The Nerdy Photographer Podcast

In this episode, I sit down with portrait photographer Betina LaPlante to explore the philosophy and practice behind her visceral, intimate portraiture.
Topics covered:
Why Betina puts the camera down before she ever starts shooting — and how building rapport before a session transforms the images she gets
The difference between directing a subject and witnessing one — and why she almost always chooses to witness
Her work photographing actors like Charles Dance and Christopher Lloyd, and what it means to reveal the person behind the persona
How shooting tethered (something she rarely does) became the right call for one particularly camera-shy subject
Her 35mm lens, her reliance on natural light, and why she's learning to work with continuous artificial lights
Her lifelong love of black and white — from developing film in her bathroom darkroom to converting digital portraits today
Why hands are central to her portraits: what they reveal, why they're harder to perform with, and how they carry a life's worth of character
The ethics of intimacy in portraiture — and why she has never felt the need to use discomfort as a tool
Dream subjects she'd love to photograph: Tilda Swinton, Willem Dafoe, Christopher Walken, and more
Her advice for photographers still finding their voice: shoot what you genuinely love
Find Betina LaPlante:
Instagram: https://instagram.com/betinatheplante
Website: https://betinaplante.com
Sponsor links:
StyleCloud — beautifully designed website templates for photographers: https://nerdyphotographer.com/recommends/stylecloud | Code: nerdyphoto15 (15% off)
Luminar Neo — AI-powered photo editing software: https://nerdyphotographer.com/recommends/luminar | Code: nerdyphoto ($10 off)
SiteGround — web hosting with increased storage capacity: https://siteground.com/go/nerdy
Support The Nerdy Photographer
Sign Up for The Power Up - https://nerdyphotographer.com/newsletter
Get some artwork from the print shop - https://art.caseyfphoto.com
Buy some Nerdy Photographer Merch - https://nerdyphoto.dashery.com
Use our link to buy new gear from Adorama - https://nerdyphotographer.com/recommends/adorama
Use our link to buy used gear from KEH - https://nerdyphotographer.com/recommends/keh
Follow along with us on social media @thenerdyphoto
About The Podcast

The Nerdy Photographer Podcast is written and produced by Casey Fatchett. Casey is a professional photographer in the New York City / Northern New Jersey with more than 20 years of experience. He just wants to help people and make them laugh. You can view Casey's wedding work at https://fatchett.com or his non-wedding work at https://caseyfatchettphotography.com 
 
If you have any questions or comments about this episode or any other episodes, OR if you would like to ask a photography related question or have ideas for a topic for a future episode, please reach out to us at https://nerdyphotographer.com/contact

You can be an exceptional photographer and still be completely invisible to the clients actively searching for someone like you. Not because your work isn't good enough, but because Google doesn't know you exist. Don't worry, though! This episode is going to make that problem go away.

SEO for photographers isn't dark magic. For a local photography business, roughly 90% of what moves the needle comes down to three things: your H1 tag, your image alt-text, and your site speed.

Your H1 is the main headline on your webpage and one of the strongest signals Google uses to understand what your page is about. "Capturing the Essence of Your Soul" is lovely — but nobody is searching for it. "Wedding Photographer in Austin" is what actually gets you found.

Alt-text is the written description attached to every image on your site. Google cannot see your photographs — it reads the label you give them. A file named "_MG_5422.jpg" tells Google nothing. A file named "golden-hour-bride-groom-portrait-austin-texas.jpg" with a matching alt-text description tells Google exactly what it needs to know.

Site speed is a documented Google ranking factor, and photographers are almost universally the worst offenders — uploading massive unoptimised files directly from Lightroom. Images destined for the web should be under 500KB. Free tools like Squoosh make this straightforward. I also recommend using a file format such as WebP to bring down file sizes.

Finally, we cover Google Business Profile — the free local listing that puts you on the map, literally, when someone searches for a photographer near them. A complete, well-reviewed profile can outperform a first-page organic ranking for local search intent.
Support The Nerdy Photographer
Sign Up for The Power Up - https://nerdyphotographer.com/newsletter
Get some artwork from the print shop - https://art.caseyfphoto.com
Buy some Nerdy Photographer Merch - https://nerdyphoto.dashery.com
Use our link to buy new gear from Adorama - https://nerdyphotographer.com/recommends/adorama
Use our link to buy used gear from KEH - https://nerdyphotographer.com/recommends/keh
Follow along with us on social media @thenerdyphoto
About The Podcast

The Nerdy Photographer Podcast is written and produced by Casey Fatchett. Casey is a professional photographer in the New York City / Northern New Jersey with more than 20 years of experience. He just wants to help people and make them laugh. You can view Casey's wedding work at https://fatchett.com or his non-wedding work at https://caseyfatchettphotography.com 
 
If you have any questions or comments about this episode or any other episodes, OR if you would like to ask a photography related question or have ideas for a topic for a future episode, please reach out to us at https://nerdyphotographer.com/contact

In this episode, Casey speaks with photographer, filmmaker, and DePaul University professor James Choi, who returned to Seoul after 46 years away and came back with the images that became Seoul Days and Nights, a new photo book from Trope. They dig into what it means to photograph a city holding ancient tradition and radical modernity in the same frame, the slow disappearance of the small family-run food shops that give neighborhoods their character, and how the Korean social concept of nunchi - the unspoken ability to read a room - shapes James's entire approach to working on the street.
In This Episode
How a six-month sabbatical in Seoul turned into a photo book
Photographing the tension between ancient palaces and glass skyscrapers - and why Seoul makes that contrast feel surprisingly at peace
The vanishing mom-and-pop food culture, and what gets lost when it goes
What nunchi is, why James's mother always said he had it, and how it cuts both ways as a street photographer
The ethical lines James draws on the street - when he holds back and why
The one image in the book that reminded him of his grandfather
What he hopes a first-time Seoul visitor takes from the book vs. what he hopes a local sees
Episode Promos
Seoul Days and Nights — https://amzn.to/4xSLRZz
StyleCloud website templates for photographers — https://nerdyphotographer.com/recommends/stylecloud | Code: NERDYPHOTO15 for 15% off
Luminar Neo photo editing software — https://nerdyphotographer.com/recommends/luminar | Code: NERDYPHOTO for $10 off
SiteGround web hosting — https://siteground.com/go/nerdy
Support The Nerdy Photographer
Sign Up for The Power Up - https://nerdyphotographer.com/newsletter
Get some artwork from the print shop - https://art.caseyfphoto.com
Buy some Nerdy Photographer Merch - https://nerdyphoto.dashery.com
Use our link to buy new gear from Adorama - https://nerdyphotographer.com/recommends/adorama
Use our link to buy used gear from KEH - https://nerdyphotographer.com/recommends/keh
Follow along with us on social media @thenerdyphoto
About My Guest

James Choi grew up a latchkey kid in Chicago. His parents immigrated from Korea when he was five and worked six days a week, so from age six and Seven he was alone taking the bus, walking the city, learning to read people and places and light. He didn't know it then, but he was already doing what he'd spend his life doing: observing. Photography and eventually filmmaking came from that.

His work has earned Awards at SXSW, Slamdance and Chicago International Film Festival. As an educator, James is also an assistant Professor at DePaul University where he founded Indie Studio, supporting students making their first independent features.

Seoul Days and Nights is in some ways a return to the beginning except this time he was walking a city that looked like him.

Seoul Days and Nights is available now - you can get it on Amazon - https://amzn.to/3QTxq6R. James Choi can be found on Instagram at https://instagram.com/JCPOV.
About The Podcast

The Nerdy Photographer Podcast is written and produced by Casey Fatchett. Casey is a professional photographer in the New York City / Northern New Jersey with more than 20 years of experience. He just wants to help people and make them laugh. You can view Casey's wedding work at https://fatchett.com or his non-wedding work at https://caseyfatchettphotography.com 
 
If you have any questions or comments about this episode or any other episodes, OR if you would like to ask a photography related question or have ideas for a topic for a future episode, please reach out to us at https://nerdyphotographer.com/contact

You've probably been told you should shoot RAW. And I'm sure you've also thought - WHY? I'm just delivering a JPEG file anyway. What's inside a RAW file that makes it worth the storage space? 
This episode gets into the numbers, and once you see them, the case for RAW becomes impossible to argue with. Yes, I knew it was your understanding that there would be no math, but, unfortunately, there's actually a lot of math behind what you see in digital photos.
Bit depth is exponential, not additive. A standard JPEG is 8-bit, giving you 256 brightness levels per colour channel and roughly 16.7 million possible colours total. A 14-bit RAW file gives you 16,384 levels per channel — over 4 trillion possible colours. That gap is invisible straight out of camera. It becomes very visible the moment you start editing.
We cover the staircase effect — what happens to smooth gradients in low bit-depth files when you push exposure or shadows in post. Those gaps between brightness levels stretch apart and become visible as banding: ugly, digital-looking stripes in what should be a smooth sky or a softly lit wall. In a 14-bit file, the steps are fine enough that normal editing simply can't pull them apart.
We also break down the difference between lossless and lossy RAW compression. Lossless compression reduces file size without discarding any data — think of it like a ZIP file for your image. Lossy compression makes a permanent, one-time decision to discard some sensor data at capture. For many shots you'll never notice. For scenes with subtle gradients or heavy shadow recovery, you might.
Support The Nerdy Photographer
Sign Up for The Power Up - https://nerdyphotographer.com/newsletter
Get some artwork from the print shop - https://art.caseyfphoto.com
Buy some Nerdy Photographer Merch - https://nerdyphoto.dashery.com
Use our link to buy new gear from Adorama - https://nerdyphotographer.com/recommends/adorama
Use our link to buy used gear from KEH - https://nerdyphotographer.com/recommends/keh
Follow along with us on social media @thenerdyphoto
About The Podcast

The Nerdy Photographer Podcast is written and produced by Casey Fatchett. Casey is a professional photographer in the New York City / Northern New Jersey with more than 20 years of experience. He just wants to help people and make them laugh. You can view Casey's wedding work at https://fatchett.com or his non-wedding work at https://caseyfatchettphotography.com 
 
If you have any questions or comments about this episode or any other episodes, OR if you would like to ask a photography related question or have ideas for a topic for a future episode, please reach out to us at https://nerdyphotographer.com/contact

Portrait photographer Craig Fleming has spent decades navigating the space between film and digital, celebrity commissions and working-class subjects, polish and truth. In this episode of The Nerdy Photographer Podcast, Craig joins us for a wide-ranging conversation about his process, his philosophy, and two ongoing personal projects — Quiet Men and Circus — that are reshaping how he thinks about legacy and the purpose of his work.
We get into what it really means to balance film and digital photography, why Craig thinks returning to medium format gave him integrity back as a photographer — and made him better at digital. We talk about his strong feelings on AI and what it's taking from photographers and creatives. Craig also shares what he believes is the single most important element of a great portrait — and it has nothing to do with your camera.

Episode Promos


Siteground Web Hosting - https://siteground.com/go/nerdy
Stylecloud Website Templates - https://stylecloud.co/ref/380/
Luminar NEO Photo Editing Software - https://nerdyphotographer.com/recommends/luminar
Support The Nerdy Photographer
Sign Up for The Power Up - https://nerdyphotographer.com/newsletter
Get some artwork from the print shop - https://art.caseyfphoto.com
Buy some Nerdy Photographer Merch - https://nerdyphoto.dashery.com
Use our link to buy new gear from Adorama - https://nerdyphotographer.com/recommends/adorama
Use our link to buy used gear from KEH - https://nerdyphotographer.com/recommends/keh
Follow along with us on social media @thenerdyphoto

About My Guest
"Portrait photographer. Stuck in the mid 20th Century."

You can find Craig's workshops — in London, Rotterdam, and Venice — at https://craigfleming.net, and follow his ongoing projects on Instagram at https://instagram.com/craigflemingphoto
About The Podcast

The Nerdy Photographer Podcast is written and produced by Casey Fatchett. Casey is a professional photographer in the New York City / Northern New Jersey with more than 20 years of experience. He just wants to help people and make them laugh. You can view Casey's wedding work at https://fatchett.com or his non-wedding work at https://caseyfatchettphotography.com 
 
If you have any questions or comments about this episode or any other episodes, OR if you would like to ask a photography related question or have ideas for a topic for a future episode, please reach out to us at https://nerdyphotographer.com/contact