FULL TRANSCRIPT: Please note this transcript was generated by AI and may contain errors.

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You’re listening to the Portrait System podcast.

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I’m a great believer in getting the most out of as little as possible, and what I mean by that, Nikki, is you don’t have to have the most expensive camera. I mean, I’d like to, but you don’t have to have the most expensive lens or you don’t have to have the most expensive flash. I mean, if you can afford it, good. So I mean, if I could afford it, yes, I would do it.

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This is the Portrait System Podcast, a show that helps portrait photographers and people hoping to become one. Navigate the world of photography, business, money and so much more. We totally keep it real. We share stories about the incredible ups and the very difficult downs when running a photography business. I’m your host, Nikki Closser, and the point of this podcast is for you to learn actionable steps that you can take to grow your own business and also to feel inspired and empowered by the stories you hear.

Today’s guest is John Busby with the Portrait Kitchen that he runs with his wife, Angie.

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Their business is called the Portrait Kitchen because their studio is actually in their kitchen in their home. John and Angie live in a tiny town in England and one of their specialties as millinery photography, which if you’re like me and had not heard of this before, millinery is actually hats. They have this really cool, just niche photographing all sorts of hats for their clients. Along with doing their other portrait work, it was really interesting to chat with John about just having such a specific niche with his business, and what he talks about is really relatable to all different, you know, just really narrow parts that you could get into with your own business.

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I just loved our conversation, and I’m excited to introduce you to John Busby. Hi, John, welcome to the portrait system, how are you?

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I’m good this is Friday evening. I’m so I’m in a good mood. Looking forward to the weekend and thank you for inviting me.

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Same. I love the weekend. Weekends are so great now that I don’t work them. Well,

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that makes a big difference.

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Yeah, yeah, I sometimes do.

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Yeah, yeah. Well, I can imagine so because you’ve got a job and a portrait business. Well, yeah, I guess portrait business is also a job, but yeah. Yeah, yeah. OK, so tell me a little bit about you, John, where you live and your business partner is also your wife, Angie. So I want to hear a little bit about her. So just let’s just start there.

00:02:14:06 – 00:02:49:20

Yeah, sure. Well, my name is John, and with my wife, Angie, we run in the portrait kitchen, were based in the Midlands, in the UK. So think sort of like the middle of England. I mean, technically, we’re about as far away from the sea as you can possibly be in England. I think from where we are, we’ve lived here for about five years. I’ve been sort of into photography or aspired to be into photography for most of my life, but kind of found it quite challenging the old film days. You know, we have a business that is kind of beyond start up, so to speak, but I like to call it startup.

00:02:50:14 – 00:03:25:07

So it sounds quite cool. Call the portrait kitchen and people say it’s a bit of a random name for photography people, but actually started in our back garden was that one day and I was going to studios and I was renting and obviously couldn’t afford a studio on my own. I mean, just to be honest, it was Angie’s idea, she says. Could we not use a kitchen when you write a particularly large kitchen? My wife’s a great cook as well, and it’s kind of a very long galley kitchen, but it’s about two or three times wider than the Galley Kitchen, though typical galley kitchen.

00:03:25:09 – 00:04:14:09

And there’s a lot of space. But and then I kind of like looked up and so I could put brackets on the wall, how Kalorama drop sort of rolls, whatever coming down. And and it’s it’s sort of start from that. So there was the sort of concept of the Portrait Kitchen, but the other thing that’s really helped us with our business and having this is being as a couple. So husband and wife, a lot of our clients are women. And, you know, when we’re photographing, say, their product or some of their fashion or whatever the case may be, what we do is bring in portrait styles, portrait kind of knowledge to, you know, really glorify and enhance something like millinery, which is what our big specialty is, which is a little bit different to perhaps what you normally do with people on on the show.

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And it sort of grew from that, and that was about three four years ago. Maybe we felt slightly funny story. I had a wild idea about a year ago to say, Oh, let’s be more cool, let’s call it TPK instead of the Portrait Kitchen. And that got binned pretty quickly. and the you know, the funny thing is, Nikki, people you will probably remember now in your head the portrait kitchen because it’s so quirky. It’s so wacky. The Portrait Kitchen. That’s the first sort of business thing I’d say to anybody is that think about it from that point of view that you you know what I call it the John Busby portrait service.

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No, people won’t remember that, but they will remember the Portrait Kitchen.

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Well, it’s interesting because the first time I heard your business, I was thinking, Do they photograph food? And I wasn’t sure, you know, but now that I hear your story, it’s really I have so many questions for you. So I want to back up a second and I want to hear a little bit more about your studio in the kitchen because I know we have a lot of listeners who are, you know, they don’t have a space for a studio or they’re doing it in their guest bedroom or they’re looking at renting. You know, there’s just different options. So I’m curious how you have it set up in the kitchen.

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OK, well, one thing that I would like to say and it’ll come out hopefully during the podcast is that I’m a great believer in getting the most out of as little as possible. And what I mean by that, Nikki, is you don’t have to have the most expensive camera. I mean, I’d like to, but you don’t have to have the most expensive lens, so you don’t have to have the most expensive flash. I mean, if you can afford it, good. I mean, if I could afford it, yes, I would do it. So in terms of the set up, so we have kitchens, probably I don’t know 30 foot long, it’s probably about 10 foot wide.

00:05:56:29 – 00:06:35:10

So it’s it’s big. We have one wall at the end and on that I have. So so when we shoot, I use paper rolls. So that’s that’s kind of like my key thing. So I have a bracket which holds up three of these. This is great. Talk in this podcast can get quite technical. You know, normally when I talk to friends, they go, What’s a one point thirty five roll of paper, you know? And I’m like, Yeah, clicks, I actually do it myself, go. So we have a in that bracket, you can put up to three rows. So typically when we talk to a client, we’ll have a discovery call beforehand and we’ll say, what are the colours of your hats, what sort of models you want or who’s modelling it or whatever the case may.

00:06:36:04 – 00:07:09:00

So there’s quite a bit of work goes in even before the shoot happens, so we want to make sure colors matching so you know, they need a black background do they needed a pumpkin background. Does it need an aqua blue background? All that we’ve got about 20 different roles that we keep in the loft is storage. So that’s kind of like a backdrop. We normally shoot with one, maybe two lights only space confines that a little bit. Sometimes I might bring three in as a kicker or highlight something like that. Here’s the bit that always gets people is that I only I tend to use speed lights.

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So again, this comes back to this thing about affordability. So actually, to be able to break into doing off camera photography, it doesn’t matter to me whether or not you’re doing product, you’re doing portrait, you’re doing, you know anything. What matters is that am I going to be able to create this light and can I do this affordably? And I even I don’t even get a major camera brands like Nikon or Canon. And I go down too much, sort of like lower cost ones like Godoxis or young people like that, which are just as good equally as robust, but are about a quarter of the price of

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I’m with you on that. Totally.

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Yeah. And around that, I’ll just have reflectors that probably cost me, you know, 15 quid. If you light stands so I can, I can manipulate the light a little bit, you know, in terms of that in terms of the actual shot. So before I get really technical issue on the day, eight hundred taken me the best part of five or six years to get to that point because they’re not cheap. I never buy new cameras, so this is about nearly 10 years old now. Still does the job kick, so it’s got a good sensor on it all that sort of thing.

00:08:18:09 – 00:09:01:26

Well, it. Yeah, it then recently what we’ve done is that we tether directly out of the 800 into Lightroom, and that’s important for us because we can actually see you can only especially be doing portraiture or you’re doing what I call like millinery portrait, which is what we do because and I’ll come onto that, hopefully later, it’s like, why do we use models instead of stands? And there is a very valid reason for that. But being able to tether into Lightroom, we can get that detail so we can take the shot and then we can zoom in and we just say, you know, there’s an eyelash here, what? Because I’m what I’m trying or what we’re both trying to do is I’d want to spend that much time in post-processing that I can avoid by getting it right, pre shoot toner.

00:09:02:04 – 00:09:32:26

And it’s like, you know, there are things that I do in post, but you know, if there’s a button in a jacket that hasn’t gone into the kind of like the hole properly, I’d rather know that now because that’s a pain to sort out Photoshop. And it’s like, it’s just a little thing you could spend two minutes doing. And so that’s that within the kitchen. So the kitchen, if you think of it about sort of 30 foot whatever is in two half, the front half is kind of the studio where the shoots all happen, then that the second half is where the model will sit.

00:09:32:28 – 00:10:07:03

The client will say the hats will set. So that’s kind of like the working area. I rarely go into that area. That’s kind of Angie’s area, and she rarely comes in and touches the camera because that’s kind of like my area and it’s quite an interesting dynamic we have because we’re quite obviously we’re husband and wife and as well as that. We’re best friends as well. And it’s kind of it’s almost clients such as it’s almost entertaining to see the two of you because and just say, Well, how about with a great backdrop? Not so great And then we have this little sort of going on between it and the client is quite light as well.

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That’s character. I feel like,

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yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And you know, if you know, what’s really interesting is that I was talking to a client millinery client actually probably a month or so ago, and she said to me that what I really liked about it, John, was the fact that I’ve always wanted my work to be photographed beautifully on a beautiful model. So it’s almost like it could be on the cover of Vogue or it could be at a Dior collection or whatever the case may be. I’ve always wanted that, but going to a studio which is really big, big ceilings and lots of big lights, I felt quite intimidated.

00:10:39:02 – 00:10:50:11

Whereas when I come to yours, I feel like I’m going to see friends. And that enables her to relax and just feel like, you know, just feel at ease and she can open up, then

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that’s part of that service piece that is so important. Yeah. Real quick. OK. This is I’m going to embarrass myself, but I had never heard or I’m sure I’d heard of the word, but I wouldn’t have been able to define it before chatting with you with millinery. I didn’t know what that was. So I want people out there who maybe don’t didn’t know what that was, either. It’s hats. I mean, you photograph hats. Like, really cool. Just dainty, beautiful, detailed, intricate hats. Is that

00:11:17:21 – 00:11:56:23

right? Yeah. OK, so it actually lends itself very well, and it’s not accidental that we do hats or millinery. So the pieces that we do, Nikki, are typically couture pieces, one off handmade. So these are probably. And it could be anybody from a I’m not a fan of this word, but a hobbyist person who is good at craft and design and wants to make something at the weekend right through to businesses who are actually selling. These works have a lot of clients in the States interested so that the space that we have is not that conducive to, say, a full length shop.

00:11:57:07 – 00:12:40:27

It just starts to get a little bit too tight then. And you know, you start at the store and all the rest of it. So in a way, the space we have has dictated what we do. So and actually, that’s not necessarily a bad thing because you know what photographers are like, we will come up with an idea of every five minutes we’ll go off running and running up a hill and then look at the top down because I’ve had another idea let’s go and run to that hill so that actually the space kind of like forces us or disciplines as opposed to the better word for it to actually do things. So if you think about a hat and you know, if you’ve seen or you get the chance to see what we do, our hats a quite one off pieces that are quite dramatic in some cases and the space of what we got, we can fit in normally.

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We normally say to a model, it’s chest in above, frankly, can turn up in your tracksuit trousers, you know, with a pair of trainers on or something like that, because that’s not going to be in the shot anyhow. But what happens from the chest in above is going to be in the shot. And that’s what we do. We do hats and we’ve got clients from Europe. We’ve got clients from American clients from the UK, but the space really lends itself well, and it also lends itself well to things like head shots and things like that because we’re not really going to be shooting your legs or at all or what have you.

00:13:12:21 – 00:13:39:16

We do have a fallback position as a lady. We know he’s got a studio about 10 50 miles from where we were when I’m sat now. So if somebody said, Oh, actually, I want a really big shoot doing for my brand or one do full length, well, we have a fallback position on that. We wouldn’t do that in our location as the Portrait Kitchen because it’s just too tight and you then got to start doing compromises and we don’t want to do compromises.

00:13:40:14 – 00:14:10:25

Right, right. That makes sense. OK, so let’s give the listeners just an idea of your business as a whole. So obviously you have the millinery, you know, hat photography within your studio. You mentioned that you do head shots. Yeah. So let’s let’s just give them an idea of the things that you cover. And then I also want people to know that you are working towards full time. You’re not quite full time doing all, you know, doing just photography. So to start, let’s give the listeners just an idea of everything that you shoot.

00:14:11:02 – 00:14:20:16

And then I want to hear your story as to how. You know, when you started and how you got to where you’re at today and what you’re you know what your plan is moving forward?

00:14:21:09 – 00:14:49:12

Yeah. So I would say the three core, well, I’m going to say two Nicki because there’s a third one that we’re developing because we’ve had approaches recently about space. So we’re kind of starting point is millinery. So the interesting about millinery is it calls in numerous photography styles, I’d say, so you’ve got fashion, you’ve got product and you’ve got portrait and we’re blending all of those three things in. So that’s that’s that’s kind of key thing at the moment.

00:14:49:24 – 00:14:54:29

John, real quick, how did you get started into that? Like, how does one decide I’m going to photograph hats?

00:14:55:25 – 00:15:28:08

Yeah. How does a bloke in England decide that is going to become the world’s top millinery photographer based on the fact that I can’t find another one, not on my necessarily my ability being good or bad. So, so I had to think about this once somebody asked me that question a few months ago. So where we live in, we live in a really tiny. It’s not a village, it’s a town. It’s got 9000 people. That’s all. But it used to have a hat factory in and that hat factory is now closed down. In fact, the building that was in is is a preserved, creative list of buildings literally 100 yards over my left shoulder currently.

00:15:28:28 – 00:16:07:24

And at the time when we moved here, my wife’s originally from this town, but we met in London. You know, we had a flat or thing in central London. Anyhow, we moved. I eventually got here and I was interested sort of probably from a local history point of view, and I found out about the hat factory at the time. If you go back fifty six years at this time you either worked on the pit in a mine or you worked in the factory and they were kind of two big key employers now. Long story short, we my wife knew the lady who said, my wife, Angie, knew the lady who whose family owned the factory, although it closed and we got into a conversation with her and I said I would be quite interested.

00:16:07:27 – 00:16:49:14

You know, I’m doing photography. I quite like this document, perhaps because she had all of these hats, but they weren’t the sort of hats that I’m photographing now, Nikki. They they were kind of what I call utilitarian hats. So policemen’s hats, army hats, you know, berets, that sort of thing. They weren’t fashion hats or anything like that. And then one thing, another shape. She moved away. We didn’t manage to do that project, but something stuck in my head and I thought, Oh, you know, is there any? This is an interesting one. Of the things I really appreciate about what Sue does is about looking at the business side of this, you know, looking about it, you know, I always say, you have to separate your photography into two things, which is the art of photography, taking the pictures, doing whatever you do with them.

00:16:49:16 – 00:17:22:11

And that’s the business of photography. And this bit was probably more in the business of photography side. And I thought to myself, Well, is anybody else photographing hats? So I did a bit of research, joined a few groups on Facebook. I talked to a few milliners and there really wasn’t. There was people doing things with iPhones and taking the hats themselves. And then something I noticed when I was looking at all the pictures, they were all pretty much all of them that people were making. Hats were doing them on a stand or like a poster or a styrene head something like that. And I thought, that’s interesting, but I thought, there’s no emotion.

00:17:23:01 – 00:17:39:21

And the main thing about a photograph, especially a portrait type photograph or fashion photograph, is it’s about creating an emotion, isn’t it? It’s about making you stop and go, hang on a minute. What’s going on here? Well, that’s interesting. All that’s caught my eye. And because they’re on stands that they just like that. So there was a couple of milliners

00:17:41:16 – 00:17:42:19

who I talked to and I said,

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You know, I’m really interested in photography. I’d love to photograph it, but I want to do them on models or people that want to be photographed in a portrait style. So I want to bring in the lighting techniques of portraiture, the photography techniques of portraiture, and I want the hat to be the kind of the product, the thing that we’re going to do, and I’ve got some ideas about how I want to do that. And that was about five years ago. I mean, this is crazy, Nikki, the first millinery shoot. I look back at it now. I think how the heck did I do that? I had a really good milliner and She was very switched on. She knew exactly what she wanted.

00:18:15:16 – 00:18:47:25

We did a series of hats or eight nine hats. We had this the complete opposite, what we’re doing now. We had this big studio. I mean, it’s a small studio and bring a truck into, you know, and photograph its face, that sort of thing. And she got in five models to make up artists. I think the entourage behind me when I was photographing all the time was probably about 15 20 people in total. This is bear in mind, this is my first of a photo shoot ever in terms of this sort of scale. I mean, I’ve done photographs myself and and it and it worked, and I thought, hang on a minute.

00:18:48:03 – 00:19:14:04

So what I decided to do that was for those shots that are taken and I think possibly for one more shoot. And here’s a sort of another little I guess I’d say business tip is that I did that as well. I didn’t do it for free in the sense that we split the actual hire of the studio and we got the models on. But no, I suppose nowadays, but we got the models and TFP where we just traded for, you know, which we don’t do anymore.

00:19:14:26 – 00:19:19:06

But are we starting out, I mean, I did the same thing. I mean, yeah,

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but the great thing of it was, was that what I got out of? It was content, and now I had content images. That’s something I could build into a website. And then when I would go around to other milliners, I would say, Well, look, you know, if I come to you said, I can photograph your hats, that’s great. That’s not interesting, is it? But if I can say, if you see what I’ve got here, I can. This is what I can deliver. And that’s that’s that was my business head thinking, not my art head thinking in terms of going right to convince people to invest in you or to buy something off you.

00:19:50:29 – 00:20:10:00

They have to see something you know, they can’t you can’t go up to somebody, say, I’m a portrait photographer. Do you want to pay me money to take your portrait? They just won’t do it. I want to see your portfolio. Exactly. And that’s kind of where it began from that lady and then me thinking, I’m going to go off and do this. It was one of the scariest things I’ve ever done because it’s so much to organize. So many things could go wrong. But it didn’t.

00:20:10:18 – 00:20:21:05

Yeah, yeah. I mean, OK. So it’s interesting, too that that the hat town in your or the hat factory in your town closed down and then you opened

00:20:23:01 – 00:20:37:27

a hat photography studio in your town. But I think that’s really cool. Yeah. You know, and sometimes niching down like that, it does. It makes you desirable. Like you are likely the hat photographer in your area and you said people come from the states too right.

00:20:38:18 – 00:21:15:12

Well, they send stuff over. So yeah, we’ve done. Yeah, I mean, I mean, they’re welcome to come over 20 miles from PHX bearing or international, but you know, you make a really good point here about niche and. There are. And I mean this in the nicest possible way, but there are a lot of wedding photographers out there. There were a lot of newborn photographers out there. There are a lot of street photographers out there that crowded markets, which is not to say they’re not good at what they do because they are. But I just I just from a business background of previous jobs I had, I thought, Well, really, you’ve got to start.

00:21:15:18 – 00:21:55:06

You can actually create your own market, you know, but you’ve got to do quite a lot of selective targeting. You’ve got to think about the audience, you’ve got to think about what they want. You got to research what’s available minute. You’ve got to research what they can possibly stand in terms of pricing that sort of thing. And that’s what that’s another thing that I did, Nikki. I looked around and there was nobody doing it right. So I thought, All right, let’s go for this, and I’m sure there are tens, hundreds of other niches that you could go into that you can do fairly minimal investment to get going. I mean, I can’t think of one off the top of my head now, but you know what I mean? Yeah, and it’s totally three to four years now where, you know, we talk for the Milliners Guild of America.

00:21:55:08 – 00:22:25:08

We talk for London. We were the last one with the official photographer London Hat Week. You know, we did a talk for FIT, Fashion Institute of Technology in New York recently about photography and millinery. So it starts springing in different directions. And the other thing I’d say is, as well as if you do find a niche, you’ve got to go into that community pretty open handed for want of a better expression. You don’t go into it and go sell, sell, sell. I could do all this to three, four, two or whatever. They don’t respect that.

00:22:25:18 – 00:22:44:06

You’ve got to build your authenticity up, first of all. And you know, we spend a lot of time doing that. And I think the fact that we’re a couple Angie and I is quite good, you know, because it’s not like, well, I’m not an alpha male in that sense, but you know what I mean? It’s kind of the fact that we’re a couple just gives that sort of humanness about us.

00:22:44:09 – 00:22:54:08

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. OK, so you do the the millinery and then you said you also do head shots and you were going to say there was a third thing that you’re thinking about bringing on to your business.

00:22:54:18 – 00:23:28:13

Yeah. Yeah. So the head shots is interesting and I actually don’t like the word head shots or head shot because I feel it’s quite limiting and there are I’m going to be I’m going to be what? I’m going to be controversial. So there aren’t there are headshot photographers that do great headshots and we’re going to got a criticism. But there is a sense that I get when you look on LinkedIn or whatever business pages or that headshots can feel a little bit kind of prescribed, you know that you have to look a certain way, you have to squint your eyes a certain way.

00:23:28:15 – 00:23:29:15

And I’m not, you

00:23:29:17 – 00:23:35:15

know, a hundred percent, John. There is no I’m a personal branding photographer. I agree with you 100 percent.

00:23:35:17 – 00:24:06:29

Thank you. Thank you. We probably know who all the people that we’re talking about, and I think that’s fine if you just want to be a kind of LinkedIn poster boy. But actually, the whole point of portraiture to me is about it’s about bringing out emotion. It’s about bringing out character. That’s what a portrait is. And and I see a headshot as pretty much something, and it’s we’ve kind of run away with this head shot type look that you have to have a certain way. And you know, people do have imperfections, Nikki.

00:24:07:01 – 00:24:25:01

People do have teeth that aren’t straight or people do have, you know, the hair isn’t whatever or some people. Like to be on, you know, have a stubble or something like that, but when you go into a process of certain styles of headshots where you have to look a certain way, you have to do this, you have to do that, what have you? I just feel that we lose a bit of character.

00:24:25:11 – 00:24:58:15

So I something I will say some. I’m sorry to interrupt you. Some industries kind of still quote unquote require that, you know, some of the more corporate or the more professional. So there is a time and a place for it. But I am seeing a shift among my really corporate professional clients who are saying they don’t want that anymore. So yeah, there is a shift happening, I think. And like you said, there are some incredible headshot photographers and then some people want to do more than that, you know, and it sounds like that’s the direction you’re headed, right?

00:24:59:03 – 00:25:27:07

Yeah, I mean, I don’t know if you know, a photographer called Ivan Weis, who is based in London, it’s the most incredible support, is a portrait photographer, and he’s say the name again, Ivan Weis. So it’s WEIS. OK, gotcha. And he his work is in that place where I’m sort of headed. Ivan, to be fair, is somewhere ahead of me. But if you look, I mean, it’s and I think you’re right, there is a kind of

00:25:28:24 – 00:25:30:03

incongruous culturally

00:25:30:16 – 00:25:31:27

know these are his beautiful work.

00:25:32:18 – 00:26:05:05

Yeah, but in corporate, you see what happens in corporate and corporate marketing department specifically is there will always play the safe hand because what’s gone on before will carry on tomorrow. You know, so the companies that interest me and I did this for a law firm, funnily enough, just before the pandemic and the lockdown happened, and then I finished it off after the lockdown, and I was kind of fortunate because I knew the managing partner at the law firm, who’s since left, but she’s been quite a good sort of mentor for me from a business point of view. And she said part of the brief was John.

00:26:05:07 – 00:26:40:00

She says, Just don’t make my people look like everybody else’s people. Mm-Hmm. I said, What do you mean if she’s colicky as well? She says, I want some character to come out of them, John, I want you to. What have you? And the first thing we did was actually quite a simple thing for getting, you know, codes and all that sort of stuff. Nikki, the first thing we did was instead of having the shop cropped. So it’s sort of like the chin. And had I thought, let’s bring it out a bit, let’s let’s utilize the white table in front of them. You know, let’s turn the chair a little bit and then suddenly you see a little bit more of the body and opens up the character a bit more.

00:26:40:12 – 00:27:14:27

When you just see sort of like from the chin and above of you’re losing so much of, well, real estate is probably the wrong word, but you know what I mean? You’re losing things, absolutely, you know? So suddenly, you may have a detail like a watch comes into it. So it’s got the same watches me. Suddenly that becomes something that can happen. Or I like his tie or I like her the bangle on her wrist. I mean, these aren’t the primary things that you’re looking at from it, but what you get is you get more of the person and therefore the chance to feel feeling connected to that person are far greater.

00:27:14:29 – 00:27:16:11

Yes. Great point.

00:27:16:23 – 00:27:54:26

Yeah. The balance is that, you know, men and women, you know, are not always sort of body positive about themselves. They sometimes feel quite insecure about it. So what I decided was not to do full length unless somebody felt particularly comfortable, but actually using the desk, you know, typical white desk. And the reason I use a white desk is because I get bounce on it. So it’s like it’s good from a light point of view, but by using the desk, they have something to rest on and they could just relax their hands on it. The trouble is, if you have to hold your hands and you’re tense, that tension in your hands that you’re squeezing goes up your forearms, goes up your upper arms and ends on your shoulders in your neck.

00:27:54:28 – 00:28:05:01

And it’s do you see what I mean? It can be quite problematic, but if you put the hands on the table or rest them in a certain way and they really like them, you know, they really love them.

00:28:05:09 – 00:28:07:07

Mm hmm. Hmm. Yeah, yeah.

00:28:07:15 – 00:28:13:03

And she gave me one of the bit of advice which which you probably come on to in time, which says, like, Oh, by the way, John, you’re far too cheap.

00:28:14:01 – 00:28:31:17

OK, I was going to I was actually going to call you out on that. Yeah, because I did look at your website and I saw what you charge for your millinery and I was like, Huh? Three hundred euro for two hours of work. I’m like, Oh, come on, John, I was going to challenge you on that here.

00:28:31:19 – 00:28:33:15

Like, that’s a that’s a fair challenge to

00:28:33:17 – 00:28:34:18

talk about that.

00:28:34:28 – 00:29:06:16

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I’ll be waiting for this one for about three or four weeks, Nikki. Yeah. So this is another business where we’re trying to move to his headshot corporate. And the third thing which we touched on him, which is personal branding, photography, and there’s a potential opportunity for us there. So I think one of the big lessons I’ve learned about photography, Nikki, is that it’s a journey. You know, it’s not you’re not going to start on day one and then you’re going to be, you know, Annie Leibovitz by end of year one. Takes time.

00:29:06:18 – 00:29:18:27

A lot of it. It’s serendipity. A lot of it’s hard work. You know, it’s just the way that’s just that’s just life, you know? So the. The millinery is I mean, it’s quite good that you looked at it three 300 there used to be a lot less, actually.

00:29:19:10 – 00:29:24:01

So we all started somewhere so. Trust me, I get it.

00:29:24:07 – 00:29:54:26

Yeah. So where we’re gradually moving it to is we weren’t. Well, we did an analysis of the business of that channel of the business. of that product line and it was very clear that, you know, we did the two hour shoot and then we would probably do some post-processing afterwards. But under the two hours and maybe do an hour or so before a discovery call with a client that we always do, we absolutely insist on it because it’s partly so they know what’s happening, but it’s all so we know what to do.

00:29:54:28 – 00:30:25:15

So we don’t have any, you know, awkward conversations later on down the line. And it’s still the price isn’t right, but I feel part of a community here, and I accept that this may be may be an inverted commas, a passion project because I actually value this community because it’s not just simply about the money. In the case of millinery, yes, I have to make some money, but as long as I don’t lose some money in that particular product line, you’ve got to bear in mind that handmade couture millinery is a dying industry.

00:30:26:03 – 00:30:59:27

And I kind of like positioned myself much more in terms of like trying to support it with Angie by encouraging that community. One of the things that we’ve expanded out to is into more educational things in those communities around back around photography. But if you say to me, OK, this is Nikki here, I’m the CEO of the business that’s not making any money. You’ve got to bin it. I’m not sure I want to bin it because there’s a lot of people who like us and are actually quite well connected and yet introduce us to places can introduce us to museums for exhibitions where we get really positive marketing exposure.

00:31:00:16 – 00:31:04:15

That’s the kind of the loss making, if that makes sense and where we’re trying to do that.

00:31:05:08 – 00:31:21:24

Do you really think, though, that you know, people are would just throw you to the wayside if you raised your prices to where they, you know, to making a much more livable wage that they’d be like, Oh, screw you. John and Angie like, you’re out. You know, do you really think people would do that?

00:31:22:24 – 00:31:28:15

I think I think the way to look at it is, well, the straightforward answer, I don’t know.

00:31:30:09 – 00:32:05:19

We’re gradually stepping the price up. So I I would say there’s a significant proportion of that market that couldn’t afford, you know, that sort of pricing. But I don’t want to lose that market. So I came up with other solutions, which I’ll touch on, perhaps in a moment. The top end of the market. So if you take milliners like Philip Treacy, Stephen Jones, people like that they they would already have that. Photography is the market that I’m really interested in is those that want to pay 500, 600, 700 pounds for us because they recognize our value.

00:32:06:00 – 00:32:36:16

In fact, we did a client recently who did a whole collection and called it the Havelin and collection after Eleonor Havelin, and we did a fantastic shoot with her and I was talking to her about it. She works in the accountancy world and she said, no. At the end of the day, John, you know, if that’s what I’ve got to pay going forward, that’s what I’ve got to pay because I see the value, you know? But it’s important to understand your market, Nikki, because there are some people in there who may be just doing this as a weekend hobby, you know, and suddenly that market.

00:32:36:19 – 00:33:09:22

But so as a business, I’ve kind of like thought, Well, yes, I want to go after those if we just use the millinery channel as an example. Yes, I want to go after those that are going to pay me five, six and seven hundred pounds, whatever it is. But I don’t believe these ones behind you can’t afford that because I want to be I want to contribute something to … we want to contribute something to everyone. So that’s where we brought in our ask service, our talks with people like FIT and Milliners Guild, et cetera, et cetera. But at the same time is just doing that, which is we actually do a lot of those for free and you get to go doing it for free.

00:33:10:01 – 00:33:44:25

We’re actually exposing ourselves to 40 or 50 people in a Zoom call. Angie and I both of us together, and it’s actually reinforcing our brand. And if you think about it, it’s a bit like, you know, you’ve got a mug of tea. We’re on Zoom. We’ve got 40 people talking to us, 40 being made away. I wouldn’t do a one to one for free. In fact, we do do one to ones around photography tips. We made quite a few quid just doing nothing but one to ones over Zoom to help Milliners improve their own photography because they accept that.

00:33:44:27 – 00:34:15:09

With that, if all they’ve got is an iPhone or a smartphone or something like that, I can actually sell that service, that education service to them for 25 30 pounds and they will benefit from that. They can’t afford to have our kind of Rolls Royce service for a better expression, but that doesn’t stop me from actually having something which in an hour I can sit over, zoom in and whatever and actually build because you don’t know that Milliner in two or three years. Time where she will be able she.

00:34:16:00 – 00:34:35:17

So we’re always constantly reinforcing the brand as a as a part of a community. You know, so yeah, your dead, right, threatened to quit. That’s peanuts, you know, but that’s where we are. And this is why we’re moving more towards things like the back to that word headshots again and personal branding.

00:34:35:25 – 00:35:06:04

Yeah. And you know, honestly, there is always a time and a place for free. I still on occasion do a free shoot here and there because it’s someone that I know will be a great evangelist for me and I want them in my portfolio or. But you’re doing it because, you know, there’s value within it. You’re not doing it because you’re afraid to ask someone to ever pay for a shoot like it. It’s a marketing strategy on top of doing something for someone. It’s also a marketing strategy, so there’s absolutely a time and a place for it. It sounds like you guys have really figured out a good, you know, something that works well.

00:35:06:26 – 00:35:18:21

So I’ve got a question for you. So my question for you is which one of us, I and Angie and I put their foot down and said, You’re not doing free anymore, John. No more free shoots. I’m just giving giving away that I

00:35:19:17 – 00:35:46:05

I was going to have a feeling. This is Angie. This is the first time under the third woman. Yeah, John, it is easy to get into that mindset of like, you love this community and you feel part of it and you feel passionate about it, you know, so there’s that balance of you guys wanting to be full time at this and also, you know, being able to provide for the community. So it’s, you know, it’s it’s a it’s a fine line.

00:35:46:18 – 00:36:20:11

I think it’s important, though, Nikki, to be able to say, I don’t like excluding people who I can help or we can help. But what we wouldn’t do is give you a three or five hundred pound, three hour photoshoot for free. But what we can do over Zoom call or a group call for one of the girls and one of the groups, there’s lots of groups of, you know, really, really talented ladies who create incredible hats. What we can do as a balance to the sort of top end stuff is say, here’s a solution we’ve got, we’re going to do a zoom

00:36:20:21 – 00:36:50:26

So for example, we did a zoom recently where a lot of our students submitted their own millinery photographs, and we constructively criticized them. In terms of where you should do this, you should do this. Take this out, this destruction here, all that sort of thing. And they find it hugely valuable. So I think it’s important to yes, it is important to make money and and living out of this. But also, I don’t want to forget and leave behind people who can’t afford to access that at the minute because they may be able to access it tomorrow.

00:36:51:06 – 00:37:26:10

Right, right. Yeah. Totally makes sense. Totally makes sense. OK, I do have a question for you about, you know, when someone does decide to niche down the way that you’ve done just, you know, particularly with this part of your business, how do you you said you have to, you know, make sure you’re focusing on a target market. And I guess what advice would you have for people to try and put their name out there if they’re going to target a specific type of like, let’s say, for example, someone wants to photograph glassware? I have an obsession with glassware like drinking glasses.

00:37:26:29 – 00:37:40:29

So if I wanted to become which actually is kind of not a bad idea now that I’m talking to you about this, like if I wanted to photograph glassware, let’s say, how do I find people who would want their glassware photographed? How do I market to them?

00:37:43:27 – 00:38:17:06

Well, hello, Google. It would my sort of like starting point, right? So if you think of your niche and I’m I’m just talking about millinery, but for mine, but the same concept or the same theory could be transferred elsewhere. So it’s not like, you know, it has to be fashion, it has to be this. It could be anything, you know. So I would do a lot of research on Google. Find out who the milliners are. I want to be looking at what they’re doing, you know, because if you turn up and you find out where they’ve got incredible photographs taken, they’re not going to need you. You know, that’s quite a quite difficult thing to unseat if they’re very, very happy with it.

00:38:17:08 – 00:38:52:29

And a lot of milliners are happy doing photographs themselves or using their iPhones or that sort of stuff. And you know, that’s, you know, good luck to them. We’ve got no problem that that the sort of next stage is to probably look at various Facebook groups and joining those mainly as a kind of a listening tool and also observing what people are doing and what people are posting and that sort of thing. I don’t know if there’s a class where Facebook page, but I’m sure there is something there. And actually, the very first response, like I joined a group in Australia, hats are massive in Australia.

00:38:53:01 – 00:39:25:02

I think it’s a climate thing. That’s the reason for it. It’s like a really big thing in Australia. And you get some fabulous hats that I joined a group called Hat Academy, and I just put this thing on post one day and I just said, Hi, my name’s John, I’m photographer. I’m interested. I’d be really interested in doing some millinery photography. Is anybody interested? And that’s how that post became. But, you know, the one I told you about about the five models and you know that that started from that post.

00:39:25:10 – 00:39:56:25

So somebody approached me and then they said that I’m interested, and it probably took about three to four months to ferment, you know, backwards and forwards ideas and what have you and then and then disciplining those ideas because, you know, again, photographers and creatives were all over the place aren’t we. We need discipline to keep things on track, which is one of Angie’s biggest strengths. So that so it could be a Facebook page, it could be. I mean, the the whole concept that’s around Facebook is around, you know, building community.

00:39:56:27 – 00:40:28:20

So. And I realized that there wasn’t a lot of people doing it. So that gave me a slight advantage. So, so very loosely, social media channels may be writing emails to people, to milliners or, in your case, glassware and just say, but the one thing I’d say, Nikki, is, I think it really matters to have something that you could demonstrate, because whether so, go back to your glassware example. If you were going to do this, I’d say this weekend or next weekend or whatever to create some really good shots, three or four shots, you don’t need a lot.

00:40:28:24 – 00:40:47:15

You don’t need the whole portfolio of 20 or 30, just three or four shots that are there to open the door for you and then off you go from there. But it’s the communities that matter. And then from the communities, you get other connections like the colleges, then you get the skills and all this stuff, but they are not dragging you through. That’s the wrong word, but they are validating you through the process.

00:40:47:24 – 00:41:07:07

Yeah, yeah. I mean, it’s interesting just listening and talking about this because it really all is the same. It’s just a different target market. It’s building your portfolio. It’s building credibility. It’s building relationships. It’s providing great service. I mean, it really goes back to, it doesn’t matter what you’re shooting or what your genre is or your niche is, it’s all the same.

00:41:07:17 – 00:41:55:08

Yeah, yeah. And this is the this expression of which is the, you know, you need to. Again, I’m suggesting as advice that you don’t have to take it. It’s for me. The one thing I’ve realized is to separate out the art of photography from the business of photography and this that we’re talking about getting to a market, getting in there, finding out who to talk to, maybe having a few conversations, getting feedback on other photographers they’ve used. And I remember doing that once somebody said, Yeah, the photos are really awful. I said, Well, why were they awful? But I had to coax out people just through conversations, and it was like, OK, I understand why they’re awful now, because all they’d send them back, all, for example, you know, they’d use photographers that would take the photographs while they were smoking a cigarette, which you can imagine to a milliner.

00:41:55:10 – 00:42:01:23

Coming back with a hat is handmade and it smells of cigarette smoke. You know, it’s it’s not a good look for a business, is it?

00:42:02:11 – 00:42:28:15

No, no, it’s not. And that actually reminds me, okay, this is a total side note story, but we live out in the country and I love getting farmer fresh eggs. So I saw a sign and I was like, Oh, sweet, you know, fresh eggs, $3 a dozen. So I pull in and I got three dozen. And the second he handed them to me, I was like, Whoa, like the bags. Even the eggs smelled like cigarette smoke. And I was like, Oh God, no, thank you. Like, it’s just yes. So

00:42:30:12 – 00:42:47:13

the service part of it, the environment, everything matters. All the little details. It all matters. It really does. It does. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Well, very cool. It sounds like you guys have a really, really great thing going, where do you see yourself going from here? What’s your what’s your goal, I guess, for the next year and a half, two years?

00:42:47:21 – 00:43:22:22

Yeah, I there’s one which is the head shots, because I that would again, oh, I kind of like the pretentious to call them corporate portraits. And we’ve kind of been working through a pricing model on that and came up with something that was quite interesting is like I was in the art of thought process in a conversation with someone. And originally I used to just do a price, which is, you know, half a quarter, half day, whatever, and it would be anything up to, you know, 1500, two thousand pounds, you know, then I had an idea in my brain which was actually break it down by sitter.

00:43:23:06 – 00:43:55:07

So it actually. So here’s a nice little short tip if I give you somebody. And if you look at the pricing on our website, it’s like it’s by sitter. So the first is you have the higher the prices per sitter, the more people you have. The price gets really low. It goes down to about 50 pounds. Was $75 something else precedent, which sounds really cheap to you, but you’ve got to have 31 cities. But the customer will say the $75 or the fifty pounds think that’s pretty good. The whole purpose of my website is not to sell everything, job done, all the rest of it.

00:43:55:09 – 00:44:27:29

My whole purpose, the way we designed that website is to work as a filter, which is partly just to qualify people in, but also to qualify people out because we don’t always have time with people who can’t afford it or whatever the case may be. So that’s probably the next big thing that we’re going to be looking at. Who is the head shot packages, the corporate portrait type things. Beyond that, the really interesting thing was, I have a friend. This is the lady who was the managing partner at the law firm, and she’s moved away from that now and she’s looking at.

00:44:28:03 – 00:45:02:07

So she has a background as being, you know, managing partner of a major law firm got a lot of experience how to run a business, you know, and she decided I’ve had enough of that. I’ve been doing it for 30 odd years. I’m going to go and build a consultancy where I’m going to help women who are either being in the same position as I am but don’t know how to look after themselves. You know, from running a business. It’s a big leap, isn’t it? When you go from working from a corporate where you’re getting a salary every month and you know, you know what everything is to actually being on your own, you know, you’ve certainly got think about marketing, you got a marketing director anymore, you’ve got to think about finance.

00:45:02:09 – 00:45:35:23

She knows all of that. So she’s building a consultancy around it. And she said to me, So John, I’m going to need to get focused on and I know you and I like what you do. Could you do it? And I will pay you the full price for it. And I said, OK, cool. But also what I’ll do is I know I have lots of connections of women in the same position who I mean, I think what you’re saying in a roundabout way Nikki was, I know a lot of people and I’m happy to, you know, validate you for want of a better expression in terms of what you would probably call personal branding photography.

00:45:36:11 – 00:46:10:26

Beyond that, I’m interested in developing I this I tend to do sort of like looking a long way into the future. I want to bring in video because I think photography is good, but I think when you start bringing video in, it becomes even more powerful. So you’ve got the still for that kind of like. But then we and the things that we’re looking at here are similar lighting style. I don’t if you’ve come across a thing called Unilad on YouTube. No, I haven’t. Yeah, they interview people. And they’ve always they’re always interviewing people like, you’ve got an unusual life or something in their life that might be.

00:46:11:09 – 00:46:43:20

So some of them are quite random, I warn you in advance, but it might be a London gangster. And it’s like ten minutes they interview him and he tells his stories. You know, I want to do a compressed version of that, but for personal branding. So you have the imagery, you’ll have the video, so you can slice that into his big or small pieces as you want. But the interesting thing is Nikki I won’t do the video. What’s the point? I’m not going to spend five years learning videography. I’ll just outsource it to somebody in the same way.

00:46:43:22 – 00:47:13:06

I’ve got a web designer. If anybody needs for web design, I need any clients we talk to. I’ve got some better access to because this is a danger. As a photographer, you tend to take everything over, don’t you? You tend to do everything when actually it’s about being brave enough to say, here’s a trusted person. They’re a videographer. Why am I going to spend five years learning that when I could just tap him and use him or her from tomorrow? So that’s the sort of plan, so that’s the sort of direction we’re going in. I don’t think we’ll do that in a year and a half.

00:47:15:02 – 00:47:17:25

Well, it’s like, you know, you never know.

00:47:20:08 – 00:47:36:14

Well, thank you so much for sharing everything. It’s just such a cool business, and I’m excited for you and Angie. I think I think it’s really great. But I do have a couple more questions to ask you that I always. Yeah, go ahead. At the end of each episode, the first one is what is something you can’t live without when you’re doing a photo shoot?

00:47:37:01 – 00:47:37:16

Angie

00:47:37:27 – 00:47:41:00

I had a feeling you were going to say that.

00:47:41:17 – 00:48:13:08

Yeah. Well, you know, I could say music, but I’ve done shoots for that music before I can anyhow. Doesn’t mean I couldn’t say music because it’s always Angie’s choice for the music. I never get a choice. That’s not how many joking. But seriously, I would say that when I was photographing before Angie got involved, the business is so much more better run now because she’s has no fear about saying the hard things to clients. So if a client says, Oh, you’ve got it down, you will have to shoot five hats. Is it all over being 10 again? Whereas Ang will go No.

00:48:13:24 – 00:48:48:20

Four to go? Yes, you can, because I’ll be an extra 220 pounds. And she’s very good at those conversations. She’s also, the other thing that’s important with Angie is that because she’s a woman, she sees things from a woman’s point of view, not just in the styling of the photograph or the coloring and all that sort of stuff. But actually, when somebody walks up to our door and opens it and walks in, she what goes and I don’t know how this going to sound. But you know, women will look at how a woman keeps woman keeps the house, you know, so it’s a home, it’s a pride.

00:48:49:06 – 00:49:01:14

I’ve been in so many scruffy, scruffilly run studios and most, most of the time, they’re run by man, whereas it’s very different when a woman, when it gets that woman’s touch of cleanliness and tidiness and pride.

00:49:01:24 – 00:49:05:00

Yeah, yeah, someone’s got it. Yeah, someone’s got to have it. So

00:49:06:19 – 00:49:18:19

it just sounds like you have the, you know, different strengths, you know, and when you can come together as a team like that and have those different strengths that bring you, you know, that cover all the bases, it’s so it’s so wonderful.

00:49:19:03 – 00:49:28:10

Yeah, I mean, Angie she has no interest in post. She has no interest in the other thing. She has no interest in the conceptual designs. What Angie does very, very well is that she makes sure it’s delivered.

00:49:28:20 – 00:49:29:14

Hmm. Mm hmm.

00:49:29:19 – 00:49:34:23

Mm hmm. And and that doesn’t sound very exciting, Nikki does it, but it actually is. Absolutely.

00:49:34:29 – 00:49:39:03

It’s very, very exciting. I kind of wish I had an Angie.

00:49:41:21 – 00:49:49:00

Oh, it’s funny. My husband, Dan and I have very opposite strengths as well. But yeah, we we’re not going to be working together. It’s just not happening.

00:49:50:23 – 00:49:58:20

OK, so number two is how do you spend your time when you’re not working? And I’m assuming with Angie, but what do you guys do?

00:49:58:22 – 00:50:37:02

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I mean, blimey. More recently, after a strange but I’ve recently started discovering fiction and reading, which is kind of good. It gives me a chance to wind down. And so I also have a discipline about I do, you know, every night I go to bed, I get a chapter or whatever the case may be. I’ve also become addicted to swimming, so I’m lucky I’ve got a pool near behind me and it’s kind of swimming is quite good for me. Let’s me clear my head out because you know what? It’s like, Nikki. When you’re a photographer, you’re always thinking ideas on you. You’re thinking, Oh yeah, what about this? What about that? It’s kind of a blessing and a curse, isn’t it? In a way? But when I go swimming, that’s it.

00:50:37:04 – 00:50:54:22

It’s gone. And then I come out and I feel, really, I don’t. I mean, I get the benefit of physical fitness, but I do for the mental wellbeing. You know, outside of that, you know, I’m just sort of I’ve got two teenage kids, you know, one slightly older teenager. So that’s driving them to drive them. They’re basically that keeps you busy.

00:50:55:12 – 00:51:00:23

Yeah, yeah, that’s awesome. OK, number three, what is your favorite inspirational quote?

00:51:02:06 – 00:51:06:13

You know, it’s not a quote, but it’s an idea, is that acceptable.

00:51:06:29 – 00:51:11:06

Is that acceptable? Hmm, interesting. Tell me more. Why that one?

00:51:11:26 – 00:51:56:11

So I always think with a photograph and you may have come across this before, so. And I always look at my photographs this way and when I take them or when we take them and it’s about there’s three people in the photograph. I don’t know if you’ve ever come across that before. And the three people on the photograph are the sitter are the photographer and the viewer, the person you don’t see. And there’s a dynamic going on there that I find really interesting. So the way that the sitter is posed, you know, the way that the photographer is photographed him or her, the way that that’s going to be perceived by some other person could be anywhere in the world on Instagram or, you know, whatever channel that you’re sharing it to.

00:51:56:20 – 00:52:09:26

And I find that very interesting because something that I made, that I may get, that somebody else in the room doesn’t get somebody else somewhere else does get. So that was kind of that’s kind of like a big driver for me. It’s not really. It’s more of a concept.

00:52:10:14 – 00:52:12:09

I love it. I love it. I love that.

00:52:12:25 – 00:52:44:15

It comes from a guy I first came across it from. I think Simon Scharma, the historian. He did a series on portraiture, and that’s interesting as well. That’s the thing that fascinates me is portraiture. You know, the things we can take for inspiration from, you know, all this from three, four, five, six hundred years ago and still use them in photography. I mean, Rembrandt is the classic one, of course, but all of those sorts of things, you know, we’ve got such a catalogue behind us that we can use to go forward with as well.

00:52:44:17 – 00:52:56:18

It’s not just about, you know, a photograph, so to speak. It’s about that emotion that you come back to. I could probably pull a quote out the top of my head. And yeah, I’ll go for that because you call. If you want to get something done, get a woman involved,

00:52:59:08 – 00:53:30:13

get an Angie. No, I like the idea of I’m tempted next time to start saying, you know, a quote or a concept because I’m not really a quote person per se. Maybe it’s because I struggle with remembering things the first time that I heard it. I don’t know. It’s just a if I have, I guess so. But concepts in the way you know, the way I look at things. That’s a lot easier for me to say, like, Ooh, I love, you know, I live in this way or I treat people with this way or when I have an idea, I ask myself these questions.

00:53:30:15 – 00:53:31:28

So I like that. I like this.

00:53:32:22 – 00:54:08:12

I think I think the other I mean, it’s slightly it’s slightly connected to it. But for me of the photograph, pretty much the sort of stuff that I do, the sort of stuff that you do, the sort of stuff that Sue does that sort of thing. Ultimately, what we’re trying to do is create an emotional connection that just happens to be that the medium we’re using is photography and I love that. I mean, you know, the women that I photograph are typically quite aloof, quite haughty, quite provocative looking, you know, and I kind of like that thing that they have all of this femininity, but with their eyes, they are in complete control, you know, and I like that kind of empowerment that comes out of it.

00:54:08:14 – 00:54:24:15

So it’s it’s kind of, you know, and those styles will come back from photographers long since gone from portraits from the Renaissance, that sort of thing. It’s always about that power in the portrait, you know, and that’s that’s that’s why I say, look to this day, it’s why I still love doing it.

00:54:25:00 – 00:54:31:14

Yeah, that’s awesome. OK, last question for you is what would you tell people who are just starting out?

00:54:32:07 – 00:54:38:16

Believe in yourself. Don’t worry about the technology. YouTube will sort that out for you. All those things.

00:54:40:22 – 00:54:44:06

Don’t be scared to ask. I know I’m giving you a long list here.

00:54:46:27 – 00:55:16:29

Actually, it’s quite funny. I was thinking about this the other day. I was talking to my son about it. So sometimes, though, you kind of get a lot of YouTube and you don’t get locked into it, you can be a bit of a rabbit hole. So I’ve learned quite a lot of stuff. I’m self-taught. Nobody’s I’ve not had a formal education of photography, something I’ve had to learn and experiment with and all that. And probably that’s the advice I’d give. Well, the two things I give is to experiment and try things be brave. And the second thing is, I would say, is to make sure you separate the art and the business of photography. I mean, they are next to each other. You don’t separate them miles apart.

00:55:17:19 – 00:55:45:04

But you know, the stuff that we talked about earlier on about going to markets going into communities is very different to that how you set the lights up. And it’s very here’s the thing, Nikki, is that when you’re struggling, I bet you you’ll fall towards the art of photography. If you’re not getting business and you try and hide from the business of photography, because that’s the easy option, isn’t it? Go and get yourself a new lens. Try a new shot when actually it’s the business of photography that makes it successful or not, as the case may be.

00:55:45:22 – 00:55:54:17

Yeah, yeah, that’s great. Yeah, I love. I love your advice and I just, yeah, I love your voice too. You have a great voice. I feel like you can narrate books or something.

00:55:55:09 – 00:55:57:17

Well, that’s on the market. I’ll charge £300 for two.

00:55:57:19 – 00:56:01:08

It was like, now we’re going to have to talk about that beforehand.

00:56:02:03 – 00:56:26:24

Well, first of all, thank you to you and to you guys and Sue for inviting me. And let me tell you a story to tell us a little of Angie’s and my story. You know, Sue is a great advocate. You know, she’s she’s somebody that you can look up to, isn’t she so? And the whole concept behind it? So, you know, we’re really chuffed and frankly honored to be invited on. I just hope I haven’t talked too much.

00:56:27:28 – 00:56:34:05

Oh, no, no, no, you were. It was perfect. I learned a lot. I think it’s wonderful. You did great. You did great. Tell Angie I said, Thank you too.

00:56:34:26 – 00:56:39:13

Yeah, sure. Well, she’ll be listening to see how many market book next to see how many times you just say the word Angie.

00:56:40:24 – 00:56:45:23

Angie, thank you. Thank you for being sort of part of our interview. Next time I’ll interview, you know?

00:56:46:21 – 00:57:00:28

Well, is the funny thing is, Nikki, it’s kind of a family affair. Sort of the reason it might sound sounds to good is because my son is training as a sound engineer. Daughter on occasion helps us because she’s a makeup artist, so she sometimes comes and does makeup. So we actually, you know, we’ve got the whole thing sealed up here.

00:57:01:17 – 00:57:10:12

Great. That’s awesome. Very cool. Very cool. Yeah. Well, thank you again. And yeah, I’m excited. This is great. Good stuff.

Thank you so much for listening to the Portrait System Podcast. Your five-star reviews really help us to continue what we do. So, if you like listening, would you mind giving us a review wherever you listen? I also encourage you to head over to SueBryceEducation.com, where you can find all of the education you need to be a successful photographer. There are over 1,000 on-demand educational videos on things like posing, lighting, styling, retouching, shooting, marketing, sales, business, and self-value. 

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