we are back with the wonderful the delightful the nuanced Liz Seabrook do my best we are we're having a nice time aren't we we're having a nice catch-up and you very very patiently have allowed me to record this again because somebody didn't have their correct microphone on and that someone was me it wasn't me it wasn't me that's a shaggy song if i ever heard one yes it is yeah we we had a nice nice old chat we were talking about all sorts of stuff botox and fillers and faces that don't look anything older than 35 nothing wrong with that you know if that's if that's your bag then brilliant then go full demi more go full i mean she does like yeah i mean did you see that amazing film the substance no i refuse to watch anything horror or horror adjacent why i'm interested in this why because i don't like horror films but i watched it because my nervous system is already frazzled enough without adding to that load uh the last thing i saw was hereditary which i got tricked into seeing because i did i kind of tricked myself into seeing it because it had tony collette in it and i love tony collette i love tony collette and i was like if tony collette's in it it must be good and um we saw it at cinema in islington and i came out and a van was on my bike and a van came within like a couple of inches of my handlebars and i sprinted it down for like the length of up the street and caught up with it at the end when it was at the lights and just sat there like what do I do now so yeah it just um it just puts me way like horror films just put me way too into my fight and flight for like anything good to come of it I'm chuckling and not at your horrible dilemma but I did something similar some stupid van nearly ran me off the road when I was on my road bike once and I chased him down but I actually when I got caught up with him I went on the inside of him which was very naughty because he was about to turn left and I sort of twatted the van really and then wobbled wobbled past while shouting at him and when I get angry I go in the poshest accent and I don't swear I don't I just go how dare you serve your rights and then cycled off I couldn't I can firmly say that I go the opposite way and become an extremely obnoxious like cockney urchin I love that we couldn't we can I can be the posh one you can be the kind of you know what is it go on my son yeah well yeah slightly stronger language than that but I just always think about my one of my friends um a car full of like kids drove past him when he was on his bike I mean I say kids they're probably like 17, 18. Scary. Spat in his face when he was on his bike. And he is massive. Like he is not to be trifled with. And at the next set of lights, he got off his bike and just lobbed his bike at their car. Oh, gosh. So that's why I'm always slightly wishing that I could be that ferocious, but I'm just not. Cycling's one of those weird things, isn't it? You have to remind yourself, you don't know who these people are. You don't know what they're capable of. You're very mortal on a bike. Yeah. And you've got to, I've got to remind myself, Katie, you're a woman. You've got no muscles. You might be six foot, but if somebody came at you, you wouldn't know what to do. You do have a bike to wield though. That's true. Yeah. But I like my bike. I don't want to waste it. It was a gift to hand me down from my late father-in-law. so I don't want to like waste it on well if it's carbon you probably shouldn't no it's a pinarello oh fair enough no although my brother keeps telling me off he's like why like it's a lovely bike but it's a really old bike and don't you know that all of the technology and everything is is just so much better for women now like the seats are better for women and you're like using a uh hardened man's seat that's about 20 years old and out of date compared to what you can get now and I'm like it might be perfect for your sit bones rule number five baby rule number five what's that? oh my god I thought you were like totally looking at me then I thought we were having a moment I thought you knew what it was no I I just thought mambo number five to be honest and it was quite least well then in cycling rule number five is harden the fuck up oh yeah it's very much a bloke thing really toxic masculine bullshit yeah In hindsight, I feel like if I hung around with you a bit more, Liz, I would become a better person. Maybe just slightly more aggressive towards the pink striarchy. Yeah, but, you know, I did hit the van with my bare knuckles and gave him a good telling off. not my proudest moment but also yeah not my proudest moment but also potentially my proudest moment you know I'm not going to take any you know I always like to sort of shout things like you know metal skin and bones metal and then like that putting my finger on my template looking at them going think I also I found as I've got older especially if I'm on my period I'm like get to a junction if it's raining and there's cars I just walk out in front and then mutter under my breath at them like while shaking my head it's raining it's raining you're in a car and i'm walking it's raining i'm going i think that's totally fair i think so i think so right this is the spark this is where we have a little bit of fun me getting over a cold and you i don't know what's your excuse today what being grumpy yeah honest i mean if i'm being honest and bringing the mood down uh grief oh no oh god now i feel bad because i feel like i know you a little bit because we've worked together haven't we and we've we've chatted on socials for many years and i'm so sorry for your loss well you know it's not been great but these things happen i did one day you know you weren't your usual sparky self you want to talk about it or are we leaving swiftly on really swiftly on i reckon okay all right so we have a subdued spark episode I do my best Yeah I be as sparkly as I can We don't have to force ourselves to be anything. Now you chose these questions last time. So we're going to dive in. I wonder if my answers will be different. Oh, yeah. That's a good point, actually. Okay. So what is a trend you're secretly over, but everyone else seems to love? Matcha. Matcha? Matcha. Ooh, what the green tea? Everyone, you can't look left without seeing a matcha here. All right. Everyone's got a matcha everywhere. Oh, it's everywhere. And they're just, I mean, I just don't know who actually likes it. Who actually likes matcha? There's a difference between liking matcha and liking like strawberry syrup with like a hint of matcha in it. and it's all just i just think it's nonsense where do you live i mean not the like not the historic beautiful tea ceremonies of japan and china they are not nonsense or bullshit in the slightest i live in east london oh well there you go then the epicenter the epicenter the wasp's nest whenever i go down there i'm like i need to improve my wardrobe and live a better life to do anything so once um i think when i was i'd been in london for like a year maybe maybe not even and i was really figuring out like the fact that anything goes absolutely anything goes you can do whatever you want in east london and people will like barely look twice at you and so i put my ponytail at the front of my head and put it through my cap which i had on backwards and walked around for like an hour went into shops bought some things and no one even like blinked at me and i was like okay this is where we're at anything is possible so when we finally meet in person can i come down and we'll just both dress up in the craziest shit and just go around hackney or shoreditch and we'll just see what happens we will be overshadowed within minutes love it love it i love sitting in the owl and the pussycat and watching people watching i was there with a friend the other day and we were just i said right we're gonna we're gonna do something completely which i don't normally do but we're gonna assess everybody's outfits and we're gonna be either complimentary or bitchy right that's the brief let's do it so pints in hand we just sat there and we watched and actually i was quite surprised there weren't that many people that stood out and had like really good style but those that stood out definitely were out there and then they they pulled it off i was impressed yeah yeah this is i was talking to a friend the other day because me and my friend had so my friends got really into queer line dancing okay which is amazing i've been with her to that and it's uh so much fun um but we went to there's a thing here called queer country which is spelt with an x right and no o um brilliant and we went to that and there was um like a country band on stage of like performers of various like genders queernesses outfits binaries non-binaries like you know everyone represented and the mc was a drag queen wearing this huge enormous like black tulle dress there was also someone dressed as a like drag queen cockerel um but yeah the end the like compare wearing this like huge dress which is the kind of thing that like as a like cis het woman i would reserve for like the glitziest of like red carpets and then they're just there wearing it in a brewery in walthamstow on a friday night and just being like it's like it's it's really interesting watching like or kind of observing the the drag scene and this like hyper hyper femininity that exists and is like completely accepted and completely like lived in and embraced and as like a cishet woman being like oh I wonder what that's like yeah and I think they're great because they're super confident and they're into it and you know they they look fab because obviously they're wearing like this incredibly like ostentatious ball gown but um yeah it's just having the like confidence and the like the vibe to pull it off it must be fun just like playing dress up when we were kids super fun yeah i'm getting into clothes again at the moment and it's just it's great it's it's being creative it's having the confidence to do it it's like oh am i gonna walk out with my balloon pants I had a friend pop around the other night I haven't seen him for ages because he's moved to Northern Ireland and it took me ages to get down the stairs because I was wearing my parachute pants and they kept getting caught on my my feet and I was like going down the stairs like this and open the door. There's been so many times recently that I've nearly fallen over my trousers on chutes. They're so dangerous you have to be so careful. I know and I'm now devastated that skinny jeans are coming back into fashion after I've taken so long to rehabilitate myself from wearing them oh come on you don't have to wear skinny jeans don't tell me skinny i've just got into parachute pants i can't go back to skinny jeans this is the problem this is where we're at nah they are very efficient for day-to-day living love them i love them i'm wearing some north face hiking trousers today there's no way i'm going back not no skinny for me no way do you remember that campaign when was it um was it for a kind of denim brand where they like basically spray painted skinny jeans on it i do remember that that was a long time ago yeah i want to say that was maybe diesel might have been yeah yeah you could have pretty much in some cases it could could have looked like you were wearing paint and not jeans they yeah you know the pains that we used to go through to get them on and off the jeggings oh no not leggings i've never worn leggings no not for me i prefer yoga pants well they are leggings still well harim pants so just nice and sort of floaty and baggy i wear them in bed i've got one pair that have got about five holes in them i just don't want to let them go i love them do you have to i'm not going to um what is a what is the smallest thing that instantly improved your work day Adam not being at home oh yes having the house having the flat to myself preferably the dog also not being there just a Monday of like complete just me for the morning potting around doing my life admin doing bits and bobs and then also like just having the space to think about like what my week looks like what I need to get done what I'm gonna do just in peace and quiet oh brain space yeah it's when they turn around when you're expecting them to go and they say well actually I'm not going to go in again now I'm going to stay at home I'm going to be with you and you're like go away go away oh we love them but it is wonderful as soon as they go and he comes back sometimes when he's forgotten something and I'm like at my desk looking at the ceiling well you'll just go I love you but fuck off I need my space I need my quiet and sometimes I'll just do like a little dance around the house when he's gone he doesn't know know all this and he never he would never listen to this podcast i mean not not that he doesn't love what i'm doing it's just i think he would hide under the table and cringe if you heard me on the podcast you know poor tom and now i'm on youtube as well inescapable i know and it'll pop up now and again and he'll go there's no way we're watching that and i'm like look it's me absolutely there's no way look mom i'm famous i know oh my god my wrinkles mom anyway um what's one piece of advice you'd ban from the creative industry forever side hustles yes or at least not side hustles full stop side hustles as a means to get into it to get into the creative industry because i think you need if you're serious about making something work obviously it's not financially viable for like some people to leap straight in but if you want to like get into the creative industries and get going like hit the ground running have a solid start quit your job and make it happen don't do the side hustle thing because it just slows everything down. Yeah, save up a bit of cash first and then see what happens. Buffer zone. Give yourself three to six months. Maybe sacrifice, you know, luxuries. I mean, yeah. Sacrifice loads. You won't have to do it for very long. No, you won't. Because once you get going, once that momentum builds, it's true. I mean, I did Creative Beam as a side project for years and it was only 12 years in that I said, right, I'm going in full time. And I definitely noticed a massive difference because I was like, right, I've got to make this work. I've got to like turn this into a commercial business. And yeah, here we are. So I think I would agree. I would absolutely agree. Now, if you could skill one steel, which is what I was about to say, if you could steal one skill from another creative discipline overnight, what would it be? I also remember my answer to this, which was the patience of graphic designers. of the ability to look things critically after you've experimented with something a bunch of times tillia is about to walk up the stairs now and she i watched her and robin developing ideas for the projects that they're working on at a fieldwork facility and it's so interesting and inspiring watching them like figure stuff out with like materials or whether that's typography and that's the size of things and like you know they've always got like bits and bobs printed out on the wall and they're standing and looking at everything and I'm so bad at just being like I know what the final thing is I'm just gonna make it and then skipping all of the testing process so that's something that I'm actively trying to develop at the moment and watching these two has been really useful for that. Do you share a studio with other creatives then? I do. Yeah that must be nice it is nice we've got a field work facility opposite me so that's tillia and robin and then arabeshi de latte which is francesca who's like i'm still not 100 on what she does but she basically like designs menus and food related stuff for fashion events and like the biennales and all sorts of things so she's kind of a food stylist concept maker extraordinaire and then downstairs we've got ali who's making this brand mim which is connecting like stylists influences so whether they're like interior stylists or stylists fashion stylists to their audience so you can kind of pay to have sessions through mim with your like favorite creators um for them to give you advice for certain things we've got steven who's downstairs who's currently also on a also chatting away um who does things in the restaurant industry we've got sounds great and is this all in east london it is we're into both are and i think there's like 15 desks here and then we've got a cafe called lee's downstairs and a florist called let's you look like that something like that but it's very nice it's nice to kind of yeah be around people doing different things community community it's what we need more of more real less kind of fake more in real life stuff it's always um always a comfort i think that is something that's definitely come out of the last couple of years with all these technical technical shift technological god wait until you get to my age you just start forgetting very basic words and mumbling over words and phrases and forgetting why you've gone into rooms that's my life well me and my housemate who i lived with when we first moved to london just mumble at each other and don't finish sentences when we talk to each other because we know what we're talking about anyway and one of our friends moved in and for the first few months she told me this like several years later she thought she'd gone deaf that is so cute though that you got to know each other so well that you didn't have to finish sentences. Yeah, just mumble along as two little kind of forest creatures wandering around. Cute. Is she doing well? Is she all right? He is an incredible, very talented DOP. He's called Ben Marshall and he does lots of DOP work in the fashion industry. DOP? He's very technical and loves if someone allows him to have a crane or a robot on set to do things what DOP I being stupid Director of photography Oh of course Right Okay So all the camera and lighting design for commercials So same as the cinematographer in features. Yeah. Do you think his job's safe? Yes. Thank God. That's good to know. Well, because he's the duo with the director. Yes. He's the instigator. He's the director's the ideas man. he's the making it come to life yeah people versus technical i love it love it i'd love to go to one of those shoot days you know and see what they get up to bonkers who's your creative hero past or present and what have they taught you without even knowing it jane bone or bound b-o-w-n i'm not sure how it's pronounced um who is a photographer star photographer for the guardian and she shot mostly in black and white and portraits and would turn up with a shopping bag with a desk lamp in it as her lighting in case she needed additional lighting inside amazing and my general thing is that because I ride my bike as much as I can I like having kit that all fits in my backpack for when I'm riding my bike so I think she kind of remembering how the work that she created and the longevity at which she created that for with like such minimal kit has been really useful to me in reminding myself that like for me as someone who's like a people centric photographer rather than sort of tech and gear first that it's okay because she made it work time and time again I thought it was the equipment that made the photo Liz should I tell you my good story which I'm not sure is an urban legend or is a real thing of a um photographer who goes to a dinner party and someone the host says oh it's so lovely to have you here you're such a wonderful photographer you must have a really exceptional camera and the photographer's like yeah sure and then at the end of the meal goes oh that was an absolute exceptional meal you must have an absolute cracking oven brilliant very very well played love it Now we do a chain reaction question. The previous guest was Jesse Maguire from Thought Matter and she wants to know what do you want to be remembered for? Not the angry bike. not the angry well I don't know maybe that would be quite cool um no this is I mean this feels quite like maybe more pertinent and relevant than last time we spoke because I've lost a friend since that happened and just seeing the what he has been what he is currently being remembered for and that was being like incredibly supportive and just this kind of warm light of a human who showed up for people and was always there for like he's a yoga teacher amongst other things but showing up for like new teachers first classes in the studio and like always being there for advice and making his students in the class feel safe and supported and cheerleaded to do different things and push themselves and reminding them that if you fall over you just get back up again um and really like that's a pretty that's a pretty amazing legacy to leave behind yeah and so I think and for me I think with my work or it's always been about like seeing the people in the middle of it and allowing people to be seen and to be heard and even if that's like the one time in that week or you know whenever that they feel like they have like everything stopped and they've been truly seen and heard and I have something that represents them as they feel themselves to be that's kind of what I would hope I'm able to offer yeah we want to be remembered as kind and generous yeah yeah but also as a space for people to feel safe and to be themselves yeah because I think we spend a lot of time not feeling safe in this world yeah we do you certainly do that I've seen you at work and I think that's the the part of being a photographer that is often overlooked it's about being a people person and having empathy and being able to pick up on the vibe of the room and it's a very intimate thing that you do actually um having gone through it myself with this lovely Jason Moore photographer for on Saturday it was um you end up having this kind of back and forth and you don't realize before the shoot just how much how intimate that is you know you he's got a job to do to get a bunch of photographs out of you to show the real person so as part of that you have to sort of draw that person out and it was fascinating to watch him at play quite disarming but in the end I guess what I showed and let out was somebody I'm now quite proud of so it was okay which is an amazing thing to offer you yeah and to like create the space for that to be yeah 100% which but you know newfound respect for photographers and and uh all the people in this amazing industry because it's uh a very very difficult very challenging job but probably very rewarding from what I saw. Yeah. Now you have a question for the next guest. Would you like me to remind you what it is or can you remember? I remember. It was, what do you feel like you should be doing and why are you not doing it? Perfect. So we will put that to the next guest next week. Lucky guest. Yeah, it'll be really interesting. What are you not currently doing? You're not going to answer that are you outreach outreach okay marketing well you know podcast episode yeah did one effort did one uh did my first sub stack a few weeks ago and have not thought about it since i mean there have been reasons for that yeah yeah of course you've had had a sad time yeah well thank you liz this has been truly lovely and thanks for being such a generous soul and sharing sharing your time with us today. Well, thank you. Thanks to Adobe Acrobat Studio for sponsoring this episode. If you're curious about what it can do for your workflow, head to the link in the show notes to find out more.
