Hit-N-Record
Welcome to Hit-N-Record! I'm Keno Manuel, a filmmaker, and I’m excited to bring you inspiring and insightful conversations with some of the most influential and creative minds in the creative space.
Each episode, I sit down with local creatives from filmmaking, photography, and other creative industries, offering you a unique perspective on their successes, challenges, and the lessons they've learned along the way.
Whether you're an aspiring filmmaking professional, an entrepreneur, or someone passionate about personal growth, I hope to provide and inspire you with the motivation and tools to unlock your potential and achieve your goals.
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Hit-N-Record
"There's No Such Thing As Bad Photos" | Capturing Memories and Navigating Creative Ethics with Photographer Jim Clark
What if you could capture the essence of a moment, preserving it for generations to come? Join us as we sit down with the incredibly talented photographer Jim Clark, who shares his journey through the ever-evolving world of photography. From the rapid pace of modern life to the nostalgia of early computer equipment, Jim recounts his experiences with heartfelt anecdotes. Listen as he reveals the emotional power of photographs, especially in connecting with loved ones affected by dementia, and provides a behind-the-scenes look at his magazine, Amuse.
We dive deep into the transformative journey of graphic design, charting its course from traditional methods to the digital age. Jim and I discuss the revolutionary impact of software like Photoshop and the early Macintosh computers on the industry. This isn't just a trip down memory lane; we explore how design principles have remained consistent even as tools evolve. With ethical advertising and marketing dilemmas at the forefront, we navigate the gray areas of aligning strategies with genuine customer benefits, shedding light on the moral considerations that guide our creative decisions.
You'll also hear about the resurgence of film photography, the balance between artistic integrity and client expectations, and the humorous yet insightful approach Jim uses to manage long-term client relationships. The episode concludes with a lighthearted discussion on aging gracefully, drawing parallels to fine wine, and a teaser for our exciting next guest. This conversation is filled with insights, nostalgia, and inspiration—perfect for anyone passionate about the ever-changing landscape of photography and design. Don't miss it!
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An ad that you would do now, in probably 30 minutes, on your computer. We would have about two weeks to do it.
Speaker 2:What you know how. In this generation, we're just like. I need it now, now, now, now, now.
Speaker 1:Say you would have the same issues that you have now, it's just it's faster. People that were using shortcuts didn't appreciate the consistency of a good look. I got one with two 12-bit drives and a separate hard drive and a keyboard, of course, and a printer. One with two 12-bit drives and a separate hard drive and the keyboard, of course, and a printer, and I called it my Volkswagen because the cost for it. I could have gotten a brand new Volkswagen for Wait what?
Speaker 1:Yeah way back then. It was insane. My mom made scrapbooks, different cards for each year. I grew To me, that's you know, how did my mom have the patience to do that? So it's like being a historian of our family for my sisters and I.
Speaker 2:But the dementia, it's like the feeling that you get when you show her a photo, it's like, and then she lights up. That's such a powerful thing, um, and it's an emotional thing, yeah because when she first started getting it yeah that was the tool that I used to get a smile on her face everyone has their own way of seeing how much photography can mean to them in their lives, and for you that was. Thank you for sharing that.
Speaker 1:Good photo tells a story You're telling me, and this was, you know, 50, 60 years ago, when you were little, and you're still sharing that bad picture. That's what pictures do Memories would be built from that and then makes you want to revisit it welcome back to uh hit record.
Speaker 2:Uh, my name is kina manuel and today we have a wonderful guest and his name is jim clark. Jim clark is a wonderful photographer who also has a magazine called, I believe, amuse amuse magazine. If you could please show everyone the front cover. What issue is that, by the way?
Speaker 1:This, I don't know. It's number four of 2023. There we go. So basically I do four a year. My wife would let me do more if I didn't spend two to five hundred dollars on each issue.
Speaker 2:Oh, oh, my Support, us guys Support. You can go to his website. I believe you said it was. Oh, yes, Iamjimclarkcom. It's a personal brand too.
Speaker 1:Personal brand definitely Okay.
Speaker 2:And now we're actually recording the audio. All right, whatever, take three. Yes, but okay. Whatever take three, yes, but okay. So, going to the first question, um, jim, how are you doing, buddy, I'm doing wonderful, you're doing wonderful.
Speaker 1:It's been a long day, a long week, but any time to get to play with creative friends is always a good time if they put up with me, that is you.
Speaker 2:You just came back from event.
Speaker 1:By the way, you were shooting pictures at simonia tonight and it's uh, it went really well. Um, they, there's a lot of people that have more money than I do, buying things that they really don't need, but it's for a great cause, so it's good so, um, remember the other conversation, they were, uh, the event that I was at.
Speaker 2:They had like a pair of pannier watches. Oh yeah, I didn't even know how much would cost.
Speaker 1:I found out one cost 20 grand yep, I could believe that because I talked to two of the gentlemen today about cameras and one of them used to shoot canon and saw that I had the sony and he's like, how do you like it? He goes, I'm thinking about getting that one. We talked for a little bit and then found out he was in cyber security, going to school for that, but then realized he and the other gentleman were the security for those watches wait is that that's his name did he have a short.
Speaker 2:He didn't have any hair, but he was a white tan suit probably okay he's a pi private investigator.
Speaker 1:Okay, go on but they were, they real nice guys, and I came back later and the music was thumping and everybody's like looking around and they're still standing there with I don't know like their arms crossed and everything. I'm going. Okay, are you guys security, or are you guys here with the watches, or are you going to take some pictures or what?
Speaker 1:And they're like no, we're security and it was very cool because I was being an ass joking around, you know, smart ass. So it was fun. And by the end of the afternoon they're like that was fun, wasn't it? And I'm going and he goes. I'm not used to standing up this long all day long and I go, you'll get used to it, or you'll you know, get an Advil.
Speaker 2:Wow, wow. Well, as you guys know, the watches, they're about 20 grand. It starts from five grand. Yes, it's too much for nothing.
Speaker 1:Well, it's jewelry, it's a me.
Speaker 2:Necessary, you want to buy. Hey, we're not in the world of rich people. Okay, let me rephrase it's a different world, where we don't necessarily understand what it's like to have access to those things on a regular basis.
Speaker 1:Well, that disposable income you know.
Speaker 2:Oh, we are going to talk about some illegal tactics to get to my mom or my. We're not doing that, okay, all right. So, jim, tell us who you are, what your mission is as a creative and what you do. That is the first question of the day or the night. Are you ready to answer that?
Speaker 1:Over my career I've done quite a lot.
Speaker 1:You know, it's like back in the day when I was young I in say even high school yeah I enjoyed drawing and so I was in the art classes and I found out that you could get attention from the opposite sex by making nice pictures. And they would say, jim, that's a cool picture. You, how did you do that? And you would show them and you'd do this, this, this, and I'm like, okay, well, this is kind of cool. And then I yeah, it's totally true. And ended up getting into. I guess it was like directed study, basically, you could get out of one of your classes and go do art for an hour.
Speaker 2:Oh my.
Speaker 1:God and learned that I enjoyed art. With that said, my mom wanted me to become an art teacher and that didn't work because I started doing classes towards that. And the very first time I went to student teaching there was like 20 kids in there and we were going to do a screen printed t-shirt and I'm like that's cool, you know.
Speaker 1:I'd love to do this. Well, out of the 20 kids, there was like five of them that were even paying attention, and out of those, only one wanted to do it, and I'm like I don't want to teach kids that this is the way to do it. So I decided I'd go to another direction and I thought about doing fine art, and so I started taking that, and then graphic design classes, 2d design classes as well, and then realized that after I got out of school that if I wanted to be successful with fine art, I had to move to Chicago or New York or all that, and for some reason it snows there every year.
Speaker 1:Really yeah and it's a little chilly, and so that isn't going to work for me. Okay, so I ended up going into the advertising field as a graphic designer first, and it's like you could use your drawing, you know, expertise to do something. You know this was back before you were born and we didn't even have computers, so if you didn't have a budget to do photography, to use the picture of the vehicle.
Speaker 1:You would draw it and then you would take a picture of it and then you would post it down on an ad layout board and then you would send that camera ready art to the newspaper and they would process it to make it, oh wow it was.
Speaker 2:It was a lot of fun it's like mail you wouldn't mail it. Basically you guys were depending on that system. How, like, getting the uh final deliverables?
Speaker 1:it was a different system back then, basically an ad that you would do now, in probably 30 minutes, on your computer. We we would have about two weeks to do it. What.
Speaker 1:Because you would meet with your client and they'd say, oh, I rent DVDs, and here's well not DVDs. Back up VHS, oh my gosh, yes. So you'd get this VHS from Jaws or whatever it was. You'd get this VHS from Jaws or whatever it was, and so we would make an ad featuring that, saying that they were going to have 10 copies of that movie in their video rental store coming up, and you would do a Jaws mini poster and say if you want to see Jaws at the comfort of your own home, go to XYZ VH place.
Speaker 2:There wasn't any facilities where you can do that in one place. No, there had to be one.
Speaker 1:You had a lot of rental places. Why, I don't know. I was too young to know why.
Speaker 2:Okay, All right, We'll figure it. Wow, that made me just really open my eyes, Because you know how in this generation we're just like. I need it now, now, now, now now. Oh yeah, it's like seconds, you can get it in less than a minute. But I didn't realize that.
Speaker 1:Let's say you would have the same issues that you have now. It's just it's faster.
Speaker 1:Back then you had an account executive that would go and talk to the client, and then they would come back and they'd say, okay, our client wants to sell a hundred of these things. Now we have to figure out how to sell that for them. And so then it would go to a copywriter, or they would give us samples of the stuff. We would either take pictures of it, draw it and give them a mock-up, and us as art directors, slash designers, would say, okay, well, I'm going to, you know, put in a headline for it. And then I already had the logo from their business, so I put that in place. And then I'd say, okay, this is their contact information phone number, all that stuff in place.
Speaker 1:Do you have to fight for columns too.
Speaker 2:You know, like in newspaper, you would have to. You know there's spaces that you have to choose, but did you for you at that time? Did you have to at that time for your own column magazine or whatever?
Speaker 1:yes, in in the columns with you had a machine, that, yeah, a computer. You typed in I want your columns to be an inch and a half wide and the type to be, you know, eight, eight over 16, so you had eight point height type and 16 in the lettings.
Speaker 1:And then you would type all your words in and then that would come out and you would do a film processing kind of thing, like your words in, and then that would come out and you would do a film processing kind of thing like you did with cameras, but it would come out of the machine, you'd wash it and then you'd have this piece of paper that you'd look at it and then you cut it out, put rubber cement on the back of it, stick it on to an illustration board and if you're letting, or you know you had a one word sticking off the end that looks stupid.
Speaker 1:You like go back and do it all over again and then you go through that process, but the the two weeks was basically you coming up with those ideas and then someone would work on the copy for the ad and then that would go back to the client and they go no, you need to say it like this. And then you'd, then you'd put it together and then, if you had to do, say you were doing a three column by 10 inch ad and they also only had a budget for that to run twice.
Speaker 1:And then they wanted to go down to a two column by six inch ad. You had to shoot it down under another photography type machine stat camera and say, okay, it needs to be 70%, and hope that that fall is in that range. What the hell? Oh, it's crazy 70% and hope that that fall is in that range?
Speaker 2:What the hell? Oh it's crazy.
Speaker 1:You had a little wheel called a proportion wheel.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:And you would look at it and in the middle part it would say percentage. So if you put in one size here and you turn it to the size that you need it to be, and it would say in the middle, you need to reduce that 62% to get to that second size. Oh yeah, yeah, it percent to get to that second size. Oh yeah, yeah, it wasn't a matter of like on your computer today you just do another ad layout and then you copy it and paste it and reduce it as a group or something.
Speaker 2:Okay, so now that poses an interesting question. We will get to the questions here later, but this is an interesting conversation. We knew, we all know the one the introduction of photoshop, all of the software, and now that, now that you have a bit of experience in having to learn how to take one piece of content into another content, that's a whole different kind of workflow versus what we have now. How did it feel watching the change from learning, all of those spending hours making sure that everything's perfect, only to start learning the systems like software or Photoshop to cut that number of hours into? Just maybe less.
Speaker 1:How did you do the transformation? It was more like Christmas. Really. Because you went from doing it that way to having a computer, now that you could do your type in the computer and you could do your type in the computer and you could do your box in the computer if you needed to. And then you you eliminated some of those processes that way, or even the um, the approval process, because then you could print out what it looked like yeah you know this book may have, as I think I did it in the back.
Speaker 1:Now that you asked that, it's hilarious yeah there is the proportion wheel that I was talking about, that little round thing right there yeah and then this was the oh, can you make it now?
Speaker 1:you know, and this you would do a headline. You would rub off these letters individually to make a headline like this. And then you would Like oh, yeah, yeah. And well, look at that, mahi-mahi, this illustration. I drew it once and then used a copy machine to replicate it and then tied it down this was chart-packed lettering, yeah. And then copied it to make the second one. You know, logo placement this little texture down here was crumbling up a piece of paper on the second one, logo placement. This little texture down here was crumbling up a piece of paper on the copy machine and making it rough to get a texture like fish or something.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so you had to figure out within your means of how to make stuff happen for you.
Speaker 2:Were us and Photoshop, you would just get a texture from online.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, what. There was no textures on. You actually had to. There was no textures on. There was no onlines. Online was until later. This was what the first Mac that I had looked like Best Macintosh. This was probably the second version, because mine had two floppy drives in here.
Speaker 1:I got one with two floppy drives and a separate hard drive and the keyboard, of course, and a printer and I called it my Volkswagen because the cost for it I could have gotten a brand new Volkswagen for Wait what? Yeah, way back then it was insane. Wait how much was that at the time oh, I don't know Probably like six grand or something like that.
Speaker 2:You're telling me a Volkswagen cost that much at that time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think the new ones were like that what in the? World. It was fun to go where. Now you know any of these things here you could probably do in an hour. Maybe not the insides of how does it feel to have learned all of that process.
Speaker 2:What were some of the parts that you were able to translate into the digital world of that um process? In making a magazine or at ads? Were there some things that you could still?
Speaker 1:you could, you still had the basic elements you had a company's logo you had what you felt was their brand or their look yeah for that. So you could keep that consistent. And it was easier to keep their look for that. So you could keep that consistent.
Speaker 1:And it was easier to keep the consistency across the platforms because you had all those elements, like if you were doing a TV spot and you could say, okay, well, usually on the footer of my website now is going to look similar to the footer on, say, my TV spot on the corner, so you could have those types of things.
Speaker 2:How does it feel to know that that's becoming um? It's not necessarily a lost art? Well, I feel like it is. But how does it feel to do you think there's still some merit to still doing that process?
Speaker 1:it's like you know how lost art they're. Just it's kind of one of those things. It's's kind of because in the middle there you know, we were talking earlier about AI. Yeah. Well, back in the day it used to be, you only had so many fonts available on your computer, and then they became a, a CD that you could get a thousand fonts on and all the graphic designers thought, oh, we're going out of business now because that person can spend $70 and get the CD and have every font that we want.
Speaker 1:Well then, what you ended up happening was you had people that didn't know their graphic design and they would have like 10 fonts in an ad and you're like you know, is this a, a, a ransom note, or is this an?
Speaker 2:ad.
Speaker 1:You know cause there's so much stuff going on oh, wow so you didn't. The people that were using shortcuts, okay, didn't appreciate the consistency of a good look, you know. So you'd have some things that well, I can't even tell if that's that brand site it looks like it could be this brand site, because there's no consistency in the two ads.
Speaker 2:You know, yeah, I mean okay. So you know how to rise up the film photography. It's somewhat site, because there's no consistency in the two ads. You know, yeah, I mean okay, so you know how to rise up the film photography. It's some. You know, there's some things that seem to die off and then all of a sudden it just comes back. There's a huge surge in wanting to bring back that specific art form. Do you see that for that kind of workflow, for the film photography or no? Not film photography, the? I'm using it as an example of how one thing that was once seen as a dying art it will never come back, but all of a sudden just came back into popularity. Could that be?
Speaker 1:I don't I don't see this one doing it, unless it becomes a, um, you know, kind of a vintage feel on your heads, because you can still get a different look by doing stuff like that where it's not perfect. You know, like if you it's like doing a drawing versus taking a picture and then putting a filter on it, the drawing will have that personal touch where the filter may just throw random stuff not even random, it may be the same thing over and over again onto it to get get that look it's like our conversation losing the personal touch, not just with the digital, but the fact that you took hours to make that.
Speaker 2:It's like that's a lot of dna from you to make, even if it's wow. Guys, I hope you learned a bit of a history on what would you call that process. Again, what is that? What's the word for that process?
Speaker 1:well, it's basic, basic layout and design on an illustration board with overlays and you know, type setting, that you wouldn't have. You know you wouldn't just type out the words. You, yeah, you would rub a piece of a letter onto an illustration board to make sure your kerning was correct and all that stuff, and take a picture of it. Then you take it over here to use it for another thing.
Speaker 2:Something you just said reminded me of Steve Jobs. I remember when he was younger he took calligraphy classes. Yep. Oh my gosh Damn, it's a lot of art.
Speaker 1:Calligraphy. There's actually some people around here that still do that, and they're very good, but there's no real thing other than, you know, doing somebody's name that's appreciated anymore. You know, it's almost like the monks that used to do the bible yes, and they only had a limited numbers of pieces of you know what. Was it the product that they would? Write on and now it's like push another button and you have a couple hundred of them.
Speaker 2:The value is just not there. Well, in this day and age, it's just so hard for them to really see the value, because it's the instant gratification of being able to get that. It just removes that. Wow, I really want it.
Speaker 1:Oh my gosh gratification of being able to get that. It just removes that. Wow, I really want it, oh my gosh. But then again I think too in the creative process of that people will just take what's close to that and not improve on it. Because I've always noticed that in like creative tanks where you're doing brainstorming- yeah and you'll say, okay, well, we're thinking about selling this dog food product and we know dogs like to hang around trees so we need a logo.
Speaker 1:And so the first person goes okay, well, let's do a dog in front of a tree. Well, that may not be the right solution.
Speaker 1:It could be something that simulates a tree and a dog, but it may not be the whole dog. It could be a shadow of the dog on the trunk of the tree, where you see two things and it, and it gives it to another level, to where you want to remember that, to go. That's it. Oh my, it's that dog, that's this, it's not just a dog and a tree, because it's the first thing they thought of it's. You know, creative to me is writing all those things down and going okay, this is okay, this is good. But what if we take these three things?
Speaker 1:and incorporate into one and that gets us to another direction. And then we make that even better by honing it down.
Speaker 2:You, know that is. I don't think that that one is being done anymore, because that what you just reminded me of is the film strips or the comic strips. And then there's at at the time, like during the 80s or 90s, I remember there were a lot of. We're not getting into politics here, but I will say I remember seeing a lot of political art where they're just so creative with the way they can say a certain thing but without coming off as offensive.
Speaker 1:Without actually saying it.
Speaker 2:yeah, there's some political art where it just hits the message. But that's not being. I don't think that's as common now. It's just like people don't want to look for it. I think people don't want to look for that anymore. It's just sad.
Speaker 1:Yeah, what do you think? It's like straight in your face now yes, and there's no thought process on it, they're just gonna go. Oh, I hate that, or oh, that's really bad or oh, that is weird, you know, and it's not. They're not taking account of who they're showing it to yes, I think they're just okay.
Speaker 2:We need to get to the questions, but the last thing I was that. I hope you enjoyed that conversation. That was really good. Thank you for sharing that.
Speaker 1:Wow, I'm just happy to be here okay.
Speaker 2:The last bit to that is I um, when you mentioned about how, where they don't focus on who they're showing it to anymore, I think the greed and the the profit over quality mindset in most companies it's just destroying a lot of that, and when that happens, I can see how it started to erode the trust in the customer, especially if you want to sell something that's meaningful. But now they're just already used to just automatically say nope, don't want it, because the first thing they think of is oh, you're trying to sell me something and you're trying to overpower their thought process of why they want it yeah, you know it's like.
Speaker 1:You want this because you think orange is your favorite color. Well, no, I want this because I like the smell of oranges and the texture and the taste. Well, that's okay. If we only do it because orange is your favorite color, we'll sell these many units. Well, that may be happy with them, but it's not good for the product or the people that are getting it.
Speaker 2:You know, do not ever do profit, mindset guys. If you own. If you are a company and you own that and you have that mindset, I will shut you down. I'm kidding, um. Okay, jim, thank you so much for uh that becomes one of those ethical questions. You know, it becomes an ethical question, you know we are now skipping to one, two, three somewhere there. That is actually a great segue into that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, talk about the moral ethics, about that actually advertising is a thing where you are creating a work of art or a feeling to sell somebody something it shouldn't be. You know, you've all heard sex sells. Yes, you know that's a thing that now you wouldn't say it because it's, you know, not the right thing to say and it's just pure wrong. But you want to sell something that benefits your client with the client's benefits to them. You know.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And it's like this will make you feel better because you'll get out more and ride your bike. And this is our ABC bikes. Okay, you know, get out, see the world, enjoy some fresh air, get some exercise. Not that you know you want to feel better. You need a red bike. You know that's not going to help you, other than if your favorite color is red, then you would go oh, that's cool, but you're not getting no benefit of it.
Speaker 1:And you just said that you know. You say that Mr or Mrs Movie Star rides that bike, so you should ride it and that's going to make you feel better? Well, it's not really.
Speaker 2:That sounds like a FOMO mindset If you have missing guys. Yeah, it's manipulative, yeah.
Speaker 1:I think it would be that as well. I don't know, ethics is one of those things that it's just like you were mentioning that they just want to sell so many units. It's just like you were mentioning that they just want to sell so many units.
Speaker 1:Well, that's just a money-driven thing, rather than say if those things aren't really helping people they're actually killing small dogs that those people have and you didn't know that and now you do and you're still selling it. So it's very unethical for the poor dog that's dying and the people that are doing it now are mad at your product because it did it and you have no, you know, remorse I guess.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's okay, we sold a million of them, you know. So we there's a lot to unpack here. I'm gonna I have three points to unpack here. So the first point is I can I remember seeing magazines, um, or commercials where they focus on smoking. I remember there was a race reading it. I read it in a magazine, I think it was whatever. Basically, there was a race in how they were trying to sell as tobacco wasn't a bad thing. There's this cool image of being someone who smokes and now it kind of like shifted and now we're just saying, no, bad, do not do that. But there's vaping. So where where do you think, from your perspective, uh, the morals and ethics, all that? Where do you think that comes into play and portraying? What are your thoughts on what morals and ethics? And when it comes to doing ads and marketing, you know, on something that's now considered as not a good thing?
Speaker 1:Well, it depends. If that person that's creating the ad for this client has no morals, they would think it's a fine thing because we're going to sell these many things before we get in trouble. For doing it and we're OK, but then they're not thinking about what that may do to someone else. You know, like you know, if you're pregnant you shouldn't be smoking.
Speaker 1:Well that, I think, is still on cigarette things, yes, and then when it switched over to vapes, all the vape stuff is flavored that kids would like, you know, and that's ridiculous, but to me that's I don't know if it's the tobacco industry that's I don't know. If it's the tobacco industry, I guess it would have to be of them trying to keep part of the market that they're losing due to having to regulate their smoking advertising.
Speaker 2:Can you describe the morals Like there's a black area, there's a gray area and there's a white area, Black and white? Can you categorize what would be considered something in the black area and the other in the gray area and the other in white? Does that make sense?
Speaker 1:It makes sense, but I think it's one of those personal things. Well, because if you're an immoral person, you're not worried about, you know, unless you're saying black as far as one person versus another person. But if you're not moral and you don't have any ethics, you'll do anything to make money or to make yourself look better, or you know those kinds of things, whereas if you do use an example, say photographers- yes there's tons of photographers out there.
Speaker 1:I can say I'm a good photographer. I'm never going to say I'm the best photographer, because I always see someone's work that's so much better than mine.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:And I'm like wow, I really like this. And if I ask that person, how did you do this? And they tell me I go, well, this guy wants to share and enhance the whole group of photographers, whereas that person goes, well, I'm not going to tell you because then you'll be copying my style.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:Well, whereas that person goes. Well, I'm not going to tell you, because then you'll be copying my style.
Speaker 2:Yes, well, that person is more caring about themselves than they are, of what? They do.
Speaker 1:Okay, you know I shoot pictures because it's one of my passions and it's because when my mom was young, she was, you know, the oldest in her family and her dad, um, knew he could trust her with the camera because it was expensive back then, and so she was the one that went around.
Speaker 2:What was the camera that she had? I?
Speaker 1:don't even know which one it was. It was one of the film cameras, but it was probably like you know it was definitely a point and click and so like click and then you just turned it.
Speaker 2:Oh, that kind of camera. Okay, all right.
Speaker 1:Um, so she would have pictures from that and you wouldn't know what was on them until they process them like you do before. Now you know what's on them as soon as you put them on your computer and you know that's different. So to me. That made me realize that all the older pictures that we see of our relatives, that someone's taken for us or in our family that's taken it hits me in my heart. It's like, okay, I wouldn't remember you unless I saw that crumbled up picture that's been over under here for a while. Yeah, and you were in it and you were here with the dog next to the lake and you tell that whole story without even seeing the picture. So that's what she was doing, and when I was younger, and my sisters as well yeah my mom made scrapbooks and basically did cut and paste of christmas cards.
Speaker 1:A lock on my hair when I was born something from the hospital, different cards for each year. I grew and it's like yeah it's like two inches thick, and to me that's. You know how did my mom have the patience to do that so many years?
Speaker 1:yeah, it was just something she wanted to do, so it's like being a historian of our family for my sisters and yeah so when I started seeing that as I got older so I think I was like 16, 17 yeah I started doing photography and I would love to take pictures of some of the places that she was at when she was younger and when we traveled and that kind of thing and some of that stuff I'm still sharing today to relatives that I don't even really know, other than they may live in Canada or they may even live in this place and they're like on Facebook going that's so cool that you got a picture.
Speaker 1:You know, we hadn't seen pictures of our grandmom in so long, or our mom, and that's the kind of stuff that I think is so cool. Mom, you know, and that's the kind of stuff that I think is so cool, and a, to me, a ethical, caring, compassionate person is going to share things that they like and tell other people that they could do that same thing. It's just a matter of you know learning how to push a button with our phones.
Speaker 1:it's easy, you know yeah I always tell everybody you can't take a bad picture, and they're like what are you talking about?
Speaker 2:and now I'm about to ask what are you talking about?
Speaker 1:Well, basically, I was asked to teach a class over in Gulf Coast, over in Panama City, on photography, because their person couldn't do it. And I said well, how long is it? And they said it's four nights and over a two-week period, and I said okay, well, I started out going everybody. I don't think there's such a thing as a bad photo and everybody's like uh, and I'm going what's going on.
Speaker 1:I go, I can tell you that and some of the guys go. I go, raise your hand if you can tell me you know a bad photo that you know. And I go and don't just say it's out of focus or it's you know, the color's right or whatever. Tell me what you really think about it. And this one gentleman stood up and he was probably I don't know 65 or 70. He goes.
Speaker 1:I remember when I was little I was 11 years old and me and my dad, we were fishing down to this pond. I caught the biggest fish that I ever caught and I said, dad, can you get your camera out of the car and take a picture for me? Dad, of course, said, yes, we're going to do it. Well, dad went to the camera. I went to the car, got his camera out and he's holding up his fish again and he holds it up towards his dad and his dad takes a picture. Well, the picture focused on the dad I mean the son, not the fish and so the guy didn't like it because his fish wasn't in focus, but it's focusing on him and I'm like.
Speaker 1:So you? So you think that's a bad picture because you couldn't see your fish real well, he goes. It's the biggest fish I've ever caught. He goes. I haven't caught one bigger than that now and I go. Well, listen, you just told me a story that I can almost smell the smells from the air around where you went fishing yeah I can tell everything about it and I go that is awesome.
Speaker 1:A good photo tells a story you're telling me and this was, you know, 50, 60 years ago, when you were little, and you're still sharing that bad picture, uh that's a good photo.
Speaker 2:What a great story, oh yeah and I he goes.
Speaker 1:Well, I didn't think about it, that like that, and I'm going. That's what pictures? Do you know when you go see a movie you're wanting to get a scary or a positive?
Speaker 2:or a creative.
Speaker 1:You know experience and hopefully it tells a story that sticks with you so that's the reason I'm behind that lots of of it back here again.
Speaker 2:Oh my God. Okay, the other thing was like. I think he may have seen it in the wrong way, but I think the father subconsciously took a photo of his son because it's his son.
Speaker 3:It's his son exactly. He's proud of it, he's proud of it.
Speaker 2:It's not the fish, but it's the happiness that he could see on the son's face and he wanted to experience.
Speaker 1:Save that experience for his son as well as for himself.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah and that's a powerful thing, what you have the power to capture a story, and that's a. That's a. That's such a hard thing to remind people that you just don't take photos just for money. You, you actually like what you said. You take photos and you, you're the one with the power to just freeze that moment in your life of what, uh, what's um unraveling in front of you. It's a great story and, like, I love what you said. What if you are still telling, if you're still telling the same story from the same photo?
Speaker 1:so many years. Not even a bad photo. No, it's a great story, great story it is. It's not about the photo anymore. It's about, oh, that experience with your dad and the brook running by and catching fish and you had a great time where you thought, okay, dad, will you capture this moment for me? And he gets the pictures and you know it became a bad thought in your mind, but you're still sharing it.
Speaker 2:Well, do you think people get hung up on technicals? Because I feel like that's where they come, like what he said, it's out of focus. What do you think about? That.
Speaker 1:In that same class. I don't think we had mirrorless cameras at that point, Because I had asked the class. I go okay, how many people have Nikon, how many people have Canon, how many people have something else? Well, they raise their hands. Nikons and the Canons were like split 50 50 okay and then there were some Sony's, and they're not Sony's Panasonic.
Speaker 1:I think it was a couple other brands and then someone goes I don't even know what my camera is. I haven't taken out of the box yet. I want to learn. I'm like, well, that's awesome, hopefully we can teach you or someone here can teach you. Yeah, but you're talking about the differences between. It became from talking to the different people during the class and the.
Speaker 1:Nikon folks, which this is no scientific thing at all, but a lot of them wanted no shadows in a picture. They wanted the light to be perfect. They wanted, you know it, more of a pose shot than a, you know, candid shot.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And then the Canon. People wanted it more artsy and if they accidentally bumped themselves when they took a picture and then made a blur, they were excited about that because it showed some motion that they didn't know how they got, but they still got some of it in focus and they thought it was artsy. So I know you can be artsy with either one, because no matter which camera on you, it's the person that's shooting it.
Speaker 1:But I thought that was interesting, that and some of the the older gentlemen were retired air force stuff so they were probably dealing with specs. All the time it's like okay, this has to be this way. You have to be able to read all of it look at it and to me, that's a technical drawing, that's's not a photograph. But it was strange, it was a strange process.
Speaker 2:Well then, basically, do you agree that photo art, art in general, is subjective, because one you could say that's a bad photo, but that's also a great photo. You would never be able to get everyone to agree on.
Speaker 1:You go to any art gallery or museum and you see, that person just sitting there looking at the work and if you went up to them, ask them what they thought about, it is probably the total opposite of what you're thinking about it yeah, you know, because it could relate to well this lady that's in the picture and she's petting her cat and while she's looking out the window, yeah well, that reminds me of my grandmother, and when you're looking at it going, I really like the fashion that's on the lady's clothes and that cat looks like it's a hairless something or other and you're not even thinking about her looking through the window.
Speaker 1:You're saying the light's hitting it neat, so there's plenty of ways.
Speaker 2:See, a perfect photo is boring, Even if the light's just off. It's just charm, just a certain charm to imperfect photos. I think that's a style that's. Have you started seeing styles where everyone's starting to do more blurry and it's like cut off?
Speaker 1:It's like breaking out of the rules.
Speaker 2:Their head is cut off, but you can tell the story with the motion of their body, especially in wedding photography and couples' photos. I've seen some of that stuff in this area.
Speaker 1:It's like well, a lot of the wedding stuff has gone to more documentary style yeah, rather than pose stuff, which to me I love that because there's nothing more aggravating when you're getting a group of creating a group of people together and mom's sitting there looking like this and dad's eyes are closed, yeah, exactly, and then somebody's got their you know funny face and the kid's scratching his ear and you know, and you take that picture and they're going. Well, really don't like your style of photography because look at these people and I'm like those are your people, but I didn't shoot a lot of that. But then they love the ones where you go. You know the ring bearers down here and grandmom and granddaddy's right above yeah.
Speaker 1:And you, you lower your camera down and you shoot at his angle and he looks up at you and he's, you know, just looking up into the stars or something. You get that and you show them. They go. Oh, my God, I love our little grand baby. Yes, we need to shoot more stuff like that. Yeah, not more of this. Oh, there's grandma and granddaddy.
Speaker 2:Like the 1800s style yeah exactly.
Speaker 1:It's like you have to hold it for 30 seconds before we get the picture.
Speaker 2:Going back, I wanted to touch on when you were, I think you said 16 or 17. And then your mom was the one taking the photos, basically the historian of your family, basically, out of all the things that you saw, from the scrapbooks, to being the one that always handed the camera to take all the moments when you decided to do photo, is there. Is there one thing that you can say now that made you, uh, really appreciate why? Why photography is the great choice for you, based on what your mom did for you guys well based on mom.
Speaker 1:It was more capturing the moments of people that I may not have met or got to know very well, or places like she's from newfoundland, canada, and so the traveling there is totally different than here yeah, you know, and so I would be able to look at those things and say, hey, I need to go back there or see how much it's changed yeah way back then to now with a new picture.
Speaker 1:You know that kind of stuff. And then with my mom she has dementia but she can remember the brooks and stuff that we would go up the hills and go pick blueberries and we didn't have pictures of that. But she would tell us those stories and then we would get back and we would have a picture of ourselves with some blueberries and some cream on top eating that. And so those two would tie to the story of going up in the woods. And it was crazy because we were 7, 5, no 9, 7, and 3, and we would just take off in the morning and as long as we we home before it was dark, they wouldn't know what we were doing.
Speaker 1:We didn't know what we were doing half the time you'd just be sitting on a big rock looking at the water, go by or go walk by these horses and you'd memorize memories would be built from that and then makes you want to revisit it, you know, yeah now, man, I'm sad.
Speaker 2:I can't imagine what it's like. You know um, what the dementia it's like. I would imagine the feeling that you get when you show her a photo.
Speaker 1:It's like, and then she lights up oh yeah that's, that's such a powerful thing, um, and it's an emotional thing yeah because when she first started getting it yeah that was the tool that I used to get a smile on her face. I've got a book of her older pictures that she took, yeah, and then it ends with, I think, some of the ones that we took on the last vacation going up there yeah and she's like, oh, that's your uncle, johnny, and this is his kids, and I wonder what they're doing now.
Speaker 1:Or it's a picture of her folks that she took when she was younger, who've been gone for 60 years, yeah. And she's like how is mom and dad doing? And, sad to say, you have to say they're doing fine, because if you don't, then you, she gets upset.
Speaker 1:You know, and we didn't know that until the learning process of saying you know they had passed away a long time ago yeah, and you see your mother get upset and tell one of her friends that she hasn't known for a day or two yeah, she thinks she's known them for years, but I still use it today. It's actually in the trunk of the car right now.
Speaker 2:Photo really has a certain place in our own hearts as a creative, and for you being able to do that and connect that bond within your mom and for you and everyone else and connect that bond within your mom and for you and everyone else. Yeah, everyone has their own way of seeing how much photography can mean to them in their lives, and for you that was thank you for sharing that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that was wow and shoot another little story on that yeah we um.
Speaker 1:I was asked to come shoot pictures at one of the hospitals in fort walton and there's this group that would come and sing Christmas carols the week before Christmas to the people that were in the terminal ill areas or the cancer wards, that kind of thing, and you weren't allowed to take pictures of the I say guests but the patients there. And we had one couple that was dressed up as Mr and Mrs Claus and I remember one time when Mr Claus was in the room and the carolers were here and I asked the nurse on staff, I said, do you mind if I take a picture of Santa Claus and I won't get the face of the patient? She goes as long as you're not getting the face of the patient, it's fine.
Speaker 1:Well, santa had his hand next to the lady's hand and the lady's hand was a 95-year-old lady, so it was bony and wrinkled and stuff, and so you could see the light on that. And then the Santa was up here looking at her eyes, but I couldn't see her eyes because it was cropped there and you could just tell that she was enjoying it, without seeing her face, through the reaction from Santa.
Speaker 1:And it was like such a touching moment for me. It's still one of my favorite pictures and it's crazy. It just makes you appreciate life one and two, that you can still make people happy when it's closer for their passing. Yeah, it's crazy. Yeah, people happy when it's closer for their passing. Yeah, it's just crazy. Yeah, I know it's deep.
Speaker 2:No, bro, this is a safe circle, literally no, I'm really happy to hear, sharon, that, because one of the things I really appreciate in all the conversation in this one is to just try to. I don't. I just want to get past the typical uh stuff like oh yeah, how much money do you make in photography? Blah, blah, blah, blah. Who, how much? How do you get this? And I mean, yeah, we'll dive into it, but it's like that's now my main focus. My main focus who the hell is jim clark?
Speaker 1:well, it's with photography. You say that I tell everybody that it's a passion. Yes, I go, I go. You can make money with your passion, but that's a whole different type of thing.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:It's like a musician. If a musician gets up in the morning and says I'm going to write a song and then I do it and then I go play it and I might make a little money, or if I don't play it because I wrote it for my girlfriend that I just broke up with.
Speaker 1:that I'm still mad about or still in love with that kind of thing. It's still got a reason for doing it. And I get as I'm getting older I say older I mean as I get tired, because I'm never going to get old but that I get up and I want to go capture some images. It can be anything. I can walk out the door and it could be a frog that's got squished on the pavement and it's like I'm going to take a picture of it. People, and it could be a frog that's got squished on the pavement. It's like I'm going to take a picture of it. People go. Why would you do that? I go.
Speaker 2:That was that frog's last day on earth?
Speaker 1:Oh no, that's what it looked like and I'm going. I like the way he looked or she looked, and it may be gross to some people.
Speaker 2:My mom used to joke with me, because I would see a lot of of hey, sorry, time's up. No, my goodness, I'm going to mute this but I would do, you know, like, a dead bird. I'd see that you take pictures.
Speaker 1:There's something about the mundane stuff too well, yeah, it gets a reaction and it's textures and it's a little dark, so you could stay in that color palette yeah, well, you will. It was flat for the frog, I'm sorry. Oh, it was awesome. I laugh about it all the time. I don't even I used to have a thing on. It was either Instagram or Pinterest where I did textures and the frog, I think, was one of the pictures.
Speaker 2:Yes, it was hilarious. Oh, carve it, carve it, it's okay, anyways.
Speaker 1:Next up.
Speaker 2:Peter, we're not supporting dead frogs in this episode. You can't support them.
Speaker 1:They've been squished by a car. There's no support left.
Speaker 2:Well, I could say you could say no, no, it hopped into. No, I was trying to make a pun, but it doesn't work. Okay, we already did that. I already did the first question. That was like about your mom, I would imagine, because the question was can you share a pivotal moment or a figure in your early life that inspired your journey to photography and creative direction? That sounds like it was all rooted into your mom.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there was a lot into that. Some of it like, if you went to the business side or graphic design, you know some of the people that I worked with when I first got started that I was good at drawing but I'm like, okay, I don't know how to design an ad, but I could put the elements in a way that they look like they belong, rather than, you know, like a ransom note yes, like a ransom notes or balance wise, like you could have a. It could be symmetrical or asymmetrical, but so I would look at things that way. And I didn't even learn about photography, the rule of thirds, but I'd always been using it because I didn't know the term but, because of 2d design.
Speaker 1:I knew that typically I'd want to have a large audition here and some nice white space. That was the biggest. It just came naturally for you. Yes, because of art from painting. And the lighting was drawing or painting, because if you only had one color, you're just getting a line drawing, but if you were wanting to make some dramatic stuff with it, you would have light coming from one direction and shadows and all that good stuff with it.
Speaker 2:You would have light coming from one direction and shadows and all that good stuff. So do you feel from your perspective? Do you feel like people are born with the natural sense of making things just look good, without any um? Do you feel like that can be the same for you, or did you? I think it?
Speaker 1:can be learned okay I'll just take photography an example. If I look at my photography from 20 years ago, you suck. You know you need to learn how to do this. But then you look at it every year and you learn okay, these are what I like, to make it look better and I just move it over here or I crop it a little different. Okay like a hundred pictures and some of them may be similar. But then I can crop them and it messes me up with editing time because yeah, I'm going I can make that look like a good picture.
Speaker 1:I can make that look like a good picture but, um, I still think any person that picks up a camera today can learn how to do the process with some direction or guidance, because if you can see and you can point and you can look through a little square and you can see what you're going to look, and you go, okay, look, that model looks great, but then they're standing in front of a pile of trash yeah okay, we need to move over to a background that's clean to get what we want.
Speaker 1:It's all those little processes you know people used to tell me when I was drawing and they go how, how can you draw? That's so nice. And I go you can do this. And they're like I can't draw a straight line. And the smart ass in me goes have you heard of a ruler? All you have to do is put a ruler on a piece of paper and you can draw a straight line. And they go well, that's not what I mean. I go, okay. Well, let me put it this way when your mom or dad taught you how to write your name when you were three, four or five, could you read it? And they're like no, I can't read it. And I go okay, well, as long as you're not a doctor, can you read your name now? And they would laugh because you know doctors are known for not being able to and they go, yes you can read my name now.
Speaker 1:It's nice and I still write in cursive. Some people say and I go okay, so you learned the process, how to go from a scribble to writing cursive. Because you learned that in school.
Speaker 1:So you were taught the process and now you might be going from cursive to calligraphy because you wanted to learn how they did it with the big looping and all that stuff. So you just learn what those things are and those things just like when we were little. You know, we, when I was little, they had a piece of paper that had lines on it and then they had a halfway point. Yes, yes you know oh. I had to do it in middle school, you knew your little letter needed to be this height.
Speaker 2:This is the Y.
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 2:And then the curve or the loop.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah 100% that, and you know they don't do that as much as now.
Speaker 2:you type it in oh no, my god, that's. That goes back to what we just said early the fact that you're just putting a docusign oh, my god, I just signed that, oh yeah, and if I look at my docusign now and I'm like why wouldn't you pick that font?
Speaker 1:why does it do that?
Speaker 2:it's so default. There's no personality, no, but I mean other than it's legible yeah but, and it's, and what's it?
Speaker 1:x and o's, or what? You know ones and zeros and that's why they're reading it, you know.
Speaker 2:So it knows where that stuff is and it's consistent so it sounds like, uh, we're all going through an endless stage of evolution. How would you describe your photography style to someone? Maybe me? Style. Yeah, how would you describe your?
Speaker 1:work to me. The joke I do still with new and prospective clients is I take out-of-focus, weird angle candid photos. Out-of-focus, weird-angle candid photos Out-of-focus, weird-angle. With bad lighting.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:So I give them all those negatives right up front, except for Candice, because I love taking candid pictures, and they're going really, and I go, well, what are you needing? Well, we're thinking about this, this and this, and I say, okay, well, I really don't like the pose shots, but if you like a pose shot with real good lighting, this, this and this, I recommend you call this person I said, because I'm not really into taking that, so you won't get my full attention on it if you're not wanting to.
Speaker 1:It's like a give and take conversation. I want to give you what you want, and a little bit better by finding out what you want, and if I can't do it, I want to give it to somebody else and that goes back into that ethical question.
Speaker 1:Yes, I can take your money from you and give you what I think you want and it'll be an okay photo. But when I go to talk to the next one and that might be best friends with the first person that I gave an okay photo they would say, oh, jim only does okay photos, I wouldn't use him. Whereas if the next person says I want to be here holding a ball of fire and doing this and I'm like can you hold a ball of fire? Yes, how long can you hold it? Yes, well, we can do that because I know I can do it. Yeah, and I think you become more passionate and you have more fun doing what you like to do while you're capturing what the people want to capture.
Speaker 2:I didn't even think about that because subconsciously you know you just think about the money. But the moral ethic questions? Now that we're on that point. It's hard to say no to things when you know you won't. It's like we don't even focus on the client. We focus oh my God, easy money, let's go, let's do it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I've got to pay that power bill or I've got to pay that phone bill. So let me go ahead and do this. Well, that is good for the immediate. Yeah. At the ad agency, we used to call them, uh, utility clients and they're like why do you call it?
Speaker 2:a utility clients.
Speaker 1:Well, if I'm doing work for you and you're wanting me to do something that I think is silly, but you're willing to pay me five hundred dollars to do it, yeah, and I know that my phone bill and my power bill equals four hundred dollars. I'll still have a hundred dollars left after I do that and you also.
Speaker 1:you do that so you're basically tricking yourself, but in the past we've had clients like that that they said this is what we want. We've always done it this way and say, if it was a newsletter, at that time, all you need to do is we're going to take a picture for this to go in these spots, we're going to give you the text that goes in here and you're going to get it all laid out to send to the printer and get us 1,000 of them and we'd go okay. So we knew every month we would have one of those and we knew that we were going to make X number of dollars and we just said, okay, that's our phone bill for that month.
Speaker 1:Oh wow, oh, wow. And so you didn't push the creative element to do more creative stuff, because they didn't want it and they were good with everything that you got, you know, because we would even show them. Why don't we change the masthead of the thing? And do this and they're going. That's cool, but we've been doing this for this many years.
Speaker 2:That's archaic.
Speaker 1:It's like how do you deal with that? You deal with it by telling them that they need to look at bringing some youth into the company.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:And that's a hard one, because that person could be there for 30 years and this is the way and it's like, okay, I agree, you've been there for 30 years and what you've been doing is doing well. Are your profit margins still going up or have they leveled off? Okay, is your prospective customer dying off? So they may not be here still. Yeah, but the young person that's just turned 21 and is paying their power bill themselves or their phone bill.
Speaker 1:you need to be going after them because there's more of them coming along and you want to get them to be a client of yours, you know, for their lifetime. Yeah so you have to weigh that and some of them don't want to do that research. It's like, okay, we know we've had from 50 to 75 year old people for 10 years and these new kids are coming in and they're wanting, you know, cheaper prices and fancier, you know, features or something and, but we don't want to spend the time on making that happen for them.
Speaker 1:We want to keep just safe. They're gonna die up, just like what you said. Yes, and the other ones are gonna go well. My grandma and granddaddy's still using them and I'm not going to use them because I want the new this that still does that and you know I can tell time on it, you know, or whatever it is.
Speaker 2:Well, with the photography style they described. How do you cater to those that are like as the older generation start to pass and the new ones come into the picture? No pun intended.
Speaker 1:That's pretty good. I like that ones come into the picture. No pun intended. That's pretty good, I like that.
Speaker 2:I got the picture how do you I did not do that intentionally, but um? How do you um keep, how do you still retain the qualities of your art style or photography style while still reaching to the younger generation?
Speaker 1:I think it's one of those things, because back in the day I would watch VH1 and MTV when it was cool, oh yes, and you would see all the different photo styles and the different looks of things, and then you would try to emulate some of that. Yeah, and then today it's still the same thing. I joke with people because I'm on Facebook and anybody under probably 25 or 30 is like I'm not going to be on there. My mom's on there. Well, I got on there not because my mom was on there, and she still has like eight accounts because she can't remember.
Speaker 1:She can't remember her passcode, so it's like she'd make a new one, cause it was quicker than having to find out where she wrote it down. Um, but anyway. But I loved about Facebook at the beginning when my relatives that I'd never talked to for 20 years got on there and did a friend request and it's like this is awesome. And now the younger generation is going to TikTok or Snapchat or more on Instagram. I don't see the interaction as much on Instagram that I do on Facebook.
Speaker 1:The photo shoot I had today, I had three ladies come up to me and she goes Jim, I really love your photography, I see you at all the events. And I'm like I don't know you. And she goes oh no, we're Facebook friends. And I'm like, okay, well, good, I go next time you're on Facebook. Say, hi, this is I think it was Heather. I said say, this is Heather. I saw you today at the Symphonia event and it was nice to talk to you in person, which is scary but cool. But then if you were to tell a 30-something, they go well, I can't be friends with him, he's old. And I'm like, well, you don't know me yet. Then, because that was that one statement, that my bio says that my wife wrote.
Speaker 1:That he may be strange, weird, you know something, but get to know him first. And it ends up being that way Because there are weirdos out there, there are strange people out there and stuff doing stuff, especially in the photography field.
Speaker 1:I'll be the first to tell you if your daughter's wanting to get into modeling and you're their parent you be on every shoot that you're going to be with them on, because you can't trust anybody. You know, and that's male or female, you know it's, it's, it's scary but true. And and then, in the same vein, you know, if you are a model, take two of your friends with you and and if that photographer says, no, we only want you Red light. Exactly Yep Flags up and turn the other way and say thank you for playing. You know that's a whole other.
Speaker 2:No, no, that's, that's, no, that is very important.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Remember, your mom and your dad told you stranger danger, right, exactly. We're not cursing you. That thing applies to that. That is such an important thing. Do you think people talk about that often, or not?
Speaker 1:Does it feel like it's?
Speaker 1:I'm in some groups on Facebook and other things that they do collaborative events where six photographers and 10 models get together and they everybody takes a chance, shooting at each one of them and to try to emulate whatever their style is with that model. And then you end up sharing your images to those people guys and girls for their modeling portfolios, which, which is great you get to as a photographer. You get to experiment, doing something you don't normally do. You know, say, if you just want to shoot black and white for that event, it's fine and it's a good thing. But some of those groups in the Facebook posts that I've seen, they said, oh, don't interact with that person, and it's like no one knows what that person is and until they give their, I guess, review of that person said they weren't going to do this unless I went to this location.
Speaker 1:And they said I didn't want to do that. And then someone else says yes, I was approached by that person too. And then the next thing they do is report them to facebook and say please keep an eye out on this, this and and this, which is great. You know it should be more of that.
Speaker 2:How do you deal with the reputation Because it sounds like as long as you either you hold it in a good way or a bad way, it literally will stay with you.
Speaker 1:It will. I usually tell people. You know we were talking about Megan earlier.
Speaker 1:Yeah tell people. You know we were talking about megan earlier. Yeah, I have friends that are friends with megan and friends that are friends with me, and this just happened. Recently there was one new model on one of the groups pensacola creatives group and said that she wanted to do a photo shoot, if anybody's interested in doing a trade for photos. And I sent her a message. I said you don't know me from anybody, but if you're interested in not interested in doing some fashion stuff, once it got warmer she responded back. She goes well, I don't know what, I'm going to be able to do it, but that would be great. And I said well, this is what I was thinking. You know, go out to grand boulevard and shoot some fashion. Here's a couple sample photos. But feel free to bring a friend, definitely. And if you have any mutual friends that we are, check with them to see if they can tell you about me.
Speaker 1:And Megan was one of her friends and I don't know if she did. But then the girl said, yes, let's do something once it warms up, once it warms up. So to me I'm I'm glad the girl is being leery about a person especially a guy shooting pictures for them.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I've just I've seen it happen in a shoot over in pensacola where you had the mom there and the daughter there there and it was a trade for photo shoot and you're shooting pictures. I was one of the photographers at shooting pictures and these drunk people were on the beach and they started screaming pedophile, pedophile.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, it was insane, but the guy that was the guy that was running the event ended up calling the police. Police came down and they moved their thing and they had like 12 bottles of alcohol and these guys and the policeman ended up telling him because, sir, you and your whole party.
Speaker 1:And they moved their thing and they had like 12 bottles of alcohol, oh wow. And the policeman ended up telling him sir, you and your whole party needs to leave now or we're going to get to take you to downtown to the jail. What, oh yeah, it's insane, and I'm talking to the mom going is the person blind? It's like photographer, photographer, photographer, photographer, model, model, model. And we had everything from. You know, there's like a four-year-old boy up to like a, yeah, 50-year-old guy and they're all wanting to be models and it's like, if you don't see what's going on, you're the problem. It's weird situation awareness.
Speaker 2:Please, yeah, what? Yeah? Well, to summarize that point uh, make sure you, uh, if you're a model, make sure you check in who you know before you even go to that photographer.
Speaker 1:Second be, careful yes Be careful. Yeah, do your research.
Speaker 2:Yeah, see, Jim said it right here Research, research. Anyways, let's put the focus back on you Over 30 years as a creative director. How has your role and approach evolved with the changing landscape of advertising and media and what are some of the few things that stayed the same throughout your career, regardless of how things turned out?
Speaker 1:I remember when I was younger, over 30 years, did I say that somewhere?
Speaker 2:it's been a couple it was in your bio, actually on your website.
Speaker 1:I better edit that. I laugh because I used to lie and tell everybody that I was 37. And I still do sometimes. But my mom stopped me and she goes. Jimmy, you need to quit saying you're 37. She goes. I know you're older than that, I go, but, mom, you're only 50.
Speaker 2:She goes oh okay.
Speaker 1:Well then can you at least tell them you're 42? And I get the biggest kick out of that.
Speaker 2:But what was the question again? Oh, the question is basically how. How did you change your role? How, what was your role like in your approach as a creative director and the advertising and media, and how has that changed throughout the over the years? Basically, Well, a lot of it's still the same.
Speaker 1:Basically, as a creative director, you're either overseeing your copywriters, and your graphic designers and photographers. Depending on what I was involved in, photographers depending on what I was involved in, that's become a quicker job because if you've got a team of people that are working on a project and this one's getting done, this one's getting this done, but you already know this is the look that this person gives you, this is the copy that they typically, and that all of that's right for the client that you're working with.
Speaker 1:Whereas things that have changed since then when social media popped up um. One of my pet peeves is that all of a sudden there was social media experts everywhere and I'm like social influencers too. Oh, influencers, well, influencers, just to me that's the same thing. But hi, I'm Jim, buy this for me because I'm Jim, you know, to me that's not right. And as far as a social media expert, with the different changing environment, of it every day.
Speaker 1:You can't one person. You know if you have 20 people or 10 people you may be able to say we have a social media expert team, because that person can be monitoring TikTok and Instagram. That person can be doing? What's coming up next for the 12 year olds that are going to be on, whether or not they get permission?
Speaker 1:from their moms or not, and so all that is constantly changing. So one person coming to you and saying, hey, $5,000 a month, I'll cover all your social media and we'll take care of it. And we'll do two or three posts and we'll make sure you get likes. And if you need more Instagram followers, I'll just write another check for a hundred dollars and we can get you 10,000 of them that aren't real. You know, things like that have happened. What's the proof is in the pudding. I don't know what that means, other than you, once you taste it, you know that it's good.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Is where I think it's coming from. So if you do things traditionally, even though that you're using the current media, you're still going to get those results. People are going to follow you. You can't do a yellow page ad now, because there's no yellow pages, so you're finding those types of things. You make sure that your phone number is on your website and it's on your social media if you're wanting people to contact you.
Speaker 1:If you don't want them to contact you, you don't put it on your Facebook page. So you still have to look at all those variables of what you're wanting to do with your campaign.
Speaker 2:Yeah, am.
Speaker 1:I wanting to get people to go to my Instagram page or to watch my YouTube video, and you know, subscribe.
Speaker 2:Yeah, what do you think they're doing wrong based on what do you know is successful?
Speaker 1:The influencers, they weren't doing anything. I, I want to say they weren't doing anything wrong. They were doing things that are unethical Because it was more about I have a pretty face, not me them, and if you do this and pay me this, I'll make sure that they see this pin. Oh, I showed it in front of my face. I don't need to do that. I need to tell you that you need it and you need to agree with what I'm thinking.
Speaker 1:And it's like you're telling me that your self-promotion is going to make my product jump off the shelves, when I don't think it's going to. And if it does, well, if my name was Kim Kardashian and she thought it was going to jump off the sales, it would for her base, because she told them to, yeah, and she's already sold something to them. But if I'm just have a number of followers and I think you're going to get it, because all my followers are 16 year old female blonde- hair or red hair.
Speaker 2:you may not, so it's sounds like they're way too focused on statistics and just trying to get them like really they're getting, just trying to get their face out there, yeah, yeah, well, uh, one of the things that I love. What you said was earlier in the conversation. You said that, uh, the photo of santa claus and, you know, the hand of the mom. What was the equivalent of that? You said that was your favorite. That was one of your favorite words.
Speaker 1:It was one of my emotional ones, yeah.
Speaker 2:Is there an equivalent for that in advertising and media?
Speaker 1:Well, I think about. We talked about judging awards before.
Speaker 1:Yes yes, back when I was 25, working at the first agency I worked for, I started looking at what's winning these awards and stuff and it always had been big budget clients because they had the dollars to do the research and get the talent and all of that together. Well, there was one ad, I forget which it was in Alabama town, but it was two inches wide by two inches tall newspaper ad. The ad only said Aw Shucks, what Aw Shucks. And it was for an oyster bar in alabama. And because you shuck oysters and oh yeah, and if you knew anything about oysters, when you, when you saw ah shucks, you just you just smiled, and then you looked at it and it was so and so's.
Speaker 1:I don't remember the name, so that it's only been what?
Speaker 2:55 years ago.
Speaker 1:But 50 years ago, but not even that long. But it had their name, address and phone number and that small ad and it ended up winning a national award because it was so creative and budget-wise they didn't spend probably $20 to get that ad to run on a newspaper. Yeah, something so simple, but so efficient, wise, they didn't spend probably twenty dollars to get that ad no way newspaper.
Speaker 2:Yeah yeah, something so simple but so so efficient. Do you think that specific style of work or art is so lost because everyone is so focused on getting your face and they over complicate with so many visuals, whereas something's just as simple?
Speaker 1:as that it's. It's, like you said, getting complicated with the visuals. To me, I relate it to logo design.
Speaker 1:Yeah, a lot of people make their logo design or they get their logo design from the t-shirt shop that they're wanting to sell t-shirts yeah and so this 12 by 12 inch logo looks great on a t-shirt, maybe multi-colors, but then if they bring it down to a one inch square yeah, that's the main point, one inch square you may not be able to read the name of the place, you may not be able to figure out what it is. It'd be like looking at a quarter and going, okay, you know what is this guy's face? What did he do? All you see is his face. You can't read the type around the corner yeah.
Speaker 1:So we used to say that if and it's not even because of smoking, yeah, you can't even. We used to say if your logo looked good on a match box oh, that's how you that's, that's yeah which was basically a one inch square or one and a half inch square. If you could read it there and kind of feel the feel for the company, then you've got a good start for a logo. Oh, wow, yeah, if you could read it there and kind of feel the feel for the company, then you've got a good start for a logo, oh wow.
Speaker 1:And it's the same way if you look at Nike or any of the IBM or any of those people. Ibm didn't have a computer in the background IBM didn't have a computer. Okay, I'll use Telecommunications company they were a computer company first, and then Apple came out and started competing against them. And then you recognize the Apple now more than you do.
Speaker 2:Oh wow, see, I'm glad you mentioned that, because IBM, like who is that? But then when you mention Apple, and then you have that simple logo, just Apple's, like oh, I know what that is. Yeah, what was IBM's logo?
Speaker 1:It was an I, a, b and an m and that's it I think it had a couple of lines underneath it, that's it yeah that's how I want to say. It was integrated business computing or something like do you think that looks memorable to you? Versus the apple logo. Well, it didn't tell the story, but it told the you know. I would think that their company probably started with the full name of what?
Speaker 2:yeah and then, once they became known for selling their computers, then it shrunk to that shortened it yeah yeah, yeah, I that doesn't ring a bell as much as apple does yeah, well, if you, if you looked at any any logo from through the years, yeah the processes of how they've changed it.
Speaker 1:It's usually to make it more concise and eliminate the clutter. So you, you see it right away.
Speaker 2:Yeah so the simplicity is. It's still somehow out of all this noise. Simplicity is king yep 100 is there. I'm assuming that's the same way in photo. Just don't don do too much. Sometimes just a little bit of adjustments and it makes the whole entire photo. It's like art, yes.
Speaker 1:Don't overthink it. Yeah, you know, it's like knowing when to start when you're painting a painting, yeah or not? Start, stop.
Speaker 2:Stop okay.
Speaker 1:Starting's easy You've got a blank canvas. But it's not that easy because you still have to slap that first piece of paper going. I screwed up.
Speaker 2:Get another canvas or you just continue until it comes out um but the stop it part is just you know you want to, you know you think there's something better, but it's already good enough.
Speaker 1:Yeah it's to the point of this has got an impact. I think if I do some more, I'm going to muddy it up or, you know, weaken the it's going to weaken the whole image.
Speaker 2:Well, speaking of which, um, in both uh media, uh, advertising and photography, were there any people that you looked up to as far for inspiration?
Speaker 1:every one of the graphic designers in in the you know graphic design magazine world and you know in your, a lot of it was through magazines you go through ad week. You'd look and see what the new creative was and what they were doing things for and you'd go, wow, that was, how did they get that process?
Speaker 1:and then you do some research on it. You'd find out that it started out as this little idea in the brainstorming area and then they said, okay, now we got to make that a little bit better and add some more words to get it going and then make it happen. A friend of mine worked at the first agency that I worked for.
Speaker 1:We had hired him as an art director and a really good illustrator, but he ended up leaving that agency and working for a cross town agency and it was good because the agency I was working we were both working for ended up quitting paying their media bills, which is something you can't yeah so he ended up hiring me over at that agency afterwards. Well, when he left that agency he went back up to st louis where he was from, and you've heard of Budweiser. Well, him and his sister, he went to work for the agency that had that and the agency had just lost the account. It was like in the end of November, middle of December.
Speaker 1:They lost the account but they had had an ad that was going on the Super Bowl. Well, he was the creative director on that account and he had another friend that worked at that agency who was the copywriter. Okay, well, michael and his sister growing up they had one of those little inflatable pools in the backyard that were so big around and they'd fill it up and they ended up putting some lights around it and some grass in it, just because they thought it was cool and they were going to put fish or stuff in it.
Speaker 1:Well, the frogs came there.
Speaker 2:Oh, oh. Now we're going back to this. Is there a dead frog at the end of this story?
Speaker 1:there's not a dead frog in this one. Well, he thought it was cool because he could hear the riveting and going on at night well, that's when the bud Frogs. He came up with that concept that you need to have these frogs, three of them, sitting on it, and the first one goes Bud Wise.
Speaker 2:No way it all was from the frogs.
Speaker 1:Yep, they got that idea, concept from the frogs when he was younger.
Speaker 2:No way.
Speaker 1:So he told that story to him and he thought this is how I could relate it to this alcohol which won tons of awards but he got recognized for it, but the other agency was the one that continued it on, um, because they had lost the business. But but wise or yeah with the frogs, with the frog saying research that one. You get a kick out of it what the heck, I didn't know, that friend that was, the copywriter got credit for the copywriting, which was bud wise, or?
Speaker 2:so all the all, the all the things that we see that are, like you know, very high, valuable, high value company it sometimes, some of them, you don't realize that it just comes from something so simple and so mundane. Yeah, what the?
Speaker 1:heck, yeah, and it's, and it's insane. When we saw I, I we had asked him he goes. Yeah, we lost the business, but you know, they still asked about some stuff and it's like the, they tried to do some more stuff and some of it was funny and some of it wasn't, and but it was Okay. So when I'm going to go shower, I'm going to pay attention to water. Okay, that's a great brand right there.
Speaker 1:You pay attention to me. That's what creatives are Really. They see things that other people don't notice or take notice of. You know, because it's like we're sitting in here and I look over there and there's nice shadows on that column over there. That would be cool to have someone just sitting there with a little light on the bottom. Yeah, going into, you know, to their face. So it'd be, you know, moody.
Speaker 1:But yeah dark, you know. So you just see these things and you try to, you know, figure out how you can use them in your next project, or you know, something. Or you just write them down in a book and go okay, I'm brain dead right now, let me figure out what I can do. And you come from the book oh, I remember this, let's try this.
Speaker 2:Yeah, okay, that's a bit of your creative process. You just look for little things and then you just use it for the next.
Speaker 1:Well, in photography, you know it's like knowing site locations to shoot stuff you can write down in a notebook and say hey, I know that the beach is usually nice here at this time a year because the sun sets over the gulf not over the city.
Speaker 1:You know things along those lines. Or you know you can go in the fall to any of the malls when it's not crowded and you can shoot fashion stuff and just get permission with the people that own it, and you know your set design is already done and you just have fun, you know yeah find a little bit about how she got in, and yes, so they will.
Speaker 1:The listener will experience that. And then she, if she has a copy of it or the location on the web for us, and say, hey, go look at this, it'll answer some of those questions that you have and that will help that person out, yeah, and also I wanted to with summer.
Speaker 2:There was one thing that I realized mid-halfway of the conversation was I realized that I really wanted to break this trope of oh, models are hot, blah, blah, that's all they are.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and then models are professionals yes and.
Speaker 2:But my favorite part that happened midway was when she started going about you know, you know, I love nerdy movies. I loved it. And then, when I started making the connections, she said, oh, I love lord of rings, I love all this and this and that. And then when she connected it to her desire of being an actor or, yeah, actress. And then connecting that to the modeling, it just all connects into one dot and that, being able to break beyond that specific, typical stereotype of a hot model.
Speaker 1:I'd love it when that happens and to me I would tell her listen, you're your own person, you're, you're you. Hey, anybody can be a model. I said I can be a model yeah I won't be the same model like you are, because it's a different thing, but your personality is going to outshine other people that look just like you once you project it, and if you're not projecting it, you might get beat out by someone next to you that looks just like you that's projecting it.
Speaker 1:My wife told me today, coming up here, she was still a little tipsy. She goes Jim, I didn't get to read what you were going to say, and I go well, because I didn't get to write it down and give it to you. And she goes just be concise, don't ramble on, just say it. I go. Well, I know I ramble when I get talking and get excited about something.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but to me in this kind of give and take thing it's like you're feeding off of each other yeah, so you ask a question, I give you a response that triggers you to go this way, versus the way we're thinking about, or whatever yeah and to me that's just cool. And to me, if you're, if you're concerned about what you're going to say, you tend to screw up yeah, you're not concerned and you just let it come from here yeah then it's the real you and it's like, well, they don't love you or they're going to hate you, but you're going to get what you give them.
Speaker 2:Yeah and uh, it's that, bro. Screw the perfect version, if you like oh yeah well I'm like I want a raw real.
Speaker 1:I don't think anybody's perfect. If you're perfect, then you know I joke with. I don't know if you know Michael Boone.
Speaker 2:Wait Boo Media.
Speaker 1:Yeah, boo Media, I love him. We shot today at the event. Wait today, yeah, well, he was shooting the video and I was shooting stills.
Speaker 1:And I tell him he goes why don't you shoot more real estate photography? I go well, it really doesn't excite me. It's one of those things that, yes, it'll pay some bills and but I don't want to spend that much time making a thing that's getting ready to be sold for somebody for the amount of money that they're going to pay me on it to make it look like a Barbie house and that becomes. It starts looking over process where you don't see any shadows in there.
Speaker 1:It looks like, well, how come there's warm light there and no warm light on that wall because they color corrected that side and there's no shadows. I'm like, do real people live in here or is this an illustration? And he goes yeah, but that's what they're buying. I go I understand that if you're selling a million dollar house, you want to see the most the.
Speaker 1:Thing you know rose petals floating in the air, but that's not real. So that switches to that ethical question again. You know it's like okay if you make it too good, like if I if I shot this hundred thousand dollar home in Fort Walton versus the million dollar home in South Walton and this one had scratches on the wall and this and this which one?
Speaker 2:The million dollar or the the $100,000.
Speaker 1:Okay, and I went in and fixed in Photoshop all those little dots. Oh, that's a lie and I looked out the window and, instead of seeing the trash cans, I made it to where you saw trees or stuff that you can do, that's not real. You know that's leading on, oh, leading on 100, because if you went in there and you know the outlet you see is matching that outlet over there and there's a hole in the wall here, there's something wrong with this picture because it's not the same one you took that that's yeah, what's the right term for that?
Speaker 1:I I mean, rather than lying, and it's unethical, it's, it's, it's forgery, so it's, you know you're forging the look of your picture. Yes, it is, but I don't know. That's the reason I don't shoot stuff, because it is. It is too easy for someone to say you know, can you fix this? I go, yes, we can. But all I like someone to say you know, can you fix this? I go, yes, we can. But all I like to do is you know, get the line straight you know, because you're getting distortion when you're shooting wide angles.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So, if you can straighten up some lines to where it looks real and that's what they're going to see, because you wouldn't want to see the curve walls on the side. Exactly, you're in a Willy Wonka house now, right.
Speaker 2:Anyways, we just took a quick break. We are almost done with this interview. Don't worry, guys, this will not be the last time that you see Jim Clark I'm going to make sure he comes back, for another episode.
Speaker 1:Are you open to that? I'm open to anything. There we go, see.
Speaker 2:All right, don See. All right, don't forget to like and subscribe, and, oh, where can people find you, by the way?
Speaker 1:You can find me on my website, which is IamJimClarkcom. You can find me on Instagram at IamJimClark it's kind of consistent. And you can't find me on TikTok yet, even though my stepdaughter says I should be on it and I'm like you're crazy. I'm on LinkedIn as as jim clark, and you keep going facebook. I think it's something else. I want to say, I want to say ad3.com.
Speaker 1:But jim clark, if you search for that okay and see all of this and my wife sitting here, you'll, you'll be end up, you'll say you'll find it well I actually wanted to get into.
Speaker 2:Can you tell us about the amuse magazine? So how I, how we met was? I think it was a. It was a shoot in seoul house. Yes, uh, one of the things that I found was impressive, that was the magazine which is amuse, and I'm not gonna take the lead. I would like you to go ahead and tell the audience why and what is Amuse magazine. Share us the stories.
Speaker 1:It's really exciting.
Speaker 2:Yes, it is no it's not.
Speaker 1:Do you remember that little thing where everybody had to stay at home because of COVID?
Speaker 2:I think it was Pandemic. Yes, COVID-19.
Speaker 1:Yes, that happened and it was real and I was in my living room and looking at my computer going because my clients weren't having their events and I wasn't shooting very much photography or doing graphic design work. And then my wife was sitting behind me making money working for the company she works for out of New York.
Speaker 1:So I said well, I better do something to be productive or I'm going to works for out of New York. So I said, well, I better do something to be productive or I'm going to get kicked out of the house. So, other than starting to make her breakfast, lunch, dinner, go get groceries, all that fun stuff. I decided, well, I've got a lot of pictures and I've done a lot of events and I like some of it and I like sharing it. And since I was into digital printing, because I had done a couple of books before, I said, let me try doing that. And so I did the first one with existing pictures that I had wrote some stories, and this one is the 12th one I've done, which is, yeah, it's got a beautiful model, that's real nice lady, but then it's also got, you know, pictures on the back which you can't see very well, which is kind of funny. But this little this, where is it? It was this little kid. He just passed.
Speaker 2:Wait, is that Candace? Huh, On Candy Candace. He was at the this guy. Yeah, wasn't he at the Mexican restaurant thatican? Restaurant that we were maybe, yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 1:I I can't remember I don't know where all these people are from but what? You know, west is an artist locally. Yes basically I put in here that it's a publications of things I like, love and want to share with others. I hope you like it too, but if you don't, that's okay and that leaves me room to complain about stuff.
Speaker 1:When I want to complain about stuff and they say I really don't like it and I go, that's okay yeah um, but I started doing these for one, knowing that after covid was over, we'll be getting back out in the world yes and so I jokingly said, because to produce one other than the time which is just on me, um, it took about 15 to get one produced and shipped to your house.
Speaker 1:So I call it a 15 business card, okay. So if someone has an interest in my photography and they want to see samples, but they're too lazy to go to the website or something, and I'm talking to them in person and they're like yeah, we really want to do this, we're thinking about doing a festival. We need some photographers to do this. I'm like, okay, well, I've got a Seabreeze Jazz Festival edition. I can give you that and you can see the samples of work for what you're needing. And they'll go oh, that's cool, how much do you charge? Then you can go into the details and negotiate and all that good stuff. But after doing a couple of them, I found that it's more of a a passion, creative release of while I have downtime in doing what I'm normally doing or waiting to get approval on ads that I've already done, or brochures, or whatever the case may be, I can.
Speaker 1:Instead of just sitting there doing nothing, I can work on another copy. So I decided I would do four a year. Um, and people always ask well, what do you do quarterly? Do you want in this month, one? This? I go no, I do four a year. I may do one in january quarterly. No, well, it could be quarterly if you're doing it I mean, there's like with equal spaces. Oh, okay, yeah, but I may do one in january okay and then do one in oct. November, december.
Speaker 3:Oh, okay, and there's four years. That's a lot of space.
Speaker 2:Well, yeah.
Speaker 1:Damn. Because, it's a self-promotion piece, but I think my picture's in maybe one or two at the most. So it's self-promotion in a piece that you're promoting your work rather than yourself.
Speaker 1:Other than people say, well, I like your writing on this article and if I wrote it it's great. If someone, a friend of mine, wrote it, I say, well, that was, you know, my wife, you know those kinds of things, but it's, it's so much fun and it's a it's an easy, you know icebreaker. When you're meeting somebody, what do you do? And if you have one with you, you can go go. Well, this is what I just did this last month, and here's a studio over in pensacola and I went and did some behind the scenes and had fun, because they were shooting video and they were setting up all these great lights and I was getting to shoot over the video. Guys, yeah and get cool, you know stills, um, and and it helped the megan to- the to you want to help promote her.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah yeah, so that's where it came about. I used it, for you know, I've got one edition that has pictures that we were talking about dementia with my mom, or pictures from all of that. Where I found all these pictures? That, um, they were color, but the color in the photos had faded. So I photographed them with my iPhone and put them in the computer and then just went crazy with the saturation, and so all these pictures are like intense colors and they're family pictures that mom probably took when she was younger and so I would show them to her. Now she goes oh, I remember this. That's when the three of you were in that yellow bus and the bus is like bright yellow now, and so it was fun for me to see what would happen in doing that.
Speaker 1:Plus, I learned more about Lightroom at that time, so I was able to do the coloring.
Speaker 2:It sounds like this was your for the like, a better word, a vessel for you to uh use as a playground, to you know, keep the creative spark going, because you know, whenever we have a space in in our work and it's just what, where's the next stop? You're gonna lose if you're, if you get too complacent with that.
Speaker 1:So I think that you don't have that rhythm going yeah, it's like you got to catch back up to get it going again.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so that was a way for you to keep on your toes. Was there one thing that you learned that surprised you throughout that process of making a magazine, one thing that really surprised you?
Speaker 1:the easiest one is that if you don't get an editor or you don't have a friend, edit that grammarly is not always correct if you use grammarly and I found when I did another book that I used the word that way too many times yeah, but I guess it would. But with this I always go back to that statement of if you like it, that's okay, and I and my wife will end up finding some mistakes and ones that she didn't edit, and so I'll say well, I meant to do that. And we used to say in advertising all the time if you found a typo in your ad, we would say that was for marketing purposes, we wanted to find out who could catch it. Total bogus. But everybody would laugh when you said that and they'd say it's already corrected on the next one.
Speaker 1:So if it, ran again, and they typically wanted a discount on their last ad. Okay.
Speaker 1:Well, you got responses on it, because you've already told me that you found something in it that you didn't think was in there I go. There's a period missing, or whatever. Such a tiny thing but it just has such a major consequence to any special in that world such a major consequence to any expression that well, I would tell people that if you didn't study english when you were growing up, start doing it, because, you never know, you might get into advertising and need to write oh yeah because my grammar is not there okay, going back to ai, you know, chad jpd can now start writing that for you.
Speaker 2:So what is the point of doing that?
Speaker 1:that is true, but, um, my first writing experience was just recently with ai. I did a facebook post and I said, um, one thing that I was going to do got canceled. So I said I'm looking to photograph something tonight because some things have changed, and can you give me any suggestions? What should I shoot? What or who should I photograph? And then I said I saw this feature on Facebook that said AI, and you click the AI button and it takes what you just wrote and you can get a short version, a long version or a professional version. And so first I clicked professional and it just didn't even look right. So I just went to a long version next and it was like I don't know four or five sentences well, yes, the golden hour would be a great time to take pictures and you should stroll around the woods doing this. And it was like this person is, you know, drunk or something.
Speaker 1:I know the influence of something other than reality, which I guess ai is kind of like that but, I don't know, I don't even know where I was going with that, but that's my experience with ai on that part. I have you know, grammarly gets my grammar more better, okay, even though I don't think Scrate all the time. It's just like spelling, but now it's so fast it'll check your spelling for you a lot quicker.
Speaker 2:Well, where you were going with that was you were trying to give me the answer on whether AI will replace the need of having to learn English. That's where that question was coming from. Yes, yes, need of having to learn english.
Speaker 1:that's what we that's where that question is. It will do some molding and it may grow into molding more um I I still don't think it's going to replace the human touch or the style well, kind of like a drunk yes, I'll go to the morning, go to the beach that frog's not dead, it's just laying there
Speaker 2:still okay. So we're still safe for now.
Speaker 1:Yes, okay I think we're safe, other than it's. If it's, you know, some photo editors may not think they are because you can now put in ai your style of the way you shoot and then you upload all your pictures and then, just clicks it and it does all those photos in your style and lighting and coloring and everything. So it may it'll affect it that way, but I think it's going to affect your monetization. You'll make less money if it's doing it and you're charging by the hour.
Speaker 2:How would you be able to tell?
Speaker 1:um, well then, that would bring the ethics part. This conversation is all about ethics guys. Yes, go on if you want to lie to your client and say, yes, it took me 100 hours to do 100 photos and they all look the same lighting and stuff. And there's ai out there now that how come I can do it on my instagram post just like that? Well, you're gonna have some issues, because what's that?
Speaker 2:always you got some explaining to do, well wait before the advent of ai, though, we have some workflow. We got to a point where, okay, there's a sentiment that I agree with the faster you work, uh, the more punish you get. Okay, now going to the moral ethics, we perfect our craft. We get to a point where, okay, this is going to take me, what? Two hours, but we don't necessarily tell the clients how long we're working on it. So where?
Speaker 1:is that that becomes a billing and estimate thing. I will do this job for you for $1,500. Thing. I will do this job for you for $1,500 and I don't know for sure how long it'll take, but my product is this good that it's worth the $1,500.
Speaker 1:Whereas if I do that, I don't know 10 more times instead of it being worth $15,000, it may be worth $7,500 or something 15,000, it may be worth 7,500 or something, if that's what you want to build them. If they can't get that same product from your competition, then you're okay. But it's like now if you want to buy a Picasso and if it's the original and you're going to spend millions of dollars, whereas if you go to AI and say, hey, I'd like somebody with their eye looking left when their other eye is looking straight at you and it's got a pineapple on its head and it's in the style of Picasso, you can get that for $20. And if you're happy with that, you can blow it up on a wall and use your printer and paste it together. It depends on what you value it for.
Speaker 2:That's fair. And then on top of that, it's like you know how we've worked so much to get to our process where it's so efficient, but we tell our clients, yeah, this will take me, what a week, then we're done, when we're already done with ours. Do you think that's unethical, or what?
Speaker 1:I think it's unethical.
Speaker 2:Really yeah what.
Speaker 1:Because you know the truth and you're not relaying the truth to your client. Okay, let me rephrase it a different way. When we first started making ads and you didn't have computers and stuff, you would draw a square in the size of the ad that you wanted to do. You would put paste on the back of this thing, stick it here, put this here, stick it here, and it actually took that amount of time. Once that became computerized, if you did that same thing for the same price, you would have competitors or anybody that had a computer that was faster than yours saying, ok, I can do that same job for half the money.
Speaker 2:OK.
Speaker 1:And the kid in college. Oh, I just learned how to do that yesterday. I can do that for $40. And they're charging you $1,200.
Speaker 1:Well, yes, they will use that kid for that $40. And if it consistently looks good for the next one they've got, you're out of all your money. And that kid's only making $40 and realizing that he should have, or she should have, valued that at $1,000. And it's the hard thing, it's that whole education thing Today. It's it's the hard thing, that's that whole education thing. You know, today, like photography, if I say I'm going to shoot a portrait of you, a headshot, and it's going to be $125. Okay, and you say okay. And then if I say next time it's going to be $500. Okay, and they're saying, what's the difference? Well, the difference is I was using, I was using 1500 worth of equipment and lenses and all that good stuff.
Speaker 1:And the next one now I'm using 7500 worth, so my tools to make that end product that should look better than the first one are more on my end, so I have to pass those on to my clients so you can do that okay and it's the same way in video. It's like okay if you're only using one light or two lights versus you know, a beauty dish and this and this and this and gels and this and the staff they're doing makeup, this, this, this.
Speaker 1:It's going to be more expensive than you saying okay, you look good, let me get a little powder in to get that shine off and take it.
Speaker 2:So this should cost less than that, unless they're happy with the price and also the easy way to even leverage the price that you want to get is building your personal brand, because sure, you can get the exact kind of like same result from other photographers that are charging really expensive work. But if there's a client that let's say, no, I don't want that photographer, I want Jim Clark. Kind of like same result from other photographers that are charging really expensive work. But if there's a client that let's say, no, I don't want that photographer, I want jim clark. I don't care about the price, I want the jim clark quality. It's like where did how do you, how do you, how did you get started in building your brand to get those clients that actually just want you, not the price? It?
Speaker 1:becomes a customer service type of thing yeah and it's a turnaround. You know because like you said, today everybody wants it quick. Um, you know you can go shoot stuff, say, if you shoot an event. I'll just use that example, because I have some photographers that get upset with me when I turn around my work for an event.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the same day that I shot it okay because they want to have a week or a couple of days to do some good editing. Well, and I tell them this straight up, I'm going. If I'm shooting an event that I'm not getting paid for but I like doing it, I will do a quick edit and deliver it on facebook if they want it that way, or send it to them and say thank you for your business. If you ever need photography done and you have a budget for it, let me know. I'd be glad to. Okay, they look at that as oh, he really wants to work with us. He did stuff for free. It looks good.
Speaker 1:It is not polished like I might get with this person, but since we didn't pay him, maybe they didn't spend as much time with them.
Speaker 1:And then when they say they want me, it's usually because my personality is joking around. It's like hey, listen, one of the ladies today, a couple of the ladies. I took pictures of these three younger ladies in front, first with these two guys that were they. They must have been dancers. And another thing, because they had. They had suspenders on no shirts. Oh wow, pants. Yes, so they were. They were taking pictures with them. I took a picture with them and then the the three ladies behind them said well at the recording.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much for doing that. Um, we just had a bit of a technical issue, but we are okay. Okay, we have another technical issue now I am going to flip the screen of the fx3. You were taking photos of ladies.
Speaker 1:Yeah you were talking about if someone were to pick you to do something, and why would they use Jim Clark? And I was using the example of like today. There was three younger ladies and two of the people that were part of the event going on. They had suspenders on, no shirts on and long pants. Might be strippers yeah, I don't know if they were that or not, but they could have been. But they were pretty fun and took pictures of them. And then the next ladies in line were a little older and they go. You're not going to take pictures of the older ladies, I go. If you can show me the older ladies where they're at, I'll go take pictures of them. But I want to take pictures of you next and they're like okay, okay, just right at that moment.
Speaker 1:So it's just a matter of you know, realizing what's going on in the situation and saying, okay, she thinks that I'm only taking pictures of young people and they're having fun just like the other ones. So the next thing I did was got them with the two guys and took their picture as well and it's like smoothed it out, and then they're like well, do you guys do these pictures all the time you know?
Speaker 1:we'd love to get pictures and I was like you want to call me? Just call me. Look, you know, talk to Symphonia. They'll give you my contact information.
Speaker 2:Well, the information, so well the thing that you said um, you know you provide all that customer service. It's great, but it also kind of opens the door of being taken advantage of. So how do you protect yourself from that?
Speaker 1:you get taken advantage of okay, and you go and you go. I learned from that, though oh yeah, I've gotten taken advantage of many times and you know, I've even had shoots where I've they said, yeah, we're gonna pay you cash at the thing and not a problem and at the end of the thing, they pay you in cash and it's half of what you thought it was going to be.
Speaker 1:Wow, because you've talked about it and you just say okay, well, I learned a lesson with that. And you take your money and go buy something to eat for dinner and say it was a fun night.
Speaker 1:But you don't typically call those people back when you want to do something, yeah, and then they contact you and you go I'm sorry, we're not actually doing those types of things anymore and they assume that it's photography and it's dealing with people that aren't paying you and it's hard. Because, yeah, the hard part is when you're you enjoy doing it and you had a good shoot and you got some nice images and you're like man, I wish I could get some more of that cute little kid on the motorcycle with his dad, or whatever the case may be. Um, but as a business owner, you have to look at it the other way. It's like would you rather not do anything and, you know, not get, you know, taken advantage of, or would you want to get taken advantage of? Or would you want to get taken advantage and take a risk? Or do you need to look at your contract?
Speaker 1:If you have a contract? I don't use a lot of those because I'm old school. It's like shake your hands Really, yeah, unless it's a big project. Okay, because the way I look at it, if people don't want to work with you, they'll find a way to get out of anything, and even if you have a contract, they're going.
Speaker 1:Yes, but we didn't mean everything in there. We thought they were saying this the amount of money that you spend in court is going to cost you more than the amount that you lost, and that one's usually a hard thing to swallow. But there's people out there that take advantage of you, and there's just as many people out there that want to pay twice as much as you're charging to get your work. You just have to find a way to get to those people.
Speaker 2:The worst part is being taken advantage of and then letting that derail your desire of wanting to become better and letting that derail your desire of wanting to become better.
Speaker 1:It's just Well, you got to look at it, as it's not something you did, it's something they did to you.
Speaker 2:That's fair. But then, when that happens, you're in this mindset of shit I should have known better. You start beating yourself up for it.
Speaker 1:Well then you write up the contract the next time and they have it and they sign it, and they still do it and you go, oh well, that piece of paper wasn't worth the ink that's on it, you know.
Speaker 1:And you and you can say, okay, well, I'll have to take it to the small claims court or something but then you go, do that process once and you're like, okay, well, I spent two hours down at a courthouse trying to get this done and they said, well, you both are liable for it, or whatever the case may be. There's instances like that and in my business I said well, forget it, we just won't do business with them anymore. If you can't afford to pay your bills which they don't want to hear that because they know they can then we shouldn't be working with you.
Speaker 2:That comes back to that speculative work for people.
Speaker 1:It's like if I do an ad for you and then you like it the way it looks and the whole concept and everything, and then you give it to the people that have been doing your ads before and they copy it, that's just giving away your work.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it's BS. I know, but giving away free work also makes it harder for the competition to ask for what they're selling for, because when you have people that are just getting everything that they can from, they're basically like bottom of the barrel. It makes it harder for someone like you to charge what you want to charge, but then when you have so much of them doing what they're, that goes against what you're trying to achieve.
Speaker 1:Well, the speculative work you should be doing now would be say, if you were really into Nike shoes and you wanted to do work for Nike and you knew you were just a one person shop, but I still want to do work for Nike Well, you would contact Nike and find out what their process is. You would do your speculative work and contact the people that you would know have those ethics yeah, this again and say, hey, I'd like to show you this.
Speaker 1:It's something I'm thinking about and if you'd like to use it, you know we can negotiate later. Yeah, and with them, being a company that they are, they don't want to be, you know, talked bad about yeah doing stuff like that, so you'd have more of a chance to get what you want to make for it, and possibly even more, by just being straight up and going straight for what you want to do versus say, a new company that was doing something that just wanted to get started yeah didn't want to pay anything.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's, it's all a game.
Speaker 2:Remember that game of life thing where you twist the thing well, sometimes there are some people out there that constantly get the wrong ones, so, and it's really rough and none of them go directly to jail and collect 200. Wow, um okay, we're almost out of done here, so we're gonna go with a few more questions and then we're gonna get you out of here, jim, okay all right okay, so, as the owner of clark and company yes, I looked this up.
Speaker 2:All right, what? What's your philosophy or approach that you believe that has been the key number one, the key to success, to your agency and longevity in the business?
Speaker 1:Well, the funny thing, when I saw that question, it was like. It was like that was my agency back in 1992.
Speaker 2:And I don't push it anymore, really.
Speaker 1:Okay, Just because some people that know me from the advertising world still use my services. And plus, when we were first, I think we had like seven people on staff and you would get one of those little things hurricanes come through here and put all your clients out of business for a few months and your agency would pay their employees until you ran out of money to not be able to pay them anymore until we got on their business.
Speaker 1:So we had one hurricane that happened and we reduced our staff by half. Well, if I had seven people it was a little more than half. But then we decided that we were going to try for New Orleans more business that way and started getting some businesses doing it over there. And then Katrina came and that it over there.
Speaker 3:And then Katrina Katrina. Katrina Katrina came, yes, and that hit our business.
Speaker 1:So after that I said, okay, yes, it's great to have a full staff on here. Um, but stressful it is. And I said, from here on out, and that's probably been, it is. And I said from here on out, and that's probably been, I don't know, 15 years, I I jokingly say that there's only three people working for my agency, and it's me myself and I. So, and usually you get a laugh like that and then I and they say well, what do you do if you get a bigger project? Yeah, you hire freelancers, just like the agency's hired you as a freelance prior to that so you go okay, well, I need a copywriter.
Speaker 1:This person's really good at that. Let me get her to do this yeah, and then I like the graphic design style of this person and I'll just oversee it as art direction you know, or account executive, and you just keep on going. So that's kind of where I'm at now. I've gotten lazier lately just because I enjoy the limited number of clients that I have, so I've started doing more photography because it's an instant gratification thing, yeah, Whether I'm getting paid for it or not.
Speaker 1:I still enjoy it Okay. So that's where I'm at with that. And you know where it goes from there? I don't know. I may. I may go back full circle to wanting to be more of an artist and produce work, that I can sell a product and lots of agencies have sold products before and even the collaborations with their clients that they were doing advertising for to do a joint thing which helped out the client, and their product became a product of the agency as well, and they shared revenues.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:That's very cool Okay. If you've got a chance to do a product. Do a product as well as your other stuff.
Speaker 2:Really Okay. Yeah, I actually did not know about that kind of thing because I'm not always what that is such a whole world that I well.
Speaker 1:I think it came about as somebody asking a question and we got a really good idea. But you know we would like you to make our product for us and you know we'll pull our name on it and get a percentage of revenues. You'll do it at this price and you know, go from there so it's really your product, but not, they just slapped their well it's. It's probably like a 60 40 kind of thing so okay it's your, your name, with their pieces of the product.
Speaker 2:You know they're like sony what associated with marvel studios, kind of thing. Yeah, you know, kind of like that or more.
Speaker 1:Like like beats headphones or something okay, you know, you got the company that made the headphones and then you've got the. You know, mogul that said I want it to be beats and I'm going to promote it and I'll be your oh, okay your promoter for it and everybody that trusts me and my brand and my ethics will buy it it comes back to the social media influencers.
Speaker 2:Well, to me promoting a product and they're influencing their influence, if they are.
Speaker 1:Let me rephrase it if you're an, I can influence you to leave the burning house, but if I yeah, I know it's as weird as that, but if I'm the fireman, you're going to believe the fireman that you need to leave that burning house more if you're just looking at me in the houses behind you but you may think yeah, well, she or he is cute, maybe I should leave with them. No, I'm married, I shouldn't do that yeah, so I'm gonna stay here and you know the end.
Speaker 1:It makes no sense but it. But if, if, if I'm p diddy or you know jay-z, and I've got my brand already made I'm not really an influencer, I'm more of a producer yeah, then you know that I've produced this act, this act, this act, this act.
Speaker 2:Okay, and now.
Speaker 1:My production staff all wears these headphones, and if you want your stuff to sound as good as my production staff's doing it for these people, you need to be wearing these headphones, because then you'll get the best quality out of them.
Speaker 2:You know so it's called product placement basically pretty pretty much when and shared revenues you know great this, uh, this video is sponsored by samsung. Samsung t9, a great whatever.
Speaker 1:And you can get your logo put on it for an extra $20.
Speaker 2:Oh, okay, there we go. Okay, we are actually going to save a lot of this question for the next one, because all the answers that you've given are freaking fantastic. Okay, well, good, seriously, thank you. So we're going to go. Unfortunately, we are also running out of time. We gotta get jim out of here too, and I gotta adjust the camera because I just realized that is also not zoomed out or zoomed in. It's fine, it's actually.
Speaker 2:It's funny to move closer no, closer, closer now, everything that you have shared from being a photographer from at the age of 16 or 17, from when your mom, um, being basically the one that lit the flame for you as a photographer, and then having gone through numerous experiences such as, like what you just said, your business just got hit by a lot of hurricanes and then being taken advantage of and then you went to. You learned a lot about the marketing, the ad agency, marketing slash, whatever but the you know, the lost art of creating a print. All of that, what were, what are some of the things, what are some of the key takeaways that you can share with the audience, with what you have learned in your journey as a creative?
Speaker 1:well, probably one of the biggest things was to try to follow your gut and what you're doing for somebody, because you'll probably have people that'll give you some pushback on why you're thinking about doing something a certain way because they don't see things the same way. You're kind of looking at them or having that feeling of, well, this would really work if I could get them to just change that to red and yeah purple or whatever it is, because it's more cohesive look and then they might try it in purple and they find out that it doesn't get a good response, then you have to go back again and say okay, can we try it one more time?
Speaker 1:okay, in the red, and then they get a better response or they don't. You know, it's a it's a crapshoot either way.
Speaker 1:But usually, like today, you see some of these commercials on tv and you're like whoever's doing their, not just their color grading, but the color placement I forget which the one commercial is, but it's got purple and so many different things and it's like this is awesome. It's like you're looking over here and there's purple over on this side and and by the end of it you're going that is a very nice spot. I'd like to watch it again, just for the prettiness of it. Yeah, and to me that makes you want to learn more about that product. You, you know, or see more about it. I don't know, as far as you know, what more that you're looking for there. No, that's a great answer, okay.
Speaker 2:That's a great answer. No, seriously, that is a wonderful answer. So now, what other advice would you give to the next generation of people that are coming into this career, because we're now? One of the biggest things that is so hard to accept is that we were once at our peak and we're now having to deal with competing other, younger people. The advantage that they have over us is time. And now I don't know if you've watched Cars, have you?
Speaker 1:You know the Disney movie the movie oh yeah, cars 3. I love it, lightning.
Speaker 2:McQueen is now competing with all the new modern cars and now you feel like you're slow, you're falling behind. What are some of the advice that you would give to those people and also to those that are coming into the picture frame the next generation?
Speaker 1:people that are falling. They're falling behind are the ones that aren't keeping up to date with the technology and what's going on. It's like if I just stayed in cut and paste on illustration board putting on things, now people would go what's he doing, you know? So you did have to switch to computers. Yeah, and you know I was going to joke when you first asked that question. I go well, the first thing I would do if I was up and coming, I changed my name where my initials were ai. So people go I use ai for all my work and they're like perfect, mine, alvin, whatever. Yeah, but that wouldn't work.
Speaker 1:But staying up to date with the technology and not being afraid to use it and see where it can take you. Because, yes, ai is going to be one of those things that does it Just like the computers. When they started, everybody thought it was going to take over their jobs, but it did mold into. Yes, if I want to work and survive, I need to be able to use that tool to do things that we want to do, whether it's video or stills, or create products, build houses with machines. With what is it? The printing digital? Printing yes digital printing yes.
Speaker 1:You would have never thought when I was a kid oh yeah, we're going to have a computer that's got to connect it to a cement mixer and it's going to build a house Like a 3D printer. Yeah, 3d printing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, 3D printing.
Speaker 1:Like a. Play-doh house, you know. Everybody would have a house if that had happened way back when. Yeah, I agree, yeah.
Speaker 2:I agree. I don't think. I think that the future is. Do you think the future is bright for creatives?
Speaker 1:Bright, it could be too bright?
Speaker 2:No, not that.
Speaker 1:Do you think I'm always going to say yes because I'm an optimist?
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:And because if you ask three people what a creative is, you're going to get three different answers. Um, someone will go to well, I can't even joke, say that you're weird or strange because you like Lord of the Rings. Well, that's just a different genre. You could like, I don't know, go back old school bonanza and that's cowboys and scarface. Yeah, or scarface. Well, the couple we were talking about before, the one guy in, that relationship loves starface. But yeah, any of those.
Speaker 1:But that's, that's all human nature things okay and if you're, if ai becomes the new villain, then you. It's just like iRobot with Will Smith he still had to concert that. So yes you've got to know your technology. You need to know how to control it, so it doesn't control you so it doesn't control you, and I think that's where AI is right now, that they're trying to get some standards on it, to where it gets control some, because if it doesn't, then there's going to be some machines that are going to be able to do that.
Speaker 2:Well, there is already Boston Dynamics. They just made a robot that can lift and weld and carry the tools, literally do a four-minute.
Speaker 1:I'm just saying, yeah, well, to me that's great, because you're not going to get me to lift something that a robot could lift, because it would be too heavy.
Speaker 2:Fair, but what happens to the people that? That's literally their livelihood.
Speaker 1:You switch gears. How do you do that? Well, to me and this is not a political rant or anything- yeah if I migrated from another country to here and I was willing to pick fruit out of a field and do it cheaper than someone else.
Speaker 2:You know okay, would you do it? Yes?
Speaker 1:you would do it. And if I was the person eating that fruit and didn't want to pick the fruit, would you complain about the people picking the fruit? No no, you would just take your fruit and go. I want to get it cheaper next time because we're not paying them much. So why should I have to pay much? Well, if a robot's doing it for free, you still have electricity, so you still have solar panels, you still have whatever's making that robot work.
Speaker 1:So that's going to make either that piece of fruit cost $20 or 69 cents a pound, so you're going to have gives and takes.
Speaker 2:Well, we'll save that conversation for another. All I'm going to say is this kind of I'm waiting for judgment day. Well.
Speaker 1:I don't think Arnold will be coming back, but it may be.
Speaker 2:Let's just say it's going to an evolution. Oh yeah. We're really scared or not scared. It's going to be interesting to see how that looks like. The same way with photoshop, the same way with home computer.
Speaker 1:Like you said, it's gonna be an uh interesting but you're gonna have to make robots that can swim what you have to make a robot that could swim or, you know, live in the desert and all these things. Well, for them to take over everything fair. I know it's it's crazy, but you know, is it going to do what a dolphin can do?
Speaker 2:or we build a dolphin, oh my gosh you might, but it'll just be a visual.
Speaker 1:What well a dolphin could be rebuilt right now as a visual and you could have it swimming around in your oh like spiked dolphins oh my gosh, anyways, getting off track here.
Speaker 2:Um, let's say, um let's say oh okay, where can people find you on social media? Um, I know, we're gonna go through that whole entire thing again all over again.
Speaker 1:You can find me at I am jim cl. That's the main one, and then you can go to the website as IamJimClarkcom.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:And you can just do a search up in the little friend thing up in Facebook if you want to do that. Jim Clark, yes, or just my contact information is on the website, so go there and you can get all of it.
Speaker 2:Jim Clark His contact information is also in Muse Magazine. It's on the website, so go there and you can get all of it. Jim Clark, his contact information is also in Amuse Magazine. It's on the back, I think.
Speaker 2:Yes yes, don't forget. Please support Jim Clark, the Amuse Magazine. It's such a wonderful piece of work and if you read into it you will actually see if you're living in 30A or Panama City Beach or across the Emerald Coast. This is such a great piece of thing to have if you're trying to keep up to date with the creatives around this area, especially if you're a creative. You're going to meet a lot of people like Megan Glasser all from reading the book. You will meet Lindsay. Is it Dubai? I forgot. She's an artist, she's a painter. You will meet people like her if you read this piece of magazine and you can look at it for free.
Speaker 1:You don't have to purchase it. If you go to my iamjimclarkcom and go up and click on muse, you can see all the issues, and if you want to just enlarge it on your computer, you can read the whole thing and don't have to spend a dime that's great, but I also believe in supporting our local artists.
Speaker 2:So if, if you have some extra cash, please support our local artists.
Speaker 1:If you want to do that, just go straight to Venmo and send me your money. It's IamJimClark.
Speaker 2:IamJimClark. The title of this episode is IamJimClark. All right, do you have any last words that you would like to share that you didn't get the chance to in our conversation?
Speaker 1:Do you have any last words that you would like to share that you didn't get the chance to in our conversation? Do you have any last words that you want to share?
Speaker 2:No, I just appreciate you taking the time to listen to my BS. Most of the time, what? Hey, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. It's not BS, it's all.
Speaker 1:Let me put a business. Oh, would you say BS, or I said BS, so that's like business suggestions. Exactly, it was like what. Oh, you know.
Speaker 2:BS Business suggestions. I'm so sorry for your ears. I'm going to fix that audio in the post. But thank you so much, dan, for making the time to you know, do this with me, and I definitely would like to schedule another episode in the future. It'd be a blast, huh, and I definitely would like to schedule another episode in the future.
Speaker 1:It'd be a blast. Huh. Just tell everybody out there that I look better than this person.
Speaker 2:Well, I'd like to think that we all age like fine wine.
Speaker 1:But that's if you age. I'm not planning on aging, I'm just going to get tired. I'm not going to age.
Speaker 2:No, that's not what I meant. I'm saying that wine still retains the beautiful taste, the look.
Speaker 1:What he's saying is I'm a Riesling and I'm not dry this episode.
Speaker 2:Please don't forget to like or subscribe. I can't wait to show you guys this episode. We also have a wonderful guest coming on for the next one, so stay tuned for that and, as always, you can find Jim Clark on all socials by saying I am Jimim clark, my name is and I'll see you guys in the next episode. Bye.
