13: Wrestling portraits with James Musselwhite, hands-on with new Panasonic and Fujifilm kit, Canon EOS R1 announced

The Photography & Video Show Podcast, Season 2 Episode 1
Published on Thursday, 6 June 2024

Hosted by David McClelland with Angela Nicholson and special guest James Musselwhite.

In this month’s show: Angela has some hands-on time with the new Panasonic Lumix S9, Fujifilm GFX100S II and X-T50, while pro-wrestling photographer James Musselwhite shares ringside stories capturing both dramatic and intimate moments.

Links:

• Panasonic Lumix S9 
• Fujifilm GFX100S II 
• Fujifilm X-T50 
• Adobe Lightroom Generative Remove
• Canon EOS R1 Announcement
• Portrait of a wrestler: https://www.portraitofawrestler.com
• Portrait of a wrester YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQJjwwWaJKkOJ2aGRdr2agw
• James Musselwhite on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/y2jimbob/
• Lensbaby Sweet 22 Review

The Photography & Video Show Podcast:

• Find out more online: www.photographyshow.com/podcast
• Follow us on Instagram: @thephotographyshow
• Connect with us on Twitter: @ukphotoshow
• Join us on Facebook: @thephotographyshowbirmingham
• Email us: thephotographyshow@futurenet.com

Subscribe to The Photography & Video Show Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

The Photography & Video Show is coming to London! 8-11 March 2025, ExCeL Centre.

Transcript

David McClelland: Hello, and welcome to season two of The Photography and Video Show Podcast. We're back with more news, more features more new-kit hands-ons, and more interviews. 

I'm David and coming up in today's show, we get reaction to new cameras from Fujifilm and Panasonic and a surprise announcement from Canon, plus I do three rounds with pro wrestling photographer, James Musselwhite, to hear how he grapples capturing chaos inside the ring and candid portraits inside the locker room. 

James Musselwhite: There are a select number of portraits that I've shot and in, 10, 11 years, it is only a handful where you've really got a study of the vulnerable person behind everything, behind character, behind showman, behind performance, behind athlete, behind child who wanted to be wrestler. You know, that dream you actually sometimes get into that, that realm where it's, Where it's really the real person.

David McClelland: And joining me to cover this month's news is journalist photographer and SheClicks, founder, Angela Nicholson. Ange, good to see you. Have you been? 

Angela Nicholson: Thank you! It's really great to see you. Um, I seem to have been really, really busy recently. We've had all sorts of SheClicks meetups. I just got back from Ireland where we had a meetup over the weekend. There's lots of exciting new kit being announced. It's a really busy time, but it seems, well, I'm always really excited by new kit and things going on, so I've been very happy just recently. Thank you.

David McClelland: As always, let's kick off with what's been making the headlines over the last few weeks. Panasonic has announced the full frame mirrorless, the Lumix S9. It's a really nice looking camera in my opinion, Angela. You've had some hands- on time with the S9. Is it as easy on the hand as it is on the eye?

Angela Nicholson: It's very easy to operate. The controls are well laid out. Um, it feels really nice. The only thing I would say is it doesn't have a grip on the front. It's completely flat front, flat fronted. So it, it's not a camera that you're going to use one handed. And, you know, depending on what lens you've got on, of course, that will make a difference. But, you know, I certainly got to grips with it quickly. But I didn't find it a comfortable hold. Now, it's got a vari-angle screen, which means you can tilt it, you know, to get a perfect view. It doesn't have a viewfinder, which in the bright sunny conditions where I was using it first was a little bit tricky. And that does make assessing exposure and, you know, colour and things a bit a bit tricky.

David McClelland: So, you mentioned the lack of hand grip there. It's a full- frame mirrorless, let's contextualize it then alongside some other full frame mirrorlesses that Panasonic Lumix does have, the S1 and the S5. And this is the first of the S9s. I think we've had an S, a couple of S5s now, haven't we?

So where does it fit in that lineup? What is it doing that the S1 and the S5 is not? 

Angela Nicholson: So, it's got a lot of the technology of the S5 2, but it's kind of pared back to make it easier to use. There's a lot of emphasis on the speed of, um, capture and sharing. You know, they've introduced the new Lumix lab app, and you can use that to create LUTs, uh, know, lookup tables, um, color profiles that you can, add to the camera really easily and then start using those live.

So, you know, I literally edited an image on my phone and created a look that I liked, then uploaded it to the camera and then spent some time shooting with that LUT. So, you know, that's really good fun. So there's an emphasis on, you know, speed and ease of use. But it doesn't have a headphone port and it doesn't have a microphone port.

So,

David McClelland: Oh wow, that feels like a bit of a miss because it seems to me, and the content creator, I've seen people putting the S9 in that bracket, you mentioned there, the ease and the speed with which you can share, apply a look, to that image and then get it on your smartphone or on your computer.

That's all very quick, but not to have the headphone or the microphone input does seem a little bit strange given that framing.

Angela Nicholson: Yeah, I think so too. it does seem a bit odd because, particularly with the microphone, that's something that is often advised as the first big step you make. You know, whether you start with your phone or whether you start with a GoPro, the big improvement you can make is by having an external mic.

And if you're stepping up to full frame, it seems like a logical thing. That seems a little bit odd to me as well. I mean, say it's a content creators' camera implies that people will also want to shoot stills with it. And I think no viewfinder is a bit of a miss for most stills photographers these days.

You know, there was a phase when lots of compact cameras didn't have viewfinders, and then, you know, we don't have a huge number now, but most of them have a viewfinder because people recognise how useful it is and how it separates the camera from a mobile phone.

David McClelland: Yeah.

Angela Nicholson: that, uh, it only has a cold shoe, so there's no hot shoe, so you can't actually use the cold shoe to trigger a flash. So, again, I think that takes it away from the stills photographers. So I would say it's, it's predominantly going to appeal to people who want to create video, um, and maybe want to create video quickly and share it quickly. But, to not have the microphone port, I think is a bit of an issue.

David McClelland: Something else that Panasonic launched at the same time was a new lens, which is also curious too, it's a 26mm f/8 pancake, very flat pancake lens, which, uh, some will say complements, and maybe that is the purpose of this lens to really complement this new body. When I read, oh, 26 mil, okay, yes, nice on a full frame, f/8, f/8? Surely that's F1. 8, no, it's F8, and it's a fixed F8, You can't close that down anymore, that's a really odd choice, it's £220 including VAT, so it's, it's certainly on, on the affordable side. It's an interesting choice, shall we say, what have you made of it?

Angela Nicholson: Well, I only shot with it very briefly. Um, but the images I've got from it look great. You know, there's lots of detail there. It's, it's really nice. I like a wide angle lens, so it's, you know, it's a good focal length for me. However, the S9 has got subject detection autofocus. You know, it's got phase detection autofocus as well.

And this is a manual focus only lens. So it seems like a big miss from that point of view. And when I was out with the S9, I'd say it was quite bright conditions and it was tricky to make sure that the focus was right. When I got the focus right, as I say, the image quality looked fantastic, but there were a few instances where it was, it was a little tricky to get it right.

And, uh, okay, F8 should give you a reasonable amount of depth of field with such such a wide lens. But actually, you know, it was fairly obvious that the focus off when I looked at the images on my computer. 

David McClelland: One more thing though before we leave Panasonic behind. Harking back to The Photography Show where I last saw you back in March and Panasonic were present in Birmingham at the show or were they?

I would say that Panasonic wasn't present, but Lumix certainly was, and I was trying to find their stand. I remember where it was now, it was kind of on the main drag as soon as you'd go in and turn right. But when I looked up in the show guide, I was looking under P for Panasonic, and I couldn't find them.

And I thought, oh, maybe I'm hallucinating here, and they weren't here at all. I did find them later on, but under L for Lumix. And as I walked past their booth there was nary a mention of Panasonic. So I'm curious, is it me that's a bit late to the party in noticing this?

Or have others noticed this divergence between the Panasonic brand and the Lumix brand? What do you reckon might be behind that?

Angela Nicholson: It is something Panasonic's been talking about for a few years, and it's possible that it's, you know, people like me, um, who write about cameras, maybe it's our fault that we haven't passed that information on quite so readily because people still talk about Panasonic cameras and Panasonic Lumix cameras, but not separately Lumix cameras.

And I think it's because, you know, when I've gone to events with Panasonic, they've been clear that they see Lumix as a brand that people recognize. And I have to say that most of the journalists at the events tend to look at each other and think, well, we think everybody still thinks of them as Panasonic.

But so we always refer to them as Panasonic Lumix or Panasonic S9. And Panasonic is very clear that it is Lumix. I think it's a little bit like Canon suddenly deciding to say, right, EOS, you know, this is our brand. And just start renaming all the cameras or, you know, going to The Photography Show and just having a big sign that says EOS, so you don't find them under C, they're under E.

David McClelland: Right. I mean, I get, yeah, maybe. I mean, Canon does a few different things. Panasonic certainly does a lot of different things I think I've got a Panasonic microwave in my kitchen. Uh, certainly Panasonic have been big in display screen technology in the past, so I can understand how if they wanted to have a particular identity for its cameras that it would try and push that Lumix messaging.

I also have a Panasonic mirrorless, and well, there we go. I called it a Panasonic mirrorless. I never call it a Lumix. I never do. So maybe it's just something for me to be aware of and listen out a little bit more carefully too in the future. 

Angela Nicholson: Hmm.

David McClelland: From full frame to medium format and Fujifilm's been at it again this time with the GFX 100S mark two. Um, comparing with a mark one, not too much to look at on the outside in terms of differences here, Ange, I know you've had some time with this as well. What is different? What's different maybe on the inside this time around?

Angela Nicholson: Well, it's got a new sensor. Um, it's not the same sensor as is in the GFX 100 Mark II, but it's the same resolution. So it's 102 million pixels. And it also has the subject detection and the, you know, the snappy AF and the impressive responses. So I was really lucky. I got to test the camera at a safari park and, You know, the subject recognition was just amazing.

I mean, it was a bit challenging when we were shooting through fences, where, you know, where you've got, wire grids to shoot through, but generally, it did a great job. Medium format cameras, or at least Fujifilm medium format cameras, are not like medium format cameras of the past. You know, suddenly you've got a camera which is as responsive as a small format camera, and I think we're really starting to see them in a very different way now. So, the idea of shooting wildlife with a medium format camera is amazing.

David McClelland: For those of us who maybe aren't quite so familiar with this part of the Fujifilm universe, you mentioned the GFX 100 and the GFX 100S as separate things. Just remind us what the difference is between the non S and the S versions.

Angela Nicholson: The GFX100 mark 2 is the flagship camera, and it's got incredible video capability as well as still shooting capability. And it's got all the different aspect ratios and all the different formats that you can output video and 8K video, whereas the GFX100S II is kind of reigned in a little bit to, um, you can still shoot great video, but it's reigned in and it's just that bit more affordable and say it doesn't have the same level of sensor.

But it's still, you know, high quality chip.

David McClelland: Still 102 megapixel, and in terms of the speed there, and you mentioned it as well, is large format, medium format, getting close to competing with 35 mil in terms of its high speed capabilities, and is that maybe why they sent you to a safari park just to put that to the test?

Angela Nicholson: Yes, and yes, I think is the answer there. I mean, I can't see it yet that there's going to be many people standing on a touchline photographing, you know, rugby matches and things because there are still some, you know, the speed and weight advantages, but the capability is certainly there. And it's, you know, there's a lot of people who shoot wildlife portraits, rather than, you know, fast moving action and stuff like that. And yes, it's just making the cameras that bit more versatile and the image quality is incredible. 

David McClelland: Uh, video capabilities in there as well. 4K30P 422 to, an SD card in the camera. ProRes out to an SSD as well. So it's certainly not just a stills machine. There's very capable video in there too. Uh,

Angela Nicholson: slouch, that's for sure.

David McClelland: £5,000 is still some serious money though, but then you are getting a, a lot of camera even at that s level by the sounds of it.

Angela Nicholson: Yeah. And you know, there are other cameras, you know, full frame cameras that cost around that, that figure. So, you know, you are getting something a bit different. Um, you've got even more control over depth of field, which is often something people want.

David McClelland: Also from Fujifilm, something that brings the price quite a lot down, is the X- T50. 

Angela Nicholson: So that's got the 40 million pixel sensor that we've been seeing come through, you know, from the X-T5, for example. and it's got the latest processing engine. So again, we've got fantastic subject detection, but it's, you know, think of it like a baby X-T5. So you've got the majority of the traditional controls for exposure in a smaller package, and it's Probably most likely to be used for street and travel photography, again, we had it at the safari park, and you know, it's much more than that.

It has lots of capabilities, so you get exactly the same image quality as you would from the X-T5, but from a smaller body. It's better suited to use with some of the smaller lenses that Fujifilm offers, but you can still mount. the other bigger lenses, bigger zoom lenses if you want. So I think it's going to be a popular little camera.

David McClelland: Just time for a couple of bits of news in briefs. Adobe Lightroom, we've been tracking AI, I guess, the time that this podcast, we're in season two now, but we started just over a year ago. And we've seen so many developments in generative AI capabilities over that time. And we've been been tracking in various ways how they've been making their ways into the bits of software that we use, into creatives' workflows, and, uh, the announcement a couple of weeks ago is Adobe Lightroom is now featuring generative remove powered by Adobe Firefly, um, we've seen this elsewhere in Adobe products, in Photoshop, but it's good to see it coming into Lightroom and I'm, I'm really looking I don't know how many photographers I speak for, but for the stills that I take, most of my time, honestly, I don't go into Photoshop at all.

I spend my time in Lightroom. So to see some of these capabilities come Lightroom, and yes, we've had tools that do similar things, you know, it might, Content aware fill for example, but to actually see proper generative remove that just gives you a little bit more I'm not going to say accuracy and precision because it's making it up still but a little bit more flexibility, shall we say. I think it's still in beta technically speaking and as with a lot of this at some point in the future when they come out of beta there's going to be some sort of cost associated with it.

I don't quite know how that's going to work. I think there are credits or something. but I'll find out more about those, and I'm sure we'll chat about those in the future as well. But it's good to see that in there.

And another thing is Canon making an in development announcement about the Canon EOS R1. R1. Uh, this Is like the super flagship camera. The first time that we've had a flagship camera in the mirrorless range here from Canon. What did we learn and why do you think they made an announcement?

Angela Nicholson: Well, we didn't learn a massive amount, but there were some things they didn't mention, which I thought was quite interesting. You know, the R3 has got the eye selection AF. They didn't mention that. So whether it will have that or not, I don't know. There was mention of the subject detection being more sophisticated than ever before, faster, more responsive, improved image quality.

All the things you kind of expect them to say. And of course, it's gonna be their flagship camera, and it's gonna it's aimed at pros. The reason why I think they made the announcement was because, you know, we've got the Olympics coming up, and traditionally the Olympic Games is the time when the manufacturers bring out their top end cameras, and then all the photographers, you know, use them at at the games.

But you kind of need a bit of time to get used to the camera before, you know, you pick it up the day before you go to the games and start shooting some of the most important images you've done in four years. So I don't know whether they announced it so that people could start mentally thinking about that's what I'm going to do, or whether to just let people know, oh, don't go and get, an alternative camera because there will be the one you want, but it might not come out until after the games.

So it raised quite a few questions. I'm pretty sure they have made the odd announcement like that before, and certainly other brands have done. So these sort of teaser things seem to becoming more popular or more common, perhaps I should say.

David McClelland: I guess the real news would have been if Canon had have said, Nope, we're not doing an EOS R1. Nope, I know it's an Olympic year, but stuff we'll save it for next year instead. James Musselwhite is a Portsmouth based photographer, specializing in dramatic images of pro wrestlers in full flow, sometimes in full flight, alongside more intimate portraits of the athletes, capturing the moments in between the action on the canvas. 

A fellow of the BIPP and winner of multiple awards, Musselwhite's decade long Portrait of a Wrestler project is a multimedia chronicle of the modern- day wrestling scene. But beside the ring isn't where he began his professional photography career.​

James Musselwhite: When I started, I started in a high street studio, high volume, lots of clients, and you never knew what was coming through the door next. So you could be shooting newborns, maternity, big generation family with grandparents, pets, all sorts of pets. We had everything from dogs to cats to African snails to tarantulas in our studio. 

And you'd know you'd be shooting nine sessions a day. And what that taught you in a really short space of time was people skills and social skills, learning to read social skills, learning to read people, learning to interact with people. And I think that skill set in social photography is by far and away the most important. And that skill set is also important moving forward now is a sole trader and as a business person in terms of interacting with other business people and interacting with clients and interacting and securing contracts.

So everything in photography for me from a business point of view, comes back to social skills and and social skills as well is so important in creating an experience. So although you allude to the fact that I'm kind of like a ringside wrestling photographer and a lot of our social output is that ringside stuff because it's it's dynamic and it's impactful and it's attractive and it catches the eye on social media feeds.

Ultimately what we're trying to do with the studio that we work in now is create experiences for our customers that centre around them and making them feel as amazing as they can possibly feel in studio. And that doesn't come from my expertise in understanding f stops or understanding lighting setups or anything like that. That comes from our team here building an experience that makes people feel valued.

David McClelland: We hear that time and time again, I think, yes, the camera, the lighting, the setup, all the rest of that stuff is, it's certainly one part of it, but it's about the experience that you create for your clients, how they feel. You know, I recently changed my hairdresser. Complete sidebar here. I recently changed my hairdresser and uh, he pitches himself Uh, he's he's got a few stores where I live and he pitches himself as a celebrity hairdresser.

I'm like, right, okay, whatever whatever just cut my hair and one thing that he Did that is different to any hairdresser that I've ever had before. As we were getting towards the end, and you know, you're kind of going through the sign off process, if you like. He asked me, how does it feel? How do you feel?

Not, does it look tidy at the back? Is it short enough on the top? Do you know, do you want a bit more round the ears? He was going for how I felt about the experience, about how I felt about how my hair looked, and that it was kind of a bit of a penny drop moment. And I think that's similar to what you're talking about here in terms of that client experience.

Yes, how the images look, but also how they reflect, how they come out of that session feeling about the journey, the experience they've just had.

James Musselwhite: So if it's a well worn adage and I'm going to and I'm going to repeat it. But if

David McClelland: Go there, go there.

James Musselwhite: if it looks good, if it looks good, you'll see it. If it's marketed right, you'll buy it. If it's real, you'll feel it. And those real experiences which can't be replicated as much as the industry is desperate to try and change that.

No, I don't mean the photography industry. I mean, every industry around the creative industry is trying to change creative industries to homogenize them. That you cannot replace. Real life experiences and you cannot replace real life interactions. And no matter how much like, um, marketing we put behind online social media campaigns or online advertising, the, the best relationships that we've created have come from pressing, pressing palms.

It's, it's, it's come from meeting people. It's come from, you know, engaging in real client interactions. Those are the ones where people, that's where you build trust. and that's where we, we drive our business at the moment. We've gone on off on a bit of a tangent, I fear, um, away from the ringside stuff.

but genuinely like in the last. month alone, we have had real life situations that people have found themselves in that have driven them to us to celebrate their families or celebrate themselves. And these are, and these are real life situations that are life changing.

David McClelland: Right.

James Musselwhite: in those situations they have felt the need to come to someone who they trust to do something with them that creates a memory that will last forever.

And I, and I can be, I can be as I, I can be as blunt and honest about this as, as I possibly can be. I lost my, I lost my father last year and one of the most emotive, one of the mo the hardest, but the, one of the most rewarding things I did was go through. Go through his boxes of photographs and albums to find photographs to build up a portfolio to build up an order of service to build up a photo board for the wake and all those sorts of things difficult in the first instance to do because you're ultimately as a son, you're looking at very old photographs.

of a person you never knew, because I never knew him before I was born. So you see these images that are, uh, that are really, really emotive. And it's a thing that we stick to as a family ourselves. We go through, uh, maybe, like, I don't know, maybe someone wants to take this as a tip. We go through our phones every year.

And we select a hundred photos from our phones and we send them off to a photographic company and they come back as little 5x5 prints and they go in a box. And that's all it is. And then every year we will pull the box out and we will have a look at them. Because I can guarantee there's phones on this desk back here that no longer work.

That have got internal storage that we can't get the photos off of. But because we have a box of photographs, all these little moments of our kids eating ice cream in like weird places or us going for walks in places that we'd completely forgotten that we went to. Bring back those memories, and you cannot replicate, you cannot replicate the power of print.

And that really hit home when I had to go through my father's stuff last year. Because I've always been an advocate for it, as a photographer, of course I am. But it really hit home that, oh wow, this is a real tangible thing that I'm holding in my hands here. And we value that box so highly in our, in our household.

And I, and I love that. I love keeping memories like that, you know, because that's what's really, really important. And that's what we can give, you know, that's what we can give as a service to as photographers, to people.

David McClelland: Two things there. We do a similar thing in as much as every year, we go through our phones, and my kids are old enough to have their own devices now, to start capturing their own memories on their devices. And we create a calendar. It's the McClelland Family Calendar and, uh, sometimes there's a hero image for June when we're all on holiday together and we're all licking an ice cream until he's got a bit of ice cream on her nose or something like that and then other ones are, you know, it might be a collage of eight or ten pictures.

We have that. printed out multiple times, actually, and we share it with our family. It's a Christmas present for family members who you don't really know what else to buy. So, you know, sometimes it'll end up by the fridge or sometimes it'll end up in a box at other family members, but it's something that we've done now for, A very, very long time and every now and then we'll go through the old calendars and uh, yeah, it's it's a real treasure.

The other thing, uh, yes, I recently went through my late father's photographs. In fact, I came across one of the boxes last night just as we're doing some decorating.

James Musselwhite: mate.

David McClelland: I haven't been able to do anything with that. Well, actually I lie. So, so for my dad's wake, I did a similar thing. I went to, I think I went to the local Tescos and bought, uh, uh, half a dozen, but maybe more big cork boards.

Uh, and I was able to get some photos, reproduced some photos that I already had of, of him, of, of us, of, of our family as he was growing up, as, as we were growing up. And I, I pinned those out and they were real. A real star of the celebration of life, because many people who came had never seen those photos before.

It was a real talking point, and sometimes at those events, as much as you want to be upbeat, and you want to be able to have conversations with different people from different groups, it's quite difficult to do that. You sometimes don't have as much in common as you might like to have. So those photos were, uh, Brilliant for exactly that And I've kept all of those photos, but there's an awful lot more that I don't really I actually I like I've bought an album I just haven't been able to go through and put the photos in there and actually it's of my mum and my My late mum and my late dad now, so I know that it's gonna be a really long weekend, a really long rainy weekend, uh, and I, I need to be in the right frame of mind to do that, but I've got the photos, they're in an old suitcase, you know, proper thing you would see at an antique shop, so, so they're all there and they're all nicely safe, I, I, I think, um, but yeah, that, that is a process I need to go through.

Um, Should we start talking about wrestling? Let's um, should we go down that journey before we get to too far into a kind of morbid melancholy place? Um, so you spoke a moment ago about your first incarnation, if you like, of your business working with all comers really from business headshots to families to pets and all the rest of that stuff as a high street studio.

What was the moment when you realized you wanted to jump into something else or was that Always there, that there's something else I want to be doing, lying latent. Did it just jump out at you or did you have to make the jump?

James Musselwhite: I knew I had to create portraits that stood out from the norm and like after shooting that high key family style for about 10 years, you surround yourself with other photographers who are doing other things and doing them in different styles, and you want to learn how to do, how to approach that and how to do that.

But it doesn't necessarily transfer to what you're shooting to make to make you money. So you can't sort, you can practice on those clients, but ultimately those clients don't really want that. I mean, I'd always been like a wrestling fan since I was young. Um, so I mean, that was, that was the thing. And because when, when I was young in the nineties, sort of, it was very Hulk Hogan y, you know, it was very impressionable when, uh, this big thing from America.

So, and I saw that there was a promotion local to me in Portsmouth. There were a couple of promotions actually. And like, you'd see their photographs in, you'd see their posters. In shop windows and stuff like that. And I just thought, oh, I could do better than that. I could, can I? And the goal, the goal was, when I've said this before, the goal was, was to get an image on a poster.

That was literally all I wanted to do, was to find one wrestler and get an image on a poster. So, it was that drive to sort of go, well I think I can improve that industry. And I think I can probably work with people in that industry who are naturally creative to give me a creative output to sort of develop my style to be, um, a photographer that's different to the one that I've created, if that makes sense in terms of the marketplace.

So that's where the driving force for it came. And we started to email people, email promotions, you know, find, this is back in 2014, when, you know, people were kind of pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty good with emails, pretty good with responding, trying to contact people, left messages, and we did that for six months and we got zero replies.

I

David McClelland: oh,

James Musselwhite: don't know why.

David McClelland: that's tough.

James Musselwhite: So yeah, so the rejection thing, which is like, you know, every freelancer, every sole trader and every creative will tell you, you know, the rejection thing is really, really hard to deal with, but we, we, we kept going and then eventually I just decided, you know what? This isn't working. I'm just going to turn up at a show and and start messaging people that way and start sort of meeting the promoters and sort of putting myself out there a little bit more and then we um, it was old school. Actually, I saw a newspaper article featuring a wrestler who had recently made his comeback in the ring from some abdominal surgery that was life threatening, which was the story.

That's the story. So I'm like, Hey, that looks cool. It looks like the photographs been taken on a It doesn't look like it's the greatest promo picture. So I contacted the journalist and just said, look, here's my details. I know you can't give me his, but here's my details. If he wants a shoot, tell him to call me.

And the phone rang five minutes later with this. Oh, I understand. He was taking pictures of me and I was literally down there the next day. So.

David McClelland: who was the wrestler?

James Musselwhite: Uh, a guy called The Fearless Flatliner.

David McClelland: Flat. Okay.

James Musselwhite: He's great. I mean, he's like, he's just, he's just exactly what, he's just like this big, larger than life character, you know, and I still see him around town occasionally when I'm walking around.

You can't miss him. He's got piercings coming out of everywhere. Big bleached beard that comes down to here and he's and and and and from that and I picked him up and I brought him back to the studio and we did some shots and then all of a sudden, you know, I spoke about trust earlier. It just came back to trust here because he's like, alright, this guy isn't this guy is legit.

This guy does want to do it for the right reasons. He has got a studio. He's invited me into his home. Here's the names of three other guys you need to meet. I've told them you're going to call, you know, he's done the hard work for me. And then when I've called, they've gone, Oh, I've seen Chris's pictures.

They look great. When can you get me in? So it's kind of like, it just comes back to that trust thing. And that's like, without getting, without wishing to get too deep into portrait photography, because, because portraits are, uh, essentially a study of the photographer and the subject, there has to be trust because it has to be backwards and forwards.

It has to be back and forth. And that's, and that's, and that's how the project grew to where it is today.

David McClelland: All right, so. On on that point that you touch on there about what a portrait is. I do want to dive into that a little bit Um, so with portrait you're right. It's the photographer and the subject I like to think that we learn something about the subject Beyond just what they look like in the moment when you click the the shutter button now with wrestling.

I might be being a bit Ignorant or naive here, but there's a lot of showmanship There's a lot of performance a lot of putting on a character and I wonder how that plays out played out Maybe uh in in your sessions Capturing you've got the person you've got the athlete. You've got the character. I know you're dealing with professionals But do you ever find the need to push past some, some bravado in order to capture something genuine, something intimate?

Or is there something else that you're capturing?

James Musselwhite: Do you know what? I've done hundreds of these podcasts and you're the first person to tap into that. And take it just that extra level further because people understand that it's the performance and all that kind of thing. But there are so many factors that go into what makes up that person who's sitting in front of your camera.

So you've got the, you've obviously got the performer and the character. And the performer and the character are actually two completely, two, two different things. You've got the performer, the character, you've got the athlete. The person who's putting in miles in the gym to make themselves look great. Uh, you've got the actor behind the mask, and then you've got the person as well.

And the person can be going through some really difficult things. And as we've gone deeper into the project, and we've shot thousands of wrestlers, we've met, we've literally shot thousands all across the world. You meet so many different people who do it for so many different reasons, and so many different stages of their career as well. Pushing past it happens when you have the opportunity to do that in the relationship that you build with the wrestler. So if you're shooting for a promotion and the promotion want nice pictures to go on their match graphics and their posters, that's not the right time to do it. That's the time to bring in your efficiency skills. So you're bringing in your social skills to be quick, efficient, and get through as many people as quickly as possible in as professional a way as you possibly can. 

But if people are willing to give you that little bit of extra line and you can always read the signs and the cues and the people who always come back to me for studio sessions here or always if I'm at a show will make the extra effort to come and speak to me before the show starts, um, to just, you know, even just to ask me how I am or whatever, but even just to start up a conversation, you know that they're going to be in a position to give you a little bit more when you're shooting them backstage and there are a select number of portraits that I've shot and in, in 10, 11 years, it is only a handful where you've really got a study of the vulnerable person behind everything, behind character, behind showman, behind performance, behind athlete, behind child who wanted to be wrestler. You know, that dream you actually sometimes get into that, that realm where it's, Where it's really the real person. Um, I shot an image of, uh, I don't think I've really really, I don't think I've ever, I've got so many I've never released because I work backstage at a lot of shows, not, not always ringside so backstage, you see everything behind the curtain that you shouldn't see. So it's like, it's exactly like being at the theater and seeing like Ian McClellan come off at the end of Widow, as Widow Twankey, do you know what I mean? And just taking the wig off and being, and having those moments in the dressing room.

I've got loads of those moments. I've got one where a wrestler retired in the ring, just gave up his, 15 year career that he'd been doing since he was 16. He'd had his retirement match because he knew he couldn't afford to do it with his job and him starting a family. He had to make sacrifices and the sacrifices had to be I'm starting a family.

I need to be home more. So I can't give up these weekends. I need to commit to working Monday to Friday. So he had this absolute barnstormer of a match in the ring. Just had the crowd in the palm of his hand. He, they, they wanted to cheer for him because they knew it was a, this is the thing about retirement matches -if there's ever a retirement match and matches, they're losing the retirement match. Right? No one's never not lost a retirement match, right? They're losing the retirement match. Um, so the crowd were in on it. And, and he was a bad guy. So he'd always played a bad guy in this promotion, always was the baddie, and And they wanted to cheer for him And there was a moment in the match where he could have played out to the fans and got them to cheer for him and Got them onside and he didn't.

He turned, he kept, he

David McClelland: what a

James Musselwhite: to his character What a pro! And he left, he got beaten, one, two, three, middle of the ring, left the ring And I've got this moment of him absolutely wailing backstage bawling his eyes out because of all of the emotion of the moment but all of the emotion of 15 years of being and you suddenly saw that's the guy That's everything stripped back. That's the guy right there. And it's, and I can't, some of those ones are just like, so that I'll save them for another time, those photographs, I think. Because they all come with stories, you know, but that, and that's, there's so many magic points in, in, in, in performance. And I think that's the really interesting thing that I've allowed, I've been privileged to study really.

David McClelland: Yeah, and and a lot of that, you know that the opportunity to share those intimate moments to capture those intimate moments It comes back to that word. You mentioned a couple of times now Trust which is absolute absolute paramount there.

You've mentioned the project for those who haven't heard of it Portrait of a Wrestler. What is it? How did it come about? Where is it now?

James Musselwhite: So Portrait of a Wrestler is essentially just that it was the simplest title I could, I could think of. I always, I always think you don't want to complicate these things. And that's, it's possibly the best piece of marketing I've ever done. I think I'm not a marketing genius I'm not, I'm not the guy, but this literally describes, describes what it is. And I want to study as many professional wrestlers as possible. And many people around the wrestling scene as possible. Um, Particularly on an, what we call an independent level. So outside of the main promotions, they always say, as soon as you get signed to one of those big promotions in America, you've, you're made, 

project's gone through like a bit of a three stage evolution. So, initially, it was about creating black and white timeless portraits of as many wrestlers as possible. That was the initial stages when I set it up. Stage two was, okay, let's work with a bit more ringside and a bit more backstage and a bit more realism and start to bring a little bit more life into these characters and into these performers as well. And give you a little bit of window into the curtains to what's happening backstage. Stage three is where we're at now, which is where we use our YouTube channel to show you our point of view from ringside, to actually do portfolio reviews of other photographers, including wrestling photographers around the world, we'll take their work on board and we'll give them portfolio reviews and feedback, but also to do these grand projects in studio where we're shooting both photo and video for these performers, so they'll come in.

James Musselwhite: We literally had a guy who's playing an ice prince, um. as his new character, uh, and he came in with all of the gear that he'd spent loads of invested so much time and effort and money into big headdress and a big cloak and all that and we made him look like an ice prince with our with our lighting set up here and gave him the full day experience loads of dry ice going around there like that we had another performer by the name of Murdoch who came to us recently who he loves the films of Edgar Wright loves the Cornetto Trilogy, loves Hot Fuzz, loves Shaun of the Dead. And he wanted his character to be, to have bits of that. So in order to do that, he said, I need an Edgar Wright cut, like a 60 second promo that introduces this new character. I love those films as well. But it's a really daunting thing to be asked. Can you

David McClelland: I saw that film, I saw it. I really like the stylisation on it.

James Musselwhite: But it's so daunting because like I've loved Edgar Wright's stuff since he was on Going Live winning competitions as a young 14 year old kid and then he and then he does Spaced which is like a 10 you know, British sitcom and in my eyes, and then he produces like Sean of the Dead's in my top five movies of all time, Hot Fuzz is amazing. And, and the quality of his work and the quality of his editing, especially in these key scenes is such a daunting project to undertake to do it in that style. And, and, but, but we both had a vision and, and being, being able to, I think that's the biggest journey in the last 10 years.

It's learning skill sets outside of photography that transfer and videography and editing is one of those things. But yeah, so right now, Portrait of a Wrestler is just this base of just basically content and learning online.

David McClelland: So it was a big leap you took 10 years ago now, uh, or so from the high street to, to ringside. Uh, is this, is this your niche now? Have you found your people? Is it sating your, your creative curiosity? Or is there a, is there a next leap? Is, is the video work an area where you are able to continue exploring new creative stuff to, to keep that, that part of you satisfied?

James Musselwhite: The video work is exciting. I get more work now and I'm more enthused now to video weddings than I've ever been at photographing weddings. So I, I, obviously as part of my business in the last 20 years I've photographed hundreds of weddings, you know, because that's what you do when you start.

But I've never thought of myself as a wedding photographer. I get, I don't know whether I want to go down this route, I'm going to go down it anyway, you can edit it if you don't like it. But, yeah.

David McClelland: Okay.

James Musselwhite: I get so much anxiety from photographing weddings. I see it as such an honor and such a privilege to do it. Okay, but I get real anxiety over over capturing moments in still form. And that's come from years and years and years of just me trying to work with that, essentially. There's something that happens when I'm videoing a wedding that I just enjoy more. So I video all of my weddings in slow motion and we just create like a supercut at the end of it.

And, and I think that the reactions that I see when people see their wedding video, I just love. And I think it's the same with the photography and I don't know why. I just think maybe, I think maybe it's a control freak thing. So I think like I like being in control and when I'm in my studio and I'm shooting my stills and I'm, you know, doing my portrait makeover shoots, I feel completely in control and maybe I don't feel that in control as a photographer on a wedding day.

I think that might be part of it.

David McClelland: What about ringside? Because you aren't in control of that. Uh, how does that work from a, this thing's only going to happen once, there is pressure on me to capture this?

James Musselwhite: So as I, as I, as I allude to in my, in my videos where I'm sort of giving ringside tutorials to other photographers about how to shoot ringside, there's always another moment. Um, and you have backup as well. So ultimately your job is not, as a ringside photographer, your job is not to capture every moment. Your job is to capture the best moments as well as you can. Because there are video guys working ringside, you know that every angle of everything is being captured. So if there's an angle in a match that needed to be, to be caught, the video guys have got it because they're rolling all the time. You can't be everywhere at once.

So my job is to try and get those moments and you learn over time as well, particularly with the ringside stuff, the interesting stuff. The really captivating stuff happens between the moments anyway. So you have a big, you know, big hula double underhook credenza off the top rope or whatever it is.

That's not necessarily the most important thing or the most aesthetically pleasing thing from a photography point of view. But when he goes for the pinfall. And the referee counts to and the guy kicks out at two and a half and you get the reaction when he comes up and he can't believe he hasn't got the pinfall when he's staring straight at you.

That was the moment. So you can't kick yourself that you didn't get the big move off the top turnbuckle because you didn't have a wide enough lens or your shutter speed wasn't fast enough because the lights weren't bright enough. All you can do is just prepare for the next one and everything so fast moving ringside that there are only really two things you're thinking about.

You're thinking what's happening next and how can I stay safe?

David McClelland: Have you had any close scrapes?

James Musselwhite: really close scrapes, but I've never actually got injured ringside. I've been really, really lucky. I've come like within an eighth of an inch of the camera being kicked in my face. And that was actually a referee scooting round to make the pinfall count. So he scoots around, comes around, lays down, and his, his trainer missed the front of my lens by, by an eighth of an inch.

The worst situation I found myself in was at the Hammerstein Ballroom in New York City. Massive, Hardcore match, which is basically anything goes tables, ladders, chairs, weapons, all this kind of thing. And the tag team that we're wrestling, a tag team called the Briscoes were in the ring waiting for this other tag team to come in.

Hometown heroes. Um, are coming to the ring ready to take on these, these Briscoe brothers, these bad guys. And um, the music starts playing and no one's coming from the entrance ramp. And I'm not clued in, I'm not mic'd up, I don't know where anyone's coming from. And they, these two guys who are there facing, come out of the crowd behind me over the ring fence and they start brawling right in front of me like they just start brawling with the guys right in front of me and i've got no get out i i normally have an escape plan but i had no get out so i'm literally because you know it's live on tv as well it's live on pay per view so you can't go excuse me i just need to you just need to you're dressed in black You can't really be seen, so I just literally just, I, I crouched down, I made my, and I'm 6'1 right?

I crouched down, I made myself as small as possible, and I just pulled my camera to my lap as I'm sat on the floor, while these guys are just playing. Leathering each other in front of me, beer cans going everywhere, beer going everywhere, kendo sticks, all this sort of stuff. And I'm just shooting, shooting, shooting, shooting from my lap as wide as possible.

And I got this one shot of him pulling up one of the Briscoe boys who's just bleeding out. So there's blood everywhere as well. And it's just one of my favorite photos. Um, and it was just completely fortunate that we were just, the camera was pointing in the right direction and I had it going.

David McClelland: James, I'm sure you get asked all the time, given the position that you're in and your journey, from people who are also looking at making a move into a niche, whether it's wrestling or something adjacent to it. So, when people ask you, I want to be a wrestling photographer. What lessons do you share from your experience of having made that move yourself?

James Musselwhite: I think the most important thing that people can ascertain before they get into something like this is what value they place on their services and when to make compromises for that value.

It's quite easy for people to be taken advantage of. Because there isn't a lot of money when you sort of get into the lower levels of the wrestling. So you do have to make compromises and work out when you're going to work for, uh, less than no money, and, and when, and when you're not going to make that compromise.

I'm in quite a privileged position at the moment where I can really pick and choose who I work for and when I decide to work. always my go to advice is work out your why first, and it's okay for that to change, but always work out your why before you pick up a camera and before you accept a booking.

That would be my first thing. In terms of like, equipment because that's the other question you get asked is like, okay, what lens should I get and what camera should I get? I really place a value on lenses much, much more so than over the hardware of the body, but ultimately you can make anything marketable with any combination, any sort of hardware I saw a photographer online photograph a centenary football match for a football club that's 100 years old and he took a 100 year old camera to the match and filled it with film that they would have used and took 24 portraits on that 100 year old camera and showcased those and that's unique because that creates a niche for you and there's no reason why you can't go to a wrestling show and take an old canon 300d With a 50 mil lens and create something that's your style, you know, it's trying to work out that I think, you know, because you're always going to be seeing other people's style of things.

And I've done that not in wrestling, but outside of wrestling. I've seen so many other people's portrait styles and styles of work that I'm like a magpie. I'll just take a little bit of that and a little bit of this. But then when you start taking all of those things, you know, we are yeah. As I always say, we are a portion of everything we've ever loved, and ultimately when you're creating something that's a passion project, which this ultimately really is, it has to come from love, it has to come from your love of other media and other things.

Like we allude to like the Edgar Wright video, I mean that doesn't come from, I haven't created that, I've just cherry picked what I like from what he's done and tried to get somewhere. on the road to getting near his quality for the, for the services of someone else. So that's what I would, I always say to people, you have to go into it knowing that it's a project of passion and knowing that you want to try and create your own style and enjoy it.

Because the minute you stop enjoying it, the minute it stops being fun is, is the minute you probably should think about doing something else.



David McClelland: Big, thanks to James Musselwhite for chatting with us. We'll put links of the Portrait of a Wrestler website, James' Instagram and his YouTube channel. In the show notes. 



David McClelland: Ange, many of our listeners will know all about SheClicks as a community and the meetups we've mentioned, but you've also been creating news and reviews content there too. 

Angela Nicholson: As you know, my background is in writing reviews and I, testing camera equipment. And I recently decided that actually another really important way of raising the voices of female photographers is to have somewhere where we have reviews that are specifically written for women and by women. And now there are many occasions when we're likely to want exactly the same kit as men, but I don't think that should be assumed. So I think it's important that we have a voice, but also one of the things I'm very keen to do is include the community in some of these reviews. So obviously, if a brand new camera comes out, I will have seen it in advance and I won't be able to get comments from people.

But in six months time, I will ask who's bought that camera, who's bought that lens, who's bought that tripod, and I can send out a form and they can fill it out there to give their thoughts and then I can put that into the review with some products which have been around a bit longer. They've already got, she reviews sections as I call it.

So it's, it's real people who are not, they're not sort of people who. continually test cameras. It's someone who actually decided that is the camera I'm going to buy. I'm going to upgrade my existing camera. I'm going to get that one. And after they've been using it for a few months, they've got their comments about it.

And I think it's a, it's a way of, Helping people decide what they want. You know, you can form a connection with someone. You can read that somebody is similar to you and they made those decisions and they had, you know, had similar questions that you had or came up against similar problems with either their existing camera or the one they just bought.

David McClelland: The meetups, uh, you mentioned the one in Ireland that you've just come back from. We were at one with The Photography and Video Show Podcast back in October, I think, at the Fujifilm House of Photography, and I understand that you held another one recently, where you had the opportunity to try out some new lenses 

Angela Nicholson: Yes, that's right. A couple of weeks back, we went to RHS Wisley. And I had a, yeah, it's beautiful place

David McClelland: Cheers.

Angela Nicholson: and I don't know how they manage it, but it always seems to, you could go week after week and it always seems to be slightly different. So there's something really valuable for photographers because, you know, you could never get bored even if you went every week.

So we met up there and I had a suitcase full of Lensbaby lenses and there was all sorts of different optics that people could try. But I think the ones that people were most interested in trying was the, was the double glass two that was announced in February 23. And then there was the sweet 22 that was announced this year in February.

they're quite different lenses in that the double glass two goes into the composer pro, which is a composer pro two, which is a housing that it looks, that looks like the barrel bit of a lens. Whereas the double glass two is the glass bit and you kind of pop it in. and then you can move the sweet spot focus, the sharp area, which is in the middle, you can move it around the frame a little bit because the composer pro two 

David McClelland: that's right. I've seen it before.

Angela Nicholson: which is great fun. So You get like a dreamy blur around the outside with the sharp focus in the middle and you can say you can move it slightly off center There's also some bokeh discs that you can pop in there magnetic So you can get like a swirl effect or a star effect that you'll see in the bokeh if you've got some nice bright highlights And then there was the Sweet 22, the Lensbaby Sweet 22, which is a standalone lens.

And actually, you know, we were talking about the Panasonic f8 lens. They kind of look quite similar because it's also a pancake lens. So it's a tiny little thing. It's a full frame lens. It's got a focal length of 22 millimeters and an aperture of f3. is fixed.

David McClelland: I was going to say, is that fixed as well?

Angela Nicholson: Yes, that is fixed. and you get quite an extreme fall off in sharpness across the frame. So you got the sharp bit in the middle and you can't move that around because it's a fixed lens like you can with the Composer Pro 2. You know, it's just It makes you have to think in a different way because suddenly you can't compose with the subject offset.

We can, but it would be soft. So you tend to have to compose with the subject in the center of the frame and you don't have to think about the aperture. All you have to do is focus the lens and it's, you know, it's a manual focus lens and it takes a little, you know, a few minutes or so to kind of get into that way of thinking.

But then it's just so relaxing. It really helps you get into the zone and you can really enjoy your photography and the moment of capturing images. 

David McClelland: I'm looking at some images actually on the Lensbaby website right now of the Sweet 22 and well, interestingly, apart from a couple of landscapes, there are a lot of flowers, foliage, photographs on there and that effect, like you say, it's very sharp in the middle and the falloff is quite dramatic towards the outside of the frame. It really does help you, as you say, to, in what might be quite a busy frame, focus the viewer's attention right on that middle.

Angela Nicholson: Yes. I mean, flowers do tend to be very popular subjects for Lensbaby lenses. But, I've got a friend, Paula Wilkes, who is actually a Lensbaby ambassador now. She has shot wonderful seascapes. She's photographed puffins, um, with various Lensbaby products. And also, she's got some wonderful photos. Fantastic pictures of, a fanfare.

And the great thing about that is 'cause you know, if you go in the evening, you get all the nice lights with the sweet 22, you get this almost like zoom burst effect, where the bouquet of the outside areas you know, they pinpoint lights, they get stretched. So it's almost like having, not arrows exactly, but zoom lines coming in and pointing towards the subjects and it, you know, adds emphasis to it, but is a really quite exciting effect.

Yes.

David McClelland: products at the Photography Show in the past and elsewhere. I've never been out to shoot with them before, just having a look around. We'll put a link in the show notes. Just having a look around at the Lensbaby collection. There are a lot of lenses here. You mentioned the Composer Pro 2 and there's lots of, lots of drop ins for that.

But there's a load of other lenses in there as well. So, uh, a world of experimentation and create all the options. Omni creative filter system as well. Ha ha! This looks great.

Angela Nicholson: I mean, there will be some people who think what this is. This is insane. I've got my super sharp lens. But if you want to relax and enjoy your photography and concentrate on getting the image at the point of capture. Then they are just brilliant. When the very first lens baby came out in 2004 and I was told to go and test it and write a review, I was Amateur Photographer Magazine at the time and I went from what the heck is this? Within about 10 minutes thinking, well, this is fun,

David McClelland: Aha.

Angela Nicholson: it, you know, as somebody who spends a lot of time scrutinizing images, looking for ultimate sharpness, you know, it was quite a change.



David McClelland: And that is all we have time for for this first episode of season two. 

If this is the first time you joining us, then Hey, great to have you with us. There's a whole season of episodes in season one for you to catch up with some timeless chats in there with royal portrait photographers, AI promptographers, documentary drone pilots, and much, much more. Find those in a podcast player of your choice on Spotify, on YouTube, you take your pick. 



David McClelland: Please, please, please do all of the things that podcasts normally ask you to do at this stage. Hit subscribe, tell your friends, share on your socials, share with your local camera club too, and hate we'd love it if you were able to leave us a review; we are @thephotographyshow on Instagram and you'll find us on Facebook as well. Do get in touch. 



David McClelland: Ange, thank you so much for joining us again this month. 

Where can people keep up with what you get up to online? 

Angela Nicholson: I think the best thing to do is for people to head over to the website, which is sheclicks.net You can see links to our Facebook group, our Instagram account, the Facebook page. Obviously our podcast is there as well. SheClicks Women in Photography Podcast. You can also listen to that on all the usual platforms, but there is a link in the website as well.

David McClelland: Super stuff. Thank you all for listening until next time. Bye-bye.