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[00:00:14] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Joshua, I am so excited about this conversation. We’re just across the water from each other. So we could have done this in person, but you
[00:00:22] Joshua Dwain Frith: Mm-hmm.
[00:00:22] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: it just has to be this way. one thing I’m really excited about is you, you’re very versatile in your work. Your, you’ve got a lot going on business wise, not only yourself, but with your wife.
[00:00:38] Joshua Dwain Frith: Yep.
[00:00:39] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: so she’s helping you on the photo side, you. She’s got the, the jewelry brand that I, I’m sure you’re involved in in some way.
[00:00:50] Joshua Dwain Frith: Yes, absolutely.
podcast
[00:00:51] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: producing stuff. You’ve got going on, you’re teaching, you own a studio. You’ve got a lot on your plate. And [00:01:00] so. I know you’ve got some workflows going, going on throughout your businesses and that’s why I’m really looking forward to seeing, hearing
[00:01:10] Joshua Dwain Frith: and
[00:01:10] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: learning what you have going on and, yeah, be able to share that with all the listeners.
So thank you for being here.
[00:01:17] Joshua Dwain Frith: No, thank you for having me, man. I’m, uh, excited to be here. I’m not busy today, so we, we definitely take, take some time to, uh, to definitely talk about whatever I have going on.
[00:01:28] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:01:30] Behind the Camera: Challenges and Joys
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[00:01:31] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: So, so let’s dive into the first thing, that you, you mentioned that has been going well in your, in your business.
You said that you feel like being behind the camera is what really goes extremely well for you.
[00:01:41] Joshua Dwain Frith: Mm-hmm.
[00:01:42] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: love that because quite often when I ask people what’s going well in their workflows, they go right to the business side of things, right to the post-production side of things and all of that. And I love it when somebody says behind the camera, so me about that. What, what do you do behind the camera that just [00:02:00] makes things flow naturally and smooth and, and all that?
Well, that’s the thing, Scott. Mm-hmm.
[00:02:06] Joshua Dwain Frith: not everything behind the camera goes smooth, but, um, I think. The, the, the part that excites me more than anything else is the process of creating, right? You just, you just never really know what’s going to happen. I think if you have really high expectations, you leave yourself open to sort of disappointment at times.
I can attest, like I, I do generally have high expectations when I take photos and, uh, sometimes it feels like failure. you really, you know, for example, you might. Have a wedding that’s been on your calendar for a year. You’re like, this is gonna be the wedding of the year. I’m gonna get the most amazing pictures you get there, it’s raining.
you got, you got, um, your, your, your, your assistant is late. Things are just not really working out the way you want it to, and then you still have to perform, right? Like, things just don’t really go your way. So I think one of the, one of the [00:03:00] things that really excites me is that. I’m putting sort of that best effort forward even in situations where I might not, you know, 10 years ago I probably would, would underperform, you know what I mean?
So I think that creation part, uh, me, you know, striving for better quality images or better images, or even different images and, you know, trying to reinvent myself all the time is what really works for me because it’s. Understanding after like what, 17 years as a professional photographer. it’s not gonna go the way you want it all the time.
And, and part of the, part of the learning process is the opportunity to, to, to take photos, and understanding like in this economy, like we don’t always have the opportunities as much as we want to, to take photos. So being grateful during that time when you can take photos and when you can try to create, that’s the thing that goes well, man, I’m, I’m so happy when I can pick up the camera.
Her, especially when somebody’s paying me. That’s even, that’s the [00:04:00] best.
[00:04:00] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: of course, of course. can you the top of your head, can you think of something recently? Semi recently that you have picked up, tried to learn that you didn’t have in your, in your repertoire prior, in your 17 years that, you know, maybe it failed or maybe it went well. But you, you tried something new for the first time in a while.
[00:04:26] Exploring New Skills and AI Integration
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[00:04:26] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Is this photography related? I try new things all the time. let’s, let’s, let’s, let’s, let’s talk. Business, photography, whatever it is you got going on. maybe something you tried with your studio, maybe something you tried at one of your workshops,
[00:04:40] Joshua Dwain Frith: well, I tried to teach newbie photographers for the very first time. recently I had a workshop, for like intro to photography. very, very basic. that was a challenge, Scott. I’m used to teaching people who know what ISO is. but I think, uh, having some of the students send over photos after, after we were done and, [00:05:00] you know, them being in communication with me afterwards let me know that at least that was, you know, that’s something that’s, I mean, if tyra’s don’t realize how challenging it is to talk to.
Photographer talk to people who want to be photographers have, but have no idea what you’re talking about. There’s a certain like expectation that you will have if, you know there’s a photographer. We know where to press the button. You know, when there’s an intro to photography, you know, what’s the, why do I need to press this and why do I, what, what’s manual focus versus auto focus and what’s
[00:05:31] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Right.
[00:05:32] Joshua Dwain Frith: continuous versus like, single shot.
Um, that was something that really went really well for me. Another thing, sort of outside of photography space is that, and I know we’re gonna talk about workflows going forward, but you know, you, if you do workflows enough, you realize there are gaps and the gaps that you want to connect between, you know, you, you want the system to be auto like completely automated.
and you know, for the most part that might never happen. [00:06:00] But something I’ve recently took up with the assistance of AI is coding.
[00:06:04] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Mm-hmm.
[00:06:04] Joshua Dwain Frith: and, and trying to sort of like, if I can spend an extra, if I, if I can save an extra two minutes or five minutes, you know, downloading these cars or putting them in a, this specific directory.
If I already know where it needs to go, maybe I can program that to automate, like this goes to this, um, my main, drive or my working drive. This one goes to my backup, this one goes to the cloud. And automating that process so that all I have to do is. Type my client’s name and nothing else. that’s something that, uh, I recently started picking up is coding.
So, um, right now I’m trying to fill gaps, more than anything else. yeah, go ahead.
[00:06:43] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: are you doing what they call vibe coding or are you using the AI to teach you to code?
[00:06:50] Joshua Dwain Frith: Ooh.
[00:06:50] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: you, are you using, are you using a tool like lovable or base. 44 to like start the app you’re building and then you’re [00:07:00] adding some manual code to, to improve on it? Or are you using the AI as a, as an educator to, for you to learn how to code?
[00:07:09] Joshua Dwain Frith: I think neither. so first off, my algorithm is all crazy because I got an ad for Lovable Today, which I never got before because now it really knows. I’m, I’m, I’m doing this stuff, but, um. I, it’s, it’s been a funky journey. At first, I was just like going to AI and saying, Hey, I want to, I want like going to, like, I think I started, the first thing was on chat, GBT.
Like, I wanna learn how to, or I wanna create an app that does this. And then it would just spit out code and you really don’t know what to do with that code. So then it was like learning, you know, okay, I need to create this sort of python environment on my computer. and doing, literally doing it manually and then to, to the point where I got all the way up to using something like Claude Code.
and then, um, creating my, my sort of structure and how I want things done and [00:08:00] feeding that to the system. The problem with all that is that a AI in general, the, the ones that are,The ones that can remember what your, your history is and things like Chad, GPT, or Gemini or anything. The problem is that they’re really self-serving.
They’re there to make you feel good about what you’re doing, as opposed to
[00:08:20] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Yeah.
[00:08:20] Joshua Dwain Frith: you being the sort of director and you’re being the order of what you want your code to be. So it can get loopy if you’re using ai. So that’s, that’s been a huge, uh, learning curve for me. Um, I did coding in college, but I was never really good at it.
so this is sort of taking the guesswork about what to do and how to do it, and just giving instructions and making the high level decisions.
[00:08:44] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Yeah. I love it. I love it.yeah, that it’s, it’s fantastic that you’re, you’re using AI in a way that, you know, you could get, some, some tasks done that you may not have a solution for at the moment.
Right. I have a feeling things like [00:09:00] Apple shortcuts, for example, gonna start incorporating Apple Intelligence, which isn’t great yet, but it’s, it’ll get there. Especially with its integration with chat GPT. Right.
[00:09:11] Joshua Dwain Frith: Mm-hmm.
[00:09:12] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: I think Apple shortcuts will start utilizing Apple Intelligence to help people create shortcuts to do things like what you’re currently coding, right?
[00:09:19] Joshua Dwain Frith: Yeah.
[00:09:20] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: able to be, give it a prompt and say, help me make an Apple shortcut to do this so that when I enter a memory card I can push a button and all this happens.
[00:09:29] Joshua Dwain Frith: Yes.
[00:09:30] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: I think that’s the direction of, of, OS based tools that are like built into operating
[00:09:38] Joshua Dwain Frith: Yeah.
[00:09:38] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: So,
[00:09:38] Joshua Dwain Frith: I, I,
[00:09:39] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: that’s exciting.
[00:09:40] Joshua Dwain Frith: I think you’re spot on. I think everything is primed for that to happen, right? We have the hardware, we have the.
[00:09:46] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Yeah.
[00:09:47] Joshua Dwain Frith: The, the, uh, protocols and we have the ai, it’s just building the bridge that’s allowing us to do all these automated things, is what the issue is. I think we’re going to a, a space where [00:10:00] our os eventually will be AI driven so you can tell it exactly what to do.
I mean, that’s, that’s the logical future. It makes no sense to have artificial intelligence. But then we’re, we’re. We are making the, the systems in terms of how it’s operate. AI needs to do it like fully automated if it needs to, and all we need to do is give it permissions.
[00:10:24] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Yeah.
[00:10:24] Joshua Dwain Frith: I think that’s the, that’s where we’re going.
[00:10:28] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: I think so too. we’re already kind of seeing that with a lot of the browsers that are coming out.
[00:10:32] Joshua Dwain Frith: Mm-hmm.
[00:10:32] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Claude or, yeah, Claude has its own browser, comet, I believe it’s called. and arc was moving that direction before that company got bought out. Also, Brooklyn based, I think Browser
[00:10:44] Joshua Dwain Frith: Company
Oh, I didn’t know that.
[00:10:44] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: think they were in Brooklyn.
[00:10:45] Joshua Dwain Frith: Okay.
[00:10:46] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: they got bought
[00:10:46] Joshua Dwain Frith: I,
[00:10:47] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Atlassian. Who makes, who owns Trello and some other software.
[00:10:51] AI in Post-Production and Workflow Automation
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[00:10:51] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: of ai, you mentioned that the second thing going well in your entire, your entire workflow is, the post-production part.
[00:10:59] Joshua Dwain Frith: [00:11:00] Yes.
[00:11:00] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: I mean, let’s, let’s talk about that. you’re, you’ve incorporated culling, you’ve incorporated editing. Are there other aspects of post-production that you’ve incorporated AI or is it pre, pre, predominantly those two.
[00:11:15] Joshua Dwain Frith: No, there are others. so I, I, I really have my, my website is so old, and I haven’t, which is another long story, but I haven’t updated in a really long time and I wanted to update it. So I utilized AI to build another tool that’s gonna help me. you know, I, I can make the selections, but I wanted an app that I can, I feed it to my, like upload it to my, my website. and, uh, I know how I want to up update it to, upload it to my website. I need it resize. I need, alt tags. I need certain metadata to go with it so that it’s beneficial for me once, um, it goes public. [00:12:00] There’s nothing on the market right now that’s going to do that for my specific website.
Um, my website is WordPress based. and I couldn’t find anything that was gonna be able to do that and in the way, in a format that I needed it to get done. I created an app that does that, just that, it would scan the photos or I could manually sort of like create a file that, uh, had a bunch of,alt tags in it for whatever type of shoot it was.
I just had to enter what type of shoot it was and maybe the location and based off of this database that I created, uh, with the help of like a ChatGPT, simple, really simple format, I was able to create alt tag. So now I just, write, the, what the wedding’s about. I write the, the, the location, the application would take care of all of that, resizing the photos, creating an alt tag for each photo, upload it to my actual website through API.
And then all I had to do was, uh, go into my website, you know, [00:13:00] fill out all the basics, the name, subject. If I wanted a blurb from my blog, I can do that too, and then hit send and it would go off. and that was huge for me because, um, you know, when creating a, you know, creating a website and understanding how SEO is so, valuable in terms of people finding you,
[00:13:18] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:13:19] Joshua Dwain Frith: it takes time to write those things.
It takes time to. Enter like unique tags and all that per photo. and I didn’t want a huge bottleneck of me wanting to do it and then being deterred because it takes so long. So why not create a system to, to take care of that for me? it isn’t fully ai obviously it’s a program, but it use AI to, to help me, create the, the app or the process to do that.
[00:13:45] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Yeah. That’s great. That’s fantastic. so the.to getting the selects. Are you fully trusting the AI to, to pick for you? Are
[00:13:55] Joshua Dwain Frith: No,
[00:13:57] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: partially trusting it?
[00:13:59] Joshua Dwain Frith: no,
[00:13:59] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: tell, [00:14:00] walk me through
[00:14:00] Joshua Dwain Frith: no.
[00:14:00] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: What’s, what’s your cooling look like for, to, to narrow things down? Mm-hmm.
[00:14:04] Joshua Dwain Frith: So these are all finished images, which I, I absolutely trust, but, I don’t think AI’s gonna help me under, uh, help me make the decision. Well, I guess you can train anything to do it. Um, but, um, I don’t trust AI to make a choice in terms of what I think is marketable.you know, and, and on top of that there, you know, you’ll have different strengths for each event or each wedding or types of shoot that you wanted.
It’s not a blanket sort of, um. Medium where you can have all these hard rules in terms of what you can present to world or what’s marketable or what you would even wanna show. So I make those decisions in, you know, in sort of a final cull. Um, if we’re talking about like a large group of images, you know, I love using something like Imagen AI to sort of like narrow down out of like, you know, 4,000 images, you know, bring it down to something more manageable, like [00:15:00] maybe 700 images.
You know, but after that, you know, I got 700. If I’m gonna show 20, I gotta make that decision because, at this point, uh, I don’t think AI for me has the knowledge in terms of what’s marketable.
[00:15:14] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Yeah, that’s very in really interesting, because you know, you could, you could, you could right now utilize AI to, to pick the most aesthetically beautiful
[00:15:27] Joshua Dwain Frith: photo
[00:15:27] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: but that may not be what’s the most marketable.
[00:15:31] Joshua Dwain Frith: Yeah,
[00:15:32] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: different things, right?
[00:15:33] Joshua Dwain Frith: yeah,
[00:15:33] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: they’re the same, but sometimes they’re
[00:15:35] Joshua Dwain Frith: yeah.
[00:15:36] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: So it’s
[00:15:36] Joshua Dwain Frith: So
[00:15:37] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: interesting.
[00:15:38] Joshua Dwain Frith: yeah, you might, you might have a photo that’s like a, you know, you try to, you try to, you know, hit these home runs sometimes, and it’s really not like an emotional photo, but more like something that you tried. That’s. Tricky with light, you know what I mean? it might not understand that that lighting photo, which is much probably more different than any other 20 weddings that you’ve done [00:16:00] in that year, like this photo is like a portfolio one that is completely different.
It might not understand that one as, you know, sort of like a showstopper.
[00:16:09] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Yeah. And it, it could be the, it could be sort of, almost a flipped. Way to look at it too, where you might have a wedding where you brought in now five extra lights and jelled them all
[00:16:22] Joshua Dwain Frith: Mm-hmm.
[00:16:22] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: a smoke machine. ’cause you visualize this in your head and you got this photo and it’s absolutely gorgeous. But then you know that that’s a one every 30 weddings that you shoot
[00:16:35] Joshua Dwain Frith: Yeah.
[00:16:35] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: situation, that
[00:16:36] Joshua Dwain Frith: Yeah.
[00:16:37] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: sell the next wedding.
[00:16:38] Joshua Dwain Frith: Yeah.
[00:16:39] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: So it could be like, some
Well, You know,
[00:16:43] Joshua Dwain Frith: work. I mean, if it’s, if I, one thing I’ve noted, I mean, if something’s different, people are gonna pay attention to it, you know? but now that you think of, now that you say it, you could allow AI to say, if this one is different than the rest of these, this must be, [00:17:00] this must be,
different. I, I mean, obviously you’re making a pool of really good images, so if this one is different than all the others, this one is a keeper, so, huh. Something to think about.
[00:17:10] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: yep. and, and editing wise, so you’ve been, Imagen you’ve been using, Imagen for editing for quite some time. You now have your own profile available for,
[00:17:19] Joshua Dwain Frith: Yes,
[00:17:20] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: to, to use if they want it, which we’ll
[00:17:22] Joshua Dwain Frith: we’re very happy about that.
[00:17:23] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Yeah.
[00:17:24] Evolution of Editing Style
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[00:17:25] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Can you talk about, your editing style overall?
Like how, how, how has it evolved? How did it come to the way, to the way it is right now? and. Is there anything that, that, you think makes it stand out from, from others that are available potentially?
[00:17:40] Joshua Dwain Frith: Okay. that’s a good question. My editing style has evolved. Uh, I mean, I can’t look at photos from years ago without cringing. and it’s not really, it’s not like I feel like they’re bad at all. It’s just I wouldn’t edit like that anymore. I think it’s crazy. and I’m pretty sure my editors at the time thought it was absolutely [00:18:00] wild, uh, how I was editing, a few years ago.
but. The evolution has been, I, I, I’m really happy with the evolution. I think, you know, editing is one of those things when you just start doing photography, you’re not thinking about, you don’t think about it the way you should. for me personally, I, I, it was about being trendy. I, I wanted, I think, um.
I asked of mine at the time, he said Canon had this nostalgia look I was trying to chase. I, I seen other photographers had. Um, and you know, trying to do that and then failing miserably and then trying to be super colorful, and very detailed, you know, dark backgrounds, brighter subject, everything.to where now I just want it to be more true to life and I want people to feel.
And I want people to be distracted by how the edit looks. Like. EE [00:19:00] editing should be the thing of you think about, secondary, right? Like you people, especially non photographers, they should look at the image and feel the image, and then talk, and then you say, man is beautiful. And then try to figure out why it’s beautiful.
Is it the tones, is skin skin color? Is it how soft it is or is it how hard it is? Like what, what draws you to this image?for me, those are the things I’m, I’ve evolved into thinking and wanting people to feel an image more than, you know, think about its color and think about all that. Those things are secondary.
and then, you know, for my shooting style, I’m purposeful. Wanting to get the emotion and wanting to, wanting people to feel like they’re either there or feel like they want to be themselves within those photos. Those are the ultimate goals for me. So when approaching editing, editing should never, my, my philosophy, editing shouldn’t be a distraction.
you can’t be [00:20:00] blinded by how bad light is, or you can’t be blinded by how dark everything is or, or how. You know, there, there’s, there isn’t enough greens or why, why does it look like that? Sometimes people can’t articulate why, why they don’t like something. They just know they don’t like something. So
[00:20:17] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Yeah.
[00:20:17] Joshua Dwain Frith: if you sort of can subconsciously move that feeling of, yeah, I like, it’s a nice photo, but you know, that, but is the toughest thing to eliminate.
you know, it’s a cool photo, but uh, there’s something there. And if you’re not like a photographer, you can’t articulate why image is not. That good. Um, you just know and, um, you know, that little piece of, you know, just people not really understanding why a pitcher doesn’t compel them to say I love it, is what I think.
Editing sort of does a really big part of that heavy lifting in that, in that, in that scenario. So it’s the goal.
[00:20:59] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: [00:21:00] Nice. Well said. let’s dive into.
[00:21:04] Struggles with Creative Shoots
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[00:21:10] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: An area that you are struggling with working on improving, it’s right now or like coming up, you mentioned to me that it’s creative, creative shoots.now personal projects? Are these paid creative shoots? Tell me more about this and what the struggle is and what you’re hoping to, to do
[00:21:26] Joshua Dwain Frith: Yeah. Uh, yeah. Um, this is something that I’ve been talking about for years with, uh, a lot of photographers. we don’t shoot if there’s no money.and I, and I, I think we do it, we. It’s a huge disservice to our ourselves as people who wanted to, you know, who more or less picked up the camera for the sake of picking up a camera.
you know, c the, the curiosity of creativity is something we’re all innately born with. Some of us, it, it, it, it spa it, it stays with us long enough where we can do [00:22:00] creative things as adults. Not just photography, but specifically for photographers. A lot of times we’re not creating just for the sake of creating.
We are too busy. You know, life happens. We have families, you know, businesses trying to get money. that’s usually probably the biggest reason why we don’t do it. We, because we’re trying to chase money in other avenues. But I, I, I strongly feel that, you know, personal work can aid in that and we don’t really, We don’t give it enough attention to cr, you know, do creative shoots on our own. So I think one of the biggest things is, is trying to find things that are, you know, generally worth the effort to do. creatively for me, I’ve shot a lot of personal stuff,while having a functional business and while having, um, paying clients.
But I think I still need to do more. I think it bleeds over to what I do for other clients and also it’s, it [00:23:00] continues to bring eyes. Um, it’s like, you know, social content. A lot of us, that have business really only make social content, like surrounding our business to, to, to sort of, you know, because it’s required of us.
[00:23:14] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Yeah.
[00:23:15] Joshua Dwain Frith: but to make social content for the sake of it, who wants to do that? it’s the same thing with, photography. Sometimes you are like, why am I doing this? Shoot For what reason? But, well, the reason is it would bring more eye for me personally, I think, I believe it’ll bring more eyes to my photography business.
there’s some of the things that,
of this actually. go ahead,
[00:23:35] Balancing Commercial and Personal Work
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[00:23:35] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: So in the sport portrait space, right?
[00:23:38] Joshua Dwain Frith: Uhhuh.
[00:23:39] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: I know a lot of photographers in that space,
[00:23:41] Joshua Dwain Frith: Yeah.
[00:23:42] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: and there’s some that are high volume sport portrait photographers. There’s some that are low volume sport portrait photographers.
[00:23:47] Joshua Dwain Frith: Mm-hmm.
[00:23:48] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: have the, the Jaison Sterling of the world that low lower volume sport portrait photographers and the content they put on and, and YouTube [00:24:00] and whatnot.
TikTok, so et cetera of. Doing the smoke and the, and the fire and you know, all the
[00:24:08] Joshua Dwain Frith: Yeah.
[00:24:08] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: lighting that’s just so freaking impressive and all that stuff. They’re doing that for every, sport player that they photograph every single
[00:24:16] Joshua Dwain Frith: Yeah.
[00:24:17] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: they’re, they’re doing that, so it’s lower volume because they’re taking more time in the production. Then you have the Jay and Carinna Boatwright of the world that are high volume knocking out entire sport leagues in one day, but them. They’re doing the creative shoots once leagues league session, and it’s
[00:24:39] Joshua Dwain Frith: Mm-hmm.
[00:24:39] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: the day.
[00:24:40] Joshua Dwain Frith: Yeah.
[00:24:40] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: They wait till all the, the, the, the money making shots are done,
[00:24:44] Joshua Dwain Frith: Mm-hmm.
[00:24:45] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: where every parent’s about, you know, gonna buy a whole bunch of prints and digitals and so on.and when everything’s all done, they ask of the players that like caught their attention during the day. do the creative [00:25:00] shoot for themselves
[00:25:00] Joshua Dwain Frith: Yeah.
[00:25:02] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: and like that’s what, what, what you were just talking about.
That’s what it reminds me of is like you do the, you do the moneymaking work and then figure out why you’re doing that, what the creative thing is for yourself,
[00:25:13] Joshua Dwain Frith: Uhhuh.
[00:25:14] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: and take the time.
[00:25:15] Joshua Dwain Frith: Yeah, I, I, you’re spot on. that’s one of the things I used to teach at my workshops is that you, you can get maybe five images out of the day for yourself, right. You’re shooting five portions of a wedding day, getting ready, first look, ceremony, portraits,performable portraits and reception.
Five of those you need to create five portfolio images. Four, you yourself. You don’t have to be happy with them, but to at least try to make, you know, five in visits for yourself because you spend so much time like following a schedule or following a, um, a shot list. When do you create for yourself? you [00:26:00] know, so I, I totally agree with, with, you know, at the end of the day, let’s try to get something for ourselves.
[00:26:05] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Yeah, it’s a great, it’s a great approach. so, so what are you gonna do to try to, plan more? are you, like, you currently in the brainstorming process of what, like writing down all of your different ideas or? what’s, what are you doing to, to, to make this, better for you going, going forward?
[00:26:25] Joshua Dwain Frith: Wallowing in it, man. The wallowing, wallowing in the fact that I haven’t done it. I mean, I don’t really need to right now. There’s no, like brainstorming. I have full,what do you call it, with those sheets of mood boards of things that I wanna do, multiple of them. I have things in my head. It’s really just planning and timing really.
That’s, that’s what it is. And, and the hardest part isn’t. Me because if it were just me, I’d just go to my studio and shoot. But it is coordinating models, it is [00:27:00] getting, a, a makeup artist that will do it for, for the sake of, you know, creating it is getting hairstylists to do that. Clothing is one of the toughest things to get, from a, like, as a stylist, because they have to pull clothes from people if, or, or, or fans.
Um, stores, if they don’t have anything in their inventory that fits your vision, so, and then they want to get paid, so rightfully so. So that’s really the hardest part is, finding people who can collaborate within a timeframe that works for myself. And them, than anything else, which is why it’s a slow project, um, process.
a lot of personal things that I’ve done that are easy, it’s like, Hey, I know a model, or I know somebody who wants to take some photos. I can try that with them. You know, if they can do their makeup, they can do their own own hair, if they can dress themselves. Those are the easy parts. I think when you, when you relying on a team to collaborate, that’s when it can get, you know, pretty difficult and, you know.
Disheartening or, you know, [00:28:00] person that you wanna work with, isn’t available or can’t make themself available.
[00:28:04] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Yeah.
[00:28:05] Collaborative Efforts in Photography
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[00:28:07] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Let me ask you, so when you do, let’s say you’re doing a, a commercial job. It’s a, it’s a portrait session for something.
[00:28:11] Joshua Dwain Frith: Mm-hmm.
[00:28:12] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: some brand hired you,
[00:28:14] Joshua Dwain Frith: Okay.
[00:28:15] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: and, and, and you’re, you’ve got, you’ve got the stylist, you’ve got the makeup artist. everything’s going, getting planned, behind the scenes before the even happened.
[00:28:27] Joshua Dwain Frith: Mm-hmm.
[00:28:28] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: How much say do you have in it as a photographer?in the direction to take the, the job?
[00:28:36] Joshua Dwain Frith: that’s a good question. So, you know, I’ve. I, I strongly feel that photographers, need to understand that they are photographers. and there are other people, in other roles like creative directors. Now you can do both.
[00:28:50] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Yeah.
[00:28:51] Joshua Dwain Frith: but if someone’s hiring you, that, that needs to be understood. Like, what’s my role?
[00:28:58] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Am I a photographer or am a [00:29:00] creative director?’cause sometimes they can actually blend into each other, uh, without you even knowing, like. It is a, it is a real question. Yeah.
[00:29:11] Joshua Dwain Frith: so I typically, if there’s a creative director, I would absolutely defer to them in terms of the direction of the shoot. But as a photographer who has to put their name on it and stamp on it, and who has been hired for my abilities, I’m definitely going to, you know, sort of see where I can, what opinions I can give and, You see, like I, it starts, so like, is this okay? Or I think I can do this, or, you know, if they’re receptive to that, it generally comes with like, Hey Josh, do whatever you want. I just wanna keep it here. But it, it, it’s a, it’s always a collaborative effort when you’re working on commercial shoots like that, even, you know, down to the makeup artist.
I, and. Having active conversations with them, with stylists, [00:30:00] Hey, this looks right. You know, can we do that? Or even the model, I care about where, what side their key light might be on because I want to know what side they photograph best on. so I think everyone involved should be collaborative generally.
I am always asking questions and deferring to people, but when I do have an opinion, for sure.you know, as a photographer who has to say who, who, at the end of the day when, when things don’t go right, it’s generally our fault. I can’t let that happen. So, yeah. I’m, I’m checking in.
[00:30:30] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Yeah, it, it’s good that, You know, they hired you, they hired the makeup artist, they hired the stylist for the work that you do. Right? so hopefully they would trust your feedback, trust your opinions on things and stuff like that. have you ever been on a job where it was basically like, no. Do what I tell you?
Have you,
[00:30:50] Joshua Dwain Frith: had one of those situations?
yeah, I do all the time. My wife,
[00:30:55] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: That’s gotta be fun.
[00:30:56] Joshua Dwain Frith: it’s my, my wife. She’s like, no, I don’t [00:31:00] want it like that. I said, I want it like this.
[00:31:03] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Right.
[00:31:03] Joshua Dwain Frith: hey, you’re the boss. You got it.
[00:31:05] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Yeah. Well, I think your, your wife gets a pass.
[00:31:08] Joshua Dwain Frith: Yeah. Yeah. She’s honestly, when working with her, I don’t know, like, I don’t know what she wants, like, I mean, I have an idea, but she has, you know, as a jewelry designer and when I’m working for her brand, she knows exactly what she wants. so I ab and that’s talking with some, like when I’m hired, because when we, when we had that, you know, dynamic when we’re doing shoots for her airing brand.
I’m absolutely constantly checking in to make sure that this, you know, it, I, I help her with the business and I help her run it from a business side. But as a designer, she’s the creative person. Like she knows exactly what she wanted. She, the angle is how she feels if photographs better and how it looks.
So, you know, I think it, it’s, you know, as a perfect example, I think it’s. To always best to sort of work with the person who’s [00:32:00] either hired you or is responsible for the direction of the, the shoot to check in with them and not be egotistical as a photographer to say, you know, this is the way it goes. I, I’ve heard stories,you know, I’ve worked with people after they’ve worked with other people, in our industry, and I’ve heard stories about how, you know.
Rigid people can get, which I completely understand because like I said, it’s our work. You know, we, we care about it deeply. But, um, I’m, I’m a collaborative person, always have been. always will be.
[00:32:29] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Yeah. Love it. Love it. Joshua, this has been fantastic. I, I love, I love chatting about all this stuff and I feel like I, I could talk to you all day about this.but, in the meantime, can you share where,all the listeners who have not seen your work, where
[00:32:47] Joshua Dwain Frith: Okay.
[00:32:48] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: you, check out, check out the wedding work you do, the portrait work you do, what workshops you got coming up, because I know, I think this is gonna air after your next workshop, unfortunately, but. Where they can find your workshops and [00:33:00] all of that fun stuff.
[00:33:00] Joshua Dwain Frith: All good. All good. So guys, you can find me on Instagram at Joshua_Dwain. there’s no y in my name. It’s an I instead and, uh, my website, JoshuaDwain.com.
It’s old but it still has new work on there. check me out on those two platforms. if you want to find out more information about my. Uh, workshop or education, coming up? I have a link in my bio on Instagram. Check me out right there.
[00:33:26] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Sweet. And we will definitely be linking to your AI profile for Imagen in the show notes as well, so everybody can check that out. And again, you can try Joshua’s profile before you even buy it, which is fantastic. so with that, Joshua, thank you for taking the time, and, and sitting down with me and chatting about all this incredible workflow things you got going on.
[00:33:49] Joshua Dwain Frith: Thank you for having me, man. It was great sharing. I gotta interview you, man. I want to pick your brain. So let’s, let’s, let’s definitely talk soon. but thank you so much. Yeah, for sure. It needs [00:34:00] to, thank you for having me, man. I appreciate this.
