3x2 Photocast - Episode 18

Surprise everyone, we're back! It's 3x2 time and it's kind of a hiatus but not really, but we're not following the schedule because this should just be fun, right?

Yeah, we're not holding ourselves to any, uh, kind of strict recording here. It's just gonna— it's gonna happen when it happens and we're gonna like it.

And what are you munching on today, Jason? I can see a snack.

Fruit snacks.

Fruit snacks? Is that like fruit that you're calling a snack or it's actually like a branded fruit snack? That's what it's called.

Like kids' food.

Oh, like lollies?

Basically, yeah. Gummy things. Yeah. It's the official food of podcasting.

Fantastic. Well, I didn't know that.

Because it doesn't crunch and make a loud noise in the microphone.

That's a good idea. Yeah. Okay. Now I know because I was just like, what is he eating? This is nice. And there's all these like American— you can go to like service stations or convenience shops over here that have like American stuff and you'll go there and it's just an American shop. And I'm like, wow, okay, I don't know what these things are. So, maybe I'll look for American fruit snacks next time I go to a place.

You should. You absolutely should. I highly recommend it.

All right. So, for people who haven't listened before or they've just joined in, the idea is that we're kind of like the audio commentary for photos. So, I've chosen 3 photos. Jason, you've chosen 3 photos. There are 2 of us. That makes it 3 by 2. And you can imagine as we describe what we like about them, or you can visit them in the links and show notes. Whatever.

Yeah.

All right, so I'll kick it off. I think this is quite glass heavy today, which is easy for navigation. The first photo that I spotted was by Shane, and it's called Summer Blues, and it was taken with the Ricoh GR IIIx. And what really stood out to me about this, it's this portrait orientation photo of these 2 women sitting in their lovely kind of colourful floral shirts or blouses on these red portable chairs looking out over the sea, sitting under this blue and white striped umbrella. I found the colour quite striking. You look out over the ocean and it's like the ocean almost blends into the partly cloudy sky. And I just thought this was a very kind of maybe idyllic— Do you think it's somewhere in Europe or the UK or something with this rocky, pebbly beach and they're just sitting out in this lovely attire that I would not associate with Australian beach weather. Do you know what I mean? Like you're out in board shorts or a bikini or something, but they're sitting down on the pebbly beach to gaze at the ocean, and one of them seems to be looking through binoculars.

I will jump out on a limb here and say this is not Australia. Just gonna, just gonna take a wild guess right now. When I initially saw this, when you sent it, I was curious what VHS cassette cover you had removed the title from. Because it looks absolutely perfect to be a videocassette cover. Because the top is, like you said, the sky, but it's— you could easily put a title of a movie right at the top of this with them sitting in the chairs.

Yeah.

From top to bottom, the way the water and the sky are the exact same 2 tones but in completely different textures is super cool. And they kind of diverge right where the umbrella stops, which is nice lining up there. You have the perfect edge of the coast there that's left to right. And then like you mentioned, the pebbles and the— they're like river rocks, but this is clearly not a river. If this is a river, it's a very, very wide river. And then yeah, there's the 2 people sitting there in the middle in the red chairs give a nice pop of red against all of the white and the blue. And then what they're wearing almost kind of goes with it as well. They're kind of wearing white and blue as well. So outside of it being the COVID of a movie, which it easily could be, Just really cool with the, the way that the textures go from the, the warm rocks to the cool water to the cool sky that is then in 2 different textures. I, I really appreciate that.

Yeah, and I know you're not supposed to, and I don't, just for the record, I don't do this, but you're not supposed to take things like rocks or pebbles or any natural features from where you visit. Ideally, they should stay there, but I just know that I would go to this place and just want to touch all of those smooth rocks. People will like be tempted to take one.

Hey, if one or two ends up in a pocket here or there, like, how are you gonna— you can't stop that. That just, that happens sometimes.

Yeah, they don't have security on the beach, do they?

No. No, they don't. There's not individual AirTags on every rock, I hope.

That's a good idea. Individual AirTags on every rock.

That's a very e-waste heavy beach.

That's a lot of button batteries. Anyway, your photo now, I think.

My first one here from Bianca, Infinite Channels.

Wow.

if you kind of squint at it, it almost looks like it's a macro photo of like camouflage material.

Yeah.

So if you got real close up to some camouflage, you'd think that's what it was, but it's not. It's a, I'm assuming aerial photo from what, I don't know, probably a plane, maybe helicopter, not sure. Maybe they're just floating. That would be pretty cool. But it's a, it goes from, from bottom to top. It's, it's in focus, I'd say closer to the bottom and kind of fades off out to the distance. And it's kind of a nice mist or fog almost to it as you go further and further out. It's very desaturated, which I really like. I feel like you could have probably really jacked up the, the green here and had it be very vibrant, but it has a much, I think, cooler feel. I guess literally it's a cooler feel because it's a blue. But the, the way that the shapes are just so organic is really nice where they don't— they almost look like puzzle pieces, but they don't quite fit together because it's nature. So there you go. But it is just a— it's a pleasing photo. photo to look at, and it's— I find it to be very calming.

Yeah, it's really cool. I love it. And what you said about the lack of saturation, I wonder, you know, when you're on a plane and you just want to take endless photos of the cool landscapes that go past, I'm assuming this was maybe through a plane window. Do you think maybe it's that effect of the glass?

Oh, you think maybe it was the window? Yeah.

Maybe. And I'm not saying that to have a dig at the photo. I'm actually quite pleased that if that's what it is, Bianca hasn't seemingly tried to fix it. You know, when that's just an unfortunate reality of the photo, that's the medium between you and the scene, and you kind of want to pump up the saturation and you start doing things and it looks unnatural. I think she's just accepted whatever the circumstances were that day, and it's a cool photo. Like, it lends to the character. So, I like the fact that it's a little bit washed out, whether that's haze or an aeroplane window.

You know, it's funny you brought that up about that being a filter. I'm surprised that's not ever been a filter in, you know, the million different photos. that have been out. I've never seen a, like, airplane window filter. Like, maybe that's my— maybe that's my next thing.

Do you want the scratches?

Yeah, it's got the little, the little hairline cracks that you're kind of nervous about. You're like, I guess that's fine. It could be, here's the Airbus 380 window, here's the Boeing 777 window.

I reckon this is going to be bigger than Fujifilm simulations. People like, oh, I want the Boeing.

Oh, okay. Well, directly after this, I will be creating a new, um, photo filter pack. Look for it here on 3x2.

And you can start your new career as a YouTube influencer flogging them online and saying just, you know, and you can point to the corner and tell them where to, where to get their filters.

Yep, get my filter pack. And then I also have— I'll have a course available as well, don't worry.

Oh, fantastic. Will that be on LinkedIn Learning or—

Yes, all of, all of the above.

I know we don't normally tag or link to our own photos, but what you were talking about, hairline cracks or the scratches, I remember I took a photo with my OM System TG-7 with its little macro or microscopic mode, exactly that on an airplane window. And as much as I thought it was cool, I kind of instantly regretted it because then I felt a little bit less secure about the integrity of the plane that I was on. So maybe I'll include that as a separate link. Yeah, yeah, I survived. Okay, my next one. This one's by Yoshito, and the caption is, I think I could touch a bit of old HK's mood. HK referring to Hong Kong. I want to take more time to walk around this area soon. And it says, I might be mispronouncing this, at Yau Ma Tei Wholesale Fruit Market in Hong Kong. It was taken with the Leica SL3, 18mm. It is— I just saw this photo and thought, wow, this is like visual overload. So, to explain a very, not messy, but certainly very busy scene to people listening, you've got on the right-hand side this some sort of freeway or motorway overpass interlocking kind of flyover and ramp up to the right towards—

City.

skyscrapers in the distance and then dominated on the left-hand side of the photo on this diagonal line of like railing and a road sign is just chaotic roofs, do you think? I don't know if this is like the roof of the markets and things that lie beneath. And there's this haphazard like pallets and wiring and tarps. And then there's buildings at the top left corner. It's just— You can just see how older kind of maybe heritage areas or traditional marketplaces have been shoved up against new developments and freeways. It's like old meets new. And there's certainly elements of places in Australia that I can think of where you can see that they've just carved a freeway or a motorway overpass through an old area. But this has a much older feeling to it in Hong Kong. What do you reckon about this? It's at nighttime, I should mention, as well.

Yeah, I think the nighttime adds a lot to it as well. Chaotic is correct. Yeah, it's... I like that it's not half and half, I think is the first thing that comes to mind. It's like 2/3 this kind of handmade older style of buildings, and also very low, I think is important. Like, things were not built up very high because they are very much person-built by hand out of sort of what's available, versus the, you know, modern mechanized skyscrapers of the future in the background that are, you know, a million feet tall.

Yes.

And then you have the airport kind of off-ramp like you were talking about going off to the right, which is super brightly lit, very modern, all new materials, huge trucks going through, contrasted by this. I'm gonna assume you're correct here with this being the roofs of the market. If we kind of went down below, we would see all the different little stalls, which a truck like that would not fit anywhere in a place like this. You could probably barely squeeze yourself down some of these marketways. So this, the contrast there of the is super powerful. And again, I like that there's this— even though the big new is bigger and newer, the way it's framed, it's, it's showing that kind of the, the old Hong Kong here is like holding strong amongst everything around it, even though it's being completely engulfed by everything that's going on around it.

Yeah, it's almost like compartmentalized. It reminded me of— and I like what you say about the fact that it's not the whole picture. It's almost like It's 2/3 of the left, but it has that nice diagonal leading line to those buildings in the distance. It feels really well composed. It's really cool. But it reminds me, like, if you looked down, just flat right down bird's eye view at it, you know that Mac app Grand Perspective?

Yeah.

The thing that scans your drive and shows all the little compartmentalised bits of what's big and small video. It's almost like if we look down, you would just see these patches of rectangles and squares of what Hong Kong would be made of. And this is this file and that's this file and that, that's that area. It's just the way it's just absolutely butted up against the other thing. There's no buffer here other than a footpath.

Yeah. Oh, that's, that's exactly what it— yeah, that is it. It's like it's basically SimCity where you're kind of trying to fit all the different pieces together. It's like, well, I guess the airport's going right here because that's the only space we have left.

Yeah, phenomenal. Anyway, have you ever been to a place like this that you can remember in your travels?

Yeah, I have. Yes. I'm trying to think of where would be the closest. Probably in Taiwan, I think.

Okay.

We went to a night market that was very much just surrounded by everything. And then there was just all these little tiny stalls kind of similar to this.

Wow. Okay. Yeah, because, I mean, I've been to Japan before, but I don't recall anything quite like this. You know, markets in Europe and stuff. This just has a very full-on look to it. And I thought, yeah, maybe you would have seen on your travels, but Cool. Well done, Yoshito, for capturing this one.

Yeah, great photo.

Next one, Jason.

My next one is from Mike. It's called Goldfish in the Pond, and it then says in quotes, At Home Series. And I think I didn't mention the details on the last photo, but this was the Fuji X-T5, 23mm, f/5.6 at a quarter second. And this is Fish in— I'm assuming this is at home. So this is already— I'm like, this is incredibly cool that this is at your house. And I'm kind of not sure if it's like those big goldfish.

Hmm.

Or if this is somehow just normal goldfish in a smaller bowl, but we're just so close to it. I can't— I kind of could go either way. The rocks on the bottom of this lead me to believe that it is like a bigger outdoor kind of pond. But the really cool effect here is that it's because it's a quarter of a second. Everything's very blurred and there's a lot of motion involved here. So all the fish are in motion, either turning, going straight, or kind of swirling around each other. So you get that cool, like, white ghosty feel around them of the fins that aren't really there. And there are 3 orange and 2 red, so they have this cool striking contrast with each other. The thing that drew me to this, because recently I took a photo of, of a koi that was orange and just very bright. And then when I saw this, it just immediately made me think of that. So I had to pick this as one of my photos. And then there's the, the last piece that kind of sticks out to me here is just there's one bubble that is the kind of only thing that is not in motion or being blurred. It's just the bubble, and then everything else around it is blurred. And then of course the very bottom, the rocks are still because they are, they're obviously not moving in this photo. But I, again, I'm not sure if this is small goldfish, like, in a bowl in someone's office, or if this is a huge pond in someone's backyard. It's hard for me to tell.

The moment I saw it pop up that, you know, that you had linked it, I thought, of course Jason would love this. And I love the orange too. It's very cool. That bubble, you're right though, it's like the sharpest thing in the photo. And when you zoom in, I'm thinking like Blade Runner, you know, zoom and enhance. What am I gonna see about Mike's world in here? And you get this impression of maybe some space or something in the room, but it's just out of reach. So clearly we're not quite to the level of Los Angeles 2019, as we were promised in Blade Runner, to reveal Mike's scene within the bubble.

Yeah. Or when you— oftentimes you'll take a photo and then you'll go and look at your own photo and then zoom in on something and all you just see yourself holding the camera. You're like, oh, okay, great. I didn't really want that in there, but okay.

That's right. That's right. But no, I like this photo too. I love that it's a square crop. I often see that. I just have this, I suppose, habit of associating square crops with that early Instagram period. And I don't normally think to do that to my own photos. these days. But then I see a photo like this where it just frames it beautifully and doesn't give too much extra context around the fish. And I think for me, that's part of what makes it the shape of the photo. It just looks really, really nice and balanced. I can imagine this on someone's wall, really.

Yeah, same.

Really nice. Yeah. Good spotting. And well done, Mike. The next one, I just love this photo. It's by Louise. It's called The Little Girl and the Donkeys. Morocco. It was taken with a Nikon D90. I said Nikon for your benefit. I hope you realise, Jason. Does that make you happy?

I was like, wait, who are you? I believe it's pronounced Nikon.

I just wanted to see if you're like, what? Come on, we're inclusive here. All hemispheres, as our other show suggests, all accents, all pronunciations. No, this is just— I just love this picture and that's why I wanted to put it as my third one. It's this little girl. as it says in the title, with some sort of brown headscarf and traditional blue outfit of some kind, basically squatting down between 2 donkeys in front of some sort of jagged rock wall that's covered in graffiti and spray paint tags. And she's looking beyond the frame to her right, our left. And it just feels kind of like, even though it's a totally different photo, it kind of feels like what was happening in that Hong Kong photo that I put in there where you can see... Old and new. Like, where in Morocco is this photo taken? It's very traditional. She's got, you know, what ultimately like, I don't know, the family livestock or transport or pets, but it's kind of bordering this graffitied, maybe urban or, you know, newer environment. It's just, I don't know. And the fact that like, for example, my family on my mum's side, they came from former Yugoslavia and it wasn't exactly obviously like Morocco, but You know, there were donkeys there. And I remember when we visited on a family trip, maybe what was it, like 10 years ago now, you still saw carts and things being dragged by donkeys in these rural areas. So, I don't know. It's just a reminder to me in this photo of the fact that so many people live so differently and traditionally from what I'm used to or, you know, what I imagine on my high horse in, you know, very modernised Western Australia. And that's not to put this person down. It's just You just remember that people have very different ways of life and this captures it beautifully.

Very powerful photo. I would expect to see this in a magazine.

100%.

Of, you know, of travel documentary photos or something like that, because it just— it feels so, so powerful. First of all, you know, it's got adorable donkeys. So.

So cute.

Plus 100 points there. But the fact that, yes, they're obviously being used to carry whatever is in those sacks to somewhere. I can't— like, is this right next to where they're going? Is this, you know, miles and miles and kilometers away from where they're going? It makes me think it's probably closer to where they're going just because, again, yes, there's spray paint all over, which was this probably beautiful rock face, which is kind of not anymore.

Mm-hmm.

You know, again, contrasted between— then you have the donkeys in the front. One gray, one brown, which is cool. So you kind of have the half and half symmetry thing going on. They're almost exactly mirrored from each other, which you would think is kind of a staged thing, but probably not. That just happened to be what was going on. But the fact that they are literally mirrored except their colors are different, which is really cool. And then yes, the, the, the little girl just bent down looking at what I don't know, but I want to know so bad. What is just out of frame? Which, you know, that's— what great photos do is they make you, they make you want to know more and they make you, make you wonder. So excellent photo. Um, the other thing I just, I think is interesting, just as a not related maybe to the photo, is we freak out about gear and, and what camera does what or whatever. And like looking at this photo, it is impeccable. And then you look and this was almost 20 years ago on a D90.

Yeah, I didn't mention the date. You're absolutely right.

You wouldn't know that. You would just think, oh, this was probably last week on the latest blah, blah, blah camera that's got this spec and that spec. And no, it doesn't. And it, you don't need it. You know, I think, you know, we, we just get obsessed with this stuff, but just another example of great photography has been made since the beginning of cameras. Uh, and this is a fine example of that.

Yeah, I really hope that Louise shares exactly how many megapixels were in this file because that would make or break my opinion of it.

Yes. Where is the megapixel count?

Exactly. Does it have a flippy screen? You know?

No, probably not. The D90, I don't think it did. I'm pretty sure it didn't.

No, it wouldn't have. But yeah, I just think—

I remember I had one, but I don't remember the specs.

That's right. You were a Nikon/Nikon guy.

I was, yeah. That's how I kind of started was with them.

Beautiful. Yeah, I just think, like you said, powerful image, great portrait, and wonderful to think about where she may be now. And what they're doing. It's just, that's the story that we imagine from this photo, I imagine.

And that person is now 20 years older, which is also— What are they like? Imagine if they saw this, what would they think? Who knows?

I'm pretty sure that on my parents' honeymoon, they took a photo of a guy posing proudly with his donkeys in what is now called North Macedonia. So, it's a thing of, you know, proud with your livestock or your family animals. Anyway, time for your third and final.

Third and final. This one is titled Don't Go Down This Road, and it is written— it's part of a collection that is in like a scary font. I didn't even know you could do different fonts in Glass, so there you go.

I've seen that too, and it freaks me out, and I feel like, am I some sort of internet or web noob that I don't know? Like, am I a total noob that people do this? And I go, what are you doing to cheat the system? Anyway, go on.

Yeah, the I mean, just so before I get to the photo real quick, just looking at this from a glass perspective, every single thing on the entire page with the exception of the button is black and white, which is kind of haunting in a way, especially with this like weird font. But anyway, it— the photo itself is, uh, is a looking down a road. It says don't go down this road. So going down a road, it has a sharp white border around it. The road itself is almost invisible in terms of the amount of light available. As we go from the bottom up, we then reach the, the horizon line where we then are seeing this, the, the sky, which is a— it's, it's lighter, but it's still very dark gray. And then the whole left side of it is all very, very dark trees. So just a lot of high black and white contrast here with telephone, or I guess power line poles. Um, following this road as it goes down, which are also basically completely black, both the poles and the lines. The first thing I noticed, which has nothing to do with the photo, was that it was on my birthday last year. So that kind of was like, whoa, that makes it even spookier somehow.

Ooh.

But the photo itself, I'm a sucker for these kind of high-contrast black and white. I guess, is it liminal space if it's outside? Probably not, but just this, this sense of no one exists, and this is just kind of a capture of a place where people don't belong. And I think it's done that very, very well. And the, the graininess of it is cool. It's on a Fujifilm, so it's, you know, it's a digital camera, but it has that kind of film grainy look to it, um, from whatever the effects are that was added, you know, the editing that was done with the black and white. So yeah, Fuji X-T50 on a 15-45 at 31mm. Just a really, a really cool photo. I think Don't Go Down This Road is a— I think that's a good title for this road that goes seemingly into nowhere.

Yes, and thank you for the warning because I won't be going down this road. I think you're right though, even if it's outside, like maybe you would normally say liminal space for an indoor thing, but I think a similar word or one that's based on the idea of liminal space is a non-place. In the sense that—

Oh, okay.

Almost like motorways, for example. You only pass through a motorway or a freeway. It's hostile to humans. You can't stop. It's not a place that you actually go to. It's only a place you travel through. So, this isn't exactly the same, but it's the sense of eerie and creepy stuff aside, you're not just standing there. You don't visit this place. You only move through it or avoid it. So, it's almost like a place that is a non-place.

I love it. Yeah, I think that's a perfect description. This is a non-place.

Yeah, it's like, I'll just turn around. I won't stay there.

Yep.

Yeah. But do you take many black and white photos like this? Like you say you like them, but do you do it yourself?

Not very often. Not as often as I probably should. I find that I only really— if I switch the camera into a black and white mode, that helps me a lot. I have a lot of problem taking a photo in color and imagining that as black and white.

Sure.

But if I'm taking it as black and white, then I can get better into that mindset. But I don't do it a ton. Do you?

I can really empathize with what you're saying. It's similar. You know, when you see videos like about Leica monochrome cameras or Pentax or something where they are monochromatic only and they do certain things with the dynamic range or the black point and stuff, which is true black and white because they're not removing color from those filters or whatever. I feel like if you photograph things with a camera like that, or as you say, you just apply black and white as a mode on your camera, it feels more purposeful, or you can actually see it. To me, maybe it's not so much the issue of imagining what it might be like in black and white, it's more that the moment I've seen it in color, I feel this bizarre thing that if I convert it to black and white and particularly export it or lose that data, that it's, it's data loss. Like I've lost the temperature or the colour of the outfit that someone was wearing, or, you know, what was the colour or the impression of the plants in the background? So I think if you take something, as you say, in a monochromatic setting, it almost feels like it's been made for that and that you're not robbing it of something that was there. I'm just— I've grown up in a colour environment, and so I feel that loss, which might be ridiculous to some people. But then I see the photo and I go, oh, that's cool. It should be black and white.

Yeah. Yep, yeah, because I, I haven't seen the color version of this, if there is one, but I'd be willing to put money that this is the one I would prefer.

Yeah, if it were in color, you'd probably go, yeah, I'd visit that place, that'd be all right.

Yeah, I don't think it would be called Scary Village, I'll just say that.

No, it would be, uh, Power Poles Worth Visiting Briefly. Yeah, I don't know. There you go. Well, look at that, we, we pulled off an episode.

3 times 2, and that's it.

Love your work. Thanks for joining me, Jason, and thanks for listening, everyone.

Thanks, Martin. Thanks, everybody with the photos. Again, look at the show notes to actually see the photos. I'm sure that's something you probably want to do. And we will see you all the next time we release an episode.

That's right. Catch you next time.