In this episode, Maine portrait photographer Matt Stagliano talks with Nino Batista, a high-end editorial photographer, educator, retoucher, and creator of Photoshop tools based in Houston, TX. Nino has translated his background in music, his lifelong love of photography and education, and a passion for creating software into a successful career helping others create Art on their terms.

Podcast Title: Generator

Episode Title: Tools, Travel, and Truth with Nino Batista

Episode Number: 31

Publish Date: 22 July 2024

Episode Overview

Nino Batista & Matt Stagliano discuss personal and professional growth, authenticity in online reputation, ethical photography practices, and the relationship between artistic vision and technological advancements in photography. They share experiences of overcoming challenges, finding balance, and emphasized the importance of self-awareness, empathy, and individualized learning. They also discuss the need for practical tools that complement AI-powered solutions in the industry.

Guest Profile

"Nino Batista has left an indelible mark on the photography industry, earning recognition for his vision and innovative techniques.

Nino's evolving legacy is not solely defined by his body of work but also by the endless list of artists he has guided and inspired. His contributions to the art community continue to be celebrated, establishing him as a trusted luminary in his field. For years, he has generously shared his extensive knowledge and expertise with aspiring artists and enthusiasts.

It’s not a surprise, after all these years, that Nino summarily dropped commercial photography to focus on what he simply has to do – what he has to make. Hardly a new journey, but now a focused one that will (and already has) cost him quite a lot, he views this all as his calling, his new will, replete with the probity and sincerity that’s been dormant far too long."

--Artist bio from ninobatista.com

Key Topics and Talking Points

• Taking a break from social media and creative pursuits to focus on personal issues and business growth.
• Personal growth, privacy, and self-awareness.
• Vulnerability, authenticity, and online reputation.
• Photography ethics and teaching workshops.
• Education, Gen Z, and the importance of real-world experiences.
• The balance between artistry and technicality in photography.
• Photography gear and creative expression.
• Developing and using photo editing tools for creative control and efficiency.
• Commercial retouching techniques and partnership between a fine artist and a client-focused retoucher.
• Traveling for workshops, targeting specific locations based on local demand.
• Cultural differences in photography teaching approaches.
• Teaching methods and accessibility with a focus on collaboration and personal connection.

Resources and Links

• https://ninobatista.com

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Matt Stagliano 0:00

Welcome back to generator, my friends. I am so glad that things are back up and running, and I'm really excited to start bringing you more of these conversations today. My guest is a guy that I've been following since early in my photo career, and I got to attend one of his workshops back before the world shut down. He's got a curricula vitae that most photographers would die for, and a list of accomplishments a mile long. He's shot covers and editorials and campaigns for some of the world's most well known magazines. Besides being one of the most recognized photographers out there today, he's an educator. He's a musician. He's in a creator of complex photoshop actions. All told, he helps other creatives make art. If you haven't already put two and two together, I have the incredible Nino Battista with me this week. Nino has been on my list of guests for far too long, and I'm glad we finally have the chance to sit down and talk. We're gonna dive into some real talk, we're going to talk about photography and personal growth and really everything in between. Nino and I cover a lot of ground in this episode. We get into the nitty gritty of being authentic online and why it's so crucial. Nino opens up about taking a 13 month break from social media and how it changed his perspective on creativity and work life balance. We talk about the intricacies and perceptions of glamor photography and navigating that space as a guy. We also talk about the ever evolving world of photography tech and the need for practical tools that actually help us rather than just looking good in an ad on Instagram, Nino's been developing tools and actions for years, and I've been using them for years before we ever met. From overcoming challenges to finding that sweet spot between artistry and technicality, this conversation is packed with tons of hard earned wisdom. Whether or not you're a photographer, there's something in here for you. Nino is incredibly easy to talk to, and is so eloquent that sitting across from him and just listening to what he had to say was a real joy for me. So grab a drink. Settle in, join us for an honest down to earth chat. I'm calling tools travel and truth with photographer nito Batista, now on with the show you.

Nino, I'm so glad you're here. You know, I've been trying to, I think, hook up with you for a couple of years now, sure, the world shut down, but I had come to one of your classes at Sean Black Studio years ago, and ever since then, I'm like, I need to have a longer conversation with that guy, and so I'm really grateful that you're here today. I appreciate it, Matt. Well,

Nino Batista 3:13

I agree, and I'm completely of the same mind on that. I'm looking forward to talking to you today, so I appreciate you having me on here. There's

Matt Stagliano 3:20

a lot going on. I I've been following you, and you've kind of come out of the shadows again. And I say that, let me, let me preface that by saying you never really went anywhere. But there was a period where I kind of looked around social media and I was just like, Where, where'd Nino go? And you've always been someone that's worked behind the scenes, whether it's digital products or photography or teaching or whatnot. Did you take a break from social media for any particular reason, or was it just kind of happenstance that, you know, you kind of step back a little bit?

Nino Batista 3:55

Matt Stagliano 8:16

Nino Batista 9:12

arguable, because I grew up in photography with my dad, so I've been around

Unknown Speaker 9:15

photographer, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Nino Batista 9:18

So, so around it since I was a baby.

Matt Stagliano 9:21

Yeah, so where I'm going with this is, as you did, kind of reconfigure how you approached everything over the past couple of years. Was there one thing that stuck out as you grew up, as you said, that you were like, wow, this is way easier than I thought, and I've been kind of pushing this off, you know, now that I've grown up, per se this I should have done this years ago. Was there one thing in there? Was it bringing the tools in house or taking a step back to control your own universe? What was it in there that that really stood out to you in that whole process?

Nino Batista 9:59

And you've been really upfront with your vulnerability around a lot of that, and it's one of the things that I've really respected over the years, is that you do come out and you do say, Hey, I have this struggle or that struggle, not in that give me sympathy. Please, everybody pay attention to me sort of way. It's really just been like a conversation with friends as you've talked about some of the struggles and and as well as please respect my privacy during this time, which has been a really wonderful way to see someone navigate their crowd, right? So I dare say that you've got a few followers, and so there's this oftentimes, you know, you speak to your friends one way, you speak to your fans or your followers a different way. And you really don't keep those as separate things. You talk to everybody the same, at least as far as I see, right in your outward personality. So I think it's been really commendable to see all the vulnerability that you have. I actually read an article that you had in bold journey a year or two ago, and you were very open about some of these things as well. And so do you find that by by being open with vulnerability, or with the struggles or just the ups and downs that you feel like people get to know you better. Do you care? Do you feel like it's unburdening? Do you find freedom in it, like some people are so guarded about themselves because they're afraid of what the Online Reputation might be, and you've never really struck me as someone that gave a fuck about anything. And so I look at that and I say, All right, what's the, what's the feeling that you get when you are being vulnerable.

I have a I'm going to preface this by saying that it's not like I'm I'm not like it's not like I haven't made mistakes and poor choices in my day. It's not like I haven't, you know, just messed things up before because I have. But with that said, I can say with confidence that my mistakes have been from a place of ignorance. A place of desperation, perhaps, but never from a place of balance, never from a place of manipulation, ever I'm just not that person. I mean, look around. I mean the internet, especially when everybody can hide behind an identity and things like that, the nastiness, the inauthentic experience that everybody has on the internet. And now it's just such a blur and such a, you know, a din of just chaos. No one knows what to believe. Information is everywhere, embedded. Information is rare and authentic. People are even more rare. And I think people want to be like you said. I think they're scared of it. And it's not that I'm super brave. It's just that I think that being inauthentic, which means being vulnerable, which means being honest about what's going on within your boundaries, you don't have to give out private information. You know necessarily, when I haven't been or when I've been iffy on it, I always regret it. I always suffer it. In fact, it's not just my mother. Something will happen. Someone will misinterpret me, someone will take it the wrong way. Someone will tell someone else, and it'll come across wrong out of context, at least if I'm authentic, there's nothing to bury behind me. It's similar to the saying of if you never lie, you never have to remember anything, right? Because if you don't have to remember anything, because you don't have to lie, you have to cover anything up. So being inauthentic to me is a lie, and I have struggled with it, but I figured I just couldn't talk about it. When I started my photography journey, I started in glamor and fashion. I'm not naive to how the world works, but immediately I discovered an endless sea of perverted men who thought I was one of them. So this was a big catalyst for me, because I thought there's so many men out here just doing this for the completely wrong reasons. They're out to manipulate, they're out to abuse, they're out to, you know, everything. They're there, they're there, and they think I'm one of them, so they tell me, and I've managed to push all those people far away long time ago. Occasionally, one guys come into play, and I'll push him back. But I thought, Well, I'm not going to get anywhere with the stigma that I already have by existing if I'm not completely blunt and honest, not just an engaging interaction with a model, but like my public persona of who I am at the end of the day, I'm just a dorky dad who likes guitar and nerdy things. I'm not a cool guy. I don't shit on women. You know, a lot of people have said, Oh, so you only date models? No, there's just the only women I meet. If I were an accountant, I probably date accountants. I don't know what to tell you there, you know, but I'm not hunting down women. I'm not trying to manipulate girls in any way. But men often are and so that was a big part of me thinking, I gotta bring like my most authentic self, not just for business reasons, but I didn't want to be seen as anything I wasn't. And

that's been something else that I've seen you be quite vocal about, is the level of respect that you have for your models, for your subjects, and making sure that everybody in your community really understands, hey, this will not be tolerated. Creepy behavior will not be tolerated. I think you set a very high standard for a lot of guys out there that are looking to photographers to emulate and learn from and say, How do I get into some of these situations where I'm shooting for magazines, whether it's glamor or beauty or fashion or nudes or whatever it is, and they look to someone like you who has been successful in the field for the rules. And I love, love, love the fact that you do come out and you do stress these things, because oftentimes we can take for granted that this is how we should treat our subjects. But there are the nuances that just don't get caught by everybody, that they don't know how to treat the person with respect, even if it's, you know, not maliciously intended. There are some things that you need to follow, and you've always been very vocal in your community that any disrespect will not be tolerated. Any of this kind of creep behavior will not be tolerated. I think times are changing, and the old traditional ways of thoughts are changing, but every now and again I'll be out, and someone will come up to me and they say, It must be great. Shoot naked ladies all the time, and instantly there. That's the turnoff. I know the conversation's over, because I know the way that they're thinking, and it really, really bothers me, because it's people like that that are making it tougher for good photographers. I feel like I'm swimming upstream all the time. There are there's a lot of work to be done in this space, but I just wanted to take a moment and thank you for always being, you know, that champion on that vanguard of saying, this is the way that things have to be done, or else, you know, you're just going to be excommunicated from the entire community because we don't tolerate that. So just wanted to say thank you for for doing that. You know, I. Appreciate that. I think one of the things in teaching workshops, right, as we kind of talk about interfacing with students a little bit, I read a quote, and I'm going to read it here. It says, I really don't like registering for a class and end up learning nothing, because the egotistical photographer running it just talked about himself the whole time and then sent us home. And that was one of the things on your website, right? And I hear that well from students from various workshops. How have you approached teaching, what it is that you know to such a wide body of students? How do you go in with your students and get across what you need to teach without that layer of ego in it? No,

for sure that's that's a big part of it. And I would say, first of all, I was brazen in starting workshops in 2012 because I had a few requests for it, and I was brazen because I was not qualified for it, but only because of the technical knowledge that I felt I lacked. But what I knew from start, everything from teaching music like I did. I used to be Logic Pro, certified trainer, once upon a time, hell. And so teach, yeah, a long time ago, logic seven or six, one of those. But anyway, I mean, I don't want to tell the whole history of it. My realization one thing about learning is that everybody is different. So for example, when if I were to teach someone how to play guitar, what I teach. You can take five minutes and then you run along and practice it. If you don't practice it, you won't get anywhere. And then you come back for another five minutes. The more time you spend with me, the better you won't get a guitar. You have to put in the work. I give you guideposts, I give you the rudiments, and then you have to put in the work. So if, if and I used to teach guitar, let me tell you, most of my students were teenagers talking about the late 90s. They all want to learn a song, they want to learn, and they didn't practice unless they were sitting in front of me. It was really obvious, right? So I'm not dumping it back on the student. I'm I'm the teacher, I'm the I'm putting myself in that role. So I've got to own up to it, and the way I try to own up to it is understand that I am not here to tell you what to do, or I'm not here to tell you what to think. I'm here to tell you how to think, how to approach it. Everyone has a different thing, and on top of that, it's art, just like music, it's subjective. How do you teach something subjective? How do you teach something that can vary wildly? For example, at the dawn of 2020, I realized a lot of people were were struggling and having a lot of difficult time. So I offered a pay whatever you can, and I'll give you 45 minutes of my time for mentoring. I didn't. I did 93 sessions in 100 days doing that. And some people in Eastern Europe gave me 12 euros, you know, and I took it, and we did a thing, and I met so many different people going through a difficult period. Some not, but most were. How do you tell a man in Eastern Europe whose portrait art form is self portrait photography of the macabre and morbid and his drug addiction battle of his whole life. And these are not easy images to look at. Their self portraits. There's art in his mind, and it was art, right? I can't tell him it's not art. I can't tell him that never touching was overcooked. I can't tell him it's too much color. I can't tell him maybe not so many syringes. This is his art. And so how do I respect that? Yeah, if you come to my workshop, you probably aren't doing that kind of work and expecting me to help you with it, but I still try to help that gentleman understand that as an artist, everybody varies wildly, and that variation, it doesn't excuse me from doing anything, because I still teach, don't get me wrong, but I put it back on them. It's like, I call it a co study, in some ways, like, welcome to the class. There's not 40 or 50 of you. I mean, conference is not withstanding. There's not 40 or 50 of you. There's 1012, eight. Now I try to engage with everybody. Why? What do you do? Why do you do? What you do? Tell me about what you normally do. Show me some of your work. And we work with everybody. I want everybody to understand that they're an individual, that they're not here to have a methodology imprinted in their head and then go home replicate that. I also mentioned you're not here to create art. You're here to learn methodologies. You're here to ask questions and to think about stuff. What you do next week, next month, or two years from now, because of this class that satisfies me as a teacher, so you talk, we talk about the idiot men, the gross men out there. If I get an inquiry on my workshops even today that says, hey, Nina, I'm curious about your workshop. How many models and who are they? I delete the message if you want, if that's your priority, then go hire a model, right? You know? And I know who you are. I've seen you. I mean, come on, I've done this 15 years. Come on. I've seen you. I know who you are. I'm not gonna get mad. Swipe elite, you know. I want people who want to come learn. I want people who come teach. In fact, I love learning things from students. I love seeing people work and go, welcome to the class, and I look at their work on the phone. I go, why are you here, you know? Because this is amazing, you know. And we have a we have a good time. So I try to individualize and put a responsibility on learning on all of them, you know. And if they come in saying, Well, I don't. Really shoot models. That's fine. That's fine. We can still have a conversation, because I want to know where you're at. I want to know why you shoot which is portraiture. I probably can't help you with landscapes, okay, but portraits and that human element, I can try to connect. So that's what I try to do. I don't again. I don't remove the responsibility as the self proclaimed mentor, but I try to put it back on them. Talk to me. Let's, let's go over this. How can we, how can this evolve? A lot of times they'll say what they need, just in the in the interaction, back and forth, and they go, Well, maybe, oh, I didn't, I didn't think about that. Maybe that's what I hope to do. Not Shut up, sit down and listen to me that. No, I didn't like that when people did that to

me. Yeah, and I think that's the big part of education that gets missing a lot, right, is that the the educator doesn't focus on the why. Instead, it's just very easy to phone it in and focus on the what. Set your light up at this put a subject here. These are your settings. Go for it. There's my settings. Just copy them, and nothing. Really. There's no knowledge exchange. And so the best educators that I've ever seen are the ones that challenge you on the why? Why are you making that choice? Why do you want to shoot this way? Why do you want to go about creating art the way that you create art? One, because it gives you a better indication as to how you can guide that student, but it also makes them think a little bit more critically about why they're there in the first place. So do you happen to see any any shifts going on over the past three or four years in the education space, in photography, a lot has been pushed online. There's a lot of gurus that have immediately popped up overnight, everybody starting a workshop or a course or, you know, an online adventure, whatnot. Do you see any positive trends, negative trends in the education space now, as it starts to expand more and more and more, well,

the first thing I will say is that I'm not a I'm rarely a proponent of the idea that anything is oversaturated. I think that everything has a certain time where things grow, they swell and they shrink and they swell and they shrink. Everything from who's buying and who's not, how many people are in it, how many people are not. There is a cycle. Okay, so we're not going to have it like people love to exaggerate. They got to get hyperbolic on me and say we're gonna, everybody's gonna be an educator by next summer. No, then they're not just relax, you know, just come down. So I'm not seeing that we have an oversaturation, boy. I'm going to pull my answer from my experience, from my kids. They've been with me. My kids are 2018, and 15. That makes them squarely in Gen Z and hanging out with them, and we've always had a good rapport. We're arguably friends, and, you know, I talked to them openly, and there's no nothing's off the table in my house. You know, you want come talk to me about sex crimes and rock and roll, what was talking about. So they have a very honest and open discourse with dad. At least I tried. I haven't always been always, always the right thing, but I tried anyway. What have I gotten by putting my bum on the pulse of Gen Z, through them and Look friends, Gen Z does not give two shits about social media by and large. You may not think so, but they do young millennials, mid 20s, late 20s. Do teens just turning 20, not so much. What do they care about? IRL in real life experiences that's more exciting to them? Yes, they communicate with each other, constantly on Discord and on Twitch and on the text message, and they're constantly on that. No question about that's life. But they prize and they put a priority on in real life. They see social media. They see Dad Gen X on Instagram as you don't take this seriously, do you Dad, you know? And so what, what am I seeing is as we move forward, here I am. Next year, I turned 50, and I realized that I was being the guy who was set in his ways and who loved to invoke back in my day, at every opportunity. And where was that getting me as an artist, as a businessman, as a human being, it got me nowhere. Now, when my kids are little, it's easy to dismiss them. Six year old wants something, pat them on their head, and then whatever. But then you have these adults who this 2018, year old and my 15 year old who giving me like a new lease on life, like I'm discovering new music, not just through them, because I'm willing to, and I'm discovering that the new photographers that are coming in the scene are not fucking it up. They're not, they're not any more than I am. And the old stalwarts, the 38 veterans, they're not either. This is a cycle, a life cycle that always happens. So where am I going? What I'm saying is that in person, interaction, vetted, interaction, three or four good friends versus 400 social media friends sound familiar. Sounds like pre internet. That is what Gen Z, by and large, seems to care about. It, and like it or not, in 10 years, Gen Z will start wrenching control of society, and in 20 years, they will have it. Where will I be then? So I'm like, I want to keep making art until I go old and die. I don't want to be forgotten. Is that that guy is still stuck in 2007 and and he's complaining about everybody? He had all the answers, no. So where are we going with education? Education, to me, is that authentic, real world experiences are prioritized. Now more than ever, we had this idea that everything can be on, not online, we can chat, video, right? Who needs online? We're good to go. And I don't think the wall e movie is going to come to pass anytime soon. I think people are desperate for that human engagement. I think they want to hang out together. And I think I'm not just saying that Gen Z is the reason why I think we older folks are seeing it as well. But Gen Z, after all, is the future and and you don't see that they're going to leave us behind. Gen Z has a general attitude of social media isn't real. Why you guys realize that, right? And second, they have another idea of why you guys are so obsessed on biases and differences. Gives a shit about white, black, gay Stranding? Or you guys have an obsession? We're gonna go over here. That's what Gen Z tells me, and I love that to be honest.

Yeah, it's been, it's been really interesting to watch that, because I'm noticing that here I don't shoot a lot of Gen Z clients, more millennials, but also the Gen X clients that I have their kids, right? So I'm interfacing with them quite a bit, and I've noticed the exact same thing is that there's more of an emphasis on human connection than there is on self promotion, and that, to me, is a huge difference from anything that I've seen in probably 10 or 20 years, because there's always been a focus on, I want to stand out. I want to be such an individual, and you've got to listen to me, promote, promote, promote about all my greatest features, and now it seems to be like that is such a burden on younger generations, where they're just kind of like, yeah, you're right. We don't give a shit about any of that. We'd rather hang out with our friends, talk on Discord, use technology to connect, rather than have it be a vanity vehicle. I love that you're you're hearing that you're hearing that you're seeing that I know that for me, I've just noticed there will always be ebbs and flows in however many people are in a certain thing, right? There will always be educators that come and go. My belief over the past 30 years, 40 years, has been, the good ones will always rise to the top. The bad ones will just kind of float away. There has to be a lot of stamina in there if you decide to get into that space. I don't believe that there are that there's that doom and gloom, like you were talking about, like, oh, it's going to be over saturated. There's going to be too many people. It can feel that way sometimes, for sure, I definitely look around. I'm like, There's no way you have enough experience. And that's not me judging you. I'm like, you picked up a camera last year. Like, I don't know if you should be teaching workshops just yet. That being said, that's all judgmental me, right? So I guess, I guess what I'm saying is it's encouraging to see that approach towards social media. I'm going to see where it goes. I'm reserving judgment, and I will just stand back here and shake my fist of clouds like an old man. I've heard you say in the past that you're you're an artist through and through, and I know you play music, and I know you're a photographer, and I know you have a million things in your world. Do you ever find an imbalance between the artist and the technician. In my neurodivergency, I think of myself primarily as a technician that can make some art, sometimes that I am not driven by what I see some people that are true artists that have to create or their world crashes for me. I don't view my art like that. There are times where I'm itchy and I have an idea and I want to get it out, but most of the time, I think of myself as a technician that is capable with a camera and understands the business of photography. Where do you land on a if you had to think of yourself in two seconds, do you find yourself leaning more towards the artist or the technician? I'm

definitely leaning towards the artist. This is that assertion and realization did not come smoothly. I hid in the left brain technical work in as a graphic designer, as a musician, even as a writer, when I had journalism jobs, I hid behind a technical because I enjoy that, because I never saw myself as an artist. I was a graphic designer making advertisements. I didn't see that as an artist. I was a musician playing, you know, rock and roll for whatever it was worth, and some other genres as well. I know some. Moments there, but I was never the lead part of the band. I was never the main songwriter. I always downplayed my own work. I was scared to admit Elle Morris. Then I got into photography. And I got into it because I was chasing some kind of new avenue, because in 2008 and nine, economy tanked and I needed something. So I borrowed equipment from my dad, and I started. I did not start chasing my passions, I started figuring something new out. And so, you know, that's that most romantic story, perhaps, but it's the truth. And it took years because what happened? I started shooting mostly glamor. No one sees it as art, at least my own surface, and I didn't either. So after years and years and years and years, I started realizing that I think like an artist, I need to create, and when I don't, I'm unhappy. And if I go really long periods, I'm very unhappy, but I hide behind the tech. I can talk tech like in Photoshop all day long, and that this and that. But you know what has happened in the last hour, arguable, two to four years, maybe, but acutely this year, I am sick of talking about technology. Yeah, if you said, Nina, what's your favorite lens, I'd be like, I gotta go get a drink. I bring up conversations like that, like in my Facebook group, because people want to talk about and intentionally say, what's your desert island camera, right? Things like that. It brings up conversation because I want to engage with people. I with people. But if you say, did you look at the latest DxO results of the new lens? I don't care. I want to make art my lens. I don't know where they are at the time. I leave them on the other side of the studio. I just recently reboot lens caps because I lose them all. I'm sick to the teeth of having those conversations. I just want to create, and so I'm starting to embrace and accept that I am an artist. And if you don't, not you. But if someone doesn't want to accept I am or you should picture the pretty girl. Arts is an old guy shooting picture the pretty girl, so be it. But I know what's inside me. I have a guitar sitting right over here and an amp on the table you can't see, because I play guitar intentionally every day, because I need to have that release in that outlet, because I have to create. So, yeah, like you put it, you know, you you feel like with sense of creating, I knew I had to create, but I've, I've stifled it because it wasn't practical. Think about this. Go back to the 80s, you know, you shoot your eye out. Basically the same problem. Why you want to be a musician? Yeah, once you get a real job, there was a graphic designer self employed. Why don't you go to college? Once you get a real job? Real job? And then I was an active musician, real job. Then I went to photography. You see, pretty girls can always get a real job. Oh, my God, just leave me alone. I'm doing what I do, you know, and I'm an artist. This is how if I want to get a real job, I would

be dead. It's amazing to hear that story and hear the parallels in my own meaning, I think we grew up at the same time where creative outlets or creative careers really weren't an option. You they weren't fostered as much it was always, you know, go to college or follow this trade path or something, but you will never make a living as an artist. And I know for me, that was beaten into me for years, right? Get the corporate job. Go to college, get the get the degree, get the corporate job. Do your thing. Be miserable the rest of your life. That's just how it is. Life is suffering, right? When I made that switch from corporate to photography right around the same time as you in that 2010 time frame, you know, it really was, I'm jumping into something totally different. It feels great, but am I allowed to make art? I was seeking permission from people to make the art, and it wasn't until recently, probably the past couple of years, where I did give a lot of that up, because I stopped trying to please people with what I was doing and just making the art. Now, one of the things you were just talking about was the gear, right? Everybody likes to focus on the gear, because it's kind of this common ground that we all have, right, where we can say, well, what camera do you have? And, you know, it's a dick measuring contest, right? And so one of the things that I saw recently on on social media, and I we don't have to spend too much time on this, but I loved your answer, where someone asked about DSLR versus mirrorless, and you just basically came out and said, Yeah, my stuff works. My camera still works. It doesn't matter. No one is going to tell a difference. And I, I screamed Yes, because I believe the same thing. I'll use a little Nikon Coolpix 12 megapixel purple camera, or I'll use, you know, my Fuji stuff like, whatever it is, it doesn't matter if you're struck by that muse, use the tools that you have. It's all about that expression. So I just wanted to say how refreshing was to hear like, yeah, I don't want to talk gear either. Man, like, I just want to make good stuff. You know,

I will say this though I will flip it the other way, because as an educator, I have all walks of life standing in front of me, whether on a call. This or in a group, and there are people who are very much in to the gear. That's how that's their crutch, that's how they feel good about it. They want to talk your gear, and that's where they're at. And I don't ridicule them. I try to extract them out of that slowly, like, okay, I get it. Great lens, good choice. There's a reason why 85 mil is a standard blah, blah, blah. And then I let's talk about your vision, where it's like, well, what lens should I use? Your I bought this one lens because my room is so small. I'm like, if you're buying lenses and you're picking focal length just to fit the shot, you have you that that went way over your head. The whole concept of focal length, energy, framing, composition, what you're trying to present. That means you haven't gotten there yet. You're still think vocal length is about fitting shot or, I mean, sometimes it is. I mean, 800 millimeter to shoot a lion, probably a good idea. You know, don't want to be a 1740 up on that, right? But probably good idea. There's some practical sense. But I challenge them in my classes. But for example, I challenge their gear questions. I say, we'll get what lunch did I use? We're in studio, whatever. And they say, I guess I can use 7200 long enough here. And I'm like, Okay, let's stop talking about space. I was like, I shoot in the deserts a lot. They go, Yeah, I said, I shoot in white sands in Mexico. It's 275 square miles of pure white gypsum. I can use a 1200 millimeter lens if I want to. I can use a 14 millimeter about one two. Why would I pick one over and under and they're like depends on how far your subject is, that I can change that to anything I want. Why would I pick a sub? Most people don't know why you would pick a focal length based on what kind of expression you're trying to do. It's abstract. There's not a list and a reference checklist. So you can go this vocal length means X, no, no, it's abstract. But I challenge them with that desert idea, and they go and think about that. You have a whole case of lenses. What would you pick? Why would you pick? For me, come subconsciously, I know the kind of energy I want to capture is I grab that. And that's why one rolls down the hill and I go find your lens later. And to me, that's part of that creation. It's kind of like, like guitar, right? So when I taught guitar, mostly teenagers, their parents would buy them a guitar, and I would explain to them, I was like, they don't need a $2,000 guitar, right? But if you get them a $35 guitar, they're going to think they suck because it's so bad that it wouldn't hold its tune. The predating is very difficult, and they're going to think they're wrong. So you got to go a little above that. So there's a there's a bottom threshold. You can't get complete trust. But in photography, not so much, because you can work with a phone or that old cool pic you were talking about, your vision is everything. Your vision is everything you know. So like recently, a buddy of mine, he came over with some gear one of my shoots. He always assist me on shoots. And I was like, Why do you have that many 7200s and go though this one's a version one. I just haven't bought sell it. I was like, sold. I'll take a 7200 I haven't had one in a few years that I buy and sell lenses on an emotional way. I'm born with. You sell it. I'm using YouTube mode to sell it, you know. But I bought it from him just because the price of Brian was, like, done this crazy price, and he keeps this immaculate. And now I have moved into that lens fully. Did I intend to? No, it just organically, I was like, it wasn't, Hey, Matt, do you see my new lens? Oh, that's just as good as the new one. We should have a long analysis. No, I just, I just, it just connected with me at the moment. I tried to convey that students and the desert analogy helps. Not really an analogy. It's a comparison, direct comparison, like, why would I pick a certain focal length when I have all the room in the world and hopefully get some thinking outside of their their limitations?

I love that approach, right and and I feel very much the same way that I've sometimes gotten caught in that lens world over, just like, oh, I should probably use this lens, or should probably use that because of distance or whatnot, but I fall in love. I have a nine millimeter wide lens, and I shoot on a crop sensor, so let's say 13 millimeters. And I just love the look. And I've been trying to force myself to practice with it, to understand the lens more, not because of distance, but because I want a particular look, and can I achieve it? So I just leave that thing on the camera and I shoot the hell out of it, because I want to know, do I love this, or am I in love with the idea of loving it and just being weird and hipster, right? So I love the fact that, again, you're emphasizing the why it's, I guess this is a pretty good segue to start talking about a couple of things that I know you have in the radar all your tools, right? So Nino Batista is known as a photographer, but on the other side, Nino Batiste is also known as a non coding, developer of tools. And you know, you've got, I use your frequency separation. I use your face focus. I use a lot of your compression and your noise tools, but there's CMX. And you know, you know, frequency separation is that version three, I believe, FS three. So. So talk to me about the tool thing. Why did you want to, one, develop the tools and two, how? How has that influenced what you were doing, both photography, photographically and educationally? Like do you find that exploring in that technical world and making the process of creation easier? Or do you find that you're just you're trying to give people a shortcut to making the art that they want to create themselves? What's your kind of philosophy towards creating tools like, why even enter that market?

Yeah, so quick history there. I don't know when, but let's say 2014 2015 I got some inquiries saying, Hey, do you offer actions or presets? The buzzword, right? And at that time in my mind, about 10 years ago, my opinion was that photographers sold presets to make a quick buck to police people, and it was a 250 different, slight, very variating color grades that were not that useful, and or they had these companies selling 2500 presets for 1999 and all of that just felt bogus, insincere and useless, and it was for the most part. And so I refused to sell actions because I thought it'd be gimmicky. I said, I'm not gonna sit around and make actions, you know. But over time, my my methods got I had a it was like 2016 or so roughly, I realized that my actions palette scrolled forever with a bunch of what I call zombie actions. They were like Frankenstein, halfway working things that I made for that one moment, and then I keep using it. You know that I'm like, like, if anyone else used it, they wouldn't understand what the hell it was. Understand what the hell it was. But I made it for a specific thing. Some of them were very good on on speeding things up. And during my private mentoring sessions like this, I would show people that, and I would just send them two or three of them, like, here, let me just send you this, because it'll set this up a little bit quicker, and this and that. And then I had some friends saying, Hey, is it possible you have any actions or anything that like, and I can add, like, skin texture, excuse me, like a noise just to skin. I was like, No, and I can make one, send it over. And he's like, that's cute. Thanks. And I realized there might be something here. There might be actual tools that can be useful. I don't think people are using this stuff the right way. I did go out. I have one sibling, and he has multiple degrees in computer science, electrical engineering. He's a computer programmer, database systems analyst. He's that guy, and I grew up with him. So the idea of the basic idea of scripting and coding and making digital function that that can increase efficiency. And I worked on websites with him for years. I get those concepts, and I realized actions are underutilized, really underutilized. And then a couple of plugins that people threw my way. I was like, that one's okay, that UI was made by an engineer, not not a designer. The UF experience on that is horrible. I started realizing it might be something to this, and so I developed actions at first, which, of course, Photoshop actions are, they're cool, but they have their limitations, of course. And after I made those, I was selling them individually, like, literally, down the street corner. Hey, I'm selling action, you know, send me some money. I'll send you the email. Done. You know, wasn't making commercial at that point. Then I had a developer hit me up say, Hey, do you want to we can. We can create panels plugins. Do you want to work together? I said, we'll just have a conversation. It was one of those, like, all those emails that you get that just scream scam, for some reason, yeah, totally. I was just like, let's give him a go. Why not? And and so it ended up happening, and he had a couple of panels that were in mid Gallup. And he sent them over, and I said, I can see the premise here. This is horrible. The UI is terrible. And I know what a photographer actually wants compared to this next thing, you know, that started that conversation that was and then we finally launched the first preexcept control 1.0 in 2017 and I was just like, whatever the sizing they developed it. I gave them the I was like the consultant, if you will, how it should work and what it should do and better. And then it went that direction. And there's a lot of story beyond that, and some ups and downs, and some changing of personnel and some dissolving contracts and some other nonsense that went down. But we won't go there right now, unless you want to, but because if I start naming names, it'll go bad. But yeah, well, real bad so what happened was that I said there's got to be more to these tools than people are making. And just as the AI revolution was happening, I thought, Yeah, it's cool, don't get me wrong, but there's got to be some functional tools that are still available. And so when I got my new developer, I've been working on this action that Edit Skin, and I've been remaking it and remaking it, remaking it for months. It is a 227 step action to give you an idea, very hard to keep organized. What the hell is happening in order? It takes 3545 seconds to run, and then you can tweak things. But the problem is that. Tweaking everything requires some knowledge of Photoshop pretty well. And if you want to be efficient, you know all the layers and all the settings and the changes and the key commands and all that. And I showed it to the developer, and he's like, Can I have this action and see if I can make it into something? And I said, Sure, because I sent him the action. He's like, holy crap, I've never seen an action. It's complicated. And I said, Well, you haven't seen because there's some people like it, and read about the same time, I stumbled into some web, some YouTube videos a couple three years ago about color science. And that really, especially when I hit my 2020, 22 sort of stopping point, I went heavy into color science. Yeah, there's a concept I knew, just like physics. But now I was learning the why, you know, and how color science works, and the basic concept of color science and how Adobe interprets it. And I was like, ooh. Hold up a second. So I started modifying and making new things and testing. Had more zombie actions that I would test. I have a whole folder called MVP testing. It's a mess, you should see it. And I started learning more and more and more, and I was like, There's got to be something I can do with this knowledge. That's the short version. I didn't believe it in at first I started realizing there's something to it. And then when you find the right partner, like I have now, who is passionate about it, excited about it, and is a lovingly amazing neurodivergent genius. I love that what he does to bring my ideas to life is insane as a programmer, and we have a very good relationship on that regard. And I feel genuinely this is where I was going. I really do feel like my tools are genuinely useful. They're not fluff, they're not more of the same. AI is great, and it will evolve. But I'm not trying to sell you another AI thing that changes eyebrows out that's fine. They do hear your thing. I'm trying to make real tools. It. Gibson, Les Paul, guitar is basically unchanged. It's 1959 basically argued right, unchanged for reason it works. It's not just nostalgia for what it does and for the sound you want. It's not the guitar for everyone. But if you said, Here is a land, they've done experiments like this multiple times. They can release some here's one where the strings are actually invisible lasers, and you can put your fingers on it, and they touch the frets, and it goes right into MIDI, and you can do all this. That's a cool instrument, but it's not a Gibson Les Paul, and there's still something to be said for a libs and Les Paul. And so I want to make tools that are have the fundamentals in check, that can still get things done. We ran forward. We moved forward as a tech expressive self and shows itself. But I'm not going for gimmick. I'm going for things that are actually useful. Is, is what I'm passionate about now with with MVP, and I think it's, I think it works.

I was cruising through some of your old tutorial videos. And that's one of the things that really, I think, does separate you out in this tool space, in this action space, is that you put so much emphasis on teaching people the nuance of using the actual tool. It's not just hey, I've got a skin tool, or hey, I've got a color palette tool where you can apply color grading and go forth and conquer you really get into the nuance of why and how, and especially in, you know, something like CMX two, right where you're showing how you can blend the palette, drop certain colors out, and really apply a color palette To enhance whatever artistic feel you want that image to have. And I love that you go through variation after variation after variation, so that you're giving the full context before someone even buys the plugin from you or buys the action from you, you are 100% on the table about what it does and what it doesn't do, and where you might use it, and what the case studies are, and how you apply it in your own workflow. And I love that, because that as a consumer, tells me, one, it's very well thought through and designed with my needs in mind. Two, it's not someone that is fly by night. They've put a lot of time and energy into producing this panel correctly for working photographers and three believe in the product, and you use it yourself, right? Anybody can throw presets together and save them and then have a pack and be like, Hey, here's my pack of presets. But there is a lot that I really am fascinated by in this space of the mix of design, usability, functionality, right? All of those pieces are what I will unabashedly spend money on, but I'll do all my research first to make sure that what I'm getting is a quality tool. So I love the fact that you do put so much emphasis in there. Is there one of these tools that is your favorite child? Is there? Is there one in there where you're like, I am so glad I made this. Not even so much for the entire world, but for me, this changed. How I approach things,

I would have to say it has to be the skn panel, because there's couple reasons. First of all, you know, you can edit skin lots of different ways. And I added skin manually. I added skin with that panel. I skin, you know, some variation and depending on what I'm doing, but that was near and dear to me for very selfish reasons, in that, you know, developing a panels is a complicated thing, you know, scripting, coding and all that. And that one, all the functions that it outputs, I made, and that that's near and dear to me, because I made that, my developer was like, You sure about this? And I said, Yeah. And then we went through several versions of iterations of that, and I said, Actually, scrap those. Scrap those layers. Here's a new one. I sent them a new script, a new action. It's near and dear to me, because it does work, and all the output layers were my ideas and my execution. So I feel like I put my heart and soul in it. If you're making it work, that's because I made something that you can use that what could be more proud than that? You know, CMX, two it, it pulls, pallet extraction. I know the concept. Wrote this idea, how that machine learning works to pull the extract palette and then do that, but I know how to apply it and use it. So I love them all. But skn definitely is my baby because, like their term, I made it, you know me, and seeing it go from clunky action, and at the end of the end of the day, no matter how good your action is, it's going to be clunky because there's a lot of extra fluff in it that's not necessary, because it's just a set series of instructions. When you convert all that to a script, a partner, the badass, and you convert all that to scripts, and it becomes efficient and quick. Oh, wow. It's like watching a kid be born, if you will. It's

great. And I feel that come across right, especially when I'm watching some of the videos, as you're explaining these things, I feel it come across. And I was just always curious and that, that skn panel is dope. If you haven't used it, get out there and try it. It is phenomenal on skin. Let's move forward a little bit. I know one thing that I've been seeing you talk a lot about lately is kind of an upcore upcoming European tour. But before we get to that, I know I had Dennis Dunbar here on generator God about 12 episodes ago, thereabouts, and we, he and I sat down for a while, and I saw that you're you guys are getting together out in LA teaching a class together, right? This is like the power duo, as I mentioned the other day. I would love to be a fly on the wall in that room. What are you guys talking about? And tell me a little bit about the Tell me a little bit about

the class. It's the first time I've done this specific class, and it's a focus on commercial retouching, which, when you say commercial, people mainly think technical and difficult, right? And to a certain degree, it's a little more technical, because, you know, you just have to be right. But he was curious about how we could partner. And it was his, his thinking on this. And he said, How can we partner on such a thing where I come at it him, comes at it from a retoucher who gets a job from a client and a retoucher who does his own work, because I'm not someone he saw me. He saw me. He's correct. I'm not someone who sees retouching as an annoying afterthought, a necessary evil. It's part of what I do. I love it, integral to the work that I do, right? So he's like, you're coming at it from, like, a better term, fine art, I'm coming at it from a client. How can we compare and contrast that and teach people about the commercial space? So one aspect of commercial reduction, especially tennis and people like him, but some understanding of color science in general, which is a I'm really oversimplifying, but some understand color science in general, when you get to the point where you're like a dentist, or you work at gloss production, or another one these big production patterns, it does not matter what the image is. You're not a boudoir editor, you're not a car editor, you're not a product editor, you are an editor. You understand pixels. You understand how math work. You understand calculations. You understand how to manipulate pixels, frequencies, all of that. Nothing is out of your realm. Earth, Oliver is another example of that set of colors, another example of that not everybody wants to do that most people are boudoir, wedding, high school seniors, fashion. GWC wants to shoot girls. You have a focus, and that's what you want to learn how to edit in the commercial space. You want to learn how to pixel push, pixel alchemy, as Renee Robin would say, you you can have your niche as a fine artist, but I'm also a hyper nerd about the color theory and the color science. And so pixels are pixels. I'm not scared of them. And so he thought, I think we can help people out there. But more importantly, on his end, we're going to talk about the business aspect of it, because a lot of people say, How do I edit posters from Marvel? Well, there's, there's a, you know, there's methodologies there, and that's gonna be a lot of business discussion, don't get me wrong, but we're gonna try to push the idea of learning retouching at its most fundamental core level, where you're not editing people or cars or you're. You know how to manipulate information, data, Chroma, raster and Luma information to get whatever the hell you need done. That's kind of the thesis on it.

And I love that, because commercial retouching, commercial anything really, you put commercial in front of photography, retouching, whatever it might be, people get freaked out, right? Immediately. They're like, I don't know how to get into that world. I don't know what to do in that world. It's a It's Narnia, right? I've got to go through some magic portal to get to commercial world land. And it's really not that way. So, but there are, like you said, standards that I think a lot of people are just unaware of when you're entering that space, right? You do level up. It is the NFL of photography to be doing things at a very, very high level. But that doesn't mean that the people that are performing in that space are any more or less of an athlete than you. They just kind of know the training program to get there. So this sounds like a great fundamental place for folks to get a lot of knowledge from two completely disparate views on the commercial retouching space, and you don't see a lot of that. So that's going to be super exciting to be able to bring that out.

It is. And of course, courses like this exist, but I've never been part of one like that Dennis has done everywhere, from California to Serbia, but he doesn't have as many under his belt as I do overall. Which one of the reasons he came to me, he goes, Look, I've done these. I've done as many as you maybe we can talk. And so we talked, and we figured that out. Now, what's interesting about the commercial space in in the arts, like you said, NFL, right? Well, if you look at the NFL or the NBA wherever, there's not one player in the NBA who's just a lousy idiot who does not belong on the court, even the worst player in the NBA is going to wipe my ass on the court, right? Okay, so my point is, in the commercial space, everyone is good. You can I'm gonna be mean for a second. I'm just gonna be blunt. You go to any local, regional, let's say here in Houston, right? You look in a model things. I need a photographer for portfolio work. You're going to find great photographers. You're going to find awful ones that have websites and social media in the commercial space. Everyone playing working in commercial is good. That's a given. Now there's who understands the client's style, who has the most efficiency in terms of turnaround, who has the best personnel in terms of specifically what the client wants, who? It's not who's good. It's who they pick, what the client picks for that job, or what the what kind of relationship you have with your retouching, with your production company, that they understand me. I don't care if you're all good. You understand me. You're you're going to put you on retainer for all these campaigns in the commercial space. No one sucks. That's it to remember.

No, I think it's an important point, which is why, you know, at the at the end of the rainbow, right? We all want to be recognized for having our own particular voice in the industry, right? We want someone to be scrolling and stop and say, Oh, that's Matt's, that's Nino's, that's Dennis's, right? I can tell that just from the style, and that's one of the biggest compliments that you can get, is when someone says, I know your stuff immediately. And I'd imagine in the commercial world, there's less dependence on your capability and more on The Voice that you bring and your style and what it is like you were just mentioning. What are the things that you can contribute above and beyond just the pure, raw skill that you have, right? And a lot of times that comes down to individual personality and soft skills, right? Value?

Yeah, there's very few like mega, mega rock stars, like I liken it to, I may I liken it to like session musicians, right? So if you get like, a Steve Lukather or someone like that, these, these guys are chameleons. They can play in anything, and they have played on everything, right? Speaking of Lukather, Jeff Porcaro played on everything, right? There's so many studio musicians that the world doesn't know about unless you're into it, and they're all amazing. There's a small 1% of them that you don't hire to get, like, I need some funky guitar. Get Steven here and give me some funky guitar. I need some heavy guitar. Get whoever here, give me some, you know, whatever the heck. You know, there's a few who you hire because you want to get them. Robert Fripp comes to mind. So you you don't hire Robert Fripp. Tell them what to do. You hire Robert Fripp to get the Robert trip by. If you want Robert Tripp, you hire him for that. And if you don't want Robert Fripp, you don't bother him. And mind. And in the retouching production space, there's people who can chameleon into anything and produce anything like, Oh, who's the best at clearing skin? They all can clean skin. What's, what's the very but if you want something, someone is striving for that 1% you shouldn't strive for that. That bus is going to happen organically, where you're a production person who's hired 100% for your vision as a commercial retoucher, you are hired for your service, but also, like you said, the soft skills and also that little extra something that you might do that vibes with this client, but doesn't vibe with that client, and there's gorgeous proximity. People would tell me, I live 44 Five miles outside of Kansas City, and I want to get into work. Sure we're touching I can do that right, because everything's online. Kind of you need to go to Malaysia markets. You can't just completely be online. You have to establish yourself and then go live in Sri Lanka and they eat FTP, everything to you. I just say FTP. You know what I mean? Trouble you did.

You hated yourself, man, but I was right with you. So I'm right there. So, you know,

it's like, you gotta, you gotta, you gotta be in those markets, right? So, yeah, I'm in Houston, and Houston's is cute in that they think they're a Fashion Place. Yeah, no, there's a lot of great art here. A lot of great art, but we are not a fashion Mecca in LA, some client says, crap, I need Matt. Matt, yep, where? Oh, man, I'm in Europe this month. Shit. Nice. Who's next? They move on to the next person who's around, who's around. Right? Commercial Space is kind of cutthroat. I don't want to go to the commercial space. I arguably dance in there, but I don't want a traditional campaign. I have no interest in that at all. It sounds soul sucking. So people like Dennis, who can do that, and other photographers who can do that really well. I mean, I commend that. I'm a pretentious artist. I only do what I

Yeah, pretentious is the first word that came to mind. So, you know, I just when I started and I dabbled, and I say dabbled because I was not in the NFL. I was like, you know, Pop Warner Football at best in the commercial world. And, you know, I realized very early on, this wasn't the space for me, and it wasn't because I was bad at it. It just it. It gave me no excitement to be shooting products, or to be retouching products, or to be not able to deliver my own vision because I didn't have a voice, I didn't have a brand for my own stuff, I was good at what I did, but man, you know, it didn't stand out. So I think, you know, just understanding that early on, do you want to play in that space or not, is totally something that if you decide not to, it doesn't make you any less of an artist. It's just exactly you have more time to focus on what it is that you're good at. Now,

my flippant answer to people, if I may, my flipping people, they go, Well, you should get into product targeting. You should get into weddings. You should get into there's a lot of money in it. I say a lot of money in cocaine too.

Depends on which side you're on, I suppose selling or using,

right? I mean, if I'm gonna run Coke, I will make some money. That's the only goal. There are other ways. In fact, there are better ways. I would be, I think, equally as miserable using the medium that I love, like photography, to do something I don't like. I'd be equally miserable doing that as running coke. Talk

to me about this. I saw dates in Amsterdam. I saw dates all over the place. Talk to me about what is upcoming for you in terms of travel and workshops and and all that.

Right, so this time, this trip is very personal for me, because this trip was ramping up at the end of 2019 and it was about to launch in the beginning of 2020 Yeah, you know how 2020 went for everyone. So travel was completely out of the question. So all everything fell apart, and I canceled everything. And like everybody else, took a hard left, right. And so one, when I've done a few workshops here and there in the last three or four years, brazenly did one in the middle of 2020 here in Houston, just to kind of test that. And everybody had masks on and everything. You know, I did that whole thing of later, later, like, there's, there was no later. It was just an excuse. And I told myself that I was going to get to workshops again in 2025 and I basically didn't travel all of 2023 I said I'll do later. But then they just clicked, and I was like, now I'm going to do this. It's time. And when I started reaching out to my contacts, they're like, hell, yeah, we've been waiting. And so, you know, with that said, it is not by any stretch of imagination, just a European holiday. You know, I'm running workshops. I'm trying to do work while I'm out there. And so the amount of upfront work to book these things and market them, sell them out, fill them up, create curriculum for them, the scheduling of the travel in general, acquiring the talent for it. It's incredible the amount of work that we've done. And you mentioned, Amsterdam is close this place called Amber sports, which is outside of Amsterdam in Netherlands. That will be the very first European workshop I have ever done. Very excited about that. But then we also have London as well, right outside London we're discussing now we're discussing Edinburgh, and then also discussing Rome, also discussing some really Hail Mary, like Tokyo and Sydney. But these are conversations that are not coming in cold. These are conversations that have happened before. And going back to we talked about Gen Z, it also hit me this year that those in person interactions are going to be important sitting here, you know, in my little office with the curtains drawn and plugging away at social media, does not a career make, not the way I want it to be. And so I gotta get out there. You know what? I mean? A lot of people think you want to sell all these workshops and make a ton of money. That's your motivation. That Not really, no, I don't want to go into red, but I want to get out there and and you. I fancy myself, if you will, as someone who is self proclaimed educator mentor, and I do enjoy that aspect of what I do. So if I can give something to the people, I'll explain that in a minute. Give something to the people where I'm going that they've been asking for. Or maybe they haven't. Maybe they see a promo for the first time. Go, who the hell is this guy? It looks pretty good. Let's go if I can give him that. But then I can get out there, and I can see the places I've been wanting to see forever, and I can do work out there. God knows what kind of inspiration I'll get. You know, photographing in Scotland. What kind of inspiration can I get just walking around Amsterdam? You know, these are things that a lot of people know. I've done my share of traveling. I'm grateful in the 46 or 50 states, Mexico and Canada. And, of course, I'm from the Caribbean, so I have been around, but not across the pond. As they say, it's finally time for that, and I'm looking forward the inspiration. I'm looking forward to meeting a bunch of friends that I've known online. Only really excited about that. Now, when I say, give back here is one way that I'm trying to make it happen. I'm trying to read what every location wants. If I say I'm going to go to Edinburgh. Let's shoot in castles. Why? Because that's what every tourist wants to do. Okay, I'm gonna go to Mexico. Well, we need to go to Cancun to shoot on the beach. Why? Everything doesn't have to be American centric about what we see other countries. What do they want? Turns out, they want studio training. So I'm in Mexico City, in a big, humongous, dirty city like any other big tumungan dirty city. I'm nowhere near the coast. We're not shooting bikini models. We're talking about studio commercial lighting. And that organization was like, hell yeah. American photographer wants to come down and do that. You don't wanna just go to our beaches and get drunk. No. And so I am trying to bring and work with it, with the locations. What do people want there? What do people look for there? And not just play force the American stereotype on onto them. I'm not going to go to Tokyo and shoot a bunch of kimonos, you know. I'm trying to see what the markets want and what I can bring for them, not just push on, you know, American viewpoints onto it, in the limited travel that I have internationally and even around the states, that American viewpoint does dominate. And you know, like I had been the the featured photographer and used ridiculous shoots. Sorry, if you're listening, and I went to one of your shoots. They were ridiculous, and I was the featured photographer for a lot of them, Jamaica and Aruba and Mexico and Guatemala, South Florida. And why do they go there? Why did Americans go there? For good reasons, because it's beautiful and you can vacation. But I'm not going to go there and go, let's because the locals go. But you say I'm going to go to tiny, little island, Aruba and give a studio class. The locals are like, Well, damn, I think I can gain something from that. So I'm trying to go slightly in that angle with limited knowledge that I have, I don't exactly know, but I try to find that information out. So that's kind of one of the initiatives of this tour as it evolves, is try to see what that region wants, and if I can bring it

Well, I gotta believe too, that that pushes you, personally and professionally to you know, as you're focus grouping, for lack of better words, focus grouping, what these locations want. It's got to feel good to be able to dig into your bag and be like, Oh, wow. I haven't taught whatever studio lighting in a while. I haven't done this in a while. That'll be great. Not only do I have to understand what they want, how I'm going to teach it, but there will be the intrinsic cultural difference between the American mindset and whatever country you may be in, and how they would apply these certain things. I love the fact that you're pushing your comfort zone, so to speak, and diving into that unknown a little bit even though you are very secure in what you'll be teaching. It's got to be a little bit unnerving to some degree, to not necessarily know what's going to happen in any given place as you start to put all these logistics together to really understand all right, I'm going to have to go from the Netherlands, where I'm teaching this one thing, to Edinburgh, where I'm teaching something completely different, rather than going and playing the same set list night after night after night, that's

exactly right. And it goes back to you can align it with why I feel like I wanted to express my authenticity about a guy shooting models, well, I'm not going to go to Europe like a typical arrogant American and say, do it my way or the highway, because I say so, they're going to be like, we have YouTube for that. We have all kinds of resources for that. I want to try to bring that CO study philosophy of, well, here I am. I'm here to learn as much as I am to teach. Let's see what we got. You know, I've been very, very excited about that. I noticed that state to state, and I really have been the 46 of the 50 states. And it does vary region to region. You know, PNW is a little different than northeast and of course, yeah, I know South Texas very, very well, etc. There's some cities I prefer never to go to again, but I try not to try not to blanket everything in general. So like, for example, I've been advised repeatedly by my contacts in Oceania and going up to Asia. And they. Look, Tokyo is an industrial sort of Mecca, but you walk in there as an American, first of all, they're going to be like, yo. We only speak English. We don't do that here. Yeah, in Netherlands, they do Puerto Rico, they do Mexico, they do but in Tokyo, there's like, No, you know, they're like, so you're gonna walk in there and make everybody you can need a translator, and they're gonna be like, Who's this American? You know? Okay, fair point. But I'm not so naive to think that this 12, 16 million people in Tokyo are exactly the same. That's naive. So I want to find out for myself. I want to see engage what they want over there, and not treat them like one giant stereotype the way I don't want to do that to me. There are 20. I don't forget how many people in Tokyo, depending on how you actually calculate, but I know it's over 10 million. So these warnings that I got from my contacts I hear, but I'm still curious. I think there's more there. I think there's more possibilities there. And I don't think that all 30 million people in the greater Tokyo area feel the exact same way. That's not you. So I'm curious. I want to learn about the people. I want to learn about what they look forward to learning about arts, learning about photography, where the priorities are. For example, I found out that in Tokyo, a heavy handed retouching is considered a commercial standard. Again, there's enough people that there's a lot of variation, but if you look at the commercial standard, portrait retouching at a higher level of like porcelain look is actually considered standard there I'm discussing, and so that's going to affect maybe some curriculum, or at least I'm going to challenge them, and I'm going to ask them their why and how it affects my why, etc. But I'm not going to come into it like, let me tell you the American way. First of all, we can have a whole conversation on this, but border, San Juan, Puerto Rico. I was born San Juan, Puerto Rico. I moved to Houston. I'm three years old. I go back to Puerto Rico, I feel like a tourist, and I've never felt at home here. I don't feel at home anywhere. I'm very nomadic in my head, so I don't come across like, let me tell you the Puerto Rican way to do things, because I was born there. That's fucking dumb, you know? And this is, thing is that I know how to make some Puerto Rican food. They'll look out. So I still want, I still want everybody to to tell me where they're at. I'll try to meet you somewhere in the middle, and let's see what we can both discover. It is not a tour of standing on stage and screaming about who I am. It's a tour of immersing myself in the different individuality to the type of artists that they're out there. I want to see what I can do for them and what I can learn from them.

It's that collaborative spirit that I think, from an adult learning standpoint, works best in my experience, in terms of the workshops that I've been in for 20 some odd years in a variety of careers in a variety of industries, what I find is when there is a connection between the student and the instructor, the educator, the teacher that is more collaborative, that is just really imparting knowledge, rather than saying this is the definitive way to do something. Not only do I retain more, but I'm more attentive. I'm more open to possibilities, and it blows my mind that a lot of educators don't approach things that way. So the fact that that you're diving into this head first, knowing that there is going to be, what is it? Pressfield? Steven Pressfield, in the War of Art, calls it like the the big R resistance, where people are going to say, well, this is going to be hard. And instead of you saying, yeah, maybe I shouldn't go there, you're like, Bring it on. That, to me, is just a wonderful part of what you're trying to do and how you try to teach, and the philosophies that go along with that, I think it's it's going to be really interesting to catch you on the backside of it when you do come back and hear how the whole thing goes, and

they'll be up, so they'll be down. There'll be successes and probably some some travails. And that's just the way it works. But I'm very much looking forward to it.

Yeah, that's awesome. Listen, man, I've been sitting here. We've been talking for about 75 minutes, and I didn't even realize I looked at the clock and I was like, we're just getting started. I've got a book like this that I want to talk to you about? So this is, this is what happens when you get two people with, uh, verbal skills together and we're able to just talk and talk and talk and tangent. I love it. Thank you so much for being here today. Where can people find you? It's pretty straightforward, right? Yeah.

I mean couple things. One, one. My name isn't John Smith, so Google Nino Batista. It's all there because I have a nice, unique name. I did, sir ceremoniously, uh, leave Twitter because I'm sick of the cesspool that is x.com and when I did, someone swooped up Nino Batista handle. So you'll find that guy if you type in my name, but other than that, it'll be me and your

tools same place. Just kind of go to Neo the batista.com and kind of link from there to everything

and MVP retouchtools.com but I just remember my name, like I said, I'm blessed that I have a unique name. So if you type in new Batista, you pretty much find every everything that you might be might be curious about also going back to the beginning of the conversation, to a degree, I try to make myself accessible. If you hear a photograph. For and you met. You send me a friend request on Facebook, I'm probably gonna accept that. If you send me a DM, I'm probably gonna answer it at some point. Yeah, I try to be as accessible as I can. Everybody has boundaries under some weirdos out there, but for the most part, I make myself accessible. So don't be scared to reach out to anybody you know. If you want to say a message, drop me an email, go for it.

Thank you so much for being here. Hang on a minute while everything kind of uploads. But, man, this was such a such a bucket list. Check off for me. Thank you for spending so much time with me. I really appreciate

it. Man, it's my honor. It was a great, great conversation. Man, seriously, thank you so much.

You got it. I'll talk to you soon. Bye.