Matthew Joseph x The Story Lens podcast with Haydon Perrior

Hosted by Haydon Perrior Matthew Joseph shoots advertising for sport, lifestyle and tech brands and makes personal projects about urban subcultures: parkour, bike life in New York and Baltimore, and now Skateism, a film and stills project about the roller skaters who train in a Tesco car park in North London. He picked up his parents' manual SLR at ten to get out of family photos, learned the trade shooting weddings on film as a teenager, was a professional musician first, and reckons 95% of the job now has no camera in it. We get into the pharma shoot with forty people on the email chain and one image at the end, how long to stay with a community before you're more than a tourist, big D and little D directors, and why he's betting on people wanting to know a human made it. Recorded January 2026. "95% of my job does not involve cameras." "You can take a photo before you have a relationship. Then you can take the same photo after you have a relationship and it's different." "It's going to become way more about what you say rather than how you say it." Chapters 0:00 Who Matthew is 0:55 The family SLR and getting out of family photos 5:21 Why weddings on film set him up 10:23 Music first, then photography 13:03 Explaining the job at a dinner party 14:56 The graft never gets less 17:52 One image, forty people and a pharma client 25:53 Personal projects: Jump, Bike Life and Skateism 34:35 Finding the car park skaters 40:48 Big D director, little D director 45:10 Tourist or long term: how long to stay with a project 49:12 AI, slop and betting on humans wanting humans 56:50 Apple's behind the scenes and proof it was made by people 59:09 What's next Matthew https://matthewjoseph.co.uk Haydon Perrior, Photographer + Director https://haydonperrior.com   / haydonperrior   The Story Lens https://thestorylens.co.uk https://open.spotify.com/show/0aluyHh...