Atkins Labcast
Hosted by Kate and Paul Atkins, the third generation owners of the oldest photo lab in Australia. A podcast about living with and loving photography. From philosophy to technicalities, for amateurs, artists and professionals, we talk about it all.
Atkins Labcast
Atkins Labcast Episode 32 - Derek Clapham
In a long awaited sit down with one of Atkins’ web gallery partners, Paul catches up with Derek Clapham, Engineering Czar and Co-founder of Fotomerchant. Derek is a programmer who has some unique talents and has built one of the world’s best online sales tools for photographers. Derek is a force of nature with a fascinating perspective. Paul and Derek talk about online sales, inperson sales, web development and the state of the industry.
Derek’s Fotomerchant website:
https://www.fotomerchant.com
Derek on Linkedin:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/derekclapham/detail/recent-activity/
SPAC School photographers’ Conference:
https://www.spac-usa.org
The SA Maritime Museum exhibtion Pamela and the Duchess:
https://maritime.history.sa.gov.au/events/pamela-and-the-duchess-life-on-the-last-windjammers/
Christ Hertzfeld’s exhibtions for 2021:
https://camlight.com.au/erin-fowler
Ballarat International Foto Bienale:
https://ballaratfoto.org
SALA:
https://www.salafestival.com
Shimmer Festival:
https://atkins.com.au/blog/2020/9/10/shimmer-festival-2020
Good evening. Oh, good afternoon. Good morning. Whatever time of day you happen to be listening, viewers, you're at the Atkins Labcast episode, I don't know, Dickity
SPEAKER_00:Doody? Really? Something, something. Episode I don't know? Yeah, episode
SPEAKER_02:something above 30.
SPEAKER_00:You're the one who's supposed to be like Mr. Numbers Man.
SPEAKER_02:Above 30 is pretty good. And we're still alive. Oh,
SPEAKER_00:my God. You are ancient.
SPEAKER_02:If anyone's wondering why Kate's voice sounds a little bit odd, we could say, oh, my God, she's got bands on.
SPEAKER_00:Hey, we didn't talk about whether we were going to talk about that.
SPEAKER_02:Yes, she has got braces.
SPEAKER_00:I have got braces. I'm a mid-40s woman with braces, which, according to my dentist, that is the thing. Everyone's doing it.
SPEAKER_02:Well, hang on. You normally are a trendsetter. How come now you're just following everybody?
SPEAKER_00:Oh, fuck you. Listen, I'm like a lot of women my age. They got braces when they were a kid. The guy who did the braces did a shit job. Teeth are all fucked up. Can't chew properly. My back teeth are all screwy. My front teeth look terrible. It's a whole thing.
SPEAKER_02:I don't think your teeth look
SPEAKER_00:terrible. Oh, shut up. This is not– listen. Okay, pro tip. Sorry, moving the mic around. Talk into the microphone. Talk into the microphone. When somebody gets braces, here's what you don't say. Oh, I thought your teeth looked fine. Because you know what? I've spent the money. They're on my fucking teeth now. Right. And how's
SPEAKER_02:that chewing going for you right now?
SPEAKER_00:Listen, it's not a thing. I'm on baby food.
SPEAKER_02:Thick shakes and baby food.
SPEAKER_00:I'm on protein shakes and baby food because I can't chew because there is no toothful contact. The tooths are not meeting anywhere on any part of my teeth. Are you
SPEAKER_02:masticating with your tongue?
SPEAKER_00:Oh, please. No, I have to eat things that collapse just by their nature. What,
SPEAKER_02:like puff pastries and– And vol-au-vents.
SPEAKER_00:Yes,
SPEAKER_02:essentially. What are those ones that start with an S that are very delicate that you have to put in the oven very carefully and then you walk
SPEAKER_00:around? Souffle. Oh, I should try a souffle. No, I have been eating a lot of soft scrambled things, eggs and such. How cute. I'm about to. See, I've got a bit of a wispy thing going on. Hello, you'll take that. Shut up. All these frigging job interviews we're doing. There's a bit of a whistle there. And I'm sitting there with my stupid braces. Stop it. Feeling like an idiot with my stupid teeth. Teeth? I'm not loving it. Not loving it. It's very cute. Results better. Very cute,
SPEAKER_02:especially in ponytails like you're wearing now. It's like,
SPEAKER_00:I'll be good. Yeah, I don't love it. I mean, I was stunned at the fact that none of my teeth meet. Like I cannot chew a thing.
SPEAKER_02:With braces on.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, with braces on. So I am like... It's yogurt and I'm going to do some really soft like bolognese tomorrow.
SPEAKER_02:Lots of cooking. We had a beautiful pork dish last night. Did you manage
SPEAKER_00:to taste it? That I couldn't eat.
SPEAKER_02:Did you taste
SPEAKER_00:it? Yeah, well, sort of, but not really. And so everyone else ate it and I just sat there feeling pathetic. Because my favourite thing to eat is like grilled chicken with like a crunchy, crunchy like cucumber and... And celery and tomato and dill and like all sorts of good herby things and pickled onions and I've chucked it all in there and I mix it all up and then you put the chicken. It's fucking great. I'm a good cook.
SPEAKER_02:You are.
SPEAKER_00:I can't eat any of that.
SPEAKER_02:I
SPEAKER_00:know. None of it.
SPEAKER_02:I know.
SPEAKER_00:Not a stitch. So I'm going to roast bloody pumpkin and have roast pumpkin and fucking bolognese on it.
SPEAKER_02:Oh, I like that.
SPEAKER_00:And then every time I eat, I have to go and blow out my mouth with this bloody water pick to get all the crap out of my braces so I don't walk around with half a kilo of food in my face still.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:It's like a second meal or shit that gets stuck in there. It's disgusting. It's disgusting. And if there's anyone listening under the age of 20, you know, you feel me. You get it. All the other people, you've all forgotten. None of us remember. I thought I remembered. I thought I was compassionate when my children had braces. I had nothing. I was a monster. I was like, off you go to school the next day. You need a week off, people. They really
SPEAKER_02:didn't whinge much when they got theirs on, did
SPEAKER_00:they? Are you kidding? Compared to you. This is such a husband-wife conversation. They really didn't whinge much when I left the house and went to work for the entire day and ignored all of you day after day, night after night, week after week. Yes. So, no. What was lovely was the night that I got them on, the kids came home with like a whole sort of cloud of friends and they're all the cool friends because our kids are cool and so their friends are cool. We are not cool. I
SPEAKER_02:hear I'm a cool dad, yo.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, sure, in your dreams, honey. And then when I said– Hang on, Josephine said her
SPEAKER_02:little friend said I was cool, that she would like
SPEAKER_00:to be adopted. One of them? Is she just angling for a job? And they were all very, very sweet to me. And they all were like, oh, my God, you poor thing. Oh, yes, and this and this and this. And try this and try that. They were lovely. Lovely. All the adults. Adults are like, yeah, you'll be right. The children are like. We understand. And they nod with this and they had this sort of downcast. Heavy nod, yeah. Yeah, like, yeah, man, that is not fixable and it is shit. And I keep saying, how long until I can chew? When will I be able to chew? And they're like, they quietly shake their head. They look down. They're like, you'll get used to it. I'm like, that's not an answer. When the fuck can I chew? They're like, it'll get, you know what, it'll be just, don't worry about that. Oh, it's killing me. Anyway, so recipes for soft food, please send to Kate at Atkins.com.au.
SPEAKER_02:Well, there you go. That's pretty exciting stuff. So our guest this week
SPEAKER_00:is the king of the nerds. What's he call himself? The king of the nerds.
SPEAKER_02:No, that's what you call him. And look, I don't think there is a king of the nerds. The way nerds work is they don't need a king because they're all their own.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, for fuck's sake. This is going to get to Lord of the Rings, isn't it? You're going to get back to somehow Lord of the Rings. No,
SPEAKER_02:no, I'm just saying that if there was to be a king of the nerds, it has to be Derek. Because he's a real crossover dude, isn't he? He could easily be like a ski bro. He could be your prepper pal.
SPEAKER_00:Yes.
SPEAKER_02:He could be your hunting buddy who goes out and shoots
SPEAKER_00:things. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:He could be– well, he could be your lead salesman at Google.
SPEAKER_00:Do you know what? Who knows? Here's the thing. Derek is like viciously intelligent, incredibly capable, and he has an aspect of him, especially when you first meet him, which is– there's a fairly large scoop of fig jam. I love fig jam. But it's sort of in that– it's in the Crocodile Dundee aspect of fig jam. Oh, so in the Aussie, the full Aussie way. Yeah, it's Aussie fig jam, which is better than American fig jam. Oh, yeah. American fig jam is un-fucking-bearable. But so he has the Aussie– but once you get past that, what you actually have is a deeply generous, kind and– empathic and actually very, very thoughtful man.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And I think today was a really good example of that and I think the interview was really lovely and he's, I mean, you know, I kind of want to steal him, lock him in a cupboard and make him do a whole lot of programming. We actually have
SPEAKER_02:done that once. We locked him in here for two hours and he solved like
SPEAKER_00:months worth of problems. Yeah, but it was all problems to do with his business. I want him for my business. business like I want him to just come and do things for me so separate issue because he is he's like some kind of idiot savant creature of freakdom and that's why he's the king of the nerds because he knows how to do all this shit that no one knows how to
SPEAKER_02:do he's
SPEAKER_00:got the savant bit without the idiot
SPEAKER_02:He's like a one-track person.
SPEAKER_00:No, because that's the thing. He's got so many multiple talents. Is he
SPEAKER_02:a triple threat?
SPEAKER_00:He's a quadruple threat. Do you know he was like a full-on near Olympian level swimmer?
SPEAKER_02:No.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah. Which you can tell when you meet him because he's kind of got that narrow, long frame which all those boys swimmers have. Swimmers all have
SPEAKER_02:big shoulders. They're triangular.
SPEAKER_00:No, they don't. No, no, no. They're all narrow with big feet because they just kind of slide through the water. Right. So, no, he's– Yeah, so he's got all the stuff. But he's a charmer like you wouldn't believe. I've been in America with him where he has charmed people and he is on the dance floor and sleeping under tables and drinking the house down and you've never seen anything like it. And then two minutes later he's all computer stuff. So he is the king of the nerds because all the nerds wish they were as smart as him but also as cool and attractive as him. And he grows, without a doubt, the best beard in the southern fucking hemisphere. Yeah, I'm jealous. His beard, when we met him that day in the pub, like it was years ago. Well, not that long,
SPEAKER_02:about two years ago.
SPEAKER_00:A couple of years ago. We met him that day in the pub. At that bikey pub. And his beard, I kid you not, like nipple length.
SPEAKER_02:How did you know it was nipple
SPEAKER_00:length? Well, I can guesstimate where a man's nipples are. They don't say quite to the degree that women's do.
SPEAKER_02:Depends how old they
SPEAKER_00:are. Nipple length beard with these waves and this softness and this colour. I'm spitting everywhere because I'm drooling. And it is just staggering. It's a staggering beard. And he said people stop him in the street and go... Oh, my God, your beard. So I don't know why he stopped that because he's gone back to the short thing. I bet it must be hot as balls, especially in bloody Sydney.
SPEAKER_02:At any rate, so let's just get off his looks and all that sort of stuff. Sorry, I'm
SPEAKER_00:just talking about it. Stop objectifying, people. Oh, my fucking God. For real?
SPEAKER_02:So what I'm saying, though, is that– What are you saying, Paul? So what the listeners have got coming is some really good little nuggety discussions and there's one around in-person sales. And what he talks about, because I've always had this feeling, well, this factual knowledge that there is a whole swath of our industry that said you can't get past without in-person sales. And like last year kind of blew that away, the fact you just can't do in-person sales from the start, and which meant web sales had to work. And, of course, his business is entirely based on web sales. Yeah. And the success of it is all about web sales. Yeah. you can't deny that it is stonkingly effective. And so he talks about that, and he talks about what photomotion has done over the years and its pivot to a different focus. But actually, I just noticed today, because Derek and I did this interview, like it was before Christmas. It was before the jolly man came down the chimney and all that stuff. But I was just in the old Slack channel. Here we go. And I noticed there was a new interface out there for Photo Merchant, which I thought was amazing. One of the previous partners, I think he still might be a partner, but he was working in business, Cain Teetsall.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, my God. Cain
SPEAKER_02:had made a comment about how great the new interface looks and he's got a whole lot of help videos. So something has happened in the Photo Merchant world. So I'd implore all the listeners to go and check out that.
UNKNOWN:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Remember, the development they've done over the last few years has been focusing on their– well, entirely on their high volume, which is schools, dances, formals, ballets, cycling, tour events,
SPEAKER_00:sporting. Which is an entirely different universe and the priorities for it are entirely different as well.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Which is really fascinating to listen to as someone who prioritises none of those aspects in their life because there's nothing– You know, like it's all sort of system and make it efficient and smart and all that stuff, whereas I'm the least efficient person on the planet.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, well, like a fair chunk of our volume clients, the work comes in through Photo Merchant High Volume's connection to us and the other stuff using Photo Merchant. But the high volume stuff is very well done and, yeah, it's worth having a look at. Mind you, I don't think there's still a website that you can go to to read about photo merchant high volume because it's so complex you have to sit down or Skype in with Tara and find
SPEAKER_00:out all about it. Yeah, and you know if you need it.
SPEAKER_02:You kind of do. Yeah,
SPEAKER_00:it's kind of like if you need to know the price, you can't afford it.
SPEAKER_02:Correct. Anyway, let's let these people go and listen to Derek Clapham.
UNKNOWN:Cool.
SPEAKER_02:Did you hear that clink? Listeners, I'm sitting here in my office with Derek Clapham. Derek from Photo Merchant with an F.
SPEAKER_04:That's right, yep.
SPEAKER_02:And Derek and I have known each other for...
SPEAKER_04:So I think the first time we officially met would have been 2013 or something? No, it would have actually been earlier than that. It would have been the Adelaide event. Oh, 2011. 11, there
SPEAKER_02:you go, 2011. That's right. So Derek and I met through DJ. We probably met through the AIPP first. Yeah,
SPEAKER_04:probably, yeah.
SPEAKER_02:A combination
SPEAKER_04:of both. That's right.
SPEAKER_02:And DJ and I had a podcast before this iteration of a podcast, and DJ is now podcasting and freelance radio starring. And then Derek and I have been on sort of, in some ways, in the photographic industry in parallel paths. And the opportunity... And back in those days, when you were offering a web sales system, would that be a gallery system?
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, so a website building system that actually had sales built in, so e-commerce, shopping cart, for primarily wedding and portrait photographers.
SPEAKER_02:Wedding portrait was the beginning. So that's how we... And this was really early doors in the idea... of a photographer offering stuff online because at that time it was all in-person sales.
SPEAKER_04:It was primarily in-person sales and the whole concept of online was probably beginning to come out in the wedding industry more so than in portrait, that's for sure.
SPEAKER_02:Did you feel like it was, you were doing the, I mean you probably personally because you're a bit of a crusader, felt like you were doing the right thing. you probably felt that you were doing the right thing. But tell me, were you made to feel like you were doing the right thing in the industry? Like was there judgment against having online sales at that stage?
SPEAKER_04:Yes and no. So there was in parts of the industry plenty. In fact, there wasn't so much judgment. I wouldn't call it judgment. I would say there was probably more of a– no, that will never work sort of attitude. You can't take this beautiful artistic physical product and just put it on a monitor and sell it like you sell things on eBay. That was more of the sentiment. And it wasn't like that was incorrect, really. In practice, it was a difficult thing to do at the time. There were some challenges. But the sentiment was that it's a great idea that won't ever really exist. work it won't come to anything because people want to touch and to smell and to feel and to experience what they've always experienced up until now up until then which was the physical you know in person I mean sometimes you couldn't even call it an experience it was it was a sales process that people endured some of the time and other times it was a positive experience where they got to to see and feel their memories that had been printed on paper or put in an album. So people struggled with how does that translate to online. Because when did you start Photo Merchant? 2009. We released the first version that was live.
SPEAKER_02:So digital was probably nine years old as a thing, maybe less than that.
SPEAKER_04:Maybe even
SPEAKER_02:less. Maybe five years as a thing. Kodak
SPEAKER_04:was still faffing about in 2007, right? in ways that indicated they were resisting digital. So that was only a few years before we kicked it off.
SPEAKER_02:So why did you think you needed a web gallery sales system?
SPEAKER_04:Well, it was my own problem. So I was an amateur photographer that was starting to make money from shooting, ironically, schools and high-volume events, so colleges, et cetera.
SPEAKER_02:We'll come back to the ironic part. idea in a little bit
SPEAKER_04:um but um yeah yeah and i'd done a few weddings i was one of those guys that oh wow i've got my first digital slr um i'd i'd been shooting for fun on a an old nikon 1973 body it was an f it was the f2 it was the f2 yeah um and and i'd been learning the the Some would say the art of photography. For me, it was more the maths and the physics of photography. So I was more interested in light and exposure and aperture and how that actually worked mathematically. So it's very boring, but that's what I was interested in. And so I'd learnt all of those basic principles on film and and taking notes so every frame that i every shutter release i would um take the the shot count off the camera and then i'd write notes on what i'd done in that shot what the aperture was what the exposure what the light meter
SPEAKER_02:was a few people do that i mean we're all told to do that
SPEAKER_04:yeah with our photography
SPEAKER_02:but there's not a lot of people actually do it no i was obsessed
SPEAKER_04:with it yeah right and then i would get the film developed probably at not very reputable places to get it developed and printed and then I'd go through my notes and sometimes the one hour photo place or whatever would develop it would get everything out of order and that would completely throw me into a spin because I wouldn't know what
SPEAKER_02:photos So does that mean you went at home with being a photographer and that because under dealing with photography and I gather photography of people you've got this thing in front of you that you don't have control over That is this sort of random aspect of your job.
SPEAKER_04:Did
SPEAKER_02:that lead you away from photography?
SPEAKER_04:So long story short, I really, I fell into a few weddings and events and what led me, to answer your initial question, what led me towards, you know, beginning to develop an online sales solution was the fact that I didn't want to sell in person. It wasn't something I ever wanted to do. And I envisaged that wouldn't it be better if a bride and groom or whoever it might be, could be an attendee to a college ball, could just go to a URL, click on the photos they wanted to purchase, purchase them and have those images sent to a lab, printed and shipped. where the photographer no longer needed to deal with all the pieces in between.
SPEAKER_02:So that was a 2009... That was
SPEAKER_04:actually 2005 that I envisioned that. That's when that happened. That's when I was doing it. It was a Nikon D70 that I purchased at the time. Sounds about right, I think. And graduated from the F2. And I did a few jobs and it was a nightmare. So I was taking paper orders. It was just... even dealing with bride and grooms at the time because I wasn't officially really, I knew nothing about the business and I was probably one of those really annoying, immature photographers that wedding photographers of the day thought would go away. And I just thought the whole way that this was done was extremely inefficient. However, on the flip side of that and in hindsight, I look at it now and I think, well... Yeah, if you're just looking for efficiency, maybe it is inefficient, but doing it online doesn't always give you the same return in terms of just top-line revenue.
SPEAKER_02:Well, you'd have to think back then. I remember very distinctly the thing was, unless you're doing in-person sales and selling well, you don't have a business. Mm-hmm. And I suppose that was actually the truth. It was.
SPEAKER_04:And there were a lot of really, really successful photographers that had never done it any other way and they would bring in upwards of five to ten grand or even more. from a wedding. And those days still existed. It was pretty common. Not every wedding photographer was doing that.
SPEAKER_02:But in Sydney, Melbourne, there were a huge chunk of photographers getting those kind of
SPEAKER_04:numbers. Plenty of photographers getting those numbers. And so I think my naivety at the time was, okay, well, if I do this online, I'll get those numbers but have to do less work. And I realised very quickly that that equation was incorrect. It's not impossible for that to be true, but the way– that I was calculating the math was wrong. Yeah, right. So– but that's where it started. That's the long answer to where– And who did you start with? Well, I started on my own, really, but I was working a day job in the city, in Sydney, for a media agency, and I was talking– each day I'd catch the train in with Elmer, who ended up becoming– my 50-50 partner in the business, but I would talk to him about what I was doing and the problems I was trying to solve. And he could see the potential himself and had a business background. I didn't have a business background. I had a computer science technical background. And I can't remember all the details, but in the end we agreed, well, maybe we should make a go of this. All right. So I'd already started developing things. a prototype that we ended up throwing away because it was just a prototype. But yeah, I started that with Elmar back in 2007 from memory was roughly– no, actually March 2008 is when we officially incorporated with ASIC.
SPEAKER_02:Wow. So that's a big– like it's a big move to go, okay, we're going to make– and are we talking about– What state was a World Wide Web in that stage? Were we still using Netscape Navigator?
SPEAKER_04:Not quite. Netscape had sort of already begun. It was more than through the throes of it. So Google was in and doing its thing? Chrome hadn't really tackled coming out yet, but Google was alive and well. So you were looking at Firefox, you had Safari, and you had... the horrible Internet Explorer. Chrome wasn't quite around yet. So the biggest challenge for starters right back then was you had to basically develop everything for as many browsers as there were. Yeah, right. And you probably remember those days. Oh, it was a nightmare. Something would work on one browser and wouldn't
SPEAKER_02:work on another. And any software that worked across them all was, you know, hallowed. Rare. Yeah, and this is where things like, and we're going to, get a little bit nerdy here for our listeners, but Java became super important and Flash became important too because it was almost this universal language that you could sit, you know, your little website inside of or action. And you didn't have to worry
SPEAKER_04:about the
SPEAKER_02:other thing. Well, in the end, yes, you didn't, but you did because it became its own nightmare, didn't it? The whole
SPEAKER_04:thing. It was. I don't miss those days at all. Yeah, that's the way it was. And building anything on the web, you have to remember that back then the world, iPhones weren't, Really? I mean, they
SPEAKER_02:now exist. Yeah. But not in Australia. That was in the US, their release,
SPEAKER_04:wasn't it? 2008, we got them over here, but not many people had them. Right. Not many people had them, and often they'd got them from America. But by the time we launched in 2009, the mobile phone, you've got to remember the iPhone was relaunched with, there was no app store. It came with the apps that it came with. That was it. You didn't choose a different browser. You didn't download the Facebook app. Facebook barely existed. The iPhone 1 had, I think, 20 apps on it, and that was the phone, just like a Nokia would have, et cetera. So everyone was... No one was conditioned to using the web on a mobile device. That was a horrible experience, even just from a 2G speed perspective. And secondly...
SPEAKER_02:Let alone looking at photographs or events with...
SPEAKER_04:That's right.
SPEAKER_02:A wedding with 500 photos.
SPEAKER_04:Absolutely. And so I think putting photos on the web was already accepted. You had Flickr. Flickr was pretty prominent in professional and amateur circles just as a place to showcase your work and get critique. So that was something I was heavily involved in just as an amateur. And I liked it, but I felt like, what if you could monetize this? What if you could sell your photos on Flickr, which is a whole other story. We ended up developing a piece of JavaScript a couple of years later that you could embed on any website and it would immediately monetize it. We called it Cart Anywhere. We even got a patent for it. And we actually put it to Yahoo, who owned Flickr at the time, and they were interested in buying it off us because it meant– It could have been good. It could have been, but we didn't love it enough. We weren't that interested in it. I
SPEAKER_02:really remember that discussion and I thought, right, okay, so I could have my own–
SPEAKER_04:You could have a WordPress site
SPEAKER_02:or you could have whatever– Yeah, and then suddenly there's a photo merchant cart that boings up when I click on the right thing.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah. And in hindsight, it might have been a great idea. It might have really worked. No one's pulled it off
SPEAKER_02:since. Did it rely on– on Java or Flash or something that was... It only wrote in JavaScript. That was
SPEAKER_04:it. That was it. But there were some real challenges to it that I won't bore your listeners with right now. But in the end, I don't think any one of our hearts were in it. Yeah. So we didn't move forward with
SPEAKER_02:it. Right, right. So from there, your focus for Photo Merchant was... getting the wedding portrait people with a tool in their hand. Were you guided by professional photographers? Because you obviously stopped taking photos as a photographer. I did, yeah. So you were then aligning yourself with other photographers who were saying, I need this, I need that. And your response of development then was based on what were– so who were these people that were leading the way and helping you, guide you?
SPEAKER_04:To be honest, it was actually probably the new generation of amateurs that were becoming professionals that really– were thinking forward. And that's not to say that the more established older professional guys that have been around a bit longer weren't. It's just that they had more to lose. So they had something that had worked for them for many years and they weren't about to just throw the baby out with the bathwater.
SPEAKER_02:And they're influential.
SPEAKER_04:They were. And the thing was for us, people would listen to them and we spoke to... I mean, we got to know and we got to build friendships, as you know, through the AIPP at the time and various other means in the US as well. We were able to develop friendships and relationships with some really well-known photographers. We never really got to the point where we felt... We were never a name-dropping company. We made a conscious decision, maybe in error, looking back, not to sell our product using... the names of celebrities
SPEAKER_02:in the industry. That rock star thing, I don't know how healthy that was. Yeah. Because those that have the time to be a rock star don't often have the time to be a successful business person. It's hard to do both at once, isn't it?
SPEAKER_04:It is. And we found that a lot of these guys actually weren't as successful as people thought. Some of them were, but many of them weren't. And we just didn't think that it was the right way– to put the product forward but most of our competitors at the time were all about the name so the names giving endorsements so fortunately not a lot of the Australian professional photographers that were really well known on the world stage got involved in that movement which was really good to see personally I thought it was they stayed relatively agnostic not all of them but most of them did but there were a lot of American big names that were all about alright will you give me this and give me that and I'll promote yeah now we had some really reputable Australian photographers on our platform but and they would talk about it just because it was a real product that they used so what we found was that the the more junior photographers that really felt the industry needed to move in a different or a more progressive direction were the ones that really drove
SPEAKER_02:they had nothing to lose they had nothing they were looking for a new way in
SPEAKER_04:they they drove our development yeah right really that's that's how it moved forward Even the labs we went to in the early days in Australia and pitched the idea to and said, look, what if we could do an online sales platform that beautifully showcased the photos and automatically when they were ordered, they were sent to your lab, printed, and you drop shipped them to the customer beautifully packaged, et cetera. Most of the responses we got at the time were, were, ah, that won't work.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, and you know what? That will never happen. While saying, and I was speaking for myself. We
SPEAKER_04:didn't speak to you at the time, so you're safe.
SPEAKER_02:No, but I knew that you guys were there and we had this thing that if we had to play pay a click charge or something like that we didn't want to know but we wanted to own ourselves so we'd been through three or four different iterations of trying to get our own gallery software working that we could control and run which is an absolute and a lot of labs did that yeah and but it's a joke like you cannot do that there are two different worlds Setting up and running a web gallery and setting up and running a lab. Well, you
SPEAKER_04:can get it working as a lab. We got it working, but no one used it. And even if people did, though, you now have to maintain it, keep it up to date, make sure it runs on the latest versions and so on and so forth. It's a job in and of itself.
SPEAKER_02:And actually, I just heard the one we... we'd sort of doubled down the most on have just gone out of business, which was Stockbox, which we had installed. Like, you know, I'm rolling my eyes in my head here because it was a nightmare. I don't think we ever got it going satisfactorily, and I don't think we ever got a custom work, and I don't think we ever got a sale on it. And I think what sort of opened my eyes more was the concept that there's– you know, with retail, and we're talking, this is retail.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah.
UNKNOWN:You're retailing product, right?
SPEAKER_02:You can take the most average of product, like a candle, and you can retail it and become a billionaire by selling candles the right way. Or you can just have a hokey little candle store and do a really average job. And I'm equating, you know, memories and photos and beauty and all that kind of stuff like candles, but great retail is a really great thing. And that, that is your job and that is what you know, the gallery software. Well,
SPEAKER_04:it's interesting you say that because I look at it differently. With the photography industry, you've got– as a photography studio, you're in a position where what you're going to put online, okay, is something really personal. So you're not– well, maybe landscape photographers are the exception. Do they do business? Is that a real thing? They do. They do. It's not what I would call big, but online does work for them. But landscape photographers generally struggle regardless unless you've got a name for yourself and you've managed to syndicate into various galleries and tourist shops and all that kind of stuff. But they do sell online. But those guys excluded because they're selling to a wider audience. Most wedding and portrait photographers are actually selling to their customer. They're already a customer. They've contracted in some way, shape or form. And it's a double-edged sword because if you're choosing to reveal, let's call it the reveal, your finished product to your contracted customer online, then there's already going to be some kind of expectation. Now, no one knows what the expectation of your customer is, but there's something there they're anticipating, they're waiting for their finished product that they've they've been waiting for. Now, if you're a portrait photographer, there might be a chance that they've paid their sitting fee of$100 and now you're really relying upon the fact that they're going to purchase. So on online, you've got this situation where you have to somehow make it very compelling to sell their photos that are probably where they're the main subject matter, those photos, to them. If you're selling candles online, you can entice them into the benefits of that candle and what this candle is going to do for your health and the aroma of your bathroom and all of those kind of things. And listen to it with the dulcet tones of Paul Atkins and et cetera, et cetera. And this will make your life better. When you show someone their own family or themselves in a wedding gown and their groom, et cetera, It's not a bad experience, but it's a very different experience, a very personal experience. And doing that online is even more challenging than selling a candle. No,
SPEAKER_02:I get that. But isn't the similarity that what's– yes, they're going to buy something. We want them to buy something special. And that thing, that upgrade, it from a– just a flat print because everything online looks like a flat print unless you demonstrate it somehow in a gorgeous product with great marketing images and that kind of stuff. Challenging. Yeah. That's the candle-selling moment, like how you take it from a, yeah, I love that picture of me and my kids. It's just gorgeous. I want it in a, and I want it hanging on my wall. I want it in a book in my hand. Like, how does that, you know?
SPEAKER_04:So what do you think? I mean, I'm going to throw the question back on you because you sell– physical products here and given the quality of them, you would rely a certain degree on the touch and the feel and the actual physical experience. When you're selling online, you're basically requiring the buyer to use one of their five senses. That's
SPEAKER_02:right.
SPEAKER_04:That's it. And I would have said– So you already get to use three as soon as you give something in a physical product. So
SPEAKER_02:what
SPEAKER_04:do
SPEAKER_02:you think? So what's the date today? The
SPEAKER_04:21st– no, 22nd.
SPEAKER_02:22nd of December, 2020. If you asked me– Four
SPEAKER_04:days before the zombie apocalypse.
SPEAKER_02:If you asked me before Batman comes down the chimney, if you asked me January this year, I would have said the biggest challenge that– we have is that it's a single sense method for selling a product, which is at least like we do have products that smell great. We have products that feel great. I mean, you grabbed our latest calendar stand. You said how heavy it is. It feels awesome. Slab of brass. We got, they look, they touch, they feel, some of them smell great. And if it was before this year, I would have said it's an impossible product. task. And yet, we've seen solid growth from all of our people like yourself, web gallery partners, with these products over the years. But this year, people, I don't know, I think for us it's really great photographs of those items represented with people holding them, with them in beautiful environments, you know, really great imagery that makes it and not just making it a flat thing. But this year has really shown that this stuff can actually work without all those other sensors happening. So, you know, I think– I do think it's the job of you guys to somehow augment that. Do you remember a product probably back in the mid-2000s, late 2000s called Rocket Life? Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:It was like a
SPEAKER_02:3D mapping. Back then it was all about selling mugs, like awful mugs with photos on them. And Rocket Life, I think it was all flash-based, but it would instantly map your photo on that mug and allow you to spin it in a 3D model on the screen. This is in the mid-2000s. It really was super-duper cool. We're kind of lacking, and do we need something like that that allows us to see these products online? So something
SPEAKER_04:else has changed, though, since then, and that is people's familiarity with the products that are on offer. You need another drink, I think. Yeah, I do,
SPEAKER_02:actually. If you could get familiarity out. Yeah, that shouldn't happen. We're not drunk. We've just had a very nice Italian dinner together, and we're just having a nightcap. A nice 18-year-old. Nightcap at what time is it? Quarter to 10 in the evening?
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, quarter to 10, Adelaide time. Adelaide time. Yep. Sorry, you were saying. Well, I think that without boring your listeners too much, I think that a lot has changed in the 13 years since 2007, and the consumer has changed massively. So, I mean, you've got to remember, in 2007, Amazon was seven years old. Wow. You know, eBay was six years old. Wow. So it was a– well, eBay
SPEAKER_02:was a little bit older than that. Amazon was a very different place back then. It was.
SPEAKER_04:It was books. That was it. Textbooks, novels.
SPEAKER_02:It was borders online.
SPEAKER_04:It was. It really was. And Dimmicks still had shops all over the country and Collins Publishers and all that. The world was a very...
SPEAKER_02:Amazon was a jungle.
SPEAKER_04:It was. It was. Everyone was like, just go to Amazon. I don't have time to go to South America. I'm sorry. Sorry, dad joke. That one's for you, kids. So basically, when you sold photos online back then... People really weren't trained. That's really what it comes down to. If you think of the job for me and my team now as developers is we don't have to do anywhere near as much training in our user interface design and our user experience design. We don't have to do any training because people just pick up a phone now and they know what a plus means. They know what a shopping cart looks like. They know how to behave. So that behavioural shift has happened already. And in fact, what that has meant, that as this next generation comes through, which they definitely are now, it means that if you don't present it in a familiar fashion, they actually don't know how to behave. So it's like if they see a photo on a website for a photographer, they would expect there to be a way to buy it. And that wasn't true 13 years ago. Gotcha. So... We had that challenge that we were dealing with at the time. I'm sounding very old right now. This was 13 years ago. I'm older and wiser and tighter. But you're not as old as me. No, but I've got almost as much grey in my beard as you do. So that was a challenge. And I think really at the end of the day, presenting the product now is about information. So let's take an example. If you go to... Let's say Amazon, amazon.com. When you read about the product there, you're trying to, as a human, what are you trying to do? What are you trying to ascertain before you go any further?
SPEAKER_02:Well, should I buy this? I want this sort of a thing. Should I buy this one or this one?
SPEAKER_04:Right.
SPEAKER_02:A or B? Features and benefits, what's going
SPEAKER_04:to work? Okay, that's right. Is it appropriate for what I'm looking for? Is there maybe a better option? In photography, we actually don't have to deal with that as much because... The photo, as I'll go back to what I was saying before, you've already got, and every time I get up in front of audiences and speak now, I try to remind people that you have something already that the customer wants. You already have that. So you've taken a photo of their family. You've taken a photo of their wedding day. That part of the sell, like you sell me a candle, you first have to convince me that I need or want that candle.
SPEAKER_03:Right.
SPEAKER_04:right you show me a photo of my my bride and myself and my family and all of that kind of stuff i already there's already a part of me that's like oh i need to have this yep so that's a part of the equation that you can almost just leave out because it's a given unless you've done a horrible horrible job which is rare because it's so personal you could have done a horrible job and the customer won't necessarily well i won't go into that because that's perceived value and discretion and we won't go there. But still... Let's assume... Let's assume they do. So now, nowadays, especially with what the labs offer, you have a series of final products that you can offer and I think it all comes down to, yeah, you're right, we as e-commerce providers need to find a way to present those products, but I actually have found, and maybe you're different as a consumer, but for me as a consumer, as long as I can understand that product... So that may be a 3D rendition of it. It doesn't have to have my photo on it, but like a 3D spin around version of that product that goes, okay, that's what its physical footprint looks like. And actually text that says, this is a brass blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Because for me as a consumer, I at least now know what I'm dealing with. And you and I were having a discussion earlier and... I think the question you put to me... Yeah, this is great.
SPEAKER_02:I really want you to say this, repeat it again. Ask the question. Sorry, I can't even remember what it was. No, it was... I can only think of the metaphor. Online versus in person. Online versus in person because this, well, I mean, this is how I started the conversation. At the time, I would think, I felt that people looking at web sales and going, yeah, blah, blah. In person is the only way to go. And you said to me.
SPEAKER_04:So my view on this is that there isn't really a right or wrong answer. And I think most people would agree with that. But if you think about in-person and you think about e-commerce and online, the easiest way I can explain my view on it is to think of– you could think of a number of retailers, but let's take Harvey Norman as an example. So depending on what you're looking for and on any given day, you may choose to go to harveynorman.com.au and have a look at a series of products. So like for me– I've been slowly building my smart home and I buy all sorts of products. But one of the things I buy periodically is another Philips Hue light bulb. Cool, yeah. Because to do my whole house in one hit would probably cost like$10,000 and I'm not going to do that. But every now and then I get a bit of extra cash and I'll buy another light bulb because they're like$160 each. You hope they last. Right. And I'll go to the HarveyNorman.com website and I'll look at them and I'll look at the good guys and I'll look at J.B. Hi-Fi. And they come out on special. And they come out on special and all of that kind of stuff. Now, I originally, when I was doing that, I was reading about it and I would get some information from the site. But that's a really simple thing, okay? So let's say you were buying 5x7s and 6x4s. That's really all you want. Then sure, e-commerce is pretty straightforward. But every now and then, I might be looking for something else. So let's say I need a new dishwasher or I need a fridge or even a TV or a monitor. Or sometimes, and this is what I was saying before, sometimes I just want to be sold to. I know it sounds corny, but it's like I'm going to go into the store. Is it because you don't understand what you're looking for? It's because I'm indecisive or because I don't know it yet. I need my first lot of understanding. My research is so minimal that I'm like, I don't really understand any of these things. So I'm going to go in, and I know I'm going to have some salesman tell me about it, but at the very least I'm going to be able to see, touch– and understand what that monitor or that dishwasher looks like and whether it's going to fit in my home or whether it's exactly what I'm looking for. Is
SPEAKER_02:that because you're abdicating that? And to remove that. You want to abdicate your responsibility for making that decision? No, I don't want to abdicate.
SPEAKER_04:I want to be surer.
SPEAKER_02:You want someone who knows a bit more than you do. And
SPEAKER_04:I also want to have seen it. Right. And so if I'm about to spend$600 or$1,600 on a fridge or a dishwasher, look, let's not get– ahead of ourselves, but some people will quite happily spend that online because they're not too fast. But there are still purchases where you want to make sure you really know what you're getting and what it looks like and is it going to fit in my kitchen or laundry because my laundry is like a designer laundry. This is very important. The dishwasher, not the dishwasher, the washing machine fits well with my tiles. And so you want to see it. And I don't think that that is ever, and nor should it, go away from the photography sales process. I just don't think that it's the only way that a business, the only method of sales that a business should potentially lock themselves into. It may work if you choose to build your business around that. then all power to you and I think you'll make it work
SPEAKER_02:if you really want to. So multi-channels is what you're talking about. Well, we're talking now, aren't we? We're not talking 2007. We're talking
SPEAKER_04:2020. So think about who the consumer is. So if someone was getting married, you were talking about your girls earlier. Yeah. They're not getting married, by the way. They're not. They're not. And congratulations, by the way. But, well, he has to ask permission first. So let's just get that straight. Just shut
SPEAKER_02:up, Derek. Next topic.
SPEAKER_04:So basically, if someone from that generation, though, was getting married tomorrow and looking for a wedding photographer, let's assume they're looking for one and they're not going to ask their uncle with their SLR to do it for them. What are they going to be looking for? What's their expectation? What are they used to? When your girls buy something, where do they buy it?
SPEAKER_02:Well, it depends on what the thing is. One's a second-hand lover of second-hand clothing, so they don't like fast fashion, so they're there. If they're looking for interesting little bits of handmade jewellery, By the way,
SPEAKER_04:listeners, there's an awesome market in brides buying other people's wedding photography, pre-used wedding photography. Yeah, it's a huge market.
SPEAKER_02:Anyway, go on.
SPEAKER_04:We've
SPEAKER_02:got to keep the analogy going. We do. Secondhand jewellery. Sorry, secondhand. Handmade jewellery. Interesting handmade jewellery from artisans. Now, you could pick up some Inuit jewellery online and have it shipped. Girls would be buying interesting things like that, which you wouldn't typically think to do.
SPEAKER_04:So how often do they go into Adelaide or wherever and go shopping?
SPEAKER_02:Well, I would say at least every week or two that they'd be noodling around. And do they enjoy it? Love it. Yeah, they do, don't they? But they're also on the web every day. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04:That's right.
SPEAKER_02:And they're buying on the web. That's the generation, though,
SPEAKER_04:that today's studio is going to be selling to. Right. I see. So I don't really think that there's an approach that you can take that means that they're just going to be all online because they're millennials or they're whatever they call them now, screen generation or whatever it is. I do not think you can make the assumption that that means that they'll buy everything online because I don't think they will.
SPEAKER_02:But what it does mean is that if you go to Harvey Norman– that person you see at Harvey Norman better darn be good. They should. And the website that you go to click and buy it, it better be darn good.
SPEAKER_04:Because they will go there. And the difference between today's customer and yesterday's customer is that when one of these people go online, they feel very comfortable. buying there. And that wasn't the case. My credit card, I'm popping my credit card into a website. I think I've been trained to look for the padlock. Where's the padlock? I'm supposed to look for a padlock. And even in 2007, that didn't exist. So people were worried. No one's worried about it today.
SPEAKER_02:Look, slightly side question, do you think fraud... Is bigger than it was back then, credit card fraud with the website? Or is the tools better now to prevent against fraud?
SPEAKER_04:Yes and yes. So fraud is larger than it was 13 years ago. But there's more volume. There's more volume, but there's also much more protection. So I would say the probability of any of the photography e-commerce providers, the reputable ones that are well-known, having an issue with that, I think would be very low. And so, but yeah, look, but fraud isn't going away. No. You know, it was there in the physical world. I would say if anything, the online world is much safer than the physical.
SPEAKER_02:Right, right.
SPEAKER_04:Cool. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Cool. Sorry, sorry question. So with Photo Merchant, you guys really chased wedding portrait for a long time. And then a few years ago, you found a different rabbit to chase, which... really i mean it certainly fascinated me and i thought it's incredibly logical thing tell us about the the smart slight pivot that photo merchant hit and how long ago was it and um so it was around
SPEAKER_04:about yeah about four years ago in january actually uh we we attended a few of us attended a show in vegas um that was was targeted at um High volume photography. SPAC? Yeah, SPAC. At the time, it was the School Photographers Association of California. It no longer is. It's a national body, but they loved the acronym SPAC. So now it's the School Photographers Annual Conference. Great pivot. SPAC wasn't in the vernacular over there. It's a very Australian... colloquialism. So we attended that and what we were trying to do, Paul, was understand, look, the wedding and portrait industry is always interest us, but we were seeing a lot of turnover. A lot of turnover. So what do you mean by turnover? So we would acquire, let's say, a new portrait photographer.
SPEAKER_02:So this is this churn? It's what we would call churn. So that means a user moving between services?
SPEAKER_04:But sometimes just moving out of the business because they didn't succeed. Oh, right. So a wedding photographer would start to use our platform. And then a year later, they'd be gone because they just went out of business. So how long ago was this app? You're witnessing this app? We're witnessing 13, 14, 15, 2013, 14, 15. Okay, right on. And we still see it today. Oh,
SPEAKER_02:yeah. I think it's quite high.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah. Our original product, Photo Merchant, what we call Photo Merchant 3, the third version of it, is still live. It's still active. We've still got thousands of people using it. but it's a very different business to what we've moved into. So we were interested in a different market that we're finding a market where we could see volume, where we could really add value. So as you know, there were a number of competitors that came on the market over the last 10 years that focused more on the sexy and the presentation and the coolness and the hipness for wedding and portrait photographers. And whilst we considered... Continually iterating over that. To be brutally honest, I, probably more me than anyone else in the company, just got tired of, and I don't mean any offense by this, but we got tired of the fickle nature of what photographers were looking for. that shade of pink is incorrect. If I don't have this shade of red, then I'm not going to be able to sell anything. And it was just one after
SPEAKER_02:another. We talked about this a lot at the time. This is before we kind of worked ourselves out. Again, as businesses keep reiterating, we understood exactly where you're coming from. Well, it
SPEAKER_04:was form over function. Well, it was actually, yeah, they were more focused on form than function. And we more had the view of, but we have research that shows that if you do that, your sales will actually increase. Decline, not increase. And it was just also partly the struggle of being an Australian company. We don't get funding here. That's
SPEAKER_02:really difficult to raise. You said this at dinner that you found that you're really handicapped, whereas we're all led to believe that you can run a business from anywhere in this country. web 2.0 world it's very successful but you're finding that you found that not to be so
SPEAKER_04:australian investors are very risk averse so to for us to get any kind of capital injection and investment we would have needed to go to america and we would have needed to live there and to be brutally honest none of us wanted to yeah so i
SPEAKER_02:mean you're in sydney which is rough for someone who's used to
SPEAKER_04:yeah yeah so my wife's from adelaide yeah um and we come here all the time and and i love it But, yeah, we are from Sydney. Yeah, yeah. But it's still– As big as it gets here in Australia. As big as it gets, yeah. That's right, folks. But, yeah, so we didn't want to do that. But we did enjoy the industry. We didn't want to leave the industry. We didn't want to– we wanted to be able to find a way to use our technology in a way that was probably more valuable, really. And so we ended up, long story short, to answer your question, we did what we call a customer segment pivot. And that means our focus moved away from wedding and portrait photographers. We didn't leave them, but we changed the focus of our development and our business and moved into the high volume industry, which would be school, photographers, sport. League photographers, dance photographers, event photographers, all of those things.
SPEAKER_02:Because that really was also an opportunity then. It really was a problem left unsolved, wasn't
SPEAKER_04:it? It was. In a way, it still is in some ways. But we had a number of event photographers using Photo Merchant already. We had people that were shooting marathons and races and charity bike races and things like that. And so we were really looking at the customers that we already had that were actually– doing sales because at the time even in 2016 our wedding and portrait photographers were super focused on IPS and in person and online even in 2016 was still oh maybe I'll get some residual
SPEAKER_02:sales so can I ask how how does a photo merchant wedding portrait photographer how do you make money from them how does that transaction work for you So two
SPEAKER_04:streams, a monthly subscription, which is very low, anywhere from$9 to$49 a month, depending on what option you wanted. And that's nice. That's continual revenue. And then the rest of it was– the bulk of it was transactional. So if you made a sale, depending on what level you were at, you would pay anywhere between 2.5% to 15%. Yeah, right.
SPEAKER_02:So you were relying on– Sales. Sales for it to work. And
SPEAKER_04:there were plenty of sales coming through, just not enough to sustain a nine Australian employee business. Just the volume wasn't there. You've got a good customer one week and then the next week they're gone because they just were out of business for whatever reason. And we have really good retention. Even today, we've made very little updates to the system and we still have... so many customers that have been with us six, seven, eight, nine years.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, photo merchant customers absolutely love it. And I do speak to a lot of people and they're incredibly loyal and they particularly love that it's local. They particularly love that the development team's here.
SPEAKER_04:The one thing I would say on this is we have an internal debate running pretty much permanently for the last four years on what are we going to do with that side of the business. And we definitely haven't walked away from it. It's just hasn't been our focus in recent years. Stay tuned. There may be something coming.
SPEAKER_02:Well, tell us more about the high volume because you and I started talking about that in the first place because we share a couple of customers that we're looking to solve problems. the problem and there's some really unique problems with high volume photographers so you go to an event you shot let's say a couple thousand pictures maybe a lot more often unidentified unidentified so you don't know who the subject is the job is you've got to get that gallery to that subject uniquely and allow them to find the picture of
SPEAKER_04:themselves etc etc yeah look there's a lot of challenges but in short the biggest challenge today is um Especially with COVID. COVID's really kind of changed everything.
SPEAKER_02:Hang on, we've got a challenge just this year. Surely
SPEAKER_04:2019 had its own set of... It did, but everyone... Let's back up a little bit. So a lot of your listeners probably have children and they've been to school themselves and they remember the school picture day experience. Let's just take schools. Let's focus on schools just because it's the simplest answer. often you would take a pre-order paper form in with an envelope with cash in it or a check in it or a credit card number written on it. COVID, what COVID did was remove the paper because the schools didn't want anything.
SPEAKER_02:But there weren't school photos being taken either.
SPEAKER_04:There were though.
SPEAKER_02:Hang on, are we talking in Australia or US?
SPEAKER_04:So as everyone went back to school in Australia, maybe not Victoria, but elsewhere in the country, school photography did resume. So my kids had their photos taken in term... I think it was, normally would have been midway through term one. So it did still happen. But none of our customers use paper anymore.
SPEAKER_02:So that was the thing. It had to be online. It had to be online.
SPEAKER_04:It had to be digital. So the parent orders before picture day. And whilst they've been able to order online now for a number of years, this year it was like, well, there's no paper. So that's kind of accelerated things. But I'm getting ahead of myself. So some of the challenges we have to face are obviously taking thousands of photos of thousands of subjects, children, whatever it might be, in one day sometimes. Sometimes you're in a situation where the school will give you all the information, other times you're left to yourself. And then finally, you might have group photos. So you take group photos of schools and traditionally the school has to then name the group or you have to name the group and figure out who's in which group. So what we set out to do was learn that industry and then use our technology to actually push it forward And to be honest, our company vision is removing the work from workflow. That is our vision. Hang on, removing the work from workflow. Workflow without the work. Now, it's not our tagline, but that is our internal vision. We want to take that work out of workflow. Now, any of you listeners that have done any high-volume jobs, they do, on the surface, often appear very lucrative. You look at a preschool, a kindergarten, a dance school, formal whatever it might be and you go oh okay so that's about eight grand eight grand for a night's work that rivals most weddings if if not every wedding these days yeah yeah these days absolutely so on the surface it looks very alluring it's very inviting and i've done them years ago now but i have participated in them and there's so much more to it than that
SPEAKER_02:it's a logistic like it's one of these things you get something wrong right at the beginning and And the pain all the way through to the end. Like your background's not wide enough.
SPEAKER_04:Well, you forget the scan of one child at a school and you can be out of sequence for 20 kids. And so every kid is named incorrectly and parents these days with privacy laws start to freak out when they type in their code to view their child and it's a different child. So there are a bunch of issues there. But basically what we're dealing with is huge amounts of data, a lot of photos and... To be honest, not a lot of perceived value with the end product. So parents are looking at paying$25 for... Is that what a school pack is? Yeah, the average in Australia is probably$32.$32, right. I was going to say$35, but... Oh, definitely some studios are doing that as an average, but I would say across the board.$32. When you're taking the different demographics, it's about$32. Okay. We can argue on that. We can do that in another podcast.
SPEAKER_02:No, we don't have to argue on it. You know more of this stuff
SPEAKER_04:than I do. But yeah, so$32 is not a lot for a single subject. So you're not looking at quality here. Not that they're bad quality, but you're looking at volume. And you're looking at as much volume as possible. Off a good school...
SPEAKER_02:So how many heads do you think would be classed as a good school? How many kids in the...
SPEAKER_04:It's not so much the number of kids in the school, it's the buy rate. So if you've got a thousand kids in a school, how many parents are going to buy? Up front, before they've seen the product. And
SPEAKER_02:is that always the fancy schools or is it?
SPEAKER_04:Actually, no. I would actually say the poorer schools often buy more than the richer schools.
SPEAKER_02:Is there any way of seeing that from the outside other than, I mean, you can't just look at the povo schools and go, yeah, there's going to be heaps of dough in that. No, there's no way of seeing it. There's no way?
SPEAKER_04:There isn't. There's no way of predicting that.
SPEAKER_02:Because school photography businesses get sold by the amount of heads they photograph, don't they? They do. That is a metric. That's a measuring stick. So
SPEAKER_04:how many heads do you shoot? You can't say shoot anymore in American schools because no one's interested in shooting school children. But yeah, how many heads do you capture each year and how many schools? But it's really heads. And so like our largest studio is maybe on our books is– Three million heads, four million heads a year. Three million? Yeah, three million. That's like South Australia and put together Tasmania. Half of New South Wales population. Yeah, yeah. So you've got to remember there's 50 million kids in school in America. That's double our population. Oh, right. Yeah, okay.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, you don't think about
SPEAKER_04:these numbers.
SPEAKER_02:No. So the biggest client you have is those sorts of numbers, right?
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, they're big numbers. But the biggest clients we have in Australia are also huge numbers. So we are still very much servicing the Australian market. We live here. This is an easy market for us to service. You speak the language. We do. And we get on well. But most importantly, we get to work with them to solve problems. And it's really interesting. I think high-volume photography is the last frontier of the old era. I think wedding and portraits already moved on. There's been horrible change there and good change there and difficult change there with digital, et cetera. And the school market, whilst they've moved to digital photography, which is neither here nor there, the methods and the systems they use to pull it off are still so commensurate and similar to what they were using in 1984. Really? Yeah. There's changes, obviously, but it's basically a digital version of what they were doing back then and so as a company we've looked at it and gone well there's nothing wrong with this but given the technology that's available today given the resources particularly one for us is facial recognition you know you don't need to ID that child um We
SPEAKER_02:can do that. I use Lightroom's face recognition. Yeah. Honestly, it picks– like I've got a picture of a guy from Nigeria and said it was my grandfather. Yeah. So how is face recognition doing a good job?
SPEAKER_04:Well, imagine I take a photo of your children at school for 12 years in a row. They go to a K-12 school or they go to a primary school and then a high school where my company happens to be the studio that shoots both of those schools. Using facial recognition, I can have a much more confident, I can start to build products that are what we would call, internally we call them journey products or memory products, where when your daughter gets to year 12, our facial recognition algorithm can say, hang on a second, I've got 13 years worth of photos of this child. I'm going to upsell the parent. a journey product.
SPEAKER_02:Right, right, right.
SPEAKER_04:Here is your child in kindergarten, year one, year two, year three, year four, year five, year six, year
SPEAKER_02:seven, year eight. But doesn't it mistake her? I'm starting to be a numpty on this. But as I said, my Lightroom can't pick out– it does some weird things. It does pick out babies and– Can
SPEAKER_04:I get technical for just a second? Please. Okay. So imagine this. I look at your kindergarten photo and I look at your year 12 photo. Yep. And I'm going to go, oh, yeah, right. I can see the– I can see the resemblance, definitely. What happens if I look at your kindergarten photo and I look at your year one or maybe even your year two or three photo? Yep. What am I going to see?
SPEAKER_02:There's not a lot in that little difference there, though. There isn't, is there?
SPEAKER_04:No. You're going to look pretty similar. Yep. Okay. So if I can look at your kindergarten photo and go, yes, that's Paul in year one and that's Paul in year two, my oldest photo now is the year two photo. I'm quite confident. then I know that's you.
SPEAKER_02:Because they were identified because they were you successful in year one. Yeah. So suggesting is getting better.
SPEAKER_04:So now I have your year two photo. Right. If I see a photo of Paul in year three and four and five, you're going to look much more similar to your year two photo than you are to your kindergarten photo.
SPEAKER_03:Okay.
SPEAKER_04:Okay? This is actually, for any computer scientists out there, this is what we call a binary search algorithm. But anyway, I'm explaining it in photos. Is it a BSA? No, but it is now. So what our algorithm does is look at the closest match to your year one photo and it's usually going to be your year two or three photo. And then we'll find your year four photo and then we'll find your year five, year six,
SPEAKER_02:year seven, year eight. But what's it looking for? Is it just the school, that school photos? Is it looking for all the kids you've ever photographed?
SPEAKER_04:It's looking at all the kids for that studio. That's our demarcation line. What
SPEAKER_02:do you mean by studio
SPEAKER_04:and school photography? The business. The school photography business. So let's say you're called Atkins School Photography. We will look at every photo you have in your database.
SPEAKER_02:So you're not narrowing it down to that school in my database? We don't
SPEAKER_04:need to because you own all the photos. So we can find that child.
SPEAKER_02:Wouldn't it be more accurate though if it was just that school? Nope. Okay, wow.
SPEAKER_04:It's actually just as accurate if I go across every school. So a small sample group is the trick to it. Probably more accurate, to be honest.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, like not small, but, you know, it's about the group that's– like if it said all school kids, it would struggle, wouldn't it?
SPEAKER_04:No. It wouldn't, but we'd have legal issues.
SPEAKER_02:Oh, I see. Well, tell me. Yep, go for it.
SPEAKER_04:Well, so basically we're looking for the next best match, and that leads us to year 12, right? So now I have your year 12 photo. and your year kindergarten photo, and I know for sure that is Paul Atkins in year 12. Now, if I ask the facial recognition algorithm to give me a confidence rating, it's going to say, oh, I'm 82% that that kindergartner is the same as that year 12 kid, right? Yep. But if I've led it through year one, year two, year three, year four, year five, year six, year seven, it's going to give me a 99.9% confidence rating because what is it going to compare your year 12 to? It's going to compare it to year 11. Yeah, right, right, right. And year 11 to year 10, and year 10 to year nine, and so on and so forth. Okay. And that gets us all the way back to kindergarten. So now these studios can say, I'm going to offer a$999 Journey product. And our shopping cart does this automatically, but basically– If we only have year 7 to year 12, we'll offer a six-year product. If we only have year 11 and 12, we'll offer a two-year product. And so it's that concept of perceived value for the parent where when they come online to look at their year 12 child's photos, they're actually presented with them but also, oh my goodness, there's my child for the last six months or six years, sorry. That's so awesome. That's them with all the pimples. Oh, that's them with the braces. Oh, that's them with the, you know, oh, that's when they wanted to have their hair cut short even though it was so long and curly the year before. And we're offering it to you in a framed six-year matted, cream matted, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Whatever you come up with. Right? Whatever you come up with. And that can all be done through automation. Believe it or not, not a single studio on the planet has really been able to offer that because there's too much labor involved. in that too much data too much too many too many um too much room for error so is this what you're saying that so we've focused on yeah trying
SPEAKER_02:to solve these problems trying to solve this yeah so you were saying that that this is i don't think you said the wild west but this is this is something that's not changed for a long time in school photography what you're suggesting is a utopia where these people could be yeah and you're building a Fido Merchant HV
SPEAKER_04:is the right term for it? No, it's just Fido Merchant now. Fido Merchant Sweet.
SPEAKER_02:So you're building that to be able to cope with it. But you haven't actually got– there's not someone saying we're using this and it's actually a winner. Because I can see nothing but this is great. The only thing I do see is maybe it's a little bit far ahead than the market might be ready for because it's quite a conservative in that That old school idea of, I don't like James very much. It's quite a conservative market, isn't
SPEAKER_04:it? So where we've got the technology to is that you can walk into a school, take a photo of a child, and the parent can receive a text message with a digital proof to view and then purchase product from within two minutes.
SPEAKER_02:Hang on. So you've got cameras now?
SPEAKER_04:You've got capture devices that can connect to most cameras, so Nikon, Canon, Nikon. Sorry, we're
SPEAKER_02:in Australia, aren't we? Yeah, please, we're in Australia. Sorry. Although, hang on, we have American listeners.
SPEAKER_04:Okay, Nikon and Nikon. Canon, Sony, Lumix, all those cameras, our capture device can connect to. So it just attaches to your camera, write an L bracket for it, and it captures to cloud. So the moment your shutter releases, it's 4G connected or Wi-Fi connected. The studio doesn't have to manage that. It's all fully managed by us. So whenever you turn it on, you'll get a 4G connection. And every time you take a photo, it goes up into our system. Our system then is able to determine whether eyes are open, eyes are closed, whether the child is smiling, whether it was properly exposed, et cetera, et cetera. And we will make a pick of which photo actually looks the best out of the three
SPEAKER_02:you've taken. Not you as in a person. No. You're robots.
SPEAKER_04:Artificial intelligence, our robotic algorithm.
SPEAKER_02:Have you got a name for it?
SPEAKER_04:Fred.
SPEAKER_02:Oh, come on.
SPEAKER_04:It's going to be an exciting name. It is Fred. It is Fred. And don't argue with me about it. Okay. I would have given
SPEAKER_02:us nice names. There's not enough Freds in the world these days. I think we could use Shirley. She needs to be used for something other than skin reference. Phineas. Phineas. Your fake name.
SPEAKER_04:So basically, what would have happened? Okay. So to paint the picture, usually the traditional workflow is you go to the school on picture day, you take the photos. Usually the parents will get something about three to six weeks later. That's what we're looking at right now. So that'll be the first time they ever see any of the photos from their child. So the industry wasn't really ready for this. This is not something they thought was overly needy or needed. And to be honest, I understand why. And then COVID happened. and everything changed it became all about contactless it became all about speed it became how do I compete with the next big company etc etc so it has accelerated things and it has changed things in the industry what that means we'll have to wait for next December's podcast because I'm not sure but But again, our goal is to remove the work from workflow. So why would we use paper? Why do we use humans choosing the best picture? Why do we use humans to automatically crop? Think about school photography. You take a photo of 500 children at a school. The school usually wants some representation of that. They want all the portraits for ID cards, et cetera. You want all the heads to look uniform. They have to be the same size.
SPEAKER_02:It's a big challenge.
SPEAKER_04:And it's done manually. I mean, I'm just with a studio in Adelaide, one of our customers today, and they still do it manually. They make sure every head is the same, and they use software to do it, but the algorithms are so bad that it doesn't really work.
SPEAKER_02:We have software, and it was developed in 2000, that's meant to be able to do this, and it's been refined ever since. It doesn't really work. It doesn't. And it's to do with ear sizes and eye– there's not a uniformity in there, which is why– Facial recognition works because everyone's so different.
SPEAKER_04:Facial recognition gives you the points on the face, but my head is a completely different size and shape to yours. But what a human looks at, if you show me 10 photos of children or adults in a row, I'll ask you a question, Paul. So, Paul, what do you think the human brain is going to focus on? Eyes. Right. What are they looking at in terms of eyes? Eyes. I don't know. The eye line. The eye line. Right? So if you've got 10 photos in a row. Okay. So the eye line's got. That are individual portraits. Right. Okay. You're looking. If you want them all to look uniform. If you want to trick your brain into thinking all of their heads are the same size. Yep. You're looking at the eye line. Yep. And you're looking at the head width. Yep. And you're looking at the. Anyway.
SPEAKER_02:But every. Like some people have got like. Massive. Seemingly little eyes and mega heads. That's right. And some people have got like big
SPEAKER_04:eyes. Yep. So it's a purely impossible task to really make the head sizes uniform. It really is.
SPEAKER_02:It's got to have a feel to it.
SPEAKER_04:I can make everyone's heads the same size using math, but then they will look like they're not the same size because everyone's eyes and nose and ears will be in a different position. So we're getting too technical, but... That's interesting. Our algorithm will actually work through that based off what we call cropping templates and allow you to– I can take a photo of you and I can make you, your head in that photo look exactly the way I want it to look, positioned up in the top left or top right or a three-quarter shot with your knees in shot. And I can save it as my standard portrait schools template. And I can apply that to 4 billion photos that come through our platform and every photo will be cropped the same way automatically, instantly. So that's an example of something that's up until now been done by humans. Yes, you're saying in 2001 there was a computer program that did it. There's computer programs written last year that do it. They just do a really bad job of it.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I'm surprised at that. And the other thing I'm surprised at is how bad auto color is. I don't know. I mean, you may enlighten me. Maybe it's changed, but we have not found anything that betters some human input.
SPEAKER_04:No, that's an even tougher one. I would admit that. We've been looking at it. It's doable, but there's still a level of subjectiveness to it, and it does depend on what the output medium is going to be.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, 100%. I would say that. I
SPEAKER_04:can color correct photos to the cows come home. Yeah. But if you then go and print them on an Epson…
SPEAKER_02:6.30 or whatever, I can't guarantee anything. Silver Halide versus Dry Lab. Yeah, that's right. Kodak and Fuji are probably the two leaders and they've worked on this stuff their entire business careers and it's still not right. It really, in our experience, and they kind of feel like they've given up. Fuji, I feel like they gave up and Kodak certainly gave up. Maybe in 2010... And they're just like, oh, this is about as good as it's going to get. You need some great operators. You
SPEAKER_04:have to remember, though, that if you're coming from the portrait and wedding world, that's much more important. And it sounds like an anathema, and there's probably some photographers out there that will shoot me for saying this, but if I'm going to be pragmatic about it, in the high-volume world, colour is an afterthought. And to be honest, on a high-volume shoot, you'll shoot a grey card and move on.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, right.
SPEAKER_04:And if you've got your lighting right each day and you're in a relatively controlled environment, your colour's going to be close enough. In Australia, even more so because people are wearing school uniforms. In America, not as much because you're going to have a red shirt, a green shirt, etc. But now... We're moving away from green screen with background removal, which isn't huge in Australia. It's huge in the States. In the States, it's massive. So a lot of these kids have been shot for years on a green background that creates a set of its own problems. But if you've got a blonde child or a child that rocks up in America. See-through hair. Green dress, yeah. You suddenly are in a position where, wow, okay, this is going to cause a lot of problems. So we've moved away from that and we can knock out Any photo, like you sitting here at your desk with three photos behind you, I can take a photo of you right now and knock out that background in one second without any trouble. Wow. Good
SPEAKER_02:enough for a 7.5, 10.8 print? 100%. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04:100%. Better now. You've got a bit of hair sticking up there on your head, wispy, beautiful, slightly grey hair. Thank you. And I can take this photo and that hair will not be... cut out that will stay including the gaps between it so we'll have a png file with an alpha channel in it and between all those hairs will be transparency um or i can return just a just a cut out um overlay so it and it happens within seconds yeah so technology is something that for some weird reason hasn't been put together hasn't been adopted correctly and these studios aren't really using it so our goal is to try and put all this together improve it and then provide a product so that you can go to a school. And if you wish to, capture to sale within two minutes. If you want to. You don't have to. But the parent can get a text message within two minutes and their photos will be available for
SPEAKER_02:proofing. That's incredible.
SPEAKER_04:And you're still trying to sell a physical product. Absolutely. Nothing's changed there. That's still the best way to sell. But your parent, the parent is... I don't know. For those of you that have kids out there, when you send your child to picture day... you pay a little bit more attention to the way they look and you do their hair and sometimes you even give the photographer notes. Make sure they take off their glasses, you know, whatever it might be. And so when you get that text message three minutes later, you're a little bit more emotionally invested in it because you remember that you've just gone through that grief this morning in the bathroom doing your dog's hair. Whereas when you get the photo three weeks later, our research has actually shown you're more likely to be disappointed. because you're like, oh, I thought you looked better than that. I thought that was going to be better. Right. Which is a very subjective response, but it's irrelevant. It's still the response. So there's a lot to it and it's really, yeah.
SPEAKER_02:That's fascinating. Well, look, we're on the hour, right? So I'm going to ask you a last question, unless there's something that you wanted to mention that I haven't already dug up yet. Have a think about it when I ask you this. You can ask me for another. I can. Do we do another slug? Here we go. What are we drinking? Loch Lomond Distillery. Loch Lomond. Single malt, 18 years old. 18 years. It's not a bad drop. Michael Walsh, I'll eat your heart out. Nice dram, Michael. Yes. This isn't from Michael, by the way. This is from one of my– I think my dad sent it to me down from my cans. It's beautiful. So my last question to you. I, from all the years that I've known you, understood you to be the lead programmer– at photo merchant founder, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. That's a really big weight on your shoulders to be the person behind it. And, you know, we had a software program years ago and it was a point of sale software. And I got the Christmas card from the company and I could see the eight people that were working or six or whatever it was. And I looked and I thought, oh, that's why that's not working so well. There's only six of them. Like there is a thing about– and I know there's some– I know you and I know how superhuman you can be when it comes to putting things together. Like with our integration with you guys, every other company, it's been like– Four or six months of screwing around. You came in here on the same time of year, Christmas time. Two hours you sat down and you wrote the integration. It was done. It was pretty quick. It was incredible. And look, nothing is ever perfect. But we haven't had to touch it. We haven't touched it since. We haven't touched it in what, five years, right? This means it was really good. But what I'm saying is what's up for you next? Are you getting– are you going to– how do we clone Derek? How do we– because I want to see you doing– wedding and portrait thing this is me personally I mean I'm sure half your staff would give you a hard time about it I'm sure Tara would and I'm sure there's people who are going come on let's do because I know that you've got like the stuff that you're putting into the shopping cart technology which we haven't touched on you might want to mention but that stuff applied to the wedding portrait industry like oh my god but that personally like there's a huge challenge on you you've got a young family and you've got You've got lots going on. What's your plan? What do you want to do in five years?
SPEAKER_04:Where do you see yourself in five years? Look, it's a good question. I've gotten to the point where I'm going to give you the boring answer first. I don't look anymore as to where I see myself in five years. I think that you actually, and this can sound overly profound, but when you take that approach to things, I think it's good to have a goal and I will tell you what my goal is in a minute. But I now more focus on with what I have available to me now, what can we achieve or what value can we add wherever it might be? If I focus too much on five years from now, there's a lot between now and then that I'm going to miss. And that includes your family, it includes your business, and it includes opportunities that arise that you often ignore because you're too focused on where you want to be in five years. Like high volume. That's right.
SPEAKER_02:Because you didn't miss that one. We didn't miss it.
SPEAKER_04:We didn't miss it. We grabbed it and it was very scary at the time. And it's worked out well, but at the time it was like, are we really doing the right thing here? But it presented itself to us and... Fortunately, we were able to see it. But if you think about it, that five-year goal is a moving target. It always is another five years away. It never seems to actually be, oh, I'm four years in. Now it's next year's goal. You get to that point, you're like, I'm not ready for this yet. We haven't achieved this yet. So the first answer is I don't know where I'm going to be in five years. I really have a– a good relationship with this industry. I like it. I enjoy it. I've got lots of friends now in this industry and contacts and just have had an overall good experience. So I hope I'm in the industry. I hope I'm, I plan to still be pushing the industry forward. We do as a company and to be fully involved with Photo Merchant. There's no indication that that won't be the case. How? I hope that we will be known moving forward and the reputation we're trying to build is that we are trying to push the industry forward. We are a little bit controversial from time to time, but we hope that it will sustain the industry rather than kill it. And I think you probably know what that means. We've seen many innovations and many advancements that killed the industry because they were cool... Yeah, not killed the industry but damaged it in some way. Yeah. And there were good ideas and there were advancements that were really, really interesting but there was never any thought as to, well, hang on a sec, what does this actually do to the industry? It's almost like you're killing your own children and killing the future of whatever it is you're in and trying to support because you didn't think through. Yeah. What does this mean? And I won't go into that today. That's a whole different topic. But... We would like to push it forward, advance it forward without actually ripping the bottom out from under it. Yeah, right. Okay? What does that look like? Well, let's talk again in five years. Yeah, yeah. But in the short term... Our focus as a company and my focus as a technologist in particular is just to keep working on the cool stuff. It is actually really cool to be able to demo to people a capture system that has automatic workflow built in with a background knocked out, colour corrected, image-enhanced, head-sized final product that they can sell to a parent with no extra work to be done to it. When they click on it, the parent buys it, goes straight to a professional lab, and it's printed and shipped, all in the space of five minutes. I mean, that was always the vision 13 years ago, and we're finally 13 years in, and I think we've actually... That's the first time I can put my hand up and go, we've kind of pulled it off for the first time. It's not perfect yet, but it's the beginning of something that is real. And I think a lot of companies have talked about it for many, many years. And I think in the back of everyone's head, they knew it must be possible because of technology. But it's actually proven to be far more difficult than we even thought it was going to be. So that's what I'll be focusing on. And I know that's what you're saying, you know, I'm, I suppose I was responsible for a lot of the development in the past. I think I spend probably 50% of my time now on development and I love it. I'd love to spend 100% of my time on development, but people with grey beards and weird hair keep asking me to do podcasts and I just don't have
SPEAKER_02:time. Oh, you're such a star. Well, thank you so much, Derek. Oh, Paul, thank you. Thank you. You brought dinner too. Oh, did I? I did too. You did.
SPEAKER_04:Oh, Photo Merchant did.
SPEAKER_02:Oh,
SPEAKER_04:thanks, Photo Merchant. This podcast is sponsored by
SPEAKER_02:photomurchant.com.au. That's wonderful. And look, to find out more, we'll have some stuff in the show notes. HV, Photo Merchant. Sweet. Sweet. Sorry about this. Do you have a rep that people will be speaking to when they reach out?
SPEAKER_04:Oh, yeah. If you were to reach out, you'd be, particularly in Australia, you'd probably be speaking to Tira. Yep. She's our Australian sales rep. or me. And if you were to reach out in the US, look, it could be Tara, but there's a good chance it'd be Peter. or someone like that that you'd end up speaking to. But you will get a human that will have a physical conversation with you.
SPEAKER_02:Well, the thing is it's a complicated product and it requires a lot of discussion. You can't
SPEAKER_04:sign up online. You do actually have to speak to a human to
SPEAKER_02:come on board. That's exciting. Thank you so much for your time, Derek.
SPEAKER_04:Thank you, Paul.
SPEAKER_02:It's been fun. Yeah, we did. And if we don't see each other during the year, we'll see each other next Christmas.
SPEAKER_04:We should do a regular series on some completely random topic. Let's do that.
SPEAKER_02:There is so much we've left at the door here with this
SPEAKER_04:song. I think Ikea Furniture.
SPEAKER_02:Ikea Furniture. Welcome back, listeners. That was the great Derek Clapton. I don't say that lightly because I think he is genuinely... I
SPEAKER_00:do. You take it lightly? No, I do agree. Oh,
SPEAKER_02:you
SPEAKER_00:agree. Give me a minute. You know, yes, I am fucking around with my hair because I, in the land of COVID, never got a haircut. So now I look like a hippie to the maximum, which is kind of my vibe, so I'm up for that. But I haven't had a haircut in a year. And it's looking...
SPEAKER_02:The hippies have braces.
SPEAKER_00:A bit grim. Hey, listen. I think
SPEAKER_02:they have crooked teeth,
SPEAKER_00:don't they? I am a nouveau hippie. I am a nouveau
SPEAKER_02:hippie. You're more of a Coachella girl, aren't
SPEAKER_00:you? You're really in shit, aren't you? Why am I living with you again? I don't know. That's because you want to live with a Ralph Lauren model.
SPEAKER_02:He's Ralph Lauren? Oh, that's right. He likes Land Rovers, doesn't he? That's right.
SPEAKER_00:No, Jeep. He's American.
SPEAKER_02:American. No, I think he's got a Land Rover. Really?
SPEAKER_00:Why wouldn't he have a Jeep? Isn't that the thing? Because they're much more of an icon. Don't the Land Rovers not fit in the tracks that the Jeeps make because they're too wide? No, that's the Hummers. No, there's another thing, I'm sure.
SPEAKER_02:No, it's the Hummers that are super wide. The Jeeps and the Land Rovers are a similar sort of wheelbase.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, okay. Whatever. Cars bore me to tears. Yes, they do. I hate cars.
SPEAKER_02:They do. So we thought we'd talk about... what's happening with, we've got a little art group that's coming in and we're actually going to, I'm going to have them in as a guest as the group of artists that are putting this exhibition on. Guest
SPEAKER_00:on the podcast? Yeah, yeah. We're going
SPEAKER_02:to do like an interview with five people. Oh,
SPEAKER_00:that'll be it. Challenge for the hour. I know. We've got three microphones. Speakers set up. Mic set up. Fucking hell. All we'll
SPEAKER_02:have to do is make sure people. It'll
SPEAKER_00:be like a choir. Everyone will just huddle. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Yes, that's right. No, they came in and they did a tour and they did a beautiful job. I don't know if you saw on Instagram. They probably didn't tag the lab though. I must.
SPEAKER_00:I'm so bad with Instagram at the moment. We're just so busy. Like we came back from Christmas and it has just not stopped for a second.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:It is just.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, even though we dropped a week. because we had another week off this year. January is still a little bit above what we did the previous January.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, it's mental. So I'm so behind with– every time I go onto Instagram, I have to just spend 10 minutes apologising to everyone who I missed all their stories and didn't share them.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. Well, there's a few exhibitions that we're involved with this year and I was lamenting late last year that we– exhibition work had kind of quietened off. Well, of course, you can't have shows during a pandemic. It makes it really hard. But since then, we've got three really interesting shows. We're doing one which is absolutely gorgeous at the South Australian Maritime Museum. Oh, nice. It's called Pamela and
SPEAKER_00:the Duchess. You do love any excuse to go to that museum. Oh, yeah, I
SPEAKER_02:love it. Pamela and the Duchess, but this is about a– I don't know if she actually was a photojournalist, but she certainly was a–
SPEAKER_00:Those photos? Yeah. Oh, my God. It's so beautiful. Hang on, I'm making a note. Put it
SPEAKER_02:in the show notes. Put it in the show notes. These are 1940s. A woman fell in love with a captain, and I think she was a farm girl from the west coast in South Australia, fell in love with a Scandinavian, I'd say Scandinavian because I can't remember the full story, captain, and she joined his trip in his clipper ship.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, wow.
SPEAKER_02:And she... She basically leaped the world. And the photographs she took of the crew at work and life aboard a square rigger were just incredible. And it's a love story.
SPEAKER_00:It's so sweet. They've done a
SPEAKER_02:beautiful book. So that's– I'm going to be writing down that, Pamela and the Duchess. Then we're doing a show with Chris Hertzfeld, which is actually a multiple show because he photographs dance. Dance.
SPEAKER_00:Dance. We're in South Australia, mate.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, it does. Dance. Dance.
SPEAKER_00:Dance. Dance. Dance. You put it a little bit further back in your mouth. You don't have to put it all the way down.
SPEAKER_02:So, yeah, Chris photographs dance. I can't do it. And he's got this amazing– there's several series of exhibitions that he's doing and one of them is actually going to appear on stage as a part of a– festival show. Oh,
SPEAKER_00:there's some
SPEAKER_02:beautiful stuff coming to the festival.
SPEAKER_00:I don't know how all that's going to be COVID safe. Has anybody– I want to think. But we still need to
SPEAKER_02:start booking tickets just in case. Yes, we do. So that's that show. And this other show called Prism, which is by a graduating student group as part of the Centre for Creative Photography, and there's six, I think, participating exhibitors, and they came in for a tour and a chat and– You know, it was one of the most lovely mornings that I've had, I don't know, it feels like in a year when you get a group of artists talking about their work and asking questions about how to render it. And now they're coming in one by one and meeting with our lead printer and myself and we sit down, the three of us, and, you know, sort of look at each person's work and go through it. And our place has got really like these two speeds that run in here. Yeah. There's the... There's the crazy everyday, you know, and as I love to say, babies and births and weddings and families.
SPEAKER_00:Which is, for those people, that is their most important work. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02:And for us, it's a lot of work we see. But, you know, you've often pointed, like not often, you pointed out to me as we were discussing this sort of stuff before we went to air, was that the– The artists is often once the work is on the wall and out there, they're like, yep, next, move on. And they're not really hanging on to that piece. Whereas the families who get the pictures that we print for them, it's the thing that's their treasure for life. And I don't think all artists are that way. I think there's some artists who really love everything they do and hang on to it.
SPEAKER_00:I don't know. I've spent a lot of time with artists because my background is in like art, art, like painting art.
SPEAKER_02:Hang on, isn't photography art?
SPEAKER_00:Oh, Christ on a cracker. Really? You just said it. Yes, I meant painting art. Okay, all right. You fucking brought us here, dickhead. Now you're going to have to sleep in this. No, because if I say fine art, what I mean is art that hangs in a gallery. If I say fine art inside of the commercial photography world, they think I mean soft art. pretty weddings shot in a castle because that's how fine art is referenced inside of our industry. It's a look and feel. It's a look and
SPEAKER_02:feel. I'm talking about work that hangs in a gallery.
SPEAKER_00:Of course there's photography that hangs in a gallery and it should. Of course it does. So you're
SPEAKER_02:not being that person. That's good.
SPEAKER_00:Fuck no. So
SPEAKER_02:let's get back on track, right? So the work that we're doing that is going, the objective is these people want their work hanging in a gallery. It's being hung for exhibitions.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:And part of the process is we get a chance to look at where it's going to be hanging and talk about how it's going to fit on the wall. Not
SPEAKER_00:fit as in how big can we make it so that we can physically fit it on the wall, but hang together as an exhibition.
SPEAKER_02:Hang together as a show, but also you do have to think about the space and what it's going to look like on the wall. And we've got some techniques to help people think about Some people come to me and say, I've got all these images and I've got the space. And you go, well, really, do you want all 45 of them on the wall or do you want to pick 10 ones that tell the story? And then you say to them, well, are you into– does big stuff tell your story? Does small stuff tell your story? Because if big stuff tells your story, you might only get three. And three strong pieces, like if you've got 40-odd and you can pick three, they're going to be three really good
SPEAKER_00:pictures. And that curation stuff– You are particularly– and this is what I was trying to reference earlier. My educational history is in art but my activity in the last 10 years has not been in art. So I have like a theoretical foundation of it but you have a very practical foundation because you have like devoted the last 20 years of your personal– to a degree your personal life but also the business life to the art the photographic art scene in Adelaide because you you have done so much work and you have seen so many exhibitions it's fine to sit in front of a computer and look at some pieces and go oh this is good that's good but An exhibition is actually something that you go to and you experience. Yeah, and the only way you can have an understanding of how that fits within a realm of a lot of other photographic art is by seeing a lot of exhibitions and you've done nothing but that for the last 20 years. Now, I will say, part of the reason that you do that is because you're an extrovert who lives with an introvert who never leaves the house. So if there's an exhibition, you're like, yahtzee, there'll be people there. Actually,
SPEAKER_02:I'm going to one Thursday night.
SPEAKER_00:Look at your little eyes light up. And I'm lighting up because... I'm going to be in the house on my own. Oh,
SPEAKER_02:yes. Good.
SPEAKER_00:Anyway, so I think the thing is that because you've been to so many exhibitions and you've experienced that process of curation, that is so, so hard for artists to do entirely on their own. And to understand how that fits inside of space means you have to have experienced that repeatedly. And, you know, the Biennale– in Victoria, the photo biennale. Yeah, the
SPEAKER_02:Ballarat International Photo Biennale, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and we used to take an artist group. What was that
SPEAKER_02:called again? We called them Adelaide Photographic Artists but we never really got a name and we never did it. I think we did it twice.
SPEAKER_00:I'm sure it was
SPEAKER_02:three times. But no, we did another show here. Some of the shows travelled further and were shown further than just the Ballarat Biennale. But I've been to the Ballarat show quite often and we've sponsored it every year I think for 10 years now, I could be wrong, but I think every year for– well, not every year because it's a biennial, it's every second year. But we've sponsored it over 10 years, so that's five shows. And for me, growing up in a world of the work that I described as being our bread and butter, I found– Domestic work. Domestic work. I found incredible excitement and in some ways– real desire to be a part of the business around that. And it really started with Gavin Blake and printing immaculate projections by hand in the mid-'90s, the early to mid-'90s, in a mural darkroom. And that was where I had no idea. You could still ask my parents and my grandparents, if they're alive, what's art? And they don't really get it. And I totally understand that. But it wasn't until that initial exposure– of working on Gavin's work to see that work, you know, art can be playful and it can be, it doesn't have to be, you know, full quality because of the lab stuff's always chasing. Everything's got to be perfectly sharp. Everything's got to be perfectly coloured, blah, blah. And Gavin's focus was, is it telling the story? You know, you want to talk about something that, you know, isn't quite right. The picture's got to be not quite right, you know. So it started then and, you know, with our local Sala, South Australia Living Artist Festival and, you know, now the Shimmer Festival as well. It's just– I find that the most inspiring thing and working with artists is the most inspiring thing. And it's one of the great joys that we have in our place. And
SPEAKER_00:it's the thing we tell commercial, domestic, whatever, photographers who are feeling crappy in their creative existence, go and look at art.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:You know, like go and look at– people going beyond the sort of client request. Because if you live in a world where all you're thinking about is the client request, you will not be creative to get something the client wants. Because the client doesn't always know. Yes. Whereas the artist is doing something that has nothing to do with the client necessarily. I mean, they're trying to communicate with an audience, which is a different thing. So, yeah, I mean, it's sort of perfect that it kind of feeds both ends of our business. You know, the... the fine art printing, the printing of those art exhibition works is part the printer spitting the ink onto the page and part the preparation of the files and part the discussion of what those files will be and how they'll feel and what they'll look like and also then how it will exist physically in the space. And, of course, the last thing you want to do is take a bunch of rolled up prints, throw them in the back of your car, stroll over to your local framer and go, hey, buddy, don't fuck these up. So the fact that we can frame them all in-house as well means they're all going to be perfect by the time they leave because they'll be in a frame, which makes a big difference. And, of course, we've been working with so many artists for so long, like storing their prints. Their files. Yeah, but then managing. And the editioning, managing the editions. It's funny because editioning is something that people really struggle with and don't struggle to understand, like, well, how many editions and why can't I just have it all open and just sell heaps of whatever? But it's the editioning that adds more value to each print. Yeah, yeah, it
SPEAKER_02:does. And yet Ansel Adams never editioned his work. Oh,
SPEAKER_00:Ansel Schmansell. Him and all this bloody grace, whatever.
SPEAKER_02:But there is an argument all sorts of different directions and, you know, we've got a bit of a feeling for that and got to– definitely something I love talking to people about and love helping them about. And
SPEAKER_00:I think also because you are– I think there's a lot in the art world, photographic or not, that there is a joy in the intimidation. There are people in the art community that quite like making people outside of the art community feel a bit–
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, this is the club you're not allowed in.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah. And I'm very good at doing that. Like that's what you go to art school for. No,
SPEAKER_02:I didn't just say that. How many people are you making cry now, Kate?
SPEAKER_00:Like an horrible person. But you are not good at that. Like your whole demeanour in your day-to-day life is about making people feel included. Whereas because I'm generally scared of people, I'm like I'm just going to exclude myself out of this. But you're all about bringing people kind of together. So it's– I think it makes it easier for people to be open about what they're trying to do and honest about what they're trying to do and have that conversation with you and with all our print crew and feel not as intimidated as perhaps they would, especially first-time exhibitionists.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, well, that's the hard thing. And, you know, I think the last five or so years, maybe ten, there was a bit of a rash of everyone had to have an exhibition and... Yes, I think it's a really good thing to know to understand your work. And I think planning an exhibition every few years is a really lovely thing to do. It's not for everybody. And I'm kind of glad it toned down a bit because it was full on for a while there. And just like when people said, oh, well, now we're using digital and you're not printing anything. And so, well, that's not the case. We're actually printing the really best. We're printing better stuff than we ever printed before because only the better stuff is making it to print, really. And I think the same thing about art, that yes, it is a bit restricted. Government funding's been cut and that. But the stuff that's making on the wall is amazing. And I'm just so, so thrilled.
SPEAKER_00:Not that that doesn't mean that ScoMo should get off his arse. Oh,
SPEAKER_02:100%. 100%. Because we said this a dozen times over this podcast that the artists have saved the lives of– the rest of the world. And the art that we sit back and watch and the Netflix and all that, that's art. It's a very accessible art. It's an art designed to be consumed easier. But I've got to say, the consumption of art by quietly going without your podcast headphones in, without music playing and going to the art gallery and sitting in front of a wall for a few minutes and just thinking about what you're seeing, like... Consuming art at that slower pace. It's like the difference between fast food, which
SPEAKER_00:I
SPEAKER_02:think in some ways Netflix is a bit that way. It depends
SPEAKER_00:on what you're
SPEAKER_02:watching. Yeah, it depends on what you're watching. But that stuff that's quick to get into, you're sucked in. The longer form, like a long meal at a really lovely restaurant where the chef delivers things to you and you get to think about them and have them explained to you. This is what we're talking about. And I think... The joy of going to a, seeing this, I suppose it's high art. I don't want to really rank it differently, but art, it takes
SPEAKER_00:longer. Are you being that person, Paul? I am.
SPEAKER_02:I just did that.
SPEAKER_00:You did it.
SPEAKER_02:I just did
SPEAKER_00:that. See, all our inner snobs come out and go dancing around.
SPEAKER_02:Correct, correct. So what I'm saying is, and I've always said this to, when I say to artists, what's your objective? And they go, blah, blah, blah. I said, come on, tell me. Really, I bet you'd love the art gallery of South Australia or your state or the National Gallery to tap you on the shoulder and say, we'd love to do a show of your work. And I dare say most artists would love that invitation. Yeah. Right. So I got that part right. So we're saying that Mount Olympus– is getting us to be in a state level, national level gallery, right?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:So that's what we want to do is we want to help people. Not everyone's going to get there, but we want to help people get on that path because it's a path. You don't just have great work and get there. You have to show work regularly. You know, you've got to hang around with the right people. You know, you've got to connect with the right people. But
SPEAKER_00:that all feeds into the work. Like if you never go to an exhibition, you're not going to know what can happen in an exhibition. If you never talk to other artists about what they're trying to do, you never understand other ways of viewing it. It's not a popularity contest or a let's all stand around eating cheese and drinking someone's wine. And
SPEAKER_02:you can't buy followers. No. It's not about being Insta-famous. No. It's about doing good work regularly and the right people. And thoughtfully. The right people and the right institutions. Yeah, thoughtfully. Actually thinking about the work. Hey, that's our art lecture for this week.
SPEAKER_00:Art lecture? Are we changing moment of colour to art lecture? That's
SPEAKER_02:your moment of colour for this week. How about that? Get me out of making a moment of colour.
SPEAKER_00:Well, everybody, thanks for listening. I'm going to eat some more soft foods and yogurts.
SPEAKER_02:Getting ready for the old
SPEAKER_00:nursing home. I'm so sick of yogurt. I never knew that it could happen. I'm German for crying out loud. I love yogurt. I know, but I just want to eat something I can chew.
SPEAKER_02:Good night, Kate. Love you, listeners.
SPEAKER_03:Love you.