The Beginner Photography Podcast
The Beginner Photography Podcast
Why Ditching Social Media Could Be The Best Creative Move For Your Photography with Dan Milnor
#469 In today's episode of the podcast, I chat with Dan Milnor, an acclaimed documentary photographer who shares transformative insights on creativity, industry challenges, and the true impact of social media on your work.
THE BIG IDEAS
- Seek Inspiration, Not Imitation: Embrace the storytelling and influence behind another artist's work rather than copying style or gear.
- The Value of Authentic Engagement: Understand social media's shallow interactions and focus on building a genuine audience.
- Embracing a Multifaceted Identity: Delve into various creative outlets to enrich your photography and personal brand.
- Isolation for Innovation: Discover how stepping away from the crowd can enhance your unique voice and creativity.
PHOTOGRAPHY ACTION PLAN
- Explore Outside Influences: Visit the websites of conceptual artists or photographers you admire at least a few times per year. Jot down what elements of their work inspire you the most. Incorporate what resonates with you into your photography, be it their storytelling approach or their thematic focus, to craft a richer narrative in your images.
- Prioritize Care with Equipment: Familiarize yourself with the functionalities of your current equipment, such as the exposure compensation dial, to enhance your shooting efficiency without the need to upgrade immediately.
- Engage in Long-Term Projects: Select a subject matter that sparks your curiosity and devote time to a long-term photographic project. This commitment often leads to deeper insights and more substantive work. Resist the industrial pressure to multitask on numerous short-term endeavors and instead focus on developing a solid body of work that reflects your dedication and skill.
- Rethink Social Media Engagement: Create a portfolio website showcasing your unique photographic work to establish a professional online presence that's independent of social media validation. Begin reducing your reliance on social media platforms by actively seeking genuine engagement with your audience through direct channels like newsletters or local exhibitions.
- Embrace a Multifaceted Approach to Photography: Invest time in developing additional skills that complement your photography, such as writing or video, which can enhance your storytelling capabilities and marketability. Explore your other interests and hobbies alongside photography. These pursuits can provide fresh perspectives and inspirations, enriching the creative content of your photographic work.
Resources:
- Visit Dan's Website Shifter Media: https://shifter.media
- Dan Milnor's YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@DANIELMILNOR505
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Connect with Raymond!
- Join the free Beginner Photography Podcast Community at https://beginnerphotopod.com/group
- Get your Photo Questions Answered on the show - https://beginnerphotopod.com/qa
- Grab your free camera setting cheatsheet - https://perfectcamerasettings.com/
Thanks for listening & keep shooting!
People ask, what should I shoot? And I'm like, I can't tell you that I don't know you. What do you love? What do you hate? What gets you motivated? What turns you off? Those are the things where you find stories.
Raymond Hatfield:Hey, welcome to the Beginner Photography Podcast. I'm your host Raymond Hatfield, and each week I interview one of the world's most interesting photographers to learn what it really takes to capture beautiful images so that you can start to do the same. In today's rewind episode, we are chatting with documentary photographer Dan Milner about how to thrive as a photographer without social media. But first, the Beginner Photography Podcast is brought to you by Cloud Spot, so your photos through print, product, and of course digitals. You can set up a storefront in minutes and start earning more with every gallery. You can Grab your free forever account over@deliverphotos.com and only upgrade when you are ready. So in today's episode with Dan Milner, you're gonna learn how to seek inspiration and not limitation, meaning to embrace the storytelling or influence of another photographer's work, rather than simply, copying their style or their gear choices. You're also gonna learn the value of authenticity and how to replace social medias shallow interactions with a focused and genuine audience. And lastly, you're gonna learn how isolation can lead to innovation. As Dan talks about how stepping away from, the crowd can develop your own unique voice and creative eye. Now, before we hop in, I wanna let you know this conversation just kind of naturally started. There was no like official start to it. So the interview, starts the second that Dan answers the zoom call. So it's again, not your traditional intro, and at some point the connection does drop out, but when he gets back on, there's some audio weirdness for a minute or two, but it clears up after that. So I hope that you can look past it because there is so much value in everything that Dan shares. So with that, let's go ahead and get on into today's interview with Dan Milner. Dan, let's see.
Dan Milnor:Ah, there he is. No, how are you? I'm good. Let me finish one thing really fast. I just ordered some sumo springs for my van springs, maybe one of the worst. Yeah. it's, you know, when your wife decides that van life means take every single thing with you, you can, the, um, the suspension takes on whole new relevance and yeah, the Sumo Springs website, maybe top five worst websites I've ever been on. I couldn't get it to work on the phone. I couldn't get it on an iPad. I barely got it to work on a laptop. And, it's so funny, the automotive world has some consistently some of the worst customer service and websites and people and still everything is back ordered. Like the things that I ordered are back ordered. I have no idea when I'm gonna get 'em. But yeah, I finally got it to work and I'm not even sure I ordered the right things 'cause the site was so bad. You'll find out though, right? You'll find out eventually. Yeah. I'll, you know, probably in like June when I'm not here, I'll be in the East coast all summer and I'm sure they'll show up about, a day after I leave. Um, of
Raymond Hatfield:course that's how it always happens. That's what happened when the, uh, when the fu GX 100 V came out. I was, I preed it immediately. I was so excited to have like this everyday carry and, I knew that I was going down to San Antonio. So obviously this was February, 2020. Yeah. I pre-ordered it. It said that it was gonna show up the day before I was gonna leave to San Antonio. FedEx was like, we're just gonna go ahead and deliver this thing tomorrow. Sorry about that. And I was like, no. Like, that's not an option. You can't do that. Yeah. So I actually had to go down to like the place to go get it otherwise, for no reason, for no reason other than they just didn't want to come to my house that day. Yeah. They weren't gonna deliver it, but otherwise it was gonna show up the day that I left and I was like, this is
Dan Milnor:not
Raymond Hatfield:cool.
Dan Milnor:So I totally get that. Even after I ordered it, I got the message that said FedEx is no longer guaranteeing deliveries. So, yes, this is back ordered. We don't know when you're gonna get it, and even when you do, FedEx may or may not deliver it to you. FedEx lost. Wow. FedEx lost 1200 bucks worth of shipments of mine. With tracking, and the last time they have any record of them, there were two packages for Asia, two for Australia. They were, the last time they have any knowledge of their whereabouts was in la And then when I said, well, you obviously blew the delivery. I want my money back. They said, oh, didn't you see the sign at checkout? The little business card taped to the side of the register, we're no longer guaranteeing deliveries, so we are not giving you a penny back. We're not refunding your money. And so I was out, this was this probably a year ago. I was out 1200 bucks of, of packages and FedEx just, so FedEx used to be like, when I came up as a photographer, FedEx was the thing that you use. If you had to make sure it got there and now out here anyway, FedEx is horrible and they have this weird agreement called like Last Mile with the US Postal Service. And if FedEx is too overloaded, then the overflow goes to US Postal and they have to deliver FedEx, which of course makes them furious. So they're purposely either not delivering or they're tossing them in the bushes or they're delivering to the wrong houses to try to make people mad. And so, I don't know. I mean, anymore if I get a package, I'm like. I'm ahead of the game.
Raymond Hatfield:Like, that's it. that's a win for you. But you're like up in the mountains, right? New Mexico. I'm in
Dan Milnor:Santa Fe. I'm in Santa Fe. Okay. And, New Mexico in some ways is very much, everyone laughs calls it a third world country. It's actually to me, what makes one of the things that makes it so great, but it's a little, you know, I don't have internet at my house because the fastest internet service I can get is 1.5 megabits a second. Not 1.5 gigs. 1.5 mips. Yeah. A second. Which is like, they say you should use get three for doing email. And, um, so I'm sitting in my van in front of my friend's house who has really good wifi here in town. And, um, oh my gosh, it feels like, yeah, I'm on another planet.
Raymond Hatfield:my mom lives, up in the mountains of, Arizona. So it sounds very similar where she, you know, the internet that they get, it's all satellite and it is like if we got her a Google Home for Christmas a few years ago, just so that she could see updated photos of the kids that pop up every once in a while. Yeah. And she said that that which should auto update every minute will take at least an hour for it to find, I don't know, 600 kilobyte photo, download it and then display it onto the thing. 'cause it's just notoriously bad. I haven't been able to FaceTime with her or anything like that unless she goes down the hill to Phoenix. So,
Dan Milnor:yeah, I mean, I actually, I like it because it, in some weird way, the restriction forces me to not screw around. I don't surf the web when I'm at the house. I can't. And so you do other things and you get in, get your work done, and get out. Mm-hmm. Um, I'm waiting for just T-Mobile 5G home internet, which is coming, and it's, I'm on the wait list. But, knowing this place, it's gonna be a long time, but that just solves everything. 5G, we have 5G in downtown Santa Fe, of course, a hundred yards from my house. It stops, and so it switches to LTE. And then if you're in that zone where it's switching constantly, what that means is it drops every call you've ever had in your life. So I have to turn 5G off when I'm at the house. I have to turn it back on when I come to downtown Santa Fe. But you know what? It's been this way for two years now, two and a half years. I'm so used to it. I don't really care.
Raymond Hatfield:There's got to be I'm not gonna waste your time. I'm gonna find it afterwards. There has got to be an iOS shortcut for that. When you leave your house, it turns on the 5G radio. That's gotta be a thing. Yeah, I'm sure that's a thing. I'm gonna look into that so that you don't have to keep switching on and off. Yeah.
Dan Milnor:Because there's so many people in the same spot. I talk to people all the time that go, oh yeah, I can't use the 5G thing at my house, or it drops every phone call I'm on. There's a lot of people in that 5G window that aren't quite there yet. But again, it's no big deal. I'm, I'm not doing anything that's changing the planet. So
Raymond Hatfield:I was actually gonna ask about that 'cause I know that you very much, aren't, what's the word I'm trying to look for here? You know, whenever I watch your YouTube videos, you're not like the first person to like get the brand new thing, and I knew that you had the 12 and then you have the 13. And I've thought to myself, I wonder why. But obviously that's the reason right there.
Dan Milnor:I did it because I have such a horrible track record with electronics and I'm, people think I'm joking about this, I'm not because it dates back to my middle school timeframe and it dates back to watches in middle school where every single watch I'd put on my body would break. And it would break sometimes within a day, and sometimes it would break within two weeks. And my parents were like mystified. I was mystified. And my father was a competitive shooter, rifle, pistol, shotgun. And I was a competitive shooter. And one of my dad's friends, was somehow tied to Tag hu the watch company in racing company in Europe. And as a president, they gave me a watch, we all would shoot shotguns at San Antonio Gun Club for, all the time. And so I was this little kid shooting with all these adults and the guy from TAG was like, oh, you know, as a gift, I'll give your son a watch. And he gave me this thing. I wore it for like a month and it stopped. And my, we were shooting one day and my dad says, Hey, not to be a jerk, but you know that watch stopped and the guy's like, seriously. He said, let me have it and I'll send it in. So we did, and he called my dad and said. he said, what does your son do? And my dad goes, he's in middle school, he doesn't do anything. And the guy said, the internals of the watch are completely powder. They, they like disintegrated, like, how did this possibly happen? And I was like, I don't know. So I touch phones, cameras. the guys, the tech folks at Blurb are like, you know, when you come to the office, don't touch our computers. So I get a new phone every year because I don't buy phones anymore because every time I buy one it breaks. So I'm like, I'm just leasing, 60 bucks a month or whatever to lease a phone. And, I buy old cameras, my XT twos are still working and I'm, that's a testament to somehow Fuji that they're still working. Right. they're broken in places and parts, but it's physical braking, not the sensors or the software. So speaking of that, I have not updated them in years. I'm sure there's other, the firmware. Yeah.
Raymond Hatfield:Oh man. Years. Yeah. They come out with one every few months. I'm sure that there's huge improvements for you.
Dan Milnor:I haven't done, I haven't done that in years. I totally forgot about it until right now. Well, after this you're gonna
Raymond Hatfield:have to go ahead and update those 'cause Yeah, I think I will. Yeah. Get some sweet, new auto focus performance and everything like that. That's, that would be helpful. Is the reason why you, you upgraded to the XT four just for, the image stabilization?
Dan Milnor:Yeah, basically doing, doing motion IBUs and then they'll co coupled with the IBUs in the lenses and, faster auto focus. And I think the files are a little nicer. and it's nice. But you haven't been super happy with it, with, stabilization. I have a hell of a time handholding any camera without a, tripod, unless you're talking iPhone or GoPro or 360 camera. There, there are Stabilizations. Unreal. My, GoPro is old. It's like a seven, I think, and I think now they're on 10. Yeah. Um, but still, I mean, I used the GoPro yesterday on a motorcycle, clipped it to the handlebars and, it's rock solid. Even though the bike's off road the whole time, it's just boom. I cannot hand hold the Fuji with an IVUS lens unless I'm like leaning against a wall and the subject isn't moving and I'm sitting there. And then that's why you see so much slow motion footage on YouTube. It's because people are trying to handhold and they can't. And so they, the Sony has a post. A software I can run it through after I've shot it that does a slight crop that, stabilizes it. That works pretty well. and Fuji also has that sort of IBUs plus DIS built in or stable, whatever they call that. Yeah. Which crops in a little bit. But yeah, it's, the XT four has been good. I think. I don't feel like I really have a camera system anymore. because I use Sony, I use Fuji. I have, I, I like a film, a House of Blood film. I was just on a ship in Baja for a week, looking for whales and one of my friends was on the ship as a photo sort of expert on the ship. And he's a Cannon photographer, has been for a long time. And he had the cannon, I think it's an R five mirrorless, with a full frame sensor. And these long. Beautiful lenses and you look at files off that camera and you're like, those are really nice files. Like that's a lot. 45 megapixels and plus for him to like zoom in crop into a frame,
Raymond Hatfield:sure
Dan Milnor:he could crop. And I'm looking at blue whales that are maybe a quarter of a mile off the bow. And I've got a, an eight, basically an 80 to 200 with a two x converter. So I'm about a hundred mils short. but with a 24 meg file, I'm not cropping in a whole lot before you start to see the degradation. So, I don't do that kind of photography very often, but it made me think like I'm still not a hundred percent sold on any system for all. Mm-hmm. Um,
Raymond Hatfield:well just wait, just wait until the, the XI feel like I always say this, like, well just wait, just wait until the next camera comes out. But the XH two should in theory, solve all those problems. Yeah. With, I guess it's gonna have also a 50 megapixel sensor. It'll have the InBody image stabilization and it's like designed for video as the ultimate hybrid camera. So I'm interested to see what
Dan Milnor:comes out the Fuji stuff. In terms of price point and ergonomics, to me, there's nothing that touches it. It's just, yeah, I mean Sony is killing it right now. They're probably, in my opinion, doing more for the pros than any other brand. Cannon's obviously there, Nikon's there, but Nikon seems like such a small company in comparison. And I love the Nikon stuff. I think, I hope they do really well. but Sony, when you pick up an A seven, four, or three or two, whatever, the menu system and how you have to interface with that camera is so different from the Fuji. And the Fuji is just so fast and intuitive. 'cause everything's on a giant dial on the top. Mm-hmm. And when you're wearing gloves, on a boat that's in direct sunlight, you know, in six to eight foot swells and you're trying to shoot a whale that's coming up for a half second and coming down. trying to get into a menu system on the back of the camera, in that scenario, I would've probably puked anyway, probably would've made me seasick. but you know, I look at that and I'm thinking for the money, it's really hard to beat the Fuji Cameras plus with all the tech they have in the GFX systems and the medium format stuff, which every commercial advertising person I know is switching over to those cameras. Yeah. Because again, for the price point, you're gonna buy a $40,000 back for your has blot, or are you gonna buy an entire GFX system for less than 10 grand? Yeah. Um, that's a really good cam. I mean, that's such a smart thing. Fuji's always been very meticulous in their approach to what they make and y so yeah, the XH two is probably the next camera I'll buy, but I also have like the X pro, whatever the new X PRO is, I. Well, there's a three now and I'm sure obviously they're building a four. I don't know what what it would be, but I'm sure the four is gonna have all kinds of stuff. I'd love to have just a camera that I use for stills with a fast 50 and the X Pro, whatever the new one is, because I'm sure everybody's sensor size is going up. I'm sure it'll be, bigger than 24 megapixels. I'm finally like hitting a point where I need, there are times when I need more than that 24 megapixel, but yeah, I have no, um, mainly for prints or what. Yeah. And also just to crop into that crop, into that sensor. I mean, this sounds ludicrous, but, one of the things that came out of Covid for me was birding and it sort of came outta right field because the house that I'm living in right now, March 23rd, 2020, these two woodhouse scrub j nested in our outside our bedroom window. and they, that's right outside our window. So, me going out on the patio every day to do yoga or whatever, I gotta go right by this nest. And so they picked this perfect tree. It's really a smart place to make a nest because of the safety it provides, access, routes and all that. But we had to like work out this relationship and these two birds would come down and basically talk to me. And I would, and based on what they were doing, I was like, oh, my yoga mats too close. I need to slide it over. And then I would slide it over and she would be like, fine and fly away. And then I saved one of the babies in the front yard. She was trying to teach it how to fly and it veered into the front window. And I heard it and I came out and she's on the ground like squawking at me. And I was like, okay, something's wrong. And I figured out what was wrong and I saved the little thing, and I got it into this little shrub. And then she got it into the tree. I swear to God, that bird came back. That baby came back two days ago. It was about a year old scrub Jay that hopped up to me on the ground, right up to me, and I looked down at it and I was like, oh man, I bet you that's that same bird. And so I made, I made a quick movement just to, and, and it flew away. And then it jumped right back on the ground and came right back over to, to, and wow. March 23rd, 2021, the same two birds came back and built a second nest and had a second round of babies. And now we are in February, but I just saw them for the first time yesterday. They're now back scouting for, another nest. And so I'm shooting a lot of birds now and again, I don't have the, the right lens, the longest lens I've got even with the two x is not that long. So I gotta crop into the frame. And the 24 megapixel, you start to see it really quickly when you're cropping in. So, and yeah, printing, I don't make big prints anymore. I mostly make five sevens, that I send to friends and just for fun. but I like having that bigger file size. 'cause in case at some point I want to do something down, like I'm working on a birding book right now. And so I would love to have, as large a file type as file size as possible.
Raymond Hatfield:I gotcha. That makes sense. I honestly don't know. I don't know what the XT or the X PRO four is gonna bring. I don't know if there is gonna be an X PRO four after the X Pro three did not do well, which is unfortunate. I got the X PRO two, I have two, and that's what I shoot all my weddings on. And it is, it's one of those cameras to where like I'm seeing its age. Yeah. But I'm still like, I, I don't wanna sell it because I feel like I'm so well matched with this camera that, and I bought an XT four, to kind of make up for some of those. what's the word I'm looking for? Some of the, the downfalls that the X PRO is now having at weddings, but I still like, I don't wanna sell it just 'cause I love it so much. And I was very sad that the X Pro threes sales. We're terrible that I'm scared that there's not gonna be an X PRO four. I think
Dan Milnor:we'll see My, my guess is that there will be, I mean, here's the thing about X Pro three, that camera, to me, and I've never used one. I've never held one. I've never actually seen it. I have friends that have it, that swear by it. That camera was something that a lot of brands would've never tried. Yeah, and a brand like Fuji has the luxury of doing that, whereas someone like Sony or Canon probably not. And Cannon is never the really, the FI mean, Cannon's Auto Focus was pioneering, but they're like a little bit like Toyota. They wait until other people have done things like Mirrorless for example. It took two years of Sony crushing them before Cannon was like, Hey, maybe this mirrorless thing is gonna be around for a while. And they're, Toyota does the same thing, they wait and wait and wait and wait, and then they come out with something that's absolutely the best that anyone's ever seen in that category. But Fuji's able to do these experimental things like an Ex Pro three that has all these weird features that are polarizing. And the geeks out there who most often don't really use their cameras anyway, they just geek over them. They're gonna go ballistic and go crazy because they're doing Fuji's, done something that in their. And their paradigm is, is outside the, the traditional thinking. I love that. I love it. To me, that's a probing camera of Fuji saying, what can we get away with here? And also what can we try that's new that no one else has done? And so my guess is they'll be an X PRO for, because they'll probably do the same thing you know, they'll do something that's good for everyone and then they'll do something that everyone's like, oh my God, I can't believe you did that. Because let's face it, if we're sitting here talking about Fuji, they're winning.
Raymond Hatfield:I, I agree. I agree. Do you think that the ex Pro four might have a backward screen again, or do you think they'd go back to the traditional
Dan Milnor:I don't know. I mean, I've never even. Do you touch that screen? So, I don't know how good or bad, I mean, when I bought the XT four, everyone was like, oh, it has the worst screen in the world. It's terrible. It's horrible. I can't believe they did that. I've never thought about the screen. I mean, I use it. Most of the time I keep it turned around, so you cannot see the screen. I don't shoot with looking down. I don't chimp between frames. I have my camera settings. I know what I'm doing. I've been doing this long enough. All I'm doing is focusing on what's in front of me and that screen. Yeah. Is it super strong and built like a tank? No, but my Sony, I almost broke the screen on my Sony yesterday. Totally my fault. Just like being impatient. I was trying to shoot a top down book for a film, and I had the tripod instead of having the, the main, part of the tripod going up, I have to put it in from below so that the camera's able to ah, get the book in. And I put it on wrong and I was, moving a hundred miles an hour and I like jammed on the screen and I almost broke it. And I was like, this is not that much better built than the Fuji one. It's, it's our fault. I mean, if you break your screen, if you bang it on something or whatever, in essence we're talking, it's our fault. So, my mind, your P's and Q's, and I think I've had that XT four now for I guess a couple of years and it's been fine. And my ex pro two, my ex t twos are still, that's my main camera that I carry. Yeah, that's the main camera that I'm gonna take to Albania in May. It's the main camera I just used in Mexico. I don't even think about it. I mean, I haven't changed the menus on that camera in four years.
Raymond Hatfield:Yeah. Just 'cause you've gotten used to it and it's fantastic. And now you know it,
Dan Milnor:what I use more than anything else on all these cameras is exposure compensation dial, because the metering is pretty darn good. And if you're shooting aperture priority, and you're controlling whatever, you're looking at a scene and the light in the scene and saying, okay, I'm back lit. I want to go minus one because I want to accentuate that ring light or whatever. It's just quick and it's right on top of the camera. There's no menu that you're in. It's just bing, bing. I use it all the time. Yeah. And it's, again, I guess it, I should say I'm not shooting full-time as a photographer anymore. Photography's a very tiny part of my job and my life. I wish it was actually a little bigger. not that I ever wanna do an assignment for anyone ever again, but I would love to do projects again. I think ultimately doing a project and tracking and cataloging that project from the ideology of how it came to be, which I think is a mystifying to so many people who wanna do documentary projects but have never done them. And I get the question all the time, and it mystifies me as people ask, what should I shoot? And I'm like, I can't tell you that, I don't know you. What do you love? What do you hate? what? It gets you motivated, what turns you off? Those are the things where you find stories. And so I would love to do that because tracking the ideology, then the principle photography, and then the editing, the sequencing, the page design, the publication in print form of, and that is you know, choosing materials, choosing trim size, choosing a price point that fits an audience, that entire story, that ecosystem of putting a book into the world or a magazine or a zine or whatever is so wholly misunderstood by so many people that it would be so much fun to do like three projects a year, long form projects and track film in the field. Every aspect of what's happening. And how, I mean, that would be a nightmare to try to film on my own and 'cause you're trying to shoot and record sound and do motion and write. Yeah, it so much. It's not fair for anyone to have to do that. I think that's why there's not a lot of that work being done these days is because it's just not, you know, it's hard enough to go out with a camera to make great, great, truly great picks, that's rare. it does not happen very often. And then all of a sudden I'm like, well, okay, so I need you to go make the best still photographs you possibly can. And oh, by the way, I want you to record sound too.
Raymond Hatfield:Yeah.
Dan Milnor:And you're like, oh, and by the way, shoot motion content all along the way. And then make sure you write a good script too. And oh, by the way, we need this in two days or four days, whatever. That's why so much stuff. And you're
Raymond Hatfield:all by yourself.
Dan Milnor:Yeah. That's why so much stuff looks the same. Is that people Yeah. You know, there's tricks and gimmicks on how to do that and it's why it all looks the same. And it's not, to me, that's not the fault of the creator. It's the fault of the pressure of the industry saying this is what you have to do. And people claiming to not have budgets and time, you know, ridiculous timelines. I mean, I knew in 97 I didn't wanna do it anymore because everything I was doing on my own was better than what I was getting commissioned to do. Wow. Because I, I had freedom and time and, even when I'd get like, multi-day assignments, I'd be, there were so many restrictions and controls and timelines and shot lists and everything. It was like, it just sucked the life out of all of these projects and the era of saying, I've talked to Douglas Kirkland one time. who's just an amazing guy. I mean, his career, what he's done, who he is, his whole ecosystem. It's a very impressive thing to be around and not egotistical at all. And I think he told me that his first assignment was a portrait and it was a month long. And by the way, I wanna say it was Coco Chanel. And it was a month long. And they said something like, you go wherever she goes, well, I think she lives in Paris and he's in the US and she travels all the time. And so he followed her for a month to make a portrait of Coco Chanel, which is now in book form. By the way. He did a book on this, this assignment I think came out a few years ago, but those days are. Uh, it would never happen again. A distant memory. No. Yeah. Even though everyone in agreement from the photographers or the writers or the creatives to the editorial staff, to the art directors, they're all in agreement. The work would be exponentially better with more time. They just won't do it. Everyone's convinced themselves. They have to multitask. They're convinced themselves that if an image is two weeks old, then it's mature and no one cares anymore. It's just not true. None of this is true. It's, a Kool-Aid that we all drank, starting back when social came and this is all gonna make us our lives better and our society better, and all this stuff. Actually, it started before that because it started with, at least in photography, it started with technology in the news gathering field because the news gathering folks, wire services, newspaper journalists, were the first to really start to utilize that technology. The digital technology, because it was about speed. And I remember being told, oh, this is great. We're gonna give you digital cameras because then you can spend way more time in the field on a story because you don't have to drive back to the paper and process film and scan film and do all that. And I was like, I'm skeptical. I'm skeptical. And sure enough, it didn't mean that at all. What it meant was instead of getting two assignments a day, they gave you 10 assignments a day because you could shoot a pick in 30 seconds, see it, go to your car, transmit it from the car, and then they could go, well man, we can do 10 assignments. So you spent exponentially less time on projects with digital than you did with film. And the whole thing just inverted on itself and started to erode. And you had that whole lost generation of multimedia at news gathering organizations. Multimedia is gonna save us, the public wants interactive multimedia. No, they don't. They never did. They never asked for it. They never wanted it. And guess what? They still don't. The best consumed visual content online is a still photo gallery. It's still gallery. and motion is take is rapidly taking over that. But yeah, we've all just like, you know, it's photographers in general, creatives in general. We're all looking for the next little angle on something when in reality the truth is right in front of us. if we wanna engage with it
Raymond Hatfield:being just stick with photography and just go deeper into whatever the
Dan Milnor:story is, just take your time. You don't need to do what everyone else in the world is doing. You don't need to be on Facebook. You don't need to be on Instagram. And if anyone ever tells you that they are conning you because they're working an angle, it's bs. We've known it forever and now we're suffering the consequences big time because of what companies like Facebook have done to Culture and Society. Take 2018 alone and look at what that company was liable for in that one year. The scandals that company's involved in 2018 alone is enough. Like any other company, you'd be like, I'm never gonna buy their product ever again. And yet everybody's still like, now I'm really starting to see a tilt for the first time. You've got literally millions of people saying, I don't wanna be part of this anymore. I don't want to be. I'm certainly not going in the metaverse. I do not trust that guy. I don't want to do this. And Instagram has basically ruined my photography and it's made my life miserable. And so there's a lot of people looking to get away for the first time. I heard hints of this 10 years ago, but now. I literally get emails on a daily, weekly basis of people saying, please show me way away from this stuff. I don't wanna do it anymore. I think, professional photographers have, they don't have to go far to look at the state of the professional industry and say, this is not a healthy business. Like, it was not to say that photography was pro, photography was ever like a super healthy business. I think it's been so, it's changed so frequently and so often that there's always been a little bit of instability built in. And I also think with creatives, especially really talented people, they're not necessarily the most stable, the most organized, the most cohesive. That's what makes them so amazing is that they are a little bit different. They are a little bit off. And so that does not lend itself to cohesiveness inside of a, business. And I think when digital arrived, it arrived at the perfect time because photography was stagnant, professional photography was really stagnant, and consumer photography was stagnant. And all of a sudden Kodak invents the digital camera and suddenly there's these things are trickling down to the public in the prose, and it reignited photography in a way that no one could have seen coming. It just exploded, and it's still going because of these, the phone is just the continuation of that process, and there's an upside and a downside to it. I think for consumers it's been almost mostly upside. And for pros, there has been a significant obliteration of the foundation of the industry, and I think there's a variety of reasons for that, but it's, it's never gonna be back what it was before. I just don't think you can put the genie back in the bottle.
Raymond Hatfield:It's one of those, like, it just has to evolve into something in else entirely.
Dan Milnor:Yeah, and I've said for the last five years, for me, photography is way more important and way more powerful as a small part of a large conversation if it is the conversation. You're gonna, it's almost impossible to get traction because no one cares anymore. the numbers of people who are looking purely at photographic ability, skill concept are so small. you have people in the fine art space that are doing that. You still have a couple of editorial outlets. You've got some great advertising being done. But for the most part, it's just fodder. It's just photography is a consumable that's been, it's ubiquitous, it's homogenized. And Instagram was a pioneering part of that. Instagram just dumbed down the world at a level. it's just stunning. It's the perfect weapon. Instagram was the perfect weapon to prey on the psyche of, of creatives. And you see that now just translated into the conformity. I mean, people get up in arms when I say this, but instagram ruined a lot of really good photographers and it ruined them because of insecurity and ego and also conformity to what everyone was everyone else was doing. when you've got some of the best photographers in the world putting just content after content, after content on their feed in an attempt to build following, it's not about, you know, Instagram's not about photography, it's about following, and that is a drug that is really powerful. I've seen it absolutely turn legendary photographers inside out, both, not just with their work, but mentally mental health issues from using these platforms. And no one wants to talk about this because so many people are still using the platforms. And so it's hard, you know, it's the pot called in the kettle black. You can't, if you're involved, it's why I deleted these things seven years. Seven, eight years ago. I was like, I don't wanna be a part of this anymore. And I got called every name in the book. You're an idiot, you're a Luddite. You don't understand them. These are brilliant platforms and they're gonna save the world and all this stuff. And I'm like, who's at the top? Look at the management. You tell me those people wanna save the world. I don't think so. Mm-hmm. I think those people want to dominate. They don't wanna save, they want to dominate. And so, I don't know. I think it's time for photographers to take some of their power and control back. I think that's a big part of what Web3 0.0 is doing. There are people out there who are making tools that are incredibly smart and strategic, that are allowing people, I think the very inklings, the very beginnings of people being able to take some of their creative power back as opposed to giving it to someone's algorithm. I don't wanna live my life to some tech giants personal algorithm. And that's what's happened. It's been happening for a decade, oh, you know, we're gonna change the algorithm on you, and so now we're gonna need more of your time and you're gonna have to post at different hours of the day, and you're gonna have to spend more time on there. And then all of a sudden you see a little bit of success, oh, we're gonna change that feed again. Hey, how come I'm not seeing this stuff in my feed? Hey, how come my friends aren't seeing this? Well, I guess I gotta add more. I gotta spend more time here. And no one thinks that that's weird. I mean, it's a weird, as an outsider to look in at our culture right now. It's fascinating and horrifying at the same time. And luckily, I'm more of a realist. I'm not a pessimist or optimist necessarily, but I find the whole thing fascinating. I love the study of human culture and what technology's doing right now. It's, I can't get enough of it.
Raymond Hatfield:Well, if, this is kind of like a devil's advocate question, I guess, but like, if the large majority of eyes are still on social media, if you choose not to use social media, what do you say to those people who, who send you those emails who say, I'm done with social media, but I still want to be a working photographer? how do you get your work? What
Dan Milnor:what good are the eyes at this point? So in my experience with people who spend a lot of time on social is that it's very fickle. There's a tiny percentage who are seeing a good return, and then there's millions, tens of millions, hundreds of millions of other people that are pouring everything into it and seeing nothing in return. the fractures are happening. And also you can buy following, you can buy popularity. We've known this for a decade. You can buy followers on whatever platform you're on. You know, it's a con because how many people do you know that you look at their, your Instagram feed and you go, yep, that's the guy I know. In real life, most of the time you're like, man, that guy is full of it. Because in real life they're miserable. But on their Instagram feed, it's unicorns and rainbows. Everyone knows I'm conning you, you're conning me. We're conning each other and we're all playing along because there's money to be made that is ending, that is starting to legitimately go away. And it's coming from the zoomer generation. These are kids who are like, I don't wanna be conned anymore. And you old guys, you 50 year olds who've been conning each other for a decade, I don't want any part of you either. they're pulling the rest of us. These young kids now are gonna pull us and they're fed up. They saw what happened in 2008. They don't want to be burned by the financial group anymore. They don't wanna be conned by those guys, and they don't wanna be conned by tech. that should be terrifying for anyone who's running these companies when that generation turns away and goes, Facebook's for old people. Instagram's done. Now it's TikTok, but it's always gonna change and be something else. But if you want to be a photographer, the single most important thing you can do is make unique work. And that is really hard. It is really hard because if you let your clients dictate what you do, you'll never make unique work. They want most often what they've already seen, they want what's seen, seen before, what's that's had traction from someone else. They want the sure thing pioneering artists are never working on sure things because they're out taking chances, breaking eggs, falling on their face, and getting up again, owning it and moving on and trying something else. So if you're a photographer and you wanna get away, you go back to 1995 and you build an engaging website that is truthful, humorous, and poignant. That's it. Don't waste my time conning me. Speak when you have something to say. Not re boca and talk all day long, nonstop for no reason sharing and posting stuff that has no meaning. Wait and build an audience of people one at a time, but build an audience that is actual flesh and blood, not bots, not bought, not fake, not phony. A conversation with people who are absolutely simpatico with you and your work. It's slow, it's agonizing. It takes time to work. But what you're gonna end up with is an ecosystem built on your algorithm, not an ecosystem built on some guy that everybody doesn't like and doesn't trust. Mm-hmm. That's, that's the shift you have to make. And frankly, most people aren't willing to do it. They either are okay with the status quo, they're afraid they don't wanna work that hard, or they know they have never made original work and they don't even want to ponder what it takes to do that. And so it's hard and that's why so many people conform and stay around. And it's the people out there that you look at. I mean, I was thinking about this earlier, if you go back to like middle school elementary school, everyone's geeky, right? But we don't know were that geeky. But by the time you hit middle school, there's always the kids that didn't fit in. And some of them were kids who got beat up and hazed and all that. And back in our, my timeframe, that was like a daily thing for pretty much everybody. But then there were also these kids who didn't fit in, who didn't get picked on because no one knew what to think or make of them. They were originals, they were cool, but no one could quite tell you why they were cool. I mean, we had this kid come, I one school in San Antonio. We had this kid come from Idaho and he wore his jeans tucked into his cowboy boots and he chewed Copenhagen in class and swallow, swallowed the spit. He didn't spit in class 'cause you weren't supposed to. You Oh, And he was tiny. No one quite knew what to make of him. no one bugged him. No one hazed him. No one hassled him because they were like. Huh. That's different from what we have here. That to me, is where the best creatives are at. Where you look at someone and you go, who is that guy? And then, you know, your first thought is to just immediately categorize them in a dropdown menu. But your brain goes, wait a minute. That person doesn't fit in the dropdown menu. Because that person isn't just this one thing. That person is this and this and this and this. I don't know how to describe him. I'll give you an example. photographer I love, never met him, never spoke to him. A guy named Hank Willis Thomas, is he a photographer? Yes. but he's just more of a guy who's really creative. He's an artist, conceptual artist who from time to time uses a camera. Calling him a photographer is not fair to him because it's just a sliver of what he does. But he's very successful as a photographer, so he doesn't fit the mold. Dan Winters came, I don't know, a year ago, stopped by and came through Santa Fe and, years ago when, uh, I had didn't, didn't know him very well. this sounds like a crazy story, but we all ended up camping together here in New Mexico, and my wife called and she goes, Hey, you know, we're going with a painter friend here in town who we'd camped with before, but my wife calls at the last minute and goes, Hey, um, Dan Winters is gonna come camping with us. And I was like, no, he is not. I was like, Dan Winters is, is like a superstar photographer. He is not gonna come camping with us. And he came camping with us and in my head I'm like, Dan Winter's dropdown photographer, but when you meet Dan Winters and you're standing around a campfire and you're talking about stuff, you're like, oh, he's not really, he's not just a photographer. He's way more than that. And his knowledge and skill is so far beyond photography, which is one of the things that makes him who he is. The beekeeping and the science side and the NASA side and the modeling side. Then the next morning we get up and we're looking out at this famous Butte that's around the place where we're camping. And my buddy who's with us, who's a painter, he is a contemporary art painter. He's doing watercolors, right? I didn't even know he could do watercolors, but he's over there doing watercolors and they look amazing and I can't paint. So I'm like looking at this in jealousy and like fumbling with my camera 'cause I got nothing else to do. And Dan walks up with a charcoal pen and a piece of paper and proceeds to make a sketch of this Butte that's absolutely incredible. And now in my head I'm like, he does illustration. Then I find out he has this whole illustration side that is absolutely incredible. Those are the people to me that are the future of photography. It's, I think the people who just press the button, who just do one thing, who just crank out certain kinds of work, I think it's gonna get harder and harder and harder because the world is paying less and less attention. And because there's less attention, there's less money involved. And when there's less money, it's, it slowly goes away. And so I think it's gonna be really hard, for those folks to continue to. Like it was. Whereas these other people who are utilizing photographer as an arrow in their quiver, I think are gonna make it. And I mean, I know I do a little presentation all the time. And, uh, the last part of the presentation are people like this that I think are the future of what photography can be. Charlie Grosso's a friend in New York, she's a photographer who started nonprofit for refugees around the world. You've got, Hank Willis Thomas. You've got people like Dan Winters that are, out there just doing, doing this stuff that's outside the bounds of traditional photography.
Raymond Hatfield:I wanted to ask kind of a follow up to that. talking about Dan Winters, I think that everybody really wants to create interesting work, like work of Dan Winters. Yep. Is the key then that we can't just be photographers anymore, but we have to have other skills that we have to blend together.
Dan Milnor:No, I mean, I think there are plenty of people that are still just photographers, which is a complex, not easy, tricky thing to do and be in 2022. it's really hard go for a lot of people, but there's plenty of people out there I know who are just photographer. I don't, I don't like or demeaning, it's a big to be, but I think it's gonna get more and because the meaning fee has changed so dramatically, so ubiquitous and homogenous, the 99 point percent of what you see is not photography content and it's not intended to have an impact. It's intended fit into a box, already know. That's why Instagram is content for the most part. Not photography content is the kind of work that you see, but your brain never engage with because you've seen it so many times. For example. Women with blonde hair in a, in a wrapped in a rpy with an old land cruiser and a dog back lit in a national park. That photo now is being shot every day, all day by content producers all over the world. I saw two advertisements yesterday with the versions of that same file. I've seen that file a thousand times. That is not photography. That is content. That bugs me to no end because I don't know, I paid attention in school. I'm not, I don't eat fast food. I don't want that kind of thing in my life. I don't pay attention to it. Photography on the other hand is this, that you cannot forget. Because it made such impact. I just did a film and mentioned a guy named Nick, who's an AP photographer who shot a famous photo from Vietnam of the young girls burned by napalm running down the road that you see photo your life is never the same. Yeah. That is a defining moment of the Vietnam War that changed public opinion. That changed the course of multiple countries in the world. Ron Aviv's photographs from Bosnia. Ron made a picture, of I think it was Arcon who was the guy who had the sort of team of paramilitaries that would come in and like terrorized places. Aviv made a photo that changed human history, changed the course of history because people saw that photo and said, wait a minute, like no more that we're gonna end this, this has gotta stop. That kind of thing. Those images, I mean, Aviv's probably made in his career, probably made millions of exposures, but he's got at least two photographs that changed, in my opinion, changed the world. And that's rare, but that's what a good photographer is about. A good, great photographer is not filling content for, meaningless things and copying stuff that's already been done. They're out doing the stuff that nobody else is doing. Those are the people that you look at and go, man, there's an A list. And they're out there for a reason. And, if you know him and have heard how he got started and his career and the amount of work and time and patience and knowledge and research and risk that went into Ron Aviv being Ron Aviv, most people don't have the stomach for that. We're a society of get rich quick and you don't become Ron Aviv by getting rich quick. You do it by putting time, boots on the ground in the field, year after year, after year, after year. And again, it's like, I get why people wouldn't wanna do that. It's daunting. and today it's probably way harder than it was back when he started. You know, he started, I think in Panama was his first big break. That was, I forget what, 89 maybe. Now it's gonna be exponentially harder, less attention, more volume of work in the world. And you just can't keep up. I mean, have you ever, I used to love doing this. I do this in airports. I'd see someone on their phone like this, right? And their thumb swipe. That thumb is just swipe, swipe, swipe, swipe, swipe. And I'm like, Instagram, Instagram. And I'd wait, wait by my time, wait five minutes, wait 10 minutes. I'd go up and I'd say, Hey, sorry to bother you. Are you on Instagram? People be like. Yeah, I am. I'm like, you're on it right now, right? Yeah, yeah. I'm looking, I go, tell me the single best image you saw in this last session that you've been on under 10 minutes. The single best image. What was it? Not a single person could give me an answer. Not one. No matter where in the world I ask, they could not define and tell me the best image they saw. And in fact, most people had a similar response of, oh, oh, that's a good, um, yeah. Um, let me, um, you know, oh yeah, it was, they could not bring it up. That's not photography. Yeah. that is a mind job like nothing else. That's what I said earlier. I think Instagram was the absolute perfect weapon. it was so well built and so well designed and so pinpoint laser guided strike on our psyche. and it's still happening. And as an outsider, I always tell people, if you delete social. You'll detox for two weeks, like physically detox. But when you come out the other end of that, it's like surfing. And if you ever get barreled surfing and you come outta that barrel and turn around and look back at the wave behind you, it's a, a unique feeling. And that's what it is with social, is you look behind you and go, man, I cannot believe I was in there and now I'm out. Because outside life and real life is just so much more vivid than anything you can find on a screen of a smartphone. This is where I alienate myself from the rest of the population. But if I haven't, if I haven't done it completely already,
Raymond Hatfield:no, no, no. See, I think what's happening is that I'm listening and I'm thinking, this sounds so fantastic. You know, like where do we go from here? And I'm thinking back to when I was in film school, my favorite cinematographer is, uh, Roger Deacons. Oh yeah. He shot. Master. Have you seen his book? Uh, by Ways, by the way.
Dan Milnor:No, I have not. I've seen every film he is done. And I actually met, I met him once in LA at, at an event. He was very, very awkward. And, and I don't, it wasn't, it wasn't an ego awkward, it was that got the feeling that he was like, I just wanna work. I just wanna work. the rest of this is, doesn't matter.
Raymond Hatfield:Well then that perfectly leads into this. And that was, in film school. I remember asking, because I guess the intention of our film school was that we would create enough experience material so that we would leave with a reel to be able to show, uh, sure. Potential producers, you know, whatever. And I remember asking one of my teachers, I said, do you think Roger Deacons has a reel? I mean, he is synonymous with fantastic work. And he said, I'm sure that he has a reel. He probably hasn't updated it in years, or maybe somebody does it for him, but he's the kind of person to where he's at this level to where he doesn't have to share his work. People already know that it's gonna be quality stuff. And I thought to myself, how do you get to that point? And now thinking kind of tying these two together here, like again with eyes, there's lots of eyes on social media, there's lots of people on social media, and maybe they're not actively, looking at these photos with intention or they're not being shared in the right ways. But if we're not using social media, how can we use our photos to still potentially get to the level of a list, quote unquote.
Dan Milnor:Well, again, it's making unique work. and for me, for example, I know that with a vast majority of professional photographers out there, if I watch them on social, I'm not actually getting them. I'm getting the social algorithm version of them, which is palatable to the masses. And most of these folks, let's face it, are not palatable the masses. Most of us aren't. I'm not. I'm moody, I'm fickle. I love to be isolated. When the lockdown happened, I was like, awesome. I hope this lasts for, five years. Now, that's cruel on one side because a lot of people were impacted in a horrible way and they still are being impacted that way. But as a human being, as an individual human being, just taking me alone, I was built for total isolation. I love it. And so, because it eliminated a lot of the noise that I knew I was gonna have to deal with in my life and that I could focus on things slower and more in depth. And to me that's really slow and in depth. I went to a gallery in San Francisco once that was run by a friend of mine, amazing photography gallery, and I walked in once and they had basically, the gallery always showed, typically showed two shows at once. Two different artists. Gallery split in half. One room is one artist, one room is the other. And I walked in and one artist had both sides. And I had never heard of this person and never seen this person. And I said this to my friend, I said, first of all, these two bodies of work are diametrically opposed to one another. They are so completely different. I'm amazed that the same person did both of these. And I'm even more amazed that I've never heard of this person. And my friend who owned the gallery kind of smirked. And he looked at me and he said, well, there's a reason for that. He said, do you think that this person would waste any time on social media? He said, no, this person leaves their studio four times a year total to do shows the rest of the time they are making work and they are making the best work that you have ever seen. And he goes, they don't go on social because it's a waste. There is no return, there is no benefit. It waters down their work and it takes time away and mental space away from actually producing the work. And that is a risk that most people do not want to take. Or it's a risk that financially they cannot take. Because if you're trying to cover your nut every month, and that means banging out every day, banging out assignments that you look at and go, this sucks, but I need the money. I'm gonna do this. And I've done that a zillion times where you're like, oh, I can't believe I'm doing this. I mean, I shot commercial work for a fixture company. It's a famous fixture company, but I don't know anything about fixtures. Like, why am I doing this, doing it because it gave me money to do something else. That's a hard way to ever get ahead. If I was still doing that, my work would not be as interesting as it is now. And I'm not saying it's particularly interesting, but it would've been a very hard life to continue to do that. And so I think it's giving yourself a chance to at least contemplate there is another life out there as a creative. And oh, by the way, being creative comes with responsibility in society. And it comes with freedom that you don't get. If you, let's say that you work at Home Depot and you work in the lumber section of Home Depot, and I come up to you and I go, dude, I don't know what I'm doing and I've gotta build a porch. think I need two by fours and some two by sixes. I don't know, as a Home Depot person, your job's to solve that riddle that may or may not be creative in your mind, but you know, you have limits on you and as a human being, when I'm looking at the guy at the wood department in Home Depot, I'm not necessarily looking him, looking at that person as a creative and giving him creative license. Whereas if you walk into a room and someone looks over and says, who is that? And you go, that's, Maryanne Sullivan, she's a contemporary artist. All of a sudden that dropdown menu, contemporary artist, oh, I'm not an artist, I'm not creative. I could never do what she does. That comes with power, that comes with a leniency towards anything. And I'll give you an example. I had a friend in LA who was a private chef and she was a private chef for some, like a-list, very a-list, like a plus less list Hollywood people. And she kept bugging me to like, do a shoot with one of these people. And I was like, I don't want to, those people make me nervous. I don't know what to say to them. I'm not a Hollywood person. They make me nervous. They have lawyers, I blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And so she finally like wore me down and to do, and the shoot was not like a portrait session with this person. It was like a, a peripheral thing. And the day before I was like. This sounds embarrassing. And I called her and I was like, I don't know what to wear. Like what do I wear to this? She goes, you never have to ask me that again. She goes, they're terrified of you because in their eyes you're an artist. They can't do what you do. You have the power, not them. You wear whatever you want and you own it because no one's gonna ever question anything you're doing. And I was like, oh. And that was a non photographer illustrating something to me. I should have known clearly from day one going into photography school and no one talked about it. That to me is one of the biggest things that is left on the table today for people who are working in the creative fields, is that you are an integral part of the nation's GDP. You are providing GDP, just like the mining industry is. So own it. Step up, act like it. Utilize what that power gives you without abusing it. We all know artists who are complete tyrants, famous for whatever. You're a rocker who destroys a hotel room. You're a, an artist or a photographer with a massive ego that no one likes to be around. Yes, those people are out there, but for the most part, creatives just want to create, and everything that keeps them from that is a barrier. But you've gotta understand where you fit in the cycle, in the world of creativity. It's not some isolated, moon off of Saturn that we're hoping to explore. No, we're one of the main planets, so we have to act like that.
Raymond Hatfield:But how do, how do we find that? Like, how do we know? Because I think like especially for new photographers, new, any sort of creative, there's that stage of like, you have to copy somebody else just to start to get some sort of baseline for. Of knowledge to start creating. Right. And then you get to some level, yes. You get to a ceiling and then you have to break through that to start creating on your own. Is that simply, I don't wanna say up to our discretion because of course it is, but like, is it simply just following the things that we're passionate about? Or is it following shooting for a fixture company because we know that it's gonna make us money and then hope that we find something else
Dan Milnor:along the way? The key to the fixture company was I knew I wasn't meant for that. I knew that that was a why. When I'm in the middle of a shoot, I'm going, what the hell am I doing here? That means that I know that my context and my place is not here. A lot of people don't know that. A lot of people would think that getting a job for this fixture company was like the home run that was the promised land for me. It was not and everybody has different ideals and goals and I assisted for photographers who would never touch a camera unless they were on assignment. And assignments for them were problem solving. They didn't love photography. They didn't even like photography. It was what they did for a living, and they were really good and really successful, but they looked down on anyone who carried a camera around as like a tourist. You know, oh, it's an amateur. I would never do that unless somebody's paying me to do this. Well, I'm assisting for them. I'm in that ecosystem, and I go, this is not my ecosystem. I don't wanna meet these clients. I don't wanna shoot for these clients. I don't wanna produce this kind of work. My life is somewhere else. It took me 10 years to figure out where that somewhere else was, and it was one of the most important decisions. It was like the epiphany moment where you're like, oh, I think I finally figured out who I am. That's what you have to do, and it takes time and sacrifice. I heard Martin Par doing an interview, and he's like, you better be prepared to fail. You better be more driven than you can possibly imagine, and you better know your history because to your point, context, if you don't know what's been done, what you do, and where you fit in, then what the hell are you doing here? Mm-hmm. Because. The people in power in this industry are gonna see through you in minutes. You put a portfolio down and can't explain what's in it, you're in trouble. If you put a portfolio down and they ask you what's in it, you give 'em a 32nd elevator pitch. Even if they hate the elevator pitch, they're gonna go, well, at least this person's got a why behind what they're doing. And now you're starting to see this hierarchy. So getting good, there's a lot of people working who are okay photographers. And then there's a handful every generation that changed the playing field. And I was never one of those people. I mean, I, I've nowhere close to being one of those people. I studied very classic program. The kind of work that I love to do the most is considered very, very classic. It's impossible to sell in the country. It's impossible to make a living doing that work in the country, in this country. But it was what I wanted to do and what I still wanna do. So I'm gonna do that. Regardless of whether or not you pay me to do it or not, I'm gonna find a way and I'm gonna do it. And so, breaking through and becoming that person, it requires a full battle plan for how to do that. I mean, look, I also know people who come from money. They want to get published fine because they'll do it for free. They want a book deal. They pay a publisher. The publisher publishes their book. They want a gallery show. The gallery owner goes, why would I give you a show? And the person says, well, because these are, this is my list of friends. They're all from the whatever, the finance world, they'll all buy prints. They happens all the time. Everyone wants to think that this is some sort of pure, pure society based on talent. That is not the case. It's a game. It's an uneven playing field. People of privilege, power, and connection are always gonna have an upper hand. That's the way it's always been. And so you have to understand how these pieces work and how they fit together. And you have to be okay with working in that system or trying to blaze your own path. And so I think there's a lot of people who rush into photography, professional photography far too soon. They haven't figured out who they are. I mean, the crazy thing is, in the nineties was the first time that I heard a young photographer tell me without shame at all, I said, how? Why did you start this like professional photography? He goes, well, or I said, how did you start this? He goes, well, I went online. I looked at who was popular. I went out and bought the same camera gear and then I copied everything. Everything they did. And I was like, that doesn't sound bizarre to you. Like you don't find anything strange about that scenario. Not at all. Not one thing bothered them about that at all. That's a person who shouldn't be working in professional photography. They're not adding anything. I went to photojournalism school and I used to go, um, UT Austin and there was this place, I think it was called the Harry Ransom Center, which is like a photo archive center that's part of the school or, or near the school. didn't know this initially, but they had this room, like a reading room, and it was filled with year after year after year issues of American photo, French photo, which was far superior to American Photo and also News Photographer magazine, which I was a junkie for all of these magazines. And I would go back years and I would look at who was doing what, who came along. And I would spend, I spent days in that room and I graduated, I showed my work to someone at a portfolio review and the guy said, this reminds me of Antonin Ville. And I was like, that's not good. Because I remembered reading a news photographer article about Cville escaping Czechoslovakia, I think it was at the time, in the trunk of a car escaping the country in a trunk to flee to the Western world. Wow. And I looked at his work in that Z, that magazine, and it like struck me and I was a huge fan of Tmax 3,200, and he was a huge fan of Tmax 3,200. When that guy said to me, this reminds me of Ville, that was not a positive thing for me because in my head I said, am I copying Anine Ville? Because if I am, I gotta stop right now because he already exists. So why the hell am I making stuff that looks exactly like Cville Now? I wasn't that good. And Cville had this long track record in decades of like making work and books and everything else. I don't know where he is now. I haven't seen or heard his name in a long time, but it made me nervous. That was, I mean, I would never purposely go out and copy however. I will look at Hank Willis Thomas's website on a, for me, a fairly regular basis, which may be like two or three times a year, because I am always impressed by his work, by his concept. I'm not a conceptual art photographer, but his conceptual work influences me in ways that, I don't know. It could be in my writing, it could be in mixed media, it could be in, you know, I'm doing a project now that's unlike anything I've done. It's sort of a blend of fact and fiction, and for all I know that is residue of looking at Hank Willis Thomas's website because, I need to know that guys like that and people like that are out there because that's, we're in the same creative world, even though he's like a light years ahead of where I'll ever be. We're technically we're in the same sphere, so I need to know and I want to know.
Raymond Hatfield:So what about then, like, how do you balance that, that line between, finding a photographer, really loving the work that they're creating and not copying it? How do you balance just using that for inspiration instead of trying to emulate? Does that make sense?
Dan Milnor:Yeah, no, it's hard because if you go out and you're, you know, I'm trying to think of photographers and, I mean, when I went to school at UT Austin, a photographer named Maggie Steber came and during my first semester, and there was all this politics and stuff going on, and the staff, for whatever reason, they're like, no, you're a transfer student. You can't take that class. They couldn't tell me why, but they kept me outta this class. My roommate took it and Maggie came in and I saw her work and she did a book called Dancing on Fire, which was about Haiti and Valier in the eighties and nineties, and it was amazing book a, I think it was an Aperture Foundation book. I have two copies of it right now. I love that book. And I met her and I was like, wow, I want to be her, that's what I want to do. That's where it stopped, because Maggie was not, it was not about Maggie's photography. It was about Maggie as a human being. And her circle of influence, creative influence. So yes, you had her photography, you also had the book. And I saw the power of what a good book could do at that point. And that was 1990, maybe 91, something like that. Or maybe she hadn't even done the book at that point. But the book came out soon after. And I saw this and I was like, wow, this is about more than photographs. This is about history. This is about knowledge, power, influence, geopolitical landscape. I never once said to myself, what kind of camera gear does she use? What kind of film does she shoot? Like what lab does she use? I'm gonna copy. How did she frame it? Never. That is like dust. That's the dust you're walking on. That doesn't matter. You're gonna blow it off at the end of the day. It's the earth that you're after. You're after that bigger picture of what does this work mean? What is it preserving? What is it? What is the story itself? And I think a lot of times people do not know what story they're trying to tell, and they don't know who they are and who they want to be. I was asking this, I was in Baja, walking down a beach on an island in the middle of the Sea of Cortez about 10 days ago with a young photographer. And I said, no strings attached. Money is not an issue. You can do anything in the world you want to do, but I need to know what that is right now. Could not answer that. I said, that's your first step right there, is to figure out what do you believe? How do you feel, and what are those beliefs? How do those beliefs make you feel? What do they make you think and feel about? And these are not easy questions and that's why so many people run away from 'em and they go back to Instagram and they sit there for an hour on their feed 'cause that's a lot easier to do than figure out who it is, who you are and what you want. And so, I mean, I'm at a transition point in my life where I can't necessarily answer that question anymore. For 30 years of my life, I could have answered it immediately. Now I can't. But I'm actually excited by that more than anything else. I will never be a photographer again like I was before. I'm not even sure I'm capable of doing that, but I think what I'm gonna end up doing is gonna be even more interesting, whatever that is.
Raymond Hatfield:I'm at a loss for words. Yeah. I can't answer that question either. And I'm thinking in my head like, what would that be? And I feel like it would be many things, but they're very like surface level ideas. Like I. Photographing the best nachos in every state, or following the Dodgers to like another World Series win. Something like that. But that's not really deep enough. That's not really a story. So they, they, they need
Dan Milnor:work, but, uh, maybe the nachos are not deep enough, but it's a commendable story. The Dodgers is something interesting here, and I thought about this on Sunday. I did not watch the Super Bowl. I don't have a TV that's, I have a TV that I can do Netflix on, but not a TV that gets regular tv. I listened on the radio for like five minutes just to get my old school self aligned. And I have a problem with the Super Bowl and not, not with the Super Bowl itself, but you got the Rams and you got the Bengals. And I know I'm gonna take some heat for this, but I think most of the people in LA didn't know they had a team until three weeks ago, because I lived in LA for a long time. And their fans are fair weather, to say the least. Yes. You would never see a Laker fan, a Laker flag on a car until they're in the finals and then everybody had 'em. And you'd say to people like, well, who's your favorite player? I have no idea. Lakers, I'm all in on the Lakers and I heard someone talking about this in LA of like, no one knew we had a team. And now everybody's like a fan of the Rams. That drives me insane. Whereas on the other side, you got the Bengals right? And the Bengals are like, everybody in that city for the most part is like, I know what's happening here. I know the history of this team. We've never won a Super Bowl, the whole thing. So I was like, oh. And it got me thinking about LA in general and when I lived there that the whole Fairweather fan thing drove me crazy. But there was one exception in my opinion, and this is could be a cool story, which is the Dodgers, but the subtext of the real Dodger fans to me, and there are exceptions to this. I have friends in LA who are exceptions to this rule, but for the most part, for me, the foundational base of hardcore Dodger fans are Latino population. It's the Latino population. They are the ones that carry and support a hundred percent of the time. The Dodgers, the rest of the community in LA is very fickle. You're at the top of the standings. Okay. I might pay attention. Is there a celebrity at the game? Okay. I may go to try to get a peek. They're in the sky boxes, not watching the game. They're eating sushi up there. The Latino community is the hardcore Dodger fans, and I love that about the Dodgers. Mm-hmm. I was gonna say Clippers, but there are no Clippers fans. Just kidding. So the dodger that what Dodgers mean to the community is a really interesting story. And obviously the history of leaving Brooklyn and coming to LA and you still have people that are ticked off about all of that stuff. That's a great story to me. And sport often gets overlooked in the higher annals of photography because they're snobs and they go, it's like fishing. I grew up fly fishing in Wyoming. My mom taught me when I was a kid, if I talk about fishing and photography circles, they look at me like I'm a cretin. Like, fishing. Wow. I would never do that. And I'm like, why? you'll sit on Instagram for an hour. Is that better than me going fly fishing? It's a weird thing. So I think sport is an often overlooked, well of great stories. I mean, great. It doesn't have to be pro dodger, it can be local, flag football, or it could be a girl's volleyball team or whatever. I mean, there's great stories in sport and I also think. It behooves photographers to play a sport, at least one, and playing a, an individual sport and playing a team sport. Those are great skills to have when it comes to being a photographer in terms of psychology and, pain and suffering and also working with a team. I think it's a great thing. And again, it gets castigated and talked down upon by the elites in the industry. And I saw that in photo school too. I mean, if you were any, if you were jockey at all in photo school, everyone was like, you're an idiot. And I'm like, I don't think so. I think this is about balance and knowledge and being more than just, some guy in a scarf or a buff. Some kind of buff. Yeah, there you go. Some guy in a van, in a buff waxing poetic about nonsense.
Raymond Hatfield:I love that. I think that that's changing. I hope that it's changing, photography used to be very technical and now it's a whole lot easier. I don't know where I was going with that, but anyway, I like your idea there and shout out to, uh, there's, there is a whole community of, Latino Dodger fans that's, uh, Pantone 2 94 and they are die hard. And, I respect them so much and maybe, maybe that's a thing. But, Dan, I didn't even get to ask you any of the questions that I wanted to ask you today because this was just a very organic conversation and I didn't wanna ruin that. But since we are at the end of our time, we're actually way past it and I apologize for that. Can you let people know where they can find out more about you and your photography online?
Dan Milnor:Yeah. I have two places where you could find me. My main website is called Shifter. It's shifter.media not.com. So www.shifter.media that is being completely and totally redesigned right now. Later in the month, I get the first peak at the new updated site and there will be, I'm sure back and forth. And there's gonna be a bunch of new things on that site that I don't currently have things like a Patreon page only because people ask me to do that. And I wanted to get a better understanding of how that works. And then also what I could do with those funds if I in fact actually receive any, discord server, because I think there's gonna be a continuation of the site online in terms of a chat where I can put up images and we can actually talk about photography. There's gonna be an educational component where I'm gonna start teaching online classes, that I think are based around topics that you don't see very commonly in, in online photography, teaching about actual photography and light timing, composition building stories, that kind of thing. And then I'm, I also have a YouTube channel, which I think is just my name. I think it's Daniel Milner, M-I-L-N-O-R. I should probably know that, but um, no, it is. Yes, it is. Okay. Yeah, yeah. Well then, uh, that's it. You can find me and the website has an email address and you know, I'm relatively easy to find, so I'm around.
Raymond Hatfield:Thank you for tuning into this week's episode of the Beginner Photography Podcast. If you enjoyed today's episode, please share it with a friend. Start a conversation, grow together. That is it for this week. Remember, the more that you shoot today, the better of a photographer you'll be tomorrow. Talk soon.
Dan Milnor:Thank you for listening to The Beginner Photography Podcast. Keep shooting and we'll see you next week.