The Beginner Photography Podcast

501: Craig Strong: Art of Playful Photography: Custom Lenses and Creative Freedom

• Raymond Hatfield

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In this episode of the podcast, I chat with Craig Strong, an innovative wedding photographer with a flair for storytelling. Craig shares how his unique Lensbaby experimentations transformed his approach to capturing moments, making his work stand out. He dives into the importance of storytelling, relying on photojournalism skills, and learning from sports photography. 

THE BIG IDEAS

  • Embrace Storytelling: Great photography is about capturing the essence of moments, not just staged shots. Focus on the narrative behind each image.
  • Learn from Missed Moments: Reflect on missed moments to anticipate future important events and improve your ability to capture them.
  • Experiment with Equipment: Don't shy away from trying new lenses or gear. Experimentation can lead to discovering new creative possibilities.
  • Push Through Fear: Transitioning into new methods requires courage. Embrace the fear of the unknown as a part of your growth process.

PHOTOGRAPHY ACTION PLAN

  1. Capture Authentic Moments: Start by photographing candid moments at local events or family gatherings. Focus on the emotion and story behind each shot rather than setting up posed pictures.
  2. Create a Practice Schedule: Dedicate time each week to practice anticipatory shooting, especially in dynamic environments like sports or street photography. Review your photos to identify successful captures and missed opportunities to learn and improve.
  3. Experiment with New Gear: Try using different lens converters or lens baby products to see how they alter your perspective and creativity. Document the outcomes and analyze how each tool changes your photo’s storytelling potential.
  4. Join a Photography Community: Engage in online forums or social media groups such as Instagram and Facebook communities where photographers share their experimental work. Participate in challenges or critique sessions to receive feedback and get inspired by others’ creativity.
  5. Develop a Storytelling Portfolio: Assemble a collection of photos that tell a story, including a mix of candid moments, detailed shots, and environmental context. Continuously update your portfolio to reflect your growth and experiments, showcasing your ability to capture authentic narratives.

RESOURCES:
Visit Lensbaby's Website - https://lensbaby.com/
Follow Lensbaby on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/lensbabyusa/

Grab your free 52 Lightroom Presets at
http://freephotographypresets.com/

Build Your Dream Photography Business and Keep More of the Money You Earn with CloudSpot Studio.
And get my Wedding and Portrait Contract and Questionnaires, at no cost!
Sign up now at http://deliverphotos.com/

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Thanks for listening & keep shooting!

Craig Strong:

that's what's required as photographers. You've got to be able to tell the future or at least predict that something's important is going to happen in the future. In my career, the most important thing was seeing moments that I had missed. It wasn't capturing the moments, although that was the end goal. Because when I started as a photographer, I just would walk out of a assignment going I didn't really see anything in there. Then after I'd missed them over and over and over and over again, then I started to say, okay, now at least I saw them in retrospect. And then I started to anticipate

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 does it really take to capture beautiful images so that you can start to do the same? In today's Rewind episode, we are chatting with Craig Strong about the creative impact of storytelling in photography, as well as the journey from photojournalism to weddings to innovating with Lensbaby. But first, the Beginner Photography Podcast is brought to you by Cloudspot. Impress your clients with a beautiful gallery that is easy to view, share, and of course download on any device. You can control your image size, add a watermark, and of course, set download limits. So you can grab your free forever account over at deliverphotos. com and only upgrade when you are ready. Craig Strong is the founder of Lensbaby. Lensbaby makes these camera lenses that are designed for, creative visual effects. They're super fun. So today Craig talks about the challenges that many photographers face when trying to tell a story through their lens. He shares a ton of his experience from his transition from more traditional photojournalism to creating, these unique photographic tools that pushed his creative boundaries and then making them available for you as well. He talks about mastering the art of timing, embracing experimentation, and how to move beyond the fear to discover creative freedom in your own photography. Tons here. So with that, let's go ahead and get on into today's interview with Craig Strong. Craig, I know that, when I think of Lensbaby, I think kind of off the wall. I think unique. I think innovative. I also think maybe a little experimental. Are those the same words that you would use to describe your earliest days in photography?

Craig Strong:

That's a great question, Raymond. I would say that my early days in photography were all about the learning of the technical. It wasn't artistic, it was just purely I was fascinated with what this gear could do. A friend of mine in seventh grade, Holly, Holly love had a project. Her project was on SLR cameras and I was just fascinated by how things worked. My dad was a mechanical engineer and the fact that we have this mirror that apparently is instantly getting out of the way of the film and then different kinds of shutters that move out of the way of the, you know, to change the shutter speed or doing things at different speeds. That was just super fascinating. Another friend of mine brought a little view, like a type camera. I think it was an AGFA, little range finder camera, and it had the split image that went through. And I was super fascinated with that. And so for me, it was really on the end of the gear and experimental? Absolutely not. I was just like, from the get go saying, Hey, I want to know how this works. And then it wasn't until I learned the way the gear worked that I started saying, well, I kind of want to be a photographer now, cause this is so neat. My dad was a mechanical engineer. And so I think that kind of, DNA for me was where the photography bug started. And, I think of all these, you know, 60 some year old men who are buying gear and they've never really become photographers and they're super proud of all these amazing pieces of gear they have. But for me, I got over that real early and, you know, but that was the initial thing that invited me in. Yeah. It wasn't years later. It wasn't until years later that I would say there was experimental would be a descriptor.

Raymond Hatfield:

So, the technical side is what drew you in. How long was it that you studied those cameras and got used to those before the idea of photography, as maybe a profession or the art of image making, became as important to you?

Craig Strong:

Yeah, I would say that that happened pretty much the moment I stepped into a dark room. And that wasn't until college, my freshman year in college, I was going to school in Los Angeles and I went out for the track team and it was so hot. And like it was, I remember there was a day, I think it was 105 degrees and we had to run sprints around the track and six minute miles. I don't know. I don't know where it is. two, six minute miles. And I saw my dorm and I just kept running straight. I was just like, I'm done. And I never went back to track again. I'm like, okay, well, well, what do I do now? I don't want to just be here for academics. Let's figure this out. I love photography. I went to the student union building and there was a need for a photographer or staff photographer. And, uh, I had never stepped foot in a dark room. And once I did, I was like, Oh, this is magic. And that magic of watching the images come up into the, developer and all of this, it was just like, it was something so amazing for me that again, like we're back on the technical side, but at this point I was a good photographer. Right. They gave me a roll of 10, a bulk loaded roll of 10 frames of triacs to go shoot as my interview. And I went, I spent like, every minute. They said, have it to us by, I don't know, eight o'clock tonight or five o'clock tonight. And, I spent every minute going and framing and doing all these images. And, I think that might've been the best 10 images I shot during college, at least certainly my freshman year. And so I was an accomplished photographer at this point, but it really hadn't become part of like, a real sense of compelling identity. This is what I have to do until that moment. And then there was just no choice once I'd seen what was possible in the dark room. But this was my path.

Raymond Hatfield:

Why do you think those 10 frames were your best?

Craig Strong:

I think they were my best because I spent time really deciding what is it that I see here and went seeking things that were important to me. And, I was brand new on campus. I didn't know this place. I didn't know the people that much. There was a friend of mine from high school who'd gone down to LA, the year before. So I sought out her, that was the one people shot, like posed portrait that I did of her and her roommates and, there was this incredibly ugly fountain. It literally looked like, and people would refer to it as elephant poop. And, um, and, uh, there's a huge story behind it too. Super controversial because the art department was never, consulted in the construction of this. They just handed over to the physical plant and said, here's a bunch of lava stones, make a fountain. And, uh, and so but apparently I made the best photo of that fountain that had ever been made. I didn't know that it was supposed to be ugly. So I think both having that new perspective and saying, okay, what is it, what is it that I see? And really pondering, something that is part of my vision. And that may be one of the first times that I was super purposeful rather than just going out and seeing, what do I find? What do I see? What's going on here? Yeah.

Raymond Hatfield:

So before we get into, your college career as working for that, was it the paper or the Yeah, it

Craig Strong:

was for, student publications. So the newspaper and the yearbook.

Raymond Hatfield:

Gotcha. So before we get into that, I want to know a little bit more about the learning process for you in photography, because I think it's probably easier than ever to learn photography today just because you do get that instant feedback, but I'm always interested in those earliest days for all photographers. So when it came time for you to actually learn photography, what was the hardest part for you to grasp for you to understand from a technical standpoint?

Craig Strong:

Well, I'm going to go back to the gear because that initial fascination, was followed by gear that failed me or that I just didn't know how to use. And so my vision was never that great, but I could squint and get 20, 20, without my glasses. And so, I never knew I needed glasses. And shooting through, I think I had a, you know, early seventies, late sixties, Mamiya TL or 500 TL, SLR with a 50 millimeter 1. 7 lens on it or maybe it was a 2. 0 lens, but I would rely on the little diamond pattern thing and the split image. And sometimes like my eyes just didn't pick up what was going on fast enough. So they were way out of focus. That was a problem because everything obviously was manual focus. And then I was so fascinated with the gear and thought it was so neat that I went after that camera died in a rainstorm because it was at the bottom of my tent and all the water just ended up in my bag with my camera. I went and got a, an old Nikon F with what is purported to be to this day the worst zoom lens ever made 43 to 86 millimeter. I think it was a three five to five six. you just couldn't focus that period. And it had a shutter that was slow or a mirror that was slow getting up. So I could only photograph at shutter speeds of, I think a 10th of a second and longer. Um, so, which I got around, I actually started making some really cool images with it because I found myself on a trip right. After I discovered that, oh, wow, I've got this diagonal vignette going through one corner of my image. And so, but it only happens on stuff or it didn't happen on this one long exposure. So maybe I can, take long exposure. So I ended up on this trip to Canada with a bunch of friends and I remember being on a ferry and taking this long exposure of a friend pretending he's hanging on to a post, pretending like he's being blown by the wind and I'm shooting a half second exposure and it turned out great. And so for me, like, it was kind of a circuitous route to go, Hey, I can, I don't have to do this, with a 60th of a second or faster. I can do different things and they come out kind of cool.

Raymond Hatfield:

Wow, that's funny to think about. This is going to sound ridiculous. I had a friend who, um, growing up who had a broken arm and, he would pitch in baseball and he had to learn how to pitch. it didn't heal back correctly. Like it wasn't straight. So he kind of had a bend to his arm and he had to learn with essentially broken equipment and the way that he works like I think still to this day is now entirely different than anybody else. So do you think that you working with a broken camera there essentially in the beginning, still changes how you shoot or affects how you shoot today?

Craig Strong:

I think it opened my mind up to the fact that there's solutions to problems that you didn't expect. And so when I experience a problem in the field, I'm immediately thinking, or about Lensbaby products or whatever, I'm immediately thinking, what's the fastest way to fix this? Because as a photojournalist, I worked as a full time photojournalist from the time I, well, left college for sure, but clear through college, I worked as a photojournalist. And then for 10 years after, continued that full time. And if I'm in a situation where my gear breaks, I still have to come back to the newspaper with a shot. There's just no other option. And I can only think of one situation where I wasn't able to do that. And that was the film, the back of my camera, the little latch broke on, an F 100 Nikon body, and I didn't have a backup body. And so I've never gone to a shoot since without a backup body. And so I do think it, made me more of a problem solver to say, oh, there's another way to do this that may not be obvious now that the regular way is taken away.

Raymond Hatfield:

Of course. Yeah, I think that it's a very important skill set to have, especially in a fast paced environment, such as photojournalism. So, you went out, you did your interview, so to say, of the, your 10 frames. You come back, you show the images, you get the job, obviously. What do you have to learn at this point? Because now you are being thrown into a world of being able to, having to tell stories with a camera rather than just taking snapshots. Is that right? I think so.

Craig Strong:

Right. And it's a pretty forgiving environment. I think a student newspaper, you're not expected to, uh, you're not going to get fired. I think I was making less than 6 every two weeks like that was, you know, there wasn't much of a budget and I was on the bottom of the totem pole. And so for me, what I needed to learn was to be proactive in getting names from people that I photographed and yeah, I'm new on campus. I don't know these people and most of them are upper class people and they know the place and are intimidating and I was fairly introverted and not super secure about myself as a person or as a photographer. So I think getting over those hurdles of doing people photography and then needing to get the names for the captions, that was a huge one for me. I know that street photographers have to get over that they just have to be so incognito that nobody ever notices it. But for me, that wasn't really an option. As a photojournalist later, I had to come to grips with the fact that I'm on scenes that people don't want me there, it could be an accident could be a fire could be robbery, who knows what it is. And so I've got to deal with police, I've got to deal with a situation that may be in crisis while I'm photographing it. And those were important skills to take baby steps toward when I was in college to just go, Hey, you know, we all go to the same school. This person's not going to punch me in the face. But I still have to get over this barrier that I had of talking to a stranger.

Raymond Hatfield:

Yeah, obviously I was never in a situation of crisis, I guess, but, I think some of my first weddings, it was like that, like I was scared to, say, talk to the parents or ask them a question and now thinking back. It's like, how would I be scared? What are they going to do? You know, and like, they want better photos. So, as far as from an image perspective side right now, What became most important to you because before if you if we're just taking snapshots, friends, family, just things around the house. Now being put in a situation where like a photo has to tell, exactly what's going on. Was there a steep learning curve there for you? Or did that come pretty naturally?

Craig Strong:

I would say that sports photography was probably the best teacher for me because I had played sports. I played baseball and basketball. And I was playing volleyball at the time, intramural. And so for me, there was a certain understanding that I went in with. And yet at the same time as a photographer, I'd never photographed these moments. Like I, knew after the fact that, Oh, this happened. But what was the still image that would have summed that up that somebody could look at after the fact and say, Oh, this is an accurate representation or this is the key moment in that buzzer beater shot, or, does it happen before the shot? Does it happen during the action of the shot? Does it happen when it's going into the basket? Is it the reaction of everybody afterwards? I would say sports is very similar to weddings where there are so many important moments that are happening throughout that day and throughout that game that you know there's something right behind it. If I go out and I walk around my neighborhood. I might see a beautiful scene. I might not. I might see a moment happen between a couple of dogs or owners or people walking on the sidewalk. I might not. I might, you know, it's a crap shoot. Right. I mean, you think about the emotions that go into sports, like there are moments that take on monumental weight and importance to the people that are a part of this and the people that are watching. And so these are important moments. And I think that was really good for me to hone those skills. One, to be able to say, okay, I know this, like I had some point of reference and two, to be able to go in game after game after games say, I am coming away with nothing. And even though this is something I'm familiar with, these images don't tell the story. And so that frustration was a big part of it. And eventually I started capturing those moments. Eventually I started realizing that, okay, there's something that I can anticipate here that I know is about to happen and be ready for that.

Raymond Hatfield:

So did that just come through just you being at more games or does that come from you looking at your images and reflecting and auditing your work after every assignment?

Craig Strong:

Well, I think the nature of, working in newspapers, working at a school paper, working, in the student publications is that you've just got, you've got to document everything. And I do think that putting yourself in any situation, whether it's photography or work or. Like community that you want to build having those regular accountabilities to say, Oh, I've committed to this because I've got this role or this job, or, I'm meeting with this community. Cause I've, named myself as a member or whatever it is that you start that ball rolling and you make that commitment, especially to other people. if I don't shoot those games, then I don't keep my job. Then that just. continues the, the cycle to say, okay, well, I'm going to the soccer games. Now I'm going to the baseball games now. and now we've got water polo season and we've got this and we've got that and the other thing. And so all of this, those deadlines ended up, creating the need, creating the, Hey, my name's going to be under this picture. and so as I went to more and more games and I started to connect with, Hey, these moments are unfolding. I actually have seen them happen a thousand times. Now I might actually capture one. that would be the other thing that I'd say is that. In my career, the most important thing was seeing moments that I had missed. It wasn't capturing the moments, although that was the end goal. Because when I started as a photographer, I just would walk out and of a assignment going, I didn't really see anything there. Um, but then after I'd missed them over and over and over and over again, then I started to say, okay, I, now at least I saw them in retrospect. And then I started to anticipate because that's what's required as photographers. You've got to be able to tell the future or at least predict that something's important is going to happen in the future.

Raymond Hatfield:

Yeah. I can't imagine having that skill or seeing that in yourself develop, is probably something that is, I don't know what the word is here, but like it really feels good, right? It feels like you're making progress in this field here. So at what point because you didn't take this job until you already in college. And then when you graduated, you continued with photojournalism. At what point did photography for you become so important that you thought to yourself, whatever reason I came to college, I don't know what your major was before, but like, I'm going to abandon that and I'm just going to go full steam, into photography. Was it a certain assignment? Was it a certain photo that you took? What was the catalyst for you?

Craig Strong:

I had worked at daily newspapers as an intern in the LA area. I'd worked at the Whittier Daily News. I guess the La Mirada paper was a weekly, but I was published there as well. I'd gotten published in the LA Times and Associated Press and I don't know where those initial images ended up. I didn't even know to ask at the time. And so for me, I had gained this passion and this love for photography and I, tend to obsess about things. Like when I was on the gear kick in late junior high and high school, I would get a Shutterbug Magazine. I would get an Outdoor Photographer Magazine. I would get a Popular Photography Magazine. Seems like there was one other one and every single one I would read word for word beginning to end all the ads, all of the classifieds in the back because there'd be little ads for like stove and omni bounce and I wouldn't have any idea what most of these words meant it was for me I was just laying the puzzle out on the table to go, okay, this is all part of photography. I don't understand how it all fits together. But that obsession, then went by the time I got to college then went to how do I become a great photographer how do I walk into a scene and be confident that I'm going to see a moment. I'm going to anticipate moments, not just miss them all and walk away with something that's important to me. And having done that for four and a half years, when my job fell through, cause I had studied anthropology, I'd planned on going into overseas, nonprofit work, and it was not until 1991 when there was no money in the organization that had offered me a job and they said, you should probably look for another job. Yeah. Cause we can't hire you for six months. And I said, so I've got a job in six months. They're like, no. And at that point, but like the weight of the world lifted off my shoulders because I had planned on going in this field for pretty much my entire college career, most of it. And I went, Oh, I can be a photographer. And that was really the first time that I considered, and this is two months before graduating from college and it was the first time that I considered, Hey, this could be something that I could make a lifetime out of.

Raymond Hatfield:

Wow. So at that point, you start putting the resumes, you're like, this is where I want to work. And this is what I want to do. So you shot you were photojournalist for how many years, because I know you transitioned into weddings at one point as well later on.

Craig Strong:

So I spent two and a half years in a weekly newspaper here in Portland, I had interviewed with the photographer, and there's only one photographer for four or five newspapers, five newspapers, I guess. And, so obviously he wasn't going to give me his job, but they let him go. I don't know, a month later and came across my resume in his top drawer and brought me in as a lab tech. So I'm only 20 hours a week getting 6 an hour as a lab tech. I've got college debt. I've got to pay my rent. And I negotiated a situation where I got 5 per photo, if I took photos for as assignments, because I knew that was going to happen because Vern was gone and he was shooting everything for 5. Five newspapers, and now I'm a lab tech and all the, non photographer writers, which there were about eight of, they're the photographer. So I kind of saw the writing on the wall that this is going to turn into a, full time gig for me. And so that, five dollars per photo ended up being probably taking me up to eight or 10 an hour, which was enough for me to live on, which was great. So for two and a half years, I was there at that group of weekly papers. Through kind of a humorous now a set of circumstances where they had cut my pay, taking the 5 per photo away and told me, this is an opportunity for you to go do freelance. And so, I'm in Portland. I start freelancing for the Oregonian two days a week, making more than I was making five days a week for them. And pretty soon I overlap into one of those five newspapers regions and they say, well, you can't shoot for the Oregonian in our area. I'm like, this is a small town. Are you kidding me? What kind of opportunity were you offering me when you cut my pay and, took away the stipend. After that two and a half years, because at that point I gave my notice and immediately took one of the most powerful images, like two days later after I gave notice, probably the most powerful image I've ever taken in my life. And, on a shoot that I never would have taken had I not just given notice. So that, that led to working freelance for newspapers Tanya Harding within a couple months did her thing at the Olympics, or, the prep up to the Olympics and all of a sudden Portland was just inundated with photojournalists and all these agencies were needing. journalist to follow her around. So I staked out Tanya Harding for a couple of months, and which was just abhorrent. It was horrible. She lived a couple of, like three miles, two miles from my apartment. She lived in, nearly as dilapidated apartment as I did. So I would go sit out there and shoot the breeze with all these photographers from all over the U S. And so I got connected with all of these agencies that, over the course of the next couple of years, those photos that I took of Tanya, really paved the way for me to be able to pay my bills while I went full time freelance. I also had to take a night job. I was working at a grocery store that I'd worked at in high school, from 11 at night until 7 in the morning, stocking shelves and then doing freelance work during the day for magazines and my, and the agencies that I'd gotten connected with through Tanya. So that was how it all started, but, I am super grateful for my editors and other photographers at the Oregonian, because they ended up funneling a ton of work my way for Sports Illustrated, for all these agencies, for New York Times. And without their mentorship and without their help, I would not have been able to have a career.

Raymond Hatfield:

That's fascinating. So then at what point, because it sounds like things are starting to pick up for you, starting to go pretty good. At what point do you transition into weddings?

Craig Strong:

So I was talked into my first wedding in We

Raymond Hatfield:

all are. We all were.

Craig Strong:

Yeah, in, I think, the end of 93, because I'd gone freelance October of 93. Leslie, who had been a writer at the newspaper and had gone freelance just a couple months before I left, she called me and asked me to shoot her wedding. And I said, yeah, I don't shoot weddings. I shot a wedding for a professor in college and it was just an absolute nightmare. Um, and, you know, she was pleased, but it's just too much pressure. And, I'm sure that was one of my, most nightmarish prep times because the first dozen weddings that I shot, I did not sleep through the night. I still, when, when the occasional wedding that I've, shoot, which is generally shotgun weddings for family, I've got a very large family. Um, but, those weddings that I'm shooting now, or, it's been three or four years, I will have dreams the night before where, I forgot my pants or, you know, there's no film in the camera or, something horrible goes wrong. So they're quite stressful. But regardless, Leslie asked me to shoot her wedding. I told her no. She called me back again. She said, Please. I said, no, I don't shoot weddings. And the third time she didn't even let me talk. She just said, Craig, we're not going to tell you what film to shoot. We're not going to tell you what pictures to take. We just want you to shoot the way you shoot for the newspaper. And that was one of the most flattering things a photojournalist could hear and so how do I say no to that? And, and Leslie was a friend of mine. So I said, okay, I'll shoot your wedding. And I didn't believe her. I believed that there was going to be a mother in law that would come take me by the elbow and, tell me to do this and shoot that and don't do this and don't eat that and don't touch this and go stand in the corner but none of that happened. Apparently she had a stern talking to her,

Raymond Hatfield:

her parents and her in

Craig Strong:

laws. And, so that's where it went. And that was one of the best photo essays I'd ever shot, because here I am working for a newspaper where I might have a half hour. I might be able to come back three times over the course of a month and shoot the same thing and do it a little bit better or fill in the story before, my editor says, we have to publish this. You know, it was always me holding back on, I, I'm not quite ready with this. If it was a multi-day shoot, which very rarely happened. Mm-Hmm, Um, but, that was part of the problem was they never had a beginning, a middle, and an end that could be defined except for we had to go to press with this. I would say that wedding for me was like, Oh, this is a full story and it all happened in like four hours. I can't even believe that that was a smorgasbord of candy for me as a photographer to just go. Oh my gosh, this all happens. I can tell a story. All of these moments are happening. And if I miss a moment, there's going to be a moment right behind and right behind and right behind. So I don't need to worry about that. I started showing that wedding only and no set up shots, no portraits, no anything that could be construed as this guy's going to do, even though he's only showing us mainly black and whites or storytelling images, he's still going to shoot, an hour and a half of for me. There was just nothing I'm not showing you a single portrait. I'm going to show you exactly what I want to shoot and that's, what I ended up getting and it was the best decision I made in my career because I absolutely loved the 90 percent of the weddings that I shot because I got those weddings by showing work that I loved.

Raymond Hatfield:

Wow. Oh, gosh, that is such a great story. So many times I hear from other photographers that, when they get asked to shoot a wedding or something like that, they just go straight to Pinterest and look for inspiration. But you went the opposite way, obviously, because there was no Pinterest at the time, but just relying on those skills that you have, to be able to capture it in a way that was unique to you. And the story as you saw it and to show it to other people. And then obviously you've got clients because that's what you showed because of, what you did. That's fantastic. So I'm trying to figure out here, where did lens baby come along, right? Because to this point, when I think of photojournalism, I think straight photography, purist photography, capture the whole thing, the whole story in an image. And when I think of Lensbaby as I said earlier, there's a uniqueness, there's an off the wall feel to it. It's very experimental. It's let's try something new here. So where's that turning point for you?

Craig Strong:

I hit the 80 20 rule. 80 20 rule means, that you put 20 percent of the effort into getting 80 percent efficient or proficient at something. And then it takes the other 80 percent to become an expert or to become absolutely unconsciously capable of not having to think about what you're doing to do it well. And so, I've heard this said on, a podcast before I want to be consciously proficient at what I'm doing. And then I want to move on and become consciously proficient at something else, which means I have to be super disciplined and I have to be, which is not something that I am naturally. So that said, I got really good at anticipating and capturing moment. And I think I got past that 80 percent toward being an expert at photojournalism, but I saw the people around me. I had a studio mate who was doing work with Diana plastic medium format camera cross processing her images, I did not have an art background I took a few photography classes in college but wasn't enough to be a minor in communications. It was just like, Hey, this is, more of the same of what I was, doing for the newspapers and that kind of thing. So, I wasn't really challenged to look out outside of what was right in front of me in terms of what was artistic until I was sharing a studio with about a dozen other photographers, huge studios, really an amazing space. We had four or five, large, enlargers. We had these 20 by 30, trays full of chemicals. So we could go in and print anything that we wanted. It was amazing. But Krista was shooting with this Diana camera cross processing, which I had no idea what that was and putting up these images that technically were garbage. There was nothing about them other than composition that, worked. I mean, and the subject matter. She was skilled at photographing, important subject matter, capturing moments, but then you get into the technical aspects. It's not in focus. The cross processing screwed up all the colors. It was technically very imperfect and yet I would stand in front of them and have this emotional visceral response to what was going on in this scene, partly because I had this conflict of how can I love this image so much? How can I be impacted by this image so much? And it is so exactly the opposite of what I was doing. And so that really planted the seed for me to say, Okay. I've got some things to learn about visual expression and how to match a subject matter because that's the other thing these, images were more powerful because of the way they were shot, than had they been shot with a straight lens and had they been shot with corner to corner sharpness. And so that was the beginning for me of exploring, okay, what's next for me if I have that opportunity to explore a more artistic approach than just a fly on the wall approach.

Raymond Hatfield:

So what was it? What was next for you? What got you to dip your toes into that?

Craig Strong:

Well, it was a couple years later that I bought my first digital camera and that was in 2000. End of 2000, I got a Canon D30 and two days later I was in New York City meeting with my agency and showing my portfolio around and I only took that digital camera and I took a 28 millimeter, 1. 8 Canon lens. And all of a sudden that was now a 45 millimeter lens because of the 1. 6 X crop. And I was like, well, I didn't count on that. I did not read that memo. And, um, I was like, okay, I've been thinking about doing something a little different. Maybe I can just. the trip, I think we pricelined it for 125 bucks a ticket or something for round trip tickets back when priceline was just starting out and things could be, you know, you can put a bid in and super, super cheap. So, off we went to New York, my wife and I, and I ended up on Times Square outside at the time there were these camera stores, there's still a few of them, that were just, massive and they had, all the normal stuff, usually way overpriced. I just went straight to the video converters. So I went and I found this 0. 42x converter, put it on the front of my, 28 millimeter lens. it turned it into probably the equivalent of a 15, 16 millimeter fisheye corner to corner As far as the field of view goes, and it had bent lines and I had played with fisheye in college. So I was like, Oh, that's kind of cool. But they wanted like 400 for it. And I was like, well, I'm not paying that. So I found myself at another camera store and I walked in and they had, 200 on it. I said, I'll give you 90 bucks and I don't want to pay tax. And they're like, okay. Um, so they, they jumped at it. And then I screwed that on the front of my 28 millimeter lens and just started playing. And the aspects of that were at the 1. 8 wide open, the center was sharp, had shallow depth of field. Cause of the native lenses at 1. 8, but I could focus literally inside of that converter. So something touching the front of the lens I could focus on. All of a sudden I had, a brush in my hand that allowed me to paint a different palette, to paint different strokes on my canvas. And it was just fun. I didn't spend any money on the trip. we pricelined the tickets, we pricelined the hotel. We're like, Hey, we got money to spend. I've got an extra 90 bucks. Here we go. And so that was really the start for me of, Hey, here's something that has a completely different way of seeing the world and what can I see through it?

Raymond Hatfield:

Yeah. Obviously today, lens baby makes a whole assortment of lenses. So I'm assuming that this was the catalyst for you to figure out how can I do more with this? What can I do? What can I change? And I know that there's a long history of lens baby, as you said, you picked up that lens there in the year 2000. Can you give me like a, 30, 000 foot overview of how you got from that 90 lens there to where your business is at today with an assortment of lenses and people who are just creating really incredible, incredible pieces of art, really?

Craig Strong:

Absolutely. Yeah. So in. 2002, I took a workshop from Kevin Kubota. So I'd been shooting with this lens for a year and I'd shot far, far too much. If I look back and I tend to do that, I'll get a new piece of equipment and I'll just obsess about it. And I'll, I'll shoot way, way more than I would end up. Over the long run, seeing a place for it, my photography, but I just started shooting everything. I'd go on fishing trips, fly fishing trips, and I'd take it. And I'd shoot, the scene that I've got this photo of this huge beetle. I don't know how big it was, cause it's touching the front element, climbing over these pieces of straw and, and a friend's puppy dog, real close up you've got the center in focus and it's all bent and the colors are going crazy. And a year and a half or a little more than a year later after getting that, camera, I end up in a workshop with Kevin Kubota, his very first digital bootcamp in Bend, Oregon. And I had the background of my computer, the desktop was one of these images. And then Kevin came over and asked, and I showed him a few others. And next thing I know, a couple months later, I've pretty much filled up his second workshop. Cause I told all my friends that this changed my life. And if you're considering digital or you got your first digital camera and don't know what to do with it, you gotta go to Kevin's workshop. So I filled up his second workshop. And then after the second workshop, Kevin called me and said, Hey, would you teach with me at the third workshop and be a guest speaker? and I want you to teach about all this lens stuff you're doing. And I thought, I don't even know how to get another one of these. I'd gone on eBay and I'd bought, a bunch thinking that, Oh, there's gotta be a better, wide angle converter. That's going to do something even more amazing. And, apparently I got the best one on that first trip. And still, I didn't know even how to buy that one again. So what did I have to teach? I had in my mind as. With all of my, over the years, and we haven't really covered this over the years, I would make myself things that I either didn't want to pay for, or weren't available. I made a 200 foot long. it was actually 50 feet, 25 feet, 100 feet, and, probably a couple 25 footers of these cables that I would make and splice them into the Canon off camera shoe cord distributors that would allow me to have multiple flashes on. TTL because there was no wireless TTL at the time. And so I was doing that. I was going to Goodwill and I would find these huge Tupperware tops and I would cut various shapes out of them and, I would double them over on my flash and I'd, let them go floppy on top or I'd, have, it was basically the Gary Fong type experimentation that I was doing, but I was just doing them for myself and I was able to get amazing light out of these things, but I wasn't thinking, Hey, this is a product.

Raymond Hatfield:

Um,

Craig Strong:

and so for me to go from this one lens to having something to teach, I had to pull on a lot of the ideas that I had. I had had, one of them being modifying my Mamiya or no, it was Bronica lenses to work as tilt shift lenses on my SLRs. There was only about maybe not even a half inch, probably closer to a quarter of an inch distance between the back of the lens, the front of the flange on my Canon SLRs, and then thinking about making a mechanism that would work there. But I had talked with an engineer about that and he basically said, can't do it. And like, okay, well, I guess those lenses, 364 days a year, just sit in the case. and then once a year or so, I would, pull them out and use them for a particular client. And it's kind of wasted. And then I would go rent these tilt shift lenses. But all of these ideas were just sitting there. And when I got asked to teach the workshop, I looked at a speed graphic lens that was sitting Or a camera that my sister had given me for graduation from high school that I think I shot one roll through and it was full of light leaks and had all sorts of problems and I was a photojournalist. I wasn't experimenting at that point. I wasn't even willing to go get a Diana camera and shoot a roll through that because that's what Krista did. And I don't want to open that Pandora's box, but I took those ideas that I had for modifying those medium format lenses. And this lens that instead of, an eighth of an inch or a quarter of an inch, between the front of the mount and the back of the lens, we now had like two and a half inches. And I thought, well, now I just have to, block out the light to see. So there's not stray light coming in to see what the image is going to look like. Is it going to look like a tilt shift lens or a, view camera when it's tilted? And so that was the very first prototype of the lenses that I was working on or that I ended up bringing to the workshop and I just brought a big thing. I brought a Dremel tool. I brought a drill. I brought a bunch of shop vac hose because I had found that shop vac hose blocked out the light and was cutting it to length. in my, room at the resort that we were at in central Oregon. And cause I had to come up with enough for people to be able to beta test these things. And there were like 25 people at the workshop. So that's where it started. That's the 20, 000 feet of the beginning of something that was totally unique. But even then it was based on lenses that I was getting off of eBay or on Holga lenses because Holga mods was making pinholes out of Holga cameras. And so I would buy the lenses off the Holga mods guy. So yeah, It just kind of all, came together, through Kevin's invitation and honestly, there was some anxiety. Like, I don't really have anything to teach. I better come up with something brilliant. It ended up being Lensbaby.

Raymond Hatfield:

So tell me today, if you could use three words to describe what it is that you want Lensbaby to provide to photographers, what would that be?

Craig Strong:

I don't know about three words, but I would say if I were to get it down to three words. I'd say it's a reason to grow. A

Raymond Hatfield:

reason to

Craig Strong:

grow. Because anytime we pick up something new that is fascinating to us, I think there's anxiety around that because we're not good at it yet. We're just now exposed to something that's like, oh, this is different. You know, Lensbaby's different than what my friends are doing. This is not, largely accepted, people may look at this and be critical. but if I want to get from that initial point of, I don't know this, this is a new way of doing things to the point where I'm like, Hey, I'm kind of proud of that image I made. There's a learning curve in there and there's growth involved in that. And Lensbaby's mission statement is we empower artists to move through fear, to discover extraordinary freedom. And that fear I think is present, has been present for me, and anything that is worth doing, that I didn't know how to do. And so that anxiety of looking at Krista's images and going, I can't do that. I want to do that. But, there's this hurdle of it involves a lot of learning. It involves a you know, feeling stupid. And so I held off until I had a digital camera before I really started embarking on that process. But, I think blends baby giving people a reason to grow and learn is how I would distill what our purpose is.

Raymond Hatfield:

I love that idea of pushing through the fear to, kind of get to this point to where you're able to create something that, not only you're happy with, but also fulfills you. I think creatively is a very cool idea. Well, Craig, I gotta say, man, thank you so much for coming on today. I've taken up far too much of your time here. I know that we are well at the end of this. But before I let you go, I gotta ask, I know that people are wondering right now, where can we find out more about Lensbaby? Where can we find out more about Craig? So where's the best place for listeners to do that?

Craig Strong:

So you can go to our online community on Instagram and go to at LensbabyUSA. And there's some really great communities on Facebook that you can, learn and plug into. One of them is Lensbaby Unplugged and I'm there, most days. Well, there's a whole bunch of others that are not, things that lens baby manages. Although I'm a part of some of those communities as well. So that's probably the best place because I sense that you've got a following that really, would resonate with plugging into a community and plugging into a place where it's not just a company saying, Hey, this is what we do and come by this thing. It's like, no, this is about people coming alongside each other and being excited for the learning process that, can be, more rewarding in community. So that's the biggest thing. for me, my presence really these days is, primarily through Lensbaby. So those are the places you can find me.

Raymond Hatfield:

Alright, let's recap what we learned today. First, you gotta embrace unstaged storytelling. Learn to capture the flow of the moment in whatever you're shooting without relying on stage shots. So focus on the candid and genuine interactions between your subjects to tell a more compelling and authentic story. So practice just walking around events and observing emotions and connections before taking photos so that you can start to build in your brain what the story is. So that then you can capture it with your camera. Next is to experiment with your gear. Pushing through that fear of, keeping all your gear in perfect condition and trying new ways to use your equipment can really open up a whole new, visual palette, honestly. Start with simple modifications, like using lens converters or experimenting with fisheye lenses. After each shoot, then reflect on how these new tools and techniques can actually help you to achieve. your artistic vision. And lastly, learn from your missed moments. We're all going to have them. I've had them. I've missed first kisses before. It's no good. But after each session, you got to review your work critically to understand what it is that you missed and why you missed it. Then before your next shoot, you're practice and honestly mentally prepare for being in a similar situation. That alone is going to really improve your ability to capture those key moments and not miss them. So there you go. That is it for today. Until next week, remember the more that you shoot today, the better of a photographer you will be tomorrow. Talk soon.