EP164 Inside Graphistudio: Heirlooms, AI And The Future Of Photography – With Mauricio Arias
Featuring Mauricio Arias – from Episode 165 of the Mastering Portrait Photography Podcast This summer, I found myself at the foot of the Dolomites, tucked inside a sun-drenched meeting room at Graphistudio HQ, chatting with the wonderfully philosophical Mauricio Arias. He’s part strategist, part designer, part storyteller—now officially dubbed (by me) the Product Philosopher of Graphistudio. We’ve used Graphistudio products for over 15 years. Our clients love their albums and wall art. We love their consistency, their craftsmanship, and their beautifully obsessive attention to detail. So when Mauricio and I sat down for a conversation, I had one question in mind:
Why does print still matter in a digital world?
Mauricio’s answer was simple and heartfelt: because photographs are meant to be held. He spoke about growing up with albums on the coffee table and family portraits on the wall—how physical images root our memories in something real. But what stuck with me most was this: “Printing reveals both the beauty and the flaws.” A great print will elevate your best work, but it also exposes any cracks in your post-production. It’s humbling. And it’s powerful motivation to keep improving. We talked about calibration (yes, you need it), about photography as an emotional craft, and about the importance of believing in what you offer. Because if you don’t believe your work belongs in an album or on a wall, how will your clients ever believe it? We also touched on the future—on AI, on trust, and on the rising value of human, handmade, tangible things. Heirloom prints are becoming more important, not less. Links: Graphistudio: graphistudio.com Mauricio Arias: mauricioarias.art
Transcript
In this interview, I thought I would just leave it as it was, but when I listened back to it, I felt that maybe just maybe a little clarification as to what we’re up to might not go amiss. And so here I am. It’s the hottest Saturday of the year. I’ve managed to bag two weddings this year that have both landed on what was, at the time, the hottest day of the year.
I shot one a couple of weeks ago in London – it was 34 degrees centigrade – and I’m about to go off and do the second part of a two-day wedding this afternoon, this evening. And again, it’s projected to be 34 degrees. Not only that, but we’re going to be working in a teepee. Not the coolest things in the world, at least from a temperature point of view.
In between those things, I thought I’d sit down and record a quick intro to the following podcast. I’ve been working with Graphistudio for 15 years. Sarah and I first started working with them a long time ago when we were looking for the very best of the very best of the very best to provide to our wedding clients. Lots of our portrait clients also have albums and portfolio boxes and some of their incredible metal artwork for the wall. They have always been the best and they continue to be the best. For us it was a logical choice to use them as a supplier.
Over those 15 years, we’ve been really consistent in our numbers with them – it’s barely changed, the same amount every year. And I guess because of that, Graphistudio very kindly asked Sarah and me to be ambassadors for them. As you know, I’m only ever an ambassador for a product that we genuinely use, genuinely love, and that genuinely makes our clients’ lives that little bit better. And of course, that’s true here as well.
We’ve been using Graphistudio for a very long time, so of course it’s a thrill to be an ambassador. And of course that does bias some of the ways I talk about the product, because I have a role. In return they give us exposure and they give us the most incredible service, which they always did. To be fair, the ambassador side of it hasn’t changed that. It gives us some visibility. And over the next six months or so, increasingly it looks like we’re going to be recording tutorials and how-tos and, I guess, encouragement for our listeners to use Graphistudio products, to have the confidence to use their products, because they are the best. But being based just outside Venice in Italy, it can sometimes feel like they’re a very, very long way away.
There is a UK outlet, a UK subsidiary, or whatever you want to call it. Jeremy Price here in the UK is not only a fantastic guy to know in the industry, but over the years he’s become a really good friend of ours. I think that kind of happens in this industry, doesn’t it? You start with contacts and then you just get on really, really well with them over a long period of time and they become more than just the UK director of Graphistudio. They become friends.
I’m telling you all of this so that you have some context for the interview. Sarah and I went out to Italy at the beginning of last week to spend a couple of days with the team – looking at our products being made, looking at new products that we might use, investigating, talking to, laughing with the guys, having – well, you know my feelings about Italian wine. Love the stuff. A couple of very nice lunches and dinners. Just really getting insights into different ways we can use the product, ways we can make our side of it more efficient, and get the very best out of the role as a client of Graphistudio, but also as an ambassador for Graphistudio.
So there are my cards on the table. I do have skin in the game. I’m not paid by Graphistudio. We don’t get preferential discounts or anything like that. There’s no money to be made, except that I get an inside track into the greatest album company in the world and I get to see and use the very best of the very best.
With all that in mind, here’s a lovely interview with Mauricio Arias. Go and Google him – M-A-U-R-I-C-I-O, and then Arias, A-R-I-A-S. If you’re already in the Fearless photography community, you will know him. He has won pretty much everything. Phenomenal photographer, an interesting guy, insightful, funny, full of ideas and different thought processes.
He’s very analytical about how he thinks about not just photography, but how photography interplays with people, with real life, with emotions. Enjoy this interview. I hope you do. We were recording it in a little meeting room so the sound quality might not be quite what you’re used to with my podcasts.
That said, you’ve tolerated years of me being in a Land Rover, so this is way better. Please do enjoy this podcast with Mauricio Arias. I’m Paul and this is the Mastering Portrait Photography podcast.
The great joy of this job is I get to travel, I get to meet people, I get to do and see things that are not the norm. It’s a wonderful thing to do. And today of all days, here I am at the foot of the Dolomites, just north of Venice, at Graphistudio, which is an amazing place where we create stunning products for our clients.
I’ve just asked Mauricio his job role here at the factory, and after about five minutes of him rattling off titles, the best thing I wrote was Brainstormer. So I’m sitting here with Graphistudio’s Mauricio. Hello. How are you?
Good to ask questions like on a podcast as though we’ve never met, but in fact we’ve been chatting all morning and yesterday about all sorts of things. I’m going to ask you to do this, and I do this with a degree of trepidation. Describe your role here at Graphistudio in no more than five words.
Oh my God. From start to bottom, first – strategy. Strategy for the brand, commercial marketing, image strategy. Then development would be another way to describe it. Product. Then relationships – building, maintaining, creating new and expanding. And then the last one could be production or creation of content that will be used for all channels and everything that we have to do.
You’ve actually only done four. I tried to get you to five, but I’m going to add blue sky thinking at the bottom, which is an awful term from my consulting days, but still a useful one. And having spent a couple of days around you, what’s interesting to me is having asked you that question, suddenly you’ve dipped into interview mode. I can see you thinking every answer out. But in fact, over the past two days what we’ve actually done is kill ourselves laughing, throw ideas around from one end of a room to another, to the point where the people around us have pulled us apart and started to interrupt us.
What I’m going to ask is – and I know this because we’ve had a chance to talk and I’ve had a chance to look at your work – you are an incredible photographer. First and foremost, it’s such a joy to be sitting here talking about the product, but I’m talking about the product that you understand because I’ve seen your images in these products and they look incredible. Just for the listeners, if you haven’t got it in the show notes, Mauricio Arias is a pretty well known photographer – actually, I was underselling it. I think you are tremendously well known around the world in the Fearless community. And your work is stunning. What brought you to Graphistudio?
Well, before I had this perspective, we were always trying to be the best at what we did, the way we did it as photographers. We always been very hard on ourselves in terms of our standards and how we could improve. I remember when Chrisman Studios was the studio that I started with. We had these sessions after every wedding where we would build a slideshow. Each of us would start by himself with a hundred photos or eighty photos that would tell the story. It was about storytelling. We would create the images down to the essence of what it was all about, and then we would pass it around and criticise ourselves, be very hard with ourselves and very honest. Sometimes over a glass of wine, just to be candid about everything.
It was great. And that’s how we – hammer, hammer, hammer – and then to complete this, we realized we need to have really a full experience and the product. So we came down to Graphistudio, because we were looking for the best in the world. And at the time, culturally speaking, in terms of the trends in photography, in wedding photography, we were the trendy ones.
So then Graphistudio, of course, and building that relationship, they brought us here to do a workshop. We did a workshop here at the Castello Ceconi, and that’s how I met everybody, the team here.
So let me ask you a question. Over the past few days, and this has been a conversation that is going on in the industry – much broader than just here – the newer generation of photographers, the guys that are way out there doing really incredible work, they don’t seem necessarily to value putting their work into a physical product. As much as certainly I do. I’m the older generation. I’m not yet the Aldus generation, but I’m heading there.
What I’m curious about is – I’ve seen your work, and it is stunning. And like all photographers, I look at somebody else’s work and it’s a mix of admiration and also insecurity. These are amazing. Oh my God, why can’t I do that?
But my point is that what you create is probably more cutting edge than what I’m seeing from the younger photographers right now, and yet you did and do value putting your work in print. I hear this story that the really trendy, avant-garde, experimental photographers don’t believe in print. And yet I would say you are one of those guys, and you do. Why?
Oh my God. Because first and foremost, I come from a culture and a generation that really grew up appreciating the human experience and growing up with albums and photos in my house – my grandma, my family. So for us it has always been logical, personal. And then just as a matter of craftsmanship, the photograph is the end of everything.
I remember, because I grew up in a different country – a whole different story. I remember the photographer coming to the house trying to sell me the picture that he took, that nobody asked for by the way, but he did and he came. And I remember having albums in the house. So to me, from the very beginning, a photograph means a physical thing. It was never about it living on a phone. The end was always to realise itself, to manifest itself in a physical matter that you can experience and pass along.
Starting from that point of view – very personal and genuine – it just makes sense for us to always have that. So it was included in all our packages from the very beginning. We always had an album within our offer. It was always a full experience, finishing with the product.
And then from a business and marketing point of view, it makes so much sense, because you maximise profits with a product. And from a marketing point of view, it is a great tool for building an authentic, long-term relationship with the family. And then for them to talk about you and your work with other people. It has so many benefits only.
And then on top of that, it’s so beautiful when you really start to understand. I told you this before – I did not at the beginning. I was just doing post-processing and not really thinking. It wasn’t until I started printing with Graphi that I realised, because my post-processing, to be very nice with myself, wasn’t really where it needed to be. When you truly understand the quality, the detail – if I printed on my home printer, whatever I had, it wasn’t the same as what these guys do here. It is not the same.
But that made me actually understand that I need to be better in every aspect, especially when you really want to pursue excellence. And that is what gives you satisfaction – doing something that is actually well done, and being proud of what you do, regardless of the recognition or the echo of everything else.
Just be proud of it. It’s amazing when you finally get to fulfil the piece, when you’re finished. It’s the same when you’re taking a photo and you’re trying to get a picture, looking at compositions, the lighting, and when you finally get it, it feels so good. You think, oh my God, I feel there’s something here.
And that is something you also get when you finally create a piece and then you can see it manifested in real life in front of you. And it is different – it is absolutely different. It could be personal, it could be a business decision, it could be something that is just for your craft, and then it helps your community, your marketing. Products affect so much.
Going back to the real question – why other people? I think it’s the answer to many things. It’s about education and understanding, because we all base our actions and behaviours on the database that we have in our brains. We respond based on context, the culture we come from, how we were raised, all of that.
I think the younger generations maybe haven’t been exposed enough yet to appreciate it. But it is a very smart, amazing generation and super quick. Once they get it, they get it. And the people I have seen now – being on the back end, I’ve seen more of the different bubbles of reality that exist in the industry, not only mine but all of them – I say, wow, the guys who get it, and who also understand the trends, social media and all of this, it’s a killer combination for them. Once they understand the power of it, they elevate it, and it becomes this beautiful symbiosis to see. I think it’s just that they haven’t been exposed yet to all the benefits and all the value that comes with it.
Okay, so let me pick up on a couple of threads within there. Firstly, let me echo entirely your viewpoint. Even now – Sarah is just now looking, because we’re here in the factory, at how we’re going to create the 2024 Book of Faces. The 2023 one we have in our studio is, singly, my most prized book. It’s my photos, but more importantly, Sarah designed it. She picks the pictures, she creates the book, and then essentially presents it back to me.
And the experience of opening it – it’s not just the visual. It’s the tactility of it. As you touch it and feel it and open it, each of those pages is another story for me. They’re a client, or maybe a model on a workshop, a family member, a moment in time – every page. And when you see your work like that, whether it’s a book or a frame on the wall, my heart still skips. You don’t get that sensation looking at a screen. We’ve got a 70-inch Samsung fine art screen in the studio and the photos look incredible on it, but my heart doesn’t skip a beat looking at pixels on a screen. It skips a beat looking at it printed.
We can come back to the psychology of why that’s the case. But you said something in the middle of that which made me cock an eye – and you said it to me yesterday as well – and I think it’s important that for the listeners of the podcast we talk about it a little bit.
What I’ve written down is that you said that printing, particularly with Graphistudio, because this is literally the best printing on the planet, exposed your weaknesses in post-production. And I also wrote down that it exposes the beauty of your work. It does both of those things at the same time.
It’s easy to talk about exposing more beauty by putting it into a frame. But I think a lot of photographers, hearing someone of your standing say it exposed flaws in your process, have probably just had the fear put into them. So let’s talk about that a little bit. When you are prepping a file – and I think we’re going to do some collaborative work, aren’t we –
One of the biggest lessons was to understand the media. It’s so flexible. I try to imagine and see the pixels, the zeros and ones – they can make people cry. We’re going through all the levels. It’s a weird thing, how everything happened.
From the abstract to the practical is the handling of the file. Because it’s digital, you need to understand and read it. I’ve always thought about this, just getting better with time, having more knowledge about it. You work a file, you open it, and you don’t convert it. You manage the colour profiling, you’re consistent all along, all the time – the 16-bit file that you open, smart objects that you work in Lightroom or Photoshop, or Capture One, or any software you use. Be coherent with the profile of your camera. So many things that I think you should expand on, because you know way more than I do.
The point to me is like playing guitar. People might ask you, is the left hand more crucial, or the right hand? No. The post-processing and the taking of the photograph are equally important, because you are actually putting a lot of your personality, your take, how you see the world – the same way you decide when you’re taking a picture, what goes in and what goes out of the frame. The same way you’re doing the post-processing, you’re asking: is this a dramatic moment that I should accentuate, or is this a softer situation where the imagery should reflect that? The processing of the file should also portray that.
You take into consideration not only the technical aspect, but the emotion and everything. Every single part of the post-processing is intentional – the tone, the colour, everything makes sense. And then when you understand the power of printing, you take that other layer into consideration. Fine art, for example, is so intentional. You have a vision first, something in your head. You set the end point, and then you start reverse engineering everything to see how it transforms along the way. But every step has to be intentional and meaningful. That’s how it has been transformed for me.
The technical aspects are so many, and I think I’m still learning, honestly. But the one nugget I can give everybody that I think is valuable is to understand how to calibrate your monitor.
You’ve made me smile, because you used a musician’s analogy. Of course I’m very happy, as everyone who listens to the podcast knows. I very often break things down into music because it’s so much more tangible in many ways – not in every way, but in many ways. When you talk about the guitar, left hand, right hand – you can’t play the guitar with one hand tied behind your back. Though I have seen some people play just on the left hand, which is very clever.
You hit on a whole load of stuff, and there was a moment there where even I was thinking, wow, that’s heavy. I’m taking a lot away from that.
So I’m going to take this into a couple of little bits. Firstly, you talked about intentional and meaningful, and I think that’s a beautiful way – a very spiritual way, actually, a very emotive way – of talking about what a lot of people regard as Photoshopping. But of course it’s not. It’s the delivery of your vision.
What does intrigue me is the psychology of photography. Quite often you go in with a vision, you take a shot with that vision, you think you’ve got that shot with that vision, and then stuff happens. I don’t know what that stuff is, but definitely time changes things. You look at a picture in a week and you’ll have a different emotional reaction to it than you’ll get in a year, two years, five years.
It’s one of the things I say to people – don’t delete your raw files, ever. Because in a year’s time, two things will have happened. The technology with which you process that file will be completely different, and time passing generates ideas. So I often go back to an old file and take it back to the raw, back to the beginning, and prep it again. Because my experience has changed, my tastes have changed. I’m not stuck, of course, but it’s still a great image. But now my intention and my meaning have shifted a little bit, and it’s a lovely thing.
You also talked about the split between emotional and technical, and I think fundamentally what you’ve just described is photography, full stop. It’s a heady mix of how you feel and what you can do. And that’s why it’s challenging, why it can be frustrating, and also why it’s profoundly beautiful.
It is. And personal. Oh, totally. In the field in which you and I work, which is people photography, the personal bit isn’t just you – it’s you and the relationship you have with the person in front of you. And those relationships are absolutely key.
Before we move the topic along a little bit, just to reassure people – you are absolutely right, calibrate your monitor. You can’t play a guitar that’s out of tune. Well, you can, but it’s going to sound awful. And yet every musician, even in the punk era, they all tune their instruments before they smash them. That’s how it works. You must work with in-tune instruments, and you must see what you are doing on a decent calibrated monitor. They’re not expensive. It’s 120 quid for a really good calibrator. The old days of me spending a couple of thousand pounds on a unit are gone. 120 quid – get a Spyder, a Datacolor, whichever one you like. There’s a load of them.
I should probably say, nobody sponsors this show. I didn’t sort that out. I’ve done a few bits on the sponsorship side, but never really pursued it. I mean, I suppose this is as close as it gets, sitting here in Graphistudio’s factory. Maybe I should say “sponsored by,” but here I’m in my role as me.
The additional bit I’d add is, have a look at your histogram. You want your blacks to be not quite black, and you want your whites to be not quite white, for most work. Though you and I have had a very interesting conversation today about printing on metal, where there’s a whole different world.
But that’s like, when you understand the rules, you can break them. Exactly. To anybody who’s thinking about printing their work – don’t be afraid of it, but do practise it. Even for us, before I send anything high value, as in high cost, to be made, I print it in the studio first. I don’t know what printer you’re using, but mine is pretty accurate for fine art and for finishes that are standard. Obviously I can’t replicate everything you have here, but I can at least check I’m not getting chromatic aberrations, I’m not getting bronzing, and all of those kinds of things.
Let’s move on from the practicalities, although actually it was so much less practical than I was expecting. You talked really about emotion.
I can’t help it. That is just like… it’s the central American in you, that very emotive, passionate… I’m very connected. I feel first, and I can rationalise it, but everything you do, even the most technical aspect of it, if you’re impregnated with love – and in Graphistudio, this is a family company, and you see everybody here, they’re all families.
I know everyone – from the guys who come in in the morning, the girls who come in the morning and do the offices and everything, to everybody up and down. And when it’s coffee time, we all have coffee at the same time and we go and chat about anything – the game, whatever. It doesn’t matter what you’re doing, what role you’re doing, it doesn’t matter.
So that is a beautiful, beautiful thing. And I see the guys here, they really want to feel proud of what they do. And that’s an Italian thing. I feel like they do impress their emotion and their care about what they do when they do it. And that has an effect on the final result and the output of everything you do.
No, I agree. And we tell that story to our clients.
You talked a little bit about photographers and education and all those kinds of things. One of the things that I’m not sure photographers always appreciate, certainly when you’re starting out, is your role in educating your client. And in this context, when you’re printing to this level, we are always talking about client work in some form.
We are delivering product to the client, but part of what we need to do is tell the same story you just did. Which is, do you know this album is going to come from Italy? It’s handmade. I’ve been in the factory. This factory is vast. It’s highly technical because the actual printing, the actual cutting, the mouldings – all of these things are hugely technical, but at the end, somebody assembles it, somebody’s hand stitching that spine, somebody is making sure by eye, under calibrated lighting, that the prints look right.
And I’ve met as many people as I can over the past couple of days. I’ve laughed. The people who work with us and know us know that I value more than anything else a relationship. So we have a relationship with Graphistudio. I can come down and say, is there any way we can make this work a little bit better? Yes. On our side, we’ve created something. Is there a way we can do it better so we are working with you collaboratively? Yes. And I value that. I value customer service. But more than anything else, I value that however many people are out there smiling at us – and we only come here once every few years – people remember us.
I don’t know how this works, but when you hand over something made with love, somehow some of that moves with the product. Maybe it’s the way I feel about it. Maybe it’s the way we talk about it, but we talk to our clients about all of this.
On that note, let’s talk a little bit about communication. I’ve written all of these things down about you, but one of the things I’ve really noticed over the past couple of days is – and it’s really funny, you’ve got your podcast voice on because we have just laughed for two days – you are very good at it. You are enthusiastic. You are an enthusiastic orator, with enthusiasm and passion and energy. And I love that.
What I wanted to ask you was, what’s the best advice you can give to a photographer about convincing their clients that their images should be in some form of physical product, whether it’s an album or wall art or a freestanding piece of art like the things around here?
So the advice is to the photographer for him to give to his clients?
Well, if you were the photographer selling to your client – I’ve got it pretty well down about how I want to talk about it. You work with thousands of photographers. If you were talking to a photographer saying, here’s a couple of quick tips on how you can persuade your clients to buy your products – there you go, I’ve boiled it down.
Okay. From a marketing point of view, it will always come down to value propositions and exposure. Those are the two things. It’s a concept – for example, we have people who actually do destination weddings, and they bring a small pocket album that they want to give, or give away.
Once people are exposed to it, once they touch it, feel it, understand it – they get it. This product sells itself. It’s a heirloom, it’s a premium product. It looks serious, but at the same time it’s accessible.
For the photographers – we’re a B2B company, we don’t want to disclose pricing or anything like that – but believe me, we have customers who really take advantage of this. The meeting Italy, the history, the values of the company. How conscious we are of every aspect of production. All of these are value propositions, and my marketing mind goes right there – exposure and value.
In my experience as a photographer, with my own customers, I never gave them the option to not have it. I never even thought about it. It wasn’t a thing. I never thought to say, “Hey, what about if you have it or maybe not.” No, no – you have it. We had customers say, “I don’t want it.” And I’d say, it doesn’t matter. You have it. It is our gift to you, and I don’t care about the cost. You’re going to come back and thank me later. When you have a family, when you have history, we are older than you. We know this better than you.
We never gave them the option to not have it, because it was part of our philosophy as a studio. We wanted you to have this. We understand how meaningful and useful it is.
I have a couple of friends in LA – quite a few, actually. I remember one of them, his house burned in the fires. He told me, “It’s crazy – I got the pictures. For some reason I got the pictures.” It is so meaningful. We know this, and I think we have a responsibility. I feel a responsibility when I’m covering an event. These people have put so much love, time, and money into it, and they’re allowing me to be the person with the responsibility to do justice to what they did – to capture it for themselves, their friends, their loved ones, and the generations to come.
I feel that responsibility to deliver something beautiful. From the marketing side of things, I think that answers it. But from my personal side, I say I never gave people the option not to have it. What I would tell photographers is just do that.
But only if you believe it. The reason you’re talking passionately to me right now is because you believe it and mean what you say. Otherwise it’s nonsense. Convince yourself first – do you really want to do this or not? Because I don’t want you pushing something you’re not convinced about. If you feel it and you believe it, they will feel it too. They’ll understand.
What’s interesting about that – I asked you a question that was really about how you make sure the product is your end goal. And you’ve also alluded to the fact that this is the best marketing there is. Put it on a wall, other people will come to you. It’s as simple as that. I’ve been doing it for 20 years, and everywhere we’ve put frames on the wall, at least one client will say, “I saw that picture, I want one.” Or it triggered something.
You expose it to them, and then it does the work.
But I think what you’ve just touched on about belief – you were talking about the product, because that’s why I asked you – but actually it’s belief that what you are doing has value. It’s belief that what you’re doing is beautiful. It’s belief that you are delivering memories and an experience to that client. And those beliefs, I think, when I talk to the very best photographers, are just inbuilt.
You’re acutely aware of the insecurities of this job, and you’re only ever as good as the last shoot or the last shot. I understand that. Of course I do.
But a belief that what we are doing right now will have a long-lasting importance – that’s right. And then yes, of course with frames or product, you have to believe it. Of course you do. If you try and lie about this stuff, you’re caught in a heartbeat.
Because the first thing that’ll happen – the minute the client says, “I just want the files,” you’ll go, “Okay, you’re done.”
But for us as a business, we’ve proven year on year on year on year that while everybody wants things to be cheap, everybody also wants things that they feel proud of. Very few people will say, “I want cheap and crappy.” I’ve never had them. There’s always a race to the bottom and there’s always someone cheaper.
But great product – let me qualify that – the best product always has a value. And everyone listening will have something in their lives, whether it’s their mountain bike, whether it’s their car, whether it’s their favourite fountain pen or watch or whiskey. I don’t know what that’d be, but everyone has something that was gifted to them maybe, or they bought it as a treat, that is just quality. And every time they use it or see it, it just lifts the spirits. And that’s why we do product.
Files cannot do that. They cannot.
I just enjoy talking to you and listening to you. You’re smart, and it’s fun.
I wanted to talk about two things. Firstly, the future. That’s what I wanted to talk a little bit about. I’m sitting here surrounded by product, in your dev labs. There’s new stuff, there’s old stuff, there’s failures, there’s successes. Where do you see the next couple of years as being core developments? Is there anything cool, anything interesting? Where do you see it going?
In terms of products and looks and trends, we are entering an AI era. When I think long term, I think about how the culture is shifting all the time, and with every cycle of crisis and victories that people have to go through and learn – as peoples, as a world, as mankind – we always have these morals to develop, to understand, in order to progress and keep going.
One of the virtues I think people are developing now, as a global culture, is authenticity. And that’s because there’s going to be none of it soon. It’s like an antibody. And that’s why I would always lean towards it. When the whole world is shifting, it is a way for you to differentiate yourself – to understand that whatever it is, if you are being yourself, it resonates. It holds.
When we talk about product lines, I love what we are doing. We are always innovating, always trying to reinvent the wheel. And sometimes it’s not like – well, a circle is a circle, a triangle is a triangle, a square is a square. Those are the notes in music. There are twelve of them. But how you use them, the composition at all levels of understanding – that’s what resonates differently for everybody and makes it beautiful in different ways.
That’s what we’re trying to do. And we have this mindset here. Our CEO, Tulio Tramontana, is a trained painter and graphic designer by trade. He’s a genius in finance and strategy, and that’s his vision – always thinking about the arts, thinking about the artists, thinking about beauty, thinking about design.
The reason why Castello Chicon exists is because of that, because he wanted to be the house of all photographers around the world, a place for people to come and to learn and to share. Everything this company has done and is going through into the future is always in pursuit of excellence, pursuit of beauty. Always looking for that thing that you see and say, “Oh wow.” You’re moved by it, and whatever you buy, you’re thinking about the quality, and some of your senses come into contact with it and are moved by it. And that’s the reason why you wanted it as part of your life, because you felt something.
In terms of technology, product line design and all of that, it’s part of the Italian DNA they have here. Part of our path forward is trying to be who we are – authenticity, and always this pursuit of excellence. Not just doing anything negative, but always pushing forward.
I’ll invite everybody to go and look at the website, of course.
And I was going to add a footnote to something you said in the middle of there. It’s something I think all of us are chewing on at the moment, not just photographers, which is the role of AI in the future. What we’re already seeing is that AI is producing online content at a rate never seen before. Which means that ultimately AI will learn from AI, will publish to AI, will comment on AI, will like AI, and in the end there’s no role for human interaction in anything online.
We are going to move back to a very physical world – that’s one of a series of predictions, and who knows, it might not go that way. But what will become incredibly important, certainly from a marketing strategy point of view, is if you can’t trust what’s online, how do you reach your customer? And having something physical in someone’s hands is not a bad place to be.
The same way we say today “we are an eco-friendly company,” the same way we are going to say “we are a human-based company.” That will be the future, very soon.
And we haven’t really talked about your eco footprint and all those kinds of things – that’s one for a different podcast.
I’m going to ask you one final question. Just in a nutshell, if somebody is genuinely curious, wherever you’re listening to this around the world – and just to be clear, Graphistudio is for professional photographers only, so you have to be a professional photographer, this isn’t for the public – but if you are in that position and you’re thinking, “Okay, that sounds intriguing,” what’s the first step?
We have a great team around the world – Jeremy Price and Maureen in the United States, Francis in France. The most important thing for us to start is for you to approach us and have a conversation, because the best thing we can do is actually listen to you before we pitch you any product. We’re not just trying to sell you something. We want to build a long-term relationship with you.
The first thing is to have a call, write an email, have a conversation about it so we understand your goals and your lifestyle and whatever you want to achieve. We want to help you and be your partner on that path, and help you choose what’s best for you – what might be an introductory line of products that fits your style or your brand. Because we are a sort of platform for you.
You can design something with us based on the configurations that we have. But it’s like, if Adobe make Photoshop, Photoshop doesn’t make anything if the artist doesn’t come to it and use it. We have the capabilities, the technology and everything, but it’s for you to combine colour, texture, material, size. That is up to you. We facilitate – we are the platform where you can actually design your own product line, if you will. And that conversation is important for us. The first step, I think, is for us to start that conversation and to understand what works best for you at that moment in time, where you are.
Brilliant. Yes. So those are the three big regions. Of course you can always come across to the head office, or contact them through the head office, and they’ll direct you. That’s graphistudio.com – and you can call there directly too.
And trust me, everybody I’ve met is super lovely. You will have nothing but a great chat. Even if you decide ultimately it’s not a product for you, you won’t be any the worse off for the conversations that you’ll have.
I’m going to bring this to a close because I can see people teetering outside that window. I suspect it’s lunchtime and people are getting a little bit antsy because we are chatting in here.
Firstly, thank you. What a lovely – I mean, the whole two days has been absolutely fantastic. I’m so thrilled I had a chance to boil it down to these 40 minutes, or half an hour, whatever it’s turned out to be.
I do have a job title for you. I’ve written it down. I’m going to call you Graphistudio’s product philosopher, I think. Philosopher of the arts – the way they used to use those titles. Natural philosopher, that kind of thing. You are the product philosopher. I love it. Because it’s thinking, and it’s product, and it’s everything that you do and you say. And that is now, for me, your job.
Thank you. So, wrapping that up – thank you for listening and getting to the end of this podcast. I hope you found it interesting. I certainly did. And I tell you what, it’s not the end of the conversation, it’s just the end of the recording. We are going to go and get some lunch, I hope.
If you’ve enjoyed this podcast, please do subscribe. You can find it on all the usual podcast channels – iTunes, Spotify, YouTube, Podbean. And of course you can head across to masteringportraitphotography.com, which is the philosophical home of this podcast. It’s certainly where you can get all of the show notes, the transcripts, and an awful lot of detail that you won’t find anywhere else.
In terms of production for print, there are videos already on our website for our members. We will create a few more, due to come out by the looks of things, and put some educational material together to help if you are printing stuff or creating albums. So keep an eye out for that. Some shorts will go up onto our socials, some other bits might go onto YouTube, but the long form videos will be made available to Graphistudio customers, and also to members on masteringportraitphotography.com if you fancy that. There’s a ton of stuff on there – hundreds of videos and articles.
Please do head across and maybe think about subscribing. At the moment it’s £6.99 a month, which frankly is good value. It’s less than a cup of coffee in a London Starbucks, and you get to download a whole heap of stuff.
And if you have any questions at all, please email me. It’s paul@paulwilkinsonphotography.co.uk, as I’m sure by now you well know.
Until next time, whatever else is going on in your lives, be kind to yourself.
Want More Like This?
Subscribe to Mastering Portrait Photography for access to videos, articles, and behind-the-scenes tips to grow your photography business. Whether you’re just starting or refining your craft, there’s something for everyone. Explore Membership Written by Paul Wilkinson · Photographer, Educator, and Portrait Philosopher-in-Chief