Well, hello Martin.

Hello Jason.

Hello. We are here to introduce a new little side project that you and I are working on called three by two photocast or three x two podcast.

I've been excited for this or whatever.

You want to call it. Almost any URL will work if you try them. So three x two pixel, three by two pix, three by two pix all spelled out. It doesn't matter, they all go to the same place.

I've been excited for this, but you just kind of go all out with all of the setup with like URL's and images and it's like I'll be in the middle of something in a different time zone. It's like, oh my goodness, he's so dedicated. Look at all of this. We should actually introduce ourselves properly. I'm Martin Feld talking to Jason Burke. You might know us from hemispheric views, a podcast that we co host with our beloved Andrew Canyon from the NBL Pocket podcast. I had to throw that in there. But this is a different. Yeah, you know, gotta plug his basketball passion. But this is a bit of a different beast. And I don't want to steal all your thunderjason because it really was your brainchild this side project. But it's really a photo centric podcast. It's about our passion for photography. We're both really into it. I mean, you wouldn't call yourself a pro though, would you? I would call myself a hobbyist.

Definitely not. No, I'm hobbyist at best. Enthusiast.

Great. Yeah, enthusiast. And this first episode is really just to lay the groundwork, just say, what is this format going to be? What's the podcast all about? Because we love hemispheric views. That's our main podcast. We love doing it with Andrew. But there's a certain flavor of photography discussion or a certain extent that we want to go to here that we don't want to litter hemispheric views with. We don't want to clutter it up. And we're going to be discussing photos that we love, talking about what we enjoy about other people's photos at a length and in a weird kind of audio only way, where we'll refer you to the photos, which I suppose deserves its own dedicated channel. What do you want to say about the format?

Yeah, I think that's spot on. I mean, if there's any. Any better format for visual, it's got to be podcasting, right? I mean that's just like what better medium for talking about photography? But I think it makes a lot of sense. Like you said, we talk about. We try to cram in photo stuff to other shows a lot. And it's not everyone's thing. And I think you and I, we tend to have side channel conversations in messaging and discord or whatever about photography related stuff. And it had been on my mind for a while of, is there a way that we could do another show about photography, but not about our own stuff? Not about gear, not about reviews, not about the hot new. Whatever lens came out that week? Like, there's plenty of people doing that that are far more capable of talking about speeds and feeds and all that stuff. My kind of thought was just, what if we grabbed photos that we come across over the course of a month and just share them with each other and talk about how we feel about them and how. And maybe some things that the other person finds in those photos that we didn't see. So it was more about sharing other people's work, I think was the main purpose for what I wanted to do.

Yeah, exactly. And to explain the title that you came up with. Three by two. It's really three photos for each person. So generally in each episode, maybe it'll change with listener feedback or how we feel about it episode to episode. But the general, consistent format that we're proposing is we're each going to bring three photos to discuss. So there'll be six photos discussed, explored and linked in each episode.

Yep. And three by two happens to be my favorite aspect ratio for photos. So there you go.

Oh, really? Yeah, it makes much more sense now. It didn't even click. Well, I'm a four by three guy.

So there you go.

Damn it.

Yeah.

Well, now we'll have to get four.

By three pics.

Also. I hope for this recording it doesn't sound too bad. We've got heavy rain here in Wollongong where I'm recording, so who knows? I could be ruining the show from the very beginning.

It's all good. I guess that's another maybe point to just say that we are in two very different places when it comes to photography. So I'm in the Pacific Northwest in the United States. And as Martin said, he's in Wollongong down there in New South Wales, Australia.

Best city on the planet. But I won't argue too much about that. We already had the aspect ratio problem.

Anything else we want to share with this before we.

Well, I think we should give some context of, like, why we enjoy photography, first of all. And maybe the things that we like to shoot personally and the systems that we like maybe our experience, so there's some context, because, as we both already said, we're not really professionals. We do it because we're enthusiasts or hobbyists, but it might give people a bit of context for maybe why we choose the things that we like. So, Jason, why don't you. You can start off, tell us about your photographic history or what you enjoy about it.

Yeah, I could give a brief overview. I started into photography, not super early, probably when I was, I don't know, maybe high teens, 1819 years old, something like that. It's just I've always had a thing for still photography, like moving pictures. Great. But there was just something about the constraint of only being able to get one frame at a time that was very appealing to me. So I got into digital photography first, actually, my good old Nikon D 40, I think it was. I think it was a D 40, and quickly progressed through different. Different cameras, different lenses, and trying to figure things out. Briefly went into film photography from there. So I actually did film second from digital, which is kind of weird, but that's what I did, and then went back to digital. Just, I think, for the reason a lot of people probably choose. Digital is convenience. You know, you can take one shot or 10,000 shots and it's all on one little SD card, so that's pretty handy. And I've always been into technology and stuff anyway, so doing things related to a computer, pretty natural, and I've really just been into it ever since. It's always been the one steady hobby that I've had across, I would say, the majority of my life at this point. And still to this day, I think that it ebbs and flows a little bit sometimes. If you look at my library in photos, some years, there's tens of thousands of photos, some years not so much, but it's always consistently been there, and it's always driven me to go places that I might not otherwise because I want to try and capture them.

That's a great summary of your approach. For me, I remember getting, I think, a little compact camera, a little point and shoot. Canon. Is it Powershot? I'll actually have to check and put it in the show notes because I've forgotten what the model was. It's somewhere in my cupboard here. But that was my first kind of exploration as a kid, you know, going around and taking it on trips and stuff and just getting used to that idea of composition. I have some of those earlier photos, and of course, by these days standards, it's. They're just not really up to scratch, but they're very, they're very precious to me, as it would be for anyone who has family photos. And it was on my. It was after I finished exams in year twelve, heading towards my 18th birthday, that my family, my parents got me a Canon 500 D APS C interchangeable lens camera. And that was my first proper go at, I suppose, photography with a big or dedicated camera in that sense. Now, I still had no clue at this stage. I was on auto mode and doing all these other kind of scenery or landscape settings that they had. And I don't say that pejoratively or in any kind of elitist sense when I say no idea, because you can stick on auto mode and shoot in that way as much as you like. But I never really tried to get into the whole manual thing or understand the elements of the camera. I was very focused on just using it for travel and just getting into composition and stuff. But over time, I got more and more into it and I started to discover that same kind of passion for still photography that you were describing. But I always found it interesting in the sense of framing, how what you chose to omit from the photo was often just as important as what you were including. It's that framing of a situation, movies, tv, any kind of moving picture. Yeah, you're still choosing angles and making decisions about what you include and exclude, but you have the greater luxury of showing a scene or developing a story and showing the surroundings of a character or something. When you take a photo of something or someone, you're making this very deliberate decision to capture that one moment and that one thing. So photography, I think, has that very focused, deliberate kind of pressure on choosing that moment and over time, doing stuff at work. I got to bring photography to kind of work and do things like events and things through my different communications roles. But even though I've done photography at work, I wouldn't call myself a professional. I kind of regard myself as a hobbyist or enthusiast who's had the luxury of doing fun photography at work. It's a fun part of my job when it can be, and I suppose over time, you know, I don't want to be too negative about this, but I feel like the iPhone both improved and damaged my photographic hobby over time, because the iPhone became this carry everywhere device, so convenient. You can just snap photos of family, travel, everything so easily. But it distracted me somewhat from that canon camera. I still used it, I took it to places, but I never invested quite the same amount of time that I should have or like I did earlier, because the iPhone was so easy. And it was when my wife and I had our son that I rediscovered that passion for photography because I wanted to follow more family moments, both with him and with the broader family. So I thought, you know what, I love this canon, but maybe it's time for something new. Things have obviously moved on and I haven't kept up with it. And that's when I made the move to Om system, formerly part of Olympus, by the recommendation of this, like, the best salesperson I've ever met. And I understood at least, wow, this mirrorless kind of micro four thirds system has all the compactness and the power that I want. And yeah, sure, things like full frame might give you more light in lower light situations and certain advantages, but it was that compactness, that portability, chasing around a young kid that made me go, wow, I love photography again. So I've kind of gone all in on that, chasing down different lenses, often used or discounted so I don't explode my wallet, which is an interesting challenge. And families come along for the ride, being in even more photos than they were before. But yeah, I'd say that discovering micro four thirds has been the reinvigoration of my photographic hobby.

Yeah, totally. And you mentioned something that I had to just reiterate the idea of omitting things from a frame. Photography is one of those mediums where you can actually force someone else to look at something. Almost exactly. They're still going to have their own interpretation, don't get me wrong, but you're forcing them to look at exactly what you want them to look at. Even if you're standing right next to somebody and you say, hey, look over there at that bird or whatever, they're going to see it. They're going to see everything around it. They're going to choose what they want to be in or out of their frame. But that photo means you get to actually put them almost in your eyes, I guess for lack of a better description. But I think that's a really powerful thing to be able to do that.

Yeah, and we're going to be doing that doubly so on this podcast because we're going to be telling you which photos to look at.

Exactly. That's the hope.

So it's a bossy show already, so we covered everything. Do you think that we need for listeners? Do you think they've got the context for this show?

I hope that that gives everybody kind of a rough idea of where we want to go. This is episode zero. We've somewhat described what we're planning to do doesn't necessarily mean that episode 510 and 15 will be that. But, hey, we got to start somewhere, right? So I think that is a good, rough interpretation of what this show will be for you, and we hope that you join us for episode one coming soon.

And I think at this time, we're kind of committing to a monthly thing. That's what's.

Good point.

Yeah.

In terms of when to expect, don't expect a new one to pop into your podcast player there every day, every week, every month, roughly, I would say life, depending. But it should be doable if we somewhat stick to our relatively small format here.

All right, that's a good reminder to end this now so we can get to the next one.

Sounds good.

See you then, Martin thanks, Jason. See you. Listeners.