ANNOUNCER: Welcome to the More Photos’ Photography Spotlight brought to you by Morephotos.com helping professional photographers with all their internet needs. Now here’s your, John Bentley. JOHN: Today on the More Photos Radio Photography Spotlight, we have, Somerset, England, photographer, Phil Flowers, and we’re here to talk about Photo Academy. Welcome to the program, Phil. PHIL: Good afternoon, John. How are you? JOHN: Just fine and dandy. Thanks for tuning in with us. Hey what is the Photo Academy? PHIL: Well the Photo Academy is a small idea I’ve put together over the past 18 months. I’ve been a digital photographer in my studio now for ten years or so, and increasingly more people as they went on to more digital work were phoning me up and asking me to help them out, and I would do that willingly on stuff like software packages and computers and other bits and pieces. So I decided some 12 months ago that potentially that there was a good market for it. So I invested a grand, and I now have a system whereby I can sit at my desk and they can sit at their desk and we can do one to one mentoring and tutoring and training on software packages like More Photos and other bits and pieces common to us like Photoshop, Lightroom, and a few other software packages I deal and that people are using in their studio, and I’ve been short circuit the manual, if you like, and direct them and modify how they work. It’s much faster. An hour spent with a tutor is worth about 12 hours of with a manual. JOHN: Well, now, Phil, do you find that, you know, obviously photographers usually are a very creative bunch. Do you find that a lot of photographers struggle with the technical aspects of this digital age? PHIL: I’m fortunate in as much as I am from an engineering background. I was formally trained as an engineer before the wedding photography. So I think to have empathy or an expertise that’s natural to me for digital photography, cameras, and computers and software programs. I seem to be able to pick it up much faster than my contemporaries. So I am actually studying all the time. I make a habit of getting up at 6:00 in the morning while the birds are singing and doing at least 2 – 3 hours of training a day, every day, even on my birthday. So I can keep up to speed with the new developments in digital photography and the software. JOHN: So what do you find to be the most common problem that people have with, let’s say, a technical problem with the Photoshop software? PHIL: Photoshop is huge. Photoshop is all things to all men. It’s a wonderful program in the versions I’ve used right up to the latest version Series IV. But because it is so large, you are like a small boat on a very large ocean trying to find a port and trying to find that place that will get you to your area that you want to achieve. That is its major disadvantage. You have to get someone on your shoulder that potentially can help you and direct you to the solution that you eventually want to do. I’ve spent hundreds of hours fretting around trying to find a way of doing something then eventually found it and it would only take a couple of minutes to do. So that’s the problem with all software is the manual. Nobody likes to read now-a-days. JOHN: For sure. So how do you per se get onto a student’s shoulder to help them through these programs? PHIL: They go to my website which is www.photo-academy.org and on the front page I have to say now it’s just a work in progress website, because we are testing out the technology, and they will go to “connect to their chooser” and then I will give them a code word, and we will then connect screen to screen, and I can view their screen, and if they want me to I can remotely control their computer from my computer and direct them to the area of the problem and the training we do with them on a particular subject. JOHN: That’s an amazing piece of technology although Big Brother pops into my head all of a sudden. It’s kind of scary in a way that you can control what’s on their computer screen. PHIL: There are a lot of safety aspects we put into training. The student is informed on how they can cover the communications and link directly. I will never do it without them being present so they can see what I’m doing; otherwise, that would defeat the object wouldn’t it? JOHN: Certainly.
PHIL: They have to be able to see what we’re doing. Also we record it for them as well so they can have their own movie of what we’ve done on the course. Potentially you say Big Brother, possibly in the wrong hands it could be. The technology is out there, and I’m sure it is in the wrong hands, but in my hands it’s a safe environment, because I want to help people. JOHN: I’m sure it is. Now the Photo Academy does training and rescue. Tell me, what is the rescue part? PHIL: It would be if somebody was in a big jam, I’ve got lots of friends who have computer crashes on bits or pieces or they have a problem with an image that they can’t deal with or they have problems with coloring or they can’t get their calibration right or the programming is just not producing what they expected last time, and then we go in and have a look at the settings and see if the computer has changed or whatever. We try and rescue the situation on a minute by minute basis. If you like it’s a technical assistance for software without being the software vendor. We’re coming from a different direction. If you imagine a manual is every facility that you ever have, we only deal with facilities that photographers want. JOHN: Now we are in the studio with Phil Flowers of Photo Academy.org. That’s where you can find him on the net, and you’re listening to More Photos Radio Photography Spotlight. We’re going to step aside for these important messages. We’ll be right back. More with Phil, ANNOUNCER: More Photos Radio is powered by www.morephotos.com the online sales solution for professional photographers worldwide. ANNOUNCER: VERTIOTALK RADIO.
ANNOUNCER: Did you ever wonder why the groom is supposed to carry the bride over the threshold? What does the saying something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue mean? Visit www.weddingdetails.com and click on the lore and tradition section. We've got culture and tradition information from around the world. Visit www.weddingdetails.com tonight. ANNOUNCER: We now return you to More Photos Radio Photography Spotlight with your host, John Bentley. JOHN: Welcome back to the More Photos’ Radio Photography Spotlight. We are in the studio with Phil Flowers, and we are talking about his training and rescue website. It’s PhotoAcademy.org. Welcome back to the program, Phil. PHIL: Good afternoon, John. How are you? JOHN: Just fine and dandy. Let’s talk a about the wedding manual. That’s a big part of what you’re doing there on the Photo Academy isn’t it? PHIL: Yes it is. We’re just taking it on. I’m fortunate in as much as I have access to what was one of the U.K.’s best wedding manual training exercises in the early 80’s, late 90’s. We’re going to make that electronic now, and it’s a work in progress. We’re working on it now. We’re making movies for it. We do interviews, and we’ve got photographers involved, but it’s to be an interactive system whereby if you go and check the sample site out, you can see pages will flip, but within those pages there is going to be movies, there is going to be interviews, there’s going to be audio comments from other photographers about a particular subject. It’s going to be media rich and that’s thanks largely in no small measure to Adobe Acrobat 9 and Adobe’s Flash 10 which allows the PDFs to be hugely interactive, and hopefully the initial signs are that everyone is quite rap with the idea that they can dip into a manual online constantly based on photography. There’s a lot of it going on for software and the Lindon.com in California, but nothing yet in the photography market. So we’re trying to have a go at that, John. JOHN: Now do you find that the majority of your students are working professionals or people who are just getting into the photography business? PHIL: The first target is for my fellow professionals. I know a lot of them and some of them are the most well-known photographers in the U.K. and some in America actually. We have come to a time we would like to be able to give something back to the industry. So in these early days we’re gathering together a series of tutors if you like who are prepared to go out there and teach through the system, because it won’t only be me. It will be as many photographers who want to get involved, and we’re mainly doing it for other professionals and from that point when that is launched and running, we’ll open up to the perspective professional photographers as well. Those who would like to be, and there are those who work part time now. It’s a part of the industry that’s not going to go away, and I take the view that why don’t we train them to do it properly right from the outset so the whole industry benefits from good quality photography with good training. JOHN: Well it sounds like you have a pretty good idea going there, and we certainly wish you the best of luck in your endeavor of the PhotoAcademy.org. We appreciate you taking time out of your day, Phil, to join us on the More Photos’ Radio Photography Spotlight program. PHIL: My pleasure.
JOHN: Why don’t you tell our listening audience where we can find you on the net? PHIL: Why don’t you just pop over to www.photo-academy.org, and you’ll find the front page with the information there, and you can contact us there, and there are pages to view and samples to look at, and I would really appreciate anybody at this hour to give us feedback or if they just want to get involved. The whole thing is open, and we would be happy to speak to anyone about the project. JOHN: Well thanks again for joining us, Phil. We appreciate your time. PHIL: My pleasure. Thanks, John. See you soon.
JOHN: We have been listening to Phil Flowers talking about the Photo Academy.org, and you have been listening to the More Photos Radio Photography Spotlight. Thanks for tuning in. Everybody have a great afternoon. ANNOUNCER: This Spotlight is powered by www.vertio.net. Vertio Talk Radio; radio for the 21st Century.
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