Mica: [00:00:00] Welcome. to the 54th episode of the Savory Shot, a podcast about the art and soul of working in food photography. Y'all know who I be. I'm your host with the most Mika McCook. I'm a food photographer based out of Austin, Texas. I wanna start this show off by saying thank you for being here. If this is your first time joining us, welcome to the show.
Welcome to what I like to call the Hot Mess Express. And if this is your 54th time, welcome back. Thanks for showing up. Last episode, we went on a wild ride with a discussion all about feedback, that love hate relationship we have with it, from feeling stung by criticism to embracing it as a growth tool.
We covered it all. So if you haven't listened to that episode, it's a must [00:01:00] listen. So, Get to it. But let's talk about today's episode. We're in for a treat, and I'm gonna get right into it, y'all. We're chatting with Skylar Burt. He is a food photographer, educator, and the creative force behind the YouTube channel We Eat Together.
He's a legend in the food photography world, known for his practical advice and down to earth approach. Skylar's journey is, it's inspiring, y'all. He started in photojournalism and travel photography, but his passion for food and cooking eventually led him to food photography. He created the We Eat Together channel to fill a void he saw, a lack of accessible resources for budding food photographers.
Y'all in our conversations, Skyler shares his insights on everything from [00:02:00] gear and technology to the importance of hobbies and personal projects and evolving as a photographer. If you are looking for some real talk about what it takes to make it in this industry, then this episode is for you. But before we get into that, make sure you hit that follow button so you never miss an episode.
And if you're feeling generous, leave a review. It really does help the show. It helps more people discover this little podcast of ours. So grab your coffee, your wine, cocktail if it's been that kind of day, and let's start the show.
[00:03:00]
Mica: I mentioned to you before we started recording how I got into food photography. Your channel We Eat Together was one of the channels that I watched. And one of the videos that I loved where [00:04:00] you did a shoot with a 20 dollar light. And I thought that was really cool because at the time I did not have any kind of budget and I thought I have to go buy all of this crazy expensive equipment and I'm like, how on earth am I going to afford all of this?
Your videos taught me. That A, you can build as you go and B, you can work with so little and get so much. It just made me think outside of the box. So I'm really glad that you're here and I'm very excited. So thank you again for being on the show.
Skyler: Thanks for having me. it's funny you mentioned that video. I appreciate you watching the videos. That's really cool. That is actually one of my favorite videos because it's my mantra to food photography for just starting out. If you're a beginner food photographer, I think it goes for any photographer.
I think the first thing that if you're like getting into photography, the first thing you think about is. Okay, now I need all this stuff, I need that stuff, I need this lens, and it all costs a [00:05:00] ton of money, how am I ever going to do this, and really if you have a camera, if you have a lens, that's probably the first standard that you need, and then you can just build up from there. And not be so worried about getting everything perfect.
Especially, I think it's the trend now not to really be perfect. I liked that video. That was a long time ago. Wow.
Mica: Five years ago. Five, six years ago.
Skyler: That's like centuries in YouTube time. Yeah. That was just a halogen light from Home Depot. But it's really not the equipment you have.
It's really how you use the equipment, the technique and stuff like that. If you're going for that kind of food photography, the limitations to cheap gear you'll quickly run into as you go along your journey in photography.
But if you want to start out that way, then you know, that's perfect. It's a double edged sword because I also believe that you should buy, if you're buying equipment, buy the cheap stuff, buy stuff that'll last forever. Which, a lot of [00:06:00] the camera that I'm recording myself on or that you see right now is 10 years old and I haven't changed it, but it was a great camera and it's still a great camera.
There's some dead pixels, I'll change it out here in the next couple of years, but I guess my point is really, buy gear once and then use it for as long as possible. Cause you're going to buy tons of gear. There's like light stands, there's soft boxes and there's lights and wheel stands and every little doodad and gadget, you're going to have thousands of it.You know, thousands of pieces of gear. So you want to make sure that you're not constantly rebuying a bunch of this stuff, especially if you want to make any money.
Mica: As a photographer gets further in their career how do they know what equipment to really invest on and what's okay to buy the generic brand or something? I remember in photography school, they told us, lenses absolutely.
You can buy [00:07:00] that used your camera body. You might want to invest in something new. But I know that everyone has different opinions on that. So how what's your opinion on that?
Skyler: I don't know. I personally would like to have my camera and lenses new because that's the most crucial part of the puzzle. It all depends on what kind of photography you do. You know, like some people like the artistic. Style of really old lenses, like film lenses and stuff.
I love it. So yeah, I would buy those kinds of lenses used, but if it's for professional use, you might want to get yourself a set of prime lenses that are really nice. And that you're going to use as your workhorse lenses. They'll get you your standard image, nothing really artistic, no crazy lens flare or, haze to it or whatever, but yeah, you can play around with other stuff, in your test shoots. But if you're wanting to become a professional photographer.[00:08:00]
You're going to have the set of gear that you use. As test shoots to build your portfolio or to try stuff out in the studio. And that stuff doesn't have to be the top of the line stuff. But when you do a professional shoot, most likely you're going to rent the gear. If you're doing like a professional studio shoot or a commercial, you're going to need a lot of gear that you can't afford.
And so you're gonna have to rent that. And then you might find pieces that you use often. You can buy those and have it part of your kit if it makes sense, and you want to use it a lot to get familiar with it. So when you go on set you don't have to fumble around with it.
There's a couple of pieces. Like I often use this like dolly slider that is a professional dolly slider that you would see in movies. And it comes with tracks and stuff like that. I've used it a couple of times of commercials and every time I rent it, I have to spend like a half an hour fiddling around with it to figure out how it works.
I'm doing this cause it actually has a PlayStation remote control.
Mica: Really?
Skyler: Yeah. [00:09:00] And so it's not something that I have in my studio. I use it only on the commercial shoots. And, so it is something that I would, if I had the budget, I'd love to buy it that way I could practice with it, in my studio, but I guess, as you go along, you'll figure out what you need. Because when you get a brief from a client and they want you to do this impossible shot, you'll go, okay, I need this and this to make it work. The specialized lens or this high end light that's really powerful or something like that.
And then you'll start to realize, Oh maybe I need that, in my studio to do test shoots with, or something like that.
Mica: Oh, yeah. I do what you said about using equipment repeatedly. I tell people don't sleep on that, that Nifty 50, that 50 millimeter. I use that for so long before finally buying two additional lenses. And really that's in my kit my, my macro by 24 to 70 and [00:10:00] my 50.
Skyler: For food photography, it's three lenses. It's a wide lens, like a 24 or 35 or something like that. The 50 and a hundred millimeter macro and everything else is up to you. You can get your personal flair. One of my favorite photographers they use the probe lens as a still photography lens.
And they get some really cool, like wide angle product shots. That's helpful. Video is a whole different monster. You're going to want a probe lens. You're going to want probably some cinema lenses especially if you're using follow focuses and tracks and stuff like that. For photography, that's nifty 50, a hundred millimeter macro and like a 35 or a 24 or something like that, or the 24 to 70 is a good lens to.
Mica: I know a photographer who only uses prime lenses. They're reasoning behind it is they're like, if I feel like you should move your [00:11:00] body.
Skyler: Yeah. I only use primes as well. And I do use my zoom lens. If I know I'm going to be taking portraiture, and I want to zoom in and out to get a good composition cause you don't really know what's going to happen. But in still life it's really the primes.
Mica: The primes are it, they're it. When I started, I thought I'm going to have a whole library of lenses. And then I realized pretty quickly that I don't need all that. It's expensive, but really just boil down to, I don't need all that.
All my needs are met.
Skyler: Yeah. You get weighed down by the amount of gear you have to. It takes up space. I have a whole closet that is packed filled with gear that I don't regularly use. It's great to have it when you need it, but it becomes annoying after you do it for 10, 20 years, you're like moving around all this stuff that is 10 years old and you're like, I don't want to throw it away, but I [00:12:00] haven't used it in 10 years,
Mica: It's because as soon as you throw it away, you're going to need it.
That's how it always works out.
Skyler: Worse than a photographer too, because you hold onto like scraps of paper and cardboard and random stuff, plates and dishes.
You're like, what did I need this scrap of paper for? I can't remember, but I think it's going to be useful one day.
It's going to be useful.
Mica: And the day it is useful, it's ah, vengeance, you know, I've been yes. I want to ask you about the halogen video and We Eat Together YouTube channel. You did an interview you talked about how you were a teacher, you were educator, you were teaching I believe travel photography and that you started teaching food photography because it's so hot outside and food photography is mostly an indoor niche. And so I'm wondering, was that the foundation of How We Eat Together came about?
Skyler: Yeah. Yeah. [00:13:00] My wife and I traveled around. We lived in Korea for a couple of years. We worked doing stock photography for a lonely planet. Then they sold the Getty. And so I guess a lot of my old stuff, a lot of our old stuff is with getting now lost in the archive somewhere.
But then we moved to the Middle East. We lived in a country called Oman. And we became photography teachers at a university there. I was teaching advanced photography, which was studio lighting. Portraiture and stuff like that. As well as they previously from the previous teacher they had assignments where they went outside and did some kind of travel photography. However, the students would complain all the time. There'd always be an excuse of why they couldn't get their assignment done. And one of the big ones was, Oh, it's hot outside teacher. And so I decided I I've always been interested in studio photography and food [00:14:00] photography. Even before I decided to do travel type photography. So I decided this is a perfect opportunity to learn more about it and to teach it as well. Even if you're not interested in food photography at all, you end up learning a lot of the lighting patterns that you would use in portraiture or in pretty much every other type of studio photography or videography.
You learn how to create soft light, hard light, you learn light distance and all that good stuff that you would use in all the other types of photography. So it was easy for the students to do all they'd have to do is bring in some fruit or vegetables or, buy a dish from the local restaurant and they could, they could have something to photograph.
So subject was also an issue in the Middle East where they had a hard time finding good subjects for their photography, especially for portraiture. And so finding subjects to photograph with food was a lot easier. They could buy a bottle, do product photography or [00:15:00] food photography. And in teaching, it became, I became a lot more knowledgeable about it because when you teach something, you really study it and you become more educated yourself in that topic. Just an act of having to find resources and stuff for your students. I noticed you had Christina Peters on your podcast and she was actually one of the first kind of examples of food photographers that I would share with my students.
So it was before she even had a blog, it was just her website. And then she started the whole, the blog and stuff like that. It's funny cause her name keeps coming up. But yeah, she she was one of the first people I taught to my students as an example of what food photography is.
But then I got interested in myself and started to take it professionally. Or take it more seriously and work at it. But I wasn't really doing food photography professionally until I [00:16:00] came back to the states because in the it's not necessarily true.
Okay. I wasn't doing it for advertisements. I was doing it for hotels and resorts. When I was living in the middle east, I was working professionally for photography, doing photography for advertising agencies there. But it was more portraiture or travel type based portraiture. Where we do tourism type ads and photography and stuff, but they didn't really have any kind of clients for food.
But there was like some resorts that, that I was able to work at. And my wife was with me doing that too, as well. After we started doing that, I was thinking it'd be really cool to start a educational blog. We just had our first daughter. And so I was, we were thinking of names and I was we're thinking like We Eat Together.
It was a cool name cause we like to cook and we like to eat together as a family. So yeah, that's how it got started.
Mica: I'm so glad that it started. I think it's really cool [00:17:00] that it comes full circle with Christina Peters because there are those photographers that when you get into this world, you hear similar names, Penny De Los Santos, Christina Peters, Joanie Simon, you, and, Andrew Scrivani, of course, and you just start to become familiar with these educators who are paying it forward in my opinion.
So, you studied photojournalism. You did travel photography. What was it about food that really intrigued you and made you go, this is a career. This is something that I could really see.
Skyler: I’ve always been interested in food. I love to cook and it's a hobby passion of mine. Traveling around, we got to eat a bunch of different types of food. It was always the highlight of wherever you're traveling, whatever country we were in.
It's like, Oh, let's get the food of their culture and try new things. And buying travel magazines or [00:18:00] food magazines from those countries that would display the beautiful photographs of the local cuisine. It was always really inspiring. And being a photographer, I was like I could do that.
And I guess that kind of that kind of attitude of, I can do anything. I could do that Really gave me a push to try it out for myself and realize how horrible I was at it at first. It was awful. I could definitely not do that. But then I got better, you know, I just like dove into it and studied all these photographers like Christina Peters or even Penny later on after I had already started.
It was weird cause I started in about I think 2008 or 2009. So a lot of the educational thing around food really hadn't picked up at that point. I remember when I started my YouTube channel, I couldn't find any food resources, and this is actually, okay, to segue into why I started WeEatTogether is that there, or the educational [00:19:00] portion of the food photography is that there was really no resources for food photographers. And when I was trying to teach my students how to do it, I couldn't find material myself to learn how to do it online, at least. There was a couple of photographers that had one off videos where they'd show a shoot like a behind the scenes type of thing, but there wasn't really this is how you do it type of content that there is now. Maybe I could, bridge that gap or whatever. And so that's why I started the We Eat Together Channel. I started, I like posted one video or something like that, and then I don't know, five years or six years later, I posted my second video. But yeah, that's why I got into the educational portion of food photography. I love education.
I'm fascinated by learning and teaching people how to do something. It's really a fascination of mine. I liked that portion of photography as well, because I think it's one of those [00:20:00] niches where people really want to teach no matter the subject they're in. There's some people that just, they hate it or whatever.
They hate teaching. They hate speaking. They hate the whole thing, but I think the vast majority of photographers love to show the new thing that they figured out and share it with everyone for free.
Mica: It's like showing that child something new and just seeing how they light up.
Skyler: Yeah, I think, just photographers love to share, I remember when digital first came out, looking at the back of your camera, they would call it shimping to be like, Ooh, look what I just shot. And you show it to everyone on the back of your screen that's about this big.
But it's just inherent in photographer is. Every photographer is you want to see all my pictures? Every shot that I ever took since I was a kid? Let me, we only met five minutes ago, but yeah, let me show you for. I guess it extends to teaching too, as well as let me show you this new thing I just learned.
Mica: [00:21:00] With managing your YouTube channel and balancing it with your photography business. How do you juggle those responsibilities and what keeps you showing up for We Eat Together?
Skyler: I don't. I am the worst YouTuber on the planet. I think it's been about three months since I posted the last video. I love to post YouTube videos, but I just haven't really been able to find a groove ever since I started YouTube where I can consistently post new content every week or twice a week or something like that.
I have a plan and my plan is that I'm going to start just filming my portfolio shoots. Cause I'm working on a new portfolio right now. And I'm spending time doing that I do a lot of client work that keeps me busy. So pretty much everything in life prevents me from making a YouTube video.
And that's my excuse. So yeah, I don't balance it at [00:22:00] all. I wish I could say that, yeah I'm great at this, but I'm horrible at balancing YouTube and professional photography. yeah.
Mica: You know I find that answer to be so incredibly refreshing because I don't know how many interviews I've seen out there where someone will say, oh, I just meditate in the morning, or some bullshitty answer like that. And it's like, okay maybe I should go meditate.
And then I'm like, I'm still not juggling everything. Someone asked me like, how do I manage the podcast? How do I do food photography in addition? And I told them unless I have help, something's going to suffer. That's just the truth. When I devote my attention to the podcast, that means things are slow in my photography business.
And so I can, do test shoots and things like that. But when I'm working, then the podcast suffers because I'm working. Unless I hire someone who can take care of those responsibilities for [00:23:00] me there really is no juggling. I do what I can when I can
and the rest will happen there.
Skyler: I'm just grateful for anyone who watches my videos because I know it's, they've been like holding on for a long time and I get comments, Oh, welcome back. We thought you died, which is, to be fair, it's probably accurate. I used to give myself the excuse of it takes me a long time to make a video and I want to make sure it's really good.
So that's why people have to wait. But in reality, I just, I can't juggle both and you're right. Unless I hire somebody which I don't make any money on YouTube, so I can't afford to hire anyone. But yeah, you're right. If you focus on one, the other slows down and vice versa. I try to do YouTube when I can. I've been trying to make it as simple as possible to where, if I can film just what I normally do on set doing a test shoot or something like that, then maybe it'll come out easier, but the amount that I want it to be perfect, which I [00:24:00] know it doesn't have to be perfect.
It's like the antithesis of YouTube, but when I go to film a YouTube video, I want to make sure it looks great. The edits perfect. And then it ends up taking six months and I forget what I'm even filming at that point. I actually have five videos that are like three quarters of the way done that I don't even know what I was filming.
If I go to back to look at them now, I probably wouldn't be able to remember what I was doing. And then I run out of hard drive space and I delete it all. But YouTube is weird, it's definitely. I don't know how deep you want to go into YouTube. But if you look at YouTube, like photography, I think a lot of photographers after the pandemic, their viewership kind of nosedived. There's some that I have a huge following so you can't really see the nosedive, but if you see the previous videos before the pandemic, it looks like there's a huge kind of nosedive and a lot of the YouTubers that I followed took a [00:25:00] break. I think maybe after the pandemic people just, they wanted to get back to work. They didn't have enough time to sit around and watch YouTube videos all the time. So I think it's a trend across the entire industry of, for at least photography.
And also with photography, I think a lot of content that gets produced now is shorts and reels.
Mica: That's true. I mean, I still feel like there's an audience for that. I'm a slow learner. So if you try to explain something to me in three minutes, I'm not gonna get it. I need you to break it down. It needs to be a 20 minute video. I need to know the deets.
Those cooking videos I find to be so deceptive, and made me think, Oh, I could make croissants. And I didn't realize the amount of time and effort that went into making croissants, and I'm like, yeah, I'm not doing all that.
Skyler: Roll, roll roll.
Mica: Fold.
Skyler: Oh, there's a magical croissant. Yeah. It's just I didn't, I totally didn't cook that 20 times to get it perfect for on camera. [00:26:00]
Yeah.
Mica: Exactly. Exactly. There's a YouTube channel that I love and follow. It's called Peaceful Cuisine. I tell people who go to watch it. I'm like, do not watch this if you're in a rush, because homeboy takes his time.
It's beautiful. It was ASMR before it was a thing and he keeps the background music very low. So it's just there, but really the sounds the textures of everything that he cooks it's very therapeutic, but this is like a 15, 20, 25 minute video, but I'll sit there and watch it all day, every day.
But there will always be a community for it, but I, I like what you said about, how people wanted to just get out after the pandemic. I realized that a lot of people's mental health kind of suffered during that period. And so now they're just like, I want to be out.
Skyler: It's also a very, I think a lot of YouTubers have spoken about this. It's a very lonely existence. There's you [00:27:00] and a camera and that's about it.
For the vast majority, if you really, are doing it full time as a YouTuber, you're by yourself pretty much 90 percent of the time, unless you have a team.
But if you're just talking to the camera, it's long lane stuff like that. You have to get out and do stuff, but with the pace at which you have to produce content, that seems like it's just to get out of the studio or wherever you're filming yourself. It seems like you're always constantly in that headspace of making your next video or putting out your new piece of content.
There's always something that you're failing to keep an eye on, keep control of, and so it's very stressful. And in trying to increase your business as a photographer, I'm having to keep marketing and build clients and get new shoots and stuff like that.
And that takes a lot of time to do. Test shoots and shoot my portfolio and really dedicate my time mentally to that. It's hard to think about making a video while you're trying to do that as well.
Mica: Oh, for [00:28:00] sure. For sure. What keeps you coming back? You've had this YouTube channel for years and with all the challenges that you just listed. What keeps your foot, what keeps your toe in that pond?
Skyler: Pride. I feel like I owe it to the very little audience that I have left. I enjoy making a video and I enjoy getting comments and answering comments. And I enjoy whatever I can with my audience.
Sometimes I feel like I'll be thinking about a topic and I'm like, people need to know this. This would make a great video. Not because I think it'll get great views, but because I think it's good information that people need to hear. Yeah, that's, I guess that's what keeps me coming back and making videos.
But in the same sense, like my favorite videos that I've done, or at least the topics that I think are the most important ones get the least amount of views or little to no views. That's [00:29:00] disheartening. I'm like, you wish more people would hear it.
Mica: That makes a lot of sense. What I hear you saying is, you're here to serve and people who are here to serve it's not what can you do for me, but what can I do for you? That's, how I feel very much about the podcast. I love that that's what keeps you here. Sometimes find myself when I Google something or search for a YouTube video, I find I'm putting the limits, like the search, the filter limits of, I want to, I want a video that was, posted 10 years ago because I know the people who knew what they were doing were actually posting and I don't know, these want to learn how to do this in five seconds?
That just throws me off.
Skyler: I, that's, that is tough because yeah, the whole quick, quick, like five, five second video or whatever, or 30 second video of let me teach you this thing. One of my favorite YouTubers right now is Scott from Tenal studios. Do you, have you seen [00:30:00] this channel?
Mica: Yes, I have. I have.
Skyler: Has he been on the podcast yet?
Mica: Yes, not.
Skyler: Oh, you should have him. You should invite him. He has the YouTube channel that I wanted. He says all the stuff that I was ever like too afraid to say cause I feel like I would alienated people, but he really just tells it how it is, especially concerning professional photography. He doesn't really get into the tutorial so much but he dives into more deeper concepts about, what it takes to be a photographer. His videos are all under 10 minutes, but it's definitely not like a this is how you do a thing in 30 seconds. He stays away from that. Yeah, that's a good channel if you want to learn about being a professional photographer.
Mica: What have your students and viewers taught you about yourself?
Skyler: Was it taught me about myself? I guess it, it's really if we're just talking about the the YouTube channel, it's taught me that there's really not enough information that you [00:31:00] could ever give somebody. I guess the best form of education would be to learn directly from the person.
Because you would get all those little insights that you can't share on a video, or there's just simply not time or the person making the video just can't think about every little piece that a person might learn. But it's also taught me to be more humble about my own work.
I think photographers get into a groove of I can do this thing really good. And then they plateau. And so being part of this space and looking at new work all the time from other creators and to see what's trending and stuff like that is really pushed, my art forward.
Everyone's generally kind on YouTube. I know people really talk bad about the YouTube comments section and they can be really mean there. It's true. [00:32:00] But, they're also really supportive and really kind. And when they give you even if it's a simple note on your video. Hey, your audio is terrible or something like that. It's coming from a, generally a good place. I think, maybe I'm a little naive on that. People like to talk poos in the comment section.
Mica: I assume that the mean comments are bots and they're just there to start an argument. I look at how people comment and I'm like, okay, that's a genuine real comment.
That sounds like person. That sounds genuine and then I'll see one where it just sounds so ridiculous. I'm like, okay. I don't believe you're a human. think you're a bot. I don't know those are just there to like entice arguments, I assume but.
Skyler: Maybe what I was trying to say is there's a lot of comments that let you know that you're not alone in what you're experiencing. So like sometimes I'll talk about a topic and then I'll get comments of I have that same experience. And I'm like, Oh that's great. I thought maybe I was the only one, and I think that's really important. That's [00:33:00] another thing I was talking about Scott's channel is he'll talk about a lot of things that he experiences as a professional photographer. And I'm like, Oh, he goes through that stuff too. So I'm not the only one that has three clients a year or something like that, and I thought I wasn't doing enough or whatever but maybe he's not doing enough either, like it reaffirms that it is not just you.
And so sometimes people will share in the comment section what they go through or what they have problems with and you go, oh I never realized maybe I should, make a video about that.
Mica: I went to a commercial photographer happy hour. This year has started off on the slow note for me and I thought, man, I'm not doing enough. I'm not working hard enough. I'm not marketing myself, like just not doing enough.
And this happy hour, we spent a good chunk of the hour just talking about how it's been generally slow for us all. It felt like a release.
I love that you said that about [00:34:00] just that community and not being alone.
Skyler: Yeah. The photography community can be really harsh. Cause there's camps and then there's everyone else who doesn't even know those camps exist. In the camps it can be really toxic especially concerning gear or whatever. Oh, you shoot Canon.
That's horrible. I shoot Nikon's way better. But then there's everyone else who's just really nice and encouraging and stuff like that. But I don't know if it's really taught me anything about myself other than the fact that I never can do enough.
Mica: What do they say? There's never enough hours in the.
Skyler: There's enough hours in the day.
So there you go.
Mica: Yeah. Even if the day was extended from 24 hours to 28 hours, it still wouldn't be enough. That's like the biggest thing is accepting you can't do everything and not everything's going to get done. How do you feel about the future of food photography and with these new tools that are becoming available to photographers?
Skyler: I guess let's start off by saying I [00:35:00] don't know much about it. I'm not an expert in it. I really haven't seen all that it can do. I've tested it out myself just in Adobe for an hour or something like that. But so I'm not really knowledgeable. So if I say anything and people are like, Oh that's not true.
I don't know anything about it. Just from my knowledge of food photography, I don't think it's going to take over. A lot of people are afraid. It's going to end photography. They said that about 3D. They said that about stock photography. I'm sure there was something before.
They
Mica: Said that about art.
Skyler: Yeah.
Okay.
Yeah. When
Mica: The camera.
Skyler: Came out. Yeah.
Mica: This is Satan's work.
Skyler: Yeah, I don't think it's gonna be a world ender for photography. It might for some genres, if those photographers don't utilize it like 3D did with product photography. If you learn how to use the 3D software, you can still do that genre of art, and you can still do product [00:36:00] photography.
It's just there's a lot of 3D out there now. But with AI, from my small short time testing it now, I think it's a few decades away at this point. I know everyone's Oh, it's incredible. But I wasn't able to get any kind of perspective. Like proper perspective. I used it in Adobe to mask out and replace something with something else.
But it didn't look good. It didn't even look possible as a photo. And so I think we got a ways to go before you can take a cup and change it into a different style of cup. You can do it, but it won't look great because they just don't have the source material there.
Maybe if some a group of millions of photographers were to dedicate their time photographing every known possible object and then they would [00:37:00] upload that to the AI, then it would probably be scary, a lot scarier, but think about making a pizza shot from in front of the food, there's perspective issues.
There's depth of field issues. There's lighting, which to be fair, it is pretty fantastic with relighting subjects, that's pretty cool. And adding reflections where they should be, which is interesting, but I don't know how it does that. Just getting that proper perspective on the pizza. Or whatever it is, it just doesn't look good and they don't have the correct pizza that you want.
So yeah, I don't think it's 100 percent there with food, at least. Unless we're talking about what the audience expects and that's where I think it becomes scarier is, what does the audience react to?
If the audience reacts to AI positively, then you might start seeing [00:38:00] ads that are created solely from AI because the audience likes that kind of content. And the reason why I say that I was actually thinking about it earlier when you brought it up is user generated content wasn't always a thing in advertisement, but now it's the word UGC, the acronym is thrown around pretty much all the time.
And it's become commonplace where 20 years ago, you would never hear it. And so I would say if that happens to AI, where the audience goes or the creative directors or art directors go, we want some AI stuff, people love AI stuff then. Yeah. Then you have a scary moment where traditional photographers go by the wayside.
What happened to studio photographers when UGC content or user generated content became popular, they studied all their [00:39:00] lighting for 20 years. They got everything perfect in their photography. And then all of a sudden the trend shifted to where lighting doesn't matter anymore. Great backgrounds don't matter.
Anything that they previously spent their life dedicating to mastering doesn't matter anymore. That even includes food photography. So if that happens with AI, then, yeah, then it's scary.
Mica: You mentioned just now about about what will keep someone working or in this industry, if they're willing to adapt and be flexible and be a chameleon and be like water, if you will. I went to a panel discussion at South by Southwest and they talked about where the future of food media is headed with AI and just in general.
One of the panelists said that [00:40:00] what increases your chances of longevity in this career is not being married to one way of doing something. I mean that just rang through my head as truth. I'm like, yes you can't be married to one way of doing things because you could just wedge yourself out of a career.
That's why if there's an app, I'm trying it. If there's a software, I'm trying it. Anything that will make it easier for me to do my job. But it is a little bit of a gray area when it comes to food photography, especially if it's a brand or a restaurant saying, yeah, this is our food and it's an AI image.
And someone goes to that restaurant and they're completely disappointed with what they see because the images that they saw on their website falsely advertised what they were actually going to get. I guess it circles back to expectations.
Skyler: I [00:41:00] think there's two points to that. One is currently that would be, I believe, illegal for restaurants to do, at least in America and the UK, I think has even stricter laws. America, at least there was a lawsuit that just happened two years ago or a year and a half ago now with Burger King for misrepresenting their Whopper, the size of their Whopper.
Somebody decided that they didn't like how Burger King was photographing their Whopper. But I don't know how that case turned out. I just saw that the lawsuit got started. So with AI, that would be an issue as far as misrepresenting the product on the menu or on the packaging or something like that. Photographs are already an interpretation of reality. I don't know how deep you want to go with that thought process, but everything that is in a camera is captured by an [00:42:00] artist and then artist chooses to compose it the way they compose it.
And the entire story could be not based in reality, depending on how the artist wants to interpret that photograph, they could compose it away. They could use an aperture or a shutter speed that could completely bend reality and lighting as well. Or editing. And I think people get caught up on the whole editing.
Oh, it's once you cross that threshold in the dark room or in Photoshop, then you're distorting reality. It's there's a whole lot of distortion that goes on before you even reach Photoshop. And it didn't always be like that, it wasn't always that way with commercial food photography.
There was a lot of distortion of reality on set when Photoshop didn't even exist. And I think there's a trend. I know. I don't think there is a trend in commercial photography where they're going more towards natural, especially with editorial style food photography. They're even using real ice cubes.
So [00:43:00] there's that trend. And I liked that trend. That actually what inspired me to do the work that I do is, I wanted to make it all natural as much as I could. It's just like, where is that line of reality to not, like a lot of food styling is to bring life back into the food.
If you were to photograph it as it is in reality, it wouldn't look as good. Even if you're just doing minimal brushing of highlights on a hamburger or something like that. Brushing some oil or spraying it with water to make the water drops or something like that, even that is a misrepresentation of reality.
Now in the the Burger King case with the Whopper, the patty was too big or too small, or it's too big in the photograph. It's not that big in reality. It's tough because I've never worked on Burger King or McDonald's, but I've seen the behind the scenes on McDonald's. Has a great video on YouTube, actually, of how they do the burger photographs.
A lot of people think [00:44:00] it's faked, but it's not. It's just the perfect bun out of a set of a hundred buns that they have laid out. It's the perfect patty out of the 25 that they cooked and then they style it to make it look great. It's not squished into a cardboard box with all that steam melting everything by the time you open it.
So it's the perfect representation of that burger pre boxed and they make it look really good. And then to go on to, to defend Burger King a little here, I'm not sure about the photograph that they're speaking about, but I can assume maybe they're using a wider angle lens, which would distort the size of the burger of items in a photo. Make them look larger, depending on where they're placed in the camera, it could look bigger or smaller. There is that distortion of reality and wherever that gray line is, it's up to the viewer. What the audience or consumers will accept. If they accept AI then great.
[00:45:00] We all have to learn how to use AI then. I'm currently making a new portfolio right now because I feel like I, as a photographer didn't change with the times. I didn't grow. I perfected and further perfected what I do and then further perfected it.
But it's all still generally the same thing and I was just taking a look at my portfolio and I love all the photos in it, but I feel like they're all old hat. Where maybe I could try something new and reinvigorate my style and reinvigorate my outlook towards photography. I think if you don't do that as a photographer, then yeah, you become stagnant and you'll lose clients.
You won't gain new ones and you'll become a little jaded and maybe a little angry. And you'll sound like the angry old man yelling at the young kids or whatever.
Mica: Say, back in my day.
Skyler: Yeah, exactly. [00:46:00] And on the photography forums. I just personally, for me I just grew bored of the type of work that I'm putting out there. Not that it's not good.
It's great for the type of work but it's just not exciting to me. It's not something new for me. To talk about that point, there's two sides of that one. It's whatever the audience is going to accept. And two, it's always great to change as a photographer and learn new things.
If you're a product photographer, I'm sure learning 3D software. If you didn't do that, you would be losing a whole host of business that, that you could have. But as a food photographer, if you don't follow the trends, you could definitely miss out on a lot of clients which I've experienced.
I think everyone experiences it. They even have a, the name for it. It's popular in photography. I don't think it was used for that, but the Dunning Kruger effect is it's.
Mica: What's? I'm not familiar with the Dunning Kruger effect. But.
Skyler: It's where you learn [00:47:00] something and then you think you're the best at whatever that topic is.
And then you realize it's just a peak and there's a whole nother mountain that you can't see from your peak.
Mica: I've met photographers who, you know, like when we're talking about stop motion and just adding motion cause I had mentioned that I wanted to incorporate more motion and I feel like I'm super behind on it. One photographer in particular, they were like, what am I a videographer now?
Like I studied photography. I don't want to learn motion and all that. And I said to them, that's fine. That's wonderful. Whatever you choose to do, just be okay with that choice. I often wonder why some photographers are just so resistant to trying something different.
You say to yourself as the photographer, you go, I'm getting clients now. And they obviously like the stuff that I do. I have no fear of losing clients, but then they'll suddenly ask you to do video.
Skyler: And you're like, I don't know how to do that. I want to gain as much [00:48:00] skills as I can, whether it's in stop motion or video or photography or different styles of photography.
I want to gain as much skills as possible because when a client reaches out to me, the first thing I'm going to do is go, yeah, let's do that. And hey, let me upsell you on some other skill that I have that you might, you're not asking for right now. I can do it if you want it.
It works. Sometimes they're. like, yeah, we've been wanting to have some video and I'm like, great. I'll put that in the estimate. I see it as a way of being able to offer different things on your menu as a photographer. Have a menu of stuff that you can do and be able to offer your clients multiple things other than just the one thing that they might be reaching out for you to do. That way you can upsell them. Maybe it comes up on set where they're like, Oh, it would be awesome. If this was actually instead [00:49:00] of this video, maybe we could do a stop motion or something like that to make it a little bit more interactive or whatever.
And you can go, yeah, I can do that. No problem.
Mica: I also wonder if it's just fatigue. It is really hard to be a freelancer. It's hard to be in this industry and you're constantly learning new things and trying to stay ahead of everything. That's where you can have that conversation with yourself. If this is something that you want to learn. If it's going to make my life easier as a photographer.
Like I'm just a forever student and just eager to learn wherever I can. I feel like when people lose that that that desire to learn that's where they stagnate as a creative and as a professional.
Skyler: I look at it also as just being able to service your clients in a way that they didn't know you're capable of. I was on a shoot doing a pizza commercial and it [00:50:00] was just a video shoot. They wanted to get the shot of a pizza being made and my first thought is this is going to take a long time. It takes, a lot of time to decorate a pizza with pepperoni or whatever, and they're like you can just speed up the footage.
So why don't we record the whole thing, speed it up or whatever. And so then I told the client yeah, we could do that. Or I could do a stop motion of it. And it would look a lot more fun, stylistic wise. And it would be unique because not a lot of other companies do that for their commercials, and they really love that idea.
If I didn't have that skill, then I wouldn't be able to offer that to them. Then I would miss out on this opportunity of really making my client happy at that moment. The more like skills you have in your toolbox, the more you can provide to your clients when they don't know that they even want those skills.
Skyler: I really, I like to work with clients where I have input as well to the whole creative making process. We'll have a pre production meeting or something like that. And they'll be like, okay, [00:51:00] this is what we want you to do. We want you to do this shot and that shot. And do you have any suggestions?
And then that's when I really enjoyed it. Come in and be like, all right this is my take on it. Yeah, we could do it like this, but I could also, bring the camera around and, Do this kind of motion or light it like this or something like that, or bring up the fact that I can do stop motion or something like that.
And sometimes it's winners and sometimes they're like, no, you're crazy. The last thing I want to say is I can't do that. That'd be horrible, from my perspective. And so if you're constantly as a photographer, keeping yourself from doing things for I don't know, pride or something or whatever, then I think you're really doing damage to your professional career. You're not sticking with the times. I hate that term because photographers, motion pictures, it's photography, but with video and stop motion or whatever, creating gifs.
These are all like under the photographer's [00:52:00] belt and if you don't know how to do these then learn because that's what it takes to be a photographer. Not just now. It's always been that case. Maybe before it's always been that case since digital came to the, came to the forefront, but I would suspect that even before digital.
Photographers would probably get clients asking them if they can do video too, as well. So I wasn't around as a professional photographer. I grew up in the film era, but I wasn't a professional photographer then but I'm sure if you'd talked to some people, they'd be like, yeah, I've gotten asked a bunch of times to do video, and they pulled out their camcorder and their DB tape.
Mica: Oh, the camcorder.
But yeah you're spot on. So I, I want to finish this interview out with talking about photographers and how they can develop relationships with their clients. You mentioned that earlier about [00:53:00] how you like to work with clients where you have input and say in how the shoot turns out.
So how do you turn a first time client into a repeat client where you do have that input and you do that, have that established trust between them. How do you go about that?
Skyler: It's difficult to answer because when you start shooting with clients, you'll quickly build a complex of, I hope they like what I just delivered. Especially if they're a brand new client and this is the first time you're shooting for them. If they don't respond great job, like within the first five seconds of you pushing submit, you'll sit there and think that they hated everything you just produced which could be true. It's really difficult to answer because that doesn't ever go away. It just happens whenever you have a new client, at least for [00:54:00] me, I don't have the self confidence to say that everything I produce is great and they should love it. And so I shouldn't be worried about it. Every time I have a new client, as soon as I turn photos or a video in or whatever, the next couple of days, until they affirm that I did a good job, I will be on the edge of my seat.
I'll be at home talking about it to no ends annoying everyone around me until I hear that they actually like the work or whatever.
But things you can do to ensure that they'll call you back is one, provide them more than what they're asking for. And you can do that by simply taking a couple of extra shots or saying, Hey, I have this idea. If there's time at the end of the shoot, maybe we could do a shot like this. And when they see it and they like it, they'll be like, Oh, this guy's awesome. Or this person's awesome. They really took care of me.
Two is do the post production as fast as [00:55:00] possible and get it to them as, as quick as possible. And that really build trust between you and the client. The assumption that I get all the time is the question I get is can we have a fast turnaround as if there's any other sort of turnaround?
And my response is always, yeah, no, I was planning on having this to you in a couple of days or whatever. Doing that and saying that and being honest and then honestly delivering on your promise is really helpful for building those relationships with your clients.
Don't take on jobs that you know you can't do. There's like the whole fake it to your make it. That can really cause problems if you're faking let's say a commercial shoot and you don't actually know how to do a commercial or work your camera or something like that.
And that's maybe extreme or whatever, but there are some promises that photographers love to make and it ends up ruining the shoot, not speaking from experience or anything. But the best case is just [00:56:00] to be realistically honest with the client and say, this is what I can do, and don't promise anything outside of that small box of what you can do. And if they say, yeah, that's great. Then you deliver on that and you deliver it quickly and efficiently. But also manage the shoot. Shoots are chaotic and there's a lot of people talking to you.
So figure out a structure to manage the shoot to where it's a little less chaotic and that'll just make everything seem to run smoother. And the client will be like, wow, this person has control of the situation. As the photographer, you're more of the director of the operation.
You are in control of the camera. You're in control of all the wires on the floor. If there's other people you're in control of their time management, so you really have to be the manager or boss of the whole situation, and you have to be communicative with the client and be like, is this what you want?
Are you [00:57:00] sure this is what you want? And then you get that feedback, that instantaneous feedback. They say, no, it's not good. Then you have, correct it. And don't have any kind of prima donna attitude towards. This is how I would shoot it. You got to keep the client happy and you got to make those corrections and provide them with what they want, their vision.
Those are really helpful for keeping clients happy and wanting to return to you. It's just to be easy to work around, have everything that you can. Operate smoothly. I have my assistant, my really good friend, and he's also my producer and he's also a buffer between a lot of people and me when we're on set.
So I've cordoned off by him and he'll answer questions and field questions. And so that keeps the shoot running smoothly. Is now there's two people, answering questions and managing people [00:58:00] on set. But you don't need two people. It's just, you need to communicate while you're shooting and get out of your creative space just a little bit to be able to have peripheral vision of the whole entire thing and how it operates. And also remember, the experience is like a it's like a play in a lot of respects, and they are the audience of this live performance, your client is. So everything you do on set from the, the cameras, the lights, to how you set it up, they're all, they're watching, not judging, but they're watching because one, they're probably interested in it.
They're creatives too. And two, it's entertaining. So if you're really like frazzled on set and you're having issues, that's what they're just watching it like a television show. That's [00:59:00] not going to bring them back to see that you're not in control of this situation. So it has to run like a like a play, a well fine tuned organized performance.
I remember back in the day a lot of photographers, it was a joke is that they would bring not just the stuff, the equipment that they need, but they would bring like extra stuff and set it up but never use it just to impress the clients. Because of the performative aspect of the shoot, it would make them look like more professional, a lot of photographers still make this comment.
I like oh, that, that camera. The client won't feel like that camera is good enough or something like that. So they use a Hasselblad or something like that because they think clients will, Oh, that's an expensive camera. You must take really good pictures. Oh, look at all these lights you have set up.
These pictures are going to be fantastic. There is that performative aspect to it. Maybe not so much in the fact that your client cares what camera you use or what [01:00:00] lights you use. They don't, they just care about the results. But the per the idea psychology behind it of them watching the shoot and going, oh yeah, this guy's, everything's flowing, everything's moving smooth.
He's on time. He is getting great images. This is all, this is fascinating. You want to make sure that that you are running a tight ship and the show is going smoothly.
And that comes with pre production planning, even test shoots that you might do in the studio before that prior to the shoot to make sure that you've actually photographed something like this before. You've actually lit it before, the worst case scenario is to come to a shoot and have never photographed whatever you're photographing that day. It happens, I've done it myself where it's I'm a food photographer.
I'm not a photograph. I don't know, this hamburger or something like that. And I've never photographed a hamburger before, but I'm sure it's, it's food. I can do food. And then you quickly realize in about five [01:01:00] seconds that you don't know what the heck you're doing. So then you're fumbling around going, you're trying to make something up and that is visible.
And that can be seen. So you wanna make sure that you have at least photographed the food before and you have some creative bank to pull from. Whether it's, as far as setting up your gear to the compositions you're making, to the lighting that you're using. It's all up here. You've done it before, you've rehearsed it, and now the show is gonna be a good show.
Mica: I love that you referenced theater. I always tell people, go talk to a stage manager, talk about running a show.
Skyler: Yeah.
Mica: A good stage manager knows everything that's happening all at once.
They run the crew. Go talk to a stage manager, go watch them. The stage manager is the buffer between the actors, and the crew and the audience and the director in some cases, and they [01:02:00] just make sure that shit happens.
Skyler: That's exactly what my producer does. He does the call sheet. He gets people there on time. He helps organize the shot list, what shots are going to happen first, what's next, and make sure it flows and that even something as simple as ordering the shot list can be quite complicated because maybe there's cook times, maybe there's camera movements that take time to set up, organizing that makes everything run smoother and to have somebody like that, even if it's just your friend or somebody that has never done it before, it's more helpful than not having anyone, or trying to switch brain hemispheres from creativity to productivity.
Mica: You mentioned earlier about hobbies and I want to touch in on that very briefly. Is it important for photographers to have hobbies or [01:03:00] interests outside of their work? And if so, why?
Skyler: Yeah, I have a whole video. This is actually my favorite video so I have a whole video on this. If you want to go watch the video later after the podcast.
Basically it's the easiest way to find your niche in photography is to find something that you're interested in outside of photography. A quick story about when I was in college. I had a classmate in college and he was a rock climber just outside of photography, he was a rock climber and we're all learning photojournalism together and how to take pictures and all that kind of good stuff.
And then he started turning his camera towards his passion, which was rock climbing. Photography was like a secondary passion, he's thinking about getting a job and going to college and stuff, but he really loved rock climbing. So once he turned his camera towards rock climbing, he started making some really nice pictures from a perspective of a rock climber.
He quit [01:04:00] college within the second year and started working for a rock climbing magazine. And we were all like, this is crazy. How did he do this? The reason why he did that is because he was passionate for something outside of photography.
If you talk to any professional photographer, they're like, what's your passion? It's usually it's for the subject that they photograph. Car photographers are really interested in cars. Basketball photographers are really interested in basketball. They're less, there's less interest in photography than they are the actual subject that they photograph and that's why they photograph that subject. I'm really passionate about cooking and not just cooking.
I really love fine dining and I really love like the chefs and the whole cooking the food and learning all the intricacies of the flavors and combinations of flavors and pairings of foods and the beverage side of making mixology and cocktails. I love all that kind of stuff.[01:05:00]
I watch cooking shows all the time and that really inspired me to turn my camera towards food photography. I did travel and stuff but I didn't really have a, other than the fact that I'd like to travel, I didn't have a connection to travel photography. And so I didn't really make great work.
And I did this video and it's interesting because a lot of the comments I got were, Oh, this is awesome advice.
But then I got a lot of comments that I knew I was going to get, which was you're lucky because you live in America or something like that, that you could do such a thing. Most photographers have to be multi genre or whatever to make it as a photographer. If you truly have no passion for that subject you have to really, it's all or nothing.
It's I'm going to live homeless, or I'm going to make it with my camera doing this thing. And that's the kind of attitude that you have to have, no matter what the genre is. You could be a portrait photographer. You'd be a wedding photographer. [01:06:00] You can be whatever photographer, but it's really there is no other alternative. It's either this, or I'm going to go work at Starbucks or something like that, because I have no other skills.
So anything else, just saying, oh I'm going to be multi genre. Because I don't really have am confident enough that I can make it in a single genre. That's just it. You're not confident enough and you're not willing to jump off the ledge. You're too hesitant that's my opinion. If you don't pick a genre you'll end up a wedding photographer, but it's more tongue in cheek because it feels that way. It could be that with food photography you don't pick a genre you end up as a food photographer because you think that is the easy path to making money with a camera, but what you really care about is making money and you just want to do it with a camera. There's a difference between I want to make money with a camera and I want to make money as a food [01:07:00] photographer or as a wedding photographer or as a rock climbing photographer, it's passion of the subject before the camera. Once you have that you don't care about what gear you use or the camera you have, or all this gear stuff has little consequence to your photography because what you really care about is that genre and making the best images that represent that genre. And then you have like as I'm doing a service, I'm representing this genre with my art, versus I'm just taking pictures or whatever.
Mica: What I wanna close the interview out with is what do you hope the listeners gain from today's episode? If there's one action that they could do today for their photography, for their business, what action would that be?
Skyler: If you are in a genre already and you're building up clients or you're doing your first jobs or you're trying to get your name out there, spend more time [01:08:00] marketing than you do actually shooting. I guess we didn't touch on that subject, but, really photography is 80 percent marketing and 20 percent actually photographing. Maybe there's 10 percent editing and paying the bills and stuff like that. But a huge portion of it is marketing. Don't neglect it. You really just have to bite the bullet, send those emails out to get clients. Then always just try to keep fresh, try to freshen your portfolio up with new images, new styles. Try out and experiment. It's fun to experiment and it's free to experiment, so always try to experiment as much as possible.
Mica: Oh, I love all of that. Where can the listeners find you and follow you and support you?
Skyler: They can go to my Instagram. We Eat Together. Underscore We. Eat. Together underscore. Or they [01:09:00] can find me on YouTube, Skyler Burt. My portfolio skylerburtphotography. com. You'd see my work there. My latest work there.
Mica: Well, Skylar, thank you so much for being on the show and oh man, this was awesome. So thank you.