Photographer Pete Halvorsen And A Watch On A Secret Mission¶
Published on Mon, 2 Sep 2019 10:00:05 +0000
This week we talk with a Los Angeles–based photographer who has followed the winding path of his passions to end up with his dream gig.
Synopsis¶
In this episode of Hodinkee Radio, host Stephen Pulvirent returns to the office after a three-week absence spent recording on the West Coast. He and Editor-in-Chief Jack Forster discuss the week's watch news, including Jack's recent interview on the podcast where he reflected on his decades-long career in horology, the controversial Apple Watch Series 4 and the practice of double-wristing, and Omega's divisive new Seamaster Aqua Terra Ultralight priced at $48,600. They also examine how steel sports watch shortages are driving customers toward gold models, and review Longines' accessible moon phase offerings.
The centerpiece of the episode is Pulvirent's conversation with Los Angeles-based photographer Pete Halverson. Halverson discusses his unconventional path from aspiring baseball player to actor to photographer, his early adoption of Instagram, and his current focus on film photography and Leica cameras. He shares insights about slowing down in a digital world, the spiritual connection to mechanical watches and cameras, and his workshops teaching photography. Halverson also reveals the story behind his vintage Rolex Submariner ref. 5513, which mirrors the watch his father sold after serving in Vietnam.
The episode concludes with Cole Pennington recounting a fascinating piece of World War II history: how Benito Mussolini commissioned special Eberhard and Longines watches for a secret 1942 mission to deliver cipher codes from Rome to Tokyo by air, navigating through enemy territory using only celestial navigation and the purpose-built timepieces.
Links¶
Transcript¶
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| Unknown | That's something I've always enjoyed about a mechanical watch, to be able to look down, look at the time that has been, you know, wound and told or automatic and told. And there's something very spiritual about being grounding, about looking down. Okay, what time is it today? Yeah. You know, what day is this today? And just being like pinpointing that second and being like, okay, like this was just a moment I just had and it's kind of a grounding thing to do that that I feel in the digital side we just get so lost in you, know z,eros and ones and binary codes and everything that it it's important for us to facilitate things again for themselves. Yeah. Um, which is an interesting process I think for all going through Hey everybody, I'm your host Stephen Polveran and this is Hodinky Radio. We got a great show for you this week. It's anchored by my conversation with Los Angeles-based photographer Pete Halverson. Super interesting guy, somebody I've known for a long time, but had never actually met face to face, so we sat down on my recent trip. We're gonna finish the show up with a little lost piece of horological history from our own Cole Pennington, but before that, our editor-in-chief Jack Forrester and I take a look at the week that was. Enjoy |
| Unknown | well, well, Stephen J. Pulverant, look what the cat dragged in. I'm back, baby. You are? I still work here. You do. It' |
| Unknown | s amazing. Two two how long were you out? Uh I was out of the office. Three weeks. Yeah. I think that's the longest I've been away from the office Honestly, I didn't walked in. Walked into our our new office uh all disoriented, barely barely made it to the office. Straight up didn't. Yeah. But uh yeah, I was gone for a while. I was working, but I was gone. I was out on the west coast uh recording some episodes of Hodinky Radio, some of which uh people are already getting a taste of, some of which you'll hear today, and some of which are are soon to come. Did some magazine work. We've got some uh we've got some fun stuff coming |
| Unknown | . Uh working on some quite uh quite beautiful looking stuff for the magazine uh which obviously we're not gonna uh blow our cover on that but um I th |
| Unknown | I think it's gonna be fantastic. Yeah, we got to work with uh a photographer who we haven't worked with before, uh some models we haven't worked with before. Uh it was it was a pretty fun, pretty fun shoot. I agree with you. We won't spoil it too much, but uh I think I think people are gonna like this one. Hell of a location. Yeah, really one hell of a location. Uh somewhere I've wanted to go for a long time. So that's all we'll say about |
| Unknown | that for now. But yeah, so keep your uh keep keep your eyes out for that one folks when the next issue of the magazine drops. Yeah, which should be uh November. It's coming |
| Unknown | up. We gotta finish making it, right? Apparently. That's what they tell us. I think we have to actually finish it before it exists. But uh yeah. So what I wanted to do is since I'm back and I now actually get to see my colleagues. I thought we could kind of talk through what's been going on on Hodinky D this past week. Yep. All right. Sure. Uh we kick things off with a bang uh with our last episode of Hodinky Radio, the most recent episode of Hodinky Radio, which was uh your interview, sir. Yeah, um very, |
| Unknown | very enjoyable to do. And um, you know, as so often happens when you talk about yourself for forty-five minutes, uh you you um you know, I ended up remembering things that I really I I hadn't thought about in years. |
| Unknown | It's funny you say that because one of the things I liked about doing that episode was I feel like I know you pretty well. We work in very close proximity to one another. Uh I spend more time with you than I do with most of my family. Um and we've known each other for years, but I still learn new stuff about you, which I thought was fun. It's always exciting when, you know, you interview somebody you know and you learn new stuff. |
| Unknown | Yeah, yeah, you know, uh it was a chance to look back on you know how I got into watches in the first place. Um, you know, and and to think about why I'm still interested in them after all these years and why I still find it possible to uh f |
| Unknown | ind a lot of excitement in writing about them. Yeah, which uh again we won't blow our cover too much, but about an hour before we sat down to record this, a pretty special watch came through HQ that it excites me when I see you get that excited about a watch. It tells me it's something I need to pay attention to. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yep. That's all you're saying about that? That's all I can say. All right, all right. Um kind of actually the opposite of the watch that just came through uh is the Apple Watch, which is something else you wrote about this week. Uh you're a I would say a fan, a pioneer maybe of uh what we'll call double wristing. And uh you wrote a story about it. The headline is just because doing the two wrist tango with the Apple Watch series four A |
| Unknown | aron Powell Uh You know, um I threw in as one of the article tags um moral outrage. Uh I don't think you really I did. I don't think anybody actually noticed. to me how much we personally identify with the watches that we wear and how they become really a part of us not only physically but psychically. And when you wear it it doesn't really matter whether you're wearing a a smart watch on the other wrist or just another mechanical watch. Wearing two watches at once feels weird. Yeah. You know, it produces this uh sense of kind of kinesthetic derangement and split identity that I was not expecting. Um and you know, y you get uh you you start to feel I I I should claim it, I started to feel uh when I first began doing it more and more uncomfortable through the course of the day. It would be an interesting experiment actually to wear two mechanical watches uh at the same time uh for you know a longer period than you know a few minutes or an hour. Uh I mean our buddy Morgan King does it basically every day. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean I think like anything else it depends on whether you do it habitually. If you get you know, once you get used to it, you're used to it. Right. When how long have you been doing that with the Apple Watch? Um so when did series four come out? Uh a year ago in two weeks. Yeah, I would say on very on and off uh over the last year. Um more frequently over the last six months probably, and it's it's not something that I do at you know, typically it's not something I do at trade shows, it's not something I do when I go to watch enthusiast meetups, but on a daily basis, yeah, I find it very useful, and not just as an activity tracker, it actually keeps me from hauling my phone out of my pocket a lot of the time to do things like, you know, check messages, um, check the weather, uh, all of the things that you can do on a on an Apple Watch that you can't do on a mechanical watch. Yeah |
| Unknown | . Is there something about the series four that got you doing this? 'Cause I know you tried it a little bit before and it never really took. Is there something about the series four that kind of like changed the game for you? |
| Unknown | Yeah, there is. Uh th first of all the series four is I think in terms of user interface it',s the most capable uh Apple Watch that Apple has ever produced. It's very easy to use, it's very easy to customize, it's very easy to uh make it a part of your life in a useful way, and it definitely does things in terms of utility. Obviously that a mechanical watch doesn't do do. What itesn't do is duplicate the emotional satisfaction of wearing a good mechanical watch. So I don't really see the two objects conflicting the way some people do. There were a couple of folks in the comments who very, very vehemently said, and you know I appreciate people's uh passion about this because it's one of the things that keeps the site going, keeps people reading. Um they said, you have to make a choice. You m if you're if you're a real watch guy No, but you know, I I mean, no, I don't have to I do have to make a choice. It doesn't have to be your choice. So your choice would be not to not to wear two you know, a smart watch on one wrist and a mechanical watch on the other. It happens to be a choice I'm making. I feel it's a positive choice and it works for me and Uh do you think you'd get some of that |
| Unknown | emotional factor back if Apple there's there's rumors that with the next Apple Watch, Apple might be reintroducing some premium materials, the ceramics or things like that. Do you think that would add and bring in some of the emotional value that you don't necessarily get with the Apple Watch or is that not kind of what it's about for you? I think it's defin |
| Unknown | itely possible. I've never had an opportunity to wear premium material Apple Watch. I've never had an opportunity to wear one of the ceramic models for any extended period of time. They feel great and they look fantastic. Yeah, they're beautiful. Um yeah, they're beautiful objects. My impression of the Apple Watch, one of the criticisms leveled against the Apple Watch is it is a fundamentally a disposable piece of consumer electronics. While that is true, there are disposable pieces of consumer electronics and disposable pieces of consumer electronics. Strictly speaking, like a digital camera is a disposable piece of consumer electronics. Sooner or later it is going to be superseded by a camera with a better sensor, uh with uh more uh sophisticated inerds that's capable of doing things that earlier models can't. However, you and I both know people who bought M8s when they first came out and they're still perfectly happy happy shooting them. Um and my feeling with the Apple Watch is that while in a narrow sense, it is y,es, a disposable piece of consumer electronics. It is much less vulnerable to the sense of obsolescence that you see in a lot of other pieces of consumer electronics. And the the thing that really has made it feel like a more enduring and durable experience for me than than many other consumer electronics items is that the user interface has really stabilized and it's stabilized at a very good place. Where most of the stuff that you want to do that anyone who uses one would want to do easily, it's right there on the surface. It's easy to get to and it's actually enjoyable to interact with |
| Unknown | . Yeah, I I totally agree. And I I think you make a good point with the comparison to the M eight, which is that something electronic isn't inherently sort of soulless in the same way that something mechanical isn't inherently soulful. I mean we've you know all I think basically anybody listening to this has seen a mechanical watch that they just didn't connect to and didn't give them any any warm feelings. And on the on the flip side, I'm sure most people have had either their first iPod or an iPhone or a great piece of stereo equipment or a camera that they really did connect to. So it's it's that doesn't seem to be the sort of like defining criteria for whether something is meaningful. Aaron R |
| Unknown | oss Powell Yeah. I mean you know I shoot watch editorial here with a uh Canon Mark IV and at some point it's gonna become obsolete, but I'm still very attached to it. |
| Unknown | Yeah. As as you should be. Um all right, let's move on from Apple Watch stuff because people are gonna get a lot more Apple Watch stuff soon, presumably. We don't know that Apple's releasing new watches, but I would be shocked if they didn't they haven't said anything, but you know, who knows? Uh let's uh let's go to something actually that's kind of kind of uh also divisive, which is uh Omega released a new watch this week, a new Seamaster, the Aqua Terra Ultralight, uh, which is titanium with a titanium a ser ceramized, am I saying that correctly? Ceramized titanium. Ceramized titanium movement, the crown pushes in and out, it's like spring loaded, uh, super lightweight strap. The whole thing weighs fifty-five grams. It's an insanely light watch. Right. It's also expensive. Right. Um what were your |
| Unknown | thoughts when you first saw this watch? So when we first got the press release we didn't have price information for it, so that part of the equation was not there to react to. I think it's a very interesting watch technically. Um my experience with lighter and super light watches like uh I think it's the uh RM thirty seven um uh is an example of a super light watch. We'll have to we'll have to check that and my apologies if I'm mistaken, but it's it's uh I think it's something like 20 grams. Okay. Um my experience with those things is that r to really gauge your own impression of them, you have to handle them. The lightness and the fact that the lightness often kind of pushes back against what you expect visually is one of the things that makes watches like that interesting. And you have to sort of have them on your wrist for a while, I think, in order to gauge the sort of worthwhile thing. Now all that being said, we got a fair bit of flack for not um expressing moral outrage about the price in our introducing story. And what I've tried to sort of let people which I get, but I've tried to let people know that information was not actually there to be outraged about when we uh uh when we put the story together. John John could not intuit the price of this watch and be upset about it. John was not able to say to himself, you know, I don't know why, but I feel like this might be a fifty thousand dollar watch, and I think I'm going to preemptively say how pissed off I am |
| Unknown | about to watch. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I mean that's the thing, right? Is like it's a C Master. You have certain expectations. It's an Aquatera. Most of the Aquatera models, even though they're master chronometers, they're in-house movements, they're amazing watches, they're relatively affordable. This watch is forty eight thousand six hundred dollars. Correct. Uh and now to close to a thousand bucks a gram. Close to oh I like that. I like the way of measuring that. Oh that I owe that to a reader. Oh that's great. Um I mean what what that doesn't take into account is that like yes this is an aquaterra, but like this is not an aqua terror in a lot of ways, right? Like, this is in some ways you already mentioned Richard Meal, like this is Omega kind of taking a page from Richard Meal's playbook, um, kind of am |
| Unknown | ping up the cost program. So what you're so so so would would you be comfortable Sort of. I think it |
| Unknown | still feels very Omega in a lot of ways. I think this is not out of character for Omega. It's definitely something on the surface that's new, but I think in sort of spirit, like doing sort of unusual, unexpected technical things is pretty traditional for Omega. Like that's kind of their |
| Unknown | bag. It is. I think that the big shock for people was just you're you're just not used to seeing that kind of a price associated with the time only C master on any level. Totally agree. Uh and and the habit among Swiss watchmakers is that when they introduce it uh exotic new materials, they usually do it in a particular kind of idiom. So I remember when Gigère introduced the uh extreme lab watches back in the mid-2000s, 2007, I think it was. Remember those titanium nitride on the bearings and no conventional jewels. But it was a very, very overtly techie looking watch. And this is not an overtly techie looking watching. No, |
| Unknown | I actually I'm kinda into it. Especially on the the Velcro strap, the one that's actually not dissimilar from the Apple Watch sport band you're wearing right now. Um sorry to out you as wearing your Apple Watch right now, but uh information is out there. I'm kinda into it. Like it's it's forty one millimeters, which like is a little bigger than I would typically wear, but like this it's kind of cool looking. I'm kinda into it. I'm really excited to get one into the office. And like like you said, you |
| Unknown | you need a watch like this on your wrist. Right. I had a you know I had a big long conversation with Ben about this watch uh the morning that it broke in Oh I know. But you know, I had I mean I I have to be honest, my initial reaction was the same as a lot of readers. I thought to myself, okay it's cool, but forty eight thousand dollars for a Seamaster, that's just a little hard to swallow, you know, for any Seamaster. However, uh I have learned sometimes the hard way over the last you know couple of decades of thinking about and writing about watches and all that jazz. Uh you you really do have to sometimes actually you really have to sometimes often forego judgment um before you've actually had a chance until you've actually had a chance to handle the piece. Yeah. Yeah. No I I And I've and I've changed my mind dramatically more than once. |
| Unknown | I mean we talked about this the other day too, which is that this is something new for them and so the R and D cost for this is all upfront. Right. Uh and the way this case is made and then the movement, which is titanium, uh that's expensive. Like you can't just throw titanium into a CNC machine that's typically making steel or gold components and hope that it comes outright. Right. Uh titanium is also super flammable when it gets hot. Uh it's like magnesium in that way. Uh and if it ignites, you basically can't I mean you can put it out, but it's extremely difficult. Uh and so like I'm sure there were costs associated with this and I'm I would guess that those are built into the price of this watch and that hopefully if Omega does uh more things like this in the future, we'll get a sort of version that's maybe more approachable |
| Unknown | . Yeah. It's very, very interesting technology. Right now, it's clearly intended not as a widely distributed commercial s commercial piece but more as a sort of talking point and a a technology demonstrator. So I think that we and yes, it is a production model, it's gonna be made, it's gonna be sold. There's a price attack. It's not a limited edition. No, it's not it's not a concept watch. Right. |
| Unknown | Um so we'll see where they go with it. Yeah. I'm gl honestly I'm like even if I'm not personally gonna spend forty eight thousand six hundred US dollars on uh on a titani all titanium C master, like I'm gl |
| Unknown | ad they're making it. It's kind of cool. Yeah, and people react to these sort of things different ways. You know, there are people who have a lot of emotional they buy watches from watch companies because they have a very strong emotional commitment to the identity that the company has projected. And if the company does something that seems out of character, it feels a bit like a personal betrayal. So I get the strength of feeling that people have about this. You know, I really do. Yeah. Um and it was a daring move for Omega to make on a number of different levels. So yeah, like I said, we'll see where it goes. I personally do not generate nuclear rage over this watch, but uh good to know. You know. Sin |
| Unknown | ce we sit very close to one another, I'm glad to hear that. Um all right, let's move on to two other materials: steel and gold. Uh our very own, Mr. Joe Thompson, uh, wrote a story this week looking at the shortage of steel watches and how that has impacted the market for gold watches. I think it's a pretty familiar story to most people that you know, if you want to go buy a steel royal oak, a steel nautilus, a steel role sports watch, good luck. Like you're you're unless you're a great customer with an AD you've been buying from for a long time and you get lucky, you're probably not getting one of those watches. So Joe dug in to what that's done for gold watches and he's t he talked to some analysts. And uh Jack, you want to give us the the TLDR uh version of that |
| Unknown | ? Well interestingly enough, it looks like people are actually willing to buy gold and gold and steel models instead of steel models if the steel models are not available. There's been a noticeable increase in the sale of both um two tone and pure gold models partly goosed uh so say the retailers who were interviewed by the uh analysts who gave us information for the story by the unavail uh uh by the unavailability of some steel models. So uh yeah, it's whether whether or not the restriction in availability of steel models is calculated on the part of Rolex is anybody's guess, Rolex does not comment, so uh you know, in the absence of information everyone's an expert as Joe has said more than once. Yeah. We know for sure that uh Mr. Stern at Paddock Philippe uh does not want to flood the market with every single stainless steel nautilus that the market can support because he feels that's not appropriate for the identity of the company. Um you know, which I also get. So in that case, uh the shortage is not a manufactured shortage necessarily. It is manufactured in the sense that there's a much greater demand than there used to be, and the company is restricting itself from meeting the demand as fully as it possibly could, uh, simply because it doesn't want to be thought of as a single watch company. Yeah. So no. Very interesting story. And again, uh, you know, this was a uh a week for very strong feelings on Hidinky. Uh people have very f strong feelings about wearing two watches. They had very strong feelings about w one of them being a smartwatch. They had very strong feelings about the peop people continue to have very strong feelings about steel and gold |
| Unknown | . headlight on for me is that you hear all the time, right, that the the gold watches are higher mar margin for the watchmakers, right? If you look at the price of a you know steel date just versus a gold date just, you're talking the difference between a six thousand dollar watch and a thirty thousand dollar watch, right? |
| Unknown | So you get the way, if any anybody who wants to can look at the um you know the spot prices for gold versus prices for uh steel alloys and for sure it's a you know it's it's a higher mar |
| Unknown | gin product. Yeah, it's much higher margin product. So you you hear that all the time and people speculate about whether, you know, steel watches not being available actually encourages customers to buy gold instead. And I I feel like my instinct was always kind of like no, like, if you if you're in the market for a five or six thousand dollar steel sport watch, like how is somebody gonna upsell you to a thirty thousand dollar gold dress watch or to a two-tone watch at twelve or fifteen thousand dollars. But turns out they are. Like it turns out that' |
| Unknown | s a re that's a real thing that I just didn't expect. I mean do you think it's that much of a jump though in terms of price if you're already thinking about buying a ten thousand I think it's like ninety five hundred something around there. Just shy of ten thousand. Yeah, so going from there to a two-tone model is I guess that's true. Not that much of a jump relative to going through. So you're right. I guess that's not that bad. Two tone makes more sense. Now you start going to full gold. Of course, you're you're talking about a doubling, tripling, quadrupling of the price, but um, you know going, to two-tone models is not a huge, huge jump. That makes sense. So yeah, I mean it seems it it's I mean it's definitely happening. Yeah, yeah. Um that people are migrating slightly up market. I was actually really surprised by one of the comments in Joe's story was from someone who said, uh, I feel very I'm paraphrasing a little bit, but he's he basically said, I feel extremely upset that I can't buy one of the classy uh timeless steel models from any of these companies and I have to buy a uh tacky uh one of their tacky gold watches instead and I thought to myself I don't I've heard Calatrava's called a lot of things, but I don't think they've ever been called tacky relative to I mean when the Nautilus was first introduced, it was kind of the other way around. Yeah. I feel the same way |
| Unknown | about like a day date. Like it's really hard for me to think of like a 36 millimeter like champagne on gold day date as a tacky watch, but I guess to each their own. Yeah. Uh so let's let's go to one more story uh from this week. I know it's it's a watch that we both personally kind of were were into and were waiting for some samples to show up in the office, which was the new uh long jean master collection moon phase. Yep. Uh which is a sub-three thousand dollar watch with an optional diamond dial, which I gotta admit I'm kinda into |
| Unknown | . Something weird ha something weird can happen to a person's taste when a person is around a particular product for long enough.. True The simply well done sort of stops piquing your interest as much and you start to look for increasingly niche and in some cases outright perverse ways of deriving pleasure uh from you know these objects of interest. I don't know. I don't know whether it's perversity necessarily that one of the watches I would very much like to own is a thirty six millimeter yellow gold day date. I don't know if it's perversity that we both at this point, after years and years and years of looking at watches, add infinitum and sometimes add nauseum, both kind of find diamond dial markers appealing on a certain level |
| Unknown | ? Yeah. I mean like I've got my phone out here. Like this is a handsome watch. We'll link it up in the in the show notes here, but like this is for tw I think it's twenty eight uh twenty eight fifty. Let's look at the at the uh app here. Yeah, it's uh 2750. For 2750, you get a 40 millimeter steel long a steel bracelet with a date and a moon phase center seconds black lacquer dial and diamond indexes |
| Unknown | . You know what it is? It makes me feel like a that watch if if I wore it, I think it would make me feel like a corrupt mid-level bureaucrat, but in a good way. Exactly. I agree |
| Unknown | . Right? We could be our own corrupt bureaucracy, Jack, with our diamond dial uh moon face watches I mean to be to be fair uh the metal that sets the stones is actually larger than the stones themselves. I think much of the shine would be from polished steel settings, but like who cares? It's a diamond di |
| Unknown | al watch for under three grand. It's cool. Yeah, that that just turns the uh corrupt uh mid level bureaucrat uh setting up to eleven. Yeah. I'm into it. And like I actually am too. I mean I'm being a little bit ironic and I hope Lon Jeans doesn't take offense because I think it's a really I think it's an entertaining |
| Unknown | watch. I agree. And I mean there there are versions without diamonds as well. Uh and those those versions are even less expensive. Those are uh twenty three fifty is what they start at. You can get a couple different dial colors, Arabic numerals, Roman numerals, whatever, bracelet strap. But uh I think this is long doing what they do best and what they've done really well for a long time, which is make relatively classic, compelling watches at good prices that don't they're classic but they don't look faux vintage. They're not like part of this like Faux Tina trend. They're just classic in their design. They're not they're not pretend |
| Unknown | ing to be something, they just are that thing. I also always kind of feel like there just aren't enough nicely designed affordable moon phase mechanical watches around |
| Unknown | . That's true. I mean if you think about it, like what are kind of the entry points for good moon phases? I mean I think of the JLC master moon, but that's almost triple, maybe it is triple at this point the price of the case. Yeah, I have to check the long gene. It's the like six and a half to eight and a half range. So like it's it's definitely more than double the price of this watch. Yep. I mean I guess Frederic Constant makes one, but it's a little bit more. Frederic Constant. Uh yeah, I'm not sure who else. But uh yeah, you know, it was a nice it was a thing that showed up in my inbox unexpectedly, and uh yeah, I was happy with it. |
| Unknown | The moon face complication is maybe there's a s there's definitely a story in here. Uh it's sort of an interesting lens to look at in terms of how they get mechanically more sophisticated as you kind of go up market. So you know you go from standard fifty nine tooth moon phase disks that are out by a full day after about uh it's around two years I think. And then as you go further go further and further up market. You see moon phases that are accurate to you know, with one one day's error within more you know, in more than a century. Yeah. And which is which is kind of becoming the standard I think has l has now long since become the standard for uh um entry level moon phases. But there's a big jump there, you know? Yeah, there's a huge jump. And then you get into the crazy stuff. I love the complication. It seems to be a niche interest, but you know, real I mean relative to the number of people |
| Unknown | who are interested in chronographs, for instance. Do it during a full moon, we'll get it'll things will |
| Unknown | get weird. As usual. Yeah, and those of you who uh find no romance in uh the skies above us,. Um you know, you know you'll know which episode to skip. All right. So pretty good week all in all. Yeah, it was a very interesting week. We are uh getting to the end of the summer, obviously. Um we're recording this uh segment right before Labor Day weekend. Yep. Uh the vacant surloger is winding down or has wound down. Uh I'm not sure what the official end date was this year, but typically September becomes an extremely busy month in the watch wor Yeah. The watchmakers all get back to their benches. Yes. And the journalists all start getting on airplanes again. Often it's when stuff that was launched at the trade shows in the spring starts to hit uh stores. So uh yeah, it's and it's also when we start hearing rumors of uh you know things yet to come. So there's there's a lot to look at, uh there's a lot to see, there's a lot to experience, there's a lot to look forward to and uh we're gonna try to bring it all to you on uh on the site and on the pod |
| Unknown | . Yeah I was about to say yeah busy season's about to start but I realized that that busy season is the next 11 months. Right. The busy season is until next August. Yeah, awesome. Thanks for joining us, Jack. And uh talk to you soon. Yep. On my recent trip to LA, I finally got to sit down with somebody who I've been sort of internet friends with for a long time, but had never actually gotten to sit and have a conversation with. So if you like baseball, if you like cameras, if you like watches, if you like travel, all the above, maybe even none of the above, uh, I think you're really gonna enjoy this. So without further ado, here's my conversation with photographer P Hey man, it's really good to uh meet you face to face for the first time. Thanks, good to meet you too. I mean, good old Instagram and Twitter and everything. You kind of get to know somebody through it all. But yeah. This is one of those friends on the internet uh situations. Absolutely. And I always like to say it's like I like to take digital relationships and make them analog. That's that's a good way to do it. And I think that's that's what we did. Yeah. Yeah. And then we're making more digital product out of it, right? Exactly. You know. And then ultimately make more analog product as well. Yeah. Yeah. I think we both we both brought film cameras, right? We did. All right. We're we're gonna have to talk about that. But uh yeah it's funny because you've you've been in sort of my orbit through uh through the Leica world, but also through the watch world because you're in Manhattan Beach and our friends with Matt Jacobson, right? Mr. Matt Jacobson. You've got a connector of uh all humans, right there. He is. He's he's he's an amazing, he's kind of that that sphere for sure. Is is he a part of your sort of like watch and photography stories at at all or is he mostly just a just a friend? Uh no I um he he he's definitely um dovetails into both sides of that for me um you know as as a mentor of a collect as a collector. Yeah. But also um just an amazing connection of of both style and um education. I mean he just like he knows so much about everything that he collects. Yeah. It's just it's inspiring to kind of just hear him talk about a piece or why he didn't like a piece. Um, you know, and and that that is over into my world in photography, um, as much as he spends um time and money into collecting uh special lenses and and bodies, I'm also going, Oh, you know, how would I use that particular body or or that lens in in my work as a photographer? And so it's interesting just to hear his perspective on that. Yeah. Sounds like that. Sounds like Matt. Yeah. Yeah. So so you sit at kind of the intersection of the worlds of of photography, of travel, style, of watches, of all these things. How did you kind of end up there? I it's uh I I do a lot of workshops now and in the beginning people asked me that question and I and I one of the things I say is my blueprint isn't gonna be your blueprint because sometimes I have um people who are amateur photographers or semi-pros that wanna you know elevate their game or I have you know the high end like a collector who just wants to take better photos. But the question is well how how did you get to this point? And I didn't take that normal road of you know become a photography assistant and go to school for photography and and find it in that way. Um and that's where my journey began. I wanna be a college I want to be a baseball player. Um I went to to school for for baseball, college baseball. What position? I was a short stop. Middle infield. And it was during the the mid nineties when let's just say uh people were getting bigger and stronger um during that era. And so a lot of my teammates and and during that that time period, the um the the d gap hitting middle infielder wasn't exactly it high on the list. So I I I read the room early in my sophomore year and I stepped away from that and uh went to work in um and actually started to study theater. I completely left um the athletic world and um found a passion in in telling stories on stage, and I started to just find that that muscle. And through that kind of growth, I moved to Hollywood later and uh tried my hand at acting, which I loved and I met so many amazing people and I did that for about 10 years. But then I was there was this nine thing for me as as far as having to um look for others approval to my work and I'd always shot photography on the side and I had friends who were editorial and fashion photographers who were saying Pete you have a really great eye you shouldn't really look at doing that more and I'm saying you say that to everybody. You know it's like that nice like oh no, you you take great photos. Yeah. It's the classic thing. The classic thing. So I went ahead and tried my hand at it. And sure enough, started picking up clients. And because of those connections I had made in the entertainment industry and just everybody who who was a uh PA at the time was now you know an assistant to and then they were moving up in in the ranks and they were in the position to to hire somebody and I was getting hired because they knew me as a person and and you know lik,ed my work and those relationships then were turning the jobs. So I started to uh get work as a photographer. And through that um explosion of social media and and Instagram in the what was that the two thousand ten era? I was just a working photographer at that time. But then because of social media, it elevated my my work. Yeah. Um, I saw it as an opportunity to reach a larger audience quickly. Yeah. I mean you were pretty early on the Instagram bandwagon. Yeah, I was I was within the first million um users. That's crazy. Yeah. So uh and at the time I really thought it was just a way to put cool filters on. You know it's like a hipstomatic kind of thing. I was like, oh cool idea. Oh Hudson. Hudson. Nineteen seventy seven. Oh man. Yeah. Not at all. But it it was a way that I was able to uh start to reach strangers with my work. And I saw it as a great opportunity. But those same professional photographers at the time were looking at me going like, oh Pete, you know, Instagram, really social you know, you're gonna you're just saturating your your images and you're throwing them all around line, people are gonna steal 'em and making fun of it. Like, oh, you're gonna use Hudson on the lo-fi, what would and those same guys, you know, five years later we going're, Hey, my agent is telling me I need to get some more followers. How do you go about doing that, Pete? And I was like, Okay, come school soon. It's a steeper hill to climb and it's a lot harder to to to build that audience. Um so it was it was really an interesting time. It also from a curation standpoint allowed me to um tet try new things, uh reach out and find new people all around the world. And when I started working in the travel industry on photography, I was able to now have connections to two people around the world who I we had followed each other for a while. I agreed with how they saw the world through their iPhone as they were just taking photos and putting weird filters on them, but all of a sudden their composition was interesting. I was taking me out of my comfort zone. So it was no longer me just having to go to galleries or reading photo books to to grow myself. It was me seeing this this you know this woman who's an art director or um taking photos of her coffee in Paris uh you know in the morning as I'm taking a photo of a sunset at night in Manhattan Beach at the same time. It was all instant at the time. So it's like, oh cool, this is all happening at at in real time. But I'm also learning new things about photography and people telling stories through mobile phones. Um and then 'cause also people don't realize back then you had to take the photo in the Instagram app. Like you you couldn't bring the photos in. Yeah, right. Like there was there was none of this like, oh you're shooting with your five D or your M10 and then running it through Lightroom and like you know, 2 minut0es later you finally maybe have something you can transfer over. But like this was pull your iPhone out, snap something, throw a filter on it, put it on the internet. That was it. That was it. And there was not even yet, it had to be thrown a filter on it. There was no even adjusting you know brightness and exposure and and highlights or anything. It was like, hey, throw one of our amazing filters on there or normal, which was just the way it was, you know, is my favorite filter. Good old fashioned normal. Good old fashioned normal. And and then go with it. And but that again for me was where we grew. Um the Instagram community and photographers on the Instagram community grew together and it it was a really special time. It it's become in you know huge and and a business obviously and of itself, but there was a special community that grew out of that that early time on Instagram that I'm I I look at it and it helped me in my career, it helped me in my life and, um it was a really special moment in time. But through that, I uh created um uh I started some amazing connections with Leica and um yeah, I was shooting an M at the time and then um I transferred all my s systems over into Leica systems and it just worked and created a uh again another community, a fired up amazing community of photographers and then the intersection of the watch community and Leica obviously there's a it it it's it's quite a it's quite a community that there's a lot of overlap there. Yeah there's a lot overlap. Yeah it's funny that you know the Leica community specifically and the photography community more generally are very similar to the watch community in that way, where any platform you can find connections on, people are so hungry for those connections. So it's you know, whether it's a photographer in Italy who you've never actually met, but you are DMing back and forth with and you follow their work, or it's a watch collector in Tokyo and you're doing the same thing, those relationships seem to be built easier, I think, than than in some other maybe subcommunities. Yeah. No, th it's those subcommunities that I think are are where um future growth will continue to happen and and innovation through kind of um what's old is new again. Yeah. You know, and and I see that in film right now incredibly, which I'm super excited about. Um I'm I've been working with Kodak quite a bit and you know, there's a whole lot of resurgence in just the e excitement of film and that is matching up the 14 year old 15 year old kid who's using dad or granddad's film camera for the first time and you know the 70-year-old 75 year old guy digging out his his old um, you know, Hassle blad and going like, I never thought I'd use this again. Yeah. And he's coming out on a photo walk with us and going like, wow, you know, and talking, this is the way it used to be. Right. Um, but in the middle, you have those same photographers that I talked about before who kind of poo-pooed Instagram who were going like, I'm never shooting film again. You guys are crazy. What do you you how much you're spending on developing? Like I I did it. I did film and um to those guys I always say, you know what, the maze isn't. You know, it's like the Westworld kind of thing. Like, hey, you know what, if if this isn't your thing, that's cool. I I'm I'm not gonna like try to convince you why I'm shooting film. Right. Um it it's it's a feeling that I get out of that. And it's the same kind of thing. I I think as we'll talk about today with watch is it's like not not everybody gets it and that's okay. Yeah. Um yeah but the people that do, there is they're your they're your people. Yeah. You know you get it. Yeah. And it's amazing how how fine and again it's it's parallel to the watch world and the car world and and other basically anything where there's uh a lot of information and a lot of variety and people want to hone in on one thing you you get these sub-subcommunities so like there's this whole world of like guys in LA who shoot Leikas with Kodak film. And like I can think of five or six guys off the top of my head who like most of the people listening to this show would probably know or have at least encountered who fall under that umbrella. But that's that's such a tiny sliver of the photography world and then such a tiny, tiny sliver of the Instagram world. And yet everybody seems to like find each other somehow. Yeah. Yeah. And what used to be, you know, hashtags or whatever. That's where you'd go. But now you you go to any hashtag and it's gonna be yeah inundated with everything. Um n nothing probably that you were actually looking for. Yeah. Uh but so now it becomes more and more about connection. So, you know, the the the mutual friends, the referrals, those types of things and and again h how we found each other and that same same kind of thing, you're like, Oh, you know, that so and so's following the same kind of people and and then that's that's when those those connections are made. And I think that's again an important part of of of my future. I love that connection. I love that analog collect connection that we make from a digital relationship. And that's something that's uh you know, it it excites me to to kinda see how that plays out in the future between collectors as well as just artists. Yeah. No, I to totally agree. One one thing I wanna touch on is, you know, we started talking about Instagram and then you mentioned film. And these things kind of I think to some people might seem in opposition to one another. So how how have you gone from like, okay, Instagram shooting with your iPhone, putting filters on it, to now you're shooting almost exclusively film, right? Right. Yeah. No, it's it's really interesting. It's really an interesting hybrid approach that I that I talk about now. And and I love to say these days your mobile phones are so good. Yeah. That you can capture digital images that are usable. I mean, you see them, put them up, make billboards out of them, right? So it's like how can you not um say that that's gonna be an usable image that you can get out of your phone? But for the real image that I want to capture, it's it's a film image and it's a film image with a rangefinder for me because I feel like there's a connection to the image I'm taking um that that I can't replicate that feeling as much on film. You know, I know Sony creates these amazing sensors and you know autofocus is insane and you could literally, you know, shoot 10, 12 frames a second and pick which one's great, and you're gonna get a good image out of it. But for me, the one image that I get, you know, shooting wide open with my Sumelux, um, it might be a little blurry, it might be a little off, but I have a connection to that image that's really there because I was so involved in in and shooting it and making it and um on a real level and even processing it you know and printing it and that to me um is connecting to a story that you're telling yeah so yeah, not to not to like you said, not to poo-poo what anybody else is doing, you know, every everybody can find their own path, but you know, do you find that having that connection and and especially in your travel work, not having the you know, to call it a crutch maybe implies some value judgment, but I'm gonna call it a crutch anyway. To not have that crutch of of looking back down at the back of your camera or to be tethered to a monitor and always be, you know, kind of looking back and forth. Do you find that that improves kind of your experience as well as the final quality of the work? That like when you're off shooting in Iceland or even here in California, like if you're shooting a sunset, you're looking at the sunset, you're not spending half the time and looking at the sunset and half the time looking at your camera. Yeah. No, I mean that's that's absolutely you know, y there's a lot of faith that's involved as well. Yeah. Uh I I've been burned a few times. I mean talking about Matt, I was I actually uh met up with him in Cannes and was shooting and it was a roll of actar one hundred and I was so excited and we had spent half day together and I was I was shooting out and beach it was beautiful out there and I was so excited about m this role that I'd shot and I got to uh thirty six and thirty seven and thirty and it what? Thirty eight and it had torn on me. Uh and you know, and I opened it up. But it was a nightmare, you know, but I I wasn't on an assignment, but it was that there were images that I was excited about that I had shot. And then it was also going like, all right, just one of those good universal, you know, universe reminders to you that hey, you know, slow down. You know, this is this is uh it was about the experience, about being there. It's okay. It's okay. So um like you said though, at least you weren't on assignment. I wasn't assignment, yeah. Exactly which is where um on assignment I I do shoot a hybrid approach on those and that's something and especially if you know clients are involved and need to see the images day of and that type of thing. Um yeah, there's there's obviously things there. But I do love when I'm given the opportunity to to shoot an assignment on on film because there's a there's a connection to I feel like the images are better. There's also a story about the making which which is important, which Instagram allows you to do as well these days, to tell the behind the scenes of whatever it is you do, people are intrigued by that. And the Instagram stories, I think it's given an opportunity to where you're able to tell another layer to your story, behind the scenes of your podcast, behind the scenes of whatever it is you do. Yeah. So yeah, I I 100% agree. And and I think that that connection and the like slowing down approach is, you know, one of the reasons why watches, analog cameras, cars speak to so many people is you know, I'm the first one to say like I I don't have the screen time feature turned on on my phone because like I don't want to know how much time I'm spending on my phone. Like it's a lot. It's probably too much, but I enjoy it. So fine. But there are times where I want to step away from it. And a mechanical watch, a mechanical camera, like those are a really nice kind of like a like a pressure valve. Like it lets me still be creative and engaged without having something kind of like glowing right in my face. Well even in the travel side that I I feel it's talking about slowing me down, that's something I've always enjoyed about a mechanical watch, to be able to look down, look at the time that has been, you know, wound and told or automatic and told. And in this moment in time, you look down at your watch, you see what date it is, or you just look at the time. And there's something very spiritual about being grounding, about looking out, okay, what time is it today? Yeah. You know, what day is this today? And just being like pinpointing that second and being like, okay, like this was just a moment I just had and it's kind of a grounding thing to do that. That I feel in the digital side we just get so lost in you know zeros and ones and binary codes and everything that it it's important for us to and I think that's why a lot of people are looking back at you know mechanical uh just even manual life. You know, being able to like right facilitate things again for themselves. Yeah. Um, which is an interesting kind of um process I think we're all going through. Yeah. Not waiting for that like that next push notification or that next vibration of your phone or your watch or whatever to tell you what to do, but to actually like do what you want to do. Yeah. I mean I I found the Apple Watch for me was was actually adding adding so much anxiety to my life. Oh yeah. Yeah yeah um you know I I still wear sometimes if I you know wanna do sleep patterns and those kind of things but I know there's some rings now that I think I'm looking at that you can do the same kind of thing. But um but so the Apple Watch was just like there was too many notifications happening for me to where I thought like, oh I'm gonna use my phone less 'cause I'm gonna have it. But no, I ended up like so much more. What's happening now? Who who's this? You know Yeah. I found like when I I use it for exercise and like I have turned all the notifications off. Like when I have my Apple Watch on, I'm not getting anything. Like it's it's literally a a very high powered fitness tracker that if I if I need to pull up a map or I need to make a phone call I can, but I don't want things coming to me. It's more about having that choice to to connect out as opposed to connecting in. Yeah. No, that that that's definitely important. It's one of those out of office things that um it it's interesting when you when you trying to get h when you're trying to hold of somebody and you can't get hold of them and you're like, where are they? Like I tried every I how can they not respond to their their email or text? They're not picking up their phone. Yeah, you know, y Instagram DM, nothing. You know, w what where are they that I cannot get a hold of them? And then you go like, all right, they're in a good space right now. Actually. They're in a really good spot. Yeah. There's a there's a publicist who I work with a lot, who I know very well, who have known for almost ten years I guess now. And uh he's so good at communicating, like one one of the best I've ever met. And one time I sent him a note at must have been like eight o'clock at night. I didn't hear from him by the time I went to bed and I was legitimately concerned. I was I was worried. Turned out he was on a flight on a vacation. Yeah. He was fine. But like I started to panic. I was like, is he is he okay? He doesn't do that. Like he never does this. This is the longest I've ever gone without getting a reply. Like, is everything okay? I hope nobody's sick. Like, you know. Uh, but turned out everything was fine. Yeah. And I needed to just like calm down and like temper expectations a little bit. Yeah. You you were pointing a minute ago as you were talking about kind of looking down at a watch. You were you were pointing at your submariner that you're wearing can you tell me a little bit about this watch? Well, um this one uh is one of those special watches for me, and it's not the watch that my dad had in Vietnam, but it's a um you know, I I got as close as I could to to the the same model that he had. Yeah. Um that he sold when he came back from Vietnam um for seventy-five dollars in nineteen sixty nine. Oh no. Yeah. And and uh as he talked about, it was his uh wild bill days. You know, it was like it was like came back and kind of one of those things, I'm happy to be alive. I made it through um and you know needed some cash or w whatever it was at the time. But it was always one of those things that he had talked about through time as as one of those one the fish that got away, you know, and as you build your family and everything and it d doesn't become a priority. Um but it always was for me as I thought about it. Um so um recently through through Matt I met a guy named Bob Marin who um deals and watches and um good friend of Matt and he I told him about the watch and it was a five five one three and um nineteen sixty three and so I just I I gave a couple parameters that I was in financially as well as the the the um the type that I wanted to look like or that I um the condition that I wanted it in. And he found it and when I got it it was whatanna I take w one of those spiritual experiences. It was just like um, you know, my dad's passed away, but it's definitely one of those things for me that is a legacy thing that I'm looking forward to passing down to my son. Yeah. And it's a connection to um you know, a time and a and a period and one of those things that just um it it feels like a a a story complete for me. And it's also, as you know, a a fun uh litmus test, walk it around to see, you know, who knows what and everything when someone goes, hey, you know, it's a mariner, you know, and then all of a sudden the conversation starts. And the same things happen with Leikas all the time as I travel around the world. That's another community that ends up based on, you know, what you have on your wrist. It's all of a sudden doors open up because someone in an elevator is like, hey, you know, submariner. You know, like and all of a sudden conversation starts. When I had one back in the door, I have two. And and then all of a sudden a new connection's made. Um and that's such an interesting unique perspective um for community and and and networking in in that respect. Um but uh yeah, that was uh that was just a kind of one of those crazy things that I wasn't necessarily looking at um becoming a collector and and I'm still don't call myself that, but my first my first you're still in that phase, but I'm not a collector. I am noting. No. But yeah, about 15 years ago I bought a Baumarcier capeland and um I sp spent more money than I thought I w ever would for a watch and it was worth more than my car as I was driving around. I know, I know that one very well, yeah. I was kind of looking at my you know, as I'm driving around going, like, this is worth more than my car. I'm driving between auditions and like, you know, going like but I loved the I loved it because I, you know, invested in it. And I even had my wedding ring kind of match the watch. Um at the time. It was like it was a reverse. You know, it was like I was like when we were just getting married, it was like, okay, I'm wearing this watch and I was having my wedding ring being made and I was like, Can I have it kind of look, you know, matching this? And she said, yeah. So she did. And so it was like kind of a reverse, reverse move there. Yeah. Uh but I so and as those years went by, that's again not necessarily a highly clectible watch, but it's important to me because it's a it was a time in my life and it was also um I look back at it and I remember a lot of good memories with it. And um so you know, maybe that's an again another one legacy wise that you start to think about with kids and and even just um people that you mentor and and now I'm kind of heading to that phase in my forties that I'm having these young photographers looking up to me and I'm talking about you, know, they're wanting to build families or kind of grow a career and now all of a sudden I'm being put in this interesting position to mentor them. So it's it's interesting and it's it's fun to to talk um about those types of things. Do you remember what it was originally that made you want to invest in a watch like that? Like it's it's it's always interesting to hear how people take that initial leap because it's much easier later on once you're already in it to kind of justify it. Yeah. But that first time, like why what made you say like, okay, I want to spend more money than I spent on my car. Yeah. On a watch. Yeah. Uh for me it was really something that uh i I I needed at the time especially I needed kind of I it was an identity that that I wanted to have that wasn't a tattoo you know but that I could be on me every day. Yeah. That that I just kind of felt it felt like it was gonna be become part of me and and part of my daily routine. We talked a little bit about routines and travel and those types of things and and I think watches uh become that. Be become that morning routine that you, you know, find what outfit you're gonna wear, what watch goes with that outfit, or um, you know, what it is you're doing this evening. Does that does that go from your day outfit to your evening outfit? You know, and you start to think about those. And so for me it was again, it was a about a telling a story and identity wise and it became a conversation starter within my peer group. You know, I was in my twenties at the time and uh what what's that? You know, you got you bought a nice watch. You know, like what do you what are you doing? You know, you don't, you know, you're a struggling actor. What are you doing buying a nice watch? Um so and those are the kind of things that are again fun conversation starters, but I think it really became about telling a story of personal identity. Nice. And and since then, in addition to that and the the fifty five thirteen, what other watches have have been added to your your not collection? We won't call it a collection yet. Um well uh let's see. Yeah, I d d you know, that uh Bertucci, which I told you about, which was that for me was a funny story because I was going to Australia to uh work on assignment. I was gonna be there for three weeks uh with Surfrider and we were gonna go up and down the east coast and and shooting and when I was thinking about what watch to take on that and that's something I always talk about even on travel assignments there's a few things that I that I look at going into the country that I'm gonna go and I do some research there. One of them is I I come up with playlists at Spotify and I'll like I like put together certain playlists that that either put me in the mood for where I'm going. Um you know there's obviously there's if you've ever shot photography for a number of years, you all of a sudden become obsessed with camera bags. Yep. Oh yeah. And that's a whole story in a few years I feel like we could do a whole episode on on camera bags. Camera bags. Uh so you you know, you kinda check check those off the list and then it came down to watch and I didn't necessarily want to take any nicer watches because um I didn't we were gonna be spending some time kind of a away from um civilization and on the coast up there in uh Five Mile Rock and a few other places. And so I went to a local SERP shop and I was like, well, you know, what are the nicer watches you have? And they they weren't create they weren't expensive, but they were they looked cool and they had good bands and I was like all right and I tried it on and also it just fit right. So I I wore it and I loved it and it connected me to that trip so much that when I wear it these days it just it's it's a great reminder of of a trip that I had that I loved that I enjoyed. And um again it's it's that personal connection that you then have to to what's down there. Um oh my grandfather's um which I'd sent you a photo of. Yeah. Um it was a Gruen. Gruen. That's what yeah. So my grandfather's watch um was a Gruen and he was g it was given to him in the Seabees. He was in World War Two and um they're not you know expensive watches now you can find them on eBay but again the personal connection to even the engraving on the back was you know United States CB's Philippines, Okinawa. That's so cool. Um you know, USN and his name Halvor R. Halverson. You know, and so and and it's a cool looking watch, that art deco look to it. It's small. So when I wear that one out, people you know, whoa, what is that where you know and then I can go to yeah you know my grandfather was you know World War II and he was in the CBs and they're like oh what are the CBs you know it's all you know to always start this new um conversation about the c construction workers that were also, you know, fighting at the same time as they were building airfields. And on on his return, the Navy gave him this watch. And so that was a that's a really fun, interesting one. And so there's personal connections to those watches are are are a fun one. And then I told you about the fun Daniel Wellington watch. Yeah, yeah. I wanted to talk about that. So you know, again, going back to this this Instagram thing, you know, Daniel Wellington is a brand basically built on Instagram. It's like one of the most like ubiquitous watch brands around now. And it's all built on Instagram. Yeah. So it was it what I t I told you the story. I think it was twenty fourteen or early 2014, I received an email from somebody who's like a Swedish watch designer um wants to send you a watch. And it was like maybe at the time I had 50,000 followers or something. And it was it the influencer market hadn't grown. There wasn't much to that yet. And I said, Oh, why? Oh, we just want you to we just want you to send you a watch so you can see it and and and hopefully you like it. And it's it's for you. Okay. So it's Daniel Wellington. So sure enough, um two weeks later a a watch shows up and this is this is great great for radio. Yeah, yeah, it's great sound effects. Velcro Zelp in the post. Um, this watch shows up, which um I forget the name of some fun grace selling or something like that. Yeah. And but it was fun looking. Yeah. It was fun looking, it was classic, and it was clean, and it was cheaply made, but it didn't matter because it was um again, when I look back at it in time, I I I wore it a few times and people actually, whoa, what what what watch is that? Yeah. It it intrigued people. Yeah. And then uh years later, as they just blew, as I started seeing them all over Instagram, they were sending these watches everywhere. And people were getting free watches. So they were putting them up online. And it was an amazing marketing campaign. It was incredible. And the growth of them was just, you know, exponential. And now all of a sudden, you know, Abbott Kenny, they got brick and mortar, they got them all over the world. I think I even saw Missurick. And it was incredible. So now I look back at that watch and again talking about a story of a moment in time. It's a very particular moment in time. Very particular moment in time and an inter interesting Instagram history. Yeah. Um with I I think maybe Pura Vita and Daniel Wellington and a few others that really capitalized early on on um low um low cost production and an ability to reach a huge audience and make a product that was attainable for a lot of people in mass. Yeah. Um and make an amazing business model out of it. Yeah. I'm uh I may have mentioned this on the podcast before. I've definitely mentioned it in stories before, but uh I'm sort of persona non grata with uh with Daniel Wellington. Uh I am not their favorite human being. Uh when when I was at Bloomberg, uh I wrote a story that ended up leading the lifestyle section of business week one week. And you know, for people not in the in the journalism world, they may not realize like when you write a story, you're not writing the headline, you're not doing the layout for the most part. Like especially the big magazine like that. There's editors whose whole jobs are just to write headlines for stories. Like that's somebody's job. So I wrote this story. I interviewed the founder whole nine yards, contacted a bunch of people who were were influencers who had been approached by them, all this stuff. And uh the story comes out in the magazine, and the headline that my editor chose to put on the story was how to make $250 million selling cheap Chinese watches. Oh uh and I got some very angry phone calls from uh the publicist and the team over there. But uh you know, I I I don't think they liked the headline, but the the story was basically about what we just talked about, about how it it was an incredible business model that was really ahead of its time. Yeah. Uh and in five years they went from nothing to I guess this was twenty fifteen when this story came out. Yeah. So it's it's it's a little dated at this point. But in five years they went from nothing to two hundred and fifty million dollars in annual sales, which is nothing to nothing to scoff at. Pretty incredible. Pretty incredible. But also a fun. And again, like I said, a a moment at time. And you know, I don't know how many of these are floating around out there. You know, obviously you could recreate them if you needed to, but for me it was uh interesting story connected to um Instagram and the the influencer world and all of that at the time. Yeah. That's cool. Pr pretty pretty funny. Pretty funny. You also ended up getting to work on a project with Beaumont Mercier, right? Yes. Yeah, I did. Um through GQ. Uh a few years ago I was propelled into this uh GQ style world, which is a pretty neat uh pretty neat uh collective that they that they created. And through that there's some uh partnerships that come up that they'll they'll pair off um whether it's designers or photographers or um fashion bloggers whoever with with with certain um brands and so with that particular um collaboration they met with me on um because of my travel work and uh it was the Clifton Club Indian uh edition which is a beautiful watch and it really for me told the story, as I kinda talked about earlier, was this growth from i if I'm out traveling, whether it's in, you know, Scotland, London, um Paris, that you're out during the day kind of doing your work and then you're able to transfer into the evening without going back to the hotel and you know digging through your safe to find your next watch for that night or what whatever. It's it's like what can transfer between the two where you can kinda live that you know day commuter day or or wherever it is on the street, but then transfer into a nice evening where and that watch for me was a was a it was it was a cool collaboration to talk on and and work on. And it was something that will also give me an opportunity to talk about that automatic kind of heartbeat that I feel not to get too ethereal with everything we have with with life with watches again with the mechanical of a rangefinder, with being able to be connected through to time and there's a connection to you know your movement that is telling time that's allowing time to continue to move and the same thing with uh with me and my range finders and being able to kind of capture time and there's a lot of moving parts happening at once that you're connected to. Yeah. Um so that's something that's a it's a fun fun thing to expound on a bit for that article that we Yeah, one other thing I wanted to make sure we got to talk about is you know related to Instagram is people see, okay, you're a photographer, you have a pretty big following on Instagram, um, and you you're shooting a lot of travel, which to be honest, is is a sexy thing to shoot. It looks really cool and fun and appealing. Um but I think what people don't realize is is kind of the the grind that it takes to be a professional photographer these days? You know, with everybody having cameras, the the competition is is even more fierce than it's ever been. Right. And kind of like what does it mean for you to be a professional photographer? Like, what is your your day day to look like? What is your sort of like your main actual business? Uh what what does that look like for you? Well it's interesting. Two of those um the the grind you talk about, I I often joke when I'm on when I'm on location, when I'm shooting, I'll I'll sometimes post a photo uh at dinner by myself with my camera across from me, saying, you know, dinner with my date tonight. Yeah. And that happens quite a bit when you're when you're on the road or late night and you just have to grab a dinner at the hotel bar or whatever. And you know, so I'll there w I I name my camera. So it's like you know can I had my camera over there and I'd say, There's Quincy, you know, having having dinner with Quincy tonight. Uh but they don't understand and they see all the sexy stuff. You see great photos, you see you're traveling around beautiful places, but they don't see three AM, you know, plugging everything in, backing up hard drives, uh charging this, charging that with, you know very sketchy uh conversion that you're not sure it's oh yeah you're gonna live see the next day. Um in in in different countries different things are are uh you know wort different worries are happening, but you know they, see the amazing photo. So Instagram's always for me, you know, you're telling that amazing photo and that that's the one you're gonna share. Instagram stories you're kinda getting a little more gritty behind the scenes of what's happening. And then Facebook's is where you're you know showing your kids and and kind of the the um the the fun family stuff along the way. But as far as the grind of the the professional photographer these days everyone is a photographer these days with the mobile phone. And to some people that that scares them and they feel there's this assault on photography. I come at it from a different perspective. I'm excited that everyone's a photographer. I think that that is a great opportunity to not only elevate storytelling, because hey, guess what? Everyone's taking photos of every event that's happening. Well, how are you gonna tell that story differently than them? lazy and just take the same photos everyone else is taking because now um thirty people took that same photo with a variety of amazing cameras that you know will be able to be delivered somewhere. But if I'm on assignment to tell that story, well what's the story? Is it me taking a step back and taking a photo of everybody taking the photo? Or is it me going, you know, circling around the back and you know, again shooting from behind them, everyone shooting the sunset? Maybe the photo is me turning around and taking a photo of everyone taking the sunset. These um there's also talk about shooting on film, I there's a a less arresting feeling for that when you're shooting people these days on film because uh they're a little more relaxed. They don't feel like this is gonna end up on the internet because you're taking a photo with digital or with your iPhone and what what are you gonna do with that? With film, there I I I you know I still gotta process it, oh it's so cool. You know, and there's all of a sudden they're a lot more relaxed through that or I bust out my Mamma RZ67 and you know and there's a whole it that in and of itself kind of releases people because they're like, wow, looks like just it's amazing. It's like an old movie camera and and again gives them an opportunity to relax. So there's different ways I think that we can continue to um tell stories through photography and hopefully elevate that. Um my everyday these days, um I'm now working on creating more workshops with Leica. Yeah. Which has been That's a that's a big part of what you do, right? Is is teaching and and work Yeah, and and that's something that I've found so much joy in. I love teaching and again from the fifteen year old kid picking up his thirty f his dad's thirty five millimeter you know cannon for the first time or the you know the grown man who's been traveling and just wants to take better photos of his family when they go on vacation or whatever and and wants to learn workflow. What's my workflow? Um those are I love to be able to let people in on on what's made my job easier shooting. And I learned things from those, you know, just by having that open dialogue. And it's really cool again to be in that teaching mode and yet being a student at the same time. Um and so yeah, I've been working with Leica quite a bit um on these workshops as well as um when they have new um systems come out. I've been able to lucky enough to test a lot of them early on and and lenses and kind of kick kick the tires on them and spend some time out and headquarters. Which actually was just out there with Ohm. Oh nice. Yeah, we were we were out in in Wetzlar. He's a friend of the show. Yeah, he's a very good friend. I'm seeing him next week after. Okay. And and really cool guy. And um again, uh there's a digital guy that I've been friends with for a long time that um of all places, even as much time as I've spent in Northern California, uh we got to hang out in in Vetzlar in Germany. Uh uh Chris and Michelle and and um and ohm and we had some good good conversations about Leica and you know, watches and analog and th the future of of digital and the future of social media and those guys, you know, to being able to kind of crunch crunch all that. It's really, really fun. Yeah. That's the uh Kieran Carnania Fest. Yes, Kieran. She manages to bring together the best groups of people. Talk about this sphere. And and Matt and I actually met because of Leica as well. Uh originally back in twenty twenty fourteen. Despite being neighbors. Despite being neighbors. And that was where we were both at the Leica store here in LA um for an opening. Um I forget what the opening was at the time. And um Stefan Kyle, who works with with like uh out of Germany, was there and he you got it, you know, Matt lives in Manhattan Beach too. And so we we met and sure enough it was like live a few blocks from each other and loved Leica and you know, all all that aligned and uh we became fast friends and that again there is something that the the tie that binds and and makes um those relationships amazing. And from that point on, um, I was able to grow with Leica and Kieran's obviously been a huge part of the community side of Leica. And but I've been able to meet people like Keegan. Yeah. Um as well as uh Howie Kendrick who are you know huge watch guys but also huge Leica guys. And those all those relationships baseball guy baseball obviously all those relationships happen because of this uh really cool intersection between watches leica you know storytelling and social media yeah. So um making those I guess I'll go full circle, making those digital relationships analog. Yeah. Such a cool such a cool future that I think we we can continue to grow on. That's awesome. Well I'm gonna I'm gonna pick your brand while we have you here. Yeah. You know, uh if if you had to give the people listening one photography tip, you know, I know it's hard, it's it's a very generic question, but uh if you if you had to give people one bit of advice, something you'd tell them if they maybe came on one of your workshops. What what would that be? Well, um I'll I'll do a couple quick hits. Okay. One one is uh clean your lens. It's so funny. Even it it's I mean it's such a remedial like you talk about basic stuff, something we forget all the time. Um my my images are always blurry. You know, you kinda take the lens and you give it a little quick little wipe and try that one out. And sure enough, people it sometimes forget to clean the lens. Um I think rule of thirds is something that people should should look into, learn about and and once you do, it can really change your storytelling. Um learning about the rule of thirds and and how that adds an extra dimension in into um in into taking a photo. Um less is more. I think some people uh allow uh try to tell too much in one in one image uh rather than um learning about simplicity and then um try to emulate people that you you love their images. Try to recreate those. And what you'll end up doing is finding your own style through that. And I think that's something that everybody wants to do. They want to, you know, find their own style, but how do you do that? It's it's it's a you know it's it's a journey. It's not gonna happen overnight. And if you start to find those photographers um or painters that you love, you try to emulate their style with what you're shooting and sure enough um you'll start to to to create that and that's that's fun to see is years down the road getting emails or texts from people hey check out this image look at it you know I we we worked together in Boston and um you know you taught me this and that and look look look what I'm doing now. And that's such a cool opportunity to see the growth in someone, not only from an artistic standpoint, but for them to feel so good about what they're creating. And I think that's something that as a teacher, as a photographer, is um is inspiring. That's great. Yeah. And what's what's coming down the line for you? What do you what do you other than more workshops, what do you have coming next? Yeah. Um I've been finishing and as is the me the amount of travel that I've done over the last you know five, six years especially, thirty, thirty plus countries and and being able to make some make make a way to some pretty cool places. Um I have a lot of images from those that weren't necessarily client images there for me. And so I'm starting to put together fine art um opportunity for not only online sales but some local galleries to start to do that. And then I've been working on a film book that I've been shooting over for a little over ten years in the South Bay, um in in where I live down in Manhattan Beach, Redonda Beach, Hermosa Beach, and just telling the story of surf surf culture. But I've been doing it on film, which is a long, arduous process. Um but it's also very redeeming because as I look back those images, a lot of them that I haven't put on Instagram or haven't seen the light of day, it's really fun to curate that and put that together. So I'm um put together a book of those, which is which is a neat a neat again, analog way to feel about um telling a telling a story about a community that I've got. Any idea when that uh when that'll be out. Uh probably late um late twenty nineteen, early twenty twenty. Okay. So so soonish. Soonish. Okay. Yeah. Great. Let you guys know when that when that drops. Yeah, please do. We'll uh we'll let everybody know and we'll obviously link up your your website and your Instagram in the show notes so people can check you out. And uh yeah, we'll have to have you back soon. I can't believe uh we we reached the end of this. That was fun. Yeah, I think we could talk for another uh two, three hours. About camera bags. Yeah. That's what we'll do. We'll do this the sequel will be the camera back episode. Exactly, exactly. I I think we'll lose like, you know, probably ninety five percent of our listeners. But those five percent they'll love it. Yeah. The maze is for them. Yeah. Exactly. The maze that I think we've got our episode title here. The maze is for them. There we go. Perfect. Awesome. Thanks so much, man. Steven, thank you. To close things out, we've got our resident military history expert, Cole Pennington, with a story about a watch you probably haven't heard of and its role in a secret mission during World War II |
| Unknown | . When I was doing the research for one of the first articles I published on Hodenki, the one about a series of longines from the golden age of aviation. I came across an interesting pair of watches. One was an Eberhard, and the other was a Lindbergh longines. I asked about the watches and found out that they had a pretty colofulur past. They were commissioned by Benito Mussolini, the fascist leader of Italy during World War II, for a very specific mission. When it comes to anything involving the Axis powers in World War II, a nuanced approach is of course necessary. The Axis powers were responsible for some of the darkest events humanity has ever witnessed, no doubt. But from a horological perspective, I felt like these were watches worth looking into. So I dug into the history and found a fascinating story. This is it. In early 1942, Benito Mussolini had a problem on his hands. He suspected the British and Americans had cracked the secret codes the Axis used to plan attacks over the radio, and this could cost him the entire war. He immediately seized all radio communications until he could get a new cipher But it would take two months. Or he could send them by airplane, but it would be incredibly risky. It was wartime. No one was a stranger to risk. And just weeks before a Luftwaffe Condor was shot down making the trip from Germany to Japan. But delivering the codes by air was really the only way. In order to do this, they would need to fly from Rome to Tokyo undetected. They took an SM75 out of the The seats were removed and replaced with light metal frames with stretched canvas over them. There was a whole lot of enemy territory between Italy and Japan, and it just wasn't possible to land and refuel. With the modifications, the SM seventy five could now travel 7,000 miles without refueling. Once the plane was taken care of, the next step was securing navigation equipment that would allow them to navigate in complete radio silence. Rule number one, never give away your position. In order to do that, the crew would need to go dark over Russia and China. Five men were picked for the mission. One of them was Publio Magini. He was considered one of Italy's best pilots. He'd even developed his own aerial navigation system that relied only on the stars. This would allow them to stay off the radio and hopefully remain undetected. And this is where the watches come in. The Italian Air Force, along with Magini, ordered a purpose built timepiece from Eberhard. It was a twenty four hour rotropont conograph. It was unique in that the dial also rotated up to fifteen degrees. This along with a Langine's Lindbergh Hour angle watch, would allow Majini to navigate. Ah, and a little luck, of course. It would certainly take some of that. Since the plane was so heavy from all of that extra fuel, it had to fly at a low altitude, about twenty five hundred feet. When it did cross the front into Russia, Majini said that he recalled actually seeing anti aircraft rounds flying through the shafts of light coming up from the searchlights that had locked onto the pl One round in the wrong place would end the mission rather abruptly. When you're flying, lights on the ground are usually a good thing. It means there might be an airfield nearby in case an emergency landing has to be performed. But in this case, the crew is ecstatic to see nothing but darkness in front of them First they crossed the Aotai Mountains, then the Gobi Desert, then finally they landed at Pao Tao Chen in Japanese held China. They had just spent twenty- hooneurs in the air, and they used the Eberhard, the Langines, and the stars to find their way. Somehow they pulled it off, but there was one last leg. The Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service was instructed to shoot down any plane without Japanese insignias on the tail. The secret Italian mission came two weeks after America's famous Doolittle Raid, when the U.S. had bombed a number of military targets on Japanese soil, so there was plenty of tension in the skies. Even an Italian plane ran the risk of getting shot down. So they actually painted the SM seventy five with Japanese insignias and received an escort from Pao Tao Chen to Tokyo. The plane took off at 7 AM the morning after it landed. By 7 PM that day they were in Tokyo, where an Italian delegation was waiting to receive the codes. A German military attache transmitted a message to Hermann Gorig that the mission had been a success. He used the new codes to transmit that message. Ultimately, a watch is just a tool built to get a job done. These watches didn't have a conscience to decide what side they were serving on. They were built for a very specific purpose, an incredibly complex mission, mind you, and they serve that purpose. Some might argue admirably. So that's the story. And uh this this one had actually been sitting in my uh Google Docs for a long time. So I didn't really know what to do with it. Obviously it was a little bit of a sensitive subject, but I find these tool watches absolutely fascinating. Uh when I came across that watch, yeah, it looked like any old Eberhardt. And yeah, there's a huge Eberhard community out there, although it needs a little bit more uh it's it's not as popular of a watch as Rolex or Mega, whatever. I thought part of the job is really just finding the the kind of cool stories that no one talks about. And uh and this is certainly one of them. And I hope you think so too |
| Unknown | . This week's episode was recorded at the Network Studios in Los Angeles, California, and at Hodinky HQ in New York City. It was produced and edited by Grayson Korhonen. Please remember to subscribe and rate the show. It really does make a difference for us. Thanks, and we'll see you next week. |