Tom: David, so good to see you on the show tonight.
David: Thank you.
Tom: I kind of know your voice already from all your writing and it's nice to see you in person.
David: Yeah, it's lovely to meet you. Thanks for having me.
Tom: David, before we start, what's the best joke you heard recently?
David: The best joke, uh, you know, I spent 12 years as a comedian and, uh, I am probably the worst joke teller. I don't know if I lost my sense of humor somewhere along the way. God, the best joke, I'm, I'm gonna have to think about that. I don't, uh, you've caught me very
David: on that one. Yeah. I'm gonna have to think about that.
Tom: well let's come back in the end maybe.
David: Okay.
Tom: So, David, you're all heading to Zambia in a week from now.
David: I am, a week from now, I'll be, uh, I'll be on a. Plane to Johannesburg and I've got three weeks, three weeks by myself, uh, photographing in lower Zambizi and uh, the Kafue regions. So very excited. It's, uh, one of those trips that is, uh, it's just for me. No, no one else is joining me. It's just me and my camera and a guide. Um, and I'm, I'm very much looking forward to the time just to, see where it all leads me.
Tom: Yeah. But I want to know, David, you are the kind of person who packs everything the week before, or you leave it for the last minute.
David: The week? No. God no. I packed like the month before. I think the adventure starts when you start packing. And so I came back from a month in Kenya, uh, at the beginning of March, and I did my laundry, and then I immediately started putting everything back into the bag. Uh, I all, I really didn't even unpack from the last trip, so, no. My bags are zipped. I'm ready to go. I'm staring, I'm staring at the door at this point, just waiting, waiting to go.
Tom: And you feel that exciting mix, David, of, on one hand the pictures you hope to make, and on the other hand the experience you hope to have.
David: Oh, absolutely. And, and it's more of a, it's, it's less about. Uh, on one hand, and on the other hand, it's more of a triangle, because if I had a third hand, there would be that, that fear and that worry that it's not gonna work out the way I expect. And, and the, there's also the curiosity, like, I'm going to places on this trip that I haven't been before. And so there's a component of excitement, uh, about the photography and the experience, but also of the complete unknown. And, and I think that makes the excitement a little bit, uh, a little bit greater because I, know, I carry into this the expectation of those photographs, of those Uh, but you never know. And usually I come back and those expectations have been completely, uh, bypassed and something, something else, something extraordinary has happened, but it's, it's almost never the thing I expect. So, yeah, it's, I'm very excited about it. I like that, know, you're walking into the unknown and then everything else is improvisation. And that's exciting to me.
Tom: And we talked just before we hit the record button, the food, you are excited about the food.
David: Yeah, I mean, safari is interesting because most of these camps are, you know, they cater to western, uh, travelers and, uh, so you're not really getting a taste of local cuisine. I've spent the last 20 years working in Sub-Saharan Africa, so I'm very familiar with the food. I like the food now. Um, mostly we're getting pretty world class western style cuisine. Um, but yes, the food is, the food is fantastic. The, uh, accommodations are fantastic, but the food doesn't have the same, you know, as we were talking earlier, and if I come to Spain, I'm eating food that's different. It's very specifically, it's specific to that local region. And I like that part of the exploration. Uh, safari is usually not that. Safari is excellent food, but it's usually not local cuisine.
Tom: Okay, David, let's take you out of the box one moment, but let's walk back, David, maybe 10 years, 12 years, 14 years. Talk me about the moment you started first being interested in photography. David?
David: Oh, well, it was a lot more than 14 years ago, that's for sure. I, uh, I
Tom: No, when? When you were 14.
David: Yeah, when I was 14 exactly. So I was 14 years old and, uh, my father had been, uh, a photographer in the Canadian military. He was a tank commander, uh, but also did some photography. So, uh, I was surrounded by cameras. I was familiar enough with cameras, uh, but at 14 I got my own camera and I purchased it at a neighbor's yard sale. They were selling some of their old stuff and I bought this camera for almost nothing. Uh, and not long after that, uh, that same neighbor sold me a bunch of dark room equipment and traded it for babysitting services. So I got this whole dark room worth of stuff in exchange for babysitting for them. and it was, it just came at the right time. When, as a, as a young, you know, as a, as a kid, really, you're. You're figuring out what the world is like and what you're good at, and lot of what you're not good at. And I was not good at at athletics. I was not good at music there. There were a lot of things I wasn't good at, but when I picked up the camera, I found something that I. I was good at, uh, that, that at least made sense to me and challenged me enough that I wanted to continue to explore this. And, and it was right about that time too, that I, you know, I've always subscribed to the National Geographic Magazine as a kid, and I had somewhere I had a cover. Um, I had a, the copy of the magazine on the cover of, which was the photograph that Steve McCury made of Sharak Gula. Most of us refer to her as the Afghan girl. and there were other pictures too, uh, from the cover of the National Geographic with people climbing mountains and adventuring to far off places. there was something about that mix of adventure and the exotic and the travel and the photography, especially. That just sent me to dreaming this, this was the thing. Everyone else in my school, you know, they all had their thing. They had music, they had drama, they had athletics. I had photography and it, and I was, it was the one thing that gave me hope that I could be good at something. And so I dug into that. I was not even good at school. I wasn't even good at writing. I, you know, I look back now and I think after writing all the books that I've written, I can't believe there was a time when I was, you know, almost flunking out of English class. Uh, but I just, I just was not, so I had to discover my own way. And photography was that journey for me. And, um, I never looked back. There have been times when it has been a little less important to me in my life, but I have always had a camera at my side. it's always been the thing that I have fallen back on. As my, uh, most successful way of expressing myself creatively. The, the way that, you know, 'cause I've drawn and I've painted and I've done all kinds of things, but I, it never stuck. It was never, it was never me in the way that photography has been.
Tom: Mm-hmm. Something that I also found interesting, David, is that you spoke about that you went out with your father, I think, and he told you, uh, Hey, look at this.
David: Hmm
Tom: You both went out with, with the camera.
David: mm-hmm.
Tom: And it's nice because my starting in photography, I think I was also 12 and basically I think my parents got a late wedding present of an Nikon. I think it's an fe with three lenses and they just saw it take it, and I think they wanted me out of the house. So
David: Lucky
Tom: this is the kind of way I started
David: Uhhuh.
Tom: in, photography. But your father. What, what you think he was really teaching you in those moments when you went out together?
David: Uh, he was, I don't actually know what he was trying to teach me. My father and I had a very complicated relationship and I think the episode that you're referring to stands out in my mind because it was so rare. It was not a common thing for my dad and I to
David: together. Uh, I lived with my mother. Um, but in that instance, I, what I got out of it was this, this way of seeing just differently than I would normally see. You know, I was seeing this sort of big picture and my dad in this, in this particular instance, we, there was an ice storm where I grew up and, you know, all of the trees and the, there were some mountain ash trees with berries and they, they were covered in a thick layer of ice. he, I think what he showed me, while my dad never really. Did much to help me see my own potential. I think he show was showing me in that day we had, with our cameras in a scene, the potential to see photographically. Because again, I was sort of looking for that big thing, that big obvious thing, what can I take a picture of? And my dad was looking at things on a much smaller scale and saying, look, look at, like, look at that. Looking a little closer, I could see, okay, it's a berry covered nice, but really it's a, it's about the contrast of color and tone and the shape. And so he, in that one instance though, like I said, there weren't many of them. really helped me a little bit differently. And years later I looked through a number of his slides, uh, that he left behind and of got a sense of his own photographic vision. And it's been interesting to compare the two. Um, but I think on some level though, we didn't spend much time together. I think he was responsible for at least the beginnings of me seeing the world and seeing the possibilities in a scene for more than what I first judged them to be.
Tom: mm-hmm. Well, my parents, they let me mess up all their attic and build a dark room, so I'm, I'm eternally grateful for this part in my life.
David: Yeah, I had a wonderful dark room, but it was, I had to take over the bathroom. What? We had two bathrooms in the house
Tom: I.
David: took over one of them for, you know, every Saturday and Sunday for at least for a couple years when I was in, when in high school. And I would just, you know, close the door and I would seal it up and turn the red light on and. I would spend hours in there and I didn't have to come out because it was a bathroom. So if I needed to use the toilet, it was right there. Um, so I would spend all day in there. I'd bring a sandwich and a, and some, uh, some milk in there or something. A soda, I would spend all day. And I, they, they really did put up with me because now that I think back, I think, God, I, the smell of a dark room is not something that goes away quickly. Uh, but,
Tom: No.
David: they did what they could, especially my mother, uh, in whose house I lived. She did what she could to, you know, she really did put up with me. And, and it's never gone away. Years later. Uh, this is the thing that has stuck with me the longest and the thing that I, that gives my life such meaning. Um, so I'm very grateful to my
David: though they didn't teach me photography. It was ultimately my mother who got me my first, my first real camera. She got me in a used SLR, um, and a couple of lenses and. Was very, very patient with me as I, uh, I'm sure she funded most of my film purchases and, 'cause I didn't, I didn't have the money for years. But, um, I owe her a
David: debt of gratitude for, uh, for at very least for putting up with it.
Tom: Hmm. Nice. Then David photography became a part of your life already, but then you didn't dive straight it professionally. You became, or you went in comedy instead. So how did that happen?
David: went into, well, that's a good question. I, so I wanted to become a so-called professional photographer. I wanted that to be my career. uh, in our high school, we had a program where we could go and take a week off and job shadow, uh, someone in the career that we thought we wanted to. Um. To be a part of. I found a, a in Ottawa who would take me for a week. And after a week working for this photographer, I had not picked up a camera once and I had filed negatives in the dark room, and I had cleaned the dark room and I had swept the floor and I had light stands from here to there and then move them back. And, and it was all very educational. Uh, but what I really learned was this is, this is not what I wanted to do. Not at that point in my life. and I think that was a good choice because I probably would've lost the passion for it. I probably would've, you know, taken any gig that was available. I would've ended up in weddings and no dig against wedding photographers. I think wedding, good wedding photographers are really.
David: I mean, they're a, they're really good at what they do. But that wasn't for me. That was not my path. And so I ran off to school. I followed a girlfriend to a, uh, to a theology school of all things. And, um, as a younger man, my faith was very important to me. And I followed this girlfriend to theology school. I ended up spending five years out there. Our relationship ended after the first year, but I kept going and somewhere in there I learned how to juggle. And I became a part of, I had always worked with children and so I became a part of a drama, comedy, drama troop for children. And, and I did juggling and magic tricks and some clown stuff. And, and by the time I graduated from college, uh, I was. Almost full time doing my own comedy show. Yes, doing birthday parties and shopping malls and that sort of thing, but also doing festivals and churches and school events. And, uh, and it just, it grew to the point where I don't think if I had had to go to school one more year, I would've had to choose between doing comedy or going to school. Uh, and unfortunately it was doing comedy that paid for me to go to school, so I couldn't have dropped the one. Fortunately, I graduated and, uh, I continued to do comedy for several years before, uh, coming back to my first love coming back to photography. Uh, but the, the comedy was wonderful. I think I learned a lot about perception, especially when you learn, when you're learning magic, slight of hand and illusion. It's all about perception. It's all about how the other person will see what you're doing, the assumptions they make, the feelings they will get from the experience. And I think I've carried that into that as a priority. I've carried that into my photography. So it was not wasted time. It was excellent time. And when I did become, when I came back to photography, was photographing children and families in, international contexts in south, uh, Southeast Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. But I was working with kids. And so tho that skillset of being able to make kids and families comfortable with me to relax, to laugh, uh, that was pretty important. I leaned very heavily on that for, uh, for years. And, you know, if it got really difficult, I could do a coin trick or something, uh, or juggle three bananas or, and break the ice. And, and I think that. It. Like I said, it wasn't wasted. It was good. It was good time. But I did finally come back to photography. when I came back, I knew exactly what I wanted to do. I knew that it wasn't wedding photography. I knew that it wasn't sports or corporate stuff. I knew very specifically when I came back exactly the stories I wanted to tell. So I think that 12 year hiatus was a luxury in terms of figuring out who I was, and what kind of photography I wanted to do.
Tom: Mm-hmm. David, I'm now so sorry that you don't have three bananas there that you can juggle. I mean, that had to be.
David: Well, let me tell you, when I, when I stopped comedy, I stopped completely and I wonder if this may be why I'm so resistant to the idea of telling a joke and can't remember them. Because I really, I left comedy, it wasn't because I was tired of comedy. It was because I was tired of playing a character on the stage. I was tired of being someone. was part of who I was, but not completely. And, and so when I left, I really, I haven't done a magic trick. I haven't, other than for, you know, a kid in Uganda who refuses to smile. Um, I've sort of left that part behind me. But, uh, yeah, if I had three bananas, I would, I would be happy to entertain you. Um, it's really not, bananas aren't that exciting unless you light 'em on fire and do a chainsaw as well. But I think we could make something with it.
Tom: Mm-hmm. Be careful with your nice studio.
David: Mm.
Tom: David, then you did, you worked for some NGOs, you did humanitarian photography. I think it started all after a trip back from Haiti. I hope I pronounce this country right. I have a bit of problem with it.
David: Yeah. It was ha it was Haiti. And, and I had gone as a, as a comedian, the organization, uh, I'd met the founder of this organization and he had this idea that maybe during my comedy shows, I could, uh, at the end talk about his organization and maybe be part of their fundraising. he said, come to Haiti, see the work that we do. And just before I left, uh, he said, Hey, I found a website of a photographer with the same name as you. Is this, is this you? I said, yeah, that's, that's my work. And he said, could you bring your cameras? I'd like to extend your trip, uh, have you stay a little longer and maybe you could shoot for us. And I said, yeah, sure, that sounds, that sounds fun. And so I brought my cameras and it was, it was on that trip that I suddenly realized stories I wanted to tell. I I was probably there for only 12 hours. And I said, I remember saying to myself, I probably even wrote it in my journal. This is what I want to do for the next part of my life. However long that is. This is the next chapter. I was tired of comedy. I was tired of playing a character, and suddenly all of the, things that I had learned about this craft, about using a camera, it was like I'd learned to use a microphone and suddenly I knew what songs I wanted to sing. Suddenly I knew what message I wanted to use the microphone for. And I went home and I told my family, I said, this is, this is what I want to do. I want to become a humanitarian photographer. And most of them said, what's that? And I said, I don't actually don't know, but I'm gonna find out. And then they said, well, can you make a living at that? And I said, well, I can. I don't know, but I'm gonna find out. I figured if I could make a living as a juggler, I could probably make a living as a, as a humanitarian photographer.
Tom: Yeah. Mm-hmm.
David: least the perceived need for the one is probably greater than the other. so I, I immediately told, told my, uh, my agent that I was done. I did my last performances, uh, through the end of the year. And then I got off the stage for the last time. And in that transitional period, I got a call from someone who read my blog and they said, we've seen your work in Haiti and Ethiopia. Are you in, excuse me? Are you interested? Excuse me. They said, are you interested in doing some, uh, some assignment work? And so I said, yeah, absolutely. And, uh, they sent me to Democratic Republic of Congo and Malawi and, uh, over the years, Uganda and Mongolia and India. And, uh, I, the, I mean, a huge long list of places, uh, r Rwanda, Kenya, um, just an astonishing number of places on assignment for them. And, uh, suddenly I was up and running that, that became my career for, uh, for many years and absolutely loved it. It was the time of my life. Really, really enjoyed that work. But it all began with that trip to Haiti and having that spark and going, this, this is what I want to do with my cameras. The cameras were not the point. Learning that there
David: I wanted to tell. That was the point. The cameras were just a tool to get me there and allow me to tell those stories in the way that made sense to me.
Tom: Would you say, David, that this was maybe, and this is this magical word that you reinvented yourself.
David: Yeah. I, yes, it, I, yeah, I would choose a different word. I think I was already evolving as a person and there was an opportunity that I took unaware of what it, of how it would further that evolution. But yeah, I think life is full of opportunities to recognize that. we're all, we never stay the same person. Uh, much of
David: I think remains the same, but we are, we are evolving, I hope in a life well lived. We are evolving into, uh, the person that we are becoming. Uh, and there's lots of little opportunities. I could have come back from Haiti and not picked up, uh, this. Career opportunity and done something else. And who knows where I could be a, i I could be a a, an entertainer in Las Vegas now. Um, who knows what would've happened, but, I followed the thread really of my curiosity. It just felt like of all the opportunities, this was the one that excited me the most on, I followed it. Um, on some level, yes, it's, it was a pivot. It was an evolution. It was a reinvention. But like I said, it was already happening within me. It wasn't a conscious decision to change who I was and what I did. It was a decision to recognize what I was already becoming and seize an opportunity that I had no idea where it was going. But it seemed pretty exciting and it made a lot of sense to me. And, and I think because I was already, because I'd spent all that time learning my craft, not being a professional, but learning, just learning my craft for the love of it. I think when it finally clicked, I already had the skillset to them. You know, do what I do at the level that I needed to do it, uh, competitively in, you know, a world where everyone's got a camera, everyone's got, you know, half camera will travel. Um, I needed to bring a certain skill set to that that other people didn't in order to, you know, get the jobs that I, that I did.
Tom: But then you wake up one day, David, and you say, I think I'm a wildlife photographer now.
David: Yeah. Well, it wasn't quite, that, it wasn't quite that dramatic. I if, you know, if I look back in my portfolio for years, there were opportunities for me to, there was certainly an a moment, uh, in time. If you look back, and I would've said, and I even wrote in one of my books that, that wildlife doesn't really interest me as a photographic subject. think what I, what I really meant, because I've been, I, when I first picked up a camera, I was photographing ducks on the pond and, you know, I've always been an outdoors person. But for a long time I just had a story that was more important to me, and that was the humanitarian, uh, story. Uh, but increasingly I realized that, uh, where there was the greatest humanitarian need, there was also the greatest environmental destruction, the greatest environmental, uh, exploitation, human wildlife conflict, that sort of thing. And, uh, I had this big accident in Italy years ago that that changed my life. I fell off a wall, I shattered my feet, and that for a while, took me off of the field as a humanitarian photographer, uh, pushed me deeper into education. And when I eventually went back, uh, things had changed in my mind and in my heart a little bit. I was growing cynical, uh, I was finding humanitarian photography. I mean, it was a wonderful job, but it's a hard job and it's a difficult, a dark corner from which to, you know, look at the world and, uh.
David: And so I started to spend more and more time photographing wildlife. It's not much of a stretch, excuse me, a stretch. When you're photographing in Sub-Saharan Africa and places like Kenya and Rwanda and Uganda, there are often opportunities to get out and do safari, do a game drive, see the wildlife. So it's not quite as dramatic as you make it, uh, as you make it seem or as maybe as it appears. Um, but then COVID happened and COVID really put the last sort of nails in the coffin, if you will, because I really, like a lot of people got a little, uh, anxious about being with crowds and didn't really want to be in big crowds. And so the appeal of going to places like India or you know, on the crowded streets of Italy to do the work that I was doing as a cultural photographer, as a travel photographer. That appeal got less and less. It was much more attractive to me to sit on a rock in the rain and wait for a bear, uh, or to sit in a land rover and photograph a leopard. And, and increasingly I realized that that was what I wanted to do. The stories I wanted to tell sort of shifted. Um, but I don't put a lot of stock in the idea of genre, you know, a humanitarian photographer, a wildlife photographer. Fact is the stories that I tell are still infused with adventure. They're still exciting to me. I still, I believe my photographs feel very similar from one, uh, subject matter to another. Uh, it's just that the story has shifted a little, and I think I really do believe you need to follow your curiosity in life. You need to follow your whims. And when I recognize that, I just would rather be doing this than that. And it was commercially viable. I could still make a living at it and fund these adventures through that. I just sort of, it was a, it was a cont continuation of, let's see where this leads. And it has led me for now to, uh, to photograph wildlife. And I'm, I'm thrilled. I love it. I have fascination with big subjects with bears and lions and rhinoceros, elephants. Um, I'm, I'm really interested in that. And so for now, that's what I photograph. But will that be the thing I photograph for the rest of my life? I don't know.
Tom: Yeah. No.
David: I, because none of us know who we are becoming, we don't really know where we're going, and I think we sort of need to stay a little bit open to that. Um, when I left the comedy world, so my stage name was the rubber chicken guy. That's how I marketed myself. That was my show when I left. was very difficult because I had given myself this label. I was a magician, a juggler, a comedian. I was the rubber chicken guy, it was very difficult for me, emotionally and mentally to wrap my mind around the idea that I wasn't that thing anymore. I was now a different thing. And I'm sort of keen to avoid the labels now because if I do shift, if I do
David: a different kind of photographer, maybe I give up photography entirely. Maybe in 10 years I'm not photographing, I'm only writing. Why? I don't know. Maybe I suffer some horrible injury and I can't see, and I go blind. knows? It's terribly, uh, morbid to think about, but life happens and I would shift maybe just to writing or some other thing that doesn't change who I am. And so I'm a little nervous about kind of putting myself, in fact, I haven't really. Like, I don't think on my website I've even changed it. Like it, no, it doesn't now say wildlife photographer. Uh, I'm just a, I'm just a photographer who right now in this moment of time is really interested in stories that are in the natural world and in involve wildlife. I think that's important because I don't think the photographs we make are dependent entirely on the subject matter. Photographs are not about, is it an elephant, is it a bear, is it a human being? It's about the emotion, it's about the story. It's about color. It's about um, it's about the story that we can make from the elements of the photographic language that it is a person or a sports event or an elephant really not the point. If you, if you know how to operate a camera and you're interested in the story, matter what the subject is, you can do something compelling with it.
Tom: The question is, David, you think your voice changes because your life changes or your voice is what drives those changes?
David: Yes. Yeah, it's both. It's, it's absolutely, it's both. It's, it, I think there's a circle, a wheel of cause and effect where the person that I am, the things I'm interested in, um, determines the things I do, uh, the explorations that I have, the adventures, the work that I create, and that drives. Me forward into growing in my craft and seeing new possibilities and wanting to explore new things. I think, I think it's both, but it all comes from a very internal place. Uh, your voice comes from your preferences, your, your curiosities, the things you love, and your willingness to explore those and not distract yourself with everything else. Not distract yourself with the, you know, the ama, the amazing work that other photographers are creating. Not being jealous about it, not being, uh, swayed by it and looking going, oh, I should be doing that instead, look at the success they're having. Um, that's, that's wonderful. But they're having that success because they are who they are, and that's, that's not your path. And, and so I think all of it comes from a very internal place, but not just, everyone's got that internal place. Not everyone has got to the point yet where they can with courage, say, I don't know if this is even gonna work out, but I'm gonna follow it right to the end. I'm gonna see where it leads. where all of the great artists, and I don't place myself in their midst, by the way, I, but if you look at musicians like, you know, uh, bono of U2 or Prince, or I mean name a performing artist, that really stands out. They stands out because of what makes them different from everyone else. Not what makes them the same. And, and so you, there, it takes a certain amount of courage, uh, to pursue that, um, courage that, you know, I sort of have to, I have to talk myself into every day. By the way, it's not an absence of fear, it's the willingness to try anyways in the face of that fear. 'cause I'm nervous like everyone else. I'm nervous that the stuff I'm making isn't gonna resonate. It's not gonna work the way I hope. It's that I'm not gonna get the success or whatever. I'm not just as nervous as everyone listening to this, um, you, but you gotta try anyway. 'cause life is too short. Otherwise, life is so short and I don't wanna get to the end and find that I wasted my life trying to be other people.
Tom: Mm-hmm. And it makes it so much more exciting to wake up in the morning, David.
David: So much more exciting. You know, the, in fact, there was, what was it? I think it was like, was it Google that for a while? They had sort of, where do you want to go today? Or maybe it was Microsoft or, I don't know. There was some company used, where do you want to go today? Is it, and I love that because it's like, you wake up and it's like, what do I want to do today? Who do I want, do I want to be? And, and how can I do that? Yes, you still have to pay the bills. You still have to do what? Keeps the lights on, puts food on your, your plate. You can do that in a million different ways. How are you gonna spend your time today? And God, I hope it's not doom scrolling on Instagram or, you know, checking the news, uh, relentlessly because that's, that's, that's not life. Life is what truly what you make of it. uh, I think it was, think it was Seneca who said, uh, and I may be wrong about this, but it said, it is said, it's not that life is short, it's just that we waste so much of it.
David: I also think life is short, but I think it's short because we waste so much of it. Um. You know, I think if you live a really full, I'm 54 and I feel like I've lived three lifetimes. I, if I found out tomorrow that I was, you know, I was on my way out. I have no regrets about the way I've lived my life. I feel like it's been so full. I would wish that on everyone. I would, you know, that's not to
David: I wouldn't change some things, but they're, they're in the past. I the way that my life has turned out. And you're talking to someone whose life has not been easy. You know, I've gone through bankruptcies, I've gone through divorce. I, three years ago, got my leg amputated. We're, we're not talking about someone who's, you know, been handed. Like, I'm not a trust fund kid. Um, I've, I grew up in a single family, a single parent household, low income housing. I mean, I, I know what it's like to struggle. I still have absolutely no regrets. I think maybe even because of the struggle and the challenge, my life has been more interesting. But that's all a function of what we make it. Um, there's a lot of luck involved. I'm just saying, don't, don't waste it
David: it's gonna be over
Tom: No.
David: I look back, 54 is not old. You know, there are people listening, going, you're just a kid. I acknowledge that I am just a kid. And yet. I also know that it's going to feel like it, like it's gonna be so quick when I'm 75 looking back at this and going, wow, where did that, where did that 20 years go? It went so fast. so I beg you, if you're watching and listening, don't, don't waste it. You just, so quickly. I, we just put my mother into a long-term care home and she's losing her memories and she's not making new memories and it's so hard to watch. And, and not long ago, she looked in the mirror and she said, I don't even recognize this old lady. Like she still sees herself as a 20-year-old Royal Air Force nurse from London, who's, you know, gone off to see the world. And she met a Canadian tank commander, my father, and she still sees herself as like, as this young person. She s said, you know, where did the time go? It goes so fast. Don't, don't waste it. You know, we get so embroiled in these conversations about, you know, which lens is better and which camera. And I try so hard to hold my tongue because in the face of our own mortality and the, you know, making really good work and taking creative risks, all of that stuff, and we're arguing about which lens has corner or, uh, how many angels can dance on a sensor pixel? I don't know. It's, it seems silly to me, but maybe that's just me.
