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The Heart & Hustle Podcast
467: Are we in the DARK AGES!? James Broadbent, CEO of Narrative CHALLENGES Our Editing Workflow
01:02:54
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- [00:01]
A
You are listening to the Heart and Hustle podcast. We are your hosts, Abby McLeod and Lindsay Roman. Welcome back to the show, my friend. Today is a spicy little episode. We had the honor, the joy of welcoming James Broadbent onto the show. If you don't know who he is, he is the founder and CEO of Narrative and a destination adventurous elopement photographer behind the brand Chase Wild. He started narrative in 2018 with the purpose of enabling photographers to create their best work by developing AI to cater to the needs of the 9 million photographers working worldwide. Wow, that's a lot. Today, Narrative is the fastest growing AI tool or calling tool in the industry. And with their products being utilized by tens of thousands of photographers, Narrative processes billions of images annually by photographers in more than 160 countries. Evie, why don't you break it down why we're here today with James.
- [00:52]
B
I would love to. James took us to church.
- [00:57]
A
AI church.
- [00:58]
B
He took us to AI church.
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C
He took us to school.
- [01:00]
A
Actually, no, I feel like the accurate depiction is he took us into a. A boxing ring.
- [01:07]
B
Yeah, we did describe it as we. We went into the boxing ring with James. And let me just. If you're very confused, Lindsay and I are possibly stuck in the dark ages with some of the softwares that we're currently using. And we basically gave James the challenge today of, hey, convince us, because we're pretty happy. And it was such a fun conversation. There was so much unpacked here. If you are a photographer who has ever felt a little intimidated or confused or overwhelmed by the thought of switching up your entire workflow, your system by integrating things like Narrative select, so an AI calling software or AI editing. There is so much in this conversation with James that is brought to light and broken down clearly and succinctly. And there is just so much wisdom, so much information. We got a little spicy with James at times. He got a little spicy with us at times.
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A
It was truly a boxing ring.
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B
Such a fun conversation. And we have so much incredible respect for James and Narrative and what they are doing. And it was just a really cool kind of debate conversation back and forth. It was very insightful, but you will.
- [02:19]
A
Have to listen to know. Did he convince us to switch to the AI calling and editing world? Stay tuned to find out.
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C
So you want to grow on Instagram, but you don't know where to start. You may even be posting out the wazoo, but you're still not seeing any progress.
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D
Here's the deal.
- [02:39]
A
While being consistent is key to growing.
- [02:41]
D
On the gram, it's not the only thing you need, in fact, one of the most important aspects of growing on social media comes down to strategy. In order to create a killer social media strategy where you're not only attracting new clients, but turning them into paying clients, you need a plan.
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B
Yes.
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C
And today we are about to help you create a customized social media marketing strategy for free that will result in a ton of Instagram growth that will turn into sales and business growth. Now, are you ready to deep dive? We thought so. Grab our freebie how to define and establish your content pillars@theheartuniversity.com pillars.
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D
Hey.
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E
Hey.
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D
I'm Lindsey Roman.
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C
And I'm Evie McLeod.
- [03:26]
B
And we are family and legacy focused serial entrepreneurs and the founders of the Hart University, a business education company with a mission to help you thrive in your business and life.
- [03:36]
D
Welcome to our entrepreneur cocktail hour where.
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A
Business and marketing strategies meet faith, real talk and raw in life changing conversations.
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B
At the end of the day, we are all in this together, figuring out.
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C
How to navigate the ups and downs.
- [03:47]
B
The messy and the beautiful and everything in between. This is a community where you can come as you are, get inspired and walk away equipped to build a legacy filled life.
- [03:56]
D
You're listening to the Heart and Hustle podcast.
- [04:06]
A
James, welcome to the show. We are in the arena. We are ready for a showdown.
- [04:16]
E
Why am I getting the picture of like sumo wrestlers like walking into the arena? Oh my gosh.
- [04:23]
F
Well, the context for that is that these guys have just been asking me like, can we ask you this? Can we ask you that? And I'm like, why are you trying to like hide what we talk about today? Like, let's just talk about it all and let's be honest and authentic. So I think that just piping in this is going to be a real spicy episode. This is going to be some deep stuff.
- [04:46]
A
Yeah, no, he gave us permission to not hold anything back and not filter anything that we say. And so we're here for the authentic and the real. Before we get into today's topic, James, can you just introduce yourself for our listeners, Tell us just a brief summary of your journey that brought you to today.
- [05:04]
F
Yeah, absolutely. Thanks so much for having me. This is going to be an awesome conversation. So yes, my name is James Broadbent. I am the founder and CEO of Narrative. If you haven't heard about Narrative, we make a AI photo culling and editing product which assists photographers in finding their best images from a photo shoot and learning the editing style so that they arrive in lightroom with the images pre edited. Before I launched Narrative. I was a wedding photographer myself, was part of the duo behind the brand Chase Wild. And I mostly shot adventurous allotments and destination weddings which sort of took me all over the world. I can't remember the exact number, but I've shot weddings in tens of countries. Used to sort of split my time between New Zealand and Europe. Mostly chasing the summers, which is a fun thing to do. Yeah, Shooting in New Zealand is always. I say New Zealand is what makes my photography amazing because the landscape is just so amazing and you can hire helicopter here for like 500 bucks and fly your couple into the mountain. So come, come shoot in New Zealand. It's. It's a, it's an amazing place.
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A
Me and my husband went on a. What's that called when you ride, when you live in a van? What's that called?
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F
Road trip.
- [06:27]
A
Well, we like, we rented a van and then slept in it. There's camper van. That's what. Yeah, camper van. We rented a camper van.
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B
It's called Roast.
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A
Through the north and South Islands of New Zealand. And that still to this day is like one of our favorite trips of all time. Because it. New Zealand is just absolutely gorgeous. And I just remember, I think I did a couple sessions there. I didn't do an elopement or anything, but it was. I was like, I need to come back here all the time. It is so gorgeous. So I'm very jealous that that's your playground.
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F
It's a beautiful place.
- [07:01]
A
Amazing. Okay, let's get into it. Let's get into it.
- [07:04]
B
All right, the match begins. We're going to talk about AI software as a photographer because that's essentially, I mean, maybe that's a dumbed down version, James, of kind of the foundation of what narrative is currently offering. But there is AI integration within the Narrative select and narrative AI of like editing, culling. And I feel like that's a. Possibly a hot topic for listeners, but also like we were having a conversation that we were like, this could get spicy. So like, what are your thoughts right out the gate? James of like what. Can you kind of describe what Narrative select is, what narrative AI is? Like, what do you offer to photographers in a little bit more detail?
- [07:53]
F
Yeah, absolutely. I mean it might be really helpful to just talk through the workflow of what a photographer does when they integrate narrative into their workflow. So when, if I'm a narrative user, when I return from my photo shoot, I import my images onto my computer and I launch the narrative application, which is a desktop application that's on your Mac or your Windows computer. And instantly it's going to start assessing each of the images from your photo shoot. And it's looking at a whole bunch of the attributes inside the image. It's looking at who's in the photo, what they're doing, what's the context of the image, is that person who's important in each of the photos, what's happening with their eyes, their expression, the head direction, their relation to other people in the image, and all of these different image attributes. And AI is, it sort of begins this process of analyzing every single photo. And at a high level, it helps you find your best images faster. And there are different, sort of like you could say levels of control or automation that you can give to the AI, depending on sort of where you feel comfortable. So at its most basic format, some of the most simple AI features inside narrative give you a little more information about, say, the subjects inside the images. So what you'll notice is underneath every single face, there is an ellipse and there is a line. And the ellipse is telling you the status of the person's eyes. So it's telling you if they're blinking or their eyes are barely open, or many different contextually eye states. So it also would understand if a person was say, kissing with their eyes closed or laughing with their eyes closed, or all of these kind of cases where you're like, wait, if two people are just intimately close to each other, it understands that as well. It'll tell you the focus level of each of the faces inside the image. And I love this because I used to spend hours like zooming in and checking to see whose faces were more in focus. And then it's got other features such as the Close Ups panel, which will give you a full crop of every single person's face inside each frame. And people love that when they're doing things like culling, they're group shots. And then the most advanced AI feature, inside narrative is called Scenes View and Inside Scenes View it groups similar sets of images. So if I was to take a photo of you right now, I would probably take 5, 6, 7, 8 images and they would all be pretty similar, but there would be some differences in between them. And some of them you would look more flattering than others. Maybe some of them you'd be talking or blinking. What the AI does is inside Scenes view. Instead of viewing each scene chronologically, which is the order that you captured them in, we reorder those scenes putting what the AI thinks is the best at the top and least desirable images at the bottom. This becomes really powerful because as you're doing selection from your photo shoot, each time you arrive on a new scene, you're seeing what is probably the best image. And if you're just looking for like a photo, you know, shot at the reception of a wedding of like two people smiling and looking at the camera, the AI is just going to do an amazing job at finding the best image and it's going to be number one. And then you can hit a keyboard shortcut and move on to the next scene. If you are looking for something which maybe breaks the rules of desirability a little bit more, where there's more, maybe there's just, you know, you're looking for that out of focus image or that image where the hair is flying over the face or something like that, you have the full creative control to dig a little bit deeper. And so you're going to see the second best image and then the third best image and then the fourth best image. And it breaks these images up into potential picks, unlikely picks, and undesirable picks. And so generally, most narrative users say that they're able to cull their photo shoot in anywhere between 25 to 50% of the time that they would have if they'd done it manually. And they're coming away with a selection that is as good or better than had they taken the time to do that the old school way. So that's the culling feature. And then once you finish selecting your images, you're going to ship the images onto your editing program, such as Lightroom. And the first time you use narrative, you link it up to your Lightroom catalogs and it learns your editing style by looking at all of the images that you've historically edited. And we simply make a prediction about how you would adjust every single image. Where would you put the exposure temperature, tint, white balance, get the base preset on there? What do you usually do in your editing process that's going to replicate that so that when you open up Lightroom with those images, they're all pre edited based on how you've historically done it. And you can make more tweaks or adjustments if you want to? You know, maybe you're like, oh, I would have done this a little bit warmer. And any adjustments that you make inside Lightroom automatically get fed back into narrative. And it's continuously learning and getting smarter and smarter the more that you use it.
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B
I love it.
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E
Quick, quick, very specific question.
- [13:32]
B
Can you, when you say it's automatically Fed into your light like the. The edit is into your Lightroom. Can you still see the raw? Can you still click the link before and see the unedited?
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F
Yes. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. At the moment, if you want to see the unedited image with Narrative, you just hit the reset button. It will just show you what it looks like, but it's not changing the RAW file. It's literally just doing what you would do inside Lightroom. So it's adjusting the Lightroom parameters so Narrative makes the prediction simply about where you would place each of those parameters. And this all works offline. It happens locally on your computer. And then when you open Lightroom, just think about it as like all of the adjustments already made, how you would do them, and then you can like build on top of that, or maybe they look great, depending on kind of how early you are in that stage of training it based on your style.
- [14:32]
A
That's cool. This might be a stupid question. So for obviously Narrative select, the culling software. I'm culling in Narrative select, but for the editing, you said it connects with Lightroom. What does the interface look like? Am I still editing in Lightroom normally, and Narrative is just like a big brother looking over my shoulder looking at the edits, or am I editing now in Narrative edit software?
- [14:58]
F
Yeah, that's a really good question. So it's pre editing the images so that when you arrive in Lightroom, they're edited for you. And actually the way that we do this is really, really simple. All we do is we make a prediction about how it should be edited and we give the photo and the XMP sidecar file to Lightroom, which is the information about how it should be edited. So when you open Lightroom, it's already edited. So Lightroom is the editing interface that you will use. Just imagine magically arriving in the Lightroom and someone's already been there and they've already done what you would have done, and they've looked at all of the thousands of images that you've historically edited and much more accurately than a person would, because AI learns all of those really specific nuances. Like when you shoot at sunset, you do this with your contrast, or when you shoot backlit, you do it more like this. And you like these kinds of skin tones when you're shooting on an overcast day. And it's going to learn all of those different kinds of patterns. And then as we said, just simply set the images pre edited in that way so that when you arrive in Lightroom, they're there and you can continue to modify and build on top of them.
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B
I love it. Okay, so obviously, ideally, if somebody were fully integrating and utilizing narrative and narrative, select narrative AI and what the potential, like, usage is, you would be saving a significant amount of time. Right. Like, that's kind of the point. And I'm assuming why you guys are building what you're building and why most photographers are desiring something like this is for time saving capabilities, right?
- [16:40]
F
Yeah, absolutely. And like I said, you know, if you. If you've got a handful of shoots, you find yourself being stressed out. I think for me, it was. I found that for every day that I spent behind the camera, I would spend like four behind the computer.
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B
Yeah.
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F
And nowadays, if I shoot a wedding, I can call it in half an hour to 45 minutes, and I'll do the editing process within an hour, and I'm coming away with a result that is as good or if not better than I'd been doing it the old way. And now I'm just winning back, like, literally thousands and thousands of hours a year, which, as a photographer, I can reinvest in, you know, upskilling myself, becoming a better photographer, finding my next sort of ideal client. And it's kind of crazy to think that we did used to, you know, because if you think about what editing is, you really. There's. There is this process of, like, sometimes refining and defining your style, but most of the time you're just trying to replicate what you've done previously to make it consistent. And that is what AI is very, very good at, is learning patterns and replicating it.
- [17:51]
A
Okay, okay, hold on. I'm just gonna need to repeat just in case anybody didn't hear him. Just to clarify, you said calling in, like, a whole entire wedding. So, like, what's an average without a second?
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B
Like, 4,000.
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A
Yeah, 4,000. Okay. So 4,000 images, you can call that in 30 minutes.
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F
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
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A
And is that. That's. Obviously, we're talking about Narrative select here. So it's. It's pre. Like, is there a time where you. You upload your gallery to Narrative Select? I haven't used it ever. I don't.
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B
I think, bro.
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A
Well, so here, the reason we're in the arena today, let's just clarify this. Me and Evie love narrative.
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B
Love Narrative.
- [18:36]
A
We specifically have used and loved the Publish, which is like the blogging. Like, you guys offer a lot of different products. The Publish is the blogging tool, which is great. It incorporates SEO. Love that. The reason we haven't really, like, jumped on the bandwagon of Narrative select is because we are sitting here and I'm gonna fully own it. It is the dark ages. The dark ages. We both use photo mechanic. A joke I feel like about it being like started in the 80s is that maybe, I don't know. He's nodding.
- [19:13]
F
I think it's older than me.
- [19:17]
A
I mean it is not like up on the times. I'm going to fully own that. I know that it's not AI. It's not AI at all. I don't even think they're trying to be on it with. They're just living their life and they have dumbos like us that are just still using it. And I think if I'm remembering correctly it was a one time payment. And so because I already have a culling.
- [19:36]
B
You, you have a workflow, you have a tool.
- [19:39]
A
I've just never been incentivized to switch over. Even though for like coaching students I recommend Narrative select I guess kind of blindly because I trust y'.
- [19:49]
E
I would like James to know and our listeners.
- [19:52]
B
I have, I have tested narratives.
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A
I've seen people use it and I've seen like the little eye blink and like the you know, like what he's talking about.
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E
Never even tried it.
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A
I don't actually know if I have. Maybe I have but it's been years.
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D
Okay.
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A
The point being? The point being. Oh, now I've lost my way from the question that I was going to ask. Hold on, I'm gonna, I'm gonna reign it back.
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F
You're stuck in the dark ages and you're trying to work out how to get out, how to get out of this.
- [20:23]
A
Oh no, no. It was, it was the time. So my point being I haven't actually done this. So my question was when you say you can call in 30 minutes like a full on wedding and is there a time where you upload the wedding and you have to hit like I don't know what the word would be but like like now like learn my like call for me basically like a button that would be like coal and then you have to wait for it to do its sorting thing or is that instantaneous?
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F
Yeah. So the short answer is it's instant. So we all of the processing of the images happens locally on your computer. There's no upload. We don't need to put them into the cloud to process them.
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A
Okay.
- [21:04]
F
So what happens is when you import those images, let's say it's like 150 gigabytes of photos, the computer, the AI starts processing the images Instantly. And, you know, the first thing we do is we just order them by capture time, which is order that you're going to navigate through them, and then we just start processing them from top to the bottom or in whatever order you're about to cull. And so it will still be processing while you are culling the images, but it can process the images faster than you can look at them. And so it basically just feels instant. Like all of the image assessments start appearing on each of the photos instantly. And yeah, I think that that was really important to how we designed the product because as photographers ourselves, we knew that when you return from a photo shoot, you just want to see the images. You don't want to have to, like, wait. And if you do have to wait, then you're probably just going to open up like, you know, the old dog or Photo Mechanic, and just end up looking at it the old way, because that also allows you to see them instantly. So as kind of a baseline, we knew that when we built this product that it needed to be at least as fast, if not faster than Photo Mechanic with all of the smart features built on top of it as well.
- [22:28]
B
I have a logistical question, and this is coming from my ignorance of not consistently using Narrative select. And does Narrative select pay attention? I don't know if this, like, if you can rate in the same way on, like narratives. I think you can from my memory and you're nodding. So yes. Okay, can. Does Narrative select also learn your behavior and what you look for? Or is it kind of a standard AI?
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A
Like, if you love like a windswept, where it's like, okay, they're clearly. Their eyes aren't open. It's not like a perfect photo, but it's like that would lean into the vibe.
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B
Because that's been one of my hesitations with going into AI calling. Like, I've, I've tried. Tried a couple of different softwares. I love your guys's is by far my favorite. But I'm just like, there's just an element where even after I do an AI calling software, yes. There are things with it that make it easier. Like the reordering and like, you know, being able to see the, the faces up close and knowing if somebody's blinking, like, that's, that's such a game changer. But I still go through every single image because I don't trust AI to.
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A
Not like, it's like if you trusted it and didn't look at everything you.
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B
And then there's like, be that what gorgeous artistic like it slaps image. But a, it doesn't see that because it is blurry or, you know, whatever. But I guess, I mean, I would love to hear your thoughts on that. Like my hesitation in general, but also specifically, does narrative select learn. If I re rate something like a, you know, number one image, is it going to start learning that I am okay with that style of image or something?
- [24:02]
F
I'll answer the point first about sort of just having to go through every single image, because I think this is really important. And we have competitors in this, this space which have a different approach to us. And that approach is that they are trying to build an AI which will select the images for you, meaning it will put ratings on what it thinks are the best images. And as we all know, like, there. It just can't. There are things that just can't know. Like, how can it know that, you know, this moment was a special moment that unfolded on the day and that would have meaning to the, the person that you were photographing because of what was happening off camera or just anything, as you say, like images which maybe are blurry or sort of break the rules of desirability a little bit more. And so fundamentally, the photographer has to be involved in the process of selecting the images. And the way that this problem exists inside our competitors is that if they put like a rating on an image and you disagree with it, then all of a sudden you have to look at every other image that is similar. Not only are you now doing it basically the same way that you would have been doing it if you were using something like Photo Mechanic, you've actually, now it's taking longer because you're having to remove a rating and then like look through the other images and probably, you know, and then apply it to another image. And actually a lot of people who are using like automated culling solutions which apply ratings to their images are finding that they spend more time doing culling, which is ludicrous because the whole idea is that it's meant to save you time. So this is why we built narrative in such a way where you can lean into the AI at the times where it makes sense. And so, like I was saying, there are many occasions where the rules of desirability are really obvious and clear. It's like, I want a beautiful portrait of this person standing in the window. It's going to find the one where they look the most flattering. I want a photo of this, you know, couple at the reception smiling and looking at the camera. I want the best family group shot or you know, there's just like a moment of them like walking towards the camera or something like that. Like there are these examples where it's very, very, very good at finding the best image. And then there are times where you know that either like something special or unique happened there or you kind of just want to dig a little bit deeper and you full creative control to do that. And so what I find is that on scenes where I know that like this is like a lot of what you're trying to capture on a day is it's like kind of functional. It's like I just need an image of this particular thing or these people, this moment. If the top rated image from narrative is what I want, then I just select it and move on to the next scene. Now if I know that there was other stuff in there, then I'll almost always look through the top picks for each scene and it's going to give me maybe I shot them in the scene and they were looking this way and they were looking that way. It's going to give me all of those different options. But the thing that's really unique in the way that narrative does it is that I don't have to look through all of the worst images from every single scene. Prioritize the best images and it will give me some diversity in terms of the best images that I'm looking at. If I really want to dig a little bit deeper, it will give me some unlikely picks. And then at the bottom, the undesirable images are all the ones where people like, you know, like weird facial expressions and like half open eyes or like, like just something real weird.
- [27:53]
B
The really drunk groomsman who is about.
- [27:56]
E
To, whatever, make a really weird face.
- [28:00]
F
And there might be times where you want to dig down into the undesirables, but a lot of the time you don't. And so you have that full creative control. Simply just to decide do I want to stay in the potential picks, unlikely picks, or do I want to dive down into the unlikely picks, I'm sorry, into the undesirable. And so I would say that I personally probably look at about 50% of the images from the shoot as a result of this. And so when it comes to something like maybe the couple shoot where there is so much more like emotion unfolding, then I probably will go down through a lot of each of the scene just to be sure. Because like you guys, I'm an absolute perfectionist and I don't want to compromise the quality of my work for time saving and so the whole product was kind of built around this premise. And yeah, it actually says it on the homepage of our website. It says, you know, finally, an AI assisted workflow that allows you to maintain creative control.
- [29:04]
B
Love it.
- [29:06]
D
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Cool.
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- [32:03]
A
So it separates it by scene. So it's like an init just knows what scene is. Like a set where the scene looks kind of the same and it will separate the most desirable and then less desirable and then down for each scene. And you can toggle between scenes like that?
- [32:22]
F
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Okay, so. And it learns, like it understands the nuances of what's changing. So if you change like your position or your framing or your location, or if the people inside the image change, then that's going to break it into a new scene. And then when you arrive on a scene, we had to build a whole new UI for this, which we call scenes View, where you see the scene grouping and then as we said, instead of viewing it chronologically, your first image is the best image. Then the second best image, which might not be the second or first photo that you took, it could be in fact, a lot of the time, it's like the best moment that you captured was somewhere near the bottom of the scene. So it's like reordering those and getting the better ones at the top so you can kind of find what you want quickly. And then as I said, either rapidly move on to the next scene, you just hit the right key and it will go to the next scene. Or, you know, at certain occasions, like if I was shooting a couple running on the beach at sunset at like a super low shutter speed, I'm going to look through them all on that occasion. But you know, at the the cases where I want them, like looking really flattering, smiling, nice expressions, et cetera, et cetera, I'm going to save my time and lean on the AI recommendation.
- [33:47]
A
Did you answer the question of does it learn? Like, if you wanted like the artistic blurry shot and you choose and you change it. Does it learn that?
- [33:56]
B
Well, you might have answered it because they don't rate it technically.
- [33:59]
F
Oh yeah. So you apply the ratings to the images yourself. Narrative is continuously learning with the editing function. We don't do this inside the culling tool because if we would, sometimes there are many confounding factors which can influence why an image is good. And if we think that you selected it because you preferred the way that their arm was, but actually you were selecting it because of a different factor and we learned that pattern, then it be. Could. Could cause unexpected results.
- [34:34]
A
So because I feel like sometimes I'll, I'll choose a photo because I could see, oh, if I crop it this way, then it could be a different image. And so like the image could be trash, arguably, but like the corner of.
- [34:45]
B
It but their hands were held so cute that you're gonna crop in.
- [34:49]
A
Right. But narrative or you know, the AI doesn't know that.
- [34:53]
B
Yeah.
- [34:54]
A
Because they're just viewing the overall image and saying like, oh, this is trash.
- [34:57]
F
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And maybe there's someone in the shot that's like, like looking, as you say, terrible, blinking, eyes closed, and it's like, oh, okay, so she actually likes eyes closed images.
- [35:06]
E
Oh, gosh.
- [35:09]
C
Yeah.
- [35:09]
E
No, let's not, let's not start giving me the worst of the worst images.
- [35:13]
A
I. Okay, so you've mentioned it's. It's very fast. You can do it in 30 minutes. Is narrative select like a one time payment or is it a subscription?
- [35:23]
F
Yeah, so it's a subscription product. It starts from $10 a month and we are pushing updates to the product currently every two weeks. And so the subscription product just makes sure that you always have the best product. And yeah, I mean, starting from 10 bucks a month, it's like a real no brainer for anyone who's probably shooting more than like two or three photo shoots a year. Because the amount of time that you're saving and most people say, you know, the annual fee, they pay that off the first time that they use it because they're winning back so much of their time.
- [36:02]
B
I love it. What? Whoa, Lindsay has a spicy one. I'm gonna shut up.
- [36:08]
A
Well, I just, I just. Okay, so if we're sitting here and we're in the dark ages with Photo Mechanic and I believe, I'm pretty sure, yeah, I checked my bank account. I only paid for it once. Like it's not a reoccurring subscription. So arguably, if I am to be swayed, you will cost me more money because I already have a Tool that I paid for. But I assume that your argument to that argument is gonna be the time. The time that I'm spending tooling by hand.
- [36:37]
F
Why don't you keep your old cameras as well? Cause you've already paid for them.
- [36:41]
A
I do.
- [36:43]
F
Like, why upgrade your camera? Just keep using the old one.
- [36:47]
E
That's so true.
- [36:48]
A
We haven't upgraded.
- [36:49]
E
The problem is we actually just did an episode last week. I don't know when it's actually airing on the podcast.
- [36:55]
A
It airs before him.
- [36:56]
E
I think we did an episode talking.
- [36:58]
B
About DSLR and mirrorless. And Lindsay and I were like, hey, to be honest, we're still on like Canon Mark fours.
- [37:03]
F
Oh my gosh. You need to try. I mean, if you like getting your images in focus, which maybe you don't, but like, if you do kind of like getting shots in focus, you should really try Meritless.
- [37:18]
A
Okay, okay, okay, wait, wait, wait. First of all, how dare you dis the Mark four like that? I'm just saying. Okay, it gets in focus. But here's where I come back to. We are at this stage of life have. We're not full time wedding like, you.
- [37:34]
B
Know, like we both shoot probably like five to eight weddings max per year.
- [37:38]
A
So I always have the issue of like, I, I know that like there are better things out there than Photo Mechanic than the Mark four. Sure. Although that's arguable based on feedback. Whatever.
- [37:49]
B
Anyways, like James goes, no, it's not. Continue.
- [37:55]
A
I guess I come back to I'm not working enough as an active wedding photographer, like full time.
- [38:02]
B
You're not shooting 30 weddings a year.
- [38:03]
A
Anymore to in my opinion, warrant like the. Because I see the value of all the new technology and this is making me sound like a grandma. Good lord.
- [38:14]
B
But it's making you sound semi retired.
- [38:15]
E
I'm not gonna lie. But continue.
- [38:17]
A
I mean, I'm still actively shooting for sure, but. But it's, it's not to the point that I, that I would be like, oh, I see the reason to invest all this money into obviously, like if it saves you six or like narrative, that's now 15amonth when I have my photo mechanic.
- [38:36]
B
First of all, he said 10. But also, let's just say, let's just.
- [38:40]
A
Say, well, he said 10. I thought he said 15.
- [38:42]
B
No.
- [38:42]
A
Did I hear that wrong? Yeah. Did you originally say 15?
- [38:47]
F
It starts from $10 a month. That's what I said.
- [38:50]
A
Oh, I just amazed your accent. I think your accent. I heard 15. Okay.
- [38:53]
E
How did you hear okay.
- [38:54]
B
Anyways, what you're saying is let's say narrative saves you even two hours of calling time versus phono mechanic. But you're only shooting five weddings, so that's 10 hours per year versus if you were shooting 30 weddings that would be like.
- [39:10]
A
It'd be so much more time saving.
- [39:13]
B
So that's your argument.
- [39:14]
A
I don't know. I'm just, I'm here in the.
- [39:16]
B
You're asking James to sell you.
- [39:18]
A
Well, that's what we're here for, is it not?
- [39:20]
F
Look, we said that this was going to get spicy and I think the reality is, is like you. You guys are in a unique position where your influential educators in the market and you have a large following of people who, who want to hear like the. Who want to learn from you. They want to know about like how do I become the best photographer that I can. And I think that if you want to serve your audience right then you have a real obligation to make sure that you understand the most cutting edge technology. And so to sit there and be like, oh, I don't use the latest camera because I don't shoot enough. Like you have an obligation to use the latest camera and to know if it's better and to tell your listeners.
- [40:04]
B
Okay, well to that point, here's my rebuttal to that.
- [40:08]
D
James.
- [40:09]
A
We've used it.
- [40:10]
B
I have, I have personally experimented several times with Mirrorless and I will say.
- [40:17]
A
It'S an active choice to go back and choose Mark 4.
- [40:20]
B
Yeah, it's not because I've never touched Mirrorless. I have, I have tried Mirrorless and I have had many conversations with many of my friends in the industry and I kind of actively chose to stay with my Mark 4 because I significantly preferred the actual final color. And there were things with Mirrorless that were very nice. I will say the auto focus was definitely a bit nicer but there's also an element that I just didn't. The final image with Mirrorless I was not as happy with.
- [40:51]
A
It's like crisp. Like a crispy onion.
- [40:53]
E
We don't need to fully justify.
- [40:57]
B
But I will say it's not that we haven't tried Mirrorless. We just really like our.
- [41:03]
A
Although I will give him that on not trying narratives.
- [41:07]
B
Yeah, you broke.
- [41:08]
E
You have nowhere space to talk.
- [41:13]
B
Anyways, James can continue taking us to church. I'm totally fine with that. But I did want to clarify. We have, we have tried technically repeatedly.
- [41:21]
A
The topic though we're not talking about.
- [41:23]
B
Camera and I still chose to stay with. Anyways continue talk. Talk to us about though AI and. And calling because that One. I, I hear you. I actually feel like we do probably need to, to be taken to, to school on that one, but it's just more money.
- [41:40]
E
That's your biggest hang up.
- [41:42]
F
So, I mean, okay, how, how much do you value your, your one hour of your time?
- [41:50]
A
Yeah.
- [41:50]
B
Okay. I knew, I knew, I knew you.
- [41:52]
A
Were gonna go here. Well, it depends on what am I doing in that hour. Obviously, like, am I active? But you know, like a coaching call would be like 1200. Yeah.
- [42:02]
F
Okay.
- [42:02]
A
All right.
- [42:03]
E
James doesn't even need to respond.
- [42:07]
F
You could have gone with something even lower, right? You could have even gone with like, I value myself at 100 bucks an hour. And like, it's like, well, that's why.
- [42:15]
A
I said, like, that's me on my prime. Active working, but like me just like sleeping. Yeah, like $50 maybe. I don't know.
- [42:28]
F
You know, like, I think one of the stresses or the problems that we have as photographer is that we know that there are all these things that we should be doing to improve our businesses and to level up our skills and to find more time to, you know, listen to more of the Heart and Hustle podcasts or all of the education that you guys create. But we're just bogged down by all of the shit that we have to do in our workflow. And so making that small investment from $10 a month to win back literally hours each month that you can do that is going to help you become better. And the cost is not going to be a part of the equation when you're now all of a sudden booking more shoots or charging more. What's $10 a month when you're making an extra three thousand dollar booking every month? Because now you're not spending, you know, a day calling a shoot, you're spending half an hour.
- [43:31]
B
Yeah, that's so true. And I think it's, I think it's the, it's not like, yes, the time I think is, well, inarguably, I don't know one of the biggest factors here, but it's also. I remember when I was going through Narrative Select, I was like, oh my gosh, these, the, the mental load that this takes off, like you mentioned of just like zooming in and zooming out on like, especially those groups is like the.
- [43:56]
A
Is everyone's most hated thing.
- [43:59]
F
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [44:00]
A
Usually.
- [44:00]
F
Yeah.
- [44:01]
B
I've yet to hear a photographer actually, when you say that, like, be like, I love.
- [44:06]
A
Yeah, no, nobody. Nobody.
- [44:09]
E
I don't know. James might be that person.
- [44:10]
F
Well, no, I was gonna say I can show you literally hundreds of messages from our users where they come through our support. And we have a channel inside our company where we share this feedback from users. And people say, I love culling now. And I was thinking of a user call that one of the guys from our marketing team was on a few weeks ago, and it was a guy in South America and he was saying that he had a backlog of about six weddings which he needed to get on top of, and a whole bunch of stuff going on in his personal life. And he was just like so stressed by the idea of needing to cull and edit and deliver these six shoots and take care of everything. And he said he didn't know that there were products out there which could help him do this faster. And so out of sheer desperation, he just like got on Google and was like, how can I call and edit my shoots faster? I'm desperate. And he found narrative. And he said over a weekend, over one weekend, he got on top of the whole six photo shoots and he was on the phone call literally in tears, just trying to tell us, I'm so thankful that you created this product because it has, like taken me out of this extremely stressful situation.
- [45:34]
A
So that's amazing.
- [45:36]
F
I'm pretty sure you will hear him say, I love culling now and many more values.
- [45:43]
A
Wow. Okay. I have a question. I'm not gonna back this question by saying it's my own belief. It's not my own belief, but I've heard just murmurs in the industry as AI becomes more prevalent, as people lean more on AI for culling and especially editing. I've heard almost like the belief that you are not a professional artist if you use AI to. I think it's mostly when it comes to editing for some reason. And I think they're trying to.
- [46:15]
B
You're like devaluing, like you're not putting in as much work because it's not custom.
- [46:18]
A
It's not like a custom human hand went through and like hand painted basically is what they're kind of like. At least from my understanding. They're almost equating it to like an artist on a canvas when we edit each individual photo. And so they're basically saying you should not charge luxury prices, you should not be, you know, a high paid artist if you use AI to colon edit Again, I'm not claiming that for myself. I don't believe that, but I would love your take on that take.
- [46:48]
F
Absolutely. I mean, just look at history again and again and again. Every time we create a new technology, there is an audience of people who are like. And like, the most obvious one was when the. I'm not old enough to have been around for this, but when the digital camera came out and people were standing around being like, digital is not real photography. How could you be a true photographer if you're not shooting on film? And then the same was true when Lightroom became a product. Like, how could you, like, you know, manipulate your images? That's not true photography. It has to look real and authentic and unchanged. And this is just how technology evolves. And we integrate the most useful parts of technology into our workflow to enable us to exhibit what we want to create to the best of our ability. The thing which our users are finding is that by integrating AI into their workflow, they're able to achieve and produce the kind of work that they desire much quicker and with less time. And in many cases, they say that they actually make better work. Because one thing that you can do if you save hours from editing a photo shoot is that you could simply sit down on the couch and play more PlayStation. But what a lot of people find themselves doing is that they now spend more time really just elevating their work to the next level. So if I arrive inside Lightroom and all the temperatures, perfect tint exposure, white balance, black spikes, et cetera, et cetera, I'm like, yeah, this is pretty good. This is where I would want it. I find myself spending more time using tools like all of the masking that lives inside Lightroom or the content Aware fill and all, continuing to develop my style. And so I'm delivering work that is significantly better than if I wasn't using AI.
- [48:51]
B
Yeah, that's so true.
- [48:53]
A
Would your take be if people, as technology gets more advanced, as AI becomes more prevalent in our society at large, but then obviously, specifically in the photo industry, do you think people that don't hop on and start utilizing AI in their. In their workflows, in their business are going to get left behind?
- [49:14]
F
I mean, the classic expression that you hear people say is that AI is not going to take your job, but somebody using it will. And if people start producing better work because they're using AI, then yeah, you're probably going to get left behind if people start being able to shoot significantly more with, like, greater ease. Like, what was. When I was doing wedding photography full time, I would try and limit myself to about 20 to 25 weddings a year. And why would I do that was because I spent so much time behind the computer. Did I enjoy the process of going out and shooting with my clients. Absolutely. That was my favorite part of it. And what have I done more if I didn't have as much post work? Totally. And so I think what we're going to see happen is that photographers are literally able to do more work because then they're not limited by being bogged down by their post workflow. And as you said, the laborious parts that really drain your creativity because you're trying to work out if someone's eyes are open or not, when you should be thinking about bigger, more important problems, like, how am I gonna, you know, like we said, evolve my style and make my work better or find my next client. And so people who have started integrating AI into their workflow are literally able to make more money or spend more time improving their business. And so absolutely, the people who. Who are slow to adopt are going to begin to. I don't want to say words that are too strong, but, you know, like, you. You might find that you're struggling in comparison to other photographers.
- [51:12]
B
That's.
- [51:12]
E
Yeah, well, yeah, maybe we should revisit the mirrorless conversation.
- [51:16]
A
I'm just kidding.
- [51:19]
C
I really do.
- [51:20]
A
The irony that we're airing this after.
- [51:22]
E
After that, I don't know.
- [51:24]
B
I still kind of stand by what.
- [51:25]
E
We said in there, so I'll just leave that as it is.
- [51:28]
A
I understand, though, when it comes to AI like, utilization in your workflow, like, I am fully. I'm. I understand, yes. Although I say that and then I still use Photo Mechanics.
- [51:38]
B
Well, that's the one thing that, that I had. I think I said this before we started recording, but I have, you know, experimented and used Narrative select before and was really impressed. But the hard part was I was in the middle of like a busy, you know, backlog of galleries and I'm just like, hey, I've used this one system and I have a, you know, a system. I am, you know, I know how it works. I'm very fast with it, arguably for what it is, and it was hard for me to make the switch. But I recently, again, within the last six months, maybe experimented with. And I told you this off, I think off air, so deeply apologize. I experimented with a competitor's culling software, like from yours, and I still, I went through the entire thing again and I was actually. Which I knew. I was like, okay, if I keep using this more, I will get faster. But I didn't trust it. And I was like, what is it doing?
- [52:45]
C
Why.
- [52:46]
B
Why did it put that photo as like, you know, rated blank? And like, that makes no Sense that photo. And it was frustrating to me and I was like, I give up. So it's one of those things that's like, I think it can be hard to adopt a new workflow.
- [53:03]
A
You have to include the time of, like, relearning a new system.
- [53:07]
B
Yeah. And just, I mean, when I think about myself with coaching students where we've had the conversation, they're like, yeah, I still call in Lightroom. Oh, my gosh. I literally, I'm like, you. You don't understand how much time you're wasting by culling in Lightroom. All the images and they're like, oftentimes.
- [53:28]
A
They'Re going and they're just deleting instead of choosing the good ones.
- [53:32]
B
Even if they're choosing the amount of, like, how slow Lightroom is, it's not a culling software. Anyways. I sit there and I'm like, oh, my gosh, yes, I know it'll be like a little bit of friction to switch to a new software, but you have to switch. And I kind of of just set my ego aside and pull myself out. And I'm like, I guarantee that's exactly.
- [53:52]
E
How someone like James looks at me with a moto mechanic and is like, bro.
- [53:58]
B
Like, yes, it's a little bit of friction, but it's so worth the transition. But anyways, you can answer like or. Or speak to that specifically, James. But I also would love to hear, what would you say to the photographers who are feeling like, I would love a system and a software that saves me a lot of time, but I have X amount on my backlog and it feels way too complicated to try to learn a new software right now.
- [54:25]
F
Yeah, well, I mean, first I would speak to the example of our friend from South America who was absolutely stressed out about his backlog and he got through his six weddings in a weekend. And so, yeah, I would see it as an opportunity to win back your time. And I think when you use the product, I think you mentioned it was quite a few years ago now, and really that narrative was in its infancy at that stage and it's much more mature product now. So you'll find that we've smoothed out a lot of the onboarding and first run user experience so that it's much more simple to understand how it works and fits into your workflow. And to be honest, it's pretty much just exactly the same as how you would usually do it. You use star ratings to add to the images that you want to select, or if you use colors or tags, you just do it the exact same way. And then they'll come across to lightroom. So the initial process of learning should be very, very simple. And it's not. Not. We've intentionally tried to create a workflow that isn't significantly different to how you're already doing it. So. Yeah, I mean, next time. Yeah. And what we were speaking about this earlier, you know, culling and editing sits in a part of your workflow where you're usually trying to do it when you're most busy. And so it can seem a little overwhelming. It's like, oh, I just returned from this photo shoot yesterday. I just want to quickly find some images. Like, oh, do I want to integrate this new tool at this part of the workflow? Well, I actually just really want to quickly pick some sneak peek images and get them out to them. And I totally get that. I've been in that place many times. So I would say, you know, just next time you're near the end of the week and you want to download it and give it a go, run through a set of images that you haven't culled yet and just have a nosy. Just give it a feel, see how it feels and have a look through. And then once you return from your next photo shoot and you quickly want to jump in and find a few selects, boom, you'll be in there much faster.
- [56:49]
B
That's so good.
- [56:49]
A
As he was talking, I was like, you know, when is a really great time to implement a new thing? When you're like, like not having active weddings, maternity leave, which we're, we're voting on.
- [57:00]
B
Oh, that's funny that you thought that because I was sitting here thinking as he's talking, I was like, I am sitting here with about four weeks left of work before I leave on maternity leave, and I am stressed about the amount of galleries that I still have to get out. I have like six plus galleries that I want off my plate before I like, peace out and I'm dead to the world and I will not be touching my computer.
- [57:21]
A
And.
- [57:22]
B
And I am literally sitting here like, okay, maybe now is the time that I pull this.
- [57:28]
A
Like the guy from South Africa.
- [57:30]
C
Yeah.
- [57:30]
B
Cause I'm like, I just, yeah, it's like, okay, you gotta jump in. And I love James that you were just like, hey, it should be pretty comparable and, you know, streamlined to your system that you already have. It just improves it. And I loved that you were like, yeah, you know, Evie, when you tried that, this, you know, narrative select, it was, it was a bit, it was a Bit ago. It was a couple years ago. You know, it's way better now. I'm like, oh, gosh, if it's better. Like, I was so impressed back then. I just didn't make the jump, like, straight up. That's my only reason. Because what you guys have created is phenomenal. So if, if you're sitting here like, oh, just wait.
- [58:07]
E
I'm like, oh, I really got to get on this.
- [58:10]
B
And this is the time. This is my time to shine.
- [58:13]
E
With the echoing James has sold me. I'm pretty much. That's the point.
- [58:17]
A
Yeah, yeah, no, I, I feel the, I felt pretty attacked with the, with the get up on the times. If you're gonna educate, like, who are you? Who, who are you to. To say one thing and do the other? So I really took that to heart. So I feel like in this boxing arena, James Broadbent has won. Unfortunately or fortunately. Actually, probably for us.
- [58:41]
E
Fortunately for us and our listeners.
- [58:43]
F
Let's be real, guys, there's no winners or losers. You know, the winner, you're the winner if you start winning back your time. Right. So.
- [58:51]
A
Oh, well, that was a really good thing to say to make it sound like we all win, but really that means, like, you win.
- [59:01]
E
James was right. Is basically James was right. And that's what we're learning at the.
- [59:07]
B
End of this conversation.
- [59:08]
A
What a time. Honestly, I feel like most of the listeners already, like, literally everybody that I talk to. Not everybody, but like most people that I talk to, I feel like use narrative select.
- [59:17]
B
Not gonna lie.
- [59:18]
E
We've promoted them for years too.
- [59:21]
F
Yeah, yeah.
- [59:22]
B
Because we've seen the product is great.
- [59:24]
A
We're just here being dinosaurs and we should just get on with it.
- [59:29]
F
We have users in like over 160 countries and process billions of images every year, and it's been growing wildly fast. And it's been so much fun building this and bringing it to the photography community because I built it out of a need that I experienced personally. And it's crazy. It's been crazy to make the transition from being a photographer to, you know, now the CEO of a company that employs like 25 people and is growing wildly fast. And we, I just love, I'm very, very passionate about, about the space, about solving these problems for photographers. And so, yeah, anyone who downloads it and tries it, we would love your feedback. We'd love to hear from you through support. How can we make it better? How can we continue to improve it? Because like I said, we're rapidly developing it and improving it and there's some really, really big improvements and updates coming later this year which will be excited to launch in the big scheme of things, I think. But we're just on the beginning of this journey. There is so much more that we can do to help to continue to improve photographers in their workflow. So it's exciting.
- [60:46]
B
Oh, I love it.
- [60:47]
A
Amazing. Well, so if anybody's listening to this and they're just from the get go have been like obvi, James is correct. Ebbie Lindsay. And they're like. Or, or they're like us and they've.
- [61:00]
B
Been swayed, they have been convinced to.
- [61:04]
A
Come to the not dark side, the light side. Should you say? I don't know what you would call that. The future maybe, if you will. Where can they get narrative? Where can they purchase? Where can they throw their old culling software in the trash? Like all the things.
- [61:21]
F
Obviously our website is just www.narrative. so if you want to follow us on Instagram, it's NarrativeApp. But yeah, I would recommend that they just follow the link in the show notes so that they can get that discount code and we'll make it even cheaper than $10 a month.
- [61:42]
A
Amazing.
- [61:44]
B
James, you are incredible. Thank you so much for all you're doing and building with narrative. You guys are an incredible company. I can say this from just personal experience of working with you, with, with so many of your incredible team members. Like you guys care so much about your customers and what you were.
- [62:02]
A
Which is why we keep partnering even.
- [62:04]
E
Though we don't use Narrative Select.
- [62:06]
A
Well, no, listen, listen, we use Publish.
- [62:08]
B
That's true.
- [62:08]
A
And as of this day I had.
- [62:10]
B
Tested at least Narrative Select.
- [62:12]
A
Listen, that just I was to say my faith in you is high.
- [62:16]
B
I was being so kind to him.
- [62:18]
C
We derailed it.
- [62:18]
B
Okay. James, you are amazing and your company in just what you've built, the culture of what you have built is phenomenal. And we are so grateful for your time here today and for building such incredible tools for us as photographers and just for sharing your your experience with that and your insight on it today like truly means the world to us.
- [62:39]
C
So thank you.
- [62:40]
F
Awesome. Thanks so much for having guys. I love the conversation sa.