3x2 Photocast - Episode 02

Rightio, we're back. Three by two. It's been a month.

It has been a month. Somehow you never know when you do something monthly if it's gonna feel like a lot still or not very much, but I think it feels like the right amount, which is interesting, I think so.

Listeners who've gotten in touch with us seem to think it's okay, which is good. But it's funny because I know we've been on glass and we do other kind of stuff online, chatting about photos. So it's like we kind of have a little bubbling away. Three by two, anyway, with stuff like hemispheric views and glass and everything. Anyway, so this is like the formal thing where we come back together.

Yeah, this is like the. The final book report that we have to write, you know, after we've quote, read the book.

Yeah, the research, the really hard hitting research of photos.

It's hard work. I mean, you got to look through all these wonderful photos and then you got to. I mean, oh, it is kind of hard because, like, distilling down to three only per month is. That's tough because I look at a ton of them on there and, yeah, three is not very many.

Well, yeah, I have it on glass pretty regularly. You know how you have, like, the bookmark function and it's, oh, I'm really gonna just bookmark the things that I think are special, and it's gonna be a really easy to visit thing later on, like an archive. And I'm, like, telling people, I've bookmarked yours, I've bookmarked yours. And it doesn't mean I'm Willy nilly handing out bookmarks. There's just so many good photos. And I'm like, ah, this is. It's like liking or appreciating things.

Totally.

But, yeah. Before we get into discussing our three photo selections each, if you missed the first episode, listeners, we're offering three photos from anywhere on the web, any photo services that we like, and we're gonna discuss what we like about them. I thought we might have a bit of a chat about some gear that we got recently, and that's not to turn this into the gear show. I just think it might be interesting to put a little bit out there of what we might have been trying separately. And then we'll get into the meat of the chat. Now, anyone who listens to hemispheric views might know already, Jason, that you. You've kind of undergone a bit of a brand fan transformation. What did you get recently?

It's true. Yeah. And it is related. It's not just strictly gear. It is related to photography in the sense that I think it's definitely affecting the way that I try to make photos. So, yeah, it is no secret at this point that all of my cameras now are sigma cameras, which still feels weird to say, but they are. And I recently got the Sigma SD Quattro H and the Sigma DP one quattro to accompany the. Already in my possession, Sigma Fpl. The names are just. They just roll right off the tongue so easily. But. Yeah, this.

I like the letter P, though. I've noticed P is very important.

Yeah. Yeah. I assume for photo. I don't know. Who knows? Yeah. The SD quattro is like a. It's like a. It's a big camera. It's. It's like a big slr kind of style looking thing with a really weird mount that's really long. And it's also a foveon sensor. But it's interesting because it also has the. The IR filter is removable. So instead of, you know, the. The old days of. Or I guess the current days, even of buying a camera and having someone surgically remove that and sort of having. That's now my IR camera, it can never be reverted back. This, you just pop out a little filter and you can do fun IR stuff and then pop it back in and it's a regular camera again. So that's really interesting. And then the DP one, I kind of call it like my point and shoot almost, where it's just very, very small fixed lens, 19 mm, something like 32 by the time you do conversion. But it's just real easy to hand hold and carry around as like a little pocket point and shoot. So I've got three different. Three very different cameras now. Big slr aps ch, the little aPs C pocketable one, and then the FPL, which is the. The monster like, 61 megapixel, full frame, regular sensor. So it's a weird world I'm living in these days. But it's really fun because it's put a lot of interesting constraints around taking photos because they're all very old. Honestly, by, you know, camera standards, when we have new cameras every single year, sometimes multiple in a year, some of these digital cameras are like ten years old. But I think just by the nature of different technologies, they. I think they still hold up image quality wise. I mean, they're not taking home any records for speed or anything like that. But image quality wise, I find them.

To be quite nice that's fantastic. I wanted to ask you, when you use a different camera or you've gone and bought three new ones, like, three new old cameras, essentially it would change not only how you take photos, but maybe what you appreciate about others or how you see photos. Do you feel like something's changed in how you're looking at images now that you've got these different cameras that behave differently from ones that you've used before?

Yeah, I feel like this has given, it's kind of like a little bit like shooting with kind of one arm behind your back a little bit. And what I mean by that is just that they're a lot less forgiving in the sense that if you have just some crazy camera now and you just, like, say you throw it on, like, full auto everything, you're pretty much guaranteed to get a photo. That's fine. It may not be the most creative or the most artistic, or, you know, frame the best. You could probably fix it, fix that by cropping. But as far as just being an in focus, probably pretty tack sharp photo. Like, you could probably get that with most modern cameras. Now I'm more faced with, like, I really have to. I'm back to, it feels like film photography with a digital camera where I'm being much more cognizant of my exposure triangle now and, like, making sure that things are set up properly, or else I'm gonna get home and have 150 megabyte files that are just garbage. So I'm being much more thoughtful, and it's making me think a lot more back to exposure triangle of yesteryear, which is just not something I think you have to think about a lot these days, especially with, like, phones, where you just whip a phone out of your pocket, slam on the button, it does, you know, whatever they always claim, like, 80 billion operations a second or whatever, and a photo comes out and you're like, great. That was, you know, it's in focus. It's not blurry. It's. It's the right color. Everything just kind of looks fine, whereas this is the opposite of that. Like, think about what you're doing, understand what the light is like, and set everything accordingly.

I agree with what you mean about the whole exposure triangle thing. You just whip your phone out, take a photo, and that affects how you look at photos as well. Positively, too. But, yeah, I think it's cool. I've enjoyed being witness to your Sigma transformation, so it's been funny, but also very interesting. You're like, all in, just.

And the acquisition process has been historian, its own. And I'll have to write something about it here at some point. But yeah, what about you? What's your new stuff?

Oh, well, it's not as dramatic as yours, but it's something that I've been coveting for quite a while. Basically, if anyone listening follows anything to do with micro four thirds, mainly that's Om system, formerly Olympus and Lumix. You'll know someone by the name of Robin Wong. He's this fantastic malaysian photographer who used to be an Olympus ambassador and he loves the system. And a while ago he made this video about how the thing that stopped him from going full frame or the thing that he enjoys most about micro four thirds as a lens option is what's called the 75 mm f one eight. And in full frame terms with that two times crop factor for micro four thirds, that makes it a 150 millimeter prime, which is very odd, right? And I never really needed it early on, but I kind of wanted it because whether it was just getting a little bit closer to something with a brighter aperture for the system or doing really cool portraits, I loved the look of all of the photos out there and everyone who kind of uses the system and has it says that it's one of the sharpest, if not the sharpest lens in the system. And so I got it and it's just this, I'm holding it up here so listeners can't see. You can check the show notes. It's actually like, as is the spirit of micro four thirds, a very small lens. And it's just got this, you know, simple manual focus ring. It's really actually quite light for what it does. And I wanted to bring it up because I used it quite a bit for, I suppose, the months category on glass for spring. And I found that using this lens gave a really interesting look and really challenged me to take photos differently because it's a prime and you kind of think, oh, I might just sneak up as I would with a 50 millimeter equivalent or something. Oh no, no, you really have to stand back. And it was just this cool experiment. And I actually have to give credit to my mum because we were walking around in Sydney just on a bit of a family weekend thing with my relatives. We went up and I stumbled upon this used at a camera shop. And camera shops you would think are normally more expensive, but it was actually cheaper than what I had seen from individual sellers online. And I was like, oh, should I get it? No, I don't need to buy it. She was like, you know what? Consider this your super early Christmas present, because I never know what to get you. So it's actually a lovely purchase. It was a gift from my mum, so thank you to my beautiful mum for gifting me the 75 mm f 1.8. And, yeah, so great fun to experiment with and also giving me an appreciation of photos that you have to take with a step back.

Yeah, that's funny. You held it up, and even though you already said it was 75, which is 150, like, that's not the picture I had in my head of what the lens was going to look like. It seems very small for that.

Yeah, it's just in your palm. It's just. It's hilarious. And it doesn't feel too heavy. It's just. It's just a great bit of fun. And I've actually used a little bit of work as well for portraits, and they came up really well.

It's the opposite of the normal, like, 50 millimeter, where it's the, you know, zoom with your legs, which is, you know, get in there. Like, get up. It's not a zoom. Walk towards your subject to take a photo. This is the opposite. It's like, nope, take a step back. No, few more steps. Nope, few more. Keep going. Back it up.

Yeah. And don't trip over. Just don't trip over while you walk backwards.

Exactly. That's hilarious. Oh, man, that's great. Your spring series was really fun. So I think that knowing that you were using this for that is even better. Thank you.

Yeah, I really enjoyed it. Not all of the photos were taken with it, but a good deal of them. So what do you reckon? Is it time to get to some photo review?

Yeah, let's do it. Jump in. Do you want to. You want to kick it off with your first one and we'll go back and forth again?

No worries. Sounds good. Okay, so I'm going to start off with a photo that I spotted on glass. Now, if you are on glass, you would probably have seen the name Marcus Natievi pop up. I hope I'm pronouncing it correctly, with that umlaut in there. And it's a photo called robot uprising. Wow. I love this photo. It appeals to every science fiction dystopian urge that I have. Just fantastic. And check the show notes. Remember, if you're listening, so you can see what we're talking about. This, essentially, is a very low angle shot. It's, like, right on the ground with. It appears to be asphalt or bitumen. It's in some sort of car park. And you're looking up at what I assume is, like, an EV charger, but you can see that it's this kind of robot style head on a pole with these bright green, almost matrix esque, you knew that was coming. Kind of glowing icons, and as you look into that blurred background, they're continuing in this line, and it looks like this march of super minimalist, eerie robots. I just think it's tremendously done. So beautifully done with the focus. Markus has done such a good job, and the way that that blur and the reflection of the water frames the whole thing, it feels like this AI trend is actually going to destroy us.

Yeah. So, I mean, people don't know this, but we put these photos into a shared place where we can kind of both take a peek at them a little bit before we get going. So it's not just, like, a complete surprise. I opened this, and I just stared at it for a while because I was like, what is going on here? This clearly is very robotic. There's a strong here they come for us kind of vibe to it, with the weather seeming to be, like, just rained or maybe still raining, and it's kind of foggy. It gives that ominous feel. And the way that these, they have to be EV chargers. They look like it. There's, like, a little weird, funny car shape on top. I don't know where, what country these are from. I've never seen car chargers that look like this, but it's very intentionally made to look like a robot. I have to imagine it is a very head shaped top with the symmetrical indicators on it where it's got two little plugs that are both lit up. That, boy, if you, if those don't look like eyes to you, I don't know what does. And because of that shallow f 17, like, only one is in focus, and all the rest of them fall off in the background, but they just become more and more ominous as you go back, because they get wider and wider, and, oh, it's just, it's got such a feeling to it. I really, really like it.

Yeah. And the thing that I took away from this photo the most was that it doesn't matter how good your camera is or how cool the scene might be, if you don't take it from the right angle or with consideration of how you're composing it, it's not going to be the same photo. So whether Marcus got down on the ground himself or was using a tilt screen pointing up this photo and its effect is made entirely depends on the fact that it's low. It makes something that might have been designed to appear friendly, look ominous or terrifying or tall. So he got down, and that's what makes the photo to me.

Yeah. Making us, the viewers, feel small and insignificant compared to these things. Super powerful.

Yeah.

If you were just at eye level or even waist level, it'd be like a parking lot, probably.

Yeah.

I mean, it would probably still look pretty cool. But I think you're right. The angle is definitely something to think about here.

Yeah. So that's my first one.

Awesome. All right, I will jump over to my first one from Jada Kavanaugh. I will say. And name pronunciation is, you know, it's what it is. So this one is. And this was one that I came across. This is on glass as well. And I was scrolling through and was like, wait. It sort of. It gave me a. What's that show? The stranger things, like with the upside down kind of feeling where it's. I believe it's a lake. It looks like it's probably a lake where you're basically looking across a absolutely still, like a sheet of glass. The water over to maybe an island that is kind of a half dome shape with a bunch of trees on it. But the island and the trees and everything are absolutely pitch black. Probably a sun, you know, right around sunset, just happening, about to be dark. And then it's reflected mirror image into the perfectly still lake. So in the middle, you just have this eye shaped blackness with the just tips of the trees and foliage stuff coming up, reflected on both sides again. And then around it, just the blue of the sky. But then that's reflected down into the water as well. So you have the same blue in the water. And it's just this kind of perfectly symmetrical image of the top half being what you're seeing and the bottom half being perfectly reflected down into the water. And I love how the middle is just void of any. There's nothing there. You're not seeing anything about the trees. It's as if it is just a black hole. And I think that just made it all the more interesting to me versus if we had seen a perfectly. If it were, like, perfectly exposed across the whole thing and you saw all the trees, I don't think it would be as powerful as it is here. But, yeah, the shape is just. It's eye shaped. And I don't know if that's what's drawing you in to just really wonder. Because it gives that human, as humans, we see eyes, and we're attracted to looking at eyes. And I am wondering if that's happening in my lizard brain of just like, oh, that's an eye. Wait, no, it's not. What's going on here? So, yeah, just a really cool image. Very simple, not a lot of detail in it. And that's. I think the absence of detail makes it really interesting.

Yeah, I agree. When you were saying the absence of detail, I like the fact that Jada has avoided any temptation of bringing up shadows. That's, you know, people would say, oh, you shoot raw so that you can fix highlights and shadows, for example. But the strength of this photo is that you can see none of that. It's just drawing you in like a black hole, kind of like this. It's almost like an event horizon with leaves around the edge. It feels like I'm being sucked into a black hole or a wormhole or something. It's great. And then you've got that little reminder just up the back on the right. I don't know if it's a mountain peak or a hill, but it's a different sort of shape. And it gives you that sense of even though this thing is totally flattened, you can see another plane or an idea of three dimension in the background. So, awesome photo. I agree. And I just want to say I'm also happy to see a micro four thirds user and the twelve to 40 f 2.8. I have that lens and I love it. So I look at this and I'm like, oh, what photo could I take with that? You know, just roaming through the wilderness.

Absolutely, yeah. And it does that. It has that effect, too. Whereas if this were hanging on a wall in a gallery, I feel like you'd be sort of drawn to just keep getting closer and closer just to see if you could see anything in the middle and try to pick out a little thing in there just to see if there was anything there. But, yeah, really, really interesting. Really cool. I like this one a lot.

Cool. Thanks for sharing it, Jason. And thank you for taking it, Jada.

All right, number two for you.

This is by Florian on his site. Florian photo and I discovered this through his connected blog or site on microdot blog. And the caption that goes along with this is they were quite impressed by the training session going on next to the playground. And you can see it's a photo of who I assume are his kids from behind sitting on. Is it one of those spinners? I think you stand on the top spinner. Yeah. And they're looking ahead at these women doing what I assume is some sort of gymnastic or cheerleading training session, but everyone's dressed for, you know, like, cooler months. They've got jackets and stuff. There's bicycles to the right. They're kind of on sand looking towards these women training in the park. And I think what I love about this so much, other than the fact that it's a cool looking black and white image, is that, you know, when you take a shot with an iPhone, and this isn't with an iPhone, from what I can see, so much of, like, digital photography with an iPhone is maybe, like, overly sharp. Right. There's so much. It doesn't have that same kind of depth as what a larger camera or larger sensor would provide. This feels like it has all the depth of a photo from a larger camera, and that kind of maybe, I don't know, drama about the clouds or the sky or whatever. But so much is also in focus and sharp in the way that's nicer than maybe what an iPhone would take. I don't know. What if I'm making sense? But I feel like there's so many planes and so much depth and three dimension to this and the fact that he perfectly took that moment when that woman is being thrown up in the sky and they're just looking over there, this just feels like a perfectly captured, beautifully sharp, deep moment. Like an instant perfectly. So, yeah. I just wanted to congratulate Florian on a great photo and also personal, because I assume his family's in it somehow.

You were at the right place, the right time. It just feels like it was just perfect for that. And I think what I really took away from this. Well, there's a couple. So a couple things stood out to me. So I think the black and white is great. It makes me want to see what the color version would be, but I almost don't because I think left up to the imagination maybe is better. The foot of one of the kids that's sitting there in the boot, how their foot is turned. So there's this heart on the side of it. Just felt like it just, like, add that little extra, like, bit of perfectness to the photo. And what I really love about this is that you think of kids on a playground, and theoretically, there's nothing better as a kid than going to the playground. Like, that is the end all, be all thing. Yet this other activity is so engaging that we're just gonna sit down and take a minute here and watch this other thing that is so much better. And it's another thing outside. It's not. It's not a tv show. It's not anything like that. It's just like, oh, what are these people doing? And in my head, I just think projecting onto them, them thinking, I wish that was us. Could they throw us up in the air? Could we do that someday too? Kind of an aspirational thing. A little bit like, oh, when we get bigger, maybe we can do things like that. So, yeah, it's just like a cool glimpse into. We have no idea what they're thinking, but you feel like you do. And I just think that's really, really interesting. And I love the fact that, like you said, there's. That she, the one in the air is not perfectly still shot at 4000, you know, 4000th of a second. It's just got that little bit of blur motion to let you know, like she's coming back down or just reaching that something's happening there where there's movement and a sense of movement when there's stillness everywhere else. I think that's. That's great. It's just really, really great capture overall. This is one of those ones where I want to know the story behind it. You saw this was about to happen, grabbed a camera and got it. Was this your 10th kind of try at figuring out how you wanted this to be? This one makes me want to know the couple minutes before and the couple minutes after.

Yeah, it has the feeling or the vibe of something that you would want to stage. It feels like it was staged, but you know that it isn't, incidentally, spotted. So. Yeah, I love that because if you tried to stage something like this, it maybe wouldn't have the same feeling. So, yeah. Well done, Florian. Yeah.

You don't imagine Florian is back there going, okay, throw her now. I don't think that's happening.

No, I hope not. That would be odd. All right, your next one.

All right, my second one is from Amanda Powell, who's also on glass. And if you read, it's called I've only ever wanted fire. And it's got a longer description in there as well about. I think there must have been a prompt on glass for self portraits or something related to that because that's what the comment is there, which I don't know. I must have missed that or it was before. I don't know. Anyway, the image itself is the person standing in the middle. It is as stated. It's a self portrait with a giant fiery red ring behind them, all black around outside of that. And they are in the middle and they are moving, maybe shaking their head or, you know, doing something with the hair, because it's very soft and, like, flowy in the image, and you can just get a good sense of movement there. I don't know what's making the red behind it. Maybe it's like a. Like a light, light painting kind of situation where it's a long exposure and you do the, you know, the light painting. And maybe she's moving as well. But it just gives me this, like, blood moon or mars or just like a planetary kind of feeling of just this single person in front of it. And it just makes it feel very, like, intimate and alone almost. And her clothes are all black as well, so you just see a little bit of them against this red with black background and then black in the center. It's just a very striking image. I really, really like it.

Yeah, it is very cool. And when you look at the caption, the fact that Amanda says, it was late, I was in my pajamas, but this is almost straight out of camera. That shows some serious talent or creativity, because if you're just out in your pajamas and you take this photo, I mean, it looks like she's on a different planet.

Yeah.

Or it's some sort of super compressed, as you said, blood moon or sun in the distance that's been brought into the picture. It's. I'm kind of speechless and flabbergasted. I mean, it looks otherworldly, but she's described it as ordinary. So I think that speaks volumes about how she knows how to use a camera.

Yeah, we talked on the last episode about one of the images being a movie poster. This feels like a album cover for sure. Like a giant vinyl with this as the album cover and then the band name, this would just be next level.

Yeah. Actually, Amanda, I don't know if you are a musician or if you have any albums out, but if you could just make an album to justify this and make the vinyl, this big red circle with you in the middle, like just the picture so you spin around. That would be cool.

Yeah, it's.

I'd buy it. I'd buy it.

Absolutely. Really, really excellent. I just. I love everything about this.

Awesome. Good choice. Now, my next one is a bit unorthodox and maybe doesn't fit the brief of this podcast perfectly, but I wanted to bring it up because of, I suppose, who this person is or what they're known for doing. So anyone who found their way here because maybe they're a Mac fan or like Apple products or maybe heard us on hemispheric views separately with Andrew, the person I've chosen here is known as nanoraptor. Now, as far as I'm aware, she's from Australia, and for years she's been doing these far out, wacky, photoshopped imaginings of Apple products that don't exist, like retro and new. And this is actually one of her more, I suppose, modest creations in the sense that it's an existing Apple product shot. Right. And it's a photo of a Mac mini, which has been adjusted to look retro with the rainbow apple logo and apple Garamond font on the front from like the nineties or eighties? Nineties era. But the reason I chose this was because the photo that we just discussed, Jason. Right. It was a photo of something that happened in reality, but it didn't look like reality, did it? It was just some clever settings on a camera that made it look like it was from some extraterrestrial situation. This photo here was not taken by nano Raptor, although she has taken photos of other products before and warped them. This photo here thrown into a feed. If you're just scrolling through and you didn't take notice of who did it, and you were an Apple fan or this appealed to you, you would think, oh, my God, is that real? Or it would just leap out at you. So I think what I liked about this is that it's evidence, in a very simplistic sense, from nanoraptor, that photos, as much as we think they're real, are always simulations or adjusted things to suit the agenda or style that we like. So I just wanted to say, well done, nanoraptor, for catching my eye as I scrolled through mastodon, where I found this. I think she's someone who really appreciates the power of the image.

You have to love the stuff that nanoraptor does. It's just. It ranges from very cool to just unhinged. There's been diff. There's been like, circuit boards with. With pieces that are just like hanging off and that. It's the kind of stuff that is captivating no matter who's looking at it, because it's just interesting. So, no, I do not fault you for this, but I do. It is interesting that when I first pulled this one up, I saw this in a feed as well, when it was first posted, whenever that was, and I didn't immediately notice the logo in the Mac mini part. I thought what she was doing here was creating some kind of monitor with a Mac mini built into it.

Yeah, you're right, actually. I think that's the idea.

But yes, often she will just sort of make things up like, this is this, but as that. And I was like, oh, that would be weird. But after then looking at it again and realizing what was happening, I was like, oh, okay. Because if you read the caption, it says, apple could do just one thing to make the Mac mini the biggest selling Mac ever. And then it says, among users of a certain age, and it's like, oh, okay, got it. Yep. Logo and font, for sure. People would buy that sight unseen. Don't even care what's in it. Doesn't even have to turn on. They would buy it. So I totally understood.

I think you're right. And I kind of brushed over that. But, yeah, if it's inbuilt into the foot, then that has that kind of imac g four element to it. So it's like, you put those things together. I would certainly buy it. I think that would be awesome.

Yep.

But, yeah. So I'm not sure if Nanoraptor would regard herself as a photographer. And I know this show's mainly about photography, but I think it extends into that knowledge of editing and framing and your audience. So I think it's worth including artistic.

Genius, if nothing else, because, my goodness, this stuff is the things that most people would be like, oh, I'll just do a quick little mock up. Of what? That these are like the most perfected versions of things that never existed. It's like what people think AI is supposed to be, where you just say a thing and it happens. But these are actually really good.

So your last one?

Yeah, my last one. This is what I still laugh at every time I see it. So I was scrolling, scrolling around, and when you're looking through the photo site, there's a bunch of photos on the page, and they're all not small, but they're smallish until you click in and kind of view the larger image. And I was going by and I thought, is that a giant french fry I just saw as I was scrolling by? Or, what's happening here? Or is this a tiny studio with a french fry? Like, what's happening? I don't understand. So I click in. Oh, I should mention this photo is from Paul. And I click in, and I go, oh, no, that's a french fry with Paul laying on the french fry covered in a red cloth as if it were ketchup. And the title says, hello, I'm Paul. Hoping glass fills my Flickr void. So I think another person that was kind of, you know, looking for some more, maybe interaction or whatever. That wasn't happening in Flickr anymore. And it says self portrait me on a giant french fry as ketchup. And it's like, well, I don't even need any more than that. That's already like the perfect sentence. And it looks like it's a studio environment. It's got kind of the white backdrop that comes down and curls under and it's taken far enough back to where you're sort of getting a little bit of a peek behind the studio environment.

A little bit.

You see the wood floor in the front, the paper's coming down. You see a little bit on the side there of like maybe some cables or rigging or something, maybe for the studio. And then there's just this, you can't describe it in any other way. A giant kind of crinkle cut french fry, which must be probably 9ft long or something. It's really long. And he's laying on it seemingly, you know, with his eyes closed, kind of snuggled up on top of it with this red blanket as ketchup. And I just think like, it's amazing.

Well, it's funny you say with his eyes closed because I always thought they were too. But now that I've opened it up on a bigger monitor and I'm looking at it, he's actually looking directly at the camera like, what do you want?

Oh, is he, oh, he has glasses on. Okay. I didn't realize that. Yeah, I haven't looked at it real big. Now I'm gonna blow it up. Oh yeah. Okay.

That's pretty hilarious.

Oh, now it's even better actually. Cause the look is just kind of like, yep, here I am.

He's like, this is totally normal. And that gets to what I think is most hilarious about this. Now, I remember seeing this pop up in my feed on glass shortly after it was posted. And I remember that it was actually featured by Daniel, who's like the marketing or communications guy for glass. And he does the whole YouTube channel as well and the categories.

Oh, okay.

And yeah, he welcomed him as, I think, the first comment here. And he was featured as in Daniel featured Paul in the like highlights of the everyday category and this is marked as everyday. And I just thought, is that supposed to be ironic or whatever the, whatever the intention, it's hilarious because I suppose you could say it is Paul's everyday as a photographer, but it is so hilarious in the sense that this is in no way every day. Like, yeah, I always wake up on a giant french fry and that's summed up in that look that we're talking about now.

Yep, absolutely. Yeah. I just assumed he won because it looks like he's sort of just like, snuggled up on a bed. That's a french fry. Oh, it's just so fun. There, there's, there's. You don't need an explanation. It's just like, hey, this happened, and enjoy it and go about your day, because it's just fun. I. I am dying to know, like, what. What is that? Where did this french fry come from? Like, where. Where did you get this? And I kind of also want to know, like, where do I get one? Because that would make a really fun couch.

And is it edible?

Yeah.

Very important, but one point I will make, because I know we don't. Well, we shouldn't go too long. We've got a tight 30. Whatever this is supposed to be, we never agreed, but, like, this is a self portrait, obviously, and, like, Amanda's. Was it. Am I going back? Yes. Amanda. So Amanda and Paul have done two completely different self portraits, right? Completely different vibes, totally different feeling. But I admire both of them because I don't think I've ever really taken self portraits or would know how to do it properly. And there's this air of, am I going to be pretentious? Or what does that mean? Like, is it just a selfie? But yeah, two totally different self portraits, beautifully executed, otherworldly, humorous, and, yeah, I admire the efforts here.

Yeah. Looking at the self portraits actually made me think, could I do something like this? Well, I mean, of course I can. Like, physically I'm capable of doing it, but could I do something that I was. That I was happy with or that I thought was something I would want to share out? And it kind of has these looking through photos for this month has. I'm not saying I'm going to do it, but has made me definitely think more like, I wonder what kind of spin could I put on something like a self portrait? So it's definitely got me the purpose of things like glass. And hopefully this podcast are to make you kind of think, well, what could I do that's maybe a little different from what I usually do? So it's got me thinking.

Yeah. And I've learned so much from photographers I've followed on glass and microdotblog as well flicker to a certain extent, too. But yeah, I'm not going to say it here because we only have three entries each, but this discussion of self portraits has reminded me of a particular person who does self portraits on glass, who I won't mention. Maybe that's one for the next episode. But she must do, I reckon, the wackiest photos I've ever seen. So, little teaser. I'll have to find one for the next episode to mention her.

Okay. Love it. Well, there you go. That's three. You did three times. Two. I think that's it.

Yeah. I think we've fulfilled our purpose.

Excellent.

We should probably shut up.

Well, thank you, Martin, for your photos. And likewise, that wraps the episode of the three x two photocast for May. And we will see you all in a month in June. See you all later.

Toodle it.

In three, two, one. Stop.