Hanna Neret – Special Guest – Podcast Episode 5

Joe Lenton
Welcome to the Focused Professional podcast. This is episode five and I’m Joe Lenton. [Theme Music] Welcome to the Focused Professional podcast. And today we’ve got a special guest, Hanna Neret from Sweden, and we’re very pleased to have her on today. She’s a multi award winning photographer. She’s won many different trophies, especially known for her storytelling style. She has taught at the Societies of Photographers convention and in fact, that’s where we first met. Good to see you, Hanna.

Hanna Neret
Good to be here. Thank you for inviting me.

Joe Lenton
So you must have enjoyed the convention in London if you’re still on speaking terms with us Brits.

Hanna Neret
Yeah, it was fantastic. I mean, it was my third time there and it’s really turned into one of the highlights of the year, going to London and being there. Such a lovely bunch of people, you know. So, yeah, had a great time.

Joe Lenton
That’s great. Do you travel a lot then?

Hanna Neret
I used to. I love travelling, but same as everyone else, there was a pandemic came in the way of that, I guess. Plus I have two relatively young kids, so I haven’t really travelled that much in recent years. But it’s picking up now. I’m actually going to WPPI in a few weeks and then later this year I’m going to Iceland. So I’m really looking forward to start exploring the world again.

Joe Lenton
So presumably that’s more of a holiday rather than to collect another trophy.

Hanna Neret
Yes. No trophies to be found in Iceland, I think.

Joe Lenton
Well, you never know.

Hanna Neret
You never know what you find in a geyser! I don’t know.

Joe Lenton
Yeah, well, there’s some interesting stuff going on there at the moment with all the eruptions that are happening, so, yeah, land of fire and ice, as they say.

Hanna Neret
I hope the volcanoes calm down a bit for our trip.

Joe Lenton
Yeah. Although I suppose it does heat the area up and it’s known for being a bit cold, but…

Hanna Neret
True. I am Swedish though, so I mean.

Joe Lenton
You’re used to the cold. Did you find anything a bit odd then when you came to the UK for the first time? Was there anything that you had to sort of forgive us for and get used to?

Hanna Neret
No. I’ve been to the UK so many times over the years. I actually lived and worked in London a very brief time when I was a teenager and then I’ve worked with British people for many, many years and I have British friends, so I think I’m past the point of being surprised. I think it’s really lovely people. I think the cultural difference to Sweden is not massive. We’re pretty similar. Similar sense of humour. So I really liked the British people, really enjoyed being there.

Joe Lenton
Oh, that’s great. Oh, you can come again. That’s good.

Hanna Neret
Oh, thank you. Thank you.

Joe Lenton
You’ve got quite a strong team from Sweden at the moment. You’re picking up quite a few awards between you, I noticed. And there’s the World photographic Cup, where you’re doing well in that also. Do you know the other photographers from Sweden well?

Hanna Neret
Yes, by now I would say I do. I mean, we live in different parts of the country, so we may not meet that much in between awards, but we definitely stay in touch and it’s a really wonderful, friendly and supportive community around this. So I think we both cheer each other on and we can be happy for each other’s success. But I think one of the reasons that we have had this success in recent years is also that we have each other as competitors as well. We’re friends, but we’re also forcing each other to be better all the time. And I think that’s a really healthy situation for all of us.

Joe Lenton
It helps to keep you sharp, I suppose, doesn’t it?

Hanna Neret
Yeah, definitely.

Joe Lenton
Oh, that’s good. It’s nice to be able to share your success with others, though, I should think, as well, when you’ve got people there to celebrate with.

Hanna Neret
Oh, definitely. And, I mean, if there’s five of you in a team, then you have five times the number of potential wins to celebrate. Right. So I’m really happy that we have this good, strong team going and it’s really wonderful. Lovely people as well. So people I’m really happy for when they do well.

Joe Lenton
That’s great. Yeah. So do you find winning awards is a big motivation for you to do your photography?

Hanna Neret
Yeah. It’s not really noble. Is it?

Joe Lenton
We all do these things for different reasons. Some people do it for money, some people do it for other things. So, if that’s what you like, then what’s wrong with that?

Hanna Neret
It’s something I’ve really learned about myself, that I am a lot more competitive than I thought. I used to say that I’m not a competitive person, and my husband has always laughed about this, saying “really?”. He saw things that I didn’t know about myself. But since I started this photographic journey then and discovered photographic competitions, I’ve really realised that, yeah, it is a big motivator. I’d like to think that it’s not so much about the medals and the trophies as I think two other things, really. So the first thing is that it naturally gives me an audience for the art that I create, because if I didn’t have that, who would I create them for? You could go down the route of having a big social media presence and all of that, but I don’t really have the time or the interest to do that. So I think I would have just gotten sick of that after a while, chasing followers. That doesn’t really motivate me. Or the other route you could take is do exhibitions, but that also takes a lot of time and work well.

Joe Lenton
And money getting them all printed as well. It could get expensive.

Hanna Neret
Exactly. And to be fair, competitions can also get quite expensive after a while. But it’s relatively easy. And for me, it’s easy to know that when I’m creating something, I’m doing that with a set of photographic judges in mind, that they are my target audience and they are who I’m creating for. And that pushes me to get better all the time as well, because there’s no one as picky as a photographic judge in a competition. Right?

Joe Lenton
Ohhh yes!

Hanna Neret
I can’t do good enough. I need to do as perfect as I can get it. So I think that’s one of the drivers for me, that I have someone to create for. And the second thing with competitions is that. So I have a background in science, I have a master’s degree in engineering, and I.T., and I think that says something about the way my brain works. I’m quite analytical, and this system of having a set of clearly defined categories, and you assign a numerical score to an image, that’s very scientific, isn’t it? You take something that’s very creative and you apply the scientific approach to evaluating that. And I think that really suits me and my way of thinking about things. You get, like, a really clear confirmation like, “this you did well” and “this could be improved.” It’s a very scientific approach to feedback because in the creative industry, otherwise it can get quite fluffy. What’s good? And what’s not? Why do people like this and not this?

Joe Lenton
Yeah. So do you find you’re starting to anticipate what judges are actually going to like better now? So you can look at your images and think, this is going to score well. This one, not so much.

Hanna Neret
Yeah, definitely. And of course, I don’t only create with the purpose of winning awards. There’s the whole joy of actually creating as well. But it’s definitely something that I try to apply to any image that I’m creating. How could I do this from the perspective of a judge? So that the judge will also like this.

Joe Lenton
Right. So are you considering getting a further insight by learning to be a judge yourself?

Hanna Neret
Yeah, yeah, definitely. I’m going to judge the Swedish nationals this year, so that will be my first time as a print judge and I’ve been invited to judge a swiss online competition, so that’s going to be a lot of fun. I really look forward to that. I think I’m going to learn a lot about my own creative process in that, but I also think it’s just really good to be able to give back to the community and help other people grow. I’m really looking forward to that aspect, I think, most of all.

Joe Lenton
Yeah. I mean, your work often inspires other people to try different things as well. I think it’s lovely seeing creative people’s images, not just technically excellent, but they’ve got something else behind it and it encourages other people to raise the bar and to do something more as well. And of course, you were teaching at the convention recently as well. Is that a side of things you’d like to do more of?

Hanna Neret
Yeah, absolutely. And I have done that for a couple of years, actually, in Sweden as well. So I freelance for an online platform which teaches everything creative, really. It’s based in photography and photo editing, but there’s a lot more that they’re offering right now as well. But I’ve done some online courses for them on image editing, so that’s definitely something I enjoy and I really want to continue doing. So going from that online setting to live classroom training has been a lot of fun and it’s definitely something that I’m going to keep doing

Joe Lenton
Great

Hanna Neret
If I get the chance again, but I hope so.

Joe Lenton
Yeah. Well, look forward to seeing what you come up with next, really. Yeah, absolutely. Okay. Now, what then do you find really makes photography fun for you? What part of it all is the most fun? Is it the shooting, the editing, that kind of thing?

Hanna Neret
It’s the creative process that leads up to the final image, I think, for me. So I am definitely not a documentary photographer and I never will be. And I’m also not a nature photographer because I don’t have the patience of lying around in a bush somewhere and wait for a bird in a specific light for three days.

Joe Lenton
No.

Hanna Neret
So for me, it’s not so much about the final image as it is about all the stuff that leads up to that image. So thinking about ideas, thinking about how can I make this concept or idea that I have come to life? How can I do that? What props do I need? What model do I need, what setting do I need? And also preparing for that. Getting those props, getting the clothes, finding the people, setting up the scenes. That whole thought process and preparation process is something that I really, really enjoy. That’s the best part for me, really. And then I also love editing. I mean, I spend a lot of hours in Photoshop because I really enjoy it.

Joe Lenton
I can imagine

Hanna Neret
I know a lot of photographers feel like editing is the boring part and just the necessary evil, but for me, no, that’s where a lot of the creativity happens for me as well. When I start to visually see it and I can tweak and adjust and just make it come together, it’s extremely satisfying.

Joe Lenton
I think it’s also a part of your style because, I mean, for me, as a product photographer, sometimes people just say, well, why don’t you outsource your editing? Because a lot of it’s just getting rid of any dust, any imperfections in things. And you think, well, that’s not all it is. There are other things involved as well. It’s the way in which I choose to use contrast and other elements within the edit that is actually a continuation of my style from how I lit it in the first place. A part of your style as a photographer is that editing part. Some people choose to do very little, some people choose to do more. But I think it’s important nowadays to recognise that it is an integral part of being a photographer, really.

Hanna Neret
I 100% agree. I could never outsource that. That’s the fun part. Right. Even cleaning up dust, I don’t mind.

Joe Lenton
Yeah. Well, also, if you’re going to do competitions, you kind of haven’t got much choice. You can’t go outsourcing your edits for that sort of thing, can you?

Hanna Neret
No.

Joe Lenton
So you’re enjoying this kind of like building up stories with your images. Did you go into photography intending to do that, or did you start off trying all sorts of different things and eventually you came across this and you thought, yes, this is my thing.

Hanna Neret
I started to learn how to use. I’ve had a digital camera for ages, but like so many other people, I thought it was about the camera and not the person using it. So I just shot everything on auto mode. And some images were okay. Most of them were crap. But it wasn’t until I went on maternity leave with my oldest son where I really started to learn, because I found this classroom training at the major photography museum in Stockholm. Back then at least they had courses for people on maternity leave, so you could actually bring your kid. So we were like nine moms and one dad each with a baby, and you could breastfeed or change a diaper or whatever in class. No one minded and it was so good because it was a course that was for me, because everything else that you do when you’re on maternity leave, at least here, it’s sort of directed towards the baby. So baby swimming, baby theatre, baby music, whatever, but babies don’t care. My son was like four months old. He cared about eating and sleeping and [poo noise]. Babies are quite simple like that, but mothers are not.

Joe Lenton
No [laughs]

Hanna Neret
For me, it’s really nice to have something that was challenging and developing for me. So I really enjoyed that class and I sort of started to learn how to use my camera. And of course, that made me very motivated as well, having a child, because obviously you want to document your child, right? So for the first couple of years, that’s pretty much what I did. I took pictures of him and started to get at least a little bit better. And then when my second son arrived and I was again on maternity leave, I did a follow up course which made me deep dive a bit more into both using the camera, but also we got to try out studio photography. We talked about image editing and sort of a little bit more advanced stuff. And that’s when I really got hooked. That’s when I understood this is what I’m meant to be doing. So initially it was more about photographing people. I started to invite all my friends with kids and force them to be models for me just so I could practise. So I have so many pictures of my friends kids.

Joe Lenton
Well, I see you still use your own quite regularly for photo shoots.

Hanna Neret
Exactly. They hate it, but they’re easily bribable. They don’t always hate it. Sometimes they can actually enjoy it as well. But, yeah. So, no, I didn’t start out on this route at all. I started out just by wanting to take good pictures of my kids, really. And then when I started to learn more about picture editing and found Photoshop, that’s when I really understood the creative potential. Like, wow, I can really create some fantastic stuff here if I learn this. So I started a project which I called the Vintage family, which was a set of images where I used my own family as models. And I dressed us all in vintage clothes and set up these scenes where like looking like they were from their twenties, thirties, forties, fifties, doing different things, like cooking or doing magic tricks or packing a suitcase, trying on clothes, whatever. It was like storytelling images in a vintage setting. And these images got a lot of positive attention because I started to post them online in different Facebook groups and Instagram and so on. And I think all of that positive attention and people saying, “these are really good, you should enter them into competition.” Then you got this positive loop of feedback which made me realise that, yeah, people appreciate this and I enjoy doing it, so maybe this is what I should be doing. So I think that’s sort of where it all started, and then it’s just been continuing on from there.

Joe Lenton
Grown a lot. Yes. So, now, where do your ideas for stories tend to come from? Are you inspired by people you’re with? Is it something you’ve read? Is it something you’ve seen on TV? Or do you just somehow create it out of your own mind?

Hanna Neret
I’d say that most of my ideas, not all, but most actually start with a prop or an object or a scene that I see. I do a lot of thrift shopping. I browse, like, thrift shops for used stuff. I love the vintage look, right, so old stuff. So it could be like finding an old typewriter in one of those shops. Then I buy that and I think about, okay, what can I do with this? I really love how this looks. What can I do with it? Or walking past a bus stop. A bus stop is something that you could easily represent in an image, right? There are people waiting normally. What are they waiting for? Could I do something with that? Can I explore that idea and make it into something bigger than just people waiting for a bus? Could they be waiting for changes in life or their dreams to come true or whatever? So, it usually starts with something physical, I would say, rather than the idea or the story itself that I want to tell.

Joe Lenton
So if you’re finding yourself feeling you’ve not quite got an idea for your next project, you’re most likely to go shopping in, like a sort of a charity shop or something, or an antique shop, and see what you can find.

Hanna Neret
I don’t think I’ve ever been in a situation of not having any ideas.

Joe Lenton
Really?

Hanna Neret
Yeah. I have a list of probably, I don’t know, 70, 80 ideas on my phone that just keeps on growing.

Joe Lenton
Have you bought all those items already?

Hanna Neret
No, definitely not. Some of them I have. For me, lack of ideas have never been a problem. Lack of time is the problem. I have so many of those ideas that I really want to realise, but I just don’t have the time. So I guess I’ll just start picking them off one by one. But it’s an ever-growing list. So, yeah, I am not too afraid that I will run out of ideas, actually.

Joe Lenton
You’ll probably need a very big cupboard for your props as well, as time goes by.

Hanna Neret
Yeah, that’s the problem. I have a lot of them already and nowhere to store them. Home is getting very cluttered.

Joe Lenton
So do you ever have times where you feel a bit demotivated with your photography where it’s hard to pick up the camera or are you always looking forward to it?

Hanna Neret
Oh, I definitely feel demotivated at times, and that is always when I have too much going on in the other aspects of life. I don’t make my living as a photographer. I have another job that I do in a corporate job, nine to five work. And that’s the type of job that can usually it can be done in 40 hours in a week, but not always. I definitely need to put in the extra hours every now and then. And lots of stuff that I can’t really leave behind when I leave the office either. So I feel that when that becomes intense, then obviously the amount of time that I have for photography is a lot smaller and the same if there’s a lot going on with the kids or too many social engagements. So that definitely sometimes make me feel like I don’t even want to pick up my camera because I don’t have the energy right now. But I’m also in a very privileged situation then because I’m not dependent on my photography to pay my bills, then I can simply not do photography for a while. And that has definitely happened. Like, okay, I’m stepping away for two months now and just letting life catch up with me. And then what’s happened so far, at least, is always that I’ve been able to find my way back to that motivation. Once things are a bit more in balance in life in general.

Joe Lenton
So just getting rid of some of the stress just helps you to discover your motivation then?

Hanna Neret
Definitely.

Joe Lenton
Okay, that’s interesting because I suppose most of my work tends to be stuff that I’m doing for somebody else that they’ve commissioned and therefore can be quite restrictive in what they want. For someone like me, that actually quite likes being creative and occasionally entering competitions, I can very rarely do so because most people want pictures of things on a white background, which is… No, for a competition, it’s useless. It doesn’t matter how good the product is. No one wants to see like an ecommerce image at a competition. So, I find a lot of the time I have to create my own personal projects and find the extra energy for those. Otherwise it can just get quite tiring just keep plodding doing that in order to make a living. So for you, it’s a little bit more of a conscious choice then, and you can do creatively what you feel like. Do you think then that you would rather not switch to earning fully from photography? Do you think that that kind of pressure would actually be a negative for you with your creativity?

Hanna Neret
Definitely. I am in a very privileged situation right now that I have this job that I really like. I have no desire to leave what I do for a living. I really enjoy that. So it’s, of course, really great to have that and also be able to do photography on the side. People keep asking me, when are you going to become a full time photographer? And the answer to that is just never. It’s not going to happen. I mean, I do a little bit of shooting for clients. I do family outdoor sessions for clients, which is very different from my creative work because there’s hardly any editing in that. It’s more like being in the moment, trying to get those kids to do what I want, which is a challenge in itself and one that I really enjoy. I like working with kids and that sort of gives me a little bit of an income that can cover the photography related costs and again, teaching and so on. So there’s a commercial side to it, but then what I do for competitions, that is 100% personal projects, no one is paying me for that. It’s just me. And what you were saying about people wanting things on a white background, I don’t want anyone else to dictate what I spend all those hours on. I want to do it the way I want to do it, right? So that time is sort of wholly for me, and I wouldn’t want to do that type of work for anyone else.

Joe Lenton
Yeah, I mean, some of your sort of illustrative images is sort of like you could almost think, well, that could work well in the advertising industry, but it is so prescriptive. You’ve got art directors, you’ve got all these layers of people that have to say yes or no, and they’ll come back to you and say, we want this changed, we want that changed. And that’s not for everybody. Some people find it very difficult to have other people having that kind of input with their work.

Hanna Neret
Definitely. And I think for me, I’ve always been rather independent and wanted to do things my own way. And here I really have the chance to do that sometimes to the extreme. I wish I was a bit more collaborative sometimes in my image creation. That’s something I think I want to try and develop, bounce my ideas off other photographers or get feedback outside of competitions and so on. So I think maybe I’m a bit to the extreme. Sometimes it would be good to have someone else’s opinion to work by as well sometimes.

Joe Lenton
Yeah. One thing that things like the Societies of Photographers and others offer is that kind of mentoring along the way, especially to produce like panels of images. You can do it just to develop your style. It doesn’t always have to be for qualifications and all that. But is that something you think you’ll benefit from or is that something you think you’ll find it quite hard because you’ll be a bit protective of what you’ve made?

Hanna Neret
No, I’ve done the mentoring programme. I’ve had two sets of images, I think, through that and I’ve got some really fantastic feedback on that. So thanks Christina Lauder for that. She’s been a great mentor. So, no, that’s been super useful and that’s also, you know, one of the reasons why I’ve really understood that, yeah, this is probably a good thing and something that I should do more.

Joe Lenton
So are you a keen learner then? Do you read a lot?

Hanna Neret
I used to. These days with life being so busy, very little, unfortunately. But I wish I did more. But I used to love books. I used to be a reader like 100% of the time when I was a kid, walking into doorstops, holding a book and reading while walking.

Joe Lenton
So with all that you’re doing at the moment, do you have goals ahead of you? Are you somebody who likes to plan ahead and aim for particular things or would you prefer to just allow your photography to sort of float along a bit more?

Hanna Neret
I guess I am normally a planner, but when it comes to my photography, it’s really important for me that I allow it to be passion driven and not performance driven. So for that reason, I’m choosing to not set up any goals. I’d rather keep it just floating along and then do whatever I feel like in the moment. That being said, I have signed up now to do a qualification panel next year at the convention, so that’s something that I’ll need to work towards. Yes, that’s going to be fun, but hard work, I guess. But I try to stay away from things like I definitely don’t want to grow my business because I don’t have the time for that. So there’s nothing there. And of course I want to keep developing and getting even better at what I do, but I also don’t have any time pressure or sort of set criteria for that. It’s just an ongoing journey that I really enjoy the journey itself and not focus too much on the end station, so to speak.

Joe Lenton
Do you have any kind of dream projects where you think, if only I could afford to do that, or wish if I could go there or wish I could work with that person. Is there anything that you could think of that if there were no barriers, you think, I’d really love to photograph that. That would be a great project.

Hanna Neret
One of my pet peeves is really that the diversity in models in the photographic industry is just [claxon] right. 90% are young, skinny white girls, pretty, in their early 20s. So many images that look like that, and to me, that’s so uninspiring. I really would like to see a transition where all sorts of people, I’m not saying don’t shoot the pretty 20 year olds, of course you can do that as well, but society consists of more people than that. Something that I try to do is to photograph people of all ages and both genders and people of colour, people of all different backgrounds. And that’s something that I would like to keep exploring as well, and especially since storytelling is one of my passions, right? Then there’s so much more story to be told if you have a person that looks like a real person and not like a Barbie doll that you put some clothes on to make a pretty picture. So I guess the answer to your question is not a specific person or not a specific place, but exploring more interesting people with interesting appearances that might have a story to tell visually.

Joe Lenton
Yeah, that sounds interesting. Yeah. Is that something you think you might need to travel to do? Is that something you think you can do in your sort of home studio?

Hanna Neret
I think I could do it. I’m always on the lookout for people with interesting looks, whether I’m at work, in the cafeteria, or out on the street or at the gym. I think the main challenge is just that I have to overcome the built in shyness of walking up to someone I don’t know and say, hi, can I photograph you? That’s scary. I’ve done that once. It turned out really well. He was super happy to be asked and was a fantastic model, so that was all good. So maybe I should try and be a bit more confident in that area. I think most people would enjoy it. It’s a challenge for myself, I guess, to do that more.

Joe Lenton
Yeah, some of those things can be quite difficult, especially if.. I mean, I’m very much an introvert, so for me to go up to somebody I don’t know and ask them to do something is difficult. It’s like, even big parties, even with people I know, I find very difficult. Whereas some people sort of think, what’s the problem? You just go talk to someone, it’s just another person. It can depend quite a lot on what type of person you are, as to whether that’s natural or not, can’t it?

Hanna Neret
Definitely. And I mean, I’m not a shy person as such, but it’s also, I guess, a very cultural thing. In Sweden, we are quite scared to talk to strangers. It’s something that we’re known for internationally. Making small talk with strangers is not our strength. So it’s also not just about me, but also about how will the other person think? What would the other person think if I come up to them? Will they be scared? Will they be uncomfortable?

Joe Lenton
Yeah. Do you think then that with your storytelling, with people like that, it sounds as though that idea to bring more diversity into portraits and so on, that sounds as though you could risk going into images, becoming a little bit sort of political and all that. Is that something you would happily do, or would you be careful and reluctant to do that?

Hanna Neret
No, I don’t think it’s political. Just want to represent people of more skin tones and races and whatnot. I don’t think it has to be political. And no, I don’t think I’m going down the political route. That doesn’t really interest me as much. I guess it depends on what you define as political as well. I have no problem with taking a stance against racism or homophobia or sexism. I don’t see that as political. I see that as just being a decent human being. So I guess it depends on where you draw the line. But if we’re talking party politics, then, no, I’m not that interested.

Joe Lenton
Oh, no. But it’s more that kind of a message which has perhaps got a challenge for parts of society, really. That’s probably more what I mean, not aligning yourself with anybody in particular, no. But sort of thinking that with your images, there was one that you had in the convention where a lot of the time people sort of think, well, images are there to create a lot of the positive emotions or to get you interested. But we had one in there with a lady leaning against this hourglass with all this sort of symbolism around her that actually brought a lot of people close to tears. It’s a challenging kind of an image, a sort of topic that perhaps is not commonly spoken about. So it seems as though you do quite like to bring a little bit of a challenge to your viewer by showing them something that perhaps they’re not used to seeing.

Hanna Neret
Yeah, that’s something that I’ve sort of discovered along the way, I guess, because that image is about infertility and the struggles that many, especially women, face with getting older and feeling that you’re running out of time. That’s the title of the image, “Running out of time”. And everyone else is having babies and posting on social media, and you have this sort of social pressure as well of becoming a mum. And to me, that topic is close to heart, not because I’ve experienced it myself, but because I have quite a lot of friends who have. So it’s something that I think, for me, is not something that people don’t speak of, because we speak of it quite openly and I know so many people who have struggled with it. And that might be a cultural thing as well. But I think for me, the positive feedback that I have gotten around doing that kind of images that make people a little bit uncomfortable, maybe because it’s heavy on feelings. It’s not just happy and cute. There’s been a lot of people reaching out both about that image and other images, saying that this really moved me. Thank you for bringing attention to this sensitive topic. So it’s obvious that it means a lot for people, if you dare to go a little bit outside just creating pretty pictures and happy pictures.

Joe Lenton
Absolutely. Yeah. You tell a story so powerfully and simply with an image. You often have actually quite few props, really, when you consider how complicated some scenes can end up being. You can look at some of the classical painters and some of the scenes can be incredibly busy. There’s a lot going on there, but you seem to find ways of telling a story quite concisely. You seem to pick quite key items that represent something important for the story. So you don’t need an awful lot. How difficult is that? Do you find that you actually have to weed out things so you get it simple? Or are you somebody who naturally starts from a very simple place and only adds in what’s necessary?

Hanna Neret
I think the latter because I tend to build my scenes from nothing. It’s not like I have a room full of things and I shoot in there and then I have to take things away. Since most of my images are composites, then of course the more things I add, the more work it means for me, right? There’s a natural carrot dangling in front of me for not adding too many things. And I also live by the rule that in a storytelling image, everything that’s visible in the frame should add to the story. If it doesn’t add to the story, don’t put it there because it’s just going to be confusing for the viewer. And I think that has really helped me to keep it clean. And sometimes I think about, should I add this? Should I do that? Should it be, rather than on a plain background, should it be in some sort of setting? But most of those times I end up feeling like, no, this doesn’t add to the story. This risks distracting the viewers. So I guess I quite like the more minimalistic approach than the maximalistic approach in that sense.

Joe Lenton
Yeah. Each part carries more meaning with it as well, then, doesn’t it? From a simple item to the use of colour in the image, even. It’s a bit like Jessica’s image that won the overall print at the convention. In essence, it’s very, very simple. How can it be such an amazing print, but a dog cowering in an alley? But the colour and everything tells a story and by leaving things out again, it gives a sense of loneliness and that. So it’s an art knowing what to include, what not to include. Have you got many images that you’re working on at the moment?

Hanna Neret
I’ve got a couple, yes. Trying to find the time. Both of those are composites with quite a lot of elements, so they take a lot of time. I try to do less and less of those, but sometimes I have an idea that I can’t resist it. So, I’ll try and find the time to complete those and then I’m starting the project of my qualification panel, which, where I need 20 images on the same theme. So I think that’s going to be a challenge for me because patience is not my strong suit and I tend to get tired of something quite easily. I think I’m going to love it for the first, like, two or three images, and then I’m going to hate it. I’m going to do it. I’m going to do it.

Joe Lenton
Yeah. I think the difficulty sometimes with putting a panel together like that is you shoot maybe your first ten or something like that, and then you start to think, actually, I’m not happy with the first few anymore. And you want to go back and do it again. There’s a danger that you just never finish because you keep learning as you do it. And I certainly found I improved quite a lot with my understanding of the lighting and everything as I was shooting. And there’s some stuff that I’ve shot since then of similar subjects and thought, I wish that could have been in my panel. But it’s a great way of giving you that impetus to keep creating as well.

Hanna Neret
Yeah, absolutely. So I think I’m really going to learn a lot from it, and it’s going to be a very useful thing to do then. Having said that, 20 images is quite a lot if you make them all composites, which naturally makes them very time consuming to put together. And it’s more than I usually create in a year, so I really have to be focused and disciplined around this, I think.

Joe Lenton
That’s interesting. How many images would you say then, of those kind of composites you aim for in a year, in a season of photography?

Hanna Neret
Probably around, I don’t know, 15. So maybe once a month or something. 12-15 ish.

Joe Lenton
Yeah. You’re really refining a few images rather than just churning out lots and lots.

Hanna Neret
Definitely.

Joe Lenton
Interesting. Yeah, that’s interesting. All different approaches that people have for creating their work and what they connect with and what works with their personality and everything. So you’re clearly somebody who’s that much more sort of methodical. I mean, when you’re doing your kind of composites, do you take notes as to how you’ve lit something so that when you shoot another element for the composite, you know it, or do you just store it all in your head?

Hanna Neret
I try to keep the lighting set up very simple whenever I shoot for a composite, because the more advanced you make it, the more difficult it is to make it come together. So I go about it by using almost always the same setup. Just one single light coming from the upper-camera-right. And that’s it. Because then it’s easy to remember. Right. If you always keep the same. If I do do a bit more advanced stuff, which happens not too often, but occasionally, then, yeah, I guess I would make some notes. But if I look at the image, I can usually remember what my light setup was. So I don’t usually need that kind of notes either. And also because I don’t do 100 images per year, I try to keep focused. And it’s not so many that I have to keep in my head either.

Joe Lenton
Yeah. What are the sort of common mistakes you see people make when they’re trying to do composites sort of for the first time?

Hanna Neret
Definitely the direction of light is one of them, that you have the light coming from different directions on your object versus your background or setting. So that’s one. The perspective is another one. So shooting, for instance, the background with a very wide angle lens and the object with the other way around, then a longer focal length and those two perspectives just doesn’t match. Or shooting the object slightly from above when the scene that you’re putting it in, it shots parallel to the ground. So that kind of perspective is something that took me a long time to really understand how to see what fits together and not. And the third one would be the depth of field. So aligning the depth of field of the different objects that you have so that the focus plane is the same for all of them relative to your camera.

Joe Lenton
Yeah, there’s a lot to bear in mind when you start going through it like that. You just realise just how many elements go into making a composite image really

Hanna Neret
Yeah, definitely. And I think all those three things are things that you really need to think about when you shoot, because it’s really hard to fix in post. I mean, of course it can dodge and burn if you have the direction of light slightly off, but if you’re doing it completely wrong, then it’s going to be really difficult to do something about it. I mean, if the white balance is off, then you can always fix that in post. That’s a relatively easy writer if you want to change the colour scheme, noise level or whatever. But there are things that you really need to get right in camera.

Joe Lenton
Oh, absolutely, yeah. I’ve seen some interesting attempts along the way and I’ve tried it occasionally myself. And it can be… Yeah… You look at it and there’s part of when we first grow into it, you look at it and think it just looks a little bit strange. I’m not quite sure what it is. And then you start to realise what you need to do with that. I’ve used a little bit of CGI sometimes to create backgrounds and that can work quite well because you can actually set up a camera in there with exactly the same settings as your camera that’s taking the product shot. So that works quite nicely. Have you explored anything like CGI? That’s obviously slightly different to AI, which you definitely can’t use in competitions, but are you interested in those coming from a scientific background? Is it something that sparks your interest or is it just, well, it’s a tool and I can’t use it for competitions anyway.

Hanna Neret
I tried it a little bit when I was at university, but, no, it’s never really appealed to me. And again then, no, I can’t use it in competitions anyway, so it doesn’t really do it for me, I think. I have some images where I’ve actually done drawings myself, like hand drawn illustrations, and merged them with my image. And that appeals to me a lot more than creating something virtually, but then it’s usually a combination. It’s not CGI, but taking something that I’ve drawn and refining that in Photoshop. So there are elements that aren’t 100% photographic as such, but not CGI. And when it comes to AI, that’s of course a super exciting and interesting development happening. The text to image things that we see now, for me, going back to what I enjoy about photography, it’s the creative process, right? So AI for me is just skipping all the fun parts and getting to a result. But that’s nothing to do with what I have in my head anyway, because no matter how good I get at prompting, it’s not going to look like what’s in here. So AI doesn’t fulfil any needs for me creatively. I can definitely see the use cases in my other job, in my corporate job, that’s a fantastic opportunity. But for my creative satisfaction, AI is not very interesting. What I am hoping for, what I’m sure we will see within the very short future or near future, is AI tools making compositing easier, because there’s still a lot of hours that go into getting a composite scene to look right. And if AI can help with that, then I’m super happy. It could still be my images, it could still be my vision, but just speeding up the process, that would be good, I think.

Joe Lenton
I’m always kind of hopeful with each release of Photoshop that the selection tools will have got that little bit better. A little bit better. Because the number of times where you go around something with the pen tool and you think, ughhh… It’s not the exciting part of the edit. It’s the bit where you stick some music on in the background and you just click and get on with it. Each time I keep hoping and people say, oh, look, look what it can do now. And then I take it into my applications and say, like when I’ve been doing jewellery and you get like a chain or something and you go, okay, cut all the holes out on the chain and it goes, no, I can’t do that. He said, come on, do something useful.

Hanna Neret
To be fair, it is getting better and better, but I agree with you, it’s not all the way yet. There is definitely still improvement potential.

Joe Lenton
Yeah. And I don’t want to give it the creative stuff. I want it to do the boring bits for me. That’s what the computer’s for.

Hanna Neret
Yeah. That’s a good way of phrasing it. Yeah, exactly. When it can do the boring bits. Then I’m happy to use AI.

Joe Lenton
Brilliant. Okay, well, thank you very much for talking to us today, Hannah. It’s been really great having you on the podcast and we should look out for results coming out in the future, see how you’re doing. And I’m sure there’ll be plenty more exciting images to see in the future photography competitions. So thank you very much for coming on. It’s been a real pleasure.

Hanna Neret
Thanks for having me. It’s great talking to you.

Joe Lenton
And thank you all for listening. This is the Focused Professional podcast.

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