“Show Notes”
He works as a top beauty photographer, particularly for hair brands in the US. He is also the fastest 100-metre runner of his age. Marcus points out we have a show about getting into hair photography.
Alec also does some cinematography work and went to film school. He also went to Harvard to study digital media.
He says he now uses AI a lot in his work. He uses it to create mock-ups of how shoots might work, in shoot planning. He also uses it for backgrounds. He says this was a key part of his time in film school. But he says he doesn’t like the green screen approach in photography. He says, especially with hair, a greenscreen background doesn’t work well.
Marcus and Alec talk about generative AI and how big businesses and photographers are competing with the latest AI campaigns, which are very realistic. Alec says this is their strength, but it has weaknesses. It is well-trained in beauty andfashion, and more trained in women than men. It has not been trained on behind-the-scenes shots, and it is really bad at this. So, Alec says sharing the behind-the-scenes becomes a vital part of the story. People are interested in that, and it showsthe shot is genuine.
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“Show Transcription”
Marcus: Well, hello there, listeners. This is Marcus again, on my own — another week on my own. But the day is saved by having a fantastic guest. We’ve got a Canadian photographer — another Canadian; we had one on the other week. We’ve got Alec Watson with us today. Hi there, Alec, how are you doing?
Alec: I am doing fantastic, and it’s an honor to be speaking to you, honestly.
Marcus: Oh mate, that is too kind. Thank you very much. Alec, tell us about what you do and how you got to where you are.
Alec: Sure. I’m a commercial photographer. I shoot mainly advertising in the beauty world, mainly for US brands. But I got my start — really, I wanted to do four things in my life, right from being a kid — and I’ve managed to do them all. I wanted to run fast. I wanted to be a piano player and a singer, and a photographer, and a filmmaker. And I’ve managed to do all of those things.
Marcus: You’ve done all those? Yeah, well, I mean, I saw your Facebook page, and you’ve got some very professional-looking running photography on there for a start. What’s your distance that you went at, Alec?
Alec: Oh, I am still a 100-meter runner. I’m actually — I’m currently the fastest old man in Canada.
Marcus: Okay, let’s get into the core. So basically, you’re a commercial photographer. What kind of — what’s the genre that you work in?
Alec: So I — for whatever reason, as a bald, middle-aged man — I somehow managed to end up being one of the top beauty photographers, especially for the hair brands in the US. And so I shoot mainly hair ads, and hair and makeup for US brands. Actually, for whatever reason, a lot of them are based in Germany.
Marcus: I think we actually did a show about getting into hair photography, because I think it’s such a rich genre. You know, it’s a great genre to get into, really, because hairdressers are great to work with. You know, you get a chance to work with great models and, you know, really strong-looking images.
Alec: Absolutely. That’s one of the things that I love most about it. I think probably it sounds like an odd genre when I’m talking to, you know, somebody who’s not a photographer. But yeah, lots of the photographers that I talk to, they’re just like, “Oh man, that just looks like so much fun. And there’s always — especially with the hair stuff — one of the things I love is that it’s about moments, which is also kind of sad when, you know, people go into a salon and they want their hair to look like this. And it’s just like, “Okay, yeah, but that was it. That was a moment —
Marcus: About five hours to create.
Alec: Yeah, exactly. All those hours to create that moment. And then it’s shoot, shoot, shoot, shoot.
Marcus: That’s the thing with beauty — you’re there, you’re waiting. It’s incredibly… it’s waiting and waiting and waiting. And then you’ve got seconds to get the shot, because the makeup is running, the hair is dropping, or whatever — the humidity.
Alec: Exactly. And then — and then the sun. And you know what? I had never put these two together before, but that sounds an awful lot like running 100 meters. Especially now — I have to warm up for like 90 minutes to two hours, lots of waiting around for the start, and then, you know, 11 and a half, 12 seconds later — it’s all done.
Marcus: That sounds about right. That sounds about right. So, and why did the cinematography start coming into play, Alec?
Alec: Well, that’s a great question. And I — that was the fourth thing. I always wanted to make movies. And so, ever since I was a little kid, there was always a video camera around in our lives, trying to — trying to — trying to make something. And like a lot of us from, you know, from a certain age group — when Canon made that 5D Mark II, and it looked like you could make a movie for the first time — I was, at the time, I had a deal with Hasselblad, and I was shooting the mid-format stuff in Canada. And as soon as I saw that, I was like, “Oh, I have got to have one of those.” And that would, that was when the love affair with making film stuff happened for me, because it was like, I could make something that looked like it was unaffordable. Because, you know, the film stock and filming was just not something that could be done on the budgets at the time that I was working with. And so this was just the entry into that. It was so exciting. And so I ended up going to film school, literally because of the 5D Mark II.
Marcus: I mean, and yet you say that, I do look on your website and there’s a very impressive photograph of you with this huge, great big movie camera. It’s based on a thing. So yeah, but yeah. So where did you study cinematography?
Alec: So for a for a little and it basically died during Covid. There was a school put put together, but there’s a cinematographer, Vilmo Zygmunt, and he he was the cinematographer for Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
Marcus: That is a great movie. So I think, yeah, yeah, I really enjoy watching that film.
It looks fantastic.
Alec: Oh, absolutely. Yeah. And he had put together a small team to do like a little private school. And so you had to apply to go there and you had to you had to submit your reel, which was basically, you know, I wrote it. Yeah, I wrote it with a letter because I was just like, you know, I am not a cinematographer. But I want to be. And here’s here’s what I work on. Here’s my stills. And so, yeah, they accepted me in. And so I went went to that school and it Covid kind of finished that off. And Vilmo has passed away now as well. And so, yeah, the school just doesn’t doesn’t exist. But it was just a little independent school. And yeah, just going there with people from all over the world who are, you know, all like cinematographers from their own countries and all had fantastic film.
Marcus: We’re going to be talking a little bit about AI. And so just tell me, Alec, because you I think, you know, looking at your qualifications, you’ve got you’ve got reason to have a voice in this department. Exactly. You did your master’s in digital media, was it?
Alec: Yeah, I went to Harvard and did my did my master’s in digital media and did a lot more computer science than I expected to do. To, you know, to fill in gaps on that. And so I’ve got friends that got friends in high places in the AI world. And I pick their brains every once in a while. I want to I want to see into that crystal ball. I mean, as far as we can see, because it’s it’s it’s hard to tell.
Marcus: Let me just say, when did you start getting involved? When did you do this digital media at Masters?
Alec: It was actually not that long ago. Twenty six. I mean, in terms of in terms of in terms of the fact that I’m fifty five, most people would. Yeah, I would. I would personally think that, yeah, I went to Harvard back in the 90s or something. And this this was not this was just like, you know, I want to fill in some gaps because I see some trends happening in what’s going on. And I, you know, at some point in my future, I would like to teach. I’m going to need a master’s. And this looks like I, you know, if I’m going to go to school again, I want to go to this school.
Marcus: Sure. Yeah.
Alec: And so, yeah, so that’s what I did and followed that path. And yeah, I really worked on some insight into, you know, what our future might. I mean, and it’s always a guess, right? But but but certainly some strategies for coping with AI that seem to be working so far.
Marcus: You’re there doing your master’s Harvard digital media. What’s AI discussed at that stage?
Alec: Yeah, yeah, like it existed, but not. Yeah, obviously not like it is now like I would not have foreseen AI being used for like, you know, a journey for photographs and certainly not in the way. Like if you’d have told me we’re at that time, we’re like seven or eight years away from making things that I couldn’t tell didn’t come out of a camera just by a prompt.
I would not have believed that.
Marcus: Very, very interesting. So you’re surprised by the development and the speed of which things have happened.
Alec: Yeah, yeah. When when that came, I mean, that was one of the first people to sign up for mid journey when when it was a solid platform, and I do actually use it all the time now. So as a photographer, when I’m working with a brand, when we’re like in pre production or pre pre visualization, I absolutely will use mid journey to kind of combine ideas, background, so we can kind of put together a visual of what we’re talking about. And I do find that really helps. I guess that’s kind of a superpower of it in terms of communication, because we all have a different idea of how things look. And, you know, anybody who’s worked with a designer and a creative director, and as a photographer, there’s, there’s some kind of thing where our brains are not wired for the same, you know, there’s a reason we went into different jobs. And so this is one way in which, you know, we can actually communicate with one another that seems to be really.
Marcus: You’re using it in that initial mood board planning of the suit, you know, you can get you can just use a single prompt. And if you get something that you can start communicating and start the journey with your creative director or whoever.
Alec: Absolutely. And I’ve also, I also use it for backgrounds. And so when I went to film school, we did a lot of work on compositing, because that for them was where cinematography was going like if you couldn’t composite at the highest level, then there was no place for you in the future of digital cinematography. So I took those lessons. And, you know, I so I use backgrounds that I create all the time for replacement. In actually in photography, I should mention that I am not a fan of green screen. And that, that messes up my teams all the time that for compositing, if I if I’m if I’ve got if it’s going to be a still, I would, I would stay away from the green screens, especially, you know, especially, you know, you’re working with a blog.
Marcus: And maybe just explain to our listeners why that is.
Alec: So especially, let’s say with blonde hair, there’s not only is it blonde, but you know, it’s got transparency, it’s kind of translucent, all those, all those little threads of hair. And so you get a green in behind there, and it starts to bleed through. And, and so when when you go to, when you go to key somebody out of that background, the first thing it does, it’s looking it uses the green to neutralize it to a mid gray. And it’s either going to add that mid gray to the hair, or you’re going to be left with both little bits of like greenish hair, like there’s chlorine. You went to the swimming pool with bad blonde hair.
Marcus: And green is a bit of a no no.
Alec: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And I work with I think. So Luma composites, Luma keying would be the opposite of, or not opposite, the different way to chroma keying. So chroma keying, we think of that as green screen and blue screen. Luma keying is to do with brightness. So we can use a white background or a dark background. Sometimes, especially for stills, I will use the background color that I’m replacing with. So say it’s a, they’re in front of a building that’s kind of like brick colored, I will I’m going to use a brick colored backdrop.
Marcus: Perfect.
Alec: Because that translucency on the hair that’s going to show up, but it’s going to be about the right color. And I’ll even use an overlay and light the background to try and get it to the right L value, like the right lightness value of between that, what the real life background is lighted up, so that it’s going to look like a final image. And when you drop that composite background in, like it’s instant, there’s no tweaking in Photoshop. It’s just like, bam, they are there.
Marcus: Just mentioned that I was gonna ask that is that your main still your main tool for doing backgrounds is Photoshop?
Alec: Yeah, I know you just got my stuff in trouble.
Marcus: Oh, why is that?
Alec: From the face of a brand that is not Adobe? But that’s okay. And I’ll explain that. So there is actually a piece of software called ACDC that I use as an asset manager. And I tell those guys all the time, like, I know you’ve got a great editor. I don’t use the editor. I can use it. I will show other people how to use it. I use ACDC for asset management, no question. And I don’t like Adobe for asset management. When it comes to compositing, the tools are pretty amazing.
Marcus: We talked early before the show about AI and how you can overcome the problems of AI, for want of a better phrase. Can I get your thoughts now? We all know it’s their AI. It’s all coming to do away with our jobs. What can we do about it?
Alec: Absolutely. So I speak on this and I started speaking on this to brands because they’ve got to compete. And so what the problem is, is you’ve got a big brand paying lots of big dollars for their ad campaigns. And now you can hop on the computer and take a can of hairspray that you could have taken a photograph with your iPhone. You can upload it to this AI site and it will make you an ad complete with a model talking about, and you can type in what you want this model to say. And they’re going to actually say everything and use the product. And like the first time I saw it, I honestly believed that they had actually used a model to do this and filmed it. And they were advertising their AI. And that was me looking at it critically going, no, that’s not AI. And it turned out it was AI. And I was just like, what? My job is over. Certainly the job for a whole bunch of people is over when a brand can do that. And so then over Christmas of this year or last year, I started looking at it going, okay, well, if I was going to play in sports against the team, I would look for their weaknesses because this is their strength. But if I’m competing against them, what are their weaknesses? So I spent a week looking into weaknesses of AI. And it’s trained really well on certainly beauty, fashion, better on women than men of its weaknesses. It has no idea what BTS looks like behind the scenes. It doesn’t know what a reality is. It has not been trained on reality. And so when you start to think about all the things involved in the craft of what you do, suddenly, it’s not so good anymore. So it’s become really important for the brands that I shoot for. And I’ve told them this, and especially for myself and my teams, that we’re actually filming what we do as a craft. Because I think people want to know this story. People always want to see the behind the scenes. And there’s a story of craftsmanship of certainly that the hairdressers, they do this amazing work. The makeup artists like, wow. If you’ve ever, you don’t know how good makeup artists are until you try and do their job one day. Stylus, so you’ve got all these teams involved. You you make sure that that’s getting filmed, because if you if you try to get mid journey to remake a behind the scene shot, it is honestly terrible.
Marcus: I mean, my take on it, and we are coming up to the end of the show. So hopefully, I just put this page succinctly, is you’ve got to have ideas, ideas will win today. Whoever can have good ideas, that’s going to give you a good career. That’s an interesting taking of Alec. So you’re saying, you know, just keep putting out that, you know, film as much as possible, take as much as possible, and from build up on the story.
Alec: Absolutely. So take your take your behind the scenes content, turn it into a short story, and then complement that to your after to your keeper images, because the keeper finished images, and AI can probably reproduce especially on a little handheld device, a pretty good version that’s going to compete with you. But once you put it together with that story of the craft, and everything that you put into that AI, AI is at least five, we got five more good years before I can figure out how to do that one.
Marcus: We’ll come back in or something but no putting out cringe stories. Alec, thank you. Thank you so much for being a guest on our show.
Alec: Oh, thank you. Thank you kindly. And like I said, a privilege and honor to chat with you.
Marcus: And just in case our viewers want to find out a bit more about you. What’s a good place to go?
Alec: Sure. My Instagram is photographer Alec Watson. I’ve got I’ve got a website that ironically is Alec Watson.com. There’s a special on it that day. And then I’ve got a visual branding course. It’s not so much for photographers as the small brands that I work with.
But we’re also all small brands.
Marcus: Yeah, for sure. The personal brand is growing, growing, growing. Yeah, of course. Alec, we’ll put all those links in the show notes. And again, thanks for being a guest. Thank you much.
