In this episode, Greg Baugues, a programmer, developer evangelist at Twilio, and writer, talks with us about his most recent passion, photography. He shares how he utilizes it to keep himself present during the important moments of his life, or to bring someone else happiness and visibility. For any aspiring photographers out there, Greg shares some good equipment tips and camera recommendations. We also discuss the importance of openly talking about mental health in any profession, and the long term positive effects it can inspire in the lives of others.
Matt Stauffer:
Hey, and welcome to Things Worth Learning. I'm your host, Matt Stauffer. This is a show where a curious computer programmer, that's me, interviews fascinating people about their passions. And my guest today is my dear and old friend, Greg Baugues, who's served on the Developer Evangelism team at Twilio over the past eight years. Greg, would you mind telling the audience a little bit about yourself, whether it's your personal or your professional life?
Greg Baugues:
Sure. Thanks so much for having me here, super excited to do this. Yeah, so my name's Greg. I have worked on Twilio's developer... We call it the Developer Network, but other folks might know it as developer relations, Developer Evangelism team, for the last eight years. My wife, two daughters, dog, and I live in Brooklyn. And I'm a programmer by trade, and I've been coding most of my life, and then moved into developer relations, which involves speaking, and writing, and communicating, and storytelling, I think is the best way to think about it. And then that's it.
Matt Stauffer:
You're also an artist and a writer. We'll talk about photography more I know. So if anybody doesn't know, go check out the show notes, and we'll have a link to Greg's website there. Greg has made the most compelling pitch for Chicago I've ever read in my entire life, and then a little bit later moved to New York, and made the most compelling pitch for New York I've ever read in my entire life. So incredible writer, amazing artist. And I hope you don't mind this, but can I share about how we met originally?
Greg Baugues:
Yeah, please.
Matt Stauffer:
Okay. So one of the things that Greg did in the past, I think you may have been at Twilio at this point, was go tour around all the major tech conferences speaking about mental health. And it was the first time I'd ever in my life heard a talk about mental health, and it gave me the space, and many, many, many other people, to go examine my own depression and anxiety in that, and to actually talk to a therapist about it and get medication. And when I first heard him speak in New York at Laracon years, and years, and years ago, I just introduced myself afterwards, and we've been friends since.
Matt Stauffer:
But that impact that Greg has made, I think can't be understated in terms of just... I know that's not all you do today. So you're not just the mental health guy, but the amount of people who have referenced those talks as a huge part in their healing journey, especially as I now talk about mental health, a lot of people are like, "Oh man, Greg Baugues, I heard him at PyCon." Or, "I heard him at whatever else." So I just want everybody to hear the amazing impact this man, who we're going to hear talk about something completely unrelated has had on the lives of so many programmers. So thank you, Greg.
Greg Baugues:
I really appreciate that. Thanks for saying that. So just for context for folks, I'm a developer, I have Bipolar and ADHD. If you all want to hear the long version of that story, you can Google me.
Matt Stauffer:
We'll put it in the show notes.
Greg Baugues:
Yeah. I started meds for both those things, probably... What was it? 2008. And life just sort of steadily got better. And I don't know, I'm just naturally curious about stuff. And then when something works for me, I just want to tell other people. And the Chicago post you referenced, and the New York post. Or even just with mental health, I was like, "Oh my God, I was suffering." And then once I could get past the denial, I started taking a pill every morning, and my quality of life improved by 10 X, and I could keep commitments and stuff.
Greg Baugues:
So I do appreciate you saying that, because I spoke about that stuff for seven, eight years. I mean, it's part of the thing that led me into Developer Evangelism, and I've kind of done less of it over the last year. Well one, I got burned out on it, but two there's so many more people talking about it today than there were eight years ago, that it feels a little bit less necessary for me to be out there doing it. But that said, it is really great to hear and be reminded that it actually helped some folks. And I very much appreciate you saying that.
Matt Stauffer:
Yeah. And just one last note about that, among the people who have told me how impactful it has been, many of them are people who are now speaking about mental health.
Greg Baugues:
That's so cool. Awesome. Thank you.
Matt Stauffer:
Yeah, you did a lot. All right, so switching on to the actual normal topics of the conversation, the first question you know that I always ask is, do you have any sort of life mantra, or phrase, or idea that you try to live your life by?
Greg Baugues:
Yeah, so I think over the last few years it has been, progress over perfection.
Matt Stauffer:
Love it.
Greg Baugues:
This is sort of tied in, I think to some of the stuff I learned through the mental health journey. I am probably like a lot of folks prone to perfectionism, prone to being afraid of what other people will think about a thing that I make, and getting paralyzed by the fear of criticism. I have a tendency to get overwhelmed by the enormity of a task. And what I've just learned works well for me, is just do a little bit. Just move the ball a little bit. And I'm 42 now, and I think there's a funny thing with age, and that when you're young, like when I was in my twenties, I wasn't old enough to have witnessed the effects of compounding. And then when you get to your thirties or forties, you start noticing areas of your life where you moved a little bit in a direction, either good or bad each week, and then where you ended up after a decade.
Greg Baugues:
And so in fitness it might be, I just gained a pound or two a year. I was like, "Oh, surprise, you're 20 pounds heavier than you were in your thirties." And never felt like a big thing, but here you are. Or career wise on a positive, is giving talks. And you're like, "Oh, go speak at one conference." And all of a sudden after a few years you've spoken at 10 or 20 conferences, and something matters. So between work stuff, or photography we'll talk about here in a second, I think just being able to say, "What can I do today? Is there something I can ship today that will just move the ball just a little bit forward? Is there something I can do in the next 15 minutes? Can I write an imperfect email and press send in 10 minutes instead of trying to write the perfect email that I'll never send." And just making progress over perfection has really helped me. Shipping something imperfect, is so much better than never shipping something that's perfect.
Matt Stauffer:
I love that. Yesterday one of my friends Michael, shared a TikTok, one who his favorite fitness people. And he's like "The number one problem that people run into, is that they're trying to lose 10 kilograms. And what they need to do is lose one kilogram, and then lose another kilogram." And it was kind of the similar ideas, we get so overwhelmed and anxious about the need to do things perfectly. And I mean, it's very relevant as programmers because most programmers have to learn how to ship incrementally. But as you mentioned, it's relevant in so many other places in our lives. So thank you for that. I love that.
Greg Baugues:
So I gained 15 pounds during the pandemic. I talk about gaining 20 pounds over the course of a decade, but really for me it was gained 15 pounds over the course of a year and a half. And so I've been trying to lose it, and it's discouraging because you see it's not steady progress. I just weigh myself every morning after I get out of the shower, and one day it's up a little bit, down a little bit. I have this app, and the scale is tied to it. But what's encouraging is when you zoom out from the day-to-day, and you see the week or the month view, the line actually does take a downward trend.
Greg Baugues:
And then what I think I have to find, is that the range of the fluctuations shifts down if you're making progress. So on any given day, you're like, "Oh, it's bummer. My weights up." I was like, "Yeah, but weight going up today is still the weights lower than it was three months ago." Taking the longer view is something that unfortunately becomes more and more apparent as you get older, but it's also when you have less and less time to actually affect it.
Matt Stauffer:
That's good though. I mean, we're so not naturally equipped to take a long view of anything. It's this moment, I'm feeling this thing, I'm experiencing this thing. And I feel that's one of the reasons why I really enjoy therapy, and even weight loss programs and structures, or fitness routines versus my own stuff. Is because when it's just me by myself trying to do these pushups, or it's just me feeling my feelings in this moment, versus somebody else whose job it is to help me kind of look at that long perspective. And maybe they can look at the long perspective because they're not in it every day. And just having another person whose job it is to help me see the forest for the trees is very helpful.
Greg Baugues:
Yeah it's huge, therapy is so helpful.
Matt Stauffer:
Oh my God, we could do a whole podcast.
Greg Baugues:
We absolutely could. Yeah, maybe we'll do a round two of things Things Worth Learning.
Matt Stauffer:
At least half of the people here during the interview, I'm like, "So there's three more things that we clearly need to bring you back on for."
Greg Baugues:
Yeah, it's Things, plural, Worth Learning, not Thing Worth Learning.
Matt Stauffer:
There you go, I like that. Today, we're going to do one. So because we know there is one, can you tell me what is the one thing we're actually talking about today?
Greg Baugues:
We're going to talk about photography.
Matt Stauffer:
I love it. So I have so many thoughts about this, but I want to give the tiniest, tiniest intro. That your photography, just like so many other things you've done, has inspired me in a way that I think a lot of professional photographers don't, because there seems so inaccessible, and yours is so beautiful, but also normal in a way. And I hope that's not offensive at all. Like street photographers are not in a studio doing stuff with the models, they're doing stuff that we all see, but they have a different eye for it. So I was really curious to start with the question of just, what did you getting into this in the first place look like?
Greg Baugues:
Oh man, I love that question, because there's a story I love to tell. So looking back, I've always enjoyed taking pictures, but it was always on my phone, or on a point and shoot. And so really it's just been the last year that I would identify as a photographer. But I started up an Instagram account four years ago, and the reason I started it was just I had heard some comments somewhere, someone said, "People talk a lot of shit about, does the world really need another photo sharing app? But Instagram actually when it first came out was really important, because it made your photos better." And I was like, "Oh, maybe Instagram will make my photos better." So I started just taking pictures, and playing with the filters, and just basically sliding the knobs all the way one side, and then all the way to the other side, and see where in the middle do I think it looks better, and doing that for each one.
Greg Baugues:
And I did that for a year or so. And we could probably come back to this, but I have a blog, I blog for 10 years, I blog a lot for work, I enjoy writing. Writing takes so much time. Also coding, I love coding, but you need these long chunks of uninterrupted time to really get into the zone, and to ship something that's worthwhile takes hours of effort. And whether it's prose, or whether it's code. And I have kids now, and it's just hard to find that time.
Greg Baugues:
I think I was really drawn to sort of Instagram in part, because a photograph is a piece of content that you can create and ship in five minutes. And so I would just walk around the city, I live in New York, which is a playground for street photography. And so while I was waiting for the train, or while I was just walking down Fifth Avenue on my way to the office, or walking around Brooklyn. And I would just take a picture, and then while I was on the train, or it was wherever I could just edit it, ship it, and be done. And for what it's worth my Instagram is @greggyb, but I keep it private. And so I made a decision early on, I'm not trying to chase numbers here, I'm not playing the hashtag game. This is just where I can ship stuff, and then friends who I know, I'll accept their request. But I just want to practice shipping stuff.
Greg Baugues:
So I did this for, I don't know, a year or so. And then a very good friend, Doug McKenzie, who's a world class magician, and a photographer. He reached out to me one day. He's like, "Hey, I've got something for you. I think you might like it." And so we met up, and he gave me his old Canon 5D Mark II. This is a camera that it's probably about 13, 14 years old now, but I've still out in the world met professional photographers who use this as their event photography. It is an amazing camera. It's a DSLR, it had a 24-70 lens on it. And he had upgraded to a mirrorless camera, and this had been sitting on his shelf for a while, and he's like, "I know you don't identify as a photographer, but you are a photographer. You're doing really good work. And I think you'd enjoy learning how this works."
Greg Baugues:
So he gave it to me the day before I took my family to Disney World. I took the thing to Disney World, I have four pictures that I took from a week there, that actually worked. Because I had no idea how to work it, and I was so pissed off hauling around this thing. And none of the shots came out, I was like, "I should've just take them on my phone." But over time I learned how it worked, and I carried that camera with me every day for a year.
Matt Stauffer:
Would you mind if I pause you real quick, will you remember where you are?
Greg Baugues:
Yeah please.
Matt Stauffer:
For anybody who doesn't know, a DSLR, if you think of a traditional, professional photographer, and SLR means the ones where you can take the big, chunky lens off. So you can tell that the body's going to be bigger. DSLR means a digital version of that. So we're not talking about a little point and shoot, we're talking about a big old honker hanging around your neck, walking around Disney, right?
Greg Baugues:
Yeah. And specifically, the SLR stands for I think a single lens reflex. So like on the DSLR, there's a mirror inside, and there's this mechanism that causes the... If you think the light comes in through the lens, and then it uses a mirror to reflect the image up into the view finder. And then when you press the shutter button, there's a mechanism that flips the mirror up. So the light from the lens comes right back into the sensor. And so what that means is two things, one it's heavy, and two it's loud, because you hear the flipping. So if you're ever watching a sports event, and you hear that noise where it's like, "DRRRRRRRR" right as the guy's swinging, or whatever. That's the sound of mirrors flapping. And so the newer version, which most of the industry's moving to, is a mirrorless, which basically just means a digital camera.
Greg Baugues:
But what that means then is the light's coming in, and instead of a mirror reflecting the light up into the view finder, they have an EVF, or electric view finder. And it's basically just taking whatever is hitting the sensor, and then putting it on a screen. And the big reason why we're able to have mirrorless cameras these days with electronic view finders, is because we've gotten so good at producing high quality compact displays because of advances in telephones, or in iPhones, or whatever. So they're basically taking those displays, making them super small so that you can just stick your eye up to it and see what's coming in. So mirrorless' are quieter and lighter than DSLR's.
Matt Stauffer:
Yeah, and usually smaller too, because they don't have the same depth that they have to have the lens go in, or whatever.
Greg Baugues:
Yes, absolutely.
Matt Stauffer:
So sorry, back to your story. I just knew not everyone knew what that meant.
Greg Baugues:
No, that's great, and I very much appreciate. It's weird to think this was about three years ago, and I definitely now suffer from the curse of knowledge, right? Yes, so just stop me please anytime here, because it is really important to me, so much of this stuff seemed so intimidating to me three years ago.
Greg Baugues:
So anyway, I carried that camera around. I probably shot 30,000 frames with it within the first few months, I started learning how to use Lightroom, and then eventually I was put onto this camera called a Fuji X100F, and it is also a mirrorless camera. It has internals, the sensor, and the processor, and everything, are every bit as good as a professional camera. But instead of having an interchangeable lens on, it has a fixed 35 millimeter equivalent lens on it. And I say equivalent there, because the way the sensor works out and stuff, it's not actually a 35 millimeter lens. We don't have to go into all the details there, but it looks like an old school, 35 millimeter film camera. And they designed it so it has the same aesthetics.
Matt Stauffer:
It feels very nostalgic when you're holding it.
Greg Baugues:
It does, and I bought this camera for 600 bucks off Craigslist, and it was amazing because it was probably a third the size of the Canon 5D Mark II. And there were a few different things with it that were just incredible. One is, it was super easy to carry around. So these days I've since upgraded to the newer version, which is the X100V, but I literally don't leave the house without it. I got this strap from Peak Design I love, and if I walk the dog I have it. I don't always take a picture, but it's always there. The other thing about it is when you point a big, long lens as somebody, they know. And they're kind of like, "Are you the paparazzi? Are you selling these images? What are you doing?"
Greg Baugues:
This camera's so cute, and unassuming, and people underestimate it somewhat. I've heard it described before as using a camera like that is sometimes like bringing a cannon to a knife fight. And I'd say bringing the Fuji X100V, feels like a knife for a knife fight. You can get in close, you can kind of bring in and out. And then it's also silent. So I never want to take a picture of someone who doesn't want me to take their picture, and I absolutely never want to share a picture of someone who doesn't want me to share their picture. But that said, it is also nice to be at a friend's party or something, and be unobtrusive. And to know that they will appreciate having great moments of that captured, but for people to have their guards down while you're walking around taking pictures.
Matt Stauffer:
And you're not changing the experience of the party by being paparazzi around the whole thing. Yeah, totally.
Greg Baugues:
We could talk more about this, but in most cases I would prefer to be invisible, and I would certainly prefer the camera to be invisible. And the Fuji X100V feels as close to invisible as you can kind of get.
Matt Stauffer:
Yeah. You got me hooked because... I don't even remember the first moment, but you had shown me some of your work. And I also carried around, not a 5D Mark II, but a Canon 20D, or something like that. And it was another one of those big, old, chunky ones. I would love the outcome of the photos I would get from my kids from that, but the experience of carrying it around when I'm out with the family, or something like that's very much what... I wasn't doing street photography, but even family photography, it just feels like I was not present when I'm sitting here, get my focal lens right, and everything. It just was this ridiculous situation. And you shared that with me, and I got the same strap as you and everything. I was like, "I'm going to do it how he does it."
Matt Stauffer:
And it's so funny because you are able to notice pictures I've taken, you're like "That picture was with the Fuji, wasn't it?" And I was like, "Yeah." Because no matter how good these iPhone lenses get, and they're pretty freaking good right now, there's just things that you can do that are a little bit different. And rather than me trying to name them, if someone else were in your situation, and you got a couple kids, you want to just take pictures, or you live in a beautiful city. Can you give me the pitch for what makes my pictures that I took with that noticeable to you, relative to my pictures I took with my iPhone? What are we getting from this experience?
Greg Baugues:
I would actually say, let's back up from there. Let's not even talk about the pictures. Let's talk about the fact I have ADD.
Matt Stauffer:
Me too.
Greg Baugues:
All right, yeah. And so I think the most accurate description of my camera that I share with folks, is I tell people it's my fidget toy. My daughter has this little fidget spinner, and for me if you're geeky... There's no video with this, there's just audio?
Matt Stauffer:
There is.
Greg Baugues:
Oh there is. Oh okay, so folks will see this. Oh okay, cool.
Matt Stauffer:
Some people are listening, some people are watching. So for those of you who are only listening, go check out the YouTube.
Greg Baugues:
Yeah, okay. All right. So here's the camera that I carry with me all the time. For the folks just listening, let's see if you can hear this.
Matt Stauffer:
Yeah, you can hear it.
Greg Baugues:
Okay. You can hear it, all right. And then listen to this. All right.
Matt Stauffer:
That's a fidget spinner.
Greg Baugues:
So it's got three beautiful mechanical knobs on it. This screen pops out in the back and articulates.
Matt Stauffer:
Yes, I love that.
Greg Baugues:
And one aha moment for me when I first started carrying the 5D, so I had it on me and our daughter at the time was five. And we got invited to a friend's birthday party at a TaeKwonDo studio, and the TaeKwonDo studio, most martial arts studios in New York, they have to optimize for mat space. So there's a very little strip of no mat up front, most of the space is mat. And the kids had their socks off, they're all playing on the mats. All the adults were crowded in the tight little cramped space in this loud room, trying to make small talk, eating pizza, and drinking wine, or whatever. I like people, but I prefer one-on-one. With ADD I think one of the best explanations of it is, the opposite of happiness is not sadness, but boredom.
Greg Baugues:
I just like doing stuff. So I'm kind of looking around, and I just kind of slipped my shoes off, and I pulled out my camera, and I went on the mat, and I just spent the next two hours just taking pictures of the kids. And it was great. The whole time is this challenge of, they're going down the slide, where can I sit to get a good shot of them going? Okay, what settings do I have to do to track a moving target? How do I deal with these fluorescent lights? And then the birthday cake came out, and I was like, "Oh man, how do I change a setting? We only have candlelight here." And, "Where can I put the camera to capture the moment of him blowing out the candles, but how do I do that without not pushing all the kids out of the way, and stuff."
Greg Baugues:
And then when it was over, the next day I sent the parents the pictures, and they were so grateful. The pictures are undeniably better than what you get... iPhones are great, absolutely great. And there are definitely situations and settings where it's absolutely sufficient, but in low light, or action shots, or whatnot, you can be more artistic oftentimes. They were just very, very thankful. And so what I've realized with carrying around an external camera, is it gives me something to do no matter where I am.
Greg Baugues:
I actually do a lot of photography for work. It's not part of my job, but would put on these events for developers, and I would organize the events. But then when people were working and stuff, I would just walk around and take pictures, because it just keeps me moving, and it gives me something to do. And then it gives me this unique gift that I can give people, that is a higher quality than what they've probably captured on their own. And they're probably not being super intentional about capturing photos in a lot of situations. So if nothing else, it just gives me something to do, and another skill to learn. And it's just this constant exercise and problem solving of... We can talk about exposure settings and stuff, but there are a number of different... Photography with an external camera, I don't want to call it a real camera.
Greg Baugues:
I'm not sure actually what the right phrase is. But with a dedicated camera let's say, is a constant exercise in managing trade offs, and juggling constraints, and working under tight deadlines, because you're going to miss the moment. I'm not as drawn to landscape photography, I want to capture a moment. I want to capture the split second of the kid blowing out the birthday candle. And that's the stuff that's interesting to me, because it just speaks to the ADD parts of my brain.
Matt Stauffer:
I had never thought about it. And it's so funny because you're saying that, and I'm looking at my fidget spinner here, it's not as loud as it, but let's see. Yeah, this one is loud. But yet it's the same spinners, just like you're talking about. But it's so interesting to think about it, not just as something that produces a particular outcome, but something that gives you a particular experience. And even when I thought you were going to talk about experience, I still thought it was going to be about the experience of your interaction with the subject, or something like that, versus how it affects you and your brain. It is really cool, and it does make me want to ask the question though of, do you feel like... Because I think a lot of people are really scared as parents, but also just as participants in life, of doing things that keep us from being in the moment. So the way you describe that almost made it sound you feel like you're more in the moment than less. Could you talk about that a little?
Greg Baugues:
Yeah, that's a great question. So I mean two thoughts on that. One, I do think it does keep me more in the moment. I think that just as I've gotten older, I just accept and learn more about how my brain works, and my brain just craves stimulation. I was never good at like sitting through cult lectures, or whatever. If I'm in an environment and my brain's not getting stimulation, it will find other things to do. And so the photography often gives me something to do, where to some extent I'm more in the moment than most people in the room. Because let's just say for instance, at a friend's birthday party or something, I'm looking at a mass of kids moving, and I'm trying to predict where they're going to be in 15 seconds. Because I want to figure out who's going to be laughing, and where are they going to be laughing? And I'm looking where's the light? So where do I need to stand so the lights behind me, but hitting their face?
Greg Baugues:
Now there's absolutely times when I've been in a room photographing, and then someone asked me a question I'm like, "I have no idea what anybody just said." So there's that. The other thing, I don't know this is everyone man, but like I said I'm 42, I'm firmly middle aged now, I just feel like my memory gets worse every year. And my screensaver is some of my favorite pictures I've taken. And I've got printouts that I've printed off all around my office and stuff. And it really has been useful for me to remember stuff, and prompt memories. And I'll see a picture, I'm like, "Oh yeah, I remember a lot more from there." But there is something just about preserving memories, that I think I only appreciate after a year or two has gone by when I've taken some of these pictures that I'm really thankful for.
Matt Stauffer:
So this is taking me a direction that I wasn't expecting to, but I was about to say, "Oh, and you probably take less pictures than we do with iPhones, because iPhone's a moment happened, and I have a hundred." I'm like, "No, you probably have a thousand after a moment."
Greg Baugues:
Yeah, I do.
Matt Stauffer:
So there's nothing about the number of them, but I wonder whether there's a process of curation after the fact that we don't normally do with our iPhones. Could you talk a little bit, and imagine maybe it's possible that some of this curation could be regardless of what we're shooting with. What does your curation process after the fact look like?
Greg Baugues:
That is such a great question, and I'm glad you asked. At some point I should write a blog post about this, but I think this is going to be personal to every photographer. I think one thing you'll find that anyone who has carried a dedicated camera struggles with, and professional photographers struggle with, is the editing cue guilt. And it's really easy to build up a backlog, and then to not clear it, and then not take more pictures because you don't want to add to the backlog. And I think that is something that discourages a lot of folks. And that is truthfully one of the great parts about an iPhone, is you shoot the picture, it's there, you can share it right then and there. And one of the kind of technical challenges I've been thinking a lot about lately, is how can I get pictures from my camera to the person that I want to give it to faster.
Greg Baugues:
All right, so let me talk a little bit about my... Thank you. So one just personal philosophy, I think it's the photographer's job to curate their images. So a personal pet peeve of mine is when someone gives me photos, and they give me 50 photos, and it's really just five scenes, but it's 10 pictures from each scene. I feel it's my responsibility not to waste people's time. Again, I have short attention span. I assume everybody else does, show me the best image that represents the scene, and then go to the next one. So that's my goal if I give someone a photo album. And a big portion of what is important to me about my photography, is again, I'm not trying to chase likes on Instagram. I kind of decided early on, I just know that's an empty, endless game. But what I really do enjoy is giving a Google photo album of 20 pictures to the parents of the kid who just had the birthday party.
Greg Baugues:
Or I just recently did headshots for people at work for the first time, and giving one awesome picture to somebody that they can use on their dating app, or their LinkedIn profile, or whatever has been meaningful. So I enjoy that. So how do I get there? End result is a Google photo album that has some selected images. I'm looking at my Lightroom right now. I have 103,000 photos in Lightroom from the time that Doug gave me the camera. Now, truthfully the real number of frames shot is probably five X that, I use Lightroom for my editing. I use Lightroom Creative Cloud Edition, it's just called Lightroom now. It has cloud storage, I use that because I like editing photos on my iPhone and my iPad in bed, and this sinks. But you do pay per terabyte.
Greg Baugues:
And I very quickly realized that if I didn't do a curation prior to hitting Lightroom, that I was going to just be paying for a lot of shitty photos that I never wanted to see again. So a friend who shoots a lot of events at Twilio, and this is another great part about this hobby for me, is I've had the opportunity through work events to learn from actual professionals. And my friend Jerry showed me one day, he had this app on his a MacBook called Photo Mechanic. So Photo Mechanic was built by photojournalists who do high volume photography, and needed to very quickly cull their images, and then send them off to an editor so they could publish them in the paper right away. So it rips from the SD card four or five times faster than Lightroom does. Lightroom is actually really slow at moving stuff over.
Greg Baugues:
And I do my first pass in Photo Mechanic. And basically what my first pass is, I'm just looking for photos that are in frame and in focus. And then I add to that. If I'm shooting people, which most of my shots that I like the most, are pictures of people. Just like with Greg's, if their eyes are closed, I don't want it. I want to see their eyes, I want to see their faces. So I'm just going through, I'm looking, I'm not saying this is good, or whatnot. I'm just saying, "Is this picture at all possibly usable?" So I mark that, typically I throw away 80% right off the gate. So then I start with what I call my ingested photos. That's everything that was ingested from the SD card.
Greg Baugues:
I copy the keepers to Lightroom, and then I import everything into Lightroom, and then I do my edits from there. And basically my process is I'll then go through, typically what you'll end up with is three or four shots from the same sequence. And I'm typically looking for the best one of those. And so I'll mark those as three stars. Then I'll go back through after I've done that pass, and I've got my one or two photos of each sequence, then I'll actually do the edits.
Greg Baugues:
Once the edit is done, I mark it as four stars, and I export that. Everything then goes to Google Photos. And then after time has passed, typically a month or more, just periodically I go back. And my favorite images with the benefit of time, I end up marking it as five stars. And those are the ones that go to the screensaver, or whatever, I might print one day, or something. So I say that to say in part, the ADD thing, figuring out the process, figuring out how I keep making progress, has been a huge challenge for me. And I use the stars to indicate where in the process it is, not the quality of the photo.
Matt Stauffer:
That's cool. And we can talk about aperture later, but the thing is there's so many tutorials on the internet to teach somebody about at aperture. I don't need you to teach us about that. Let's go to YouTube for that. I love this, I love hearing about how it impacts your life, what you do to kind of make it make sense for you. And I think that the majority of people listening to this who will be interested are not professional photographers, otherwise they'll be like, "Cool, that's fine."
Matt Stauffer:
So it's those of us who take photos with a desire to do a little bit more of what you're doing, whether it's capture this place around you a little bit more, capture your friends and family a little bit more. So in that direction, I know we don't have a ton of time left. I wanted to ask you, if you were to recommend somebody to move in the direction, from being I take pictures of my kids on my iPhone, afterwards I edit them, and I maybe bump up the contrast, or do a little bit curves editing or whatever, and then text it out to my family, or put it on Instagram. If they wanted to take a next step, what do you think the next step is for that person?
Greg Baugues:
Yeah, great question. I think the external camera's been great. There's a saying, the best camera is the one you have on you. And most folks use that to say, "Shoot with the iPhone." And I think there's a lot of value in that. I think another way you could interpret that, is the best camera you could buy is one that you'll actually carry with you every day. And so in that case, I can't really stop singing the praises of the Fuji X100 Series. There's also the Ricoh, I haven't owned this, but the one that always comes up in conversation is I think the Ricoh 3GH, or something like that. But if you look for Ricoh GH... Yeah, we can find it in the show notes. It's also small and compact.
Greg Baugues:
But I think any camera plus strap that just makes it easy for it to always be there. I carry my camera every day, I don't always take pictures with it, but it's always there. And then you just start tinkering with it, and playing with it. And I'll just say too for the developers out there, this hobby's been great for me in part that it has this really nice merge of mechanical stuff with the camera, but also there's a software component with Lightroom. And what does your storage process look like? What does your sharing process look like? And there's just kind of a fun little... It strikes a lot of the same stuff. While also being a piece of content that you can start and ship in five minutes.
Matt Stauffer:
That's cool. And one of the things I love about the Fuji is that it doesn't just look nostalgic, it feels very nostalgic in a really impressive way. I've got an old camera I got from, I think one of my grandfathers, or something. And it feels the same as those do, even those are 50 years old, or whatever. So there's something not just fidget spinnery, but also feeling you're connected to... For those who don't know, a lot of programmers take up woodworking and stuff. They're like, "I sit in the computer all day long. I'm going to do something real with my hands." And I'd love that you pointed this out, working with this particular camera feels very much real with my hands. Even though I know it's digital, it doesn't feel digital when I'm using it. Yeah, that's really cool.
Greg Baugues:
Agreed. When people stop me on the street, which happens fairly often to ask about this camera. They're like, "Oh, I haven't seen a camera like that in a long time." And I'm like, "Yeah, from the front, and from the top, it looks like it's a camera that your grandpa had in the eighties." But then I show them the screen in the back. And so the input mechanisms are very mechanical, but then you get all the benefit of software photography.
Matt Stauffer:
I love that. As always, there's 10,000 more things that I want to ask you about. And we're really short on time. So before I ask you my last question, is there any other kind of pieces of this topic that you really wanted people to kind of get a chance to hear about?
Greg Baugues:
Yeah. I mean the last bit that's just been interesting to me again, is a photograph seem to make good gifts, because most folks can buy anything they actually want on Amazon, and have it a day later. So it's hard to do that. But capturing a moment, or just even saying, "Hey, I see you." And then giving them that. Even though it's digitally, has been surprising how gratifying that's been. So I've started printing off stuff. And I got this Selphy printer from Canon, but it prints off four by sixes. So I can print my own, and then I'll buy really cheap $4 frames from Amazon, and just throw a four by six that I printed myself into a frame. This gift costs me five bucks, or whatever, and give it to people. And they've been really appreciative. Fuji also makes an Instax camera that prints off what we would typically just call Polaroids. And I'll give those to folks, and I've been surprised. And the image quality's not necessarily great.
Matt Stauffer:
Instax camera's not that great, but it's fun.
Greg Baugues:
It's fun, yeah. And people, I'll see them, they're like, "Oh, I still have that picture that you gave me." Yeah, that part's been really interesting, that if you develop the skill, you figure out how to do the process, and stuff. It is a actual unique gift that you can give people to kind of validate them in a way.
Matt Stauffer:
I love that. I don't know if you've seen these, but it reminds me, there's a few people who on Instagram, or TikTok, or whatever. They're sitting on a subway, usually you imagine it's New York, and they're showing a person. And then within the span of just a subway ride, draw the person, hand it to the person, and their face is always like, "Me, you did?" And it feels really similar to that. You're paying attention. I love the way that you said, "I see you." You're making them feel seen and understood. And if it's a good photo, it's not just a photo of them. It's photo of them laughing, or having a good time, or there's something that captures who they are. And so they feel even more seen as a result of not you just paying attention to them, but really like seeing who they are. That gave me goosebumps when you said that, I really love that idea.
Greg Baugues:
That's awesome. I appreciate it.
Matt Stauffer:
I don't want to bend, but we need to. So what insight or support, did you either receive or need when you were younger that you hope people will give to others?
Greg Baugues:
Insight or support. How many minutes do we have? How short do I need to keep this?
Matt Stauffer:
You know what? Take as long as you want. And I'll push my next meeting back because I want to hear it.
Greg Baugues:
Yeah, all right. So I think two things. So one, just this idea that there's a whole lot of different paths to an air quotes success, and yours may look different from other folks. And then more tactical on that. Something that's been really important to me in my career. And then with this photography thing too, is this idea of overlapping skill sets. So let's just talk about development. You want to make a name for yourself in the world of technology, one way to do that is become in the top 1% of computer programmers. That takes a ton of time, a ton of effort. You have to be pretty focused on the thing, for me with ADD that probably wasn't going to happen. But I became a good, or competent programmer, but then I also got good at public speaking. I also got good at writing, I also over the last few years have gotten good at photography.
Greg Baugues:
And so Developer Evangelism has been an incredible career for me, the way I typically put it is maybe I'm like 50th percentile developer. Maybe once upon a time I was, not anymore. And maybe I'm like 70th percentile public speaker, but nowhere near as good as a standup comedian, or a pastor, or something. But I'm better at public speaking than 95% of developers, and I'm better at developing than 99.9% of software developers. So I'm really good at giving talks to a developer conference, compared to the competition.
Greg Baugues:
And similar for photography, I've used my photography a lot at work. So as an example, I do these events, after we do events, we would typically send out a report internally. And we'd say, "Here's how many people came, and here's kind of the results and stuff." And so many of these reports come out, nobody reads them because they're boring, but you send the reports because you feel like you have to. I just started, "TLDR, 50 people at the thing. We did this, we did this, here's 20 pictures."
Matt Stauffer:
Yes, I love this.
Greg Baugues:
And all these pictures of developers laughing, and a developer wearing a shirt from our customer standing next to a picture of one of our people wearing a Twilio shirt. And these reports blew up, and our small team of two or three people got outsized recognition because the reports were good. So similarly my other hobby, which we haven't talked about is jiu jitsu. And I am like, "I'll never really be good at jiu jitsu, but I feel like I have a chance of being a good jiu jitsu photographer."
Greg Baugues:
And I think that can be my contribution to that community. And I say that as someone who I feel confident in my photography, but there are professional photographers whose work just completely eclipses mine. I will never be at that skill level, but there's not a lot of those folks doing jiu jitsu. And so I'd say that to just younger me, or anyone else in that spot, is you need to get good at stuff, you got to put in the hours, you got to develop a skill. But oftentimes you can create a much more interesting career for yourself. If you focus on what is the intersection of the things that you're really interested in, that makes you uniquely qualified to do this work.
Matt Stauffer:
I love that. And I mean, there's so many examples of my own life. I'll only name one, in part because it was a bit inspired by you. But I taught about empathy for a while, and I was the guy who taught about empathy in the engineering world. But outside of the engineering world, I was learning from the people who were actually studying that, who actually have degrees in that. And I've never compared to them, but I was able to contextualize something. So it's not even just the overlap. It's also the way that the overlap allows you to do something that that professional may not because they may not know BJJ in the same way you do. And maybe that's not the case always, but sometimes you both have an overlap. And then also... I don't want to use the word syncretism, but your overlap allows you to do something that even somebody technically more talented than you wouldn't be able to do to the same degree, because they don't have that same knowledge of the space that you do. So that's a really, really cool idea. And I like that a lot.
Greg Baugues:
Awesome.
Matt Stauffer:
I don't want to stop talking, but that's okay. If people think you're amazing, which I'm sure they do, how do they follow and support you? So I understand that your Instagram is private, but let's talk about other places.
Greg Baugues:
I'm @greggyb on Instagram, follow me. I'll approve you if it looks like you're not trying to get me to buy Bitcoin, that's fine.
Matt Stauffer:
Cool.
Greg Baugues:
Yeah, I was just trying to make sure it's real people. But yeah, I'm @greggyb on Instagram. My blog is Bauges, B-A-U-G-U-E-S.com, my last name. And I have a newsletter you can subscribe to on there. And I send out posts once or twice a month on there.
Matt Stauffer:
Full of photos.
Greg Baugues:
Yeah, it's like a mix of photography and prose. But those are the two best spots.
Matt Stauffer:
And all of this will be in the show notes. So anything he's talked about, any links that we've had, we'll put it all in the show notes. So go check it out. Greg, I cannot thank you enough for your time, for your wisdom. And of course your influence on me and the rest of the community over the years, but just from the photography perspective, thank you for teaching us. I'm inspired to go spend more time with my camera right now, and to go start using Lightroom. So thank you so much, man.
Greg Baugues:
Awesome, man. Well, let me know if you got any questions, happy to show you what's worked for me, and would love to chat more soon.
Matt Stauffer:
I love it. To the rest of you all, thanks for hanging out. And until next time, be good to each other.
Greg Baugues:
See you all. Thank you.