Prime Lenses

Stephen K Schuster is a New York based photographer who co-hosts the brilliant Emulsions podcast with friend Hollis Monk Thayer. When the pair appeared on the show a couple of weeks ago I asked he’d be up for coming back to talk about his long running project City Kids. He agreed and here we are! We forego lenses in favour of a conversation about image making, terrible ideas, good ideas and we open with a Prime Lenses favourite, A Question of Color. More about this show:A camera is just a tool but spend enough time with photographers and you’ll see them go misty eyed when they talk about their first camera or a small fast prime that they had in their youth. Prime Lenses is a series of interviews with photographers talking about their photography by way of three lenses that mean a lot to them. These can be interchangeable, attached to a camera, integrated into a gadget, I’m interested in the sometimes complex relationship we have with the tools we choose, why they can mean so much and how they make us feel.

Declan Friel is a photographer based near the Isle of Skye. His day job has him working on the Isle of Skye as a postman which sometimes affords him the opportunity to capture one of the most beautiful locations in the world while he’s at work. That’s something I’ll bet a lot of us wish we could do so when Declan was made famous earlier this year by the BBC News Website I thought I’d reach out and see if we could have a chat about his history with photography, printing images big and small and of course, murder mystery drama on the island.More about this show:A camera is just a tool but spend enough time with photographers and you’ll see them go misty eyed when they talk about their first camera or a small fast prime that they had in their youth. Prime Lenses is a series of interviews with photographers talking about their photography by way of three lenses that mean a lot to them. These can be interchangeable, attached to a camera, integrated into a gadget, I’m interested in the sometimes complex relationship we have with the tools we choose, why they can mean so much and how they make us feel.

For 10 years Hugh Brownstone has made photography videos on YouTube. His striking monochrome aesthetic and thoughtful delivery made him popular with fans of photography, especially those with a tendency towards cameras made in Germany with a little red dot. I’ve admired his work for years so it was a delight to sit down with him and have a wide ranging conversation about image making.More about this show:A camera is just a tool but spend enough time with photographers and you’ll see them go misty eyed when they talk about their first camera or a small fast prime that they had in their youth. Prime Lenses is a series of interviews with photographers talking about their photography by way of three lenses that mean a lot to them. These can be interchangeable, attached to a camera, integrated into a gadget, I’m interested in the sometimes complex relationship we have with the tools we choose, why they can mean so much and how they make us feel.

Hollis Monk Thayer and Stephen K. Schuster are two friends who host the Emulsions Podcast about film photography. They agreed to come onto the podcast to talk about what it’s like making a podcast, whether they benefit from having a co-host and the kinds of images they like to make. It was a good conversation, I hope you like it too :)More about this show:A camera is just a tool but spend enough time with photographers and you’ll see them go misty eyed when they talk about their first camera or a small fast prime that they had in their youth. Prime Lenses is a series of interviews with photographers talking about their photography by way of three lenses that mean a lot to them. These can be interchangeable, attached to a camera, integrated into a gadget, I’m interested in the sometimes complex relationship we have with the tools we choose, why they can mean so much and how they make us feel.