This one starts with a dodgy lane choice, a Starbucks coffee, and a misjudged underpass. As always.

I’m back in the Land Rover — which might be its final podcast outing before it finds a new home — and today’s episode is a rambling, reflective road trip through customer service, creative resilience, and the rapidly growing presence of AI in our industry.

The day started badly. Cold shower (thanks British Gas), broken editing software, and a head full of terabytes. But it ended with a reminder of why kindness, craftsmanship, and conversation still matter. A haircut from someone I’ve known for 18 years. A deep chat with the owner of Michel Engineering while he lovingly took apart my ancient-but-beautiful record deck — the very same design featured in A Clockwork Orange and owned by Steve Jobs, no less. And then... a disappointing interaction with a distracted barista and a headset-wearing drive-thru operator. Same building, worlds apart.

Customer service, it turns out, is alive and well — just not always where you'd expect it.

But the main theme of this episode is AI. Not the doom-and-gloom kind, but the real stuff: the tools I’m already using, how they’re reshaping our workflows, and how they might be reshaping entire economies. It’s not AI that’s coming for your job — it’s the photographer who learns to harness it.

We talk about:

AI tools I already use (like EVOTO, Imagine AI, ChatGPT, and XCi)

Using AI as a teaching assistant, sub-editor, and productivity coach

The real-world implications of AI-generated ads, coding layoffs, and what it means for creatives

Plans for a new AI section on masteringportraitphotography.com

And if you hang in there until the end, I’ll tell you about a girl named Dory, a gutsy 12-year-old contortionist, and the new edition of Mastering Portrait Photography — complete with fresh images, a decade of stories, and a very special launch offer.

So pop on your headphones, admire the wheat fields if you’ve got them, and come along for the ride.

Spoiler: there’s C3PO’s eye in here too. Yes, really.

Michel Engineering (Turntables) – evoto.ai

Imagine AI – Smart colour-matching editing masteringportraitphotography.com/workshops-and-mentoring

Introduction and Setting the Scene

Well, as you can probably gather from the noise going on in the background I'm back out in the Land Rover, uh, for one more podcast out on my travels. Um, you'll have to bear with me as I navigate the carpark away from Starbucks. Uh, it's been an interesting day in so many, so many ways, and I will talk about all of that.

Uh, where do I, where do I start? Right? Well, I'm back out on the road. Maybe one of the last ones. 

Memorable Cars and the Land Rover

The Land Rover is, as many of you know, now up for sale and not because I don't absolutely love this vehicle. It is by far, by far and away my favorite car that I've ever owned, and I've owned some cars that I have truly loved.

Of course, my first car, an Austin Allegro affectionately named nicknamed Benny, as in Benny from Top Cat. Um, because it's small, bubbly, and round. Um, I owned a Mark two Ford Escort with a steering wheel so small you could touch your thumbs across it, but an engine so small that it really wasn't a sports car, but that was just a beautiful thing.

I've owned a Lexus IS 200, which. From a speed freak point of view is a lot more lively than even this Land Rover is, but in the end. This four wheel drive farmer's vehicle has traveled with me all over the uk from job to job, from client to client. And even today as I was visiting, uh, a place to get my record deck repaired, which I will tell you about, the guy that owns the company came out and all he could do, in spite of the fact we're looking at one of the rarest record decks around.

In spite of that, all he could do was talk about the Land Rover. I'm Paul, and this is the Mastering Portrait Photography  📍 podcast.

 Oh, do you know what I've just done? You know, when you get in a lane, because there's a roundabout coming that I have to turn right at. So I got in a lane and now I'm in an underpass going underneath the roundabout. That I needed to turn right at. How that's really frustrating. I hate it when that happens.

However, I'm up in Hichin, uh, Stevenage way, um, in the southeastern ish corner of the uk. Weirdly enough, I've been here before. I thought I recognized it. This is where I photographed Kevin Fong in the, um, British Aerospace. It looks like it's now Airbus here. I've just driven past the lab where we photograph Kevin Fong on the moon, on the Mars Lander.

A test area. So they've built, it's like the size of a football pitch or two. It's huge. This huge great expanse of sand and rocks, and they've lit it like the light would be on Mars. I don't know. Why that would be important if you are testing Moon Lands or Mars lands. I haven't a clue. Uh, but it's where they tested, uh, or at least the British scientists tested their parts of the Mars rover and things.

I've been here before. I photographed here. Uh, that's not why I here this particular moment. Uh, but I wanna start. Oh, there it is. Look at that. How cool. Sorry. This is way Yeah. Home of the exo Mars rover. I've been in there. Wow. Some days, some days ev well, every day is an adventure. Some days more than others.

Right? Now, let's see me, let's see if I can get into the underpass the right way around this time, having turned around to head back home, mop it. 

Navigating the Day and Customer Service

Um, I wanted to talk about a few things today, but one of the things that came up, which wasn't meant to really, so this is now gonna be a two part podcast. Let me talk about customer service first.

And it starts yesterday. Really, let me tell you a bit of my day yesterday. Not if I'm honest, my best day and we all have them. So the upshot is, everything worked out and I have the photographs I needed or I need, but getting there proved trickier than it does normal. And that's in spite of the fact that I talk in.

Very good story ab about being present and giving it your all. So the day started fairly badly with a cold shower. The boiler broke, well, it broke the night before. Actually it broke on Sunday night. So I got on the bike, did some exercise, sweated a lot, went to have a nice, warm, refreshing shower and had, well, it was a refreshing shower, but a cold one.

It was, I mean, I know they say a cold shower is meant to be good for you, not for me. Alright. It left me in a crappy mood and knowing I had to get in touch with British gas, um, the week before British acid service, the boiler, now it's broken. So you can imagine, as much as I'm trying to be stoic and sensible about these things, I'm really quite cross.

Uh, I try my best not to take it out on those around me. I took it out on those around me, uh, and to all those people around me, I do apologize. And by that I mean predominantly Sarah, who takes the, the brunt of all of my crappy moods when they happen. Uh, thankfully it doesn't happen too often, uh, but when they happen, it is always Sarah that's in the firing line.

So, um, after trolling through the website and trying to get an engineer booked, that was no good. They couldn't bring, couldn't send anyone out till. Tuesday or they said they couldn't send anyone out to Tuesday. Let me just navigate this Range Rover that's creeping on my inside. Thank you. Um, so, uh, yesterday morning, Monday morning, um, I got on the phone to talk to someone.

I thought, do you know what I'll do instead of trying to use computer systems, I'll talk to someone. Well, uh, I talked to a computer. I said, yes, no, no, yes. And, uh, punched in my credit card details because in spite of the fact the engineer probably broke the boiler. Um, we still have to have a credit card ready for any excess.

Now, the upshot is quite a good one, is that by calling in, I did mostly get a, an appointment far earlier than I could do on their website, which doesn't really make any sense given that on the website, I'm assuming it is plugged into exactly the same. Booking system that the automated voice was in case you in any doubt?

No. I didn't get to speak to a human. I got to speak to a very, very poor AI or automated something or other. Anyway, so that was the start of the day. Then in the office, Katie's machine running Da Vinci stopped talking to Frame io. Now for those of you into it, da Vinci is our editing suite, any videos and Frame io is where we store our assets.

Now this isn't ideal if the editing suite can't talk to the asset store. That's the end of a day's work, really. So that put me in a fairly bad mood. And then we're gonna be photographing three amazing kids. So we're doing a video on siblings. Why you photograph them, how you photograph them, the laughter involved in photographing them.

And we've got this amazing family, three teenagers and uh, they were due in and sure enough, they arrived and I still had my head inside. What do I do if Da Vinci no longer talks to Frame io? We're gonna have to re-license a load of stuff. I'm gonna have to move a couple of terabytes of assets around, which as anyone who's done it knows it's.

Probably, you know, a week's worth of work for me. Um, everything was just piling up and I was struggling to get my head into it. And of course they're teenagers and they're excited about coming into the studio, and I wanted to give them the best. Experience. I can, even though they're not here as a client, they have been as a client before, but they're not here as a client.

They're here because I would like to create a video about photographing siblings. So I owe it to them in so many ways to give the very best of me. And I was struggling. And I think in reality, probably for about an hour, I struggled to get myself into that zone where you are creating. Beautiful pictures.

The light wasn't light, I didn't feel great. My head is spinning because I think I've got days of work ahead of me to fix something else. Um, got there Eventually we did get both the photographs and the video ready to create, uh, another one of our mastering portrait photography videos this time on photographing siblings, how to approach it, what to look for, things you can do.

And then on top of that, some top tips for top Tip Tuesday on our socials. But it's really important when it comes to the service levels. At the end of the day, their customers and I offer our customer service, and that has an interesting run on into today. So today, so far, what time is it? It is quarter to one.

I've been on the road since about quarter past eight this morning, so I went for a haircut first. Our reg, my regular hairstylist, who I've been going to for 18 years, we worked out this morning. I photographed her wedding 18 years ago, and I'd known her a little bit before then when I pitched for the work and did a prew wedding shoot.

So 18, 19 years, I've been going to cap for a haircut and we chat shit. I mean, we just. Laugh and talk nonsense sometimes. Sometimes really serious stuff. 'cause she's got kids. I've got kids different ages, but you know, we've lived through similar things. I've watched her business grow and change over the years.

She's worked with me, I've worked with her. And I would say that her customer service is some of the best I've ever met. There's only her now. She did run a multi, a multi station, um, uh, salon for ages, but in the end decided that she would rather just work on her own, have a nice, steady, um, client base, um, who she knew and does very well, that which has a client at home.

But in spite of that, or maybe because of that, her customer service is absolutely brilliant as long as you don't try to text her late in the evening. We might get quite a short answer. 

The Record Deck Repair Adventure

And then today I've been over to get my record deck serviced. Now the kids have been on at me for about, about this for a few years now.

It's been broken. Um, and it came to a head this Father's Day when they said, what would I like? And I thought, well, find me a record or something. And they both went, no. And I'm like, sorry, what? They said, we're not buying you anymore records until you fix your flipping record deck because it's been broken for so long.

And you'd said you're gonna get it fixed and you haven't. So we're no longer buying your records. Now that's not to say I didn't get some really cool gifts from them, but it did sort of, okay, I take your point. Let me go get this sorted. So I rang in to the company that originally made it so a bit of history.

The record deck is a transcripter hydraulic reference turntable. The company was called Transcripter. Um, it's the same age as I am. It's a beautiful, beautiful thing. It's glass and aluminum and big brass weights, soft belt drive. You can still get from the same company. A record deck that is derived from it called the Gyro.

It's worth thousands and thousands of pounds. Um, their decks. This deck isn't worth anything until it works. And then. Probably is worth a thousand pounds. If anyone has watched Stanley Kubrick's Clockwork Orange, then he will recognize the deck because it's that record deck. He won a design award in about 1967, I think, and he's still got the little British Design Award sticker on the lid, on the, the plastic, sorry, the Perspex cover.

It's all original. It was built by the company. I've just visited Michel Engineering and they make these most incredible, beautiful record decks. Now, I rang in a couple of weeks ago and they said, look, we haven't got any slots for service for a few weeks. Um, ringing again on the 24th of July, which I did.

So I rang on the 24th. Um, as it happened, it was Steven who owns Michel Engineering now, um, who picked up, I chatted to him and he's. When can you bring it in? So I said today, um, I'm on the road. Um, so why not bring it in on today, Tuesday? So, um, I brought it in, um, the most incredible service. Uh, I obviously, I didn't carry it to the door 'cause I didn't really know which one of the industrial units I was headed to.

So I buzzed it as it happened. It was Steven, um, opened the door and I told him who I was and he said, oh, put you in. And I said, oh great. And he said, no, no, I'll come with you. So we went over to the Land Rover where I parked up. First thing he does, I admire the Land Rover, which always makes you feel good.

Um, which followed up quite quickly with me by saying, it's you, it's up for sale. Um, and a chat there about pricing. Who knows? You never know, do you? Anyway, he admired the Land Rover, so I'm feeling better already. So I opened up the boot and there's obviously my record deck, this transcript, uh, hydraulic reference to the table.

And he's obviously seen a few of these, but he said, oh, that's a, that's an old one, that's an original. And I went to pick it up and he said, no, no, I'll carry it. Don't worry. So he picked it up outta the Land Rover and I locked it up. We took it into the service lab where it sits now amongst a few similar ones, some newer ones, well all newer ones.

Um, we took it apart or he took it apart and had a look at the different components. Um, puffed his cheeks out a little bit, which is always good when you're talking to an engineer. It's a bit like when you take your car into a garage and they go, oh mate, ah, your rings. But he was very affectionate, very respectful of the record deck, and it was built pre 1972.

And the way he knows that is there's no serial number on it because before 19. 72. They didn't put serial numbers on him, so he's got this very old turntable that my dad bought in. I think it was about 19 81, 82. He paid 15 pounds worth 15 of your British pounds at a jumble sale. Well, this deck is worth anywhere between 1500 quid and two and half thousand pounds of today's money secondhand.

Um, so my dad actually did pretty well. Uh, I dunno if he realized what he'd bought. It didn't work, which is why it was only 15 quid. But my dad attacked it with a soldier line. Probably the same things I've now got to have repaired this time. But he took all the bits off and he showed me how it worked and he explains it in detail.

And we just got chatting. We got chatting to the point where when I come back to pick up the record deck, Steven has very kindly agreed to come on the podcast because we talked about quality, we talked about the love of vinyl, which to an extent, I, I have a nostalgia for vinyl, but I don't have a particularly sophisticated, um, sense of hearing.

So I can't pick out the details that probably their guys can. But I appreciate the engineering and of course it was my dad. So now somebody who cares about it probably as much as I. Who is looking after it is gonna fix the bits that are not right. And given it was a gift from my dad to me for my 40th birthday, it was built around about the same year that I was born.

My dad bought it for 15 quid and absolutely loved it. And now it's in the hands of the company who built it. The very first company though, is his father who set up the company. There's this whole set of layers to the story that are gonna add even more love to it, even more passion for listening to records that the kids have bought me on it, and the service that they offer is so personable and so knowledgeable.

I couldn't help but just get excited. I got excited just walking in. By the time I left, he showed me this room. They've got a room downstairs with some of their legacy, Michelle. It's called M-I-C-H-E-L-L, Michelle Turntables and Michelle. And they've done all sorts of things over the years, not least of which is to create C3 PO's eyes.

No kid, you not, uh, my joy hit the floor when he was telling me he said, yeah, you know, it's based on some stuff we already had in some odd bins. And because it was all made round here where I'm driving the original Star Wars was actually filmed all around this area, Borum Wood, um, and Stevenage in West London.

And so the guys who were doing the special effects used to just hunt round OddBins around all the industrial states. They found some off cuts of something that was, I dunno what it was, a bit of a record deck I think. And hoed them out and modified them and they became C3 PO's eyes. I've literally just been eye to eye with one of C3 PO's eyes.

Um, also lots of stuff for Stanley Kubrick. Um, uh, Steven was telling me that his dad built, uh. Spaceship from Space Odyssey, the model of it. Um, you just, I dunno, you just get this sense of history and passion and just a love of engineering. Beautiful old school British engineering and. As part of that conversation, we talked about so many things.

I cannot wait to get him on the podcast. I think you'll find him hopefully as fascinating as I did, at least those of you that enter a little bit of media, his history, a little bit of film history. Also, if you're into your record decks, the record deck that these guys make, the the Michelle M-I-C-H-E-L-L, I will put a link in the, in the show notes so you can go and have a look at the things they they made because they are stunningly beautiful.

And if I was in the market for that kind of high fire, I'd have one. There's nothing like it. You've seen it in a million films. Steve Jobs owned one. This is how good it is. And I've just been chatting to the guys who made it off the back of that. I ended up talking about ai, which I'm gonna come back to, but let me take the story of customer service forwards just a little bit.

So I've left there. We've talked about all sorts of things. We've talked about his love of Laua, for instance, where I work regularly and I'm forever telling people they are the exemplar of customer service. They are the epitome of it. They are the very best of the very best. And I've been lucky enough to work all over the world with all sorts of companies and all sorts of places.

Um, LA Manu is the benchmark for how, in my opinion, customer service can be and should be done. He agrees. We've talked at a length about it, um, and. What a, a wonderful conversation it was. So I left there really buoyant and I thought, do you know what I'll do? I'm gonna nip into Starbucks, which is just on the same complex where they're based.

Um, write some notes for the podcast 'cause I'm driving so I've got some broad notes written on the back of an envelope so that I gotta take my eyes off the road obviously. And I, um, went to get a coffee and here's where customer service broke down. I don't think the lady who's served me, lemme just get past that car I was trying to pull in.

I don't think the lady who served me could tell you now who I was. I don't think she really made eye contact. Um, the guy that actually made my coffee lovely. I mean, just served it. He made it with passion. It's got a love heart on the top. Um, maybe he's telling me something, I dunno. Uh, gave it me with a huge smile and told me to have a nice day.

She barely looked at me to take my money. Now I don't think that's her fault when I actually watched, 'cause I love watching customer service and figuring out why things work or they don't work. She had a Bluetooth headset on and at the same time she was serving on the till, she was taking orders from the drive through.

Now I defy anybody to do those two jobs at once and do them both effectively. Dear Starbucks, you've ruined it because you've cut your costs so low that the customer service bit the element, that is the only element that can set you apart.

Your coffee's not that great. Your cakes are not so great. And go somewhere else. There has to be about the atmospherics. It has to be about customer service, a smile or two, the way they deal with people. That's what makes any customer service based organization stand out because you can get coffee anywhere, you can get cake anywhere.

You can get a seat in most places. I want somewhere that was clean, had some atmosphere. As much as a Starbucks ever has atmosphere, I accept that. Um, and if I'm gonna pay, you know, what is it, six quid, I think it was my coffee, then I'd really quite like it delivered with a smile. And the guy, the barista did, but the customer service, the person on the tilt did it.

And I think it's because she was trying to do two jobs at once. And that's not something that you can do, I don't think to the best of your ability, um, when you've got one voice in your ear and another voice over the front of the counter. However, that's the end of my rant about customer service because I've had two of the three.

I've been standout. One single person company just cuts hair, but she's so much more than that. She always has a smile, always has something to chat about. After 18 years or 19 years or whatever it is, we still don't run outta conversation. We still laugh about life, kids, business, you name it. And then going to Michelle, Michel, Michel, I, I've gotta work out how to pronounce it 'cause it's Michelle without an e.

Um, Michel Engineering. And honestly, I have skipped outta there with the biggest smile. And then to be somewhat deflated. Why is that the right word? It's not deflated. Somewhat energized by some, fairly average at best customer service from Starbucks. It brings the other two into sharp relief, shows you what can be done, how good customer service can be.

And it's nothing more, in my opinion, at least in this country, about being friendly, taking time and making someone feel valued. And as photographers. That's a really important message, though. It's not what this podcast is really about. 

AI and the Future of Photography

This podcast was meant to be about and is about to be about ai artificial intelligence.

Yeah. I can hear a few of you blowing your cheeks out and do I need to worry about this or, oh God, it's just awful. All of these. Things. But let me kind of try and put it into context, and I'm gonna start with what I believe is going to be the headline for all of us as an industry. Now, I'm a portrait photographer, as are many of you not a landscaper.

I'm not a fine artist. I have my moments. I'm a portrait photographer. If I'm shooting weddings, I'm still a portrait photographer. I'm just shooting your wedding guest's fine art, as sorry as beautiful portraits. AI is coming now. AI in itself is not gonna take our jobs. However, another photographer who's using AI is going to take our job.

I don't think there's any doubt about that. AI's not gonna take your job. A photographer with AI is gonna take your job. Now, this week's been an interesting. Weak. I keep an eye on the headlines and I'll come to, to that in a little bit about how I'm thinking of creating some resources to help all of us.

But the headlines this week, there have been two that caught my eye, both within a couple of days of each other. The first, and one I hope you've all seen is that Vogue published an ad for guests who I, I Fashion house, I guess retail. Dunno. I actually, I, I, I don't know. I should know, but I don't. But they published an advert for Guess.

That was fully generated by ai. No model involved. It's a beautiful image, no question about it. And the model in it is beautiful. So beautiful in fact, that supermodels have come out and said her look is unattainable. It sets the standard that no one can achieve. Now I think there's a little bit of irony here, just a small amount, um, when supermodels are saying that, look, if someone is unachievable, something is awry.

Now this is a, obviously, I mean, that's a complaint that's been land lauded around the fashion industry for as long as I can remember. And in some weird way, maybe just maybe having unattainable synthetic models is maybe healthier than having unattainable. Actual human models because in the end you can always say, well, there's no way I could look like that.

In fact, there's no way that anyone could look like that 'cause it isn't real. So there's an interesting spin on it, I suspect. Guess the company obviously have had some really good publicity out of it, or at least they've had publicity outta it. Um, but of it highlights where we are headed. The little agency that created it, they're a five person team.

They charge anywhere between. Five and low six figures for creating one of these ads. So there's still money in it, but not money for photographers, money for models, money for location scouts. In fact, there's no money for anyone at all except for the agency, possibly the clothed designers. But I'm gonna guess that AI is eating into their world.

Two, that's not my world, but I'd be surprised if it wasn't given. It's eating into everything. The second article I read, which I, in some ways is slightly more alarming, is that Tata or Tarter huge, a huge multinational company in India. In their IT division, they're laying off 12,000 coders and middle managers 12.

Thousand 2% of their workforce because the focus is all on AI doing those jobs. 12,000. There are commentary and opinion pieces around talking about how that will rip out the heart of Mumba. Middle class wealth. That's how, that's how impactful this is. Real estate companies are saying that the market has dropped retail luxury items.

The middle class is being torn apart because those were middle class jobs for people who were smart, gone 12,000 jobs, 2%. And this is just the beginning. By the way. As fast as AI develops, people will find ways of either and or cutting costs and increasing productivity for the same or lower manpower.

That's where we're headed. Um, there doesn't appear to be any graduate jobs around at the moment, if I've read the headlines correctly, because companies, and this is the right strategy, by the way, are waiting to see quite what's gonna happen with ai. Would you take someone on who under employment law is difficult to get rid of if you are thinking well?

I wonder whether AI is gonna add productivity in a way that people might not. So AI is absolutely here and it's getting better. I think. GPT five, we've been talking about chat GT four, forever Chat. GPT five I think is due out in August. So we are right on top of that. If you're listening to this layer in the ear, it's already here.

And I can only imagine having used Chatt PT four extensively, how good five is going to be. So it's upon us and it's gonna be increasingly necessary if we wanna survive that. We don't just accept ai, we embrace it, we find out how to use it, we compete with it, not against it, 'cause you can't beat it. I've got no intention of going anywhere.

We are gonna use AI in any way and shape and form I can to do everything we do better. I don't have a focus on reducing my team. I love my team, I love being part of a team. But AI allows us to do some things and will increasingly allow us to do some things that either was specific to my time, that now can be distributed around the team, or allow me to do things faster so I can do more of it.

How many podcasts have I started by saying I'm snowed under? I'm so busy, I just don't have the time to do everything I need to do. AI is an enabler in that regard. So for instance, the other day I wrote an article for Professional Photo Magazine. I love writing. I really enjoy writing. There's value in writing.

I love, I loved more when professional photo was in print. But it's not anymore. Um, but I still write for it. It's online. You can read the latest article and we use ai and everyone's like, oh, you're using AI to generate your article. No, I'm not. I sat and wrote it like I always do because it was my story, my experience.

I was there. But what I did was I hopped onto chat, DBT, and in this instance I used O three, not. Chatt PT four oh, um oh three. They have different models and I'll talk a little bit about that in a minute. So I used O three and put in my finished article and said, can you help me subedit this?

So for those of you who worked in print and media, you'll know a subedit. The journalist will submit the article, it goes to the subeditor who'll do the final cut. And then it goes to the editor for once over, uh, maybe a review or two before it goes out into the publication. It's a subedit is a role subeditor.

So I said to, uh, chat GPT-3. Oh no, hang on oh three. Get it the right way round. Help me subedit. And it was brilliant. It helped me work out the threads of the jokes if they're, as much as they're jokes, so much as just light humor. Um, it helped me, uh, reduce repetition. It helped me get the tone of it about right for, um, a readership.

I explained to the readership was likely to be. It did all of those things. Um, and it just gave me ideas and said, maybe you want to just shorten this paragraph length in that one. You've mentioned this at the beginning. You might wanna close it out at the end. Those kinds of things. And then he said, and then he did a second review that said, that looks about perfect.

But you have said you love this. Three times, and maybe you wanna just turn that down a bit. Brilliant. It did something that would've taken me hours to do, just going over and over and over refining it because I don't have a subeditor. Um, I'm assuming professional photo. The website probably does, but whenever possible, I like what I deliver to be finished so that, um, it goes out and goes onto the website, their website as I intended it to, as much as that's possible.

And I love that it does things that make my life faster and more efficient and actually pro increase the quality that I can produce. Of course, the obvious stuff for photographers is on the retouching side. Voto, I've banged on about Voto forever. They're now increasingly more competitors to that. But in my opinion, Voto is still, EVOTO.AI is still the best.

Um, imagine ai, A-M-A-G-E n.ai is brilliant for coloring, for instance, it learns your colors and delivers 'em every time. Um, AI sharpening is really useful where you've got soft images, oh, the list goes on where we can now do things using AI that make my life, it makes it possible for me as a single camera.

I'm the only editor in the, in the studio, only post producer in our studio. So it allows me to do things to a standard I couldn't do without ai. Now, on top of that, we are starting to explore other avenues for ai agent ai. Which you can use to do things like, what did I see the other day? A brilliant article from someone with A DHD who uses ai.

And this is a very simplistic view of what they do, but this is quite clever for those of us who have a DHD tendencies. Um, you will know as I do that there are days when I can be super productive. I mean, do the work of 10, and then there'll be nine days where I do the work of none. It evens itself out, I grant you, but knowing your own mood and knowing what tasks suit that mood would be a really useful skill.

And so what this article said was how this guy had developed an agentic ai. So Agen AI is where you use AI to control ai. So it's a multi-layered ai. Approach and every morning one of many things he does, and this is just a small component of it, but I thought it was kind of cute, is he describes his mood.

And if you've listened to the podcast with Helen May, I think I did a few years ago, she talks about this. She talked about knowing what mood she was in, and she talked about knowing what mood she needed to be in. 'cause she talked about when she would take the drugs and when she wouldn't. And there were days when she had to be productive.

And days where it didn't matter. So if you can identify whether today's gonna be productive or not, you can. This guy had programmed the system to do this. 

AI as a Productivity Tool

He would tell the ai, I'm in a productive mood. I'm not in a productive mood. The AI agent would then go off. And talk to other AI agents about all the tasks that were in this guy's world that needed doing and deliver back tasks that suited the mood the guy was in.

So it's sort of like having a very intelligent team member alongside you, who knows your mood, knows what you've gotta do, figures out how to distribute that. This is just a tiny example of how AI can be super helpful, and I think that's how we have to view it. We have to view it as a tool for helping us do our job better.

A tool for helping us compete with other people who are using these tools. Now we're all gonna keep coming back to that theme because if they're using the tools, we need to use the tools. Now we are using all sorts of AI in the business now to do all sorts of tasks. 

Exploring AI Software: Xci

Incidentally, actually, while I'm at it, there's a great bit of software I found called Xci, E-X-C-I-R-E.

I've no idea if I've mentioned it before. It's worth a look. It's a bit like. ACDSee, which I love too. But it has an AI component in it where you can do a search saying, find me all the images similar to this one, but it uses AI to do it and it's pretty good, which is really useful when you are building, if you're doing, uh, a themed post on, let's say you're like, we are, I'm doing a thing on siblings, I can say, I can get a picture of two siblings and say, find me a load of pictures like this one, and it'll find all the pictures with two people in it.

They probably won't figure out that they're siblings, but at least you're halfway there. X-I-E-X-C-I-R-E. It's got a, there's a trial on a website. Um, it's not cheap, but it's a one off license. When see decided, I think it's about $250, something like that. So AI is very much here and now and it's not gonna be long before.

It's a whole different world. 

AI in Portrait Photography

So one of the ideas I have, and I'd love to hear. From you, if you think this would be useful, I think I'm gonna do it and just test it anyway, is I'm gonna set up a section on mastering portrait photography that just has short articles on ways to use ai. Little things we've found that techniques prompt engineering.

Um, we can talk about what we are doing, um, because I'm doing it, we're doing a load of stuff behind the scenes. If you thought it's going a little bit quiet on MPP, just for a moment. That's why, because I'm trying to figure out how to really harness the tools that are here today and the tools that are coming tomorrow.

Now, of course, you know, I accept, I do accept, as a slight caveat, my PhD is in ai, so there is a fascination with what's going on in this sector that many of you probably or possibly don't have. And I, I do accept that. Of course, I accept that. My, my, my fascination with where the tools and techniques that we were part of decades of developing are now here.

And, and this is, you know, by the way, this is why I say that it, you know, we have a toddler, I've said this a lot, we have a toddler of an AI world right now, and it's growing up is because 30 years ago we were saying the same thing. Then, you know, imagine what the scientists are gonna do in 10 years, 20 years, 30 years.

Imagine that now what scientists are gonna do in the next 10 or 20 or 30 years. So yes, I accept, I have an enthusiasm and an excitement about AI that maybe you don't share. But equally, there's lots of little things you can do, like product engineering, like setting up memories if you use chat, GPT, like setting up product knowledge.

If you use Claude, like understanding how things like Gemini. Vo flow. These create more creative tools from Google, possibly can help you in your everyday work. These are all so useful and so right here, a, a, a great example. 

Using AI for Workshop Transcripts

Now, when I run a workshop or a one-to-one or I do mentoring is I'm aware of this same microphone that I'm recording now.

One of the roads, whatever they're called, uh, something or others. Um, I just record it and record all the audio of my voice when I'm running a workshop. That's all it needs. Just what did we talk about from my point of view? Ideally everyone would have microphones on, but it gets really quite complicated really quite quickly.

So for now, it's just me with a mic. I take that audio. Let's say there's 10 hours of audio from a day. I take that audio and I put it into Da Vinci. Why Da Vinci? Because actually the AI tools won't deal with a very long audio file yet. They're just not there yet, but. And I could put it into Descrip, which I use for the podcast, but you pay quite a lot of money for a 30 hour per month transcript.

And taking 10 hours of that just to do each workshop. And I do a couple of workshops a month is not ideal. It goes into DaVinci, which has a subtitle generator. So it takes an hour to go through 10 hours of foot of video, of audio, sorry. And it creates a transcript, subtitles, I take the subtitles and I put those into usually chat, TP, T oh three or four oh, and I can then interrogate the transcript and do different things.

So, great example, uh, chat, DPT. I enter something like, uh, this is a workshop I ran with five delegates and me, the voice you will read is mine. These are my words.

Teaching a subject title to them. Whatever the workshop is. Let's say it's mastering studio lighting, I dunno. So these are all the things I talked about in response to questions or self deduced. I want you to give me useful information that. I can send back to the delegates that are the key bullet points and details that they might find useful.

And then at the end of that prompt, I put the following, ask me whatever you need to be 95% certain of delivering this task to the best of your ability, or something along those lines. It will then ask me a series of questions. It'll say things like, what was the purpose of the workshop? What did you think delegates have done?

Again, out of it, were there any questions that delegates asked to you before the workshop that are not answered here, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. You answer those and then it will feed you useful information. It will obviously, and here's a really interesting difference. I love chat. GT 4.0, all four one.

They're great. It will say things, if you put this into chat GPT 4.0, it will say, oh, Paul, oh Paul. That was not just a workshop. You did not just educate them, you inspired them. You are incredible. Oh, I love your work. Here's some ideas. Oh my God, they're gonna find so useful. Here's ba blah, ba ba, and they give you a load of things to send back.

And it will say at the end. And if you ask it, if you're very smart, what you actually do is you also ask it, how could I improve the workshop? And it will say, I don't think there's much you could change, but here's some ideas. And these might just help you deliver more, uh, I dunno, more, more clarity or more information or help the help certain types of, uh, delegate understand more.

It's really useful as a coach for me too. If you do the same exercise with O three, which is a reasoning engine, it works slightly differently. It's not just about language. It's now reasoning. It might say, well, you did these points, here's some useful information. Here's some ways you could do it better.

It's like having a very blunt, best friend with no filter. It's a lot more useful in so many ways. But nowhere near as much fun as camp GPT. Oh, Paul, you're amazing. I love it. I'd dread them taking that side away. Uh, Claude is even, by the way, if you use c Claude ai, it's even more, I sometimes wonder whether it's, it's in the name Claude.

It, it feels like it might be quite rude. It just tells you, these are the things you didn't do very well. You should do this better. Okay. 

AI Tools for Photographers

Anyway, point being, we're using AI to gather more value outta what we're already doing. We're not trying to make things. Um, streamline things or make things, uh, it's not a race to the bottom.

If anything, it's a race to the top. So we're using AI throughout. Uh, so I'm gonna set up a section of MPP that's all about ai, little tips and tricks, information I'm reading about engines, AI engines, et gentech ai. Things like zapier make.com, if this, then that where they've now got AI baked into them. So you can do clever things if you have, you know, just a spreadsheet, for instance, you can tell, um, things like make.com without ai.

If you are good at code, you can tell it what you want it to do in terms of maybe posting stuff. Um, if you are good at coding, that's great. If you're not good at coding, you can use AI to help you with the coding. It's not brilliant, but it's not bad. And you can get prototypes up and on their feet really quite rapidly.

You can get it to give you layouts of websites, just ideas. You can get it to design logos, just ideas. Now, yes or right, if you make your living on five or designing logos, maybe that's not a great thing to do. But actually when you boil it down as photographers, how many of us actually use Fiverr more than once or twice?

I've used it a couple of times in the entire time, and frankly, I've been disappointed. Might be strong a word, but certainly not thrilled with what I got back. Whereas with ai, yeah, all right. I might not be thrilled with the first one or the second one or the third one, but eventually I'll get there by tuning the prompt and getting it to refine what it's doing.

Um, I dunno if anyone else has done this. You say please and thank you. Um, I do, and then I feel guilty if I need to correct it, but you do need to correct it. And I'll, I'll publish some articles on these, all these little bits on a section of MPP to try and make it, uh, to try and it's, it is now so much a part of a portrait photographer's life.

That not having a section on it feels kind of weird. Um, and so look out for that in the coming weeks as I figure out quite how to, uh, get that information on there, uh, quickly enough and without it distracting from the things I'm already finding difficult to find time for. So that was my little thing of ai.

And if there's a footnote here, of course, it's, uh, from Michelle this morning, the record deck, my turntable, um, Steven and I were chatting and we got chatting a little bit about ai and he said, oh my God, we use it a lot. And introduced me to James, who is. His son-in-law, I think he said, and I had the opportunity.

We went back in, actually, we'd been sit, stood on the doorstep for an hour chatting. I went back in at Stevens behest to go and talk to James. Actually, it was to show me C3 PO's eye and then go talk to James. So I went to talk to James about how they're using ai and I won't. I, I, I, he never said there's anything confidential about it, but I'm gonna treat that with confidentiality.

But it was really intriguing what they're doing with ai because some of what they're doing, I didn't know. It was possible. So I'm gonna take that information now and have a look at how you can use things in a way that I was unaware was yet possible. It feels like certain areas are already possible ahead of what I was aware of.

Um, well, that's it. Let me retract that. That's stupid. Of course, there's a ton of stuff that's possible that I'm unaware of. Um, I meant more mainstream, just simple stuff. Just ideas of how to use things. Absolutely brilliant. And that's where we are. AI is not gonna take your job, but another photographer using it.

Well, that's a whole different discussion. Uh, I hope this recording's working all right. I hope it's not too noisy. Um, I'm now stuck in a 20 mile an hour queue behind a lorry because they've, uh, resurfaced the road. So there's a, uh, grip kind of, you know, a grip warnings everywhere for stuff flying up. So we're all traveling nice and slowly.

Skid risk gets in. I'm not gonna ski anywhere. Um, so what else do I just want to mention? Uh, right. 

Mentoring and Workshops

We have workshops running. Uh, we learned our lesson by the way, uh, everybody said that. Uh, yes. Workshops on a Friday. Great. So we asked you workshops on a Friday. Great. Um, and then we put workshops on a Friday.

Much harder. Thank you for that one. Uh, all of our workshops are moving back to Mondays, which in the end when we spoke to everybody yeah, everyone said, everyone who said, yeah, Fridays are fine. When we went back to Mondays he says, oh great, it's back to Mondays. That's much better. So Mondays, the workshops are back on Mondays as a whole series.

I can't remember 'cause I'm driving what they are. Uh, but please do head over to mastering portrait photography.com and find the section on workshops and, uh, they're all listed. We'd love to see you. Uh, we are doing a lot of one-on-one mentoring now, which is lovely. Some of my favorite things. To do is to actually spend time sitting and well, I mean, I have to hope we impart some knowledge, but there are days when I think I'm just enjoying spending time with photographers, um, and discussing, uh, their work.

So if you fancy that details, give us an email, drop us an email and find out what we offer because we do, uh, what else was, I'll just finish judging. Uh, or I've got one. I've done my first cut of judging. So the way I like to judge is to do everything. And by the way, the deadline is Wednesday, Thursday. Um, and you might think it's a little bit last minute.

It's last minute because my monitor blew up. Um, I've had this Ben Q monitor for years, a decade, and it decided to pack up. Um, my eye mark. The colors I've known for a while, the colors are wandering and no amount of, um, calibrating. And I always calibrate. No amount of calibrating is gonna fix that because it's got magenta areas turning up.

On the corners, the middle's all right, but the rest is awful. So there's not a lot I can do about that. So I had to buy, I had to shell out for a new Ben Q 4K photographer's monitor. It is stunning. Oh my God, it is so nice. It's all calibrated Spider Pro. Um, it turns out that Ben Q's own calibration software does an unbelievable job of calibrating itself with a, with a spider pro that I've got.

Um, so the colors that are absolutely gorgeous, they look well, I say gorgeous, they're accurate, which actually is not necessarily the same. Thing. Um, but of course you can't judge a competition until your monitor's calibrated. So I spent many hours yesterday judging now the monitor's in and on. Uh, it's such a privilege to do what I do.

Um, mentoring, judging, coaching, you name it. You know, when I started this business or I started out as a photographer two years ago, I never, well, and I nearly said I never dreamt. I did dream of doing the things I now do, and here I am doing it. And it's no less of a dream now that I'm doing it, uh, than it was back then when I imagined doing it.

It's brilliant. It's one of my favorite things to do. Uh, so yeah, I was judging. Week. I can't remember how I got into this. I, I've lost. Oh, mentoring. I'm talking about mentoring and coaching. What a privilege and a pleasure. So if you fancy bit of that, uh, we do offer it now. Uh, one of the reasons I stood down after three years of being the chair of judging in awards for the BIPP was to give me a little bit of bandwidth and the political space to do more coaching and mentoring because you obviously, it's difficult to mentor if you are the chair of the association that now assesses the people you are mentoring.

That's a little bit of a conflict of interest. So I never did any mentoring, uh, while I was chair with, see I do now. Uh, what else? 

Mastering Portrait Photography Book

Oh yeah, his news. Most of you may have heard this 'cause we've had various social posts out about it. The book, mastering portrait Photography, the book, which is where it all kind of started 10 years ago.

10 years it's been out, it has sold 50,000 copies. It has been translated from English into American English. Do you know what? There's a complaint on Amazon. One of the very first reviews, it gave it four stars. They knocked a star off because we used American spellings. I mean, you do have to ask yourself, I'm sorry.

It was never published in British English. It went straight to American English because do you know it's a bigger market? I'm sure the publisher knew exactly what they were doing. Um, and so they only published it in American English, so apologies to the British English fanatics. It's in American English this time as well.

So it's been translated from American English into, uh, Italian twice. There's a normal copy and what's called a kiosk copy. They were both done by National Geographic. It's been translated into German. It's been translated into Chinese, and it's been translated into Korean. Now. Those last two we knew nothing about.

It's only when we were doing the audit a couple of weeks ago that Sarah drilled into it. And found them. We actually have a picture of the Chinese copy 'cause we have some Chinese clients who very kindly sent us some pictures, um, from, uh, Hong Kong. Uh, if I, if anybody's listening to this from Korea, I don't know if there is, but if any of my clients have Korean contacts or Korean family, or are Korean, is there any chance you could send us a picture of a book cover of our book cover Mastering Portrait Photography by Paul Wilkinson and Sarah Platon in Korean.

Um, that would be super valuable. Uh, at some point I try and get a copy of it, but even our publisher doesn't have copies. It must have been done locally under license, but it's out there. 50,000 copies translated into four languages and a decade later we were asked to produce an updated edition. Um, you will know this 'cause I've talked about doing the process.

It is done. I have one copy sitting in the studio, one copy of mastering portrait photography, the updated edition, and I have changed every single picture except one. There's one picture in there that's exactly the same as it was 10 years ago. Uh, we may yet run a little competition to see if you can spot it.

It will be on sale or it's already on sale. Pre-ordering. It will be on sale I think on the 14th of September. The original date was the 9th of September, but it's been pushed back a little bit by the publisher to allow distribution. We should get copies in the studio. We'll order a couple of hundred to be able to do signed copies and get them out to anybody.

Um, we're holding a launch event, um, for anybody who's in the book. Anybody involved in the book sometime in, uh, October. We will let, we'll give you details about that once we've got them finalized. Um, right. Hang on a minute. I'm gonna take a back road 'cause this road's been really noisy, so I'm gonna go cut through the back roads, which are quieter.

Uh, and, um, it's, it's out and about for pre-orders. Yeah, I do apologize again if this, if this podcast is a little bit noisy, I do apologize. But like I said, it's a podcast on the Land Rover, uh, right. Roundabouts. Hang on, let me just concentrate on traffic. It was good. Okay. Um, however, I want to just, I will try and get this podcast, Eric, today, which is Tuesday, the 29th of July, 2025.

Um, why? Well, because Waterstones in the UK have an offer on the book. They have an offer 25% off pre-orders. It's being promoted by Waterstones. Um, I'll put the link in the show notes, but if you Google mastering portrait photography, summer offer Waterstones, you'll find it, um, if you pre-order it, uh, before the 31st of July.

The offer only started yesterday. Um. Then you get 25% off the, on the offer. I promised the publisher we would promote it. So that's, um, out in September and I am beyond excited about it. Um, I talk about this quite a lot and, and I think we'll update mastering portrait photography with the stories behind some of these images.

But every one of the images is in some form a client, a friend, someone we met, someone who stood in to do a photo shoot, you know, people like Barbara and say Hi, working on Crystal Cruz's, just the most amazing people who stepped in to allow me to demonstrate certain techniques. Our normal clients, our son Jake, and our daughter Harriet, who are both in there with their permission.

But broadly speaking, it's our clients. It's the people who we photographed along the way. There's so many in there. I can tell you a story about every single image, every single moment, every single client, and on the back cover. So the front cover is Dory, who we met. She was serving US food in a really lovely Thai restaurant in the Crazy Bear.

And I asked her, I met her and with, I mean I was with Sarah and um, we were chatting and I said to Sarah, I think she'd photograph really well. And Sarah bless her because you don't have to do this when there's just a couple of you having a nice romantic meal and you start talking about whether someone would photograph well, there's every opportunity, uh, for that to go wrong.

But Sarah is the most incredible human being, and she too realized that Dory would photograph well. And so I asked her, I said, with Sarah said, go and ask us. I asked her and I said, would you be photographed? Would you be willing to come and be photographed? I think you'd photographed beautifully. And she said, no.

She looked at me, shook her head, said No. Walked away. Now, luckily we weren't on the final course, so she had to come back and I wrote on a paper napkin. I wrote, uh, my web address, my email and said, look, go and have a look. Um, I dunno why I thought, I have no idea. I just assumed, I dunno, I'd call it arrogance.

I thought, well, if you see my pictures, you'll want to be photographed by me, people in a rare moment of super confidence. Um, so anyway, I gave her that and she walked. And last night I thought, we'll never hear from her. At four o'clock that morning, the next following morning, there was an email came in that said, yes, please, I've looked at your website.

I would love to have my photograph taken. And that has started a friendship that goes on today. Uh, Dory is still this most incredible person to photograph. She is lovely. She is funny. Um, she is, well photogenic, doesn't really begin to describe it. She has the most beautiful daughter, the most incredible husband.

Um, she now has done some modeling off the back of it, and it's her picture from that from.  First session that we filmed actually for mastering portrait photography. We filmed it specifically to go with the website to support some of the ideas in the first edition of the book way back. And it's her face on the cover. One of our first, one of the first times I approached someone to model, and on the back cover is Jess.

Now, I first met Jess a few years ago, age 12, and she came to the tame food for. Where we had a, you know, popup stand selling vouchers and our wares, and she approached us and said, how much would it be to do some portraits, some photographs of me doing contortion, contortion, contortion being a contortionist, and she's 12 years old.

And what am I gonna say to a 12-year-old who is gutsy and asking about being photographed? She was there with her mom. You know, this is no. Our conversation that I would have with a 12-year-old obviously. So I had the conversation with her and our mom and I said, well, look, one of the things we do a lot of is we create videos and we run workshops and mentoring.

And I'm always looking for people that we can point in front of the camera who are interesting, have ideas, um, we can create really beautiful pictures off the back of, um, so why don't I trade you some time? So if you come. To the studio and I'll do some pictures for you as a client as long as you come back as a model and let us just take whatever pictures my delegates need and we're always looking out for models like this.

Um, and she said, yes, she agreed. I said that way, I don't need to charge you, but I get something in return that is really valuable to me too. So she came for the first contortionist. Photo shoot. She's a gymnast and a contortionist and a dancer. And um, over the years we've continued to work with her. She has now got a modeling contract.

We now help her with that too. I was writing my instincts that she would photograph well. Um, more importantly, she came to a workshop, I think. I'm sitting in the Lounge Rover. If I sit in my microphones in the studio, I'll tell you exactly the title of the workshop. I think it was Advanced Studio Lighting, or it might have been a avail, it might have been mixed.

I, I think it was Advanced Studio Lighting. And towards the end of the workshop, a couple of the photographers, we'd done a lot of freezing movement. Hang on, let me just let this guy out. We've done a lot of freezing movement. 'cause of course, you know, one of rom's brilliant features. Um, is that you can read on the back of the lights.

The pulse width, so that how the duration of the photo of the light pulse on the strobes. And so if you're freezing motion, as long as your pulse width is, is you know, ideally three thousandths of a second, but a couple of thousandths of a second or faster, you'll on the whole freeze motion. So we'd done that all day and a couple of the guys said, can we do something capturing movement?

Now, if you. Saw the work I did at the Society's convention this year. You'll see this kind of technique in action, and what we did is we lit her with two light sources. We lit her with LED, quite a lot of LED actually, and slowed the shutter down so that we could capture that movement in light. And then we fired a fast pulse at her face and her hands to freeze that bit.

And then we practiced some, uh. Um, sort of dance moves really of her flinging a dress around a ball gown and caught a couple of images that do both. They both strobe, they both freeze her hand, capture her movement, and when you get that stuff right, there's something really magical about it and we got it right.

At least I say you get it right, if that's, did I get it perfectly? No, of course there are things I'd change. There's always some. Thing you'd change? No, no image is perfect. But I think we did pretty well and I would happily do it all over again. Well, that picture's on the back cover, and we didn't know this.

We knew about the front cover because we'd sent over probably 50 or 60 full face portraits for the designers of the book to pick, and they pick Dory, which fills my heart with joy and on the back cover unknown to us 'cause we never saw it in advance. They've put Jess, who you know, was a 12-year-old gymnast and contortionist who had the guts to ask how much would it be to come and have a photo shoot.

And so I'm thrilled for both of those people, both clients that, you know, for the next 10 years we'll be talking about the book with them on the front and them on the back. Uh, it's out there, it's on Amazon, or you can wait. Until we get our copies and we'll send out signed and mounted copies. Um, sorry, signed and signed copies not signed and mounted.

You get into a rhythm with these things don't you? Signed and mounted prints obviously, but signed copies of the book. Um, we'll put that onto, uh, our website in the coming weeks once we know when we are getting our stock of them. Uh, apparently the print run is now done. It's now all about warehousing and distribution, logging, all of those kinds of things.

So that's coming out in September. Waterstone's, just a reminder, they have a 25% offer right now that if you pre-order it, uh, on their website, you get 25, uh, percent off. And I'm selling it for full price, which is 20 quid. Alright. Just so you know, uh, I'm gonna sign it. Um, send it out. But it will, um, it will be the full price.

Uh. Uh, no discounts. You can get it from, if you want it cheap, go to Amazon If you want it signed, come to me. Oh man. I've brought us round a back route. Oh, that pub's open again. Wow, that's good. That pub closed. It's reopened. Um, and on that happy note, as Irun my way back through bucking shirt, Buckingham, she's back lanes.

I was laughing with someone the other day, just how beautiful this bit of the world is. You forget because it's familiar. You forget it's your doorstep. You. I've traveled across the world to go to places that don't look that dissimilar to where I live and sat in admiration of these locations when it, you know, sometimes it's not a bad idea to sit and admire my own back door.

It's absolutely beautiful out here. Um, though the roads are in need of a little bit of repair.

Conclusion and Final Thoughts

So on that happy note, please do head over to mastering portrait photography.com, uh, which has, as ever, tons of articles and is the spiritual home of this podcast. If you've enjoyed the podcast, uh, please do subscribe wherever it is that you get your podcast. It's on iTunes, it's on Spotify, it's on YouTube, uh, wherever it is.

Please do subscribe if you have any questions. Uh, who knows? Maybe you do. Uh, please do email Paul at paulwilkinsonphotography.co.uk co uk. Uh, people do email in now. I think. Uh, I'm trying to remember the name. I saw the email come in. I think it's John. I think John, thank you for your email, John, uh, who wanted to know about the type of paint we use in the studio.

'cause I've spent ages trying to get it right. Got it. Right. This. Time, uh, got it right on two counts. I can't remember what it is. By the way, if you wait, if you're hanging on waiting to find out what it is, um, I can't remember what it is. Uh, Sarah emailed, uh, this morning the answer. I've got a top of it sitting in the studio.

Uh, a white paint for the wall that is broadly speaking, the same white as a white calibration chart. It's also super tough and super white clean, which is great for any of the posing boxes we have because we've forever putting coffee on them and leaving coffee stay. Well now it cleans off. It doesn't stain the paint.

It's absolutely brilliant. Uh, the point of the story is somebody emailed in and asked me if you have any questions, please do so. Uh, so until next time, whatever you're up to, wherever you are, and I hope. The view as you drive along is just as stunning as this is. I've turned the corner. It's just wheat field after  📍 wheat field and hedges and hills.

It's like a postcard. Oh my goodness. It's lovely. I hope like me, you're enjoying where you live and until next time, whatever else, be kind to yourself. Take care.