On Landscape - Any Questions Private

Tim Parkin (00:00)
Hello and welcome to On Landscape, any questions? I'm here as usual, although it wasn't usual last week with Joe Cornish and our special guest, Matt Payne. You may have noticed something a little different about Joe Cornish this week. He has an accessory, which is why we had Mark Littlejohn last issue. So do you want to give us a little background on why you're wearing some new fashion items?

Joe Cornish (00:26)
Thank you, Tim. I'll give you the correct terminology for it as well. It's actually called an Aspen collar, which I think is highly appropriate given that Matt is with us today from Colorado all the way from Colorado. So there's a nice link there, I feel. Yeah, essentially what this is a contraption to sort of stop me moving, turning, nodding my head too much and thereby slowing up the recovery process from a broken neck.

Tim Parkin (00:35)
Yeah.

Joe Cornish (00:56)
which I experienced on the 22nd of October. date that for me will live in infamy. I'm afraid. It is, yeah.

Tim Parkin (01:03)
Yeah, so that's just over a month ago, isn't it?

So when does it come off, have they told you?

Joe Cornish (01:12)
No, no, I wrote to the hospital today, hoping to get some help and support. GP has been really good, but hospital has not been so good. So I'm still somewhat in the dark, but I'm I'm looking forward to it as a Christmas present. How about that taking off on Christmas Day? Or maybe just before something like that. It'll be about eight weeks by then.

Matt Payne (01:29)
Nice.

Tim Parkin (01:31)
Absolutely.

Matt Payne (01:32)
What?

I can appreciate how frustrating it is wearing something like that. When I was in high school, when I was 17, I played baseball and I played football. When I played football, I went to tackle somebody and I broke my L5, fractured my L5. And I had to wear a brace that went from up here all the way down to my hips, all the way around my body. And I could only take it off to shower. And I wore it for six months. So I get it.

Tim Parkin (02:03)
out.

Joe Cornish (02:06)
You

Tim Parkin (02:07)
That makes three of us because I broke my back 30 years ago and I was in a body brace for a year in that which was yeah not pleasant for a while and a bit smelly occasionally but it all gets better as

Joe Cornish (02:17)
Yeah.

Well, I feel

this is very minor by comparison with what you gentlemen experienced. Anyway, I don't want to indulge in it, I must admit, but yeah, it's a bit of a new story.

Matt Payne (02:27)
No, no, no,

Tim Parkin (02:30)
Well, we've

got some good questions, I think. And Joe's got some things to ask Matt. But I'll start off with a couple of the questions we got from our readers. And one of the first ones is from Kai Thompson, who asks a very open-ended question. How do you become unique and self-expressive? And how do you know when you are, Matt? Are you unique? Good at expressing yourself?

Matt Payne (02:56)
Man,

I love this question because I just got back from a pretty fun trip to Southern Utah where I photographed cottonwood trees and awesome desert badlands and stuff like that. And I was with a bunch of my really good friends, photographers, Michael Bellino, Kane Engelberg, Paul Bowman, Eric Bennett. Bellino and I, were talking about this idea of self-expression and...

what do you express through your photographs and things like that? Because it's kind of become a buzzword in landscape photography that your photograph, I mean, you have Alastair Ben who has this whole brand around expressive photography. And so we were just trying to wrap our heads around like, what exactly does that even mean to be expressive? And what we decided is that in some ways, this is going to sound bad, but I feel like it's kind of like a marketing buzz term to get people.

super interested in more intimate landscape style of photography. But I also think it's one of those things that if you're someone like me who doesn't, like I don't have a ton of emotions, I don't have dark demons in the past, I don't have substance use issues. I'm not trying, I'm like when I'm out with my camera, I'm not trying to like work through personal problems. All I do is I respond to the landscape and I try to photograph it in a way that I think

is says something about the subject while saying something about me and what I like about the subject, which is going to be different than what Joe sees and what Tim sees. So for me, think that personal expressive thing is how you show up, how you communicate with the subject, and how you instill a little bit of kind of who you are into that photograph based on your personal interests, your past. Maybe it's geology or it's natural processes or...

Tim Parkin (04:49)
Yeah. Yeah.

Matt Payne (04:51)
or maybe you're just super happy to be there that day, right? So I think that to me is it's that simple. It doesn't really need to be that much more complicated than that, but I would be really curious to hear what Joe says about this.

Joe Cornish (05:01)
Hahaha.

Tim Parkin (05:01)
Yeah,

yeah, we've had this we've had this conversation a few times, haven't we, Joe? So what's your

Joe Cornish (05:05)
have it. mean,

it's super, it really is a most, you know, one of the key, key interesting topics, I think, for landscape photographers, partly because I, and in a way, this is going to follow up on a question I'm going to ask Matt later on, think, which is really the whole question about, about recording nature, as opposed to expressing something internal. I mean, we're all familiar with the mirrors and windows concept of photography, I think. And I feel

actually quite strongly as a landscape photographer that geography matters. So actually the reality that's in front of us is part of the responsibility of being a landscape photographer. It's part of the joy of it as well. And so kind of remaining as it were true to that is kind of fundamental to my own philosophy of being a photographer. But I also truly believe that you can find

some kind of self expression simply by where you stand, you know, and how you choose to see the thing that's in front of you. And also, you know, the moment the day the lighting, and all of those things. And so there's always that, you know, as I think Robert Adams said, you know, a landscape photograph, I mean, this is probably slightly, I'm not sure if I'm distorting what he said, but basically that it's geography, autobiography, and metaphor.

So a good landscape photograph will have a little bit of all of those things. And the geography for me is actually fundamental. It's the foundation. It's why we go out there. We go to record what we see in front of us. And because we love it, because we want, maybe we can want to connect with it and feel strongly about it. And we may have statements that we can make regarding land use, for example, and abuse, of course.

Or it may be we're responding to beauty and the joy that gives us and the way we see of course reflects on all those things. But fundamentally underlying it all is that it's real. And for me, that's really, that's really, really important. Whereas there is a an entire community of in our wonderful world of photography, you what you might call fine art photographers who aren't bothered about well, but I don't want that that sounds judgmental and it's certainly not meant to be. It's a different

thing. Their interest is to use photography as an art form, as in self-expression is primary for them, rather than a fortunate kind of byproduct of the process, which it is for me, if that makes sense.

Tim Parkin (07:48)
Yeah, the cameras, the cameras, the brush, it's a raw material that you play with and you're creating something mixed media, however you want to do it in a way.

Joe Cornish (07:55)
That's yeah, often

it is, I guess for people who do fine art photography, but sometimes it is just straight photography just in fact, you know, Matt, you mentioned Alistair, Ben, a lot of his work is relatively straight in the sense that, you know, it's it's composed and then it's black and white and, you know, it's done in a series and maybe it's very highly edited and stuff like that. So but whereas some people will use, you know, multi exposure techniques or

moving the tripod during the exposure or moving the camera rather. You all those techniques that we're familiar with. But for me, there's still, it gets back to that fundamental that reality is what makes photography unique, actually, reality and the illusion of reality, which is its superpower. Whereas with painting, you know that you're, it's an interpretation because the painter has so much freedom. Even if the intent appears to be

to depict the subject.

Matt Payne (08:55)
Yeah, I I agree with everything you just said and that resonates deeply for me. And I've grappled with this particular issue for my entire photography career and put way too much thinking into it. Probably should spend that time elsewhere, but I can't help myself. And the thing that I keep coming back to is that it often comes back to a couple of things. One is intent for the photographer. If your intent is to reinterpret

reality, which we know is a falsehood in photography, but that's a whole other thing. But if your intent is to interpret it or express something through your images and you feel the need to do some artistic things in order to achieve that goal, I think that's completely fine. And with that being said, think there's...

overlap. Like if your goal is to interpret the landscape and leverage reality or what you see, what you experience, and make the most use of what you're available to in nature and interpret that landscape and show the geography as it is in your personally unique way, that also can be personally expressive in that you are using your sensibilities to respond and react to the light, how you compose the subject, how you arrange your elements.

the timing of the photograph, all of those things weigh in. And the way that I do that is going to be different than the way that you do that, Joe. And that's what makes landscape photography so fun. And then lastly, the thing I would say is that I love what you said about your personal connection to geography and wanting to be a witness to the landscape. Because for me, what makes me the most excited about landscape photography is the experiential piece of being there in the moment.

and witnessing that powerful scene or even a quiet scene, whatever it is, and then being able to record that in a way that makes sense to me, and then being able to share that with the world in the way that I can see the world. And so I think that still is art, right? But they're different types of art, and that's cool. It's all good.

Tim Parkin (11:09)
you

effectively, you choose your constraints. And if you choose your constraint as being, I'm going to work with the landscape as it is, that's fine. And if you don't choose that as one of your constraints, that's fine as well. I think we probably have, although the one thing, the one thing I will add to that, which I've thought about is you cannot be self-expressive very easily if you attempt to do something that isn't what you would naturally want to do.

Joe Cornish (11:22)
Do think we've answered Kai's question?

Matt Payne (11:25)
Ha

Mmm.

Tim Parkin (11:37)
So in other words,

if I go out and try and create a picture like somebody else, or I create a picture that is trying to target a social media meme or trying to manipulate the way it seemed to sell something, I lose some of my self-expression from that, I think, because you're trying to do something external. trying to create something that's outside of who you are. So being honest with yourself.

Joe Cornish (11:57)
It could be actually.

So sorry, Tim, that's really good. A good work, a good lead, I think, into that final part of Kai's question, which was to do with with how do you know when you're being expressive? And I think that maybe what you just described is something certainly that happened to me fairly early on in my career when I was, you know, was getting commissions work. In fact,

Tim Parkin (12:09)
How do you know? Yeah.

Joe Cornish (12:23)
my very first major commission work was following in the footsteps of great Charlie Waite. And I found that the first two books I did in that series, everywhere I went, I was looking for Charlie Waite photos. And I wasn't very happy doing it. That was a strange thing. Well, not strange. It became obvious to me after a while that that was just nuts. And so I'm guessing that for many people,

listening, watching will have had some kind of parallel experience. Maybe you realize that, you you admire somebody's work or, you know, for whatever reason, maybe in this particular case, I was literally following in his footsteps and I knew that my editor was keen that there should be a sense of continuity in the series of books, but I couldn't be Charlie and nobody sees like him. And, you know, it was just good for him, but it also, in a way it was a...

Tim Parkin (13:10)
Yeah.

Joe Cornish (13:17)
very liberating thing for me when I realised that and it was very important as well. I'm not saying that I immediately from that moment became a fully realised version of who I am as a photographer, but it certainly was a very important stepping stone in the process.

Tim Parkin (13:33)
Yeah. Okay, got another question from Ed Hannan. And he says largely inspired by the last Theo Bosboom podcast, it got him wondering how current published photography will be seen in say, 50 or 100 years time. If somebody went back and looked at the book collection that they bought between the year 2000 and 2020. What do think it'd be seen as that in the same way we look back maybe 1970s photography?

Matt?

Matt Payne (14:05)
Well, I don't have a time machine, but I would imagine that it'll be similar to kind of what we've experienced when you pick up a book from the giants that we stand on, the shoulders we stand on. I'm guessing that you'll see things that it's like, man, that's not a very good photograph anymore. Or like, man, I can make something look so much better with a couple of AI prompts or...

Tim Parkin (14:06)
No.

Matt Payne (14:34)
I have this Google satellite I can access and take pictures of anything in the world with a stroke of a keystroke. So I think it's going to be vastly different. And I think with the speed of technology, it's going to be kind one of those things I feel like people are going to look back and like, they actually did that. That's kind of weird.

Tim Parkin (14:56)
I sort of see it as part of it when you look back at 1970s photography and the possible overuse of warming filters and tobacco grads, et cetera, it's now seen as an artifact. And I think some of the styles we see in photography now will probably be seen the same as being dated. It lives in its time. And one of the things I like that you really do see when you look back is the...

The work that really resonates is the work that is pretty much straight photography quite often.

Joe Cornish (15:28)
Yeah, I'm going to jump in there, Tim. I agree with that. And what's remarkable, I think, looking back, you I try to take a long look back at the history of landscape photography all the way to Carlton Watkins and Timothy O'Sullivan and some of the other, you know, great 19th century photographers. were several in the UK and France as well. Francis Fritz springs to mind. But anyway, there's, you know, when you see the

Carlton Watkins for me is a real standout. Maybe that's because he was the first photographer to, he wasn't actually the first photographer in Yosemite, by the way, but he was the second. And the guy before him wasn't nearly as good. And it's really interesting. You look at Watkins' work now, and although it's very tempting to sort of say, well, you know, there's no detail in the sky. No, no shit. That's because he's shooting on orthochromatic film. But

Tim Parkin (16:08)
No.

Yeah.

Matt Payne (16:25)
Glass plates.

Tim Parkin (16:25)
Also film doesn't do

that,

Joe Cornish (16:29)
But the positioning of his camera and the way he frames the scene in front of him is still quite often seriously radical. And that's for the camera that's huge and very unwieldy. So he's a really very innovative, very, very creative photographer in so many ways. And I think his story is one of the really tragic untold legacies of American and global photography.

I mean, it's being told now to some extent, but since every negative he shot, glass plate was destroyed in the San Francisco earthquake fire. In many ways, I think we'll never know just how brilliant he was. I think we can look at the photographer's innovative, certainly the American tradition, which was, there was a lot of landscape photography going on in the.

30s and 40s, 50s, 60s and 70s. know, Ansel Adams, Edward Weston, Paul Strand, know, numerous others who, Matt, you'll probably be able to articulate better than me. A great tradition of photography, lot of rivalries, no doubt. I mean, you think of Eliot Porter as well, being a great innovator in colour photography. And we look at Eliot Porter's work today, and we have to look at it through this kind of filter of knowing that

He was doing stuff that nobody else had ever really done. He was doing straight photography in color of trees and flowers and shells and simple things. And some of those pictures look very naive today because they're shot in, let's say, bright sunlight. But really, when you reckon that nobody else had really even attempted to do what he did,

you know, it's important pioneering work and some of his photographs remain beautiful without without question. The prints, I've seen some of his prints, they suffer now with, you know, by comparison with contemporary prints. you know, there's all of those things. And in many ways, it's tempting to say, and sorry, I'm banging on a bit here, Matt, because I'm sure you want to get in, but we see really wonderful contemporary print standards, let's say, you take natural landscape photography,

of the year book that you guys do. And the latest ones, probably the best yet. And the quality of printing is staggering. The quality of the photography is, you know, fairly mind blowing, really, especially when it is straight photography, you know, not fantasy photography. And, and so, you know, you do wonder if it's like a golden age, and people will lose interest in it, and then maybe come back to it in the years.

Tim Parkin (19:10)
Mm.

Joe Cornish (19:23)
to come. But one thing I do want to say is I do believe that it will represent a, both a high watermark, but also a record of wild places. Now, I do hope we'll see wild places and well, we won't see them. you know, in 100 years time, our those who follow will still have those places available. And honestly, that's biggest worry at the moment is just the future is so uncertain for everyone. And

Matt Payne (19:35)
Mm.

Mm-hmm.

Joe Cornish (19:51)
So having a really accurate geographic record is also part of our responsibility, I think.

Tim Parkin (19:57)
I was going to say that I think it's quite important because people will look back and we think the landscape doesn't change. But if we look at back at the Snake River pictures by Ansel Adams and the modern reincarnations of them, they're vastly different. You know, the mountains haven't changed, but the forests, the way the river flows has changed, etc. So they'll become interesting.

Joe Cornish (20:14)
Absolutely.

Matt Payne (20:14)
Mm-hmm.

Joe Cornish (20:15)
yeah. Vegetation changes, vegetation changes reflect climate change, but also land use particularly. Any, any view in, you know, for example, in Colorado, I mean, as a state which still has a lot of wilderness, but Matt, know, you can, you can tell us, I'm sure that there are places that are being now starting to be encroached upon by agriculture or whatever it may be industrialization, because that seems to be pretty well universal still.

Matt Payne (20:22)
Hmm.

Yeah, for sure. In August, I had the opportunity to go to set of art museums in San Diego. And one of them was a museum of photography. And they had a collection of images on the wall. It was a bunch of Bret Weston prints. I think there was maybe six or seven prints. They were fairly small, 8 by 10 in size. And I remember thinking at the time, this was like just

after we had finished doing our prejudging for NLPA. So I was like, I'm going to put on my prejudge hat and look at some Brett Weston photos and critique them. And which is kind of ridiculous if you think like I sound like really pompous when I say that. like it relates to what we're talking about, because I definitely found myself. were three or four of the images that I was like, this is amazing. This is incredible work. It's genius the way that's composed, the lighting, like everything was.

incredible. And there was the rest of them, was like, there's some way, way, way, way better work that I've seen just in this year's competition that outshines these images. I think that just goes back to what you were saying, Joe, is that for their time, they were super innovative. They were doing things that nobody else had done before. And I think it's really important to appreciate that from that perspective.

Joe Cornish (22:06)
It is. It is absolutely. Yeah, I mean, Edward, of course, Brett's father, Edward was also, you know, an incredibly important photographer. And I still think many of his works, you know, are amazing. You know, when you you look at them today, and now they, in many respects, certainly his landscape photographs have been kind of copied and in some cases, you could say improved upon because it is sort of shoulders of giants effect.

Tim Parkin (22:31)
Yeah.

Joe Cornish (22:34)
And that's true for Ansel Adams as well. And I'm always sort of struck how frequently I hear people say, you know, Ansel Adams here, wasn't that great? Or, you know, he was a good postcard photographer and stuff like that. And really, it's annoying because it just so underestimates the, well, the technical and creative wizardry involved and also just the pioneering spirit of

Matt Payne (22:37)
Hmm.

Joe Cornish (23:02)
of the work of that kind. And also to understand that Ansel's work, it's whatever, you may not like the photography, not everybody does, but his goal was to express something about the monumental power of the landscape. And he did it in a brilliant way with his intimate pictures as well. And to by and large, as a black and white printer, he was able to accomplish that in a way I think few people ever have. I'm not saying he's the only one.

His influence, by the way, also goes way beyond his photography. And I think that's one of the reasons that we tend to talk about him a lot because of his writing and his influence on politics and environmentalism, which is important and shouldn't be forgotten. But as I say, he's an easy person to kind of denigrate. And I always think that's a bit of a shame because he was great photographer.

Tim Parkin (23:59)
I always think Brett Weston is very underappreciated as well in the landscape photography of fraternity because I think his photographs are stunning and very often quite innovative.

Joe Cornish (24:04)
Definitely.

Matt Payne (24:09)
Mm.

Tim Parkin (24:11)
Joe, have you got any questions for Matt?

Joe Cornish (24:13)
I do. So the first one actually is about nature first, Matt. So because you are, you know, you you have my great admiration for being one of the originators of that group. So first of all, I well, there were two questions. One really, one is it'd be great if you would talk a little bit about it so that, you know, listeners can understand more what what and also what drove it and also then perhaps

You already touched on your childhood being not complicated, and a great experience. And growing up in Colorado, climbing mountains, mean, couldn't be much better than that, could it really? But on the other hand, I'm pretty sure that the reason Nature First started was not because everything was great. So if that makes sense, if it had been, there would have been no need for Nature First. Discuss.

Matt Payne (25:10)
Yeah,

so I think it's important to think about the time period in which Nature First was born. So the early discussions about Nature First started in about 2017, and that's really kind of like peak Instagram. Like everyone was on Instagram. The platform was exploding. You had all of these huge accounts that were just growing massively. And they weren't even necessarily like photographers per se. They were just like...

content creators and influencers really is like word I would use. And what was happening is you would have people with these massive like 2 million followers on Instagram. They would go to these really amazing places here in Colorado specifically. And then they would take a video of the place and then they would geotag it. Right. And then what would end up happening because of the viral nature of social media and the way that it becomes exponential and it explodes is that

a place that maybe has a parking lot for 10 cars, all of a sudden in the next year, receives thousands and thousands of visitors at that place. And all of those people go hiking up to this high mountain lake and there's no facilities up there. There's no bathrooms. It's very sensitive tundra. It's sensitive wildflowers. one or two people up there, no big deal, about a thousand people a day, it's going to drastically change that place for

literally forever. mean, what we saw was a place close here called Ice Lake Basin that just became overrun, especially during COVID. I mean, it was like insane how many people went there and it was all driven by social media. And so anyways, there was a lot of us photographers here in Colorado that were starting to see that at locations that we had previously been able to go to and you would be there by yourself and you'd have this amazing wilderness experience.

and you'd be able to capture this incredible beauty and be all by yourself all day. And then was, and then like fast forward a year after that and you'd show up and there's 50 people there with their cell phones and they're stepping all over the flowers and they're pooping everywhere, putting toilet paper everywhere. And like, it just became disastrous. so Nature of Forest was kind of born out of this frustration that we were all experiencing in terms of

what we knew the places that we loved used to be like and what they were turning into. And we wanted to try to create a mechanism to stem that, or at least try to reduce that impact. And so we met for like a whole weekend and we developed these principles for nature photographers to follow. And we released it on Earth Day. And one of the big ones was to use discretion of sharing locations.

Try to make places better than you found them, things like that. Think first before you take a photograph. If you walking out into a field of wildflowers is going to encourage a bunch of other people to walk out into that field of wildflowers, maybe don't do that. It was really just meant to hopefully instill some concepts in people's minds about maybe think first before you do certain things because here are the impacts of those actions that you might not.

have thought of yet. yeah, a lot of people liked the idea. I think it resonated for a lot of people in the UK. It resonated for people living in some of these honeypot locations across the globe that they've seen these impact of social media on their favorite locations. And unfortunately, when the NFT craze happened, we were all volunteers doing nature first stuff at the time.

We didn't respond quickly enough to the NFT thing. A lot of people felt like we should have taken a really strong stance against NFTs because of the, at the time, the environmental impact that NFTs were theoretically having in terms of that whole situation and how much electricity is required to generate NFTs on the blockchain, which those problems have mostly been fixed now. But anyways, a bunch of people were like, well, nature first is stupid. And so it's just been really...

Tragic to see the trajectory of the organization since 2018, but I'm glad you brought it up.

Tim Parkin (29:39)
It's peculiar that sharing locations like that and the reasons behind it is still massively controversial. had some few people really annoyed that you wouldn't tell them where a photograph you took was. So that was in the last few weeks.

Matt Payne (29:54)
Yeah, captured this photograph that it was these thin razor blade walls of rock that they're pretty amazing. And there's probably three or four places in Colorado that has that geology. And my photograph was pretty cool looking. And I posted it in this Colorado photography Facebook group. And of course, one of the rules in there is like, has to be a photograph from Colorado. And I posted it and like, everyone was like, that's not Colorado. And I'm like, yes, it is.

And they're like, we'll prove it, tell us where it is. And I was like, I'm not gonna tell you where it is. And then it turned into this whole thing of like, your photograph is either you're lying or your photograph is AI. And anyways, it turned into this huge debate about location sharing. I was trying to explain to people why I don't share locations anymore because I've seen what it can do to these places. Especially places that don't have ton of infrastructure. I mean, I know I'm not like a huge name, but like imagine if I had.

this is a good way to put it. That post, I think it had over 500,000 views on that post, just from that one Facebook group. And now imagine if I had a massive following and I had to reshared it to other groups as well. It would have like five, six million views and I would have put the location of where it is. And then next year, imagine all of the people that would go try to find that photograph. So I think you have to think ahead about like,

What is going to happen if I tell people where this is? You know what I mean?

Joe Cornish (31:30)
It's not a good problem to have, it? It's strange. Just to put it into context a little bit, about 20 years ago, the magazine Outdoor Photography got going. I think it must've been in the early 2000s in the UK. was it Steve Watkins, I think, who was the editor. And it was a lovely magazine that's still going.

One of the first things they did was start this regular series called Viewpoints, which is essentially finding a location, putting it on the map, telling you how to get there, where you can go to get a pub lunch and how far it is to walk. And I was furious about it then because in an awful kind of way, I suppose I kind of foresaw what might happen as a result of that, which was that the places that...

Tim Parkin (32:19)
you

Joe Cornish (32:29)
You know, previously you discovered off your own bat and found joy in discovering and then went away and you put the picture up and the caption would be Cornwall or whatever. And that would be fine. mean, and in some places are well known and everybody would know them and it's no big deal. But especially places that were relatively quiet, would deliberately never put a direct caption for exactly

the reasons you've described that. And yeah, I mean, it's unfortunate, but social media seems to just have amplified everything to a degree that has literally ruined places. And that's obviously what you guys were responding to. It's very sad.

Matt Payne (33:20)
Yeah, I think it's one thing to be blissfully ignorant about this problem and like you're a new photographer and you're excited to share your photograph on Instagram and you geotag it, not thinking that it's going to have any impact on that place versus what I've started to see in the last five years where there are people who are so desperate to grow their following on social media that they will go out of their way to create

reels that actually have geotagged locations and the whole reel is like, I'm showing you all of these secret places in Colorado that you've never been told about before. And they're actually leveraging that knowledge to gain a following and to gain views and likes and comments. And to me, that's like very, very, very insidious. the intent there is like, I'm willing to sacrifice these places that I like to photograph.

Tim Parkin (34:03)
you

Matt Payne (34:19)
to grow my following. And to me, that's just like, no offense if anyone instills this in themselves, but like, you're not a very good person. I'm just gonna say that.

Tim Parkin (34:30)
Yeah,

yeah, I would agree.

Joe Cornish (34:33)
Yes, I knew.

Tim Parkin (34:35)
I think Joe was asking about your background as well. How do you end up getting into photography and having some...

Matt Payne (34:42)
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. So I wasn't really into photography at all until I started my mountain climbing adventures. So I grew up climbing mountains, but like, it's a loose term. actually kind of like the way you guys talk about it in the UK. You like call it walking, mountain walking. Because a lot, like probably most of the mountains in Colorado, like you can walk to the top. I mean, it's hard, but it's not like you're.

Tim Parkin (35:01)
Hahaha

Matt Payne (35:09)
strapped into a harness and you're using rope and all that. There are some of that, there's a lot of that too, but when I was growing up, it was just walking up to the tops of mountains, like 14,000 feet with my parents. so fast forward, passed college, got married. My son was born in 2007 and for whatever reason, I think becoming a new parent does a lot of changes in a lot of ways. And I wanted to become healthier and I was really addicted to video games and I was getting fat and...

I was like, maybe I should get back into mountain climbing again. So I started training for mountain climbing again. And I had bought this Sony eight megapixel DSC 828 with an eight to 200 millimeter fixed ice lens on it. And I bought that like six years prior to that. And I just dabbled, right? I was shooting in auto. Everything was auto. And I remember I was at the time I lived really close or worked really close to my dad.

and we would do these walks at lunch together and I was getting ready to climb these mountains. So I'd ask him like, hey, what was it like to climb this mountain? What was it like to climb this mountain? Like, can you give me any information? Of course he didn't have pictures, he didn't have any any journaling. Like it was all like, I think I remember this part. And so I was like, okay, I need to document these trips and so that I can preserve the experience for people that might be interested. Like maybe my son will be into it when he becomes my age.

So I created this website and I started just posting these trip reports of all of my mountain climbs. It's called 100summits.com. You can see really, really, really bad photography if you go there. And anyways, that's how I got into it. And so I would take hundreds and hundreds of pictures of the climbs and stuff like that. And probably three or four years of doing that, was, of course, you you're climbing mountains and you're seeing these incredible places and these scenes and.

Joe Cornish (36:44)
You

Matt Payne (37:02)
I was getting more more frustrated with what my camera could and couldn't do. And I was trying to figure out how to solve some of those problems. And then I decided, okay, I need to get a real camera, quote unquote, real camera. And I need to learn how to use this thing. And that's 2010, like that's when the obsession began. And I would start climbing mountains at two in the morning, just so could get up there with my tripod and photograph sunrise from the tops of the mountains. yeah, so that's how the photography journey started. It was just as a way of documenting my hikes and climbs.

That was a long way to answer to your question. Sorry about that.

Tim Parkin (37:35)
I've got a question for you because I when I moved up to Scotland here, we moved up because of the walking, walking up the hills, don't call them mountains for some reason. And I got addicted to the climbing and mountaineering and took less photographs because I was out walking. Did you did you do less mountaineering or walking when you started doing photography more? they play opposite each other like that?

Matt Payne (37:59)
Yeah,

that's interesting because I think that's all driven by kind of what motivates you as a human being. like, I'm very achievement driven as a person. I've just always known that about myself. for me, like it was at first it was all about, I had a list, like I'm gonna climb the highest hundred mountains in Colorado. And as I got closer and closer and closer to accomplishing that list, then the photography piece was like, okay, how can I...

also make some achievements through the photography side of things. So I actually found myself doing less and less of the mountaineering and more and more of the photography. But I liked to blend the two. So I would try to put myself into mountains that maybe weren't in the top 100, maybe it's like highest 300, but it had an incredible view of these mountains that I'm in love with. So it was like a morphing of the two things. Yeah.

Tim Parkin (38:54)
Yeah, yeah, okay.

Joe Cornish (38:57)
That actually sounds quite familiar. think in not to not to make what you're saying sound familiar, Matt, but just the sense that as you change, know, you your priorities change. I mean, there are a lot of I think a lot of people do also in Scotland, for example.

aim to climb all of the Munros, which is the hills over 3000 feet. And that's a big thing. And some people who start off doing that will then realize that actually it's more important to enjoy the experience and rather just have the achievements. mean, in my case, not that it's about me at all, just by contrast, I'm not the slightest bit interested in.

Matt Payne (39:32)
Mm-hmm.

Joe Cornish (39:43)
trying to climb to all the tops of the mountains. I don't care if I'm 10 meters off the top, I wouldn't necessarily go to the top. It's just about being there. And the photography is simply comes first because that's what drives the joy of it, I suppose for me, rather than being at the top. And it's just, I think the camera is always a wonderful tool that encourages you to stay out in nature.

watching the light change and to notice all of the details and the colours and the textures that are around you. So I suppose because I've come to it from the other angle, effectively from photography rather than discovering hills and mountains that way, rather than being a climber first.

Matt Payne (40:32)
Yes, I love what you said there because I had that same experience. mean, the photography has driven me to go to some pretty awesome places and at really peculiar times, right? Like this photograph behind me, there's no way before I was a photographer that I would decide, yeah, I'm gonna start climbing at 10 p.m. so I can get to the top of that mountain before sunrise and photograph it. And like, I would have totally missed out on that incredible.

Tim Parkin (40:53)
Ha ha ha ha.

Matt Payne (41:01)
experience. I love that it's like for me it's been these like two very compatible driving forces that are kind of symbiotic and also just drive it they help drive the behavior so I like it.

Joe Cornish (41:17)
next time.

Tim Parkin (41:17)
I'll have to get back onto the question for a second. have one from David Dack who asks, for decades, the ultimate aim of fine art photography has been the production of a perfect print, despite the limited dynamic range and the materials. Now that cameras and monitors and tablets and TVs have this massive HDR capability of capturing everything from the ridiculous darks to light, can find sunspots on the surface of the sun. Has that really changed the goals of making a?

making a good print. Does it make it any easier? Do we need all that dynamic range?

Matt Payne (41:53)
That's interesting because as I was hearing you talk about that question, I felt like there's a focus on these external variables that bring you satisfaction and joy out of photography, like producing a perfect print or like for me, it's all about what brings you joy. Like if it brings you joy to create a bunch of photographs and you never print them, that's awesome. If it brings you joy to try to

master the printing process, that's awesome too. If it brings you joy to try to figure out a way to display your photos on 8K television and HDR and massively leverage the dynamic range of what that device can do and change your file in Lightroom so that it can do that, that's awesome too. I think it's just important to always stay focused on what internally motivates you versus what...

everyone else is saying you should do. And I think that's a really difficult proposition for a lot of us as photographers, especially in the age of social media and we're constantly being bombarded with like what you should do and what everyone else is doing that's successful. by the way, like it just looks successful. You have no idea if it actually is. So, yeah, I think, I mean, I don't think that was the original intent of his question, but yeah. And yeah, I think if,

Tim Parkin (43:06)
Meh.

No, I know where you can reform that, yeah.

Matt Payne (43:18)
Printing, obviously for a lot of people that's incredible and I love to print too. But for me, I just enjoy being out in nature and trying to every year make a slightly better photograph. And if I print it, that's cool too.

Joe Cornish (43:35)
I mean, if I can jump in Tim, and Matt, I mean, I totally agree with what you're saying about joy. Does it bring you joy? That's totally fundamental to what we do, or it should be. So I actually don't really think it's perhaps quite as significant as the question suggests. You know, I think that what we have with these HDR screens is technically remarkable. I mean, just looking at...

You know, you're honestly your average 2024 laptop these days is remarkable. But I don't think that to me that doesn't diminish a print. It's different, obviously. You know, people go into caves in parts of Europe and Asia and find 40,000 year old

cave drawings, and it's likely to be the most exciting thing they've ever seen, but it is not very high dynamic range. know, it's, it's, but because of what it is, the story behind it, the fact that it's, you know, 40,000 years old, or 10,000 years old, or whatever it is, and we connect then, you know, with our deep past and those sorts of, I think those sorts of elements are actually much, much more important than the technology.

There's no doubt that contemporary printing is very good, but it's going to be limited, I think, by by reflected light, which, you know, I think you can say probably the technology will never go beyond about four stops. Right. Something in that order.

Tim Parkin (45:03)
Yeah.

About six stops if you count the very bright and ultimate darks, mostly working variables are about four stops of light on a printed page. Yeah.

Joe Cornish (45:15)
With reflected light. Yeah.

I mean, maybe there are some materials that can absorb more light and therefore you get a bit more. But I think, you know, your average matte paper, I would guess it's about four stops from the paper base to black as black it can convey. And yeah, it's still a remote, it's a beautiful experience to look at a print really well seen and well printed. So I think if you can get good at printing,

even with the relatively limited dynamic range, it will also still give you an object which has it has a track record. So why what do mean by that? Well, it has people look at prints and get excited. I mean, it might be you know, it might be your granny or grandpa or great granny or grandpa you've never met, but you find it in a shoebox when you're, you know, you're maybe your mom and dad dies and you find it and these old pictures and they are amazing. You know, sometimes they're even good photographically.

but they're not high dynamic range. It doesn't matter. It's the story that counts. And that's what really counts, I think. It is an interesting point that the question makes, because it kind of suggests that with these expanses of technology, surely one day everything's going to be three dimensional as well. Won't that be even more amazing? Well, maybe it will, but.

Matt Payne (46:20)
Mm.

Joe Cornish (46:42)
Actually, in the end, I don't think that matters nearly as much as the story. There's a story behind the picture, you know, and how that works on our imaginations. You know, can watch binge watch, telly, know, till kingdom come, but it won't make life better. You know, it's just stories and it's the stories that count. I don't know about you guys, but personally, I've seen lots of Marvel

comic films and some of them are better than others and they pass the time if you're on a plane journey, for example. But at the end of it, I don't care about any of the people in it. Whereas if I see a really brilliantly made movie on a very tight budget where the acting is amazing and the script is good and the direction is deep, deeply felt and understood, you're moved and you care about those involved. So I mean, maybe it's

Does that make sense? I'm not sure if that's a fair analogy.

Tim Parkin (47:42)
Yeah, yeah, it does.

Matt Payne (47:43)
No,

it does. As you were talking, it occurred to me that, and I you said it, maybe it's not this deep, but I can't help myself. To me, it's like he's asking, is the end goal these massive, amazing HDR displays? And I think the question about what the end result of your process of making a photograph is a deeper question in terms of.

what do you want your photographs to do? What do you want your legacy to be as a photographer? know, like for some people having the ultimate print on your wall, like that's the end goal. But I think at some point for some photographers, like you want more out of the process. You want your photographs to mean something more. You want your photographs to, you know, like thinking of like Peter Dombrowskis, like you want your photographs to actually accomplish something in the world that makes it a better place. And so for me, I've been thinking a lot about like,

how can my photographs transcend that line? Because I think it's an aspirational thing. And for me, that's both frustrating but also kind of exciting to think who you are as a photographer and your photography can be so much more than just the simple end result of a print on the wall.

Tim Parkin (49:00)
I was going to say something from, go on Joe, I'll say afterwards.

Joe Cornish (49:01)
Yes, exactly.

No, well, sorry to move it. No, I think that's just fantastic. And that is the kind of, you know, inspirational idea that I think, you know, once you've reached a certain point in your photography, you want it to make a difference and you want it to contribute something to the world and to society. It's a very difficult thing to do.

But it is a noble aspiration. I think it's absolutely right if you can make that happen. I think you have to have intent to do that. The thing that strikes me, I was thinking about this the other day because I've been lucky enough to have worked on a project with Alex Nail about, which I think you're both familiar with, to raise money for the Ascent Mountain Rescue Team.

Although obviously I'm delighted with how well that's gone and delighted for the AMRT who are also delighted. But I'm also thinking, about, there is this, there is a desire among our community to contribute, put back into nature, into landscape. And there are nature regeneration programs and wildlife support schemes and so on.

And that's something I'm finding myself thinking about now. What could I do to help? And it's not that your photography is so great or anything. It's really more that you're in a position to tell a story and help people to connect with how important nature is to us all. You know, not just to us, but to future generations. And I think that we have to learn to use our imaginations more to try to convey those ideas. And photography, it's a...

Big part of it. It's not the only part though. And I think that learning to, you we have to be storytellers as well in order to really accomplish important things.

Matt Payne (51:02)
And I think that's why I've gotten put more of my effort and time into projects like Natural Landscape Photography Awards and Nature First and my podcast is that, as you said, like having your photography accomplish those things is really, really, really difficult. But if you can try to accomplish those goals through other projects that maybe have scale and can convey that message with.

collaboration with other people who have similar interests. I think that's where you can maybe have a little bit more impact and feel more satisfaction out of the effort you're putting into photography in general.

Tim Parkin (51:41)
Well, I'll ask a question of you, Matt, because we've discussed in our competition in the past, but I'm interested in your goals. Because when we started the competition, we talked about the fact it's great that you got a competition, it's great that you got some winners, but we wanted to do something a bit extra. One of those was to create a book. And we've done that. But we've also got a bursary to try and provide for some photographers to do some environmental projects. And was this your goal?

In particular, when you started the competition, do you have these aspirations of what it could be in the background?

Matt Payne (52:19)
You know, I hadn't concretely pieced together the environmental award type stuff that we're doing now in terms of an end goal. I just knew that I felt very strongly about the power that naturally edited landscape photography has in terms of conservation issues and inciting wonder and awe in other people so that when they visit these places,

It inspires people to visit these places and then they can experience what we've experienced as photographers. And then that tradition carries forward in terms of being excited about nature and wanting to do more and more things to protect nature. And that extends all the way out to like how you vote locally to various maybe nonprofit organizations that you contribute money to, whatever. I just felt very strongly that what we were doing was the right way to try to accomplish some of those goals.

think that we've done a pretty good job of that. So yeah, mean, my intent for creating the competition was never like, man, I'm gonna become a billionaire. I'm gonna make so much money and become so famous. No. Right? And so, you know, I think it's good to have some more altruistic goals for the projects that you work on because I think it helps center you and it helps carry forward some of that intent.

Tim Parkin (53:30)
That's good because it hasn't happened yet.

Matt Payne (53:48)
I think it's very easy, especially in photography, to get motivated by these external formats of validation. Like, how much money do you make? Are you in a magazine? Are you in a gallery? Things like that. Which is kind of ironic because a competition kind of taps into people's desires for those things. But that really has never been our intention with the competition. We always wanted it to be a way for...

people to get excited about ways that they can have their work be showcased and shared with the world.

Joe Cornish (54:22)
Tim, interestingly, that it starts to answer the last question I had for Matt, which was also a question for you, which was about the competition. you know, I just make you look at my notes here, just to check what I was saying, because I actually feel that the awards is obviously, it's produced a book, it's created a kind of ethos of photography in a way, or it's given...

Tim Parkin (54:29)
Okay.

Joe Cornish (54:51)
those of us who like to see natural photography being celebrated and appreciated. I think, you know, that's in itself has been obviously worthwhile. But I remember when I was writing my question, I felt there was always this nagging doubt in my mind is, doesn't it still encourage this kind of I'm the best, I want to be number one, I'm the winner.

kind of mentality, the ego driven side of the human personality, and which tends to, you know, in photographic terms often results in what I think I've called the arms race of the sublime type photo. Now, I should say that you have proved me wrong, because that isn't always the case. If you look at the competition this year, particularly, I think the winning picture, for example,

Tim Parkin (55:37)
Yeah, absolutely.

Joe Cornish (55:50)
is a remarkably un-Arms Race of the Sublime kind of image. And so it's a joy to see a picture like that winning. But at same time, I'm still a bit concerned that the sort of people who win are the sort of people who enter competitions all the time and keep winning because they know how to win competitions.

Matt Payne (56:10)
Mm-hmm.

Tim Parkin (56:10)
Yeah, I'll let

Matt go with one like one first, go on. Or do want me to have a go at it?

Joe Cornish (56:13)
Ha ha.

Matt Payne (56:15)
No, I mean, I'll give my take on it. I mean, I totally agree with you, Joe. And I think it's one of the problems and criticisms that we've heard from women in particular in terms of why they don't like to enter competitions because they don't feel like art should have winners. Like they feel strongly that competitions encourage negative behavior and they don't feel like how could you possibly pick a winner of the best photographs, right? And so.

I've put a lot of thought into like, can you change that narrative without changing the entire structure of the competition? Because without having the incentive to enter the competition, I don't necessarily know that people would enter and therefore it would no longer become economically viable. Even just breaking even would be almost impossible. And again, my thought is to like, how can we flip the script and get people to think about the competition as a way

to kind of have more opportunities to have their photography be seen and to have the messages that they want their photographs to say being heard by more than just like their friends and family. obviously because there's an entry fee and there's winners involved that then becomes a competitive race. I think to your point, Joe, I think we do see a lot of people out there that they're kind of serial competition enterers.

You look at the results of all the major international landscape photography competitions from 2023 and 2024, it's the same people winning everything. they make really great photographs. You can't deny that. it's also like, what are we missing in order to tap into the people that maybe aren't that way of thinking in terms of how do I win a competition? I don't have the answer to that. I'd be curious to what Tim says.

Tim Parkin (58:11)
Yeah, I mean, my, my side of that is I want to educate people about why the competition isn't necessarily the role of a winner in a competition isn't the be all and end all of it. And that's that's critical to the way I think about it. It's great to have a winner. It's great to have somebody that walks away with some money as an incentive to join to a certain extent. But for me, it was the book, but also writing in the book about the fact that

This is how the judges look at images. So for instance, we wrote an essay in the last book to describe how if we'd just taken the scoring system and taken the average score, these images would have won or these images would have scored very highly. And yet when we gave the images to the judges and they spent time with them, that assessment morphed and changed as that time went on. And the results, you know, they shift quite a large amount between the abstract scoring when people are browsing them.

maybe once every five seconds, they're going quite quickly to the point where they're living with an image for days at a time. And the other thing we wanted to tell what there was some judge, some images would score five, five, one, zero. So you've got a panel of five judges. Three of them absolutely love it. One of them didn't think it was great. And one of them never even really noticed it at all. And so you've got something really subjective going on. You've got,

a situation where people's opinions are changing on the length of time that they engage with the photographs. And so the final winner has done something interesting. It's kept people's attention, which I think why we get interesting winners quite often, especially this year. But when it comes to the book, that's when I find it gets really interesting. Because what you're saying then is all these people, the scores have changed up and down. Some people liked some pictures, some people liked others.

But the book is trying to show all of those, the ones that are of interest and provides a broad range of topics and subjects and styles, et cetera. And I think that's when it wins for me is when people start looking at the book and enjoying it.

Joe Cornish (1:00:25)
Excellent. by the way, I'm only sort of like challenging you deliberately to sort of get the conversation going. And I do personally think the book is an incredible achievement, partly as much as anything for the caption writing, which I think is truly educational. I really do. You've done a brilliant, brilliant job on that.

Tim Parkin (1:00:30)
I

That's good. I like that.

Joe Cornish (1:00:49)
I really do. And the other thing is, also, whenever I'm asked about this, I defend the competition, if you're wondering, behind the scenes, because it draws attention to the fact that there is a credibility issue in landscape photography. And ML, know, and Natural Landscape Photography Awards sets out to address that question.

Tim Parkin (1:00:56)
Thank you.

Joe Cornish (1:01:13)
and do so by celebrating great straight photography. so it's done a great service, I think, to landscape photography in the process. And we've seen some just magnificent photographs as a result, I think, which might perhaps otherwise have not done so well in other competitions or simply, who knows, a photographer might not have felt welcome in other competitions because they're not using Photoshop enough or something.

Tim Parkin (1:01:40)
Yeah, there is is some something interesting in the way that when we did the first come first year of the competition, a lot of the win a lot of the winners or a lot of the entrants were trying to do the arms race type images, there was quite a lot of those entered, even though there were quite a lot of intimates. But as it's gone on, and people realize that they don't necessarily win the the type of entries has changed. I've noticed that if you notice that Matt as well.

Matt Payne (1:02:04)
Yeah, for sure. Although I'm a sucker for a really awesome, big grand scenic with amazing conditions, it's just, it has to have a lot of really key ingredients to work to like elevate it above and beyond something that was less obvious and required more from the photographer in terms of interpreting the scene that I think is very difficult to do in the grand scenic epic.

Joe Cornish (1:02:12)
You

Matt Payne (1:02:33)
big grand scenes that have historically done really well in competitions. And I would go as far as to say that I think our competition has actually had an impact on the way that landscape photographers, not all, but many landscape photographers approach their fieldcraft and approach thinking about their own photography, which I think is net positive. Of course,

there's gonna be people who say, you don't allow editing and therefore like you're against art and you're against creative freedom. And it's like, no, you're fully free to be as creative as you want. Like we just have these limitations in place, which I think forces you to be a little bit more creative in other ways. So, but I think it's been net positive what we've seen the impact of the competition, at least from what I've heard other people say. And people have reached out to me and say things like, you know, before an LPA like,

I didn't really care about this stuff and now I'm starting to think about it. So I think it's good.

Joe Cornish (1:03:33)
Absolutely. I mean, you put guardrails in is how I would put it because you obviously can still edit for the NLPA. I mean, you know, I don't want to be like the fanboy here, but you guys have done a fantastic job. So I am being, I suppose, on the whole. I do think it's a great achievement in spite of my misgivings about competitions. I really am with Bartok, who I think is famous for saying that the competition is for horses, not for artists.

Tim Parkin (1:03:47)
Yeah, thank you.

Hahaha

Joe Cornish (1:04:01)
So anyway, well.

Tim Parkin (1:04:04)
I

think I agree. I still have a quite a torn relationship with competitions. I dislike them and like them, which is why I think you got to try and split the difference and say they exist, make them good.

Matt Payne (1:04:19)
I think it's all in how you think about it too, conceptually, because I also have a love-hate relationship with competitions, and I think a lot of people are on the hating side when their photographs don't do well over and over again, and that can be very frustrating. I've experienced that many, many times with my own photography. And I think if you think about competitions as a way of maybe pushing yourself further to try to develop your photography in a different way,

or think about it as an opportunity for your photography to be seen. Before the internet, before photography competitions existed, unless you got yourself into a magazine or a gallery, your photography did not get seen, period. So I think you gotta switch the way you think about what a competition can do for you.

Tim Parkin (1:05:12)
We'd like to know if anybody's got any ideas on what to do with the competition. If anybody got any suggestions, it'd be great.

Joe Cornish (1:05:19)
Sometimes you need disruption, don't you? Because otherwise the years go by and finding ways that you can refresh what you're doing, how you think about it is important. But so far, so it's been really, really impressive hugely. And Tim, what's the story on the book? When can we expect to see it?

Matt Payne (1:05:19)
that's a

Tim Parkin (1:05:36)
The book's being bound at the moment. It's supposed to be received. The first 300 are arriving at the dispatch of the binders on the, supposedly the 12th of December, and they're going to go to America. And then I'm going to be receiving the end of those in the week before Christmas. So just after Christmas, I'll be boxing them up and sending them out first, should be in people's hands the first week of January. That's the goal. No.

Matt Payne (1:06:03)
Wow. Don't curse it.

Joe Cornish (1:06:04)
Thank you.

Tim Parkin (1:06:05)
It might happen. You never know.

Joe Cornish (1:06:07)
Okay.

Matt Payne (1:06:09)
I like what you just asked though, Tim, about if people have suggestions because what's funny about NLPA is that it was actually born out of a massive amount of frustration from Alex, myself, other people, then like frustration I saw in the community about what other competitions were doing and not doing. And I've always kind of incorporated that into the way we think about how to manage and run NLPA.

in that we've always wanted it to be for the community. And so we're constantly collecting feedback from people, soliciting feedback, incorporating feedback, like trying to make improvements year after year so that it can become the competition that everyone actually enjoys entering and wants to see the end results of. So I don't see any other competitions doing that. And that's something that we're really proud of with NLPA.

Tim Parkin (1:07:04)
The one thing we really want to do at the moment is to try and provide value for people who don't get in the book or don't win. So people who want to improve their photography and wondering why they don't get high scores. I think trying to find a way of maybe teaching people a little bit about what makes a good picture as part of the competition. I'm not sure quite how to do that. We've got a few ideas, but.

Joe Cornish (1:07:27)
video reviews might be good, but I was thinking of something where you do it on a fairly large scale so that anybody could just tune in. using examples, I think to do it for everyone who didn't make it would be rather time consuming.

Tim Parkin (1:07:44)
It would, yeah.

Matt Payne (1:07:45)
That's the problem.

I mean, we did that after year one. actually, we did two different critique sessions where we had Sandra Bartoka do one for European people and we had Alex Noriega do one for USA people. And we had people volunteer their images. Like, so we have, I don't know, like five or six, seven people who submitted images or allowed us to use their images for critique. And we had those up on YouTube. And I think that went really well. But again, it's a massive.

time constriction and it's just difficult to pull off.

Tim Parkin (1:08:17)
Yeah.

Doing it for free doesn't work, but if we charge for it, I'd feel uncomfortable. So we've to try and strike a balance between those things. Yeah.

Joe Cornish (1:08:19)
it is.

Matt Payne (1:08:23)
That's the hard part.

Joe Cornish (1:08:26)
sponsor.

Tim Parkin (1:08:27)
Yeah, that'd be great. That's what we need, Matt.

Matt Payne (1:08:32)
We've tried.

Tim Parkin (1:08:33)
doing doing it during an economic depression recession isn't the best time to be doing a competition. It will change that we have I think I've covered most of the questions there. Let me just double check. We Hank Gossens had asked about sharing locations and nature first and also about improving yourself as a photographer. I'd had an asked about the what published photography will look like. He also left asked about

Matt Payne (1:08:40)
Yeah.

Joe Cornish (1:08:40)
Was there any more questions, Tim, from?

Tim Parkin (1:09:02)
books, would you see your current work being published in a book form in the same and lasting in the same way as James Revilius's or Paul Strand's books had? That was the last question, I think. So do you see, I mean, I think your book First Light, though, is pretty much a reference book for a lot of landscape photographers.

Joe Cornish (1:09:24)
Well, possibly, but I look at it now think, well, that's terrible. mean, work, the printing is often terrible. And the writing is not very good. I mean, I'd love to do another book, you know, along similar lines with the same kind of principles. I love doing that book. It was fantastic fun to do. And, you know, in many ways, I'm grateful for your comment, you know, whether it's that

whether it will still be of interest in 100 years, who knows. What I think is more interesting is whether books as we know them will carry on. really, why not? I mean, we see books, you know, after all started in, at least in Europe back in the 14th century, carried on ever since with, you know, a...

assimilating the changes in technology. So we now have these fantastic color, four color process. Perhaps we'll see new innovative printing processes. honestly, just in our, in my career, you know, 40 years of being involved in four color press, I mean, it's a big jump in quality, using essentially the same kind of printing techniques, know, zinc plates and so on.

but just the extra precision of the machinery, everything's computer controlled and the inconsistency is way better than it was. Just the controller consistency because of digital measuring later, the use of everything on press. I think that will obviously continue, but personally, I think it will carry on. People want to make books because the book is the one form

that as we as photographers can see our work lasting in, beyond our days and people do keep books if they're good enough.

Tim Parkin (1:11:16)
Yes, I completely agree.

Matt Payne (1:11:17)
Hmm.

Tim Parkin (1:11:21)
Yeah. Ma, are you working on a book? Have you got an idea for what you'd like to do for photography books? As if you got so much free time.

Matt Payne (1:11:28)
I have so many I have to I

have ideas and I have Yeah, no time that's the problem

Tim Parkin (1:11:37)
Yeah. Maybe when things slow down a little.

Matt Payne (1:11:43)
Someday.

Tim Parkin (1:11:47)
Yeah, I keep thinking about a I like the idea of a book as a motivation to do something. That's my idea around books at the moment. And we'll look for first light, second light, or whatever it will be called, the sequel at some point in the future, Joe.

Matt Payne (1:11:48)
Careful what you wish for.

Joe Cornish (1:12:01)
Well, I have, I keep having ideas for names, but of course it's not really about that. Ultimately, it's, it's a content. I mean, one thing I do feel very strongly about is it's important to have a concept, you know, a concept that works. and that, I mean, actually, but I'll be absolutely honest, if I do do another book in the future, that is my, my own idea, it's the book that I want to read. If that makes sense.

Tim Parkin (1:12:25)
Yes, I think that's

essential when you're creating a book. Yeah, because that's only way you can know that you're creating something that makes sense.

Joe Cornish (1:12:35)
How are doing for time,

Tim Parkin (1:12:36)
I would say that we've pretty much wrapped all the questions up. So I'll say thank you very much to Joe for turning up. I hope you better soon. And thanks very much for Matt coming from America. So I'll America. I'll post some I'll post a bit I will put your picture that you mentioned from Colorado in the podcast. So I think it is a bit of an epic one. And it's worth sharing.

Matt Payne (1:12:51)
That's right, America.

Joe Cornish (1:12:54)
you

Absolutely.

Matt Payne (1:13:08)
It's pretty cool. I think my other one's better, but it's pretty cool.

Tim Parkin (1:13:11)
I'll put both in then. Thank you very much and goodbye.

Joe Cornish (1:13:12)
you

Thanks, Tim.