could figure out a way to do that, that would be like the icing on the cake. So I started really studying how how to transcend the snapshot transcend that snapshot that I had with the camera that I bought go camping on the weekends to send pictures back home to my mom, to my grandmother and my friends, right? So that was a big turning point for me and a solid twenty years of my life that's a long time stay focused on something right? So you know, as we talk about this over this the next two days you know it's impossible for it to happen overnight it truly julius ok, now we're getting into it becoming a photographer I'm going to do stuff gonna take pictures got a lot of friends risky what's the first thing I think we're going to shoot skiing, right? Yeah. Here's the first shot of essentially an entire brick of fuji from bolivia. Okay that's what every shot looked like right there completely under exposed why doesn't know how to use my camera right went on the field got twenty rolls of film thirty six exposures each seven hundred, six hundred, seven hundred exposures let's make this happen and I had friends who are good at skiing, right? Yeah, but if you don't know how to use the camera, you're not getting anywhere either. So we have to learn how to use our tools in order to produce something that actually people can see right. Talk about the snapshot well, there's not even a snapshot there because you can't see anything s o twenty twenty rolls film completely under exposed well, I think you need to go back to the drawing board there ok, so we do we learn about exposure and this shot has taken twenty years ago so before my wife and I were married were dating I took the shot of her so what's cool about it is there was still vision there were still I was still trying to highlight I was trying to transcend what I knew at the time in trying to create something that was more dynamic but I didn't know that I was trying to create something more dynamic I just was looking at the world in this kind of open met manner ok but then all of a sudden I started figuring this stuff out okay we're in somewhat bright overcast late we're in the snow I need to add one and a half stops of exposure to my camera and I'm still shooting filming these days have to had one and a half stops of light to my meter to get a proper exposure now how can I highlight what we do out there you know I so fifty film no thirty two hundred none of this this was you know a wide angle lens wide open f two point eight I so fifty maybe I would bump it teo I saw one hundred or so two hundred and process it that way but again I wanted to show people a world that you may not get to see you know how many people are going to hike some crazy rich ridgeline and drop into avalanche terrain without having knowledge experience et cetera! Well that was mine done and then along comes the family, so building houses, designing houses, taking photographs that inspired me and hopefully inspired others along comes family. Now, what do you do? How much ever going to become a photographer? I've got to support these three or at least try and support these three, right? My wife does a really good job, but the other half of it so where do we go from there? Well, I go back to what I knew I knew architecture, let's start shooting architecture, photography I can do this there's nobody in this marketplace that's taking photos of architecture I'm going to do that, maybe that'll generate income. Maybe that'll get my business kind of flowing and going and sure enough, it did. I was sought after there was a time in my life where I was making a ton of money doing both. All my spare time was done shooting photographs for local architects and builders, and the other part of my time was building these crazy houses that were really cool, so I was getting to be in them in both scenarios. It's kind of wearing those shoes at this time, but there's one thing that happened when I started focusing on this because I started focusing on this very early, my images outside started suffering and what's crazy is I could look at this scenario, and I could graphically put in the cabinets and the scene and put my camera at the right height to get to a shot like this, but I didn't have the training or the knowledge at that point to be able to kind of focus on both of these things on architecture, hand on going outside so my my outdoor work was really, truly suffering at that point, and on top of that, I had to focus on running a business now that was actually making income and was producing more and more jobs, and I was becoming more successful at that, and I had to sit back and go hold on a minute. That sucks, you know that doesn't. That is no different than the first shot. It's, just different colors. Okay, so where did I go? Well, the first shot I should you of of the drawings is about what? It's about those very hard edged lines, but as an architect, you don't get to do those hard edge lines unless you get somebody to say I like that sketch. I like that design. I like that concept let's further progress to the next stage, so there's, this huge period of design development, but your first presentation to them is kind of a sketch it's a painting. He's got color, writes got shadow it's got designed to it all of a sudden, we're not looking at this hard edged trying, so I started thinking about this idea. Oh my god, I think I could do this. I think I can become a better photographer by going back to what I learned and I had my books from school, I actually started ripping through design books and that's where I ended up creating all of the presentations that we're gonna talk about in the next two days is from the design books that I had from architecture school, and I was like, I'm doing a lot of this, I just didn't know I was doing a lot of this going to go backwards had to be my own translator at the beginning, right? So then all of a sudden I'm going out into the world and I'm starting to look at the world in a more dynamic way. I'm looking at it from a light standpoint, I'm looking at it from a composition stample looking at it from a different perspective than just typically taking what the snapshot in just saw, right? Okay, well, now I could do it, I'm re inspired shooting the natural world this time, no people in this right, but definitely not a snapshot of a sunset this thing is designed right? The rocks in the foreground have text in the sky has texture there's contrast there there's light there's color all of this is working into a single photograph pretty cool, right? Ok, well, they could do it there I could do it here now I'm ok. I'm creating these kind of successful photographs I've got design behind me I've got an idea I've got a concept I've got subject matter I want to go places they want travel I want to see things I want to do this I wantto made my photography good all around one percent then go back to my roots because I never left this I just didn't know how to do it on a level that allows me to do what I'm doing now I had to figure out how to first take my land and then I had the knowledge of what my athletes and friends and people are doing and I had to combine them so my mission became very quickly. What am I doing? Why am I riding a bike? Why am I ski? It wasn't truly aboutthe sport, it was about the environment it was about the ability to get ten miles into the wilderness in, you know, a fraction of the time is it took toe walk and it was about hiking up to some crazy ridgeline that was deeper in the mountains than any chairlift would take me and I got to ski down on fresh untracked below about her right? That was a goal, so I'm totally inspired about my environment. Now how do I illustrate my environment to everybody else? How do I get them inspired about that's really cool? I want to go ride there, I combines everything that I've been trained to this point in my life have brought it all together figured it out piece by piece over twenty years now it's about that graphic communication over the rock I don't care what the skiers doing, you know, he's he's essentially doing a back flip spinning off of a big rock, but what attracted me to the shot was the like it because of the color we don't see that often, and if we're focused on adventure sports photography, we tend to focus on this sport as opposed to the environment as opposed to what's going on around us and that's kind of the key to becoming a truly strong adventure. Sports photographer is finding how to put your finding out figuring out how to put your subject athlete hiker runner skier mount baker I don't care what in an environment that has a graphic design to it there's no question what my subject is here, right skier but also what's the action being imposed here it's crazy right I mean, I don't even do this anymore I don't I ski around this stuff like I get underneath that, but I still know from doing it and experiencing it and being out in the wilds and wanting to other people my my environment that's how I kind of connected this whole thing, so now it becomes about those moments, it becomes about the moments of just loading the bikes in the truck at the end of the day, how people stand around and talk, you don't need to see their faces to kind of figure out what's going on in the shot data and maybe you don't get that they're standing around loading bikes, but you get the concept of what I'm trying to tell you guys about it's not about the big air, they got the figure I shot them doing the big air. This is actual fact it's the way I see my environment crazy abused trees on a wind swept ridge in wyoming think about how brutal the weather is here on a day to day basis to produce a tree that looks like that and when you're hiking up this ridge line, you are in that wind, your miserable you're cold, you're hungry, you're thirsty, all those emotions start playing with you, but then graphically like that is a cool tree I can smell trees from mile away love them as a subject matter it doesn't matter if I put somebody skiing there mountain biking there if I find a tree like this you are unfortunately going to have to jump over it through its key round it go through you know go underneath it coming come back from the other side high past that go walk down past it I'm going to shoot that thing fifteen ways to sunday to make sure I'm illustrating that tree in the way I think it should be illustrated and then the moment after hanging out remember that part where I totally wiped out I totally crashed yeah that was cool you know hanging out at the at the local bar in town after writing can't write anymore will you could ride but you know we're not riding dangerous train after dark because you can't really see it even with lights it becomes really sketch and there are some athletes that do but so it becomes this connection right? Who are the guys? They're the writers what are they doing? Well there's enough bikes around there for you to kind of put two and two together that they're mountain bikers right what's the building? Well, I don't really know what the building is I mean, if you live in jackson you probably know what the building is but okay there's something going on here there's something that makes you want to start deciphering the photograph and if I can create moments like this I can keep you engaged just a millisecond longer and if I can keep you engaged the middle second longer well maybe I can get a sail off of that image maybe I can push that image on somebody else that has that same kind of reaction once I got to this level I started getting jobs I started becoming successful and I pushed my ideas I was I'm a writer hey man, I know I know calvin and hobbes and creative right I carry creative road through college I can give you a story that kind of backs up what I shoot and highlight my story with my images and highlight my images with my story oh you're the package deal we like you come j let's go visit the chris king you know component factory in portland, oregon when we're there teaching a workshop having extra day come take a shop tour I would love to have you okay bam seven page article and dirt right magazine because I got the tour the company who makes hossam hubs awesome headsets and coffee tampers which is again connected to my heart in seattle best coffee in the world still hands down and uh never started didn't start drinking coffee until I moved here actually and now I'm drinking quad ok every day big clients, big name clients I told you you can shoot it you can shoot it with a professional of the vessel are if you could shoot it with an iphone what happens? You can shoot it with a go pro give me an idea give me a concept to chase down and I'm going to chase it till you tell me I have to submit it you give me a deadline until that deadline well we're working on it we are working working, working until the deadline so you tell me no more no more okay here here's the images I don't think they're that good but you know, because I'm always trying to get to that next one where is the next image gonna be that's going to be different than the one I just took and now covers got the covers of magazines so off its my wife and I went to alaska we shot a story fifteen years after we're married. Now, unlike most people who go to cancun or you know costa rica seems to be another honeymoon destination. My wife and I mountain like five hundred miles across alaska for our honeymoon it were a bit different. Ok a bit different uh, but fifteen years after that I came up with this idea hey, for a fifteen year university let's go back to alaska and just ride the best trails the best of the five hundred miles that we wrote and it ended up being about one hundred miles of really awesome single track so I pitched the idea to drag and they were like that's a really good idea but we want your wife to write the article and I was like well ask her just kind of got a full time job and she was like I don't want to write the article I don't want to do it I'm like do you want to go to alaska? Yes I wanted to ask if you want a mountain lake in alaska yes one about blake in alaska are you gonna write the article okay, so she the reason I asked her because they wanted the woman's perspective they wanted the woman side of going back after fifteen years of marriage and exploring places that we rode fifteen years ago in on top of that we have been riding together for fifteen years kids go on the weekends we try and get a baby sitter for a few hours and we go out for a ride where we go out this year the kids were all the both in ski school we're going to go out and ski so our lifestyles are completely together with each other you know we don't we're not thinking about different things even though we have completely different professions and what's cool about the article is that she's a way better writer than me? Because she's wicked smart and they freaked out about it. We ended up getting the cover as well as thirteen pages in the magazine and images were all about this kind of relationship that we had gone through for fifteen years and how I saw alaska now, fifteen years later, the amount like pretty cool right? That led tio a column in photograph magazine, which is an online publication a it's a pdf version but great content in this magazine it's all about the artistic side of photography and what was really cool even though I only did it for a year, I got to write very creatively as opposed to writing from a technical background side of things in photography. I got to bring in the emotion of being a photographer and that was exciting to me drama howling. It was about trying to get a shot in patagonia, where it is windy three hundred sixty five days of the year. And could I get one? And I actually stumbled upon a reflection in a moment where there was no winds but it was about creatively trying to find that subject. So I got the column like, ok, now I'm going further making this happen what's next big publications, they don't give it to anybody, I was making enough headway and what I was working on and the way I was presenting myself that I started getting big assignments and this is cool because it has pretty much just transformed the way I look at photography and writing as well, I want the story now, I don't want the single shot I want story, I want to create a story within a single photograph, but I also want to create a story collectively and a huge group of photographs, and if I can do that and then possibly get a writing deal on top of it, and I can tell this story too, aiken interact with people's emotions on all different levels, and that really excites me. So next session, what does a strong photo need? Do we have any ideas? At this point? I think maybe so a strong photo needs some core ingredients were going to kind of talk about broad scope things as we progress here today, and we're going to narrow it down narrow down, narrow down so core ingredients is what we're going to talk about next, all right? And those are light clarity, a context in composition composition is going to lead us into graphic design. So questions encourager in studio audience think lorenzo, you're ready. I have one right after bet that's always like your sanders I don't know if you're gonna cover this a little later, but was it the fact of them coming to you or you pitching an idea? It's it's, a buyer's market place now for sure, because everybody has an iphone, everybody has a camera. Everybody wants to get published, you have to make that step. You have tio hone your craft, hone your pitch, hone your photography to the point where you rise above everybody else who wants that position? So it's your job? Do they come? Do I have people come to me? Yes, I do, but it truly is like me just making noise. I'm gonna bang on the door until you let me in. That was the next person I'm like. Are you kicking in doors saying, hey, you know what I want to be? I want to be in their face, everybody's face who's willing to even think about using my work. I want to be in their face when they wake up and I want to be in their face with me go to sleep, but at the same point, I don't want to be annoying because then you get tossed aside too. So it's like a really fine line of continuously, just being in a relationship that you don't want to be too aggressive in, but you need to be aggressive into kind of rise above everybody else when I guess another question is where's their line I mean really it was great I mean that is the line between success and failure apparently I haven't gone over the deep end yet, so I'm still good but yeah, I mean, I you know, I promote myself monthly to editors that I've worked with in the past as well as editors that I have never worked with so it's like a monthly deal with me if there's some other project that I've got going as well that I think is special I do special kind of pumps to people you know and and if I have an idea I send an email flat out I'm going to hit you over the head what do you think of this and sometimes it's yeah, we did that last month, you know, because I don't think it's impossible for me to follow all the publications and everywhere it's going, but at the same time I need to kind of be able to come up with different ideas, you know? So sometimes it works sometimes it doesn't but it's just being it's having a strong presence with kind of your mailing list, your, uh your genre of photography and where you're trying to sell your market being there consistently being there, you know, aggressively, I think is the wrong word because you know, aggressive means there's going to be kind of dispute there to me, but assertive, perfect word, perfect word. You have to be assertive. Thank you. So you live in jackson now and I've got imagine that just like if you're an extreme skier, the place must be teeming with extreme skiers and hard to differentiate yourself. How is the market for adventure photographers? And do you think he gives you an advantage to be in a place like jackson, where there's probably many or is it better to be in a place where they're few? I think it gives me an advantage as faras if so and so can't work with me today and I really want to go shoot something based on an idea or something like that I can go to the next person at the same time. I'm really careful now as to who I work with of and I think it's because I don't have a lot of time anymore and I want to go out with very qualified people who I know how to react with a camera and and the most most of the times those people are the ones who need the shots as well to promote themselves because they're professionals and so there's this growing relationship on dh there are people who I work really, really well with and it's they kind of help my vision as well as me help them, you know, kind of thing. So it's is this kind of dual relationship things. So I think where I live, it's a market saturated with really insane professional athletes, I think it helps in a lot of ways, but it can also hurt too, you know, there are people that you could go out with who maybe don't have the experience that they claim they do or and on and on and you could be a really awesome professional athlete winning huge competitions and being famous, but you can't shoot a photograph like you, you can't put yourself in the position I need you to be and to make the photographs look well, look decent, right? Because we're dealing with lenses and environments and it sometimes that's the way it kind of works out is if you khun make a really good turn right on that little dot right there, then the shots going look great, but if you turn later, you're not even in the frame, you know? So those are the kind of things that make it hard and then in my environment I have a lot of competition I live where a lot of photographers want live so it's not easy again, I'm in a local environment that's just his tough is a national environment