053: Photography ft. Colton von Pertz

this week's episode features special guest Colton von Pertz, aerial photographer and outdoor enthusiast. After like 15 something episodes, I think I got this, you know, like, I feel like I kind of, I kind of have it now. Backburner this, just like Adam just rolling in like 855, like, yeah, dude, let's do this. Yeah, well, I had to show up on time today because we had a guest.

Usually I'm like, oh, I'm gonna be like 15 minutes late today. All right, well, we both know you, Colton, but we have a little bit of a guest this week for everybody that is out there joining us. And Colton, you want to say a little bit about yourself and just explain to everybody who you are? Sure.

Von Pertz, I am an aerial photojournalist, I cover breaking news from that sky here in the Los Angeles area. Background is, I used to be a digitech for a brand that sells stuff online from A to Z and then before that I was a technician and I repaired stuff. So I have a lot of different experience, but it all kind of comes back to this creative photography world. So yeah, I'm happy to be here and to share a little bit about that with you guys.

It certainly seems that when you summarize it like that, you've worn a lot of hats over the years. That is accurate. I had an interesting path, even at a young age, starting a school's business in like audio engineering major, switching to design and photography, getting into video and marketing. It's all kind of led in different paths, but it's cool how all that's kind of synchronized around this idea of creating and sharing stories, whether that's through helping other people share their stories through their computer, their device, or actually creating something from nothing and doing it myself.

Yeah, that's kind of been the central theme around what I've been doing. Yeah, you got all deep on us and like saying, you know, how you're just helping people express themselves. I'm like, yeah, I just did this so I could make money. I just wanted to put food on the table, but Colton, it's safe to say, I mean, I know Lucy, you've worn a lot of hats, but you are pretty young too.

I mean, you're at least younger than both of us. So you've just kind of been going about trying to like find your, I don't want to say place in the world because that sounds cliche, but you've just been trying to find like what you're passionate about. And it sounds like I know you kind of like led off with that. It's like, you know, creative photography or helping people tell their story or telling stories in creative ways.

Is that safe to say that you've kind of found your passion and kind of like what you want to do for the rest of your life or are you still in constant flux and searching for the next thing? Yeah, I'd say Adam that you're always trying to progress and like become better and learn more things. And I think that's something in culture nowadays is it's hard to like settle and like just accept where you are, but like it's always good to be like pushing yourself. So I'd say I'm still in that flux, but I'm 100% happy where I am.

I love what I do and yeah, I think that answers your question. Yeah, absolutely. I didn't want to say like, are you going to stay in the same area for the rest of your life? But I think you've kind of found like what you want, right?

You're not like, I don't want to say you're like engineering focus, right? You're more creative focus. Yeah, that's correct. I'd say I'm an analytical creative.

Like I like the technique and looking at how something's done rather than actually like thinking of an idea, I'd rather execute stuff, which is interesting because a lot of design and creative schools are more designed on the fact that you're thinking of this concept and then you execute it. I was the kid that like would rather like help organize that concept that was already created created to execute it, that makes sense. No, yeah. That totally makes sense.

Well, cool. Anytime we've run on, I guess there's been this duality of, you know, between Adam and I of whether Taylor Swift is a good artist and there is only like that, you just have to ask him his thoughts. Like it has to be an open question. You can't like start saying like there is only one true answer and I would just like to hear from you, Colton.

What is the one true answer? Well, I don't know that I know the question is it is it is Taylor Swift a good artist? Is that the question? Yep.

No, this is why this is why you don't get to ask the questions Lou. It's like no, the question in the outline is what are your thoughts on Taylor Swift? I mean, just in general, what are your thoughts on her as an artist? Let's say that.

I've always had a appreciation for Taylor Swift. She's transitioned like different genres really interestingly. I remember when she first kind of became like became a name on my dad and I were watching her on some like award show, like she was one of the performers and we're like, she's going to be famous. She's going to go far and she did I've never seen her live, but I do like a good majority of her work.

I think she does good work. Yeah. Okay. So Colton.

Awesome. Yes. And see, this is why I wanted to just say, Hey, what are your thoughts right? Because you can't say like, is Taylor Swift a good artist or is she better than so and so those get pretty personal pretty fast.

I always want to kind of like gauge people's feelings on Taylor Swift because it is either like a love hate relationship in a lot of ways before we even get to comparing her to other artists. But now I have to follow up with the question is, do you have a favorite song that's tough? I will say I'm a I'm a little more old school with her music. I like some of her first albums that were like the more country stuff.

So I won't give you a favorite song, but I'll give you like that's the genre like more of her than the newer stuff. Okay. So you're like original OG Taylor Swift, like love story type thing or tear drops on my guitar type Taylor Swift. I mean, like the angry Taylor Swift nowadays is just not my, not my jam, but I do appreciate some of the songs and for sure the stories she's telling.

Let's see. I'm just shaking my head over here. Shaking your head? I mean, how can you not like this?

Not bad. Oh, so you got that country twang going on right now? It's just so sweet and innocent in a way. Yeah.

I'll tell you there. All right. Especially my heart. Lou, you can add that to the tally, whatever you think it is.

I think that's a win in my book. I'm just going to take off my headphones now and so I don't have to listen to this. Well, now that Lou's gone, Adam, we can talk about our true feelings about Taylor Swift. Oh, awesome.

The true Swiftie comes out right now. Yes. I gave you a virtual high five or a Wi-Fi. Awesome.

Yeah. Yes. Wi-Fi, yes. All right.

So moving on from that painful moment of my life and a little bit of a follow up. I said I was going to watch Lord of the Rings and I did and I'm going to hold off because it was a four hour movie on diving into a full dive drive about it, but it was painful at times. Painful. A lot of walking.

It's a lot of bunch of dudes walking across a beautiful New Zealand. Talk about a journey. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

It's a journey. It's a journey in both mental feet, being able to sit somewhere for that in like the time and watch it. But that being said, it's so funny because Adam, you mentioned the videography of it and I don't know. I mean, there are some great shots.

There's also some really dated CGI in it, so it's what's good and bad in my opinion that way. But we'll save a full review of this for next week. So stay tuned. I'm going to need a good chunk of time to dive into that.

See, the whole reason I put this in here, like, hey, let's postpone the whole movie review. But I love how you focus on the CGI. It's like, okay, well, there were some very beautiful shots of the countryside and kind of just showing you the vastness of what things are. And I thought that tied in perfectly with our guests, Mr.

Colton, who flies in the sky and kind of has this vantage point that we don't have. So whenever you have aerial shots that are really, really beautiful, I'm sure Colton's like, oh, yeah, I know how they did that or how they ran that. So I thought that tied in perfectly with our guests today. Hey, I'm not saying it didn't tie in.

I'm just saying at times the CGI, the stuff they actually do to ruin the shot. Yeah, it doesn't look really good sometimes. But the overall, like, vastness of some of those shots, yeah, I'm on board. It's really pretty sometimes.

It's really, really cool. But yeah, we'll save it for now. I'll just say it wasn't my favorite. And I'll dive more into that next week.

I'm trying to set you up for the segue, like, again, and it's not working. Come on, man. Yeah, it doesn't work. So anyway, moving on, let's talk a little bit with Mr.

Colton about photography. How about that? And since that's exactly his passion, I think it's only fitting that you're here, Colton, you know, do this. I've seen your work for years and you can, the stuff you can produce is crazy at all levels of photography.

So I know sort of in our sandwich style that we kind of do on the podcast anyway, we generally start with the old to talk about the today and what do we think about for the future. So Colton, do you want to lead us in a little bit with, like, sort of, the history of photography a little bit or, like, maybe your history of photography too? Sure. Well, I'll start with, like, the general, like, just a brief history of how early photography started and go from there.

I don't want to bore anyone. And this is something that, like, people can research further through some links. We first see, like, this idea of photography kind of starting in, like, the 16th century. And it goes back to something that, like, we do as kids even here today.

I know that I did it just recently when we had, like, the eclipse, but this idea of using a pinhole to let light through and see what's on the other end of that light. So a pinhole camera. So using a reflective light that's going through this tiny hole onto a back splash to see an image. And so that's what we kind of started with in the 16th century.

And that was the first, like, idea of transferring light from what we see with our eye onto a medium, even though that medium wasn't something that we could save. But it was this whole new kind of shift of, like, playing with light, playing with perspective and how that all translates onto a medium. I know we said medium, like, way too many times there. But after that, like, we see, like, the 1700s, 1800s, like, more people experimenting with what is, was working more to what we know the photography as today, saving an image that was shot in light onto a surface that you can, at a replicate, share.

So people were experimenting with the types of materials to use in a camera or how to design a camera, what the process looked like to take an image. And then all this kind of came together in the 1800s when the first exposure was taken. When I say exposure, I mean, photo, the first time that a piece of, like, material was exposed with light in a way that it could capture and save that image. And something that was, like, fully, like, you could repeat it.

So this first photo took multiple hours to take, if not days, they don't really know. It was a French guy that actually did it. It kind of made the possibility of commercial photography. So after that, we saw the photos come out of, you know, landscapes and different scenic things.

And then you start seeing pictures taken up people, and they had to sit there for hours and hours and hours to, you know, have their photo taken. That's why you don't see smiles on those photos, because people literally had to sit there and stare at a camera for hours at a time. But then we keep going, moving forward, we start seeing more of this film come into play. And then by the 20th century, the technology has moved along so much and become so more portable after all these people before had experimented and really, like, worked at shrinking the designs and making them more effective, that we see amateurs starting to take photos in both black and white in natural color.

And then in the 90s, let me step back. So you see that mid-20th century amateur photographers, they start taking photos with the natural color of black and white. That's on film that can be developed, it can be replicated. And that's when you start seeing the age of, like, the household camera, like other people, like other companies that could not afford photography before, beginning to use photography rather than painting and drawing in their marketing materials.

And then in the 90s, we start seeing the world of commercial electronic digital cameras come into the market and film slowly worked its way out. Digital cameras became cheaper, Kodak kind of left the market of film, and we see digital as the way of the future. And now it is an art of its own to take photos with film, and that's actually something I know nothing about. I've never been trained on how to take photos with film, and you have to really pay extra to have a photo taken in film, because it is now the uncommon rather than the common that it used to be.

That's just a general background of how photography is coming from the 16th century, all the way to now the 21st century, to where everyone can be a photographer, everyone can take a photo. It's really changed. Yeah, so a couple of things I want to call out, right, is like, you say in the beginning it was all just kind of experimentations of light, where you can say like, oh, people probably encounter this in nature, or in the wild at some point, where it's reflected off something, and they see an image, or they see, or reflection, whatever it is. And everyone's like, okay, how can we replicate that, right?

And then you start seeing, you know, early concept of this, like you said, is early 16th century, where we have the pinhole camera, which, like you mentioned, just throws light in a different direction, but nothing that's permanent, nothing can take with you. And then like you said, people start experimenting with it, well, how can we like take this with us somewhere? And then you have the whole revolution of film, and now it's a digital. And there's a point, I think, like I said, mid-20th century where it went mainstream, so where everyone could use it, where it wasn't so much like a professional setting anywhere, it was like, hey, now anyone can, right?

It's the commoditization of photography, which is interesting. But I think what's funny is, when we send around photography, it's all based around the same concept, right? It's like, how can I capture what I see with my eyes onto something else? How can I, you know, keep that moment forever?

And I think, you know, when we talk about photography and I say, okay, yeah, it's definitely an area that's been affected a lot by technology, and even drastically, is because it's all centered around this one concept of, you know, we see things every day, how can we, you know, save some of those things that we see to replay in our heads later, or to have, you know, this moment in time, which is, you know, it's still a very precious thing, right? It's very interesting when you think of it that way. It's like, hey, this is a snapshot, literally snapshot in time, like, this will never happen again. Exactly.

So everything is different. And I think, you know, we as very, I guess, self-centered creatures, right, and just as a civilization, you know, we're very self-centered where we want to kind of, you know, capture and preserve these types of things. And I want to say that's a bad thing, but I think it's always interesting to see, like, where you came from. So thank you for giving us like the brief history lesson, because I'm sure, like, I learned this in my, you know, high school photography class, but let's be honest, I was a senior and I was definitely sleeping in the black room most of the time.

Yeah, no problem. Yeah. And I think that's really what you said about this being like a way to capture a moment in time. I mean, I know it's kind of cliche to say, but like a picture is worth a thousand words, but it's totally the case.

And that's why I love it is because that one photo, that one moment that like will never happen again, that's something that you can like reflect on. And then you can help other people reflect the same way through how you take that photo or through how you compose and share that photo and feel how you felt in that moment, which is super interesting. And I feel like that can be lost in other mediums that aren't photography because it can be harder to relate with those mediums. Yeah.

You're telling your story. You're helping express your story. And it's worth a thousand words. It's much easier to do that with a picture than it is with, you know, a son.

Yeah, you don't. I would never write a book, you know, or yeah, a son or something like that. Like photos a little more efficient of my time. So I want to come back to something because unless Lou has any other history lessons or other tidbits on history, no, I mean, I think that, you know, kind of it's so interesting when we look at the three of us, though, like how small, you know, our purview is of, you know, the history of photography.

It's like really most of us have pretty much grown up in the age of that, you know, what is digital only. And so, you know, I very little, I have very little memory of like film. Okay. And that's what I want to get to because you young whippersnappers here talk about film like it's like some ancient, you know, technology.

I'm like, man, like when I was growing up, that's all we had was film. We I didn't like start messing with digital photography until I was in high school. So I started using, you know, photography or starting using cameras when I never really got into video cameras, but my mom definitely had like a, I forget the brand of camera, but she had, you know, this really nice camera with all these different lenses and whenever we go to like Yellowstone, you know, somebody, you know, just any family trip, we'd always be taking pictures of that and ending up with, you know, 18 rolls of film that we'd have to go get developed after we got back from vacation, you know, but Colton, you mentioned, you know, that you've never really worked with film. I mean, is that true?

Am I that old? You know, it's kind of like the pay phone they were around in my life, but they were a little bit before I really understood them. I remember my mom having a film camera and always, you know, documenting like our trips and stuff through that as a young age. You know, I grew up taking disposable film cameras to camp and stuff like that.

But I will say that my first camera that I was gifted as it did was a digital camera. It was like a three megapixel fuji film, digital camera that held like 50 photos. It was, it was tiny, but I mean, that was, that was the tech back then. So yeah, I would say I grew up only learning on digital and yeah, I don't have much experience with film, whether that's, you know, actually shooting with it or actually like developing it.

That's something that unfortunately I say that like very sadly that like I missed out on because that is not the norm anymore, you know, like that's almost an unfortunate to say it's the hobbyist thing now unless you're doing it specifically for a job and like people take big money to shoot on film for jobs. Yeah, okay. That's kind of like the whole record thing too. You know, I think that there are some definite advantages to having digital, right, where you can take as many pictures as you want.

Like you can make the argument that, hey, with, you know, actual film you are going to get a quote unquote sharper image, right? But I don't know. The whole argument of analog over digital is always lost on me because I'm always about convenience, right? Like that's kind of how I live my life.

I also want to say, man, we kind of glazed over it, but you got to pour one out for Kodak because they kind of, you know, the rise and fall of Kodak is something that you could spend like an entire podcast talking about because like they're nowhere anymore. Like I can't remember the last Kodak product that I remember seeing in stores or anywhere. And I remember they went for bankruptcy or they filed for bankruptcy at some point, didn't they? Gosh, I think they did.

Yeah. The first digital camera we had was a Kodak. Like that was, you know, when they were like, okay, they still kind of had a stronghold in the market and like they just didn't take that transition to digital very well, you know, where. Yeah.

Well, and you went to the store and I mean, like, I mean, pretty much the only film, the number one, you know, name and film was Kodak, you know, I mean, there was, I think there was a Fujifilm too that I remember as like a second name, but like, I mean, it was like Kodak by a long shot and then Fuji and then, yeah, who else was left in the business? Nobody. So I mean, they were, they were big, big, big. And they just, I mean, what they, their biggest fault was they didn't move with the industry, right?

Yeah, they kind of held back and they kind of stuck with their, what they knew and didn't, you know, move forward. I will say though, like they are one of the only like non Disney brands in Disneyland, like I remember seeing the Kodak photo spots. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

I think they still have a few of those signs up kind of hidden behind bushes and stuff now, but yeah, that's just, that's how I remember Kodak is those photo spots. You have the Kodak photo spot. They had a pretty iconic logo too. Yeah.

So, so anyway, you've never really delved into film. So you don't really know all about like the exposures and like developing film, like, because when I was in high school in photography, like this is what we had to do. We only worked on, you know, film cameras because they were cheap for the school to have and if you broke them, it wasn't like, you know, a big deal. So we had our own dark room and everything.

So we would, you know, shoot our, you know, pictures and develop our film and, you know, expose our own pictures and everything. And like, that was the whole process of this photography class. And the only people who got these digital cameras were the people's working on your book. Okay.

Yeah. And I mean, like, I was going to put this point on film, like, what I know about it. Just as I have friends that love shooting on film is that you, a lot of the same concepts of digital transfer back and forth to film, you're still using the same types of tools, your shutter speed, your aperture, things like that to produce this image. You just have to, you don't have that instant gratification with film as you deal with digital because you can't see your results until it's printed out.

And so I'm sure you can really speak to this, Adam, but you had to be a lot more intentional about how you shot something because you couldn't take a hundred different variations because that would just cost an arm and leg and take a lot more work. Yeah. It was very, all of our photos were very staged. There weren't a lot of candid photos that you would take unless you were using the disposable cameras, which, you know, was the only way that you could get something that was cheap enough to burn through 24 pictures without caring.

Exactly. Well, I think we should, you know, move along with this history lesson and move to kind of, you know, a little bit more of a history of you specifically, Colton. You know, we know you have kind of said you jumped in really when digital was kind of, you know, a thing. And so your parents used maybe the film more, but you being in digital, you know, what sort of drew you to photography?

Was there a certain medium or something that, you know, you sort of got your first digital camera and you just love taking pictures of something in particular? What kind of got your mind sparks going a certain direction? You know, I'll say that, like, I think I started becoming interested in photography because of the technology. I was always that nerd kid and for those that know me, I still am.

And so that technology got me interested in this idea of like documenting scenes and like we talked about that, like, documenting moments. I gave me an excuse to get outside and, you know, go explore and like try to find different angles, different perspectives on things. And so I was lucky enough, as I said earlier, to be gifted a camera. And so that kind of really sparked that interest at a young age, I think it was like fourth or fifth grade.

So in like 10 to 12 range, maybe when I got my first camera and began to be able to like freely experiment with this idea of, you know, intentionally taking photos to tell a story. I'm sure it was a little less intentional back then. It was just like how to take a cool photo of whatever was in front of me. And that did kind of grow throughout the years.

And I found that like my passion was storytelling, whether that was through, you know, being on stage as a performer, being behind the scenes, helping those on stage, those that are actually shooting, those that are in front of camera, you know. And that just kept kind of growing to where like I intentionally like wanted to start shooting my own photos to show off these things that meant a lot in my life. So that's when I really focused on it in high school and then that moved into my degree that I really pursued in college, getting my first professional DSLR camera after having a semi-professional one in high school. So that's kind of like the journey that kind of got me to where I am was just having that opportunity as a kid to really like find an excuse to use technology and still be outdoors.

And yeah. Cool. So a little bit more sort of down that line though. So you kind of mentioned that you were using your first digital camera to really just tell a story, which I'll be honest is super funny because to me, the first thing I came to mind is like a little cold and it's 10 years old and Colton is telling a story through his Cheetos at lunch or something like this.

But I'm sure there was something more intentional than that going on. But you know, I'm kind of curious, so you've won a lot of hats, you've gone through a lot of changes over the years from sort of elementary school or middle school when you got your first camera all the way through shooting professionally and working for companies today that require to use your skills. So I know we kind of put a laundry list down here of types of photography. So is there certain ones that you have done or haven't done?

I don't know what's going to be easier for you to kind of rattle off. But I'm kind of curious if there's anything you have or haven't done that's on this list. Well, I'll talk about the main ones I have done just in general and then just a few of my favorites. And so I think every photographer has taken a portrait, taken a photo of someone or themselves, a self portrait, or as the kids today, I can say that because I'm a little older now, Adam.

But the kids today, you've graduated from selfie term. Look at you. We go from, yeah, we go from a self portrait and now it's called a selfie. But everyone's done that type of photo.

Everyone nowadays has taken a food photo. I live in the realm of aerial photography and photojournalism, so documenting stories for myself from the air. But there's people that do that online. That's where you see a lot of your news is people that are on the front lines of whatever situation it is documenting it online.

But yeah, so my passion, there's two types of photography in my realm. There's the stuff I do for work and then there's the stuff I do as a passion. I'll say my passion has been like long exposure, nighttime photography taking photos in pitch black and seeing what light is still out there, which is super interesting because it's stuff that you can't even see with your eye that comes out on your final product, which is really neat. And then I really love travel photography and actually going in document any places that I can share with others who might not actually be able to go there.

And so you see a lot of that in blogs and stuff like that. I personally don't have a blog, but I love to share that through my social media. But then so that's my personal stuff. But yeah, for work, like I said, I do a lot of aerial stuff, both from helicopters and drones.

I used to do more product photography, which encompassed both stuff that was on figures and people as well as stuff that was not on figures. And I was laid out on a table, shot in a high-tech imaging device that took 30 photos of a product in a split second. That type of stuff. So there's a lot of different facets of photography and not everyone's done all of them.

And that's okay, because that just means that there's more stuff to learn and you can always keep growing and trying new things. It's so funny, you go down this list and I honestly have to think, okay, I'm checking out the things that I've done. I'm like, yeah, I've taken a selfie. So I might be able to say I've done portrait photography and I've taken food photos and maybe landscape.

And that's about where all the sense for me. So you're definitely way more experienced than I think Adam and I are. Well, let's just say that I've taken amateur photos of all of these types of things, right? Definitely taken selfie.

I've taken an amateur picture of food. I've taken amateur landscape photos, nature photos, definitely maybe not photo journalism unless you count, you know, like, documenting what my kids do and, you know, putting that in the family journal and sharing that with family members. But yeah, long exposure. I've only had a little bit of experience with definitely no fashion, even though that would be super interesting to, you know, go, you know, photograph, like on the runway and stuff like that.

I just feel like, you see, you know, all the movies, right, where the flashes are going off like 5 million times, right, red carpet type stuff and yeah, I always think that's interesting. Product, probably not. But yeah, you've checked off a lot more on this list than I have. And even, you know, in my limited experience, it would all be amateur stuff anyway.

So it's like, yeah, I've definitely taken a food photo, but could I put it anywhere or like, even have someone to get probably not because it was probably like nachos from a ballpark and no one really cares. Yeah. I mean, the cool one that I see on this list that I don't know, it draws to me is sport, which I know Adam knows a little about. But I mean, there's something to be said about, you know, you say, you know, pictures worth thousand words and it totally is a little cliché to say, but, you know, to try to stop time and save a memory of something that is happening, you know, at a speed that most of us, as it is, you know, depending on the sport, can't comprehend what's happening anyway, because it happens so quickly.

And here we're able to just slow it down to a point where it's completely still. And I find that, you know, type of photography, like super cool and oftentimes just amazing to watch what, you know, we can do as humans, you know, and to be able to admire what a great athlete can do. Oh, sure. Exactly.

Like, yeah, you use that part of, like you said, stopping that time and getting that perfect shot that like expresses like how the athletes feeling or what, like, what's going in that situation what's going on, you know, it's, it's amazing. Those photographers are working with some, like, amazing gear from super far away. They're not standing right next to that athlete in the middle of the field. They're at the other end of the, you know, the football field or whatever and they're still able to get that uptight and personal shot.

It's absolutely amazing. One category I see missing from this list is dogs or animals. Any experience shooting those creatures for your friends? You know, I can't say that I've done it for any professional capacity.

I have some friends that do that and they have some absolutely beautiful work. It is a little more in the realm of like candid photography because you can't stage most dogs unless they're like trained professionals, you know, but yeah, there's this whole other realm of like, you know, capturing like emotions through dogs. And I was reading an article the other day about, you know, how we can as humans inflect our emotions on other creatures. And so like taking those photos of animals whether it's a dog or cat, like that can help us figure out how we are feeling internally.

And that like photo of the dog sticking its head out the window can mean a hundred different things to a hundred different people depending on how they're feeling and what they're going through through their life. So yeah, it's a super interesting category and for those photographers, it's tough work because you have to work fast and yeah, you can't keep the dogs attention very long. Yeah, I love that I mentioned the furry friends and your furry friend in the background just going crazy. Oh, this is true.

She heard you. Yeah, apparently. Right. Thank you.

Right. Thank you. So let's talk a little bit about, you know, sort of where you are today. And so let's dive a little bit into what your current gear looks like.

I know you said you had something along the lines of like semi-professional or prosumer like DSLR when you were, I think you said in high school, but what are you shooting with today? You know, both kind of, you know, I should say when you're not doing aerial photography in the sky. What are you shooting with on the ground? Yeah.

So yeah, I kind of have two realms to where I'm working right now that nine to five ish job that I have and then my freelance business. So we're kind of diving into my freelance business. I bought a Canon 5D Mark III in college with a 24-105 prime lens and that is my go-to. That's what I use on anything that is not shot from the sky.

And then I'll add to that kit if needed, I'll rent lenses, borrow stuff as needed, but that Canon 5D Mark III is my go-to camera. They came out with a Canon 5D Mark IV, which is beautiful, it's just not something I need quite yet. And then for the other half of my freelance business, I have a drone that I fly a helicopter. It's a DJI Phantom 3 professional, which shoots pretty high-rise photos, but also shoots up the 4K video.

So that's what I use in the sky when I'm not at my 9 to 5. And then of course I have my handy-dandy iPhone in my pocket, which for mostly they think that that's not real photography, but I bake the different. I've had a mentor in my life that has taught me that it's not necessarily about what gear you're using. It's how you're using it.

So you can use any piece of equipment, whether it's 10 years old or a brand new video format camera to an iPhone to shoot great photos, which is how you use that device. So that's my handy-dandy go-to every day because it's always with me, but I also have that other gear. And in the sky, when I'm at my other job, I am shooting more video, so I do have a video camera, which video is the form of photography. It's 24 or 30 frames per second.

It's 24 or 30 images per second that's being played in front of you. So it is a form of photography, but I have a Sony camera with a large zoom lens on it. We can get clear images up to like 10 plus miles away with it. It's pretty impressive.

It's all gyal grip, stabilized, which is awesome. It makes my job a little easier. Wow. That's crazy.

I do really like what you said about it. It's not really what equipment you're using. It's how you're using it, or that has a much larger impact in what you're trying to accomplish. And we mentioned all these things, and I think it really speaks to what you want to capture, how you want to capture it, right?

And it comes down to now, the camera's coming out now. It's the versatility, right? So it's like, what's going to give me the most range or the most things that I can play with or the most customization per shot because everything's going to require something a little different, but how do I, or what fits best in my everyday use so I can grab something and play with it a little bit to get what I'm looking for. So I think you mentioned your handy dandy phone in your pocket, which for a lot of people, like you said, some people say that's not real photography, but for a lot of people, it's like, hey, you know what?

This takes video, it takes photos, it takes now, you know, bokeh photography, right? With all the software and stuff that they're doing, but we'll get inside in a little bit, but I think with so much now, it's the versatility is the big thing. It's like, hey, I want to take a picture and then maybe make later make that picture great. And nowadays with digital photography, it's so much easier to do that, right?

You can take an image and you can, in post processing, make it better. This is my mantra, which is, we'll make everything better in post. So I mean, like the same thing with this podcast, it'll be better in post. So I think, I like how you mentioned, you know, it's not really the quality of the equipment that you're using, but how you're using it, or what you're trying to go for.

So I thought that was a good call out. Yeah, exactly. Like we talked about earlier, like photography used to be this limited thing that you had to be trained extensively on and like how this specialty gear that no one else had. And that's totally flipped with the digital age and now everyone has the technology and it's less about that specialty training and that gear that you have to have more about, yeah, exactly how you use it and how you think different than the person next to you is taking the shot from almost the same angle, but like you have still a different perspective because you're a different person.

So I'm really honing in on who you are, what your style is and what you're really trying to convey. This is the explain it like on five section. So you guys are going to call out probably a lot of words that I'm not going to know because you know, I'm very much the average consumer slash casual user of cameras. So you know, explain it like on five, right?

So pretend I'm a kid and just go through this next section and I'll just jot down notes as you go. Okay. So explain it like in five. So we're going to start with point and shoots, I guess.

Why are we there? Are we there? Is that what we want to talk about? Point shoots?

I thought we were at the buzz words. Oh, we can jump all the way to buzz words if you want. There was a talk about the other ones? Yeah.

Okay. No, you need to talk about these other ones. I'm sorry. I'm getting ahead of myself.

Yeah, you're getting a little ahead. It's okay. I mean, well, I know what a point shoot is. So you don't have to explain that like in five.

Pretty real. Like one thing I wanted to bring up to is like that, you know, Adam, you kind of pointed out that Colton said that, you know, the kind of the best camera is the camera you have or something to that effect where when was explaining that, you know, you can't kind of poo poo photography that's done on the cell phone today because if that's the camera you've got, that's the camera you've got or the smartphone and you know, the cameras are pretty cool. And I mean, I think it's kind of amazing that we touched on videography for a second, but how far smartphones have come to where they sort of curb for the inability for a user to take a good shot by just like almost shoot video all the time and then just take like, you know, when you push the big fat button that says, you know, take photo now, it's like, you know, I'm going to take like five photos and, you know, for your inability to shoot a good photo and focus well and do all the right things, I'm just going to do some, you know, stuff on the back end and make it try to look pretty. And so I mean, I think, you know, they've come a long way, but they're getting better and it's making, you know, most of us look like, you know, you know, kind of prosumer photographers when in reality we're not if we were given a real camera.

Well, now who's jumping ahead because that's written down in my section below all the other stuff. Hey, man, I mean, I didn't scroll that far. This is a long thing. All right.

So point shoots, you said skip point shoots, skipping point shoots. Well, no, you see, you don't have to explain it like I'm five. I mean, let's talk about the fact that they exist and, you know, what they are. We don't have to like delve into all of it, but this was definitely the first, you know, camera that's our first digital camera that we had because, you know, with film, we actually had cameras with lenses and everything and, you know, we switched them out as we go, but the body of the camera was the same.

But point and shoot was the very first, just a compact point and shoot, you know, digital camera from Kodak for megapixels because, you know, we went all out, you know, hey, you're going to, you know, switch over. Like you make sure you go top of the line back in 2004, which is, you know, a whopping four megapixels. But yeah. So point and shoot, I have experience with those.

So I'm going to jump around a little bit here, but so mirrorless, I'm a little confused, like so mirrorless. I understand it belongs in the DSLR camp, but how is it not considered like almost point and shoot? Because to me, point and shoot just means size. Like it fits in my pocket, man.

And, you know, it's easy to pull it out, point it and shoot it and put it back away. And like, some of those mirrorless cameras are getting pretty small today. Yeah. I will say there are mirrorless cameras that fit in that point and shoot category.

But when I wrote this down, it was more on the fact that they are being used by professionals for different types of photography, so mirrorless cameras, because they have less components in them and their sensors are bigger, they shoot better in low light conditions compared to a DSLR that has a mirror in it, because there's more like refracting and there's smaller sensors in that camera. So that's why it's in that category. But yeah, I would say that there are a lot that are small and compact that you can keep in your pocket. But yeah, to go to that point and shoot category, just to breeze through that real quick, point and shoot's changed a lot, which has been interesting.

Like you said, Adam, we come from that idea looking back on the four megapixel cameras, that's a point and shoot camera. But that's only a one variation now, we have those used a more digital zoom to allow your camera to zoom in and out and even that was a little sketchy. We got the one with the optical zoom, you know, so we had some optical, but then if you want to go to, you know, however many times zoomed in, so it had a combination optical and digital. So, yeah, so we had like a 2X or whatever, you know, digital or optical zoom.

And then after that, yeah, I had this whole motor, it was so loud when you turn it on to you. It was like eee. It's like forever to do that. Yeah.

So why do we ever leave that technology? I don't know, but I think there's some better stuff nowadays. But yeah, they had that and then they actually had, they have actual zoom compact when point and shoot's which have even more powerful lens on them that can give you more optical zoom. And then you have advanced compact point and shoot cameras that have interchangeable lenses now, which is crazy because now that's kind of bleeding between that point and shoot consumer world and this like pro consumer like pro world.

So it's really neat to see how that expensive technology and DSLRs has become cheaper and more accessible over the years to where consumers can now use that as well to get higher quality photos with different types of lenses. So tell me about the adventure one. Adventure, yeah. I'm kind of curious.

Is this like GoPro? Yeah, that's what I was like a really cliffhanger here. Like I'm waiting to adventure. I'm ready to jump.

Oh, cliffhanger? Like literal cliffhanger? Like hanging off the cliff? I mean, that's what I think of when I'm thinking adventure, you know, like.

Yeah, you guys are totally right. That the adventure category was kind of introduced when we started seeing those underwater, water-resistant and destructible cameras, the GoPros, there used to be a few other brands out there as well. But now they're selling point and shoot cameras that families can take on there. They're vacations, they're holidays, and go swimming with them so they don't have to worry about like dropping their camera in the ocean or something if they're out snorkeling or something like that.

They can actually take it with them and document those experiences with a point and shoot that actually has a screen on it. But yeah, so it's kind of that and then that world of the compact, like sport photography through GoPro and all the generations and iterations of GoPros that we've seen over the last what, six to eight years? Yeah, so funny, the one thing the point and shoot category sort of brought back for me was it's not exactly a photography camera, but it was more videography. But the old Flip camera brand which got, they kind of went by the way side just like Kodak did.

Oh, the Cisco Flip camera or whatever it was? Didn't Cisco buy out the company that made it? I think so. My dad so has one and it's just so interesting the user interface on it.

That was Snapchat without the social network, man. It totally was. They were all the rage for like six months and then they were done. Like many other startups.

Oh, yes. Oh, yes. All right. So moving on from point and shoots, we move on to what next, Colton?

I think we've glazed over a lot of the categories we've talked about smart phones and how they've developed over the years. We saw our first like real push of the smartphone photography. I mean, the old like the old flip phones have cameras on them, but those photos are almost unusable. But we started seeing people care about photography when we got the more multi touch displays, the iPhones and the early iterations of smartphone having cameras on them.

And those started with really low megapixels on them, but they've really developed to like we were talking about, you can shoot professional stuff on it. People make their businesses off shooting off mobile devices and posting on social media and stuff like that. So it's really interesting to see how something that's in our pocket all the time can make an impact on the world. But we talked about film, we've went over DSLR cameras, both the kind of blurry, like advanced compact to the mirrorless to the standard DSLR with a mirror.

Those are what you see most professionals using in weddings out on the street. People are even shooting video with DSLRs. That's what I shoot on a majority of the time because they're so versatile and you can switch out the lenses, you can shoot almost anything with them, which is fantastic. And then when you're getting up to like the super high and professional like Vogue stuff, you see on billboards, there becomes a possibility of using this other type of camera, which is called a medium format camera.

And what that means is that the sensor on the camera is bigger than 35 millimeters. So it has a big sensor on it, which means that the image that it's taking is of larger size, which means it can be reproduced at a higher quality at larger scale and is crisper, cleaner as well. They started as film, but now they're coming out with digital backs for the medium format cameras. And yeah, you see a lot of that used in fashion photography.

That's where I hear about it the most. And I know the most photographers that use that type of camera is in the fashion industry. Very cool. All right.

So yeah, I actually wasn't even super familiar with the medium format. I don't even think I, I mean, like I've heard the term before, but as of like knowing what how it was different than any DSLR, news to me. So that's actually cool to kind of know that there is a upper end, if you will. Yeah, the first time I saw a medium format camera, I thought it was one of the old school like film cameras that we talked about earlier, like the like 20th, 19th and 20th century cameras where like you put the bellows out, you covered yourself with the curtain and stuff.

They're very square. They're very boxy. And they do operate some of them in a similar way as those old cameras, but yeah, they are quite the camera. They're very expensive.

And yeah, they take absolutely stunning photos. And that's why you like can see a photo on a billboard that's perfectly clear, specifically crisp. And like I know myself, like when I was learning photography, I'd wonder like, how can someone print something that big and I can't like take a photo and print it that big without it being pixelated. And that's because I mean, there's Photoshop and other things involved in it, but that's because it's just a different type of sensor that just saves so much more data that they can expand it and do so much more with it and get those larger files.

Definitely. That's cool. All right. So let's oblige Adam and take him through his, you know, five year old's definitions of kind of the basics of photography.

Dude, it's Reddit. Explain it like on five, right? Eli five. Just six of the same terminology.

That's what everyone in the internet is going to know. Explain it like on five. So let's start. We'll just go talk about him.

So let's start with the aperture. So we've talked about this before, but essentially aperture is the hole or opening that lets light through. So we talked about pinhole cameras and that little hole is the aperture. That is the point that the light comes through and shines back on whatever element or surface.

So there, the aperture is opened essentially when you hit the shutter button on your camera. It lets light at whatever setting you set that aperture to through the lens onto the element, which saves that photo onto whatever medium, whether that's film or to the actual chip that saves it as a digital image. And aperture is measured in F stops. So if you hear someone say, I'm using aperture of 22 or F 22 or something like that, that measurement of how much light is coming through that lens at that split second that you hit that shutter button.

Got it. And on the subject of aperture too, is it common to have these sort of, you know, common aperture numbers, I want to say, or F stops or is it, I mean, common to just have pick a number, you know, just any, any number could be the aperture working with or is it common to film to say, hey, I'm using, you know, one of these 10 or 15 more common, you know, F stops. You know, there are a lot of similar ones, but it does depend on the lens that you're using and what that lens is capable of as it is a mechanical part of most lenses. So like on my 24 to 105, I have, I believe an aperture range from 22 down to 2.8.

And all that's dependent on different factors of how that lens is being used, what my zoom is. And then I set it and it jumps down and stops. So you have like a 22 and then you have like a 18 and then a 16 and then a 12 and then a or an 8 and it kind of keeps going down in these stops. And there's often not like, you can set it to 11 or 12 or 13, like there's these preset numbers that are actually programmed into the lens and that's why people buy different lenses because some have an aperture down to 1.4 and some have them up to a 32.

And essentially the larger the aperture, the more light goes through the lens and the smaller the aperture, the less light goes through the lens. And they're done in fractions. That makes sense. Interesting.

Okay. Got a little bit of an idea of aperture. Let's jump to depth of field next. Sure.

So this is when we talk about sharpness and stuff being in focus, this is where that kind of lives. So that the field is the zone of acceptable sharpness within a photo that appears in focus. So this is actually a formula, if you will, based on three different criteria, you've got the aperture that we've already talked about, you've got distance, how far that item you're taking a photo or that subject is away from you. And then the focal length, what the capacity is of your lens to actually magnify that your subject and almost that's suspect because that's like all I talk about at work, that subject and how close it can get.

So the basic idea is like, this is where we talk about earlier, like these computer systems that are like, like meshing this, like deep focus to shallow focus into this image that gives you this portrait mode, if you will, to where the subject is in focus, but all the backgrounds like blurry, bokeh or something of that effect, that's depth of field. And so it's a combination of settings and how you program your camera to either keep images fully sharp or have that blur to the background or the foreground or however you set your camera, whatever your vision is. Got it. Okay.

So yet, you mentioned or dropped the puzzle word that is bokeh or what other names does that have? I feel like it's got like a few names. Is it bokeh? Is bokeh the correct term?

I mean, that's how I was taught. It's kind of spelt weird. So people have their different ways of saying it's kind of like a GIF or GIF, but yeah, I've always called it bokeh and yeah, it's just that kind of that blur to the background. I love shooting bokeh of Christmas lights and getting those really cool orbs, you know?

But yeah, it's just really using that depth of field to have a shallow image to where what's close to you is in focus and then what's behind it is just completely, you just can't really understand what's there. Bokeh with any sort of light is really, really cool. So anyway, let's keep going. So ISO is up next.

Sure. So this is more of a digital word. So this has kind of come out with the digital cameras. And this is the sensitivity of the element, the chip in the camera to light.

So you used to be able to buy film that was of different sensitivities to light. I mean, that will pretty much make the film resistant to more light. So it took longer for light to actually burn onto that film. That's kind of a similar idea to what ISO is, but in reverse.

So you increase in ISO number, like your camera can do this automatically, it really depends on how you're shooting it. But say during the day you have that super bright light, your ISO is going to be low. So you're going to have like a 200 or a zero ISO. And then as you get the settings get darker, you have to increase the ISO to add light to make the photo look normal.

So like, trying to think of a good example here, but if you take a photo with your phone, and it's during the day something looks crisp and clear and bright, but you turn off your flash and you try to take that photo at night, your phone still has the ability to kind of make sense of that data of what's going on in that condition. And you can adjust how much light, but that photo gets really grainy. And we'll talk about that grain a little later, but that is a byproduct of ISO, that digital sensitivity to light, that computer inside whatever device you're shooting on, trying to make sense of what's supposed to be there or what's not, what's black and what actually has light reflecting off it. So that's kind of ISO and it's sense.

So the more ISO you have, the brighter your image, but that will create more grain or noise, which will make your image sometimes look worse. All right. So I'm going to go a little out of order here then. And let's talk about noise next then.

Sure. So noise is around in both film and digital is also known as film grain, but noise is the kind of random variation of color and brightness and images. We usually see it more in the electronic side and that's because of ISO. So essentially when you up an ISO to a higher level, the sensor is trying to accept more data, but it can't.

So the computer is trying to, like I said, make sense of what's going on and fill those gaps. And so it's going to put stuff in those pixel spots and it's going to try to make it as close as possible, but it's not. So you're going to have a fuzz or specs to an image that wouldn't be there with what you're seeing outside, but that's just the computer trying to render what it's seeing. So yeah, I always heard this referred to as like, artifacting or like artifacts in the photo.

And I don't know if that's correct. Yeah, that's it is a type of artifacting. There's other types which include like actually like dirt and particles as well, but it for sure is a type of artifacting. You can remove a lot of it through like Photoshop and other editing softwares, but you'll compromise like clarity of the image sometimes because of it because it doesn't discriminate between like the bright part of the image and the dark part of the image that noise is going to be everywhere.

And you kind of just have to manage it. So the best case scenario is when you're shooting like at night or in dark situations is to you know, it depends on the situation. Of course, if you're like shooting sports at night, you're going to want to add more light to the equation through flash or something like that. But if you're shooting like a long exposure, it's better to leave your lens open longer and turn that ISO down because that is going to give you a crisper image because it's letting more light in without having to make up its own light and make sense of what could be there.

It's actually giving it more time to see what is actually there. Okay, cool. And to round us out megapixels. So megapixels is something we all talk about like what phone has the most megapixels each year when it comes out and it seems like every year they try to up it by one or a half megapixel or something.

But a megapixel is pretty much a measurement of graphic resolution. So one megapixel equals a million pixels. So eight megapixel camera has eight million pixels that are taking in information onto a chip or to film or more than likely a chip nowadays and saving that. So the more pixels you have, saving that information, the crisper and cleaner that image is going to be.

So put it into perspective. In an eight by 10 photo, it takes roughly 7.2 megapixels to give you that preferred crisper clean photo. And then as you go down from that scale, so five by seven photo to get it clear, you need about a 3.1 megapixel camera and then a 4.6 sized photo printed, you need a 2.1 megapixel camera. So yeah, it's just the amount of space on the chip that allows the camera to process that data and give you those crisper clear images.

So the more megapixels you have, the clearer and larger images you're going to have. Cool. So like contrary to common belief, my smartphone today can take actually probably a pretty big photo. Sure.

It's a big relatively to other cameras in past, but it is still smaller than a lot of DSLRs on the market in terms of megapixels. Yeah, I'm not shooting any medium format with it, don't worry. Not at all. All right, Adam, are you a five-year-old that is informed from now?

I just have to say, a picture is worth a thousand words and the picture that you put in the show notes is all that I ever wanted in this podcast. Yeah, it's not mine, but I'm sure we can credit the rights to be able to share it. Yeah, we'll put in the show notes as well, because basically everything that you mentioned with, you know, aperture and shutter and ISO, it kind of brings it into a visual perspective, right? So it's like your comparisons of all of the different quote-unquote f-stops, right?

And differences and shutter speeds and differences in ISO. Oh man, Adam, Adam, I don't know how you missed that one. I brought it into focus for you. Those are like strained, straining, yeah, that was a good dad one.

All right, I'll give you that one. Oh, yes. I got one. One point.

All right. So we've talked a lot about where we've come from and where we are today and you know, common shooting terminology and so on and so forth. But you know, this is sort of the time of the podcast we'd like to look towards the future. So Colton, is there anything you would like to see in the future of camera tech or what is sort of around the corner, do you think for us?

I want to say that this is going to blur into your topic or your question that you're going to bring up, Adam. But I think that we're going to see a lot more immersive photography. So you're going to see cameras and photos that you can actually fully adapt to. We've seen technology come out that allows a camera to take pictures of not necessarily the subject or the subject matter, but how that, how light is bouncing off of that subject into different sensors so that you can go in and post and actually compose that photo and change the lighting effects throughout the whole entire image, not just what's, you know, in focus or exposed for before, but you have a lot more like custom customizable features with an image.

So I can see a lot more of that as this technology and the sensors growing to where we're less about worried about doing stuff in the moment and then it's more about just capturing the general information of the moment and then really editing it to something that makes us feel or helps other people feel whatever that the artist is trying to share. So I think there's a camera that came out a few years ago on Kickstarter that was playing with that idea. I don't know if it actually came out or not. But you're talking about the one that you can change the depth of field like kind of light or like change your focus after shooting.

Exactly. That was Lightrow. Lightrow was it. Yeah.

So I don't know whatever happened to that, but I think that we'll see a lot more of that and then a lot more of these immersive like I go back to Apple a lot because I'm an Apple fan. I've kind of grown up in that ecosystem but live photos and these the ability to kind of like, you know, shoot these moments and then pick your favorite moment out of that that one click that you did. You have 10 seconds of moments to choose from. So I see a lot more of that coming into play as well.

And we're essentially going to be having those newspapers and photos on the walls that are in Hogwarts one day and it's going to be super neat. Wow. Like the living photos. Yes.

So I like what you mentioned about the like the depth of field and then creating like almost just a great way to simulate different lighting environments, right? Like, oh, what if I put light here and if I move light here and you can see like some some I think I think Photoshop does this or some other image editors while they were actually like you can put on like, hey, there's a light source from here and it will do its best to you know, figure out with machine learning and a bunch of other, you know, fancy computing algorithms, how that light source would interact with the subject. But I think now like you're talking about, you know, the more we get into depth of field and like capturing all of that sensor data, if instead of just taking a flat 2D image, you're now taking a 3D map of what you took a picture of as well as the 2D image, then you can do a lot of cool stuff with that, right? Like you can definitely play with like ray tracing and how light refracts off certain things or if you move the light source around or in light source case, you change the piece of focus, especially for taking, you know, like a bunch of different photos at different focus points or focal points at the same time you press the button, right?

So instead of having, you have one image that you're looking at, but really it has 50 different images at different, you know, in different settings that you can kind of play with and post. I think that's a definite, you know, foreseeable future for us. Exactly. And then that's going to work right into like virtual reality as well.

It's going to be a nice segue into that one day. Yeah. When you talk about like motion capture and things for virtual reality are taking a photo and saying like, hey, here's a photo I'm in Venice right now and you send it to someone and they throw on a VR headset and then boom, they are in the same area that you were looking at exactly what you were looking at in that moment in time, back to that snapshot in time, right? Exactly.

And the thing that I wanted to call out, which you kind of mentioned as well is I think you have learned the lines between photo and video, right? You mentioned now that, you know, with things like live photos or when you take, you know, the picture, you're also taking, you know, 10 different pictures or a 10 second video or whatever it is and getting to pick the moment that you want, I think we're going to just start seeing that more and more, right? Where as soon as you hold up a camera, right? It's doing whatever it can to try to show you what you were looking at that point in time.

As we move into things, you know, outside of, you know, actual smartphones as camera tech, it's better and in smaller packages, you can, you know, if any of you remember Google class, you can remember, you know, taking a picture or people wanting to take pictures just right from their glasses or with, you know, snap, right? And their spectacles, right? Being able to take video just from what you're seeing, all sorts of privacy concerns there, you know, especially because you don't know who's taking pictures of what, right now there's a very good social, you know, indication where you're holding up a phone or a camera that if you stand in front of that, you're probably going to get your picture taken. But I think, you know, as we move into this kind of future where we're trying to capture what we see and what's the most natural way to do that, as things get smaller just means like, hey, put it in front of my face all the time and when I blink twice or tap my forehead with three fingers, you know, whatever it is, take a picture and make that picture, you know, that snapshot and give me more data in that snapshot, I just think that's the trend that we're going to keep going.

I'm kind of curious. So you guys both, you know, think it's going towards, you know, essentially more video or video is essentially, you know, sort of constantly rolling and you pull photos from that or some version of that. So I'm kind of curious. Do you think we'll ever get to the point where photos itself isn't really a thing.

We almost have just constant video going and our entire lives are just recorded. You know, I mean, there's essentially a way that everything we look at is being recorded forever in perpetuity and that sure, we can rewind the video and pause it and look at that as a photo, but that all we know is really video. You know, I think there's always going to be a place for photo as long as that we have like print medium as an option, but I do see that video is going to become more and more present. You know, we already see it through social media platforms.

They're pushing this idea of live streaming, live video updates, all these different things of that nature. So it's already becoming a bigger part of our lives. I think there's always going to be a place for that still image, but yeah, I think that video is still continuing to grow. I was experimenting with ways of doing full shopping experiences online through video, like touchable video that people can actually click through a video of like a room and actually buy stuff on the spot, like seeing stuff staged in a room through this video, this model walking through like a house.

So I can only see it like really developing and growing in all sorts of different categories. Yeah. And I think if we take the other famous line from Johnson and Q said, which is on an infinite timescale, right? Yeah.

Eventually we'll get to a point where a photo is, you know, a thing of the past, right, where you don't really consider a photo or whatever we're considering a quote unquote photo will be different, right? When you're just going back and recalling any, you know, second in time, will that be called a photo or will that be called something else? Like, I think that's kind of what you're getting at if I'm not mistaken. And sure, eventually we'll get there.

But like Colton said, I think right now the still photography there will still be a place for that. And just packing more data into that quote unquote still photography, whether that means more images, more depth, more data. I think that's just going to be what we have in the foreseeable future. But hey, man, in the future, just watching the sci-fi movie, they'll tell you photos aren't photos anymore.

There's something else. All right. So Adam, do you want to round us out? I know you kind of put up a challenge or bonus as you're calling it here.

Yeah, I had a bonus in here and it's kind of hard to express over an audio medium, which is why I kind of considered it a bonus because if it doesn't go well, then I'm just going to edit it out of the show. But I kind of want to just kind of get a feel for you too and see like, well, what do you feel is the best picture that you've taken? Right? I mean, you've taken probably thousands and thousands of pictures, right?

You keep, let's say, hundreds of those pictures or you, let's say, not keep them, but you cherish. Let's say hundreds of those pictures. But is there anything in your mind that stands out like, hey, this is like one of the best pictures that I've taken? Well, I'll say that like, we've talked about it time and time again so far, but different photos bring out different emotions.

But what comes back to my mind is a photo I actually took out at the Salt and Sea here in California, this kind of barren land that is kind of just slowly dying. It was of a model, his name was Anthony, standing out on a rock and almost in the water in this bay of this, you know, barren lake in the middle of the desert, and it's a long exposure shot at night. You can see the stars. You can see Anthony's flashlight shining into the distance, and in the foreground, you can see some water and some lights and different aspects of that lake bed that he's standing in.

And it just really like brings up this feeling of like, we're in this infinite world and like galaxy and like universe that is so much more than we are and we're all trying to find our place in it. I'll share it with you guys so you can add it to the show notes for sure one of my favorites. It means a lot to me as my first kind of attempt at like long exposure night photography, and it really got me really passionate about that kind of realm of photography. It's kind of funny.

The way you started describing that photo, Colton, was very much kind of how I thought about it. I was looking through just some of my favorites that I've ever shot, and so I will share this with you guys both. But it might be kind of boring in the sense that it is just a water and this was shot on a drone, but basically the really cool thing I like about this one particular photo that I shot was it shows areas of water that are very turbulent and very chaotic and there's very calm sections of the water. And I just like the colors in it that it's very kind of green and blue and there's multiple colors but there's also white water and it just kind of for me the emotion in it that comes out is kind of just summarizes at times different points of like life and that you know you go through different phases and stuff and water goes through that as well.

So I don't know this one was for a very, very long time just my wallpaper on my computer and it was one that I still definitely kind of look back on every once in a while and just enjoy looking at. Sweet. I look forward to seeing it. Okay cool.

Look at you guys and your fancy pictures. Super fans. I'll put the links in the show notes and I can honestly say that I'm not a very good a picture taker. I'm not a very good photographer.

So usually mine are just like hey when I go walking on West Coast drive and Santa Cruz every once in a while when there's no people you can take a picture that's pretty nice on the cliff side and surf so usually that's what I like. Those are kind of some of my favorites. I don't want to say you know my kids you know because that would be you know just cliche and your kids are cute because they're your kids right although my kids are extremely cute. I'm just throwing that out there but I'm not going to include a picture of my kids for everyone because only certain people will find that fun but let me see if I can find a picture and I'll throw that in the show as well.

Well do we have anything else we want to contribute before we go to wrap up? I just want to say like a quick word like a quick encouragement that's all right. Yeah. Well like those are some people that like kind of have been playing with the idea of really like pursuing photography and learning more about it like I just want to say do it.

I got a lot out of going to like free classes at my local art museum and to different like photography workshops no matter what gear you have even if you don't have any gear if you just have a phone or you don't have anything at all just go and like sit around these people that have been shooting for years join photography groups and really like just get involved in the industry and get involved with those type of people because they're going to challenge you and push you no matter what and really help you learn more about the field and really even if it's not something that like you decide that you want to do as a profession or even as a hobby it'll teach you a lot about it and give you a new appreciation to it. So I would say it's worth everyone at least going to a photo club once and seeing how people talk about their photos and critique photos and really build people up and try to you know help people become better at their photography and it teaches you a little bit more about like what goes into an image as well. So if you have the time just jump in and you know find that group in your area and they're all over the globe and yeah even online you can join groups so get involved it's the photography is not going away so why not jump in and enjoy it with everyone else. Very true very true I think it's a vibrant community that's for sure.

Alright so in a little bit of a wrap up I said I was going to attempt some yoga and let's just say it's an attempt Adam I can report that I have my mat and I have gone through a like air quotes here practice if you want to call it that I'm finding some serious like hurdles in how you transition it's been it's been challenging so I feel like I'm going to need like a couple full like practice sessions before I jump into trying to start to finish. Yeah you're not going to be a rock star from like day one and that's why I said like focus on the poses. And that's why I wasn't expecting to be a rock star from day one but I was fully expecting that like if I started in beginner mode here like yeah okay I could like you know maybe work through a you know like a very very very beginner one and I'm learning that even beginner is pretty tough. Yeah so beginner is beginner and you notice in the practice like hey if you ever can't do this just sit in child's pose and just wait your turn right it's kind of chill out for a little bit but yeah the thing with yoga is like once you're comfortable with the poses you can kind of start seeing how they tie together right so when you're going from like you know downward dog right to what's the example right the downward dog to you know your feet up in the air and then you bring your foot you know through and go into warrior one right like you can kind of see like how the leg would make that transition or how you would and yeah you're going to take a little bit you know a couple times to try to figure out oh this is how it how it goes right when you're starting like don't be discouraged like as long as you end up in the pose you're fine and if you're using pocket you'll get usually they'll kind of go through the poses really slow first and then after that after they've shown you like each one and each flow will kind of go through it like two times like really fast right where you're just kind of like going through the whole motion so yeah it's going to be difficult but you're at least able to do all of the poses right yeah yeah it's so far I mean I've been able to do them it's just the actual I'm gonna say like gracefulness that is the transition between one to the other that I haven't like mastered or figured out how to like do very well and so it's at this point it's not what I would consider like extremely relaxing but I also feel like if I just do it enough it'll get there slowly but surely so I'm not giving up for sure no I'm going like but it's just it's it seems that even in beginner mode it's it's more challenging than I anticipated yeah well I think that's a good thing and I kind of felt the same way I was like oh you should be easy right and you go through beginner and you're like okay well this is a little more difficult than I thought it was I'll just say this for love of god Lou don't you dare try intermediate because yeah you will probably you'll die yeah no it's so funny because if you see these people like everyone's in all you see these like when there's like inspiring shots of like you know somebody speaking of photography like on a cliff somewhere doing yoga like the sunrise or we've got golden hour like behind them or whatever and oh man it is like I'm like yeah okay first of all you don't even have a mat and second of all you're like on your head right now and you're on the edge of a cliff what are you doing with your life and meanwhile I'm just trying to you know get from a downward dog to you know whatever poses next oh man see like that's the best part like I would love to go out and just like have a practice on like the cliffs and Santa Cruz like in the morning but when the sun's coming out like or when the sun's setting like that would be great because a lot of yoga right too it's stretching and then once you kind of have a feel for how the poses are gonna go it's exercise but it's you're not I guess how do I want to say this it's exercise will also be mindful right so they have that whole aspect of it where you are focusing just on certain muscles or certain things and you're not like trying to exert yourself you know like I'm trying to push up this weight or I'm trying to run this this miles like you are just kind of going through poses and holding positions and you're finding a way to just find resistance or stretch and work muscles without being vicious about it and there's something kind of cleansing about that right and I don't want to get into like a hippy type you know preaching thing like oh yeah it's great for the soul and it's like no it's just it's great for stretching and I find it as a great like low impacts like really mellow workout that actually still does get your blood flowing and you know it seems to help with other things like flexibility so when I'm out there lifting weights then I'll go to yoga or I'll do yoga a day after other two weights so yeah man you're not gonna be a rock star but yes what are people doing with their lives when they go out and practice yoga on a cliff it's like do they're living yep this is true so a golden have you ever done yoga I have not I've heard you guys talk about it over the last few weeks and I am intrigued you might have to add it to my daily just don't worry about buying a mat because if any if Lou has any track record or if this goes anything like his past experience is he'll be looking to get rid of a mat in like two weeks so you can probably pick up a really nice one for about half off you know when Lou is done using it or just borrow his mat or just be smart and do it on carpet and don't buy mat that seems a lot easier see Lou this is what logical people do is they don't go out and buy a $70 thing they just say hey I'm gonna try this and see if I like it because in two weeks if you don't like it Lou you're stuck with this mat hey man I told you I got that that friends and family discount so there was no $70 involved and second of all yeah the the bedroom is tile so it's it's not a it's it's very hard to you know practice on tile all right what's your mat right what's your mat more than $20 yeah yes it was more than $20 he's paying you pay too much Costco do Costco yeah yeah I can totally see Adam just like behind the mattress store just me like his there's got to be some good damn memory foam over here somewhere he's just like cutting up free memory oh no army surplus store no the army surplus or they have tons of like that memory foam that they you know just have for sale and you can get it by the yard so yeah I mean if you really want to be cheap or you know frugal just go the army surplus store coming from the guy that still shops about going into so you know hey only their sales I never buy anything full price all right well Colton thank you very much for donating some of your time and wisdom yeah big thank you yeah it's my pleasure this was definitely very productive and I feel like I walked away learning a couple things I hope Adam did too I guess I got this picture I'm good and now I know to go to when I have a picture questions like holding this picture looks like crap how do I make it look better or how do I take better pictures we're gonna make a photographer out of you yet there you go next time I'm down in that area I'll have to you you'll have to show me the sights and maybe I can hit you right on your on your aerial photography sessions yeah we'll see what we can do there we go all right Colton if it's all right are you okay sharing anywhere we can find you online yeah I'm pretty open guy online and it's part of the industry I can be found at I go by my initials CVP so online on Instagram Twitter Facebook you can find me at heli underscore CVP on H E L I underscore C is in Charlie V is a victory piece in Papa and yeah so I post a lot of photos post a lot of the breaking news and different fun stories that I get to cover and as well as a lot of the beauty shots that we don't get to show on TV but are still documented on a nightly basis on our flight so yeah come say hi online give me a follow give me a shout and yeah look forward to meeting y'all man I'm gonna have to put like a an intro saying like it's featuring special guest Colton and Colton's crickets because Colton's crickets where we're on fire they're quiet now but holy smokes man I have like freaking like these huge like ear muffs on her now so I can't hear anything I can barely hear myself so oh they are they're everywhere yeah it's the nature edition are you are you still bulking up are you slimming down what's going on um right now is bulk up bulk up dang dude large like my trainer wants me up to extra large and a little hesitant oh it's most man how much are you weighing right now then 210 holy shit holy butts yeah I get looks from my pilot now because he has to fuel down some days you were a guy that flies news helicopters period and of story wait are you flying the helicopters now no I'm the camera guy and I talk now on TV so we're famous yeah something like that thanks for listening everybody if you'd like to get in touch you can tweet us at syntax error cgfm or click the submit follow up link in the show notes questions thoughts other awesome photographs you think we should see please let us know if you know someone who might like the show please share it with them and don't forget to subscribe to get the latest episodes when they come out