511: Nick Carver: Create Unique Photos: Trust Your Inner Voice and Style

In this episode of the podcast, I chat with Nick Carver, an inspiring large format film landscape photographer with a passion for architecture and personal projects. Nick reveals the profound impact of trusting your inner voice and focusing on meaningful photography over commercial success. He shares unique insights into finding joy in the photographic process itself and the importance of persisting despite challenges. 

THE BIG IDEAS

• Trust Your Inner Voice: Listen to your instincts and take the photos that truly resonate with you, rather than what you think others might like.
• Embrace the Process: Enjoy each step of creating a photograph, from planning to shooting, valuing the journey over the final result.
• Persist Through Challenges: Stay motivated and keep pursuing your passion for photography despite obstacles or setbacks in life.
• Avoid Comparison: Limit the influence of social media and other photographers to maintain the purity and authenticity of your own style.

PHOTOGRAPHY ACTION PLAN

1. Identify Your Passion: List the types of photography that excite you the most. Plan a shoot focusing on a subject that aligns with your passion.
2. Simplify Your Workflow: Evaluate your current photography process and identify areas for simplification. Implement one new technique to streamline your shooting or editing workflow.
3. Limit Social Media Influence: Set a specific time limit for consuming photography content on social platforms. Dedicate more time to creating original content rather than consuming others' work.
4. Create a Personal Project: Choose a theme or subject you are passionate about for a long-term photography project. Set realistic goals and deadlines to keep yourself motivated and on track.
5. Seek Constructive Feedback: Share your work with a trusted mentor or photography group and request specific feedback. Use the constructive criticism to improve your skills and develop your unique style.

RESOURCES:
Visit Nick Carver's Website - https://nickcarverphoto.com/
Follow Nick Carver on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/nickcarver/

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Thanks for listening & keep shooting!

Transcript

Nick Carver: 0:00

Each of us as a photographer has something inside of us that's kind of telling us what pictures to take. I think most of the time we brush that off. That thing knows what's going to make us happy but we start questioning it oh well what's the point of that photo? I saw a photo like that already that someone else took. That's the side of us that we need to like tamp down and just let that thing come up that says Hey you should go take this photo. Why? Don't worry about it just go take it. And then if you go out and take it. It may end up being one of your best photos ever and people may love it. And then you can kind of trust that inner voice more.

Raymond Hatfield: 0:33

Hey, welcome to the beginner photography podcast. I'm your host Raymond Hatfield and today we are chatting with fine art landscape Analog film photographer Nick Carver about the art of authenticity in your work But first, the beginner photography podcast brought to you by CloudSpot. You know this. Simplify your business with Studio Management. Studio Management allows you to organize clients, send professional contracts, automate invoice payments, and more. So keeping track of everything just got a whole lot easier. And guess what? You can grab your free forever account over at DeliverPhotos. com and only upgrade when your business is ready. Today's guest, Nick Carver, has become one of my favorite photographers. Nick shares many of his photo trips or adventures, whatever you want to call them, on his YouTube channel. He's hilariously witty, but it's also perfectly blended with an extreme technical understanding of the craft. That is. landscape photography on film. and that just makes it a joy to watch. It's not just all, fluff and entertainment. Like you actually learn. and are entertained at the same time. It's great. So in today's episode, you're gonna learn, how to embrace the process. Nick shares the importance of, dedication to your craft, no matter what it is, but especially film photography. Also how to follow your inner voice to trust your instincts, to capture images that resonate with you personally, and not just what you think will do well on social and how to overcome self doubt and fears and societal pressure by focusing on what you truly love about photography. So there's a lot to talk about with this episode. So be sure to join the free and amazing Beginner Photography Podcast community, which you can join right now by heading over to beginnerphotopod. com forward slash group. So with that, let's go ahead and get on into today's Rewind episode with Nick Carver. Nick my first question for you is when did you know that photography was going to play an important role in your life?

Nick Carver: 2:31

I was lucky to find it pretty young. I was probably about 12 There was a class in my middle school that wasn't a photography class It was actually called a technology class and it had little modules. You could study things for like two weeks at a time. It was like a wood shop section and a robotic section all that kind of stuff and one of them was darkroom. So it was long enough ago that it was black and white dark room photography which is really cool. My friend really wanted to do it and I said that sounds stupid. Photography sounds super boring but he kept pushing and pushing and I took it and kind of fell in love immediately. About a year later convinced my parents to buy me a 35 millimeter film camera from a pawn shop and then it wasn't too long after that that I decided I wanted to pursue it for a living actually So like before 15 16

Raymond Hatfield: 3:17

years old you knew

Nick Carver: 3:19

Yeah it was right about that time So kind of early high school I just decided. I don't know I guess I hadn't really been thinking much about what I wanted to do with my life after high school up until that point But then that's kind of when that starts coming in you know in high school they start prepping you for college doing all that crazy stuff which I do not miss cause that was just an unbelievable amount of stress But um yeah so I kind of started gears started turning oh okay. Photographer is a career I've seen photographers that I've been watching the past few years I would love to be doing what they're doing little did I know what I thought they were doing was not at all a career And I had to I disabuse myself of a lot of ideas of what you know making a living as a photographer actually is because I just had it wrong but that was a long journey that started there took me probably a decade before I really realized how to make a good living as a photographer but I decided pretty early That's what I wanted to do

Raymond Hatfield: 4:14

That's awesome. So you thought that photographers were just like taking photos all day long on beaches or something and that was it?

Nick Carver: 4:21

Yeah well the ones I looked up to were all nature photographers. So these guys aren't as in the photography zeitgeist anymore but it'd be like Art Wolf Franz Lanting Thomas Mangelson These guys are the very nature based And are National Geographic photographers. I was looking at their books and I was looking at back then there weren't even much of in the way of websites is but had this idea of they were just going out and taking pictures of beautiful scenery and someone was paying them. And they're clearly making a living at it cause they weren't doing anything else. Thomas Mangelson especially he had galleries all over the place. He had one in Santa Barbara and a few other places I visited and he'd have these big beautiful prints and they were really cool cause he was shooting all film and he was doing cyberchrome prints or Ilfachrome prints which for anyone who doesn't know that's listening That's when you make a print From the negative directly but it's not from a negative it's from a positive So he's shooting reversal film which again for anyone who doesn't know reversal film is the opposite of a negative it's actually a positive image So when you put it on the light table you're looking at the correct image It's actually really cool So that's what they used to use to project images for slideshows but you used to be able to make prints from those directly onto this paper that was just gorgeous And the prints were huge and he was shooting panoramic a lot of the time six by 17 formats Which I later got into but I saw all these prints on the walls and I thought I was 13 14 years old I'm like this is what I want to do for a living I just want to decide to take a trip to Alaska take a bunch of pretty pictures and then put them on a wall and people are going to be flocking to the store and they're going to be buying all my prints And that's how I'm going to make my living And that is what I went into photography planning to do And that fell apart pretty quick

Raymond Hatfield: 6:11

Just nothing but self assignments hoping that people would be busting down the doors and everyone's

Nick Carver: 6:15

going to want my photos Yeah obviously

Raymond Hatfield: 6:18

I want to take a step back before we move forward here talking about this technology class you said that there was like robotics and a few other things and photography was like the last thing on your list So when you got into what was it about it that made you think like you know what actually this is pretty awesome and decided to go forward with that instead of something I don't know futuristic like robotics

Nick Carver: 6:37

is actually the tactile experience of it I think if it had been digital photography I probably wouldn't have caught onto it. It was the darkroom process that really grabbed me cause I wanted to do the woodshop section because I like working with my hands I like building things I like Creating something that I can actually pick up at the end of it in the photography side of it I didn't know anything about okay you're going to take a picture but then you're going to have to load the film into a canister in the dark and then you're going to have to pour chemicals into it and you're gonna have to then put that negative into an enlarger and create a print I didn't know about all that tactical side of photography I thought you just take your film So when I got into the dark room that's when I was like this is freaking awesome I'm making something it's an involved process There's a lot to do and it's a creative process which I've always been more attracted to creative endeavors throughout my entire life So it kind of checked all the boxes for me in terms of tactile stuff I could work with creativity and It's just a lot of fun working in a dark room

Raymond Hatfield: 7:36

Sure sure what were some of those earlier struggles Because there is quite a steep learning curve If you have no idea had no idea about photography going into this You thought that you just took it to a one hour photo place So with how many steps there are involved there's a lot of room for error So what were some of those earlier struggles that you faced?

Nick Carver: 7:53

I think with you know kind of like everyone learning just the basics of exposure and understanding how light behaves is difficult in the beginning. Fortunately for me I never really got frustrated with that and I'm pretty prone to frustration but that never really was so difficult that it frustrated me I actually very much enjoyed learning that That part of it it was kind of fun to figure out how the aperture affects the image or the shutter affects the image or whatever. Most of my difficulties I think came with struggling with finding my own voice as a photographer and as an artist and then also how to parlay that into an actual living that was very difficult to figure out and took a long time And as far as the finding my own voice and finding my own creativity I feel like that's still a constant struggle. I've been doing this 22 23 years something like that and I still feel there's a lot more to evolve on that becoming a photographer that isn't just copying other photographers in some sense And I still feel like I'm doing that a lot of the time So that was a struggle early on and continues to be

Raymond Hatfield: 9:01

You still feel like you emulate a lot of photographers often

Nick Carver: 9:04

Yeah I tend not to consume very much photography for that reason there's a photographer I came across a long time ago I always blank on his name Pretty sure it's Cole Thompson But black and white photographer and he had this idea of photographic celibacy which is you don't look at anybody's work ever and his argument was it just keeps your creativity as pure and clean as possible so that you're not being influenced by anyone And then you have a raw internal creativity coming out in your photography And I'm not as militant about it as he preaches but I generally try not to consume a lot of work because I'm very prone to that feeling of like Oh I'm just copying that other one I saw And I'm very prone to if I see a photo that's really freaking awesome I really want to create that same photo and I don't want that to be a driving force in my photography at all so I've gotten through a lot of the difficulties of that to where now I don't consume a ton of photography is a big help I'm also just having done it long enough I'm more comfortable with what I want to create in photos rather than what I think everyone else wants to see which is a difficult hurdle to get over because especially with social media and stuff Now you really want kind of natural to want to create photos that people are going to like but having done it as long as I have I'm a little bit past that but I still feel like okay I'm either repeating myself too much I'm kind of copying the previous version of me that You know that one photo got enough likes to where I'm letting it weigh too much on what I'm shooting now Or if I find another photographer that I really admire I can still feel like I'm kind of copying their work I mean the the perfect example is I don't consume a lot of photography but one of the ones that I do really consume I love his work is Gregory Crutzen creates these really surreal kind of cinematic scenes of people in kind of Midwest and environments and stuff like that It's hard to describe without seeing it but my work is very strongly influenced by his and it still is And I don't want to copy him but the way he works with lighting and all that kind of stuff I'm ultimately kind of trying to emulate that So I don't even like having that much influence on my work but that's about as good as I can get it right now to where there's just one photographer that's kind of influencing what I'm doing But I don't feel like I'm directly copying anyone at the moment but that can always come back that feeling

Raymond Hatfield: 11:37

That's interesting I often feel the same feeling if I spend too much time looking at somebody obviously I'm looking at them because I'm interested in their work and then seeing more of it will influence you on how to shoot with learning I think it was David Duchemin who said like the best photo school the best way to learn photography would just be one camera one lens and then 365 rolls of film And then you go out and shoot every day You don't look at anybody's work and then you just come back Yeah Yeah And focus on your own photos to develop and obviously become a better photographer which obviously makes sense something like that is practical do you think that we can live in today's society with how prevalent social media is and not be influenced by other photographers

Nick Carver: 12:15

Yeah I don't as you say with social media and stuff it just being so unavoidable I think it may not be possible anymore but that approach of kind of like just go out and take as many pictures as possible and not get involved with the photography community essentially I could definitely see value in that especially now with so much social media I'm glad i'm not a beginner now Yeah i'll put it that way Which I don't want to make anyone who's a beginner now feel discouraged or anything There's still so much to do and there's so many fun ways to go about it but when I started I really couldn't be influenced too much because there was no instagram There was no facebook or youtube or anything like that I learned everything through books and books They're not perfect but they're relatively vetted cause for a photographer at that time to have a book had to kind of prove that they knew what they were doing had to have some sort of track record of being either a professional or being recognized photography instructor And so everything I learned was quite truthful and held up and it wasn't the blind leading the blind Cause I think what happens sometimes with Social media and stuff is it's beginners teaching other beginners the stuff they learned And I taught photography in a one on one capacity for I don't know it was a decade or something like that And so I was intimately aware of how beginners learn and how poorly they convey the information they just learned Cause I'd be in a workshop and I would hear students talking to each other And I'd hear a student telling another student Oh no this is how it's done And they were completely wrong so there's just this problem now I think where you can get too much influence from people who aren't really fully developed themselves as photographers And That can be probably not great for your photography I would think in the beginning it's probably not even great later on in photography but I mean then again on the flip side of that token there's so many more ways to learn now So you can probably learn a lot quicker than when I started but yeah it's hard to keep those inspirational avenues It's clear today because you can't you really can't avoid photos I mean unless you're completely off the internet you can't avoid They're everywhere

Raymond Hatfield: 14:30

How do you think we solve that issue then of finding the right educator for you Do you think that learning online is still a viable option or do you think that these things should all be done in a I don't know classroom setting or something or does it depend on the

Nick Carver: 14:44

Yeah think it depends on the teacher I've known in person instructors that are fantastic I've known ones that are terrible and same thing with online I think probably the best way someone can kind of learn this stuff is learn from multiple sources and then try everything and see what actually works Works out for you and as I say in my own courses you know there's usually more than one way to skin a cat So if you learn something and then find another instructor going directly contradictory to that saying that's not how it's done at all there's a good chance they're both right it's just two different ways to do it And so you kind of have to try both ways and see if one of them is less efficient than the other or see if one of them jives better with your style so I think it's a lot more sifting through information for modern photographers I think that it's just kind of information overload but you know don't get too attached to one Photographer or one instructor because there might be other ways to do it that are better or just work better with your style or whatever and it's good to learn as much as possible but then you really got to go out and actually apply it in the field to see what works

Raymond Hatfield: 15:55

right Yeah the only way to actually learn something or whether or not it's good information is to Apply it to yourself and see if it works for you I love it so let's go back to those early days in photography I want to know because today your gig is you shoot lots of medium large format film but in those early days you had that 35 millimeter camera What sorts of things are you shooting

Nick Carver: 16:14

It's all nature I started out actually wanted to be a wildlife photographer and then I found out pretty quick there were two problems with that One was the equipment was just Way too damn expensive I mean I started it when I was 12 and 13 So a 5 000 300 millimeter F 2 8 lens Might as well have been 1 000 000 because I'm never going to have 5 000 for that So that was the biggest hurdle is the equipment But I also found out pretty quick too I don't have the patience for it I think with wildlife photography it's a lot of waiting in one spot for The animal to get in the right position And you know some of the guys go so far as to camouflage themselves And it's almost like hunting in that sense And I'm too fidgety I just had to I needed to get the photo done and move on to the next photo So ended up not working well for me So I kind of just fell into landscape photography because I was already Into nature stuff and I was already outside hoping to photograph wildlife And then when I got bored with that I would start shooting landscapes And then much lower barrier to entry on landscape photography The equipment's not nearly as overwhelming So that ended up kind of becoming my main thing

Raymond Hatfield: 17:27

So you got into landscapes and then so I know obviously film natural progression you go from 35 to medium to then to large format We're kind of in this world where obviously film is still around but I think we can both agree that digital is the most prevalent right in photography So what is it about film that keeps you sticking around and going through just the additional steps required to shoot on it

Nick Carver: 17:51

Yeah I I had a weird progression with the formats too because I started on 35mm Basically all there was digital was on the scene but it was too expensive and the resolution was too small So no one was really doing it and then as I got deeper into photography digital came along So then I ditched 35 millimeter and went all digital in about 2006 or something like that and then I came back to film in 2012 cause I was pretty depressed in my photography and the film was the only thing that excited me anymore but that's another story So I got back into film and I was going to get back into 35 millimeter because that's all I knew but then I kind of quickly realized okay well I haven't tried large format So I actually jumped from 35 millimeter all the way to Four by five skipped over medium format started shooting that And then I came back and kind of did medium format after getting back into large format but the reason I continue to shoot it is I guess the workflow just kind of suits what I need from photography I need a little bit of delayed gratification I need the stakes to be a little bit higher when I take a photo I don't know why I don't know that it's even a healthy thing to feel that way I just kind of when I go to take the photo if I know it's costing me 2 when I take the photo and I only have four pictures to get it the process is far more enjoyable for me And then having to wait a little bit to see what those pictures are going to be helps keep me in the moment because when I'm shooting I still shoot a ton of digital because all my client work is all digital And I'm spending so much time looking at the screen and reviewing the photos and right away seeing if everything came out it just has a different feel to the process and my connection to the pictures is so much different it's obviously way more efficient with digital I'm much more likely to get the shot with digital but when I'm doing my own personal work I guess I like to live dangerously or something I don't know what it is I just kind of need that the higher stakes to for it to feel like it's fulfilling me fully

Raymond Hatfield: 20:54

Now you say that in your personal work you'll shoot film but I know that you do sell prints of yours right Fine art landscape prints that are also on film So I guess can you kind of walk me through a little bit about your business and how it works from a photography standpoint

Nick Carver: 21:10

yeah I call it personal work because I choose to take those pictures on my own accord but I guess it's Kind of professional work because I'm hoping to make money from it but I kind of have two facets of my business So I'm a commercial architectural photographer So I photograph office buildings primarily but also industrial buildings and occasionally retail centers and then I have the other side of my business which is basically kind of the photos I want to take combined with the YouTube videos I want to make and those usually go hand in hand in some capacity but that's all just Stuff from my own brain that I want to create No one's telling me that's what they want and so that satisfies a real important side of creativity for me That the business side of shooting architectural photography doesn't because it's an assignment I know what pictures they need it's still very much a creative endeavor and it's very enjoyable And I love my job on that side of it but that's

Raymond Hatfield: 22:06

I'm always interested in this right So you go out to shoot the fact that you sell your prints say of that photo behind you right Large landscape photo you want to obviously eventually sell that So you get it printed you get it framed and everything now this is a world that I'm not in at all So I'm very interested in this may sound like a dumb question When you go out to shoot do you have some sort of end goal of where a photo might end up Like that photo behind you did you know that that was going to end up in a large print like that Or do these things sort of develop after you take the photo and you look at it after it's been developed and edited

Nick Carver: 22:38

it kind of depends on the subject That one in particular that's behind me I just took that photo cause I really wanted to take it I didn't have any idea What was going to be done with it In fact I didn't even film a YouTube video when I took that picture which I normally try and get something out of a photo I'll make a video about it so people can see me taking the picture or I'll take the picture hoping it's going to contribute to this other thing That one was completely just a photo I really wanted to take when I was out camping and that might give some insight into why it's hanging on the wall I guess I mean it was pure enjoyment taking that photo So that might be why I like it so much but I usually try and have some sort of end purpose in mind with the photo of it contributing to a book one day that's kind of what's been driving me a lot lately is I really would like to put together a book of my pictures and offer it to anyone who's interested And I don't feel like my portfolio is robust enough at this point to fill a book So a lot of times when I go out to take a picture I'm kind of picturing it as one of the pages one day and then I recently started a project that I hope to also be a book one day but being from California you probably know this but Taco Bell used to have a building that was the same design everywhere It had three arch windows out front and then an arch up top And there's a bell way at the top of the building and they've abandoned those buildings They don't use them anymore so a lot of them got torn down and your Taco Bell built on top of it A lot of them they just sold to someone else And then so there's all these businesses that are In these old Taco Bell buildings so the project I have right now is I'm calling it previously Taco Bell And I just want to go photograph as many of them as I can find with cool terrain around them and all that kind of stuff And that's been a nice thing to kind of get me excited to go out and take pictures cause uh some photographers do really well with the approach of I'm just going to put myself in some environment and see what pictures Arise I'm just gonna find pictures when I get there I don't really do too well with that approach I work much better if I Kind of give myself an assignment So if I am working on this project it's contributing to a book or it's contributing to a print I want to make or something like that that I tend to be much more excited about going out to take pictures and that kind of keeps me focused So Yeah the previously Taco Bell project is what's got me going right now but who knows how long that'll last Sometimes these things fade out

Raymond Hatfield: 24:57

Right I get that Yeah especially with personal projects And for something like a building we have one in our town that is now a Froyo place Oh really It is right like in front of a school and stuff but right next door to it Is one of the newly built Taco Bells So

Nick Carver: 25:13

I'm finding that's the case for a lot of these There'll be one of these old buildings and then just within eyeshot there's a new Taco Bell So these move just a little bit down obviously a successful location Yeah I'm going to hit you up for that address Cause I'm building up a list of every previously Taco Bell I can find for anyone who's listening mail at previously Taco bell com If you know of one in your area please let me know Cause I'm Planning on doing a road trip at some point Put

Raymond Hatfield: 25:35

that in the show notes just in case anybody wants to get that if they're driving right now that is too much And

Nick Carver: 25:39

uh previously TacoBell com if they want to see the photos I've taken so far Oh that's wonderful But the whole project's going to be on film So large format film and medium format film and shooting it the way I like to shoot it And hopefully it'll be a book one day If I get enough of them it could be fun

Raymond Hatfield: 25:52

So this isn't where the interview was going but now I'm interested in this have you made many books like this before

Nick Carver: 25:58

No I've actually only ever made books for personal use from vacations or whatever Sure and it's so gratifying making a book It is like one of the best things in the world to flip through this book that you've worked so hard on and it's all these pictures So I'm really interested to do it I'm really excited to do it I just haven't felt That I have a collection of images worthy of a book yet but hopefully maybe this previously talked about project will be the one

Raymond Hatfield: 26:25

I like it let's get back to landscape photography here a little bit I want to know lots of people today can go out either with their iPhone or their entry level camera and say that they love landscape photography and go out and take these photos right somebody like you who is a fine art landscape photographer I'm always interested in that term fine art so can you describe to me what does fine art mean to you

Nick Carver: 26:47

Yeah that term fine art always makes me cringe a little bit when I use it Uh it's such a it's such a strange term It feels like you're really putting your own work up on a pedestal when you call it Fine art but I just don't know any other word for it I've called it wall art but that somehow makes it sound really terrible So I don't really know what to call it but fine art Yeah man I got a lot of thoughts on this but the photography is such an interesting art form because it's not taken that seriously In like the real art world you know so modern art museums and all that kind of stuff they don't really take photography all that seriously It's a lot better than it used to be But for a time I mean it was a joke it was not considered an art form for a very very long time and then so kind of what that world calls fine art photography can sometimes just be kind of weird photography It's not really anything that a photographer would Admire or appreciate It's just kinda I mean it's like any modern art You look at a rock on a pedestal and it's called modern art and people roll their eyes I think some fine art some photography which is categorized as fine art can sometimes fall into that category but for the rest of us I kind of view fine art photography as just a catch all term for making prints that people would want to hang on their walls so that's why I've sometimes called it wall art And that avenue of my business was the thing that I wanted to do originally So when I saw Thomas Mangelson's galleries and a more modern version of Thomas Mangelson would be Peter Lick I'm sure a lot of people know Peter Lick Peter Lick is the modern version but that's what I want is just like okay parents that people want to hang on their walls and sell them for a bunch of money limited editions all that kind of stuff and then that's one of the ideas I had to be disabused of pretty quick in my photography journey my photography career cause I found out that's not really a job and that doesn't really exist as a viable income source Like I have prints for sale on my website I don't sell more than a dozen prints per year and I'm fairly well known in the photography world So if anyone's going to be able to sell a few it'd probably be me Cause I got a good YouTube following but I don't sell too many and if you think about it you know how many are you really going to sell How many people have walls that need artwork on it and are willing to drop a pretty penny for a unique print Most people just go to Target and pick up a washed out picture Of a steer with the long horns the photo everyone has

Raymond Hatfield: 30:01

Yeah right

Nick Carver: 30:02

so yeah I really enjoy offering prints I love it when people buy it It's hugely flattering especially when they get shipped to another hemisphere and that kind of thing but it's more for the enjoyment than the reliance on the income For sure

Raymond Hatfield: 30:15

Okay So then I guess what I'm trying to get at here is when you're out there Actually shooting right now This may sound like a stupid question What is it that you are doing to ensure that your photo is different than somebody who just grabs their iPhone holds up their phone snaps it goes back to camping drinking beers doing whatever they were doing

Nick Carver: 30:34

Yeah That's not a stupid question at all that's the whole struggle that basically sums up the struggle of my life right there Just uh how can I take this photo So that's going to mean something more than just a snapshot of this place

Raymond Hatfield: 30:47

or

Nick Carver: 30:47

even taken to the extreme because I shoot a lot of buildings in urban areas now how am I going to take a photo That's better or more meaningful than the Google street view that came by three months earlier and has a shot of all these things and you can pan around and see the building fully I've tried to have my work be steered more by a gut Feeling than anything and a gut feeling of like I just want to see this photo That's really all it boils down to and one thing that kind of stuck with me that I heard a long long time ago actually from a comedian on a podcast he said isn't the point of art To create something you haven't seen before he said it kind of exclaiming isn't that why we're doing all this Like he was kind of joking about it but it really stuck with me It's like Oh yeah that's really what I'm trying to do I'm trying to create something I haven't seen yet and I think that's what a lot of photographers are doing At least at least once we all get bored of just making the best impression of the photographer we like which I did for many many years I had many years of just doing the best version of a Thomas Mangelsen photo or my best impression of a Galen Rowell photo or whatever but then eventually that gets kind of boring So I try and just create photos of things I haven't really seen before Things I would like to see and then in terms of like a more nuts and bolts technical aspect to how you make it more unique or to stand out better for me it's all the quality of the light timing is massive the cloud cover is massive and putting the dedication into going back multiple times if that's what it requires I've had many photos where I've gone back six or seven times just scouting it or hoping the light is going to be perfect And it's a picture of a freaking tire shop or it's something that is so meaningless on the surface but if I can get it at just the right conditions it's going to scratch that itch in the creative side of my brain to where I feel like I've done something I've made something new and the photo may not end up Meaning anything to anybody and maybe that's a failure in that sense but in the sense of the process of photography is going the way I want it to go or it's satisfying what I need from it it's a success And then hopefully all that work I put into it makes that photo an art piece instead of a snapshot from a phone because I put in the effort of making sure that the light was just right and the timing was just right And I don't know I feel like those old jokes of stuff of like you know you could frame a blank canvas on a wall in a modern art museum And just the fact that it's framed and it's in a modern art museum it'll go for a hundred thousand dollars you know on the there's nothing on the canvas and there's probably some truth to that that I'm relying on the fact that I made a video about it and I went through all the process of all the work I put into it and now it's framed and hanging on the wall Maybe that's the only thing that's really giving it that much value But I guess that's a risk I have to take and just kind of keep taking photos that I want to see and that I haven't seen before and hopefully it'll come out in the wash and people will think it's better than you know an iPhone snapshot

Raymond Hatfield: 33:53

Right right But doing that like what's the downside You know what I mean Like I don't see a downside to that for you seeing a photo having an idea for it envisioning it going out with your camera seeing that it's not right leaving it coming back waiting for it even making a video about it I don't see any sort of downside to it I don't think that that necessarily artificially inflates the worth of a photo at all

Nick Carver: 34:15

Yeah

Raymond Hatfield: 34:15

Especially because when it comes to photography one of the things that I'm struggling with now as I out how to transition out of wedding photography into something else is more of that like learning to trust myself as an artist rather than well here on a wedding day I know that I need to get X Y Z and then everything else I can kind of do myself And I think that I'm kind of coming to the conclusion of going back to what you said you can abstain from seeing other people's artwork you'll have to create art that you like And at the end of the day that should be all that matters Right But when it comes to Owning a business right Dollars also matter So is there anything that you do to I don't want to say ensure that prints get sold but I guess just you know ensure that your clients will actually like the photos that you're taking or anything like that Does that question make sense or is that a terrible question

Nick Carver: 35:05

Yeah I get what you're saying I really like what you said about what's the downside Because that's one of the things that really Kind of drove me into this approach to photography is like I spent so much time taking pictures that I thought would sell prints and I was doing like real high saturation landscape stuff with kind of epic foregrounds a lot of wide angle stuff that I thought people wanted to hang on the wall and that steered me for so long and it was miserable cause first off no one was buying the pictures So you feel like you're failing in that sense but also I wasn't really taking the pictures that I absolutely wanted to take and then I eventually just kind of said screw it I'm just going to start taking photos I want to take then because if they're not going to sell anyway I might as well take photos that I want to take and ironically is that's when I started to get more popular and that's when people started to notice my work more so there really is no downside Like just go out and take the pictures you really want to take unless you are currently selling a million prints of the photos you're taking now that you don't want to take there's no downside to ditching that and there's no risk really you take the photos you want to take you're going to feel better You're going to enjoy photography more You're more likely to stick with it and your work is much more likely to get better I mean we're all doing this because we like photography and we enjoy it Yeah So whatever it takes to keep you enjoying it is what has to be done And if people like the photos or not is kind of out of your control but I really feel like each of us as a photographer has something inside of us that's kind of telling us what pictures to take And I think most of the time we brush that off And that thing knows what's going to make us happy it knows what photo is gonna satisfy our desire to create something We start questioning it Oh well what's the point of that photo I saw a photo like that already that someone else took is this going to sell as a print or is anyone going to want this or whatever that's the side of us that we need to like tamp down and just let that thing come up that says Hey you should go take this photo Why don't worry about it Just go take it And then if you go out and take it it may end up being one of your best photos ever and people may love it And then you can kind of trust that inner voice more that's what's worked the best for me Cause every photo I've taken that people tend to respond the best to was always one of those instances where I just Really had this knee jerk response of like I don't want to take that photo I need to take that photo that thing has to exist Otherwise I'm not going to be able to sleep for a little while And then I'm not thinking about Oh how's it going to look on Instagram Or is it fitting with my larger body of work or whatever I just go out and take it and those tend to be the ones that people really respond to I don't know if that answered your question at all I kind of went off on a tangent Uh I

Raymond Hatfield: 37:47

don't know if it answered my question either In fact I forgot what the question was because I was so enthralled in what it was that you were saying because that's so interesting The idea of we have to remind ourselves to take the photos that we want to take because it could make us happy And it made me wonder like do we go wrong Like where do we start doubting that is that like I don't know psychologically from when we were kids and we wanted to do something and we were told like no you can't do that or is this something that now because social media is such a big part we think Oh that's actually not that cool Or who am I as a photographer And in my head I was trying to think like how do we completely avoid that How do we get around that how do we find that voice How do we encourage the creativity and the freedom and the courage to be able to go out and trust yourself as an artist you have an answer to that

Nick Carver: 38:36

Um I have my I have my answer I'm sure it'll solve all the world's problems but um yeah I have a couple of thoughts on that Cause I may have a bit of more of a nihilistic approach to this type stuff because one thing that keeps coming up for me when I'm starting to doubt pictures I want to take I'm starting to think too much about are people going to like it or whatever I always come back to this thought in my head where I'm like well what am I going to do I'm just going to die one day never having done this we got one life here I'm not going to do it because I'm scared People aren't going to gush over it or I'm scared I'll take it And I won't like it at least I'm going out and taking pictures and using my camera which is something I love doing So even if the photos are not good or no one cares about it or whatever I'm very much doing something I enjoy doing So at the very least I'm killing time in a way that I'm happy to be doing but it really is like you just get not going to do it You know I just kind of have this maybe it's my older brother or something like that but I just kind of feel this voice So you're just not going to do it because you think it's not going to get as many likes Or because you think other people aren't going to care about it or whatever That's such a dumb reason to not do something that you have this kind of deep feeling of wanting to do and I just watched this documentary the other night It's called the most hated man on the internet And it's about this guy on a website called is anyone up And he's a terrible person And his whole persona was like I don't give a F and I don't care what people think about me and all this kind of stuff And he had all these people kind of admiring him for that And there is a certain part of our society that kind of admires don't care what people think and you do you and all that kind of stuff And that's great I'm basically preaching that right now but it's good that we all want to please other people it's good that we want our photos to be liked by people Because if you don't have that in you you're a sociopath

Raymond Hatfield: 40:34

those

Nick Carver: 40:34

are the become serial killers They don't care what anyone thinks They don't care what anybody thinks of them Like that's not healthy So as photographers think maybe it'd be good to acknowledge like It's nothing to be ashamed of or it's nothing to dislike about yourself that you want your photos to get likes You want your photos to have an impact on people It's not just that you're some dumb Gen Z who wants the likes older people can sometimes really denigrate that of like Oh you used to care so much about your likes Yes I want people to like what I'm doing because I'm a human and I want to connect with other people and I want to be accepted by the tribe and all that stuff So it's okay to want to create photos that other people like I guess what I'm trying to say is you will create photos people like if you stop trying to create photos people like And you just really listen to your inner self That's when my photos really started to reach people in the ways that I wanted them to back when I was doing the high saturation landscapy stuff you would get a lot of wows and oohs and ahs and all that kind of stuff But wasn't reaching people in the way I want to reach them It wasn't it didn't feel deep It didn't feel like they were getting any sense of who I am or what I'm about it was just felt like kind of cheap tricks to get people to want them So I think if you start just taking the pictures you really feel that itch to take It probably will maybe not right away but it'll probably evolve To work that people really do like so then you can kind of have your cake and eat it too

Raymond Hatfield: 42:12

Yeah if we ever get to the point to where brain implants are just universally a thing I'm definitely gonna have the older brother Program running to just motivate me to go do stuff Yeah Yeah Yeah And you know it was funny what you were talking about why not you know this idea of we're going to die someday you know and we really have one chance to make an impact and I think there's been several times in my own life where I've thought I should go out and shoot And then of course there's a million reasons why not to like the kids are at home I could play with them you know do a million things I should mow the lawn I think it was Franz Kafka a quote who said the meaning to life is that it ends And I think about that often of wow that to me really stood out And Will immediately just light a fire under my butt and like all right I gotta go I gotta go you know take some photos and like you I have found those moments as well where it's like sometimes the times where I don't want to go out have made I've made the photos that I am most thankful for that I enjoy the most And I guess I'm just sharing that So in the hopes that somebody who's listening feels that same way Oh I got kids I work a lot and I got a full time job When do I have time for photography And it's like well when do you not have time for photography You know life does end And if it's really important to you go out and do it And I guess that's my soapbox there But anyway um Nick I know that we are at the end of our time here and I really don't know how to end it any better than that That last whole sentiment that you made about if you really want to create something if you really want to make an impact in the world you do have to put in that work and you have to go get it and do it And why not Right If it's going to make you happy why not so before I let you go first I just want to say thank you so much for coming on and sharing everything that you have but I know that listeners are going to want to learn more about you we didn't even talk about your YouTube channel today which I had a million questions on can you share with us where we can find out more about you and of course your YouTube channel as well

Nick Carver: 44:04

Yeah website is nickcarverphoto com YouTube is where most people know me from So you may want to check me out there just at Nick Carver and then Instagram Nick Carver So I was lucky I'm old enough that I got my name on everything So I didn't have to do Nick Carver zero one or anything

Raymond Hatfield: 44:23

Fantastic chat with Nick. I always love chatting with Nick. He is, just a blast. So let's go ahead and recap what we have learned today. Number one, embrace your passion. So that means take time to think about what originally sparked your interest in photography, and then channel that energy towards the thing that you love into your work. Next, stay true to your vision. Take Nick's advice and practice photographic celibacy. prune your social feed from photographers who don't inspire you, but get a lot of likes, and simply surround yourself with those whose images really, really speak to you. And lastly, shoot what you love. This may seem simple, but it needs to be stated. Focus on taking photos that resonate with you personally, rather than trying to appeal to social media, which you honestly have no control over, so why try to cater to that? Create work that you truly love, Doing so is not only more rewarding, but can also lead to much greater success. Now, if you like this conversation with Nick Carver, be sure to subscribe to him on YouTube. You will not forget it. And then come on into the Beginner Photography Podcast community and share, what it is that you've learned from him. I would love to hear it. So, you can join the free and amazing. Beginner photography podcast community over at beginner photopod. com forward slash group. That is it for today. Remember the more that you shoot today, the better of a photographer you will be tomorrow. That's it. Talk to you soon.