We're back.

We're back. Welcome to the Future 3x2 2025 Edition Episode 10 can you believe it? We're already. We're into the double digits now.

We're. We are. And that's kind of strange. It's flown. I know. We only do like a monthly show, which I think is good. Like, it gives us space, we can see photos, we can work out what we're gonna do. So it's my turn first, is that right?

Yeah. We're gonna kick off 20, 25 with you in the driver's seat. So take it away.

So my first photo is by Bill Carey on glass. I followed Bill for a while. I think he follows me too. We've had some back and forth. He's very generous with reactions and stuff. And this photo just stood out to me that he up and it's a photo of Bob Marley in concert with his arms outstretched in the air. This kind of beautiful, kind of purpley blue aura, this light around him. And he's got the guitar strapped to his front. And Bill's caption to go with this image is as culling image archives found this old, old photo I shot on assignment film Kodak Ektachrome pushed. So some grain visible in this bright future. You can't forget your past. Dash Bob Marley now. This alone, Jason, I thought was a very cool shot. Cool that, you know, Bill was there to actually photograph this concert, you know, professionally. I assume with this kind of telephoto reach. I mean, unless. Is this a thing at old concerts before, maybe before my time, that you could go in there with this kind of long lens. It's like, yes, please come in with your Kodak Ektachrome and massive lens. I don't know. What do you reckon? Professional, right?

Yeah. It does say on assignment. So I assume he was contracted in some way to document this concert.

Yeah, yeah, I gathered that. So we're going to say that it was on assignment professionally with a long lens. And while it's a really cool photo, I think the reason it stood out to me, Jason, was, I suppose, on glass. For example, like any photo network, you see photos go up. Some are pros, some are novices, some are enthusiasts, amateurs, whatever you want to, however you want to put it. But this kind of revealed to me something more about Bill himself on the network. I've seen his photos go up. He does a lot for enjoyment. But to see that he's been doing this hobby for so long and that he's had this professional background as well, it kind of Just opened up something about his past and character to me. So I don't know what you think about this, but I found this photo equally revealing about Bill the photographer himself as much it was as Bob, a musician, Bob Marley the musician, the portrait kind of subject. So I appreciated this kind of archival addition as a way of learning about someone who's been generous enough to react to and comment on my photos. And that's something that I've enjoyed about Glass as a user for a while.

Yeah, I love the energy of this photo. It just. It screen, you feel like you're there and you are part of what's going on. And the fact that it is film, it has this sort of. It almost looks like a painting. Like you took a photo and then painted it afterward. It has that kind of painted look to it, which is really cool. And I also love that. Well, I mean, it's a Bob Marley concert, which is awesome. So there's energy there. The lighting is super cool. How that kind of back hair light is coming in and coming from behind, giving this sort of glow to the top of his head. And the fact that he's not actually playing the instrument here. He has his arms out like he's. He's inviting the audience to like, you know, get. Get excited about what's going on. And there is obviously this sort of, you know, the photo is silent because it's a photo, of course, but he's not playing. So it kind of lends to that silence for me, which I really like. And then the. The other thing that really stuck out to me was on the guitar where there's that switch on the top and that round white circ around it. You can't help but not be drawn immediately to that and then sort of go out from there to the guitar, to his jacket, to him, and just to the overall presence of the photo. So that just topped with. Every time I've ever been to a concert, I've always wished that I could try to have this kind of access to get a really cool concert photo. I've never taken a cool concert photo. They've always been garbage. And, you know, whether that's equipment, position, whatever, you know, I think there is a very special art to concert photography that I don't think everybody has the knack for, but some people very much do. And this just is a shining example of that.

Yeah, I agree with you. And it kind of points out how useless most people's concert photography is when they go as a guest because you're not allowed to Take this sort of stuff in. Unless you happen to sneak it in, or as you are in this case, Bill, you were on assignment. If you happen to be listening to this, you really need that telephoto reach. Unless you're showing the scale of a stadium or an arena or the audience or the set, you know, some sort of interaction, you really want to have this reach. So it's kind of like. Yeah, I know, I know people want to take a photo to remember that time, but the moment you see people kind of recording entire songs, I think just enjoy the moment, you know, that photos like this are probably going to exist because they need to market the shows. So go and enjoy that stuff as a fan and, you know, be absorbed in the concert itself. Let the telephoto reach of those who are hired to do it do that job and just take one or two pics. It's special moments like this that not everyone can capture, as you said.

Yeah. And you're never going to listen to that nine minute horrible audio on the video anyway, so just enjoy it.

Great point. Because it never sounds as good. No, it's really about the sound.

You know, you're not. It's never going to sound as good as it does in your ears.

That's right. Anyway, thank you, Bill, for sharing an awesome photo from years ago. And I appreciated that insight into your past as well, if you happen to be listening.

All right, first one for me is from Eric from Frankfurt. It is. I'm just going to say it looks like a weird dream because there's this image of a building. You're looking at the corner of a building, presumably in Frankfurt, I would assume. And everything is blurry and stretched and of this dreamy quality, including this. This person walking in front of it. It is black and white, so there's a lot of gray tones going on here. The full foreground is completely blurred out, seemingly to just be concrete, I would assume. And then there is one thing that is more or less in focus, which is on the corner of the building. It has the letters O N, E on it in a stylized way. And it goes edge to edge here. So it gives this impression that this building slash thing just goes on forever. And it makes me just feel like I'm in a weird. This feels like a weird scene from a movie where something with reality has started to shift and now everything is just going to go bonkers and this person has no idea what they're about to walk into. You definitely can tell that it is the corner of a building, but because of the stretchiness of it, it almost starts to make it be flat, which is just weird to me. I don't think there's any in. Oh no. There is info about the camera and he does say experimental editing. So I'd be very curious to know what was going on with the editing here. My first assumption was this was done in some kind of way with. With a long exposure, but it is 1 1000th of a second. So it's definitely editing here. Not maybe in camera, but just looking at this chaotic slash still image at the same time. It's like peaceful and chaotic at the same time. If you just focus on the person, it feels like they're in the middle of nothing. But then as we kind of zoom out, there is this chaoticness of this. Of each of the bands of the building feeling like. Almost like a rubber band just vibrating crazily. So it makes me uncomfortable and calm at the same time, which is an odd place to be.

Yeah. I think you've described the photo perfectly. So I'm not going to delve too deeply into the construction of the image. Maybe because your description is great. I quite like two aspects or two things kind of pop out to me about the caption or how Eric has described what he's done. He said here that this is roughly what the photo looked like in my imagination. The photorealistic version bores me. This one does something to me. On the one hand, that first thing is the honesty of this. And you know, we've spoken separately like on hemispheric views recently about, with Andrew, about AI image generation, this sort of thing. I know it has its place. I'm not here to be on the whole anti AI wagon. But the kind of thing that I don't like about it just in general is the thing of just sprout this thing up, send it out and oh, thunder in the background. And if you can hear that, everyone. There's this thing of just sending images out without any context of where they came from. Here we see sort of artistic honesty. He's actually explained properly as a photographer or an artist what he wants to do with this image. So we know. We know that this wasn't the reality of the situation. But he's telling us a bit about his process or. Or how he was doing a bit of trial and error or experimentation himself. So I like that. On the other hand, it kind of highlights what I like about purposeful black and white photography. Photorealism for me. I don't know about you, Jason, but if you're capturing a loved one or a friend or something in a travel situation or day to day life. I kind of like photorealism more. I want it to look like the moment as I remember with that person. But when you're out there capturing stuff or kind of playing with things, you can get more interesting results by doing this sort of thing. So I kind of actually struggle to take a lot of black and white photos of loved ones because I want to remember the color of that day or what they were wearing and that sort of stuff. But I think that when you are away from those situations at least personally, I feel more liberated to do stuff in black and white or elsewhere. So I just want to say that I agree with Eric's assessment that this is a much more interesting photo because of that experimental editing. Because of the black and white color would probably actually just make this kind of boring. Do you feel that way?

I do, yeah. I think the. I think color would really distract from everything that's going on here. And I. And no, I'm not going to get to get on the. I think either too much. But yeah, it does just very much make me appreciate just what people can create in real life. Like people kind of, you know, get wowed by some of the fakery that is out there. But if you go scroll around glass for a while or any photo site, there is some incredible artistic work going on there that, you know, maybe in my lifetime that will be reproducible, maybe not, but it kind of doesn't matter. Just the fact that someone is coming up with something that, you know, this person had this vision of what they wanted and were able to create that super impressive to me that that's a possibility and that this is real life regardless of what was edited or changed. This is a real moment in time just potentially, you know, shifted in some way, which is totally fine. That is what art is. Photography is nothing if it's not art. It doesn't always have to be exactly what was out the camera. Like that's not the goal of photography in my mind. It is to emit a feeling from people. And if that means you're doing some kind of edit or change to it, I think that is what photography is at its core is art.

Yeah. And maybe this sounds cheesy, but as we see here, it's almost like if you're an artist or you're doing photography, you're being honest about the fact that it's a lie or that it's an illusion. You're not trying to fool People, you're trying to deliver something interesting. And that's what Eric's done here. Cool. I'm going to switch to number two of my selection now, which is by Clifford and which I discovered on Microdot Blog. Now, this shot, I don't know what device Clifford used. Maybe it was an iPhone, could have been something else. But the caption is simply children's park in winter. And it's a shot in portrait orientation of a completely empty park illuminated by some sort of power pole or street lamp. It's not on the street, it's in the middle of this kind of mowed lawn. But there are these dark trees in the background, this empty playground in the middle, the grass leading up to you. And the photo is interestingly divided by this pole that the light is on, shining away from the camera. And you've kind of got this triangular shadow, that shade from the pole leading towards Clifford the photographer. Now, I found this personally interesting for two reasons. First of all, it was not that it's menacing, right? There's nothing menacing about this photo, but there's something eerie about it. There's something slightly off putting about children or spaces for children when they're empty or not quite right. You know what I mean? That's why people use children in horror films, because you have this feeling of innocence, kind of ruined. So there's nothing terribly scary about this shot. But I looked at it and I went. I go to a lot of playgrounds and parks with Mac, right? And they're always these places of fun. And you look at this and you go, wow, it's pouring with rain, it's empty and it's just a little bit. Could this be the setting of a horror film? And somehow it still feels a bit eerie to me, despite the fact that it's in color. Second of all, in terms of the composition, I don't think I ever would have put the pole in the middle of the photo. And that's not a criticism. My mind would have been, oh, I'm going to do it to the side here. And then I'm going to like lead to the playground. Or I just wouldn't have thought to use the shadow this way. So it stood out to me because I went, you know what, I learned something here. I wouldn't have stuck this right down the middle of the photo. So I don't know if you're attempting to be artistic, Clifford, or you just thought the scene was interesting, basically. Thank you for showing me something that I probably wouldn't have photographed that way.

I Do get a definite creepy factor with this one, for sure. For. For a couple of reasons. So, number one, like you said, it's children's playground, but it's empty. Something about that, just as a human feels wrong. And also because it's at night. Right.

Put some kids in at plays, bring the sun.

Yeah, exactly. So. And I think it feels a little bit desaturated too. I don't know if that's just the way the photo is or because it was at night or whatever, but normally you think playground, bright shiny colors. These are reds and greens and yellows, but they feel very dull, like they're old or almost, you know, abandoned or something. And the dark sky does not help in terms of it not feeling creepy and then the crazy amount of rain coming in. But then to me, I kind of had this alternate thought about it as well, of it was almost this, I guess again, alternate reality kind of thing, where that pole, it feels almost like you are tearing a hole in the middle of reality to walk through it into something because the pole is almost pitch black with that triangle coming down the bottom. It feels to me like the photo is being split apart to reveal something else behind it. Which I think because I was already in that, like, horror movie scary zone, that then it was like, oh, this is now science fiction. And now the world is about to rip in half and I'm going to enter into some alternate reality because that light is on the back and that makes it so much cooler for me that it is directly in the middle. It feels very purposeful. That again, like, we're getting this, this split open world that we're going to effectively go somewhere else.

Yeah. And interestingly, and we didn't line it up this way, but now as I'm hearing you speak and I'm thinking about what I was saying as well, and I'm looking at this photo. The previous photo by Eric was not photorealistic and gave sufficient context about what was going on. This has no context and is quite photorealistic. So it's kind of like the total switcheroo of the situation, but still very otherworldly. Do you know what I mean?

Definitely.

And right here we kind of see the potential differences in photography by how much information you choose to put in the frame or, you know, include in the captions. So, yeah, it's a creepy spot overall, though.

Love it. Absolutely love it. I would love. There's no. There's nothing about it that I don't like in terms of just a photo. I think it's a very well positioned, well done capture overall. Thank you, Clifford.

Do you know what solace I take from this, though, when I reflect, and then we'll move on to the next photo. When I see something like this, no matter how creepy it might be, I take solace in the fact that nothing can be as bad, no playground can be as horrifying as the one in Terminator 2 Judgment Day. That's the worst. So this is. This is. Okay.

That's true. There is no chain link, and there is no fire. Fire approaching us. So we should be okay. The rain should take care of it. All right. My next one is from Paul. And this kind of thing. I just love seeing this in real life. Wow. Let me attempt to explain this. On the predominantly the right side of the image here, we have the side of a building, Blue sky behind it, a little bit dark, but basically blue sky. And there is a painting on the. I assuming top to bottom of this building of what looks to be a side of a piece of beef, like a steak being cut with a butcher's knife. So the. The edge of the meat is kind of folding away from the building in this 3D way. It's all 2D on the building, of course, but the way that it's drawn and painted on this building is. Is 2D. And the. The fat portion of the. Of the meat is the same color as the rest of the building, which then kind of just makes you think that the length of this building is just a giant piece of meat. And then for me, the best. The kind of thing that really I thought was playful here was you have this giant meat building on the right, and on the left, you have this vividly green tree shooting out from the left side toward the building, touching it ever so slightly on the bottom, kind of giving you this almost vegetable versus meat kind of play here.

It's the grains. It's the grains on the play. That's what it's about.

Yeah, yeah. It's. It's. It's a. It's a full meal on display for giants, apparently. So just one of those things you come across in real life and just kind of have to stop and say, what caused this to happen? You know, maybe this building is a butcher something. I don't know, but very. It was just striking. And I thought the artwork was done very well. And it's the kind of thing I just love to see in real life because you kind of just stop and think, that's. That's super cool. I just want to kind of look at this for a while.

Yeah. And looking at it, I mean, has the accidental theme of this episode become photorealism? Because that's unbelievable. Street art, for a start. It just looks. I mean, we know it's not real, but it just looks so well done in terms of the way that it folds out towards you in 3D. And I was going to say the same thing about that greenery on the left. Really clever. Right. That the greenery is there, I think, as a crucial kind of contrast element of this whole thing. It's not the star of the shot, but I don't think the shot would work. It would just be a photo of a painting on the side of the building. And you don't really want to layer it in front of the meat because that would detract from the subject, but you also don't want it just to the side. That little bit of touching that you said, I think is so important to give you some impression of space without destroying the focus of the photo. So, yeah, just a really subtle kind of point that I think Paul got exactly right in this photo. I do want to say as well, really interestingly, I have seen this camera spoken about before on YouTube and elsewhere. The Pixi camera is what he used. Now, do you know much about the Pixi? Am I right in saying this is like that weird French digital rangefinder camera?

Yes, I believe so. I believe you are correct.

I've got the right one.

Yep.

Yeah. So I haven't really. I don't know much about this camera other than quirky stuff I've seen online, but, yeah, quirky photo, quirky camera. Horrifying in its own way. Not. Not creepy children's playground, but like flesh off the side of a building. So great choice, Jason. Well done, Paul.

Yes, indeed. Thank you, Paul.

Speaking of another horrifying subject in the next one. Well, maybe, maybe not. Horrifying. Majestic, right? I don't know. It's hard. We've got a photo by Mimi, if I'm pronouncing it correctly, it's a martial eagle with a baby warthog. And if you haven't seen this photo yet and you hear that caption. No, they're not sitting next to each other as those two. You know, like, you know when you see YouTube videos like, oh, the lion and the meerkat became best friends when they were put in captivity or something. No, this is a horrifying martial eagle has caught baby warthog and is flying off with it in its talons. Right. But fantastic capture by Mimi. I'M just zooming in here. When you look at it, listeners, it's essentially the eagle flying kind of diagonally, like, away from the camera with this warthog. Like, I can. I think I can see some flesh. Like, it's kind of slightly gory. If you look at it the way that it's been picked up, this is a predator in its, like, shining moment, capturing this poor baby warthog. And behind it, you can kind of see this blurred hill or mountain escarpment of some kind. And then just below, below it, you've kind of got this. I don't know, it just looks like trees or shrubs reaching up into the frame. And you've kind of got this great layered effect in the photo. And I just think it's such an awesome capture. And the thing that makes me amused, I suppose you can say, is, you know, when I can't remember which show it was, someone's made this joke before, I'm sure, repeatedly. But depending on which animal is the subject of said BBC or David Attenborough documentary, is the one that you sympathise with, like, come on, come on, eagle. You can get the baby warthog. You know, you've got to. You haven't eaten for, like two months because of the something, something weather or climate, or it's like, oh, God, please get away, baby warthog. Get back to your family. It's like, what meaning or kind of empathy or sympathy do you take or feel for this photo? It's just an amazing action moment and also kind of distressing.

This is just like some National Geographic stuff right here. This is crazy. You could even, like, how do you. How are you in the right place, right time to have something like this? I don't know how big baby warthogs are, but I feel like they can't be that small, which means this bird is just astronomically large. And, yeah, there's a little bit of. There's a little bit of gore there, I think, but, you know, this is nature. This is how nature works. It's a really cool shot, though. I love that. The fact that the background is sky and sort of the mountain, the green mountain behind it, it's above a treetop, so it's obviously, you know, the bird is going away from you, which is really neat, and you have that full, big wingspan, which is always fun to see. Which side are you on? Right? You kind of get into that motion of like, am I team Eagle? Am I team Warthog? Like, you know, I need more information. I need to know about, like, the warthog's F family. Did they have, like, a lot of babies? So maybe this is not the worst thing. Like, you start trying to, like, try to try to figure out what team you're on. I think in this case, it seems like the eagle is the winner. I think so regardless of what team you're on. I'm sorry, but I think Team Eagle is winner here as far as just capturing, you know, a natural moment like this. This is just great. I love everything about this. It's not super far away. It looks like this was, what, 500 millimeters? This is a long lens for sure, so I assume they were out there looking for. For some nature shots, but great action. Just really cool perspective to see this. And there's also. I like that there's this. There's some kind of twigs and bush pieces kind of flying around to give that sense that there was, you know, for lack of a better. A struggle that there was, you know, this is. This is a still capture, but this is. This is a very kind of violent and wild moment, I'm sure, in. In person. So really cool to see. This is something that I think, you know, Know, it's fair to say most people would probably never see in a lifetime. So to be able to see a capture this clear and at this kind of focal length is really cool.

Yeah, well done, Mimi. And I'm sure a lot of people would be very jealous of this photo. Not of the warthog.

No, definitely not.

All right, your third and final.

All right, last one is from Anna. This one has quite a description to it, and I'll try to describe it here a little bit. So we've got this, this. This great scene. It's a. It's a bright blue day, blue, white clouds. There's this seemingly old, very rusty bottom ship fairly close to shore. It looks like, given this, I mean, maybe that's just kind of a trick based on. On focal length that's kind of making that squish in a little bit. But there is. It's taken from the vantage point of what looks like kind of an old piece of a dock, maybe, or some piece of wood that looks old. It's a longer shutter speed, so the water is n soft. This is another example of some modification to a real event. Right. So this is actually multiple images stacked on top of each other. So there are. This is great setting of birds above the ship that you're looking out at that is actually a. Stacked on top because it was a shorter or a Longer shutter speed. They did say that, you know, they. They kind of brought the birds in from another frame that was at a faster speed because you can imagine you can't really slow water and freeze birds at the same time. Doesn't really work. So being able to stack those is really cool. And it just gives this kind of. It. I don't want to say it looks fake, but it just gives this perspective of this scene that you would never expect to see. And I really appreciate how being on this piece of wood or dock or whatever it is in these orange and brown tones leads you directly out to the bottom of the ship that is almost the same exact color pattern and tones as the dock. So feels like there's this broken connection between you and the ship. And that just. It. It feels really cool. And I really love that anchor coming out to. To the left side toward the not as bright blue sky. It looks like there's maybe a storm coming in and the birds are all kind of frantic. So it just gives this sort of what's coming kind of feel to the. To the entire image.

Yeah, I think the colors are super pleasing in this. You know, when you look at blue and orange opposite on the color wheel or whatever, and you go, oh, there's a nice bit. I don't know, just. It just feels like really nice pairing of really warm and cool colors. I just keep wanting to look at this. And those lines are really appealing too. I don't know, it's. It's interesting how these themes come out in the course of our discussion of these photos, because we've spoken about photo realism, about art and AI and honesty and all of this, again, honesty about putting something together that didn't really happen in this way. But you'd have probably still a beautiful photo without the birds, but maybe it would be less interesting. So I appreciate that Anna's been honest about this and kind of given us an insight into how she's constructed it. And I think it highlights for me particularly, I suppose, or for everyone listening, you know, what is photography? We think about photography and video or particularly things like, you think surveillance video, right? About trying to show the reality of a situation. We want to see the truth of what happened because we think of photos as recording history or moments, but they're also tools for art and creation. So I think what's come out of this episode for me is having that hint of creative process. People using networks like Glass or Microdot Blog or whatever online to share their thoughts behind the photo. It's quite revealing and you can learn something. And I think that's what I enjoy about doing this show with you and connecting with others online. I learned something, and I didn't see this photo, and I appreciate that Anna shared it.

Yeah, definitely. I hope that's what everyone takes away from this whole thing, is that at the end of the day, we're, you know, varying degrees. We're all artists in some respect, regardless of what photos you're taking. You know, we talk about your everyday photos all the way up to crazy artistic photo. Like, it doesn't. It's not necessarily about how professional you are. It's just about getting out there and having the will to create. And I think now more than ever, getting back on the soapbox, we just. We. We need that probably more than ever is. Is that will to go out and. And take a risk and create something different than what's out there, because frankly, we just need more art. So I hope. I hope, if nothing else, the show makes someone think, hey, I've got a camera. Regardless of what it is, if it's your phone, if it's an old Polaroid you have in the closet from your grandparents from the 1970s, take it out and go make some art.

Yeah. And don't do it to perform or build a brand or to be someone you think you should be. Just go and have fun. Right? Because when we share this, yeah, we might say some occasionally wanky things, but I'm not trying to build a brand here. Are you trying to do jsl? Maybe?

I'm definitely not.

Yeah. This is about fun, right? So get out. As Jason said, take a device, have fun. Share it with us. I love to learn from others. So, yeah, that's what it's all about.

That's it. And that's also three by two Episode ten Thanks, everybody for listening. Be on the lookout for new stickers for 2025 for 3x2, if that's your thing. If you want to slap some stickers on stuff. We will have new ones here shortly and I'll have information in the show notes as always and until February. We will see you all later.

Bye.