Lough Aleck More

Transcription

MALE SPEAKER: Great to welcome Rodney here to talk to us about landscape photography and his work in that field and some of these great images. I've got a number of them scattered around my home. And some of you may as well. But it's great to have Rodney here. Thanks for coming. [APPLAUSE] RODNEY LOUGH JR: You might want to save your applause until the end, because you never know what you're going to get, right? My name is Rodney Lough Jr. I'm apparently the most famous guy you've never heard of. I have-- I want to first thank Google for having me out here and John Nile-- no, it's really Neal. It's not Nile. I did that on purpose-- and Chris James from the legal department. Well, I better start my little starter, my little clock. And a lady by the name of Lisa Brewer, who is one of my people at the gallery I have in San Francisco. It's a 14,000 square-foot gallery. It's the single largest photographic artist gallery in the world. Feel free to visit. I've got some ground rules. It's OK to laugh. It's OK to clap. Not so OK to boo. OK? Hopefully that won't happen. I was born in 1960 in Jacksonville, Florida. My father was in the Coast Guard. And we moved around quite a bit, because he was in the military. About every three years we found ourselves in a new location, in a new exciting place. And it's sort of a negative and a positive, right? When you move around a lot, you have the opportunity to make new friends, meet new people. It gives you this sense of exploration that you don't get normally anywhere else. But by the same token, you don't really have a whole lot of lifelong friends. My dad was an avid outdoors guy. He grew up in Colorado. They used to take pack mules out into the middle of nowhere. They'd spend two or three weeks as a family on vacation. I know that sounds completely foreign to us today that somebody would do anything with a pack mule, but that's what they used to do. And so he instilled in me this sense of exploration, which is fun. Honestly, it's fun. Sweat is a good thing. I got my first camera when I was 12 years old. And it was an old Olympus OM-1. If you're wondering why I'm only walking from here to here, it's because that's the total width that this camera can see. I would normally walk way over there just to watch all your head's turn, like at a tennis match or something. But my dad's best friend, Uncle Bill, he loved photography, absolutely loved it. And Uncle Bill saw my passion for following him around and seeing what he was doing. And he gave me his old Olympus OM-1. I started doing black and white photography with Uncle Bill. And my very first darkroom was the bathroom. I'm not joking, the bathroom. I'd mix my chemicals in the sink. I would have a little teeny tray that I would do the one thing and then the other thing. And I would hang it up. I would literally turn on the light switch to expose the material. That was my first darkroom, the bathroom, literally. And I shot black and white film. Oh man, well, I still do, right? But about eight or nine years, when I was 20, 21, somewhere in there, I discovered that black and white photography became easy. I don't know. Is that heresy to say that in the heart of Ansel Adams land? I don't know. But color-- OK, think about-- well, I should ask. Can I ask a couple more questions? Any photographers in the room? Oh, quite a few. Any of you actually know who I am? Oh, a couple. Sweet. Hey, that Google stuff's working. How many people shooting film? All right. How many shooting digital? Film is not dead. I'm just saying that. How many shooting digital, thinking of going to film? One guy. Really? Look, I'm not counting an iPhone as a digital camera. Are you guys? I hope not. I hope that's not what you're counting, because that doesn't count. Not realizing I had any talent for photography whatsoever, I took the traditional route and went to college. I was always good in math. Do I have any math majors in the room? Sweet. My kind of people. I left my pocket protector at home today. When I was going to school, I met my wife at a dance during the summer, a church dance. Went back to school. Missed her a lot. Left my last semester of my senior year to go back and ask my wife to marry me. She was stupid enough to say yes. I was lucky enough that she did. When I came back to school, I got called in after a couple weeks into the dean's office. Anyone ever get called into the dean's office for anything? Yeah, I didn't think. None of you. You're smarter than I am. And they sat me down and they said, you know, something about you is different. We're not sure what, but you used to be a C student. You're getting straight A's. What's the deal? I don't know. I don't have a clue. A couple more weeks go by, maybe almost a whole month. I get called back in to the dean's office, and he says, something's different, because your professors, they love you. And quite frankly, they didn't really used to like you all that much. And I get called in another three weeks, and he says, would you stay on for a master's degree? You've got to take this applications test. You've got to take a theory test just to get in the program. But we'd like you to get in. And I'm like, oh no. I'm pff-- are you kidding? I'm so far in debt. Anyone still in debt for the college? Yeah, me too. The cheapest money you'll ever get. Take forever to pay that off. Finally he says, look, just take the exams. So I took the exams. I got like a 98 on the theory and a 99 on the application. And I was feeling pretty good. I'm in the statistics department, minoring in mathematics. I was so smart, I could float across campus. That's how smart I was. Or at least that's how smart I felt. So they call me back in and they say, have you ever heard of the BYU outstanding achievement scholarship? Like I'd ever heard of any kind of scholarship before. Not-- no way. They said, well, we applied for it in your name. Can you do that? Are you-- what do we call that today? That's like identity theft, isn't it? They said, well, you got it. You just got the Brigham Young University Outstanding Achievement Scholarship. I said, that's wonderful, but what is it? Oh, simple. It pays for everything. Everything? Everything. And we'll even give you a job at $12 an hour. Now realize, way back then, $12 an hour in the research center was a lot of money. So after I got through school, I went in-- I did graduate, just so you know, a master's degree in statistics with a minor in mathematics. So from one geek to the rest of my fellow geeks in the room, you don't have to remain the way you are. There is life outside of geekdom. Because I'm not-- well, how do I put it? Because I can speak corporate-- and you all know what I mean by that-- actually, no. You guys have a pretty cool atmosphere here, don't you? It's not too back-biting, I hope. But because I could speak corporate, and because I could speak geek, I went up the ladder pretty quick. And within seven years I was director of database and research for an international direct mail marketing company in New Jersey. Now, I'm from Oregon. New Jersey is about as far away from where I wanted to be as I could possibly get. Any managers in the room, people who manage? A few. Well, the rest of you are lucky, trust me. Because managing is not easy. It's kind of like wrangling cats, managing kindergartners. All right? You do realize that we haven't changed. When you were in the sandbox at four or five years old, and you were a yanking that toy away from that other kid because it's mine, you haven't changed. You've gotten sneakier, but we haven't changed. Basically, we're still the same. Anyone know any Germans, I mean born and bred, honest to goodness Germans? These people have no sense of social space at all. One day-- OK, write this down. You're going to need this later in life. An hour-- I can't do this in an hour. It's crazy. I'll speed up a little bit. Write this down. If you want to run a successful business, here's how you do it. You're going to have problems, so you have to identify the problem. Then you have to fix the problem. Then you have to not do the problem again. That's it. That's how every successful company on the face of the plant operates, including mine. Identify the problem. Fix the problem. Don't do the problem again. Every day as a manager, I would have people coming into my office. We have a problem, and Susie did it. What are you going to do to Susie? Oh, come on. Really? So one morning Jens-- born and bred, Munich-- comes in. And Jens is like this close to my face. He's so close. And he's screaming about something Susie has done, so violently that the little spit balls are hitting me in the face. I snapped. I did. Jens, can you hold that thought for a minute. I'll be right back. I marched down to the senior VP of marketing, who I reported to. She reported to the owners. Now realize that this time I was in charge of $164 million in sales. I know that means nothing to you guys being from Google. That's like your budget, isn't it, $164 million? I had 30 people reporting to me in 13 different countries, and I snapped. I went down to her and I said, I'm going to be leaving. She goes, what happened? I told her the spit balls. She said, no, you can't leave. I'm like, it's still America. I'm pretty sure I can. She goes, how much more money do you want? What? Is that all I had to do to get a raise, threaten to leave? Holy crap, I wish I'd learned that lesson sooner. I said no, no, no, no. I can't do this. Well, when are you going to leave, she asks. About five minutes, because I'm done. I helped them find a replacement. On the drive home-- oh, I should back up a little bit. When you manage people, you're sort of expected to do social events of some kind, right? We love to barbecue. If you ever come up to Oregon, you want a good barbecue, just call ahead so we can vacuum and get the barbecue ready. People would come over to the barbecue. They'd see something hanging on a wall, and they'd be like, oh, that's amazing. Where did you buy that? Buy it? Are you kidding me? I'm Scottish. I made that. That's what us Scottish people do. We don't really buy stuff. We just make it, because we're that cheap. I'm sorry, frugal. More of a Scottish word, isn't it? Frugal. Get in my belly. So on the drive home I'm thinking to myself, what am I going to tell my wife. We got three kids. They were paying me $120,000 a year. This is back in '95, OK? That's a lot of money back in '95. And since I was in charge of all the budgets and the performance and the bonus structure, guess what else we made? Bonus every time. So that was like another $30,000. I'm at $150,000 a year. We're living in the big house. We got the sports car, everything. Pull in the driveway. I get out. I walk up the-- in the front door. My wife hears the door shut and she says, you're home early. Did you forget something? I'm like, yeah, forgot my life. What do you mean by that? Well, are you in a good mood, because I just quit my job. She goes, really? So what are you going to do now? Well, thought I'd work on my photography for a while. Now, I knew I'd married the right woman long ago. But this just nailed it for me. And she can pretty much do anything she wants-- I hope she doesn't see this, because then she'll know she can-- and I'll still stick with her. Because she walks up, and she gives me a big hug. And remember how we talked about being interactive. You're going to have to say aw in a moment. She gives me a big hug, and she whispers in my ear, it's about time. AUDIENCE: Aw. RODNEY LOUGH JR: It took us a whopping week to pack the house and get out of New Jersey. And we moved to Colorado. Now within the first five minutes of this talk, you've probably decided whether you love me or hate me. And I've got to be honest, either way, I don't care. Because I like me. I like me. I like the fact that I left the corporate world. I like the fact that I'm doing what I love to do. I even like the fact I keep winning all these ridiculous awards. I've got so many awards it's sick. You've heard of sick money, right? People who have sick money. I have sick awards. People shooting photography, more questions. Anyone shooting medium-format camera? How about large format? One dude. You guys don't even know what I'm talking about, do you? You saw that picture of me with the camera, right? Imagine a camera so large that the film is that big. That's how big my film is. Have you ever seen the old camera with the bellows on them, and you've got to put your head under the hood? Everything on the back i a ground glass. It's upside down and backwards. Have you guys seen this kind of camera before? That's what I'm using. They still make them, but they've stopped making my film, which is kind of unfortunate, but I have a stash. Because I'm on the Fuji film talent team, I saw it coming. I have hundreds of sheets of film sitting in the freezer to use down the road. In order to be successful in the business I do, you have to have passion. I think to be successful in any business, you have to have passion. So my passion, what drives me is I'm a soloist. Right? I love being out in the middle of nowhere by myself. Why? Well, let me ask. Anyone ever do that? Show of hands. Out in the middle of nowhere, by yourself. Nothing else like it, is there? Pure silence. So quiet you can hear the ringing in your ears, which is the onset of tinnitus, which comes with age unfortunately. Most the time I'm about 11 miles or so back. Oh my gosh, I'm only halfway through. This is crazy. How am I going to pull this off? Does Google have a mission statement? Anyone know it? Show of hands, who knows it by heart? Managers, you're going to want to take note of the people who didn't raise their hands. My mission statement-- now realize, if I had wanted to make money, becoming an artist was probably not the smartest move, OK? My mission statement is to enrich people's lives by bringing Rodney's nature-based art into every home and office in the world. It's one sentence. It's a long sentence and probably not grammatically correct. I'm a math guy, not an English guy. But if you get rid of the rhetoric, Rodney, Rodney, Rodney, and you boil it down to its simplest form, enrich people's lives through nature, that's what I'm seeking to do. I've been fortunate enough that it seems to be working. But it only works because I have the passion. I think I have time to tell you this story. No I don't. I'm sorry, I don't. I don't. Normally I give convention talks at Las Vegas or something, and they're two hours, three hours. So to try and smush into an hour is hard. My son-- I'm Rodney Lough Jr. That means there was a senior. And that means, unfortunately, there's a "the third." So uno, dos, tres. We called him Trey. He doesn't even know how to spell Rodney, because we've called him Trey his whole life. Trey's 19. He's got a fourth-degree black belt in taekwondo. He's the youngest master to ever receive that honor in the United States. Even I don't mess with him, and I'm a lot bigger than he is. But that's probably because I love him, right? It's a father thing, I guess. Trey comes to me the other day, and he says, dad, you're considered the best in the world at what you do. Why? How is that? No one had-- I'd been asked-- I've been interviewed gobs. No one's ever asked me that question. I thought, that was a great question. Why? I thought about for a little bit, and I thought, hm, because I don't think I am. Now that sounds crazy, right? A piece in the Smithsonian, an award from the United Nations. I got something from the US Senate, sick awards. But why? Why am I the best in the world at what I do? Because I don't think I am. It constantly means that I'm improving and looking at not what's right but looking at what's wrong. It's easy to stand in front of a large mountain at sunrise, with the thing just going off and the stream in the foreground and everything's perfect. And it's yelling at you, photograph me. Please photograph me. Look how magnificent I am. Those are easy. The in-between stuff, kind of not the big mountains, just sort of uh, a little more difficult. The intimate stuff, really hard. But in every one of those cases I don't look at what's right with it. I'm constantly examining what's wrong. I don't know if that makes me weird, but it's got me where I'm at. Oh my gosh. OK, my studio-- I have an 18,000 square foot studio. It's just a teeny little photography place. I've got a tango drum scanner, where I convert my film from analog to digital, because you can't even get print film for enlargers these day. Everything has to be switched over and converted to digital. I have two backup scanners. I've got a 52-inch Colex type C processor. Is this going over everyone's head? Anyone know what I'm talking about? I got some over my heads. And I got a couple people saying, I don't understand. But that's OK. It basically allows me to go like this, [WHISTLE], huh, that's magnificent, get out my camera, come back, [WHISTLE] too-doo-loo. Put it on the wall and we all go, ahh. Because that's it, right? Hah. Hah. That's what I do, try and enrich people's lives through nature. The only way I can do that is when I have that sensation, try and get it on the wall so you guys can have that sensation. Long story short, I got a remarkable studio. You guys are welcome to come up and visit. Like I said, just call ahead so we can vacuum. I do have time for one story. When I do these photography workshops every year-- people come on these photography workshops. They pay me, I think, outrageous sums of money to come and hike along. People say, what do I get for my 2 and 1/2 days? Get to hang out with me. That's what you get for 2 and 1/2 days. Now I will tell you, I wear you out. Every night you're like oh, I'm exhausted. But it's so much fun. Well, in order to do these workshops up in Glacier National Park in Montana, you have to have taken this bear encounter course. And they teach you how to deal with bears, when you come up on them in the wilderness. You take a submissive posture. You're not loud. You kind of talk to them softly. When they're not watching you, you back away slowly. The moment they take interest, you stop. They give you all these scenarios. I was up in British Columbia, by myself, on this teeny little island called [? Mala Illa Coola. ?] And I'm pretty sure I just butchered it. And I've moored my boat on the beach. I'm hiking down this one little trail that's got about this wide, blackberry bushes going off on either side. And every, I don't know, eight feet is a pile of bear scat. And I'm a guide in Glacier. I know how to handle bears. Never had to really, but I've been trained. Come around this little-- and I'm doing all this stuff. I'm clapping my hands. Hey bear, here I come. Come around this little corner and right there is the butt end of a little black bear. And I'm thinking to myself, this is not something that they teach you in the bear encounter course. What happens when you come up on the butt end of the little black bear? Because if you turn and go the other way, and it hears you, the whole fight/flight thing kicks in. The bear attacks you. It kills you, rips your jugular out. I might be exaggerating a little bit for effect. But it's probably not good. So I'm thinking to myself, what can I do? I know-- true story-- as loud as I could, I yelled, hey bear. And at the same time I slapped it in the butt. The bear went, oh, his eyes huge. [SCRATCHING] Now I'd gone to [? Mala Coola Ola ?] to photograph this old totem that had fallen down. And I found the totem, and it was really-- didn't look that great. So I thought, all right, I'm not going to photograph this. And I don't know how-- Is the mama bear around, because this bear wasn't that big, but it was big enough. And I decided that I was not going to go back the way of the trail. I actually went around the outside sandy, rocky edge of the island to get back to the boat. All right, single biggest difference between me and other photographers is that I don't fake anything. I'm actually famous for not faking it. My goal is to get back to what I saw. Now listen carefully, because it's been interpreted many ways, but you've kind of got the horse here, so you can ask the horse directly. My goal is to get back to what I saw. How I get there, I don't care. I just want you guys to see what I saw. People ask me all the time, did you Photoshop that? Now Photoshop, just so you know, is not a verb. OK? What they're really asking is did you fake it. No, I didn't fake it. Anyone know what a crescent wrench is? Show of hands. A crescent wrench? It's the wrench where it's got the little dial on it, and you twist it left-- up or down, and it gets wider or smaller. And they make little teeny ones. And they may gigantic ones. Very, very useful wrench. Now the guy who designed the crescent wrench probably never thought that it would be used as a murder weapon, but I'm pretty sure it has been. Oh. Oh. The guys who designed Photoshop at Adobe probably never thought it would be used as a murder weapon, but I personally have seen it be used as a murder weapon. So the question is, is the crescent wrench, the engineer of the crescent wrench the problem? Or is it an issue of the integrity of the user? The guy who uses the crescent wrench like it was designed to be used, the same could be true about Photoshop, right? Is it Photoshop that's the problem? Did you Photoshop that? Well, technically I had to. I have to use Photoshop to color balance it and get things back to the way I saw. No different than being in a traditional darkroom where you change the color wheels, or you dodge or burn, or you create contrast masks or-- I'm going over your heads, I know. It's OK. No difference. It's just you're doing it digitally. That's the only difference. So is Photoshop the issue? Or is it an issue of the integrity of the user? How many people think it's Photoshop? Sweet. I've got converts already. I can tell. How many think it's about the integrity of the user? It's a really stupid question, right? If you went to college, you can't get that one wrong. My definition of a lie is any communication given from one to another with the intent to deceive. Right? That's a lie. That's its most simple, basic form. It can be any kind of communication. It could be verbal. It could be nonverbal. It could be video. It could be written. There's gobs of commun-- their body language. Does that make me look fat? Does this dress make me look fat? No. I wouldn't touch that with a 10-foot pole, ever. But see, I think that when you die there's an up escalator and a down escalator. I'd kind of like to be on the up escalator. So lying's not really high on my to-do list at all. Do you know you have talent when your friends and family tell you you have talent? Does that count? Probably not. What about when someone pays you and you can make a living at it? You think maybe then you have talent? I think that every one has been given talents. Not everyone knows what their talent is. They haven't discovered it yet. But I think we've all been given different talents. Imagine a world where you wake up one day, and you've been working in the produce department at some grocery store, and you decide, I want to be a school bus driver. Now I would never do that. But in this Utopian world of mine, you give your notice and you go to the school bus driving school, which is what? Being taught by people who love nothing better than to teach other people how to drive school buses. I think everything would still get done. I think there are people who are natural born tidy uppers, if that's even a real word. I don't even know. Is that a real word, tidy uppers? People who walk around picking garbage up off the ground or straightening the papers on your desk. You didn't ask them to. Every mother-in-law in the world is a tidier upper, because they come in to the house and they clean all of your shelves. They stack all your plates and your dishes in a certain way. It's not the way you want it. And you can't say anything. They're tidier uppers. Oh my gosh. This is ridiculous. OK, how many people in the room are good at what you do? Keep those hands up, because I don't want to see the people changing their minds. How many of you are great at what you do? Put your other hand up. Great. Higher, so I can tell. These are people who are great at what they do. For the rest of you, good is the enemy of great. Don't be good. Be great. Anyone ever hear of a guy by the name of Jim Collins? He wrote a book called "Good to Great." Jim Collins wrote this book, and he said, hmm, I wonder if there's a way to determine how businesses just kind of go along, and then they just shoot up at a 45-degree angle. And they've been doing this for years. And it's just within the market trends and blah, blah, blah. What happened at that juncture to cause them to go from good to great? And he thought, well, we could design a research study, but that would take 50 years, 50 years to come up with the analysis and see what the results were. So instead he said, you know what? Let's go to the stock exchange. Let's look through that data. We've got gobs of data. And let's just see if anyone did that. Sure enough, they had. Over all the years, they went in and they looked at different categories of companies in different years. And sure enough, boom. So they asked a very simple question. What happened at that juncture? What took these companies from just doing whatever to being great? I'm going to summarize a bit. Normally I'd stretch this out, but we don't have much more time. I want you guys to get it though, "Good to Great." They came up with what they call the three circles. I don't know why they call them the three circles, because they got nothing to do with circles really. They were three questions put in a circle. First question, what are you better at than anyone else on the planet? This is important stuff. You guys want to know how to run a business and make success in your life? This is how you do it. I wish somebody had demanded I read this book when I was like 12. Of course, it hadn't been written then, but you know. What are you better at than anyone else in the world? So for our little company, we sat around and we discussed it. And we came up with a very simple statement. We create the finest landscape wilderness artwork on the planet. From click to ship, nobody does it better. And I know, because we get all of our materials from the same suppliers. And I know what other people are using. And I know that I'm the only one crazy enough to lug 120 pounds of camera gear up over a 12,000 foot mountain pass to maybe get a shot. No one's doing it at our level. Nobody on the planet is even coming close. So I'll stand on my soap box, and I'll say, bring it on. You want to put your piece next to my piece, come on, I dare you. I've got my fourth-degree black belt son backing me up. Second question, what drives your economic engine? In other words, if you could put a little box, which has got profit in it-- and profit is created through x. x is the label on the box. What would that x be? So what drives your economic engine? We thought about it. Didn't take that long to figure out. For us it's profit per piece sold. Every piece that we sell, the most profit we can get out of it, better for us. There's lots of ways you can do that. I could trim my expenses in payroll. No one wants to hear that. I know, times are tough. I didn't do it. Haven't done it. You could beat up your suppliers and get a better deal on your raw goods materials, right? That will help increase your profit. Maybe you don't discount. That would affect your profit. So for us the answer is, what drives your economic engine? Profit per piece sold. For us, pretty simple. The last question that they asked was they said, what are you passionate about? Because you have to have passion in what you do, or forget it. Go home. Choose something else. For us it boiled down to our mission statement, to enrich people's lives by bringing Rodney's nature-based art into every home and office in the world. Great. Now what do you do? What they determined was if you can take all those three circles with questions in them and overlap them into a little Venn diagram in the middle, you get this sort of little not quite triangle. But you know what I'm talking about, right? Come on, you guys are geeks. Keep up. Circle, little thing in the middle. If you can figure out what that one thing is that ties all the rest of what you do together, you can go from good to great. So for the last four years we've been sitting around, figuring out, what the heck is that? What is it? I don't know. Well, we came up with something. We came up with what I call Stand Here. OK? I have watched in horror, over the years, where places I've photographed that are truly sanctuaries-- anyone that does the hiking ever been to one of these places where you just sit there and you know it's special? It's special. You just know it. All you have to do-- If you haven't been there, I can tell the rest of you, stand-here.com. You're going to want to go there after you leave. And then you're going to want to Google all your people through Gmail-- because I'm pretty sure that's what you guys use-- and tell people about it. The places I photograph have started to be trampled to death. All right? Anyone been to a national park? Sweet. The first time you went to a national park, you probably went because your friends told you. Oh, you've got to go. It's amazing. So let's say it's Zion National Park. You drive to Zion National Park. And you're sitting in the parking lot, underneath the Cottonwood trees, looking at all the other cars, and you're like, what's so great about this Zion National Park? They go into the visitor's center, where they got the bookstores. And you look through the postcards and the note cards and the posters and the picture books and maybe even spend a few bucks and get some of them. And then you walk over to the ranger. And you lay them on the table, and you go, where are these? You guys know what the ranger's job is? No one. All right, let me tell you. The ranger's task is to protect the resource. That's what their mandate is, right? They want to protect it. Why? So it can be there for our childrens' childrens' children. I think it's a great mission. So he's going to say to you, I don't know. I'm sorry. I don't know. I'm not going to say he's lying, but he's lying because of his mandate. And I don't blame him really. Not too much. But he's going to give you a map. And on that map is going to be like 80 spots. Oh, this one's great. And that one's great. You've got to go here. Check this one out. I'm here to tell you that out of those 80 places, there's like four of them that are truly special. And there's another five or six that aren't even on that map. And I know it from spending my entire life hiking and exploring and whatnot. On one of these chat rooms, a friend of mine sent me a link to it, and it said, Rodney Lough is-- he wastes all of his time hiking around in the middle of nowhere. And maybe he finds something. And maybe he doesn't. That's incredibly inefficient. I thought to myself, that's kind of a ridiculous statement, isn't it? I mean, how do these people think that these places get found? Google Maps? Maybe, but how did that get found? Oh, right, your feet. That's how they got found. All right, Stand Here is a social media website. It's a mobile app. It's a monthly syndicated column. And with our fingers crossed and our toes crossed, it's also going to be a TV show. That's what we're working on right now. Because our mission is to enrich people's lives through nature. If I can tell people where these places are-- I believe that this concept of keeping them secret and keeps them safe is a false. It's false. I've watched it destroy places. I think the only way to protect them is to create a community of people who understand how beautiful they are and work and seek to protect these few places that are really out there in the gigantic national park. I'm not saying that the whole park isn't pretty. It is, but there are special places. Those are the ones we need to protect. So that's what Stand Here is all about. So if you guys have the ability to help create Stand Here, in the public awareness, so we can protect the beautiful places in our national parks, by all means, please help us do so. Because we're taking all of our funds and-- well, not all of them. We have bills to pay, right? But we're going to take money and donate back to each one of these places to protect them. Did you know that when you donate money to a national park, you can tell them exactly how you want them to spend the money? You can. On this trail I want you to take this segment right here and I want you to improve the trail. Here I want you to make sure that duh, duh, duh. You can tell them exactly what to do. And that's what we're going to do. We're going to create a community of people who care. Being highly-educated, intelligent people that you are at Google, you must certainly understand the importance of what I'm talking about. Because guys like me are going to die someday. And the knowledge will die too, unless it gets passed on, and it's carried on from generation to generation. I know, it's something we've heard before, but it's true. You get to a point in your life and you go, oh, if I don't share this, it could be lost. I don't want to see that happen. Thank you, guys, for having me. Appreciate it. I did it. Any questions? Yes, sir. AUDIENCE: Have you been film all your life, or do you also mix in with digital techniques, like capture techniques? RODNEY LOUGH JR: I've been shooting digital-- or, I'm sorry, film since I was 12, all the way up to about three years ago. A company had asked me to take out a 65 megapixel digital back and play with it. I think what they wanted was-- they wanted me to say it's as good as the 8x10, click for click. And it wasn't, so I couldn't do it. And I gave it back to them. And then about a year and a half ago, they came out with an 80 megapixel digital back. And they asked me to go out and do the same thing. And it does not match, click for click, with the 8x10. But because of all the techniques that are available now, where you can take multiple pieces and put them together, I can actually get something that is very close to 8x10. We're not quite there yet. The moment they can give me something that captures a gig in a single shot, and it's like the size of a credit card, I'm all over it. So I have started to switch, because they stopped making my film. I've got no choice, sadly. So I've got about 400 sheets of 8x10 film left in the freezer. And then I've got this 80 megapixel digital back that I put on a 4x5 pancake technical field camera, because the lenses have what's called an image circle. Basically what it can see. And I can move that back within that image circle, even though I've applied a tilt or a swing or a shift, which, for most of you, doesn't mean anything. Anything else? Yeah. AUDIENCE: You've got-- how many sheets of film do you shoot on a typical hike for a day? AUDIENCE: Can you repeat the question? RODNEY LOUGH JR: Yeah, the question was, when I go out on a day hike, how many sheets of film do I take with me, and how many shots do I take? Did I get that right? It depends. I can go out for three weeks and not take a single thing, because I just don't find anything. Or I can go out, and in one evening it just goes ballistic. And I'll go through everything in my bag. But typically, if I'm a day hike, I'll carry five film holders with me, which carries 10 sheets. Because there's two sheets per film holder. And I can blow through that in a day. But it's $50 a click. So I'm Scottish, right? A pretty frugal guy. And I evaluate it pretty good before I rip up $50. AUDIENCE: So do you usually shoot just one frame of each scene? And then do you always print them? RODNEY LOUGH JR: The question was if I just shoot one frame or one sheet of film for every composition? No, not necessarily. Rarely will I shoot one piece of film. Usually it's always two. Because the first one-- I shoot both sheets of film exactly the same. And then I'll process one. And then I'll look at it and make a determination. Do I need to push it or pull it in processing, which means, do I need to make it lighter or darker in processing, because I under-exposed it or maybe I slightly over-exposed it. And I'll do that post. But I shoot everything exactly the same in the field. I don't use any color filters, no polarizers. I do have a graduated neutral density filter, which allows me to hold back the bright sky. But because it's a neutral gray, it doesn't add or subtract any color, it just adds-- or actually subtracts density. So it keeps the light from coming through. And then do I actually print them? Yeah, that was actually in the section I skipped over on the studio. I've got my own LightJet 430 digital enlarger. I can do up to maximum one image, 50 inches by 10 feet. And if I wanted to, I could take that piece and stand it vertical and then put pieces together to make it even larger. Yep. Yeah? AUDIENCE: How do you decide where to go? RODNEY LOUGH JR: How do I decide where to go? When I first started, I did these little outdoor art festivals all over the country. And so I would end up usually end up going, what's between this spot and the next spot? And that's kind of where I went. I haven't done those in like 10 years. But now I pretty much get to go wherever I want. Tomorrow morning I fly down to Managua, in Nicaragua, because the president is getting one of my pieces. And I'm there to give it to him. Because I went there last year and photographed Nicaragua and actually had a blast. It was a lot of fun. So it just depends. Sometimes I get lucky, and someone says, hey, you want to go to Nicaragua? I'm like, Yeah, sure. Other times it's like, oh, I've got to work in the studio, so I can't. But if it's going off some place like tonight-- for example, if we were anywhere to the north, there's an aurora alert. I don't know how many of you know that. But if you were up in Anchorage, you'd be watching the Aurora Borealis tonight in full swing, because it's at a level four, which is big. AUDIENCE: How many days a year do you spend out in the field photographing? How many days in studio developing? And how many days talking through the business stuff, making sure [INAUDIBLE]? RODNEY LOUGH JR: You are so a programmer, aren't you? Out in the field, not enough. In the studio, too much. What was the other one? AUDIENCE: Stuff like this. RODNEY LOUGH JR: Oh, doing stuff like this. I give like-- I don't know-- four or five talks a year. So I think my next talk is-- I think it's next month in WPPI. It's a big convention in Las Vegas. And then I've been asked to come down to Disney and give a talk to the imagineers. It'll probably be a group just like yourselves, all PhDs with a sense of humor. At least I saw some smiles. That's good. Any other questions? Yeah. AUDIENCE: So I'm a little disappointed. I don't see your rig. I was kind of hoping you would show us how heavy it was. RODNEY LOUGH JR: If I wasn't going to Nicaragua, I actually would have brought it. Yeah. I had planned on bringing it. AUDIENCE: How heavy is it? And do you feel like you've got some special muscles for carrying it that most people don't? It's kind of funny, in this world, where everyone carries their iPhones. RODNEY LOUGH JR: Do me a favor. Stand up. OK, so that's you, and this is me. I'm huge, right? So if I put-- the backpack, without any camping gear in it, is probably pushing 55, 60 pounds. If I'm going out for a week or more, it'll pop up to 110, 120. Right now I'm carrying what I call my survival layer. And so if I-- get it, right? So if I carry that camera out in the woods for a few weeks, the survival layer goes away really fast. AUDIENCE: And how do you fly with the camera? RODNEY LOUGH JR: I put it in one of those foamy deals. I take the whole thing apart, lenses. I lock it up and throw it on there and pick it up. And then I leave that usually at the airport, because you can do that, and put everything in my backpack and then go. Yeah, pretty slick some of the stuff you can do these days. Yeah. AUDIENCE: How many miles do you hike a day? RODNEY LOUGH JR: When I'm in the field? Not when I'm sitting at my desk in my office? OK. Well, on average, I'm probably back about 11 miles, on average. There's a lot of stuff that's easy to get to. There's some stuff that's not too hard to get to, a day or two to get into. And then there's some stuff that's two, three weeks to get into. So on average, I guess I'm probably-- well, on Sunday I had a friend from Moscow. He came to visit. And he's like, I want to go shoot. And I'm like, it's fricking 24 degrees outside. What? Yeah, let's go up in the gorge. So I thought, fine. I'll take him on this little hike. It's two miles in, two miles out. I have what I call the two mile rule. At two miles all the jerks stop. They do. Because they're like, do, do, do-- two miles. Oh my gosh, that's four miles. I don't want to-- four miles. This tail we went on was just covered with ice. There's a part where you've got to hold the cable to get by. And it's like this wide. And it was just a sheet of ice. And as we're going through-- his name is Dimitri. He's from Russia, so he's probably used to some ice. I'm like, are you having fun? Because it was dangerous. It was really dangerous. But on Sunday I did a four miler, just a nice little day hike. Yeah, in the back. Oh, hold on. I'm getting two people. We'll start here, and then we'll come to you. AUDIENCE: Do you have any dangerous situations? RODNEY LOUGH JR: Do I have any-- AUDIENCE: Dangerous situations. RODNEY LOUGH JR: Have I had any dangerous situations? I kind of think the black bear was pretty dangerous. One of my favorite sayings is, when I'm doing workshops-- because some of places we go to, there's no fence, and I'm like, this is life. That is death. Right? There are absolutely situations. I don't have it to show you, but there's this photograph I have of me standing on this precipice, where the rock comes back underneath. And it's easily like a 1,200 foot drop. But that was the only place I could get the angle I wanted. so I went out there. I think you have to have a couple missing screws to do some of the stuff I do. Yeah. AUDIENCE: How do you sell your photographs? What is your business model? On your website, I couldn't see that you had these "dropped in a basket" tactics. How do you sell these photographs? RODNEY LOUGH JR: I currently have four galleries. I have one up in Happy Valley. I have one in Sausalito. I have one in Las Vegas. And then I have one at Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco. So my own galleries primarily. AUDIENCE: I see. So you don't sell online? RODNEY LOUGH JR: Not right now. No. Our website used to do online stuff. But what we discovered, from our collector base, is they really just wanted to look at the images and then call one of the people at the gallery and make their final decisions that way. So we tried to make our new website, which is up and running right now, to be more artsy, I guess, and less commercial. Yep. AUDIENCE: You mentioned taking people out on workshops, photography clients-- RODNEY LOUGH JR: Not British people. I'm joking. I'm joking. AUDIENCE: Can the Americans [INAUDIBLE]? So everyone's been to the same place. They've all been exposed to the same landscape. I'm curious as to how their different shots compare. In other words, how much of it is being there, and how much is having the right eye? RODNEY LOUGH JR: Remember, we were talking earlier about talent. I've actually looked through a lot of other people's cameras over the years. And some people absolutely have it, and some people don't. All right? And I can't explain why that is, other than this concept of we all have different talents, right? But I've had five, six people on this side of me, five, six people on the side of me. We're all looking at the same thing. And I go look at their cameras, and every single one of them is different. It's really unique, actually. It's kind of fun. Anything else? Yep. AUDIENCE: When and why do you choose nature to be your main subject? RODNEY LOUGH JR: When and why do I choose nature to be my main subject? Have you spent much time out there? Yeah? AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]. RODNEY LOUGH JR: Yes, OK. Well that would be the short answer, wouldn't it? I think that there is a peacefulness and a calming, serene feeling that can only come from being in these places. I don't know what a typical workspace here at Google looks like, but I'm assuming you have a cube. You have a cube, or is it just-- yeah, cubes. Everyone's got cubes. Let me tell you something. We weren't designed to work and live in cubes. We weren't designed to walk on concrete. We were given grass. That's what we're supposed to be walking on. It's OK that not everyone gets to do what I do, because that means I don't run into as many people when I'm out there. And I'm grateful to you guys. I seriously am. My guys at the studio were working on Stand Here. And your Google Maps API, they love it. If they could give you guys a medal-- Any Google Map guys in here? There was one, wasn't there? Yeah, they'd give you a map-- or a medal. They totally would. They love you guys. But no, I do it because I love being out there. Absolutely. I just grew up with it, I guess. Yep. AUDIENCE: How many people in your crew? RODNEY LOUGH JR: I have, right now, pushing 50 people that work with me. And I say with me as opposed to for me, because often they're doing a lot of things for me that I don't even know about. And they can only do that when they work with you. Do you understand the-- do you guys understand what I'm saying, the difference of working for somebody and working with somebody? My people are working with me. And I love it. We've tried to create an environment of people-- remember, I talked about the two-mile rule? Well, the people that you meet beyond the two miles are what I call earth muffins. Come on, they've got the dreadlocks. The women don't shave their armpits. You know what I'm talking about? These are earth muffins. I work-- even though they don't have dreadlocks, and they do shave their pits, I work with a bunch of earth muffins. They're like the sweetest, nicest people on the planet. I have a great life. I really do. One more question, then I think we're done. AUDIENCE: So how has this sort of-- I feel like in the last decade or so, there's kind of an increase in democratization of photography. I feel like more people have pro-level photography gear in their hands. More people are taking pictures with lesser cameras, all the way down to iPhones and stuff. How is that affecting the demand for your products in your business? RODNEY LOUGH JR: Actually, it's improved it. The question was-- I don't know if you guys heard it or not. There's a lot of people out there with cameras. There's a lot of people who fancy themselves as photographers. How has that affected my business? Actually, it's helped it. Because when you look at what other people have for the price points that they charge, and then you come look at mine, it's like a no-brainer. If you've never been to my gallery in San Francisco, it's not that far away. Has anyone been there? OK, so you even know what I'm talking about, don't you? AUDIENCE: I think it's worth pointing out though to people, it's different to look at the pictures in the gallery than it is online. He has lighting in the gallery that makes a big difference. And the size of the prints make a big difference. RODNEY LOUGH JR: Let's be clear about one thing. I take photos. You take pictures. [LAUGHTER] RODNEY LOUGH JR: I'm just messing with you, man. I don't-- he's probably like the senior VP of all of Google or something, isn't he? Screwed that. AUDIENCE: Does a different fraction-- is the fraction of money that you get coming more from the workshops and less from the photos or anything like that? RODNEY LOUGH JR: No. The fine art photography is where I make my money. Yep. That's where we feed the kids and pay the orthodontist bills. And that's where it's at. What we're doing with Stand Here, we actually don't know that we're going to make any money. We don't want to lose any money. But by the same token, we think it's a greater mission, right? It's not about making gobs of money. It's about making people's lives better. In the end, that's ultimately what I want to be remembered by, protecting truly beautiful places and making people's lives better. Is that such a horrible thing to have on your tombstone? I don't think so. All right, I think we're done. I want to thank you guys for having me out. Really appreciate it.