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A show about cameras, creativity, and the weird shit your brains do while you're trying to make something.
Together, we're exploring photography for all levels — asking the silly questions, sharing the expert knowledge, and digging into what it actually takes to grow as a human being and as an artist.
Focus on How We See
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Casey (she/her): So if you tell me to visualize a red apple and I close my eyes, I got nothing. I see a big black void. Now, do I know the concept of a red apple?
Yes, but I can't picture it,
Amy (she/her): I would put myself at the other end of the extreme.
Casey (she/her): Okay
Amy (she/her): it's full red 3D.
[00:00:43] Photographic Memory
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Amy (she/her): So Casey, there have been a few times on this podcast where you've referred to, um, before you had your brain injury, that you've, you had near photographic memory, and then afterwards that that kind of went away.
Um, I'm curious, A, about the transition from that kind of memory to not having it anymore, and then also how that you see that play out in your photography. Because there's something, one of the things that I talk about a lot is being able to see what's going on in your photos or visualize, um, that, visualize things so that you can, you know, do your post-processing or even setting up photos.
And so I'm curious about how all of that plays into what you've experienced now in photography
Casey (she/her): Yeah. So you've set me up for two conversations here, so I wanna make
Amy (she/her): Of course.
Casey (she/her): for, like, the audience is... So for those who haven't listened to a bunch of episodes, I was wounded in Iraq in a roadside bombing in 2004, sustained a traumatic brain injury. So that's the brain injury you're referring to.
Um, so yeah, the, the photographic memory is, like, pre-brain injury, I didn't keep a calendar. You could tell me something once and I would remember it. Uh, I didn't forget names, didn't forget faces. I was... drove my mother fucking nuts as a child. I would watch a movie once and I could remember the plot, the subplot, direct quotes, all the character names, like an o- an obnoxious level of detail, and then also my neurodivergence, I would then want to info dump all of that detail.
And so I was annoying. So the photographic memory was just, like, easy retention of lots of information. The type of brain injury I have, I now don't have that. I have, like, a terrible ... I can't tell you what I ate for breakfast yesterday. Um, and that's an improvement. I used to not be able to tell you what I ate for breakfast like two hours ago.
So little bit of improvement. But I have no retention. It takes a lot more repetition me to retain things, and I
Amy (she/her): OK
Casey (she/her): learn in a different way to be able to retain. Like before, I could hear something... It didn't matter if I hear it, read it, saw it, like, it didn't matter how the information came to me, I could retain it, and now I need to take it in through, like, multiple modalities multiple times if it's gonna stick around for a minute. And then the other side of this question that you asked, so there's... That's like the photographic memory,
[00:03:00] Aphantasia and the Red Apple Test
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Casey (she/her): and then you asked about, like, how, um, like visualizing shots and stuff like that. And so I also have, which I've always had, this is not related to the brain injury, I also have a thing called aphantasia, which is, I think it's like a quarter of the
Amy (she/her): OK
Casey (she/her): have this, but a lot of people don't know they have it because we don't talk about our brains this way. so aphantasia, if you don't know what that is, is I don't see pictures inside my head. this... And this is a scale. Like, people fall, there's not, this is not an all or nothing. So if you tell me to visualize a red apple and I close my eyes, I got nothing. I see a big black void. Now, do I know the concept of a red apple?
Yes, but I can't picture it, somebody who doesn't have aphantasia, Amy, uh, you can see a red apple. And
Amy (she/her): I can
Casey (she/her): I think we've talked about this, like, how well can you visualize? Like, you can manipulate the thing you're looking at too, right? Yeah
Amy (she/her): Yeah, I, I would put myself at the other end of the extreme.
Casey (she/her): Okay
Amy (she/her): w- I, yeah, it's full red 3D. I can put it into a scene like it's a movie. I can pluck it out and it can be just in a, a void on its own, and I can rotate it around. I can, yeah. And I always thought that that's how everybody saw things in their head.
Casey (she/her): Mm-hmm
Amy (she/her): so it's only within the past several years that I've realized that that's not actually how everybody in the world sees things
Casey (she/her): I think this is one of those, like, pros of social media visualizations are so common in our society, and so, like, you know, close your eyes and take a deep breath and envision you're on a beach. And, like, I always thought that was just, like, a way of talking about shit.
I didn't know actually people could see the beach and I thought we were all pretending to see the beach. And so, but then,
Amy (she/her): Yeah
Casey (she/her): media comes around and people bring weird stuff up on social media, and I think it's one that has heightened the awareness of aphantasia, and I now realize how it impacts me.
So, like, I have a therapist who loves a good visualization, and her and I have figured out a way where she can do, like, guided activities with me in a way that's less
Amy (she/her): Okay
Casey (she/her): on the visualization so it works better for me. Um, but yeah, so, like, pros and cons of social media. Here's one of the pros. I think people are finding out, having these conversations that we see shit differently, and then that impacts how we learn and how we teach
Amy (she/her): Yeah. I, I would love to know the first person who went, "Wait, so if I show you this range of, of apple pictures, which one is you?"
Casey (she/her): Right.
Amy (she/her): how did they...
Casey (she/her): Yeah.
we're gonna link this in the show notes, um, to kind of one of these, like, little aphantasia quizzes. So if you've never heard about this or never checked this out, we'll, we'll put some more information in there, 'cause I think it's fucking fascinating. Yeah.
Amy (she/her): Yeah. I mean, it's a little bit like that, um, blue, what was that dress, the color thing that came across? The, the blue, blue-gold dress thing that, yeah.
Casey (she/her): Yeah.
Amy (she/her): that's another wild one. We're not gonna go down that rabbit hole today. Maybe in the future, because
Casey (she/her): it's, yeah. that is actually an interesting conversation about color for another episode, absolutely. And
Amy (she/her): Yes.
Casey (she/her): Like, my mom has a thing called prosopagnosia, so she doesn't see faces, and it is
Amy (she/her): Ah
Casey (she/her): to watch her to try to explain this to people, and, like, how that...
Her and I have spent time talking about, like, how that impacted my growing up. We don't have family photos on the wall. I'm not drawn to human photography because my mom doesn't see faces, so that's not how I learned to identify people, so I don't about faces.
Amy (she/her): Oh.
Casey (she/her): I see
Amy (she/her): Wow
Casey (she/her): her. I, I see faces.
She doesn't
Amy (she/her): Yeah。
Casey (she/her): can't pick my picture out of a lineup. Can't pick her own picture out of a lineup. Um,
Amy (she/her): Wow
Casey (she/her): brains are fascinating. So not only does it impact how you learn or teach, it also, like, we've realized, like, it impacted how my brother and I grew up because of
Amy (she/her): Угу
Casey (she/her): how she identifies people
Amy (she/her): I, I think, and this is gonna take us a little astray and I don't care,
Casey (she/her): That's okay.
Amy (she/her): I think this is fascinating because because it just reinforces that idea that all of this shit is made up. Our brains just make shit up, and make shit up in a way that allows us to move through the world and be full, full human beings.
But everybody makes it up a little bit differently.
Casey (she/her): Yeah.
Amy (she/her): And the fact that we can all actually have a conversation and mostly know what each other is talking about is just wild. Wild
Casey (she/her): I love that, I'm gonna, like, harp on this. I love that we're talking about it as a society more because, like, my mom didn't know she had face blindness till she was, I think, in her 40s. And so she'd gone her
Amy (she/her): Wow
Casey (she/her): thinking she was, like, thinking she had, like, she knew, like, in social situations she always ended up making an ass out of herself and she couldn't figure out why. so her and I, this is a funny story. Her and I went to, um, she won an award, so we went to Washington, D.C.
to go to this big conference thing for her to get this award, and I went with 'cause I'd never been to D.C. before. So reminder, I have no fucking memory. I don't remember peop- people's names to save my life. I don't fucking know your name unless I've talked to you 100 times. She can't see faces, and we're at this very important event.
She's like, "Okay, there's one particular guy that, like, I need to be the one to, like, approach him. I need to, like, know who he is. Like, sh- there's an impressionable impression thing here." And I'm like, "Absolutely. Show me a picture of him." So I have his face in my brain and I don't remember his name, but my mom knows his name and can't pick his face out of a lineup
When he walked in the room, I nudged her and I'm like, "Hey, over there in the blue shirt with the white tie. Like, that's the guy you're... that I'm supposed to remember. I don't fucking know his name, but he's over there." She's like, "Perfect. Thank you." And so she could, like, walk over and be like, "Hey," whatever your name, you know, "Hey, Daryl, da, da, da."
Amy (she/her): Yeah
Casey (she/her): combining our, like, half-functioning brains made a, a spectacular impression on this guy that she needed to be able to go, like, connect with
Amy (she/her): That's amazing. I love that story.
Casey (she/her): Yeah, it was
Amy (she/her): I think, I mean, it, it sort of hearkens to the, reason why history is filled with so many successful men is because there, there was a woman standing next to him going, "Hey, that's, that's,
Casey (she/her): Hey, that's the guy.
Amy (she/her): that's, that's Napoleon. He's the, you know, the guy in charge.
You better make nice with him."
Casey (she/her): Right. Exactly.
Amy (she/her): Winston Churchill on your left
Casey (she/her): Run your luck, go shake his hand.
Amy (she/her): Yeah. Uh, we all need a person just standing there going, "Hey." And, and it, it can be mutual. Um, yeah, that would be amazing. I would...
Casey (she/her): Ja
Amy (she/her): Think of all the things we could all accomplish if we, like, shared
Casey (she/her): Mm-hmm.
Amy (she/her): tasks like that.
Casey (she/her): I mean, honestly, I'm gonna like sidetrack for a little bit more here. It's like, this is why it's so good to be honest
Amy (she/her): Bye now
Casey (she/her): I used to be really ashamed of my brain injury, and we're gonna talk more about my brain injury, but like the change in my memory took a huge fucking hit on my ego, and I, like, I had to learn to read again.
I had to learn how to learn again. We're, that's part of what, a big part of what this episode is about, and I was so ashamed of that. so it made my life harder because I was constantly trying to compensate for it, and I didn't, like, know how, versus like once my mom, once we put together the whole face blindness thing, we could make subtle adjustments in life that made her life so much easier.
So, at, I remember going to like Christmas parties and somebody would walk up, you know, her and I'd be talking, and somebody would walk up and I'd be like, "Hey, Sandy, how are you doing?" 'Cause my mom can't s- tell who it is by their face, but as soon as I say a name, she'll know who it is. And so I got really good at like saying people's names, or I don't, in a grocery store, I don't shout like, "Hey, Mom," 'cause she don't, she turns around, she doesn't know who she's looking at. I make a point of walking up to her or I say her name or... And so there's really subtle changes, and my family does the same for me with some of the around like my PTSD. These really subtle changes that nobody outside of us would see, but make my life or her life like massively easier. So PSA, talk to the people
Amy (she/her): Ja.
Casey (she/her): life, in your life about the shit you're struggling with.
[00:11:28] Back to the Photography Piece
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Amy (she/her): Yeah Okay. Um, usually you're the one bringing us back to center. I'm gonna do it this time, and now let's talk about the photography piece.
Casey (she/her): Yes
Amy (she/her): Um, so let's, let's go back to talking about, so how does not being able to see things in your head,
What impact has that had on your photography, either in terms of shooting or post-processing or, or any of it?
Casey (she/her): I'm starting to see it at a little bit of every level. Um, one of the things like that I first learned with photography that I didn't realize is how much work people go to set up some of these dog portraits of like scouting a location and like testing the dog, you know, getting the dog into space and like all of the pre-planning stuff.
I didn't realize that was a thing. So first of all, there was learning that step of this. But like I took one of my dogs out. We, we live on property where we've got a big open field, then we've got a little wooded area, I took one of my dogs back into the wooded area to look for some spots, and I realized one of the things I struggle with because I can't visualize is as I'm walking through the trees, I think scouting is always gonna be really hard for me until I have a...
I think there will come a tipping point where I have a way more solid foundation of like how I can scout in a way that works for me. But like, I can't picture what it's gonna look like to put my dog there. I have to go put a dog there and take a picture to see if it works or not, and so some of that kind of stuff.
Um, like whenever we do any construction, we've like remodeled the basement, have to tape lines on the floor. My husband's like, "There's gonna be a wall here and a wall there." I'm, "Sir, that's not gonna... Fucking put some flags up, tape on the ground. I need to have something." And so similarly, like I... Maybe if I'm gonna scout without a dog, I need to take a stuffed animal with me, but I can't visualize what I'm looking at without actually having something in that space. And then similarly, I'm finding a little bit in post-processing, and I'm not sure if this is a visualization, like a aphantasia thing, or like my skill level, but I struggle to...
I can't picture what I want the final image to look like, and so I can't backtrack to what edits that would take to create. a lot of my post-processing so far is trial and error. And so like... And, or I've done, I've got some bird photos where I've done like three different final edits on them because I can't see what this is gonna look like without doing the edits.
And so I just edit it the way I think. I'm like, "I know I want light over here, I want dark over here." Edit it and see what it looks like. I'm like, "Mm, something's not right about that. Okay, new version. Try some different edits, see what..." So yeah, a lot of it is that I have to make it real to be able to visualize it enough to be able to do something with that information.
Amy (she/her): Yeah, which is, it's interesting because as you're talking, I'm thinking that actually a lot of that stuff resonates with me. Like
Casey (she/her): Okay
Amy (she/her): I, I still, I don't, I'm not convinced it's an aphantasia problem. I'm, I think it's more... And I, I don't wanna dismiss that because I know that that means that you see things differently bec- and, and I, I'm sure there are subtle ways that this is coming out that I, you know, we'd have to have much more longer conversations to figure that out.
Casey (she/her): Right
Amy (she/her): I'm, I think it's not as much about not seeing things in your head as it is just simply about experience.
Casey (she/her): I do think it's a big factor right now,
Amy (she/her): when you're talking about scouting a location and not, can't see it until I put a stuffed animal there, which is a suggestion I give a lot of my students, um, and then they come back with funny photos of their stuffed animals, you know, in weird places, and stories about how people were looking at them funny.
But, and, and it can be, it really can be. Um, but it's very effective, too. but I need to do the same thing if I'm doing a portrait because I can't see it necessarily because I don't have as much experience with that. I'm actually going on a photography workshop next year that is all about dog portraits, and I'm, I know, I mean, I've got the gear, I've got the skills, I, I've got all the things except I n- I want to learn more about h- the mental side of how to approach, um, portraiture.
Not that I think it's gonna become a huge thing for me.
but I still think b- having that knowledge and having a deeper understanding of it is gonna allow me then to be a better photographer for myself, but also a better instructor or coach. Um, so there's that element of it.
So I don't see fully fleshed out scenes in my head.
Casey (she/her): Okay
Amy (she/her): I can construct things that I can see based on my past experience, maybe is a better way to see it, say it.
Casey (she/her): 'Cause
Amy (she/her): Does that
Casey (she/her): was kind of my question next then I wonder if there's an element here of like creativity versus like aphantasia where like you, I don't mean this quite the way I'm gonna say it, but like you lack the creativity to be able to picture it, so you have to pull together past images to be able to see it, versus like I think about like, um, IPPA contest just finished not long ago some of those like very artistic photos, I don't even know like where the fuck that
Amy (she/her): Yeah.
Casey (she/her): comes from or to visualize it enough to then be able to create it.
So that I think some of the more literally creative and abstract things is where maybe it makes a bigger difference. Where scouting,
Amy (she/her): Угу
Casey (she/her): a way to do it that works for
Amy (she/her): Yeah
Casey (she/her): think that is a little bit more of just a skill thing right now
Amy (she/her): Yeah.
Casey (she/her): a true like
Amy (she/her): Yeah.
Casey (she/her): thing, but
Amy (she/her): Now, where the aphantasia thing could come in, I think, is like I just said, I can take my experience and my memory, my visual memory. I talk about having a visual memory all the time because that's what it is. If I have lost something, like if I can't remember where I put something, I will scan through all of the places visually in my head where they could be, and yeah, it's, it's a w- it's not a word thing for me.
It's a, it's a picture thing. So anyway, so taking all the, my experience, whether it's experience at other places or experience in this place as I was scouting and kind of cobble together a visual of what I think it's gonna look like. But it is a picture.
It's not a description in words, it is definitely a picture in my head. And so that may be where there's the difference between a brain like mine and a brain like yours.
Casey (she/her): twofold for me is there's that element of like, I can't picture it in my brain. I also don't remember enough shit to be able to like pull from past memories even if I could picture
Amy (she/her): Yeah
Casey (she/her): And so like I have this like double whammy of like the past catalog doesn't exist because of the brain damage.
The past catalog that does exist is not in photographic format because of the aphantasia. And so
Amy (she/her): Угу
Casey (she/her): that I feel like every time I'm doing them, I start from scratch. And so
Amy (she/her): Yes
Casey (she/her): for me,
[00:18:39] Why Studio Work Feels Safer
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Casey (she/her): actually now I think about this, it might be part of why I'm so drawn to the studio work that I'm doing is because it's very set on rules.
Like I have now dialed in some
Amy (she/her): Yes
Casey (she/her): on my specific light equipment that I know I can now walk into pretty much any setting and I have a baseline to start from, and I understand enough about like lighting and white bal- balance now to like bump my things from there versus like going out to do something, I don't like the word creative because studio work's very creative too, but like out to the woods to do a portraiture where now I've got to picture what is this light gonna look like when it hits the dog?
Where do I put the dog in rela- relation to this tree or this field? Um, you know, there's so much
Amy (she/her): Yeah
Casey (she/her): like cobble together images from past experiences, which I currently lack, which is definitely a part of
Amy (she/her): Yeah
Casey (she/her): then like out what's next.
Amy (she/her): I think that's so fascinating. I had never put those pieces together of, of studio work would give you that certainty that, The only new thing you're introducing is the dog, and there's gonna be a lot of variability in that. But even that you'll build up, oh, this is one of these kinds of dogs, or oh, I better have the cleaning supplies 'cause this is one of those dogs.
Casey (she/her): Right. Exactly. Yeah. Exactly. As I already
Amy (she/her): and-
Casey (she/her): look, the color of the dog and the color of the background I'm choosing.
Amy (she/her): Yes
Casey (she/her): soon as I started playing in Lightroom working on my galleries for the first set of dogs that I did for that model call, I created, like, it's... I called it, like, base edit light dog, 'cause I realized every light-colored dog I was doing, like, the same three things to start.
And so I just create a little
Amy (she/her): Yeah.
Casey (she/her): just and I have a
Amy (she/her): Yes
Casey (she/her): "Okay, now I can see what's still missing,"
Amy (she/her): Yeah
Casey (she/her): to start from scratch every time.
Amy (she/her): Yeah. Um, and for me, I'm always, when it comes to, to big events, actually any event, um, that I shoot, I'm always way more nervous if it's a new place to me. So this year has put me to the test in that way in terms of, um, three of the four events that I've done have been in, in new places, um, and outdoors to boot.
So it's one thing to walk into a new... No, two of them were outdoors, one of them was indoors. But, um, w- walking into a new place or walking onto a new field, um, I, I'm... There's so much information I need to gather,
Casey (she/her): Mm-hmm.
Amy (she/her): be able to form that memory of, of, or to, to be able to figure out what it is that I need to do to be able to do my job.
Um, but then the nice thing is, is it all sticks in my head, and I can, I can literally picture, like, what the venue looks like on the inside in particular.
Casey (she/her): Right
Amy (she/her): I know what I'm walking into before I get there if I've already been there before, because I've, I've done this. And so
my, uh, anxiety drops a, a huge amount if I'm going into a place that I've been before, so.
Casey (she/her): Right.
for running a team, that ability to visualize has to be such a key thing because somebody could, I don't know, like text you or like meet up with you later for lunch and be like, "Hey, I'm having problems getting the shot on ring two." And you can probably to some
Amy (she/her): Ja.
Casey (she/her): I would fucking have to
Amy (she/her): Mm-hmm
Casey (she/her): two and walk around with you and figure it out, versus you can probably to, like between your experience doing this, but also that, that visual memory and be able to
Amy (she/her): Yeah
Casey (she/her): try this, this, and this," and not
Amy (she/her): Right.
Casey (she/her): walk over there
Amy (she/her): Yeah, I can, I have an initial, you know, punch list of here, try this, this, this, like you just said. Um, at, at a certain point it may get specific enough that I have to walk over there. Or if it's a place that has some natural light coming in, like there's a, um, the Murfreesboro, it's Murfreesboro.
See? I can picture it. I know exactly what arena it is. It's the arena in Murfreesboro where we have USDAA Cynosport World Games, and there are two, arenas in what we call the dungeon. Uh, every indoor venue seems to have, like, one or two competition rings that are in the worst lit possible,
but the one in Murfreesboro, if you sit by a door, there's some natural light coming in, and at certain times of day it's really helpful, and at certain times of day it's really not. So then I might have to get to the point of, no, I gotta come over and see what the light's doing because
Casey (she/her): Let's
Amy (she/her): I have no idea what the problem is.
Yeah, yeah.
Casey (she/her): yo
Amy (she/her): So, um, but no, that, that s- why you're drawn to the studio is, that's fascinating. That's ... It makes so much sense
Casey (she/her): Yeah. Like I'm all of a sudden starting to run through the things I'm most drawn to is dogs in studio on solid colored backgrounds and birds on perches with really cream, clean, creamy backgrounds is where like the need to visualize the structure has more or less been taken out of the equation. The subject is the subject. Go.
Amy (she/her): Right. Shoot.
Casey (she/her): Shoot.
Amy (she/her): Um, I actually, I think there's a lesson in there though, because new photographers tend to put too much shit in their photos. And so if you've already gotten to the point where you've are able to at least have the desire to pare it down, and you've done that with the studio work, it can be more challenging outside with the f- with the birds.
But to pare it down and make sure that there isn't anything else in the photo,
Casey (she/her): Угу
Amy (she/her): it's easier for, you know, it, it makes post-processing trivial in a lot of ways once you know the tools and all that. I don't mean to say post-processing is trivial, but, um, it certainly makes it a lot, whole lot easier.
In fact, it's funny, some p- times people will bring photos to me and say, "I don't know what else to do with this." And it'll be a, a beautiful photo of a bird on a nice perch with a clean background, and I'm like, "You don't have to do anything else with it." You've gotten so used to fixing your photos that now you just get back, now that you've fixed everything out in the field, now you get to come back and just go, oh, a couple little tweaks and it's ready to go."
And now I feel like it's, it, it's like the whole being, um, hypervigilant. Like, there must be something else I have to fix. No, bitch, just
Casey (she/her): You're
Amy (she/her): done.
Casey (she/her): stop. Yeah. Well, it's so funny 'cause I hear photographers talk a lot, and I'm thinking, like, wedding and, like, family photographers, like the people who are doing the bulk of hanging out in photography communities, and they talk about the hours of editing. You know, it's, "Oh, the wedding was only two hours, but I've got another 12 hours of shooting," which, like, maybe there's a conversation about working on your in-camera skills.
But that aside, and so, like, I did this model call, and, like, one of the dogs, like, I... A couple of the photos, it was like fix the crop, add a little radial gradient, and, like, slap on my little pre-made base edit presets that I like for some clarity and some, some contrast. And I'm like, "That took me like 30 seconds and I'm thrilled with this edit.
Did I do something
Amy (she/her): Yeah.
Casey (she/her): Or am I actually figuring out what the fuck I'm doing?" Is that a good thing or a bad thing that this just
Amy (she/her): Right.
Casey (she/her): easy?
Amy (she/her): Yeah. Well, it, that is the point where, especially with how new you are, that is the point where you bring it to somebody about like me and, and make sure that you're not missing something. I mean, that's... I'll just, I'll just toss that in there for, you know, marketing purposes.
Casey (she/her): Yes, exactly. W- actually messaging you is on my list of shit to
Amy (she/her): Okay, awesome. Um, no, but, um, yeah, sometimes it, it just is that easy. But no, I'm, I'm really fascinated by, by that, that those are the things that you're drawn to, um, because, I mean, the whole scene's been simplified, so
Casey (she/her): Ja.
Amy (she/her): that, that makes a lot of sense.
Casey (she/her): Ja
[00:26:28] Shot Lists vs. Seeing It in Your Head
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Amy (she/her): so a question I have, and I ge- I'm, I'm not sure if this is a skill thing and/or, like, how my brain works thing, is you've talked about, like, you go to Alaska every year. Often enough you do the shoots in Alaska with the bald eagles, and you said something about, like, this last year you're like, the list of shots that I wanted were different than previous years." When
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Casey (she/her): coming up with these shot lists, like, I don't quite know what my question is. Like, where are these images coming from? Like, is this, I mean, a thing you saw a bird do and you're like, "Shit, now I want that on camera," or you've seen someone else take a picture of it, or you're making shit up in your brain? Is this an experience thing, like, and/or a how you picture thing that you're able to, like, build a shot list?
Amy (she/her): Well, a shot list doesn't mean I know exactly what I want it to look like. So it doesn't mean I'm visualizing it. It means for me, okay, in the context of that Alaska trip, because yes, I had a, a list of things I wanted to try. So in that context it wasn't I have shots in mind and I have them visualized and I know what I, exactly what I want.
It was these are some techniques that I haven't used or that I haven't used enough and I wanna keep working on them. Because I have been to Alaska so many times and I have a whole catalog full of traditional, you know, the traditional shots that I, that I get on that trip. So I, for me it was a push what I know and push what I know how to do.
so it wasn't a finished list of I, I know what I wanna see in my photos. It was,
Casey (she/her): Gotcha.
Amy (she/her): that's how I, it was me forcing myself into not taking the safe shots and into being a little more creative.
Casey (she/her): Okay
Amy (she/her): um, some of it worked, some of it didn't, and that, that was kinda the point, so,
Casey (she/her): Okay, that kinda makes sense. 'Cause as I was asking, I was like, well, I had what I would call a shot list for, like, my portrait session, but that was like, I want a profile of the dog, I want
Amy (she/her): Mm-hmm.
Casey (she/her): full chest, I want standing. Like, there was, like, some concepts and, like, I use, like, lollipops and bubbles and treat catches in my shots
It's like I knew that I wanted each of these concepts, but I didn't necessarily know what the actual photo would be and, like, how it would look in the end.
I just knew that I wanted to make sure to hit these variety of concepts. So more like that than actually having kind of image ideas that you're shooting for.
Amy (she/her): Now, in agility though, I I tend to have a more concrete idea of what I want the shot to look like. And it, it... I don't ha- I don't have a list before they set up a course, so I will say that, that it's all... Let me back up. So depending on what sport it is, I may or may not have specifics about how I want a photo to look.
Um, so fast cat and dock diving are very straightforward. Literally, the dog is running straight or jumping straight at me. Um, in dock diving you can get a variety of angles, but fast cat is pretty much just either you get a start line and there's a very standard way that those look, or you can get the dog running straight at you and you get the, all the goofy faces with the, you know, the lips flying and the ears doing crazy things and the, the eyes rolling back in their heads and, you know, there's, there's a list of expected shots.
And you don't have to do a whole lot to set them up because they just happen. Um, for agility, I mean, there's the... You can name shots by what the obstacle is. So I want... There's A-frame shots, and dog walk shots, and tunnel shots, and jump shots, um, weave shots.
So we find a spot, maximize the number of shots we can get from there, and then, um, in terms of how wide or how tight we frame it, in terms of the timing, I have very specific ideas about that. so all of my photographers shoot Canon. We all use the 100 to 300.
Um, so we've got the reach of a 300 millimeter, but we've got the, um, flexibility to zoom out to 100 millimeters. So, um, I don't want a shot that should be at 300 to be shot at 100.
Casey (she/her): Right.
Amy (she/her): because then the dog's gonna be this big.
Casey (she/her): Let me see. Yeah
Amy (she/her): so we talk through I want you at 300 for the A-frame, but then for the, the jump that's fairly close here, you're gonna need to, to zoom out quick to 100.
Um, we'll even talk about, you know, how do you get... If you've got shots that are back-to-back, um, how do you make sure you're getting zoomed all the way back in for the 300 and all the way out for the 100? You know, talk about where you, you know, do you put your hand under, do you put your hand over, we're on a monopod.
So how, even that kind of stuff, the mechanics of making sure that you're getting to the, to how I want the shot to look.
Casey (she/her): Right
Amy (she/her): I will always listen to what my other photographers, um, suggest in terms of, you know, I think this should be a wider team shot, I think this should be a tighter shot. I will always...
Casey (she/her): My bias is towards the tighter shots. Some of them are biased towards the- Um, the, the wider team shots and not bias in a positive or negative, just if, if you tell me, give, you know, hold up a card that says tight shot, wide shot, I'm gonna go tight shot Right
Amy (she/her): all day long. Um, that's just what I like.
But, um, so we talk about the options and about will this work as a team shot? Because if the handler's not even gonna make it into the frame, even at 100 millimeters, then it doesn't make any sense to frame it that way. So, um, and then timing, you know, where do, do we want the A frame at the top? Anyway,
So at this point, I certainly can visualize how shots are gonna come out, and there may be, need to be tweaks, you know, as you start shooting, oh, the dog's going a little wide or whatever. But, um, I, I know how dogs run agility courses. I know how Chihuahuas run it versus Border Collies versus Great Danes.
And so you make accommodations for breed, you make accommodations for size, you make accommodations for i- you know, whether they're novice dogs or, or highly experienced dogs. But in general, you, you know where the dog is gonna go, and so you ... For me, I can s- I have a visual image of, of what I think that i- is gonna happen, and that'll get confirmed or not by actually sitting there and shooting it.
But no, it is a visual process for me on that.
I'm gonna pull us back to you had said you can't visualize the final photo. Like, now you've taken the photo and now the post-processing.
Casey (she/her): Mhm。Yeah。Yeah
Amy (she/her): this, right? Is we've taken the photo and now we wanna process it.
I know I brought up Bryan Hansel, the landscape photographer based out of Minnesota, um, last time, talking about, um, so don't just put the thing in the middle of the frame. I, I took my first Lightroom class from him. Um, he taught me landscape composition.
Um, but I remember sitting in his class, 'cause it was a, it was a weekend retreat thing and, uh, taught in person. And as he was explaining how he uses Lightroom, I realized that there was a whole lot... It wasn't a matter of I didn't know how to use Lightroom, it was I had no idea how to look at a photo and decide what needed to be done to it.
Casey (she/her): Yeah
Amy (she/her): And so it was hard to get... I mean, I, I learned how to use the tools. They're pretty intuitive there's where you pull up a YouTube, YouTube tutorial.
Casey (she/her): Yeah
Amy (she/her): If you wanna just get the basics of how, what the tools do in Lightroom or Photoshop or Adobe Camera Raw, you just, that's where you go to YouTube.
But once you get to the point of, okay, I know how to move this slider and I know kind of what happens, then you have to figure out how do you apply it to the photo in a way that makes sense. So that's the challenge, and that is an experience thing to me.
Casey (she/her): Yeah
Amy (she/her): not about... So when I say I can look at a photo and basically know what I'm gonna do with it, that isn't because I can see it in my head.
It's not, you know, gonna be harder. It may be harder for someone who can't see it in their head, but I think the majority of it is experience.
Casey (she/her): agree. I feel like the ability to see what I want the final product to be in post-processing, I do feel like that right now is probably 85% skill of, like, photo composition, understanding the flow, all that kind of stuff is... And so I, I feel like that will get easier to see that like, oh, I've got...
It's really dark over here and it's really lo- light over here, and I know the tools to change that 'cause I'm looking at the image. I think that one's more the like, I wanna say like overly edited, and I don't mean that in a negative way, but I see some of these like wildlife photos where like things are brought like really dark and there's almost kind of like a spotlight on the animal, and it's very like dramatic and artistic.
It's a very much a vibe.
Amy (she/her): Right. Yeah
Casey (she/her): would be hard for me to picture and then backtrack how to create, because you have to
Amy (she/her): Yeah
Casey (she/her): override what's actually in the image to create that, versus like the dog portraits, a lot of the stuff that you see that I like watch you editing or talking about on your group calls is now I'm looking at it and I'm like, "Oh, that's really dark."
I just saw this as, you know, Instagram and I'm like, "Oh, that dog's chest is way too dark." Like, you can't see any of the like detail in the dog's chest, and I know I would want to see that, so I know I would do X, Y, and Z to create that. So there is that kind of like, a lot of it is learning to read photos and know what to correct, and I don't need to be able to visualize that to be able to do that. It's the more, potentially the more artistic,
Amy (she/her): Right
Casey (she/her): don't love that word,
Amy (she/her): it's stylistic. Yeah.
Casey (she/her): That,
Amy (she/her): It's
Casey (she/her): the right word
Amy (she/her): That's, that to me, I know exactly what you ... Again, I'm visualizing. I have a picture in my head. I know exactly what kind of style you're talking about.
Casey (she/her): Yeah.
Amy (she/her): Um, but that, that kind of intentional not sticking with a very documentary reality-based this is exactly what I saw, but skewing it into...
And none of this is criticism, folks. When I, I just use words like skew and it's, and bias, and they're not negative or positive. Um, but skewing it into something that is more fantasy or more dramatic or more moody,
Casey (she/her): Yeah
Amy (she/her): brighter, like the whole light and airy edits that you see on, um, a lot of family and, and wedding photography.
Casey (she/her): Yeah
Amy (she/her): even you could probably pull off the same effect in some wildlife stuff too. Um, heck, you can pull it off in, in dogs. I've seen it applied in dogs. But those are stylistic things, and that's where photography really comes into its own as an art form instead of just being I'm documenting a photo, kind of the photo journalistic thing, of I'm documenting what happened in front of me.
Doesn't mean it's any better or worse than, than the more, you know, artistic way of, of looking at it. It's, I still don't naturally see my photos in the more stylistic way, but it's something I enjoy. I li- when I see it on other photos, I do actually really enjoy it,
there are times where I'll just start pulling and pushing sliders and, and throw on some masks and see what happens. I have an eagle photo that I, I did a lot of that with, um, that I really like the way it came out. In fact, I, it's one of those on my list that I'm like, I need to make a print of that, 'cause I wanna hang it on my wall.
Casey (she/her): Yeah
Amy (she/her): but that's an in- that's an intentional choice, um, about I'm gonna add some of my flair and style and taste.
Casey (she/her): Yeah
Amy (she/her): So I think that just, that definitely takes years to develop. I'm not fluent at it at all. So, um, seeing a pho- knowing whether a photo is gonna work well for that is, I think, part of the, the experience thing and that only comes with just trying it on images after image after image.
Oh, yeah, this isn't gonna, this one isn't gonna work as dark and moody, you know?
Casey (she/her): Yeah.
Amy (she/her): that kind of idea.
Casey (she/her): Yeah
Amy (she/her): in terms of just seeing the basic kind of, um, post-processing, whether it's the, the global edits or the local adjustments with masks, that's an experience thing.
Casey (she/her): Yeah
Amy (she/her): and while you may recall it differently, while you may have to figure out your own ways to approach it, um, just doing it over and over and o- it's the reps.
We're back to reps again
Casey (she/her): It's always
Amy (she/her): we're back to reps.
Casey (she/her): New tagline, it's about the reps, folks.
Which I... Like, as we have this whole conversation, like that's sitting in the back of my brain this whole time is there's... And also there's nothing in my life that I haven't found a way to still achieve with my brain injury or with aphantasia. I use different tools in different ways. Uh, like I said, even like with my therapist, we've had- we've found a different way to talk about... I do visualization exercises all the time. Like, I'm a big fan.
sometimes I'm doing it different than what somebody's like teaching me or guiding me, but I've always
Amy (she/her): Угу
Casey (she/her): out a way to do it. If I want to learn how to do the really stylistic style of like bird editing, I will
Amy (she/her): Угу
Casey (she/her): figure it out.
My process maybe comes with more trial and error than somebody who can visualize what they want that final product to look like and just kind of build straight to that. But it's not gonna stop me. It's the reps to figure out the way that works for
Amy (she/her): Yeah
Casey (she/her): then do it.
Amy (she/her): I think, so I have two thoughts, and I'm gonna try and hang onto both of them. I think, um, part of it,This kind of goes back to that idea of on social media, we just see the highlights.
Casey (she/her): Yeah
Amy (she/her): I- I think, I think there's a lot more to every artist's, whether it's photographer, you know, paint, whatever kind of art you do, there's a l- it's a lot less linear than we tend to imagine it is.
This is where our brain makes up shit again. So I know how convoluted my path to get to where I am at this moment is. I know how many crappy photos ended up in the, in the trash bin or the recycling if you're a PC user. for me, the, a Mac person, they're in the trash. They're just gone. There's no recycling.
Um, so I know h- what it took to get here. I know how many, I know how many times I started working on some, you know, kind of more out there edits on a photo and just hung it up and went, "No, this isn't gonna work," or, "I don't know how to make it work."
Casey (she/her): Right
Amy (she/her): and I don't care, I don't care quite enough to go and search out somebody else's help, um, so there's that too, you know.
Uh, it's not a big enough part of what I need in my life to, to push that hard. Our brains think that it's linear, and it's not, or think that everybody else's path is linear. Like, I started here, and now I'm here, and I know all the things, and yippee ki-yay, here we go, motherfucker.
Um, so and it's not. It's not that linear.
Casey (she/her): That's true
Amy (she/her): I'm trying to figure out if there are ways this is like, because I, I like to help people through this kind of process, my brain is already spinning off in how can I make this more transparent to people? How can I show people what my Lightroom library looks like and the starts and stops and the, the mostly stops, um, so that you can understand that this, you know, that one eagle photo that I have that I wanna put on my wall has 100 behind it that, you know, technically came out of the camera perfectly sharp and, you know, a nice pose or whatever.
But they didn't make the cut because I, they either didn't work with what I was trying to do, or I gave up and said, "Eh, I'm gonna try it in another photo."
Casey (she/her): Right. Yeah. No, I, I think that's such a good point, 'cause I hadn't thought about this and how it was seeping into my brain, is I see a lot of these Instagram reels where they start with a, like a bird or a dog, and they're like, "You add a radial gradient and turn the exposure down, and then add another gradient here, and then..."
And it's like this 60 seconds and it's step one, step two, step three, steps four, boom, here's
Amy (she/her): It's not. Mm-mm.
Casey (she/her): And so yeah, like now that you said it, I'm like, actually, I... But when I watch people who've done the edit al- I love some of the edit along, you know, or the recording of the full edit, is spending more time watching those because it's like we get through this part and then we realize we actually need to go back to that.
And, you know, I did that a bunch even with my portrait stuff, is um, I kind of was like, "Oh, I'm done," and now that I see all the pieces together, I'm like, "Actually, that radial gradient needs to be bigger, smaller, to the left, right." Like, there, there was like roundabout on some of these. It was never just like where I put it the first time kind of thing.
So
Amy (she/her): Yeah.
Casey (she/her): con
Amy (she/her): Well, and, and I tr- I will say in my groups I tend to... There are times where I'll, we'll be having a conversation, and I don't know if, uh, you may notice it. I'm, like, looking at my other screen because I'm poking at the photo that's on my screen, and I'm just kind of... I, I mean, that's really what it is.
I'm poking it. I'm like, "Oh, how about this crop?" Or, "How about this, uh, you know, a mask over here?" And, uh, that is, you are seeing my process, whether I've pointed it out or not. That's exactly my process.
Casey (she/her): Yeah
Amy (she/her): if, if I... If somebody sends me a photo and, and wants, you know, has serious post-processing questions, generally I'll do it myself before I get to the call, and then I'll just walk through, I did this mask.
Then it's more like the social media step by step by step, and it looks like it just magically happened, and, and how the fuck did I know how to do that? Well, it, you, what you don't see are the things that didn't work because, um, you know, the dead ends that I took, um, as I was doing it, and maybe that's where I can, you know, make it a little more transparent.
Casey (she/her): I, I mean, I've seen you do that with like crops is,
Amy (she/her): yeah.
Casey (she/her): a photo just
Amy (she/her): Yeah.
Casey (she/her): calls of like a close-up of a dog's face and you were like... And they're like, "Well, how should I crop it?" And you're like, "Well, you could do this. Eh, looks okay. Or you could do..." And you literally like cropped it six different ways
Amy (she/her): Ja.
Casey (she/her): then kind of
Amy (she/her): Ja
Casey (she/her): really quick like, "This one doesn't, I like this one the worst, the m- the best.
Here's why it works. Here..." And
Amy (she/her): I like this one the worst. That's good. I
Casey (she/her): I like this one the best, is like, your hero is very nice. Um, uh, but like you did that, you do that sometimes in real time is somebody will ask you a question and you're like, "Well, I don't know. Let's look at it three, four different ways and talk about why that did or didn't work in that way."
And so
Amy (she/her): Yeah.
Casey (she/her): that makes sense. Yeah.
[00:44:44] Tools, Reps, and Not Using Your Brain as an Excuse
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Amy (she/her): Yeah. Um, so then I did keep, I did hang on to both thoughts. The other thought I had was tools. You had mentioned tools. Um, and there are some ways that you can visualize what's going on in a photo better so that that can help you kinda jumpstart what you might wanna do with it.
Um, there's a trick for figuring out white balance where if you're in Camera- Adobe Camera Raw or Lightroom, in the basic edits, not the masking, where you pull up the vibrance and the saturation all the way. And it makes your photo look fucking awful. Like, you would... That's not what we're tr- we're not actually gonna leave it that way.
But what it does is it enhances, it exaggerates all of the color cast in that photo. So then you can look at the places that should be white and you go, "Oh, look, it's neon orange," or, "It's blazing blue over there." And then you can, then you know what you have to adjust. And it's not perfect, but you can, if you adjust the temp and tint sliders with all of that saturation and vibrance cranked up, then you can get it looking sorta neutral.
And then you bring your temp, or your, excuse me, your vibrance and saturation down. And you have to kinda close your eyes for a second.
Casey (she/her): Walk away
Amy (she/her): you do that, walk away, turn your head, whatever you have to do. Because then when you look back at it, it's gonna look flat and dull and boring. But,
Casey (she/her): Yeah
Amy (she/her): let your eyes readjust, and then you go, "Oh, look, now it looks like white looks white and black looks black, and everything looks like the color it should be."
Um, which is not a stylistic choice. That's getting it to neutral, and then you can make stylistic choices on top of that about how you want your color to look. But if you wanna just find neutral, so there's a tool. There's a way to have it show up on your screen, um, and, and be very obvious.
Casey (she/her): Ja
Amy (she/her): I think what happens with photos is we get, we're so in love with our subject that we have blinders on, a photo is not very big. There's not a lot that we can fit in there. But we get so intensely focused on our subject that we have fallen in love with, that we don't look farther around in the photo.
And then we're like, "Well, what should I do with it?" Well, why don't you start by just slowing down and looking at what's in the photo? Um, a friend of mine had a photo that, of some bald eagles, um, sitting on a log, and they were both facing away from the camera, and those were what were in focus.
And then in between, with just its little head poking up above the log, was another eagle looking straight at the camera. I asked if they had another version of the photo where the one that was in between looking straight at the camera was the one that was in focus, and, and they didn't.
and the comment was, "Oh, I didn't even see that."
Casey (she/her): Yeah.
Amy (she/her): gotta look, you gotta, you gotta look a little deeper. Um,
Casey (she/her): 100% the skill I'm trying to work on right now is
Amy (she/her): yes
Casey (she/her): of my portraits where the, one of the dogs is missing, like, the toes because
Amy (she/her): Угу
Casey (she/her): I wasn't looking... I was looking at the dog's chest or face or the action and not the whole frame, and I missed little bits of the dog.
Amy (she/her): one of the things I have trained myself to do with agility is to watch the outside of the, the photo more than the inside. The inside, you know, what's happening, the action in the middle there, is gonna take care of itself. If I have done the work to set up the shot, I know the dog is gonna come over the jump, and it's gonna be in, in my frame because it's just that's the way the game works.
So I am looking at edges, and oftentimes I'll have set up, um, visual anchors. Like, I know what beam of the ceiling I want the, to be at the top of the frame. I know whether I want the jumps, the, you know, far standard of the jump to be in the frame or just outside of it. So I've got all of these reference points that I can reframe the same way every time I go back to that jump, and then I know that I'm gonna keep toes and tails and ear tips all in the photo because I have locked in that, the framing of that photo.
Um, and so even if you don't have it locked in to a certain, you know, returning to the same location, the idea of watching your edges more than the center, um, that, especially with mirrorless, you can do that these days because you don't have to watch where that focus point is placed. The focus point is gonna take care of itself.
It's gonna find the eye and, and do its thing because it's really, really good at it if you've got all of your settings, you know, dialed in and working. So your job is to watch the edges and make sure that nothing is trying to escape in the wrong place, so.
Casey (she/her): yeah, I was just thinking about that with like portraits of like dogs outside. All of a sudden it was like, oh yeah, I get so focused on watching the dog that I'm not paying attention to the rest of it. Or I, I'm thinking about a particular photo from one of your critiques and like an element of it kind of became unsalvageable 'cause it was just too dark because she was watching the dog.
And I'm like, oh, but if the dog's already, like you said, in focus and I know that the dog's sitting in one spot, so the dog's not going anywhere anyways, or the dog's running straight at me and is in the center of the image, I can look at everything else and double check
Amy (she/her): Yeah.
Casey (she/her): before I even
Amy (she/her): It's,
Casey (she/her): the shutter
Amy (she/her): it's kinda less fun, I will say, because now you're not see- because, I mean, we get into this because we love dogs and we love their expressions and love watching the dogs. I get it. So it is, there is a little element of it's kinda less fun. But for me, doing volume, yes, doing, and especially doing the volume, I need that consistency, that repeatability, and to be able to hit it and, and, um, deliver shot after shot after shot.
So that's a way that I have found to be able to do that.
Casey (she/her): same argument for less volume is if I'm on location with somebody else's dog and I've got 30 minutes to get this shot and I might not be able to go back and reshoot it in the same conditions, I don't wanna fuck it up by watching the dog and missing everything that's happening in the background versus taking more minutes to adjust the shot a little bit and making sure we get it that first time.
So like for you, it's that repeatability factor, but it also that same thing applies to the lack of repeatability, is making sure that you're looking at the edges so that you don't fuck it up and then get back to your desk and now you can't go back and redo that shoot for whatever reason, and you're stuck with things that just don't quite work. So
Amy (she/her): Yeah, yeah. Well, and even more so, like family and wedding photographers, again, this is part of why I don't even wanna touch that shit
Casey (she/her): I, nope.
Amy (she/her): I, mm-mm,
Casey (she/her): No
Amy (she/her): no, no, I can't. I just...
Casey (she/her): into a coma.
Amy (she/her): It would. Okay. Um, so the last thing about tools or,
Casey (she/her): Yes
Amy (she/her): returning to that idea. So we have tools for while we're shooting, but there are still more tools that you can use while you're, um, you know, trying to do the post-processing.
Um, I started out saying by I think we get so in love with our subject that one of the things that helps is to make it, the photo not look like our subject anymore. So the, the enhancing, exaggerating the colors removes us, makes us go, "Ew." We kind of, you know, recoil from it, and then that separates us.
Break that- breaks that connection temporarily from our subject so we can evaluate it and analyze it more objectively. Um, if you blur the photo, so Gaussian blur in Photoshop, just, you know, uh, Filters, Blur, Gaussian Blur, and, and throw some blur on there so that it, you don't see specifics.
You don't see eyes and fur and, and details. You're just seeing shapes and brightness and darkness, and colors, and things in big blocks so that you're not caught up in the details, 'cause we're not to the details yet. Details come last. In my order of operations for doing post-processing, uh, we gotta get the, the structure of it established, and then we can get to details.
So instead of zooming in initially and looking at eyes, no, we're gonna look at the shape of the image. We were gonna look at how things are arranged and then decide if there are things we need to modify or fix or just kind of enhance and de-en-enhance. Is that a word, de-enhance?
Casey (she/her): It
Amy (she/her): Um
Casey (she/her): now
Amy (she/her): Sure. We're gonna need a, a dictionary of focus trap podcastisms.
Um, 'cause I'm sure there's been a few others along the way. But, um, so we just wanna see the structure. blur so we can just see shapes and blobs and colors. And then I've been using some other filters, and I can't even name them off the top of my head.
I've got an action that I just saved in Photoshop, um, that kind of exaggerates the brightness and darkness. Because fundamentally, the first thing I'm looking at in a photo when we're talking about composition, is where are the bright parts and where are the dark parts?
And are the bright parts the area that I want you to look at, or are the dark parts really where I want you to go, but I can't because I'm being distracted by the bright part? So again, if I can remove that detail, remove my, "Oh my God, I'm so in love with my dog," um, then we can be more objective about what we're seeing, and that, that objectivity is what you have to have.
You treat it like pieces. You treat it like, um, building blocks, you know, literally. And rather than treating it like a picture of a dog, it's
Casey (she/her): Right.
Amy (she/her): we're manipulating building blocks.
Casey (she/her): Yeah
Amy (she/her): Once we've done all of that, then hopefully we've put all the pieces together in such a way that we look back and go, "Oh, that's even better."
Or we go, "Oh, no, that's shit. We gotta try to start over again" which is fine. Knock it all down. Start over.
Casey (she/her): Yeah. Which also too, I think, again, the way our brain processes information is even just being able to see it in one of these different variations you process it differently. so colored dog on a blue background, and to me the colors are so different that of course the dog stands out, and you're like, "Flip this to black and white."
And I was like, "Oh, this is a flat image. It's all kind of the same shade of gray." The... And so I, 'cause I couldn't understand, like, the, the, the tone and, like, the saturation of the colors all matched even though they're very different colors. And so then it was lighten the exposure with a little radiant, and all of a sudden the dog popped totally different.
But it was as simple as putting it in black and white that all of a sudden, oh, this is all the same shade of gray. Now I can see what you're saying. And so it's, yeah, is not only I love the thing of, like, not only are we often obsessed with our, our subject of our photo, but also just the way our brain processes information. The, the saturation and vibrance one, that always kind of blows my mind, 'cause you're right. Like, it looks horrific, but all of a sudden your brain's processing it in a different way, and you can see the thing you're trying to see so much more
Amy (she/her): Yeah. Yeah. I mean, our brains are making shit up all the time, so we have to figure out different ways to make it make up different shit, um, so that we can get a better look. I mean, even just the idea that we, we kinda get tired looking at it, not, not tired of it, although there's that, you know, you could get to the point where you're like, "Oh, I hate this image now."
I... You know, if you, if you work at it too long. I've had those moments.
Casey (she/her): Yeah
Amy (she/her): this is why I tell people, "Don't you dare bring your favorite photo to me to a group session, be- or, or even a private one-on-one." I will... We will spend so much time chopping it up and, and analyzing it that there is a risk. I have had someone ha- this happen to them, where they're like, "This used to be my favorite photo and now I can't stand to look at it."
And I felt so awful. I'm like, "Oh my God, that was not how this was supposed to go." So I've been pretty, pretty careful to say, This is not, not on me if we wreck your photo. This is not on me." So photos can be just I love this photo and I don't care why. Put it away. It's for you. That's, that's great.
Casey (she/her): That's fine. Yeah
Amy (she/her): other things other than visualizing a photo, that I rely on that have nothing to do with whether or not I can picture it in my head, are anticipation, about anticipating behaviors, knowing the rules of the game.
Um, because I know the rules of the agility game and because I know how dock diving works and because I know how fast cat works, um, I can, I know where I need to be to get the moment of action that I'm looking for. So that's just knowledge of your subject, knowledge of, of what's going on. Um, and that's, I think we forget how important that is, and then we, you know, fall back into, "Well, I can't picture things in my head."
This has nothing to do with that. This is experience. It's reps. It's understanding what you're, what you're doing.
Casey (she/her): I was gonna say something like that too is learning enough to know, like, where you need to be to get the shot. Like, I don't necessarily need to know the s- like how dock diving is scored. I need to know that the dog is starting there, finishing there, and it's gonna be really cool if I'm looking
Amy (she/her): Hmm.
that's a really good point.
I don't need to know the scoring for every ve- agility venue that I, that I photograph.
Casey (she/her): Mm-mm.
Amy (she/her): I have picked it up over the years, like residual knowledge of just hanging out with people that do agility.
But every, e- yeah, it's not crucial information for taking the photo.
But yeah, how do they get from point A to point B, and where can I be and, and all that, that's the information I need to know,
Casey (she/her): So I think from all of this, the biggest takeaway I'm getting as both the newer photographer and the one with a wonky brain in this context
Amy (she/her): Oh, come on. We all have wonky brains. Seriously.
Casey (she/her): we do.
Uh, think my biggest takeaway is, I hate to say this, but, uh, go do the reps. I've never found anything that I can't figure out a way to do.
I think it's valid and important to understand brains work differently. I think it shifts how you and I even communicate a little bit about how I'm learning, and I know you're aware of it when we have conversations. But at the end of the day, have to figure out your way to do it, it's helpful to know the information so you can find the tools that work for you. Beyond that, it kinda doesn't matter. Figure out a way, go do it, and have fun
Amy (she/her): It's that idea of using how your brain works as an excuse versus using it as a motivation for, "I gotta figure out how to make this work for me,"
Casey (she/her): I'm gonna h- go back to the thing of like, on some of these elements is letting go of the shame that your brain does things the way it does so that you
Amy (she/her): Угу
Casey (she/her): it as an excuse. I've, I've had to, like I said, learn how to read, learn how to learn, learn how to communicate certain things in different ways. accommodations that I use throughout my daily life to manage a brain injury and complex PTSD, there's so much shit that I do all day to keep myself moving forward, But it, it's all trial and error and communication and asking people, and, and conversations like this, I realize, I think the aphantasia will have a lot less impact on photography than I, I think either of us thought that it mightalso because I'm open about it and I'm not ashamed of it, I'm willing to try a thousand different tools to figure out the one that works for me
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