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Lesson Info

Creativity and Vision

Segway out of critique segway out of looking at your work building your portfolio um we recently did a web critique of someone who and they had three hundred something pictures on their website and then I was good photography but it was just so much it's like hey could I get a drink of water and I opened a fire hydrant on you I just need a glass of water like seriously like here's a case no just do bottle thank you right you don't need a three hundred billion pictures all right um look at your work printed out all of that so said way into creativity um vision and style all right um creativity is you have this subject in this environment and you've got to get like an awesome picture out of it right I gotta have kind of a very ho hum subject in a ho hum environment and take a very home picture okay so I stand you know, someone next to that wall I don't really get much out of them I don't get a lot of their personality out of them and I take a picture under whatever lighting conditions an...

d it might not even be the best lighting conditions not being a very creative photographer I want to take this space and I want to make it look different I wantto I want this purse like I have musicians and at you know, eleven o'clock on a friday night when they have the guitar in their hands and they're on stage and they've had a few beers and their best friends or in front of them, they're alive and they come to me on a wednesday at two o'clock in the afternoon for their pictures they're friends aren't there, they're not playing their music it's two o'clock on a wednesday like like they just woke up yet I have to get that out of them, right? So I have to be creative in my way of how I deal with my subjects have to be creative in ways I asked them to do things um, I have to be creative in the way I like things, right? Um and as I'm a cz I'm going forward with with my work um I need to do things creatively, I need to promote myself creatively. I need to get my name out there in some sort of creative manner, right? We're dealing with like where I'm going into, I'm dealing with creatives they have of art directors and signers and photo editors they deal with creative's all the time, they themselves air kind of creative people and if I come in them was just very mediocre work presented to them in a very mediocre way and everything about me is just very bland they're not gonna get a lot of work from them and simple does not equal bland, by the way. So your goal as a photographer is the look out into the world, see how things are getting done and then say, how can I do it differently? And one thing that upsets me a lot that I see photographers do I kind of alluded to in the critique is oh, wow, I really like this person's bio and copy paste change the name and take texture and color and reverse them I love color and texture. Ok, then I'm gonna love texture and color. You just copied someone and you could see it all the time when, when one of the big organizations have, you know, their big awards and somebody came in and did something different and won awards you better damn well believe that, like eighty percent of the industry's all gonna go shoot that picture right? Some picture became popular and then everyone's going to go and do it. Somebody figured out like I'm going to deliver my wedding photos to my wedding clients on a personalized the ipod. And then as soon as people find out about it, everyone wants to figure out how do you do that? How do I give it out on one? But somebody thought about it, and then everyone follows behind and just does it just like them and there's a lot to be said for saying ok this photographer shot this picture how did they do it? I'm going to figure out how they shot it and I'm going to go shoot a similar picture but I'm not showing that picture I'm not going to do it because somebody else already did it now it can very well be said there's nothing new under the sun solomon wrote this thousands ofyears ago there's nothing new under the sun everything I do appear is derivative you think they're nobody's ever shot against a white background before oh my god like everyone she's against white background right like that eight new that's not the new that's but but what I've got to do is I've got to get something out of my subject I got to get something out of my client I've got a I've got to get their personality and take away the white background and just make it about them right abadan did it herb ritts done and I mean everyone does it white stuff right? So take away the background but now make it about the subject all right? So I'm looking for inspiration you've got to get inspired uh you've done what you could do and you need to get inspired I alluded to it earlier if you are a wedding photographer don't look at wedding photographers for inspiration because you're looking at what people are already doing in your genre in your industry go look somewhere else go look at fashion go look att editorial gold lick it photo journalists you know go go look at magazine photography from some other genre if you're a portrait the family portrait photographer look into some other genre of portraiture that can inspire you and don't just copy but say what is it about this that I love about this photograph? What is it about? Is it their expression? Is it the lighting? Are you going to take the lighting from this? You know, big advertising shoot and apply that to infant portraiture or child portraiture or or I like it I like how this person uses rim light and I like how this person uses window light and I'm going to kind of mix a bit of window light with a rim like and they do it in fashion I'm going to do it with bridal portrait it's um as you grow as a photographer f stops and shutter speeds and io sos and settings and lindsey is no longer matter to you where I stand now, I don't care if someone pulls a photo up, I don't care how you shot it I could look at and figure it out so you had a light here and a light there and they were two stops down from your main and your main was right over your head and that's around catch light and the lights falling off right there is probably a beauty dish and you did this that the other in the background is here and oh, look at how that perspective is compressed you shot that with a telephoto lens blood blood would not block I had no how you shot that how did you think about shooting that picture? What do you thinking? I wanna went like in wedding industry one of my favorite photographers that I well I like to study and I I would say how do you think is john uh michael cooper out of las vegas ault f er all theft dot com and he kind of started uh the trash the dress um the trash the dress phenomenon um and he didn't go out to start a phenomenon he did not sit there and go ok, how can I start something that a bunch of wedding photographer is going to want to do? That was not his goal your goals like I'm gonna go I need to try to start something that a whole bunch of people get on board and do like ok, fine but that's not his goal he's like uh the photography is my thing and I'm trying to do something different free for him and what he decided to do is like I want to take a really strong women from history and from literature and places like that these characters and I want to translate them into bridal portrait ce and one of his first ones was joan of arc and he set up the shot and threw his photography and threw some photoshopped trickery he takes this picture of this bride on fire here's this bride standing on a sand dune and she's engulfed in flames it's like yeah joan of arc that's what I want he clicks that picture he puts it out in the world okay how many of you going to shoot bridal portrait when she's engulfed in flames? That doesn't sound like your standard old bridal portrait right and he has this awesome story so he's at aa wedding fair bridal fair kind of thing he's got his booth his photography booth set up and he has that picture printed huge right? The main picture of his booth is this bride on fire out in the desert and this lady and her mom are walking down and looking at all the people there's another photographer are long way just across the way from him and the daughter stops in on that other photographers biggs the mom looks over and sees this big bride on fire shot she comes over and she looks at it she looks at him she looks at it this horrible this is just atrocious why would you even shoot a picture like that just so upset by this picture goes over drags her daughter from the other photographers boots drugs are over there to look at this look at this and the bride looks at it goes are you available may whatever our junior like here's my wedding date are you available yeah I'm available yeah I like that is john michael cooper trying to get every bride in the world no he can't shoot every bride in the world if your wedding photographer you do not want to shoot fifty two weddings a year that means you have zero time off right so we were talking about you know your wedding photography if you shoot wedding photography the way you shoot all the other stuff that's going to get to a much smaller segment of people but maybe you only shoot ten weddings a year but you have such a unique vision on weddings you on ly have to find ten brides the higher you and being you're so unique and so different they'll pay you what you're asking right because you're not like everybody else with a freakin lights fear trying to shoot the smiling bouquet shot there's plenty of clients for that there's plenty of photographers for that there's a whole ocean of people who want it and who shoot it and you're like I don't want that and you're like I'm popping up over here going look I'm not saying that's wrong I just don't want do it I want to do this thing well, one hundred people over here go I don't want that for my wedding photography but ten we'll go that's what I want a mag was telling you I'd hire you if you shot weddings like you shot those folks in the bathroom I want you to be plenty of talk for right? Well, meghan, I'll have to get married again. Um so but that makes your job marketing harder you shoot the nice smiley shots and one hundred million people want that you go find them but one hundred million other photographers air trying to find them too, right? So it's his catch twenty two thing right? You're going to go at things differently? That is not how you approach weddings typically but that's what could make you ultimately successful ultimately successful? One thing that made me successful music is I wasn't getting paid much, but I treated that job like there's a five thousand dollars job I put everything into it and I took care of my clients as though they were paying me five thousand bucks they're paying me fifty bucks, but I put everything into it and I know photographers will say, you know, I'm only getting paid fifty bucks for this job I'm gonna walk him out the front door snapped a couple pictures burnham a disk and I'm done yeah, I guess what you are done because I want to take your little business and put it out of business and then go on from there all right so um where I'm drawing my inspiration lately um is street art ok like total celeste um where I am where I'm drawing my my personal inspirations from street art all right street artists are out there doing amazing things in the world and they're able to put one picture on a wall and say a lot I want to put one picture on a wall and say a lot no, I'm not working with you know, spray paint and wheat paste and all that I'm working with pixels and light and all of that but I say how did they say so much in a single picture right why am I drawn to that so much? I'm not about to go bomb walls although I'm like this far from like I'm ready to go bomb smalls right um but call please street art something draws it into to me and what I'm doing right now I wish I had enough of my own stuff with me to do it but we're still working it on on all of it is I'm taking right now some of my simple photographs like oh did I do with tilson throw tilson on the floor he's always yeah so I have had to learn howto cut linoleum blocks and I made a making block prints of this on toe would and then I am doing pate and other block prints and distressing it and then I make these little wood blocks and then I take sanders to him and then I start over it again then I'll we pay something on top of it now well, straight most of that back down and then I rub it against a brick wall and then I wash it in a paint and like, I'm just tryingto like, make the's street art murals that air like this big, based off of my photography and then when I sit down and I meet with some of them and they say, oh, do you have a card a hand in this little wooden block? I think what's this only moments my card and my information contact information is like wheat pasted onto the back of it. I'm I'm inspired by week pasting and painting and graffiti and all of that and the simplicity of books of simple street art, and I'm not trying to make my pictures look like that, but I'm going to say, you know what? I'm inspired by it. I don't know exactly all what's going on inside of me when I see this stuff, but I'm putting it into my promotional materials, my business cards and my whole sort of package of branding is going to be kind of wrapped up in that kind of thing, all right, another thing that uh inspires me and this is not any sort of of pitch or uh I'm not trying to sell this thing so all right this is my field guide that I finally put out put it out through a company called mad cloud and when I'm printed my portfolio there that was the first time in a long time I had made prince on and wow print man I shoot digitally I look at it digitally I send it off digitally it's all digital it's the whole thing's digital I only see my pictures and screens and then to get prince of my work even even laser prince was like wow look at all these prints look look I never put my work and when I was putting this field guide together what's what's the thing to do these days make any book you make it for the ipad you make it for this e book this e book that download this pdf that it edited it that it's right I'm making this field guide and we'll put this out in the world and it's going to be in print and print on lee can you make it a pdf like everyone's doing pdf sees days making e book you know you want this you gotta buy the you gotta buy the print you gotta hold it in your hands it's it's a physical copy of it you gotta buy it in print way every now and then we could kind of drop it I couldn't click something on mad cloud and drop into the ipad that's what hey it's on the ipad for the next ten minutes and it's off right but if you want this you've got to buy it in print well it's easy to do a pdf it's easy toe do a download whatever but you know I have downloaded e books and some of them are like very good jonathan can bliss has won on film film was not dead in his e book on film is like fantastic you want to start shooting film? You have to get candice's e book on that and I'm not going todo can list you're stupid you know craft and vision is all about e books and man they have some great stuff and like I love my e books but a bookie bookie bookie bookie bookie bookie book print oh well come on can you do a pdf? No, no, no, no pdf. Sorry, print well then I'm not going to get it. Okay, just do a pdf photo op that no, I'm gonna be different, dammit and you have to get it in print that everyone else is doing a book so I won't and currently this is one of the best selling mad cloud things that's you know number one publication on matt club I don't know it's number one but it's it's up there enough we're marketing people mad clouds are writing to be a couple times a month going can I get a quote for this blogger article for this or that of the other yeah I like mad club print quality is good it's pretty neat next and this has inspired me to start uh magazine um and I'm not going to a monthly magazine I'm not going to do if I get one out a year I'll be lucky um but I want to take a different take so if I want to start a magazine about photography for photographers maybe I should do some reviews like camera views there's not gonna be a single camera review in there why? Because other people do camera views so I'm not going to do camera views right? Um I need to go find out who the most popular photographer is and have them write an article. No, I want to find people you never heard about it and have them write articles right? There will be some people that maybe I get you know, some popular folks in the industry to write something for it um won't mind that um oh I'm going to get some sponsors because if I get some sponsors that'll give me some more credibility if somebody this brought to you by this well sponsors are awesome when you're trying to foot a bill like creative life cannot go down without like being h right like we're not here without a sponsor but this thing over here I just upload a pdf and no one buys it then all I'm out is the time it took me to make the pdf I'm not buying ten thousand copies store housing them and then mailing them myself you want a copy? They print a copy, they mail it to you so my overheads not all that much so and I want to be able to say whatever I want to say about and I want anyone who writes for this magazine to say anything they want to say about anything at any time and you start getting sponsors and you might have toe hey that's going to put our sponsors off all right, no sponsors that might make this a little more expensive. It's definitely nobody cost more than a time magazine off the shelf grocery store because it's one ofthe to a very small industry you want it here it is you wanted is an e book it's not gonna happen? You have to get it is a print so when I doing things in my business and when I'm doing things with my photography, it for me is about what is everyone else doing? I'm going to go somewhere else last one on that is my video called transform. Uh, a little black and white video I did for scott kelby as a guest blogged post. I was in a bad head space at that time in my life, just things were going crazy. I was losing my dad. And here is a huge stage to stand on zach and say anything you want to say, talk about lighting talk about your workshop, tell people about your dvd. Use this to sell your stuff if you want, like whatever you want to do. Like hello, hello and just big audience. So I looked what are other photographers doing? And what I saw, like I could do of off camera lighting? Well, david, hobbies got that wrapped up. You want you want a block post on off camera lighting? There's, the eighth most popular blogger on blogger ever, like already got that covered, right? I could do something about burnout. That was what I was going to do, but chris or we had done this like awesome blawg post about burnout, and then yet he had, like solutions to it all. Mine was going to be I'm burned out on it sucks. So I start looking at what other photographers who do what are other photographers saying to other photographers right now, and there are a whole ton of thought hey that's going I'm johnny photographer life's also I just farted a rainbow yeah listen I'm gonna ride my unicorn over here to this photo shoot and I would hang out with my buddy big name hopes oh I'm sorry I just dropped the name let me pick it up hey I got three things going to help you be a better photographer all right get business cards and build a website and play with different lighting all right you have a good we'll see you later I'm johnny photographer wow they're so happy and they just ride unicorns and they hang out with people and that sucks that's not my life I'm over here I hate all of this shit thiss thiss sucks that's old like I should have done a better job on that this all sucks I'm trying to get there I don't know how to get their socks no exact what you want to talk about oh I want to talk about when it sucks and I'm gonna I'm not going to be johnny photographer ride the unicorn because I'm not johnny photographer riding these important I don't know how to write I don't know where unicorn is there are good days of my life and I enjoy my life and I enjoy my job but I'm not going to sit here and try to sell you a bill of goods that is true because you want to be a photographer, you want do it for money, which we're about to get into it's hard. It is hard it's hard business days. You just cry days here alone when big and I get up here and talk at the end of this it's day, we're just butting heads. We cannot see eye to eye if I had just the old day job went to and got my check came home. Someone else dealt with taxes, it's a little bit easier in their days. I want to go to that. So I make this little video talk about how hard it is and you got to struggle through it. And you've got to get past that and you've got to keep going and that I was on the peripheral of the industry in that little video of being not being johnny photographer like put me on the map. I had three book publishers are offered me a deal within, like sixty days of a pbs station wanted to like a copy of it, like phone started ringing like, can you come speak here? Can you come talk here? We want you to be a keynote presentation here, like things just changed for me, and I could have made a johnny photographer video and been like everybody else. I don't want to be like everyone else so if nine out of ten the's ten photographers there talking about how much they love texture in line ain't no way in hell I'm going talk about texture in line I won't talk about something else if all these people are doing in evers and I'm going to do a print version when this industry goes this way I'm heading this way when I feel off camera lighting is getting out of hand I'm going to go somewhere else with lighting right when everyone says this is a cool way to deliver your product I'm going to find a different way to deliver my product and it's tough to do but if you just move in a mass with everybody else then there you are with everybody else and your job my challenge to you guys is do you look at where the industry's going let's genre photography you're trying to do and bust out of that thing as soon as you can but that's going to require vision in style and that takes time you have to be patient and you have to constantly be working at your craft and what happens is vision and style rises to the top over time and if you give up now you'll never get there and not mean like you'll never get here buddy right? You won't get there if you give up now you won't ever get there you just won't. And if you want that now, you can't get it now. There's the few there's, the fee nam's there's, the cowards and the joey els that just sort of like, well, that's cool. Uh, can we hire you to do this job in l a, you know, and you want to strangle it, right? The first time I meet jeremy coward, I don't know whether to shake his hand, hug him or punch him in the face, right? Because he's getting jobs and he, like, fell out of bed and got that I'm like ten years into it, and I'm like, I can't even, like get my foot in the door. But he's, a fee nominees fantastic is phenomenal, you know? And you know, you want to hug him, you want to punch him, you just you don't know where to go with that sometimes. Um, you got people like joe mcnally has just been clicking away and clicking away and clicking away thirty years and he's phenomenal at what he does. He's he's ah, he and gregory heisler right now are like my heroes. All right, so it is coming up to four o'clock. Um what lastly, real quick, this is one of my personal projects. All right, we got this guy here. This is my main character we just clicked through these real quick if my clickers working clickers not working what I'm trying to do is put a personal project together here we go. All right there's this wife daughter his his wife just just she's just a nine iron fisted mean old wife this is a really nice guys in his lake late forties early fifties he lives in the suburbs um and he's just a really nice guy but nobody respects him he has no friends his wife walks all over him his daughter won't even talk to him. Um but dang it all the guy loves hip hop and he keeps this car in his garage because man, when he dreams about what he could be it's a hip hop artist he wants to be a gangster rapper but the dude can't wrap he can't run two words together right? But he's got this car and sometimes he just sits in that car and he listens dr dre and he listens to snoop but he listens to fifty cent listens all this hip hop and he sits there like yeah I'm a player I'm a hip hop artist I'm king I got a posse with me people love me they respect me they fear me right? He looks up to these people is king's right he's got his plain old job just kind of, you know, cubicle job on breaking and playing with stereotypes. All right um hey sits at home quiet dinners everyone just eats their food all right, man he's got a dream he's got this dream that he's going to be a hip hop star, right? Notice the green adidas jumpsuit that's where I got it was it was for this job and he listens to this radio station and they're having out of l a he lives somewhere on the east coast of america he listens to this radio station over the internet from l a and they're going to have this big emcee battle and he just sits there and he listens. This station goes, I'm I'm going to go to that embassy battle and I'm gonna win it right? I'm not going to be this guy stuck in the cubicle I'm going to be a man of respect and people are going to love me and his wife's yelling at him one day for not taking out the trash he snaps completely. He grabs the kid from the neighborhood who cuts the grass, talks in it and jumping in the car they're going to l a they're going to this emcee battle and he's gonna win and he's going to become like king of hip hop and he's going to let this guy like b his manager all right well, his car is a real piece of crap, really, and it just keeps breaking down on him and he ends up all sorts of places and truck stops and things like that, all right and back in l a we have this girl that works at this radio station who's kind of a similar character to him um she's, this white girl in south central l a who loves hip hop, she works at this hip hop station, but no one respects her. She has no friends these air, the two morning djs and they're just in her face all the time. They're just loud and rambunctious and she loves hip hop. She likes the heady philosophical stuff. All right, um but she's much like our main character she's just out of place and no one no one respects or no one loves her, she has the friends so there's our guy, he wants to be this, but he's got a battle this guy and this is a project I'm in the middle of at the moment uh, we're about finished shooting it here in the next few weeks and the story is don quixote that's the story so I'm talking to meg one night I'm talking something about donkey idea like, sometimes I just feel like I'm don quixote of the photo industry, I'm off chasing windmills and she's like if you ever read that book and I'm like no no henry books I look at pictures like you should read the book and then I start reading the book and I'm like, oh, this is a great book and then I think how could I turn this into a photo story now I could get on older white spanish gentleman and I could put him in a suit of armor and put him on an old bag of a horse and I could get the little dumpy you know sansho and I could make dulcinea a and and I could I could you know make it a period piece right? But I don't want to do that that's been done a million times you get on flicker and you start searching don quixote de and you start finding this that the other and I said I want to take don quixote modern day all right don quixote wanted to become a knight a knight errant and back in that time oh ho ho or the nights of our days celebrities closest thing we have ok I love hip hop I love hip hop hip hop love hip hop how could I take don quixote modern day hip hop who are the night so that the gangster rappers there that you know they walk in the club they got all their posse with them they're feared they're respected they've been shot at you know they've been hacked out they've been it fights that yeah yeah they're like larger than life travel the world just like the knights did right there on a quest for gold right the whole nine yards ah hip hop yeah, there there are stars you know? So you know that's stereotypical you know, don quixote de picture illustration painting story is don quixote on his old nag of a horse taking on a windmill well, I'm not gonna have and go out in the deserts of arizona the wind farms and think they're monsters that doesn't make sense for hip hop what makes sense for hip hopper battles and those air emcee battles so let's have you know an m c name windmill w y nd m y l l courts, right? Uh so don quixote is going to go after window and this is just a personal project that I'm putting together kind of thing um so that's what I'm working on right now and my process is here's this cooled story here these great characters here, these great classic themes and here's the very easy way to interpret that visually let's take it modern day all right what's next with that who's our nights baseball players sure, I ain't into baseball I don't know crap about baseball I don't care about baseball, I don't care about sports period so why would I go to a personal project about a subject I don't care about? I'm not going to it, but I like hip hop and can I make a correlation doing hip hop and nights? Yes, I can. I can make that connection. And don quixote de don quixote had a housekeeper and a niece. It was a single man living with a housekeeper in east these days nobody but they got a wife and a daughter. All right, click delson a adults today is the girl I'm going to take a creative license. I'm not going to make it a love interest. That's dulcinea a and this is the duke and the duchess who better to have a drive time morning hip hop show than the duke and the duchess? We have the duke and the duchess and don quixote. That sounds like an awesome, like radio personality. Yeah, the morning the duke and duchess show perfect, they were made for radio personalities like obnoxious, annoying radio morning personalities. Perfect. Duke and duchess um they're gonna have an emcee battle that it is a and then it all starts to go from there. And then I'm gonna put this out and it's going to be a promo for me and it goes out and that's what I'm working on yes waken move this out when you're talking about casting this you had to go through in two days casting for this we hired actors and actresses for this uh we're putting our you know, my own money into it so I'm invested into it way have people donating time and donating their resource is and so we're calling in favors were asking for help were having to pay a little bit of here and I'm trading head shots for time for some actors and actresses like I can't pay you money but I could give you a three hundred dollars headshot session that's valuable to them so we're doing bartering and training and things like that so you you know that's not I'm just right in heart launch checks like I'm having to trade time and resource is and things like that we can let's get the monitor moved out and while the monitors moving out and we're moving into business um let us take some questions from the internet question from chris boy two thousand four is there some aspect that he you're seeing in a lot of photographers today that annoys you are their god they do have a pet peeve about something that's being overdone that was a question from chris boy things that's being overdone um yeah, I don't know I mean, you know if I get too much into my pet peeves I'm going to look like the really like bitter cynical photographer but yeah, there are times you know you're going through in and someone's just will not shut up about the fact that I'm a natural light photographer for because it brings the beauty of really life and then like you're a photographer of however you like your subjects you are a photographer the only time that I've had to like state people I shoot natural light is in my specific industry in atlanta with head shots um casting agents um or talent agents prefer natural light head shots over lit head shot it's just a personal preference they have um so I say yeah I shoot headshots uh natural light head shots when I'm speaking I don't put it on the website and I actually I don't have a head shot website any longer but I wouldn't put natural like like you're a photographer however like if yours you know you light everything you don't say I am a strobe photographer I am a flash photographer I'm a photographer and if you shoot available light this shoot available light you don't have to say that right um you don't need a whole list of like when you're trying to sell to clients you don't need to tell them all about all the equipment you know like here's about me and here's my list of camera equipment I use on lee such in such kind of glass because of the contrast in the such and such they don't care nobody cares only people who cares photographers and you come ask me like you want to tell me all about your gear I don't care I want to see your pictures because you could have the greatest year in the world be a sucky photographer and you could have like nothing for equipment and be great, right? A few other questions. Okay, I have a question from atlanta from eighty eight rips stand up. Do you ever go back to famous historical photographers and dr inspiration from them, sir? On dh sometimes it's just the inspiration from the stories of their lives. You know it's like, wow, this person pulled this shot off under these circumstances um uh use of karsh shot thie the famous picture of churchill staying at his desk with a very stern look on his face was right at the end of world war two. Church held brought england through the war hitler's nearly defeated and karsh wanted this portrait of churchill is strong and defiant and and a leader you know how he got it. He's taken this picture you had this uh, from what I understand the stories I've heard it has this bubble shutter release thing and he's got his camera all set up he's got churchill there in churchill loved cigars and he walked up to him, grabbed his cigar and came back and clicked so was churchill staring down hitler? No, he's stand down off target rich stole his damn cigar. Thank you, sir. You're right. And it's dog churchill portrait. You know I love going back. I look love looking at hollywood photographers from forties and the fifties. They're lighting, and sometimes I look at those pictures going, okay, aiken, bust down some lighting. I ain't got no clue how they did that. Look at that light. Why was that coming from? Like, what were they using? They didn't have soft boxes and stuff they were doing, you know, big movie, set lights and stuff, but it's just like, wow, and they were using mirrors now to catch light and it's crazy stuff. So, yeah, and know your history know your history.