The Master of Photography, Boyd Jaynes on Episode 174

Renowned automotive photographer Boyd Jaynes is a publisher, off-road racer, and head of the Dusty Times publication.  It’s a great listen, be sure to tune in on your favorite podcast app.

8:03 – I really aspired to be an artist like my mom, but I couldn’t draw to save my life

13:16 – I bought myself a little Honda scooter before I had a driver’s license and railroaded my mom to thinking it was legal              

20:45 – I had a one-in-a-million photography teacher in high school 

34:22 – hey dude, you can’t send us film anymore, they were insistent

42:48 – I went to places that back then were crazy to go to… every time they told us not to do something, that’s exactly what we did

49:45 – and then I learned I can make a living shooting automobiles – this is so cool!

56:28 – we should find an old truck and try to do that, well, we should get an old Bronco, and that’s what we did

1:04:20 – what dusty Times used to be was not lost on me, what it was was a revered publication. 

Special thanks to 4low Magazine and Maxxis Tires for support and sponsorship of this podcast.

Be sure to listen on your favorite podcast app.

Transcript

[00:00:01.040] - 

Welcome to Conversations with Big Rich. This is an interview style podcast. Those interviewed are all involved in the offroad industry. Being involved, like all of my guests are, is a lifestyle, not just a job. I talk to past, present, and future legends, as well as business owners, employees, media, and land use warriors. Men and women who have found their way into this exciting and addictive lifestyle we call offroad. We discuss their personal history, struggles, successes, and reboots. We dive into what drives them to stay active in offroad. We all hope to shed some light on how to find a path into this world that we live and love and call offroad.

[00:00:46.140] - 

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[00:01:13.000] - 

Have you seen 4Low Magazine yet? 4LowMagazine is a high quality, well written, 4WD focused magazine for the enthusiast market. If you still love the idea of a printed magazine, something to save and read at any time, 4Low is the magazine for you. 4Low cannot be found in stores, but you can have it delivered to your home or place of business. Visit 4Lowmagazine.com to order your subscription today.

[00:01:39.240] - Big Rich Klein

On today's episode of Conversations with Big Rich, I get the pleasure to introduce someone I've known for quite a while. Not as good as I'd like to know him, but we're going to change that, and it's Boyd Jaynes. Boyd is a renowned automotive photographer world wide, has done some phenomenal stuff. If you ever saw Masterpiece in Metals, that's Boyd, Publisher and Off Road Racer. We're going to talk to Boyd about all of his experiences, his background, and some of that we share, and this will be fun. Boyd, thank you so much for coming on board and spending some time with us.

[00:02:24.630] - Boyd Jaynes

Well, cool. It's fun to be here. So thanks for having me.

[00:02:28.910] - Big Rich Klein

So first off, the question I ask everybody is where are you born and raised? Where was your upbringing?

[00:02:38.210] - Boyd Jaynes

Well, coincidentally, maybe not coincidentally, I was actually born in a suburb of Detroit, Michigan. I was born in Livonia. My parents moved to California when I was very young. I sometimes say thankfully because I do love California so much. I love the ocean and the beach, which I lived close to of most of my life. But yeah, I still consider myself, got Detroit in my veins. And like I said, it's perhaps no coincidence I ended up in an automotive space. A lot of my relatives, in one way or another, were involved in the automotive industries. A lot of people are in that area. It's unavoidable. It's such a huge industry. And in fact, my grandma worked at the Detroit plant. I can't remember which one, I think it was in Dearborn, but she worked in the executive dining room and actually served food to Henry Ford back in the day. So a cool connection.

[00:03:40.590] - Big Rich Klein

That brings us back into the off road racing then. But we'll get to that. How old were you when your parents made the move from Detroit to California?

[00:03:53.540] - Boyd Jaynes

I think I was, I want to say, I was probably two.

[00:03:58.210] - Big Rich Klein

Or three. Okay. So yeah, very young. Your real memories are from California?

[00:04:04.040] - Boyd Jaynes

Yes, exactly. I struggle with saying I'm from Detroit when, in fact, really I was raised in California and a California kid through and through.

[00:04:15.160] - Big Rich Klein

I was born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area, just outside of San Francisco, but I still say I'm from Placerville. 126 miles away up in the mountains where I'm at now.

[00:04:29.490] - Boyd Jaynes

Well, that's it's pretty amazing. In fact, when we moved to California, the first place we lived was in Almond End, which is up in that area. Then shortly after that, we made our way down to Orange County, San Juan Capistrano, 

[00:04:44.610] - Big Rich Klein

That's a good area to be in then.

[00:04:47.530] - Boyd Jaynes

Yeah. Well, it's where I spent most of my life, San Juan Capistrano and San Clement, Dana Point, lived in all those places for various amounts of time.

[00:04:55.350] - Big Rich Klein

 so that means you had a skateboard and a surfboard?

[00:04:59.620] - Boyd Jaynes

I still do.

[00:05:03.020] - Big Rich Klein

Perfect. You can't give them up if you're in that area.

[00:05:07.150] - Boyd Jaynes

No, it's hard. It's an activity you spend most of your life striving to do great lengths to do every day. It's something that every kid does around in this area. And what's tougher to do as you get older, though, I don't step on skateboard very often anymore because I just know better.

[00:05:29.770] - Big Rich Klein

You know, falling in the water and falling on pavement. Now, if you're going really fast, like behind us, some a ski boat that does over 60 miles an hour, hitting the water can be painful. But pavement from... Your feet are 6 to 8 inches off the ground and you hit the pavement, and it's a lot rougher than it is hitting water most of the time.

[00:05:59.670] - Boyd Jaynes

Oh, yeah. Especially if you're falling from the top of a pool to the bottom of the pool. I skated half pipes and pools, and we skated on giant sewer pipes that were on the back of a train in the yard in Capistrana Beach when we were younger. I found out what it feels like to crash on just about every surface.

[00:06:24.830] - Big Rich Klein

Let's go into school. What a student were you?

[00:06:29.930] - Boyd Jaynes

Not a very good one. When it comes to your bread and butter traditional academics, that was terrible. I do remember in high school having to go and visit, I think it was my history teacher, and literally had my cap and gown that I just picked up from where all the seniors would pick up their grad equipment. I think I had my cap and gown under my arm and went to see my history teacher and went, Well. And he said something to the effect of, You just scraped behind. And I did a little fist bump when, Yes, I'm graduating. So yeah, I was not a very good student. I wasn't interested in much that they were teaching. It's embarrassing, but I do remember actually purposely doing bad in some of my advanced placement classes because none of those classes were anybody I was interested in hanging out with. My friends were in regular classes, and I just didn't have any interest in staying in the last year's, which was, in hindsight, was stupid. But I was, again, more interested in getting out of school and go and climb in some fence and skating their.

[00:07:47.570] - Big Rich Klein

What led you into photography in your earlier years? Was it shooting, skating, and surfing?

[00:08:03.000] - Boyd Jaynes

For sure, that was something that I did early on. But I think really further back than that, my mom is an artist. She was always drawing and painting. And along with that, she always had camera laying around. It was helpful for her to shoot some of her subjects, especially things that were in changing light or something she couldn't keep set up or whatever it was. She would shoot photos of it and she always had a camera lying around. And I was always frustrated because I really aspired to be an artist like my mom, but I couldn't draw to save my life. And ended up picking up her camera here and there. And then eventually got one of my own for Christmas. Back when I was probably from 11 until about 15 or so, I was very interested interested in scuba diving and thought I wanted to be Jaco Stow. I spent my summers on Catalina Island at a summer camp, the Catalina Island Marine Institute, where they teach young kids how to scuba dive and about marine biology and things like that. But one of the things they had there was underwater photography. I got really very interested in underwater photography.

[00:09:25.130] - Boyd Jaynes

And of course, that translated over to taking my cheap little Minolta 110 waterproof camera out into this surf break to shoot my friends surfing. But really, I think that was probably the genesis was my mom and my frustration that I couldn't draw.

[00:09:43.130] - Big Rich Klein

I get that. My avenue into photography was I used to pencil and draw with pen and ink, that thing. I did a lot of landscape. I'd have my parents drive me out to someplace and they'd come pick me up in two or three hours. I really liked the perspective of atmospheric perspective. I was always trying to recreate that. Then I got to the point where I was like, Well, I'm going to take my dad's camera and I'm just going to shoot it. We'll drive around, I'll shoot a bunch of them, and then I'll just do it off of the slides. That is where I realized that I could never draw as well as I could shoot. My eye was better behind the camera than it was translating from the eye through the brain to my hands.

[00:10:45.140] - Boyd Jaynes

I think I had a similar realization, very similar, Rich. I really do miss the process of photography back then where you'd shoot a roll film. I'm much older than some people think, but back, a lot of times we would mail our film off to some distant lab to be processed and then come back many weeks later, depending upon what film it was and the magic of seeing those images when they came out spilling out of an envelope was pretty cool. And I agree. I was like, Wow, this is bitching. I can do this. As opposed to anytime I picked up any a pencil or pen, I was just frustrated.

[00:11:33.550] - Big Rich Klein

I get it. I don't know how many photographers get started that way, but there was at least a handful in my class at Brooks.

[00:11:43.860] - Boyd Jaynes

Yeah, I imagine. Although I know of several photographers who are frustratingly very talented with a pen on paper as well, which does come in handy in terms of communicating things to clients or fleshing out ideas or compositions, being able to do something like that. I find myself even limited in those respects, too.

[00:12:12.390] - Big Rich Klein

For a while, about five years, I was a landscape contractor in Northern California. Customers would hire me, we'd walk their property, and then I'd say, Okay, I'll do a drawing that will represent what we've talked about. The architectural type drawing where you look basically straight down on things, I could nail the perspective of standing there and looking straight at it, but it was more of the angular that I had issues with. But when I shoot my photography, I'm always shooting from angles. Nothing in that same perspective as I can draw.

[00:13:00.080] - Boyd Jaynes

Yeah, I get it. I can totally relate.

[00:13:05.530] - Big Rich Klein

So after high school, you spent your time surfing and that stuff. I got to ask, what was your first car?

[00:13:16.390] - Boyd Jaynes

My first car was a Toyota pickup truck. Nice. I had jobs very early on. I even, in working in restaurants primarily as a bus boy or whatever, but I've even bought myself a little Honda scooter before I even had a driver's license. It was funny. I railroaded my mom to thinking it was legal. She even took me to the dealership and I bought this little scooter and promptly got pulled over. And it's funny because I remember that the little scooter was so small that the cop was able to pick it up and stick it in the trunk of his cars back when there was actually a police department in San Clement. They had their own police, and it was still a small town. And he said, I knew you just looked too young. And then he just put my scooter in the truck and drove me home. My mom saw this cop pulling me out of the car and it was pretty funny. But yeah, so I had jobs, had my own money. So a couple of years later, I actually went and bought a used Toyota pickup truck. And I don't think it took very long before I had put stickers on it and tried to make it look like I've been Stewart's stadium truck or something because I was a fan of all that even back then.

[00:14:39.590] - Boyd Jaynes

One of the first things we did when we got our driver's license was go to Mexico, go to Baha. For me, it was in the beginning to go diving. I used to go down to go spear fishing and go get scarfs and cook them on the beach and do all the things that Baha had to offer in terms of that. And then quickly learned that it was pretty easy to go watch offroad racing down there and have spent many nights and early mornings out in the O'Host, camping with all the locals and sitting on the tailgate of Buddy's Kickup Truck and watching them come through the rollers out there even back then. But yeah, I think it was some foreshadowing, really.

[00:15:25.060] - Big Rich Klein

That's pretty awesome. I didn't get a chance to go to Baha u ntil 2003 was my first trip. And that was with BFG.

[00:15:38.230] - Boyd Jaynes

Well, it's funny. During COVID, I actually had a project, a personal project to go through. I had just giant boxes of film and prints and just stuff I never threw away or never really went through. They just were places where I placed things and never organized or anything like that. And I think I spent the better part of two months sitting in the center of my garage with a couple of folding cables and a light box and just went through all this old stuff all the way back to those envelopes of prints from when I was younger to big giant bankers box full of boxes of slides from my professional jobs that I never threw away even the outtakes h. So I had all kinds of stuff. But I remember I ran across some stuff that I shot back then at Ojo. There's some pretty cool old photos of Ivan going off one of the rollers with the helicopter in the background and pictures of my buddies and I down there doing all kinds of shenanigans. But yeah, it's a long time ago. But that was really fun. Baha was a lot more wild, a lot closer to the border back then.

[00:17:00.540] - Boyd Jaynes

It's hardly recognizable in most places these days.

[00:17:05.380] - Big Rich Klein

Yeah, especially if you've been going that long. Just from 2003 to when I went down for the 50th... Was it the 50th? I think it was the 50th for the 1,000 and score. It seemed like things had changed a lot. There was pavement down to the east side. There used to be. There was nothing after Yeah.

[00:17:39.470] - Boyd Jaynes

I think one of the things that has really been a bummer for me in recent years is that, the highway being paved there and Porto Cedos and past Kentucky and bypassing fast cocos and all that. That area has dramatically changed it was, even though it wasn't a terrible road, but it was pretty brutal on cars, just washboard. And it just kept people from going down there who weren't prepared to go. And now you go down there and there's all kinds of family sedans and stemis. And it's a bummer. That used to be a fairly remote spot just outside of San Philippe.

[00:18:24.830] - Big Rich Klein

#van Life.

[00:18:27.340] - Boyd Jaynes

I had a friend of mine down in Cabo a couple of weeks ago tell me he calls it the Vandemic. We were laughing about all the Sprinter vans down in the East Cape of Cabo, and he said, Oh, yeah, it's the Vandemic.

[00:18:43.090] - Big Rich Klein

I'm writing that one down. I love that.

[00:18:46.160] - Boyd Jaynes

Yeah, that's a good one, right? I totally took note of it myself. I thought, Oh, I got to use that. I'm so happy I could do it here today.

[00:18:55.280] - Big Rich Klein

That's going to start a new trend. They have to put out stickers or something. Yeah. So we'll have to hashtag it. There you go. What was the camera? Besides your little Minolta 110, what was the first real 35?

[00:19:14.000] - Boyd Jaynes

Coincidentally, I had a coincidentally, I had Minaltas. They were a very popular brand back then for the little 35 millimeter SLRs. And it just I think primarily it's because I think that's what my mom had. And so I got my own. And then I could borrow her lenses. I don't even know if you had more than one. And they were really affordable in comparison to NICON Fs or some of the fancier cameras. But but essentially did the same thing. Back then, it was really the camera body itself was just a means to an end. There wasn't any crazy features on them until you started getting into motor drives and stuff like that. Just the standard bodies all did pretty much the same thing.

[00:20:04.290] - Big Rich Klein

Right. I shot with Olympus.

[00:20:06.930] - Boyd Jaynes

Yeah. Well, again, Olympus, I think, was a similar mark to Minolta in terms of where they were on the scale of really expensive cameras versus the accessible ones. But yeah, those were great cameras too. I just remember how excited I was because it was all metal and really had that very satisfying feel when you advanced the film. I felt like a big deal with that camera.

[00:20:39.070] - Big Rich Klein

Did you shoot more regular film or did you shoot slide film?

[00:20:45.180] - Boyd Jaynes

I think a little bit of both. I think early on I recognized that transparency slide film was what professionals shot. And so I wanted to feel like a professional, and I thought it was fun to look at those and then also recognize that you could put them into a slide projector and show your friends. I think we had a slide projector at home, too, which was perhaps maybe a little unusual for most families, although they were very common. But yeah, I think probably a little bit of both. And later when I got a little more serious, it was probably almost 100 % slide film. I think somewhere in high school, I was very... The only class that I did get in, by the way, was my photography class. I had a very one in a million photography teacher at Santa Maria High School who was just unbelievably supportive of his students and involved and caring and really nurtured a lot of people that I know that were in my class that to pursue photography. But I learned a lot from him. I learned a lot in that period, but I also did some workshops. I went to Santa Fe and did some workshops with some actual professional photographers when I was really young.

[00:22:16.960] - Boyd Jaynes

And then, geez, I just absorbed anything I get my hands on. This is all pre or internet, obviously, but books and things like that that actually covered real professional scenarios and what professional I realized early that you could make a living doing advertising photography or magazines. Magazine photography and stock photography was a huge industry back then. It's almost crazy to even think that that's just pretty much gone. It doesn't even exist anymore.

[00:22:48.080] - Big Rich Klein

We think the internet.

[00:22:50.400] - Boyd Jaynes

Yeah, sure. But now I can't remember what the question was now. If there was a.

[00:22:58.530] - Big Rich Klein

Question in there. About the film choice.

[00:23:01.470] - Boyd Jaynes

Yeah. No, I enjoyed 35 millimeter slide film, primarily. I learned how to process it. One of the things that I learned at that summer camp in Catalina Island was that was my first experience in a dark room. Even before high school, I was doing that out there. I was scuba diving in the morning and shooting with either a little 110 Minolta. I actually, I guess that was Snorkel ing. And then once I started scuba diving, I was actually shooting with a Niconos, which is NICON's purpose built underwater camera. I was shooting with 35 millimeter film, scuba diving, and then go into the dark room and learned how to develop the film right there on the campus at Ketelene Island. And yeah, I think ever since then, I realized it wasn't that hard to do those processes if you just understood some basic principles. And especially during the slide film, it wasn't you were making a print, you didn't need a larger and you didn't need all the trails and the space that was required to do black and white printing. You just needed some little cans and chemicals and a couple of thermometers, and that was it.

[00:24:12.210] - Boyd Jaynes

So I think 35 millimeter film or 35 millimeter slide film was really something that I enjoyed a lot. Difficult to shoot. Very difficult to shoot, as I'm sure you understand. Maybe probably a lot of people don't understand how simple photography has become. It used to be a craft that you really had to understand. Especially slide film is a third of a stop off. It was junk.

[00:24:39.980] - Big Rich Klein

You'd blow it out.

[00:24:41.970] - Boyd Jaynes

Yeah, there was no saving it. That was it. That was the end result. That was the difference between negative film and positive. S light film was a negative film. Was a negative film, you had an opportunity to make some corrections when you turned it from a negative to a positive in a print. You could fix some things. But with slide film, what you got is what you got, man. And it was very finicky.

[00:25:06.560] - Big Rich Klein

Yeah. And you couldn't... Bracketing back then, which was huge, not only was it expensive, but you couldn't do it in action photography because you couldn't set it up to have your camera shoot three photos, plus one, zero, and then minus one. You had to manually make the adjustments yourself. So you had to dial it in. I had a lot of Polaroids.

[00:25:39.710] - Boyd Jaynes

Yes. I loved Polaroids when I started getting into that realm because it really was something that, especially when you're just starting out as professional, they gave you some confidence. You're like, Oh, shit. Okay, cool. That's a good exposure. Exactly. Check it out. But a lot of people may now understand that before digital, we used Polaroid backs on film cameras to proof and to check our exposure, check our lighting and things like that. That's what we're speaking of.

[00:26:13.880] - Big Rich Klein

Exactly. And when did you start shooting? I'm sure you shoot in medium format at some point. When did you start doing that? And what was the camera choice then?

[00:26:26.400] - Boyd Jaynes

I definitely had played around with medium format in a few times, primarily probably beginning in junior college. I went to Orange Coast College, which had a fantastic photography program there in Costa Mesa, California. For a community college, it was one of the most revered photography programs, I think, in the nation. But I think that might have been the first place that I shopped of medium format and large format, two and quarter film and 4x5 film. But certainly, once I went on to proper art school, it was a requirement. And Hasselblad was my camera of choice. Although I did, a little later on, get some vintage roll of flexes. In fact, I'm looking at my first one still sitting on the shelf right here in my office, which is a twin lens, the R eflex. Rolliflex is a very cool camera. It's a different way of shooting where you're looking down into the camera and out through one lens and shooting with another. But I think it really stripped away a lot of things about photography, although I think anything above 35 millimeter really got into a different realm anyways. But I loved that camera and using it.

[00:27:50.730] - Big Rich Klein

I didn't shoot with a Hazelblad. I still have my Mamiya, the Pro 6 7.

[00:27:59.610] - Boyd Jaynes

Yeah, I.

[00:28:02.160] - Big Rich Klein

Haven't used it in years, but I looked at a digital backport and was like, Well, I can buy such a high quality camera, complete.

[00:28:14.840] - Boyd Jaynes

For the same price. I think it's hard to justify these days. In the very beginnings of digital photography, if you were a pro, you really needed to be shooting with one of those large format digital cameras because there just wasn't the pixel count and the quality in the smaller format. But now, boy, man, it's unbelievable. The capabilities, the technology that has sparked bond out of all that that I don't think it's necessary at all. I mean, look at what's capable of a phone. It's indicative. There's still lots of guys that use them. A part of it might be a horse and pony show for their clients, but for sure there's lots and lots of quality considerations with medium format that can't be ignored. But in terms of majority of people, probably not necessary.

[00:29:18.810] - Big Rich Klein

I walked away from photography. When I graduated from Brooks, I moved back up to the San Francisco Bay area and got a job with an advertising company called Paragon Productions. It was short lived. I was there about six months and then went on my own. But I used their studio for freelance work, which was good because the IRS finally came in and shut them down and locked everybody out. Luckily, I had all my equipment with me because I showed up to go use the studio for some product work and the doors were chained and there was these notices on the windows saying, Do not enter without this IRS agent and stuff. I was just so happy to already have my equipment in the back of my car at the time because all the artists that were still there and stuff lost everything, at least for a couple of years while I tried to fight and had to show proof of purchase themselves that all their drafting tables and everything that they used for their part of the trade were theirs and not not the companies, which with my photography equipment would have just killed me.

[00:30:36.510] - Big Rich Klein

Being 35, the two and a quarter, and then the 4x5 stuff, and all the lights and everything else I had at the time, I would have gotten I would have gotten wiped out. But I was freelancing. Then when digital first came out, it was just a... The true commercial photographers at the time, it was a joke. Then the processes got a lot better. Adobe, Photoshop came out and really changed things where anybody that could use a computer could become a photographer because you could manipulate everything so much better and so easily if you understood the process with Adobe. That depressed the hell out of me.

[00:31:38.990] - Boyd Jaynes

Yeah. Well, in fact, Photoshop was out long before there was in most people had any access to a digital camera. I learned Photoshop 1, I think it was, when I was at Orange Coast College. I had a digital photography class. And in fact, we didn't even... I think before Photoshop, we worked on a different system, a target system. I can't remember the name of that platform, but we took slides and we scanned them. And then later on when I was in art school, we had cameras that were on loan to us from Kodak. And it was a 35 millimeter body that had this giant thing hanging off the bottom of it. And it shot digital photos that really were a joke, but they were a quick pathway to getting your work into a computer. You just immediately went right to the computer and certainly foreshadowing to what eventually photography would be. But yeah, I agree, the original digital cameras were a novelty. We all took turns playing with that thing, went, Okay, all right, that's cool. I hope you got here, you can have it back.

[00:32:52.750] - Big Rich Klein

Because I did so much of my work. I did a lot of product work, and for catalogs and stuff like that and advertisements, magazine ads and newspaper ads. You remember when newspapers were big? Or magazines. I could take that product and between the lighting and then what I could do in the processing, I could create something that was, to me, phenomenal. Then I realized that when digital was coming out and somebody could just take the picture and not worry about the lighting much and then jump on the laptop or the computer, not a laptop then, but jump on their computer and then manipulate the hell out of it and bring in objects that... If we wanted to do a replica of here's the moon behind a waterfall or something like that, there was a hell of a process to do it. When with the computer, it made it so easy. I was like, Okay, this is bullshit. I'm not reinvesting. At that time, I probably had 45 or $50,000 worth of camera equipment between the lights and everything. I just said, I'm done and I quit.

[00:34:22.650] - Boyd Jaynes

Well, I had clients who would call me up when they would get my FedEx envelope after a job was complete and go, Hey, dude, you can't send us film anymore. That they were just insisting that, Listen, those days are over. We don't want film anymore. We're just about ready to unplug the scanners and throw them in the dumpster. You got to make the transition. Everyone else is doing it. And then admittedly, the transition to digital photography happened before it was better than film. It happened before it was anywhere near equal. It was merely a matter of economics and convenience at that point. It was cheaper. It was cheaper for them to just take files and go right into the whatever medium or whatever format that your photography was going to appear. It was easier. And so for them, it just made sense. And it took a while also for photographers to pass on those costs to their clients as well. I used to charge nearly $40 a roll for a roll of film to my clients. And when we switched over to digital, nobody knew how to charge for that. So the benefactor of that indecision was all the magazines and clients that didn't get charged for that.

[00:35:47.840] - Boyd Jaynes

But it didn't take long for us to figure out that there was a digital fee or digital processing fee. Now, postproduction fees are pretty standard. But it was an interesting time back then because it was an unhappy time to be a photographer because you more often than not were disappointed with the results you got out of those cameras in comparison to what you're used to with real film.

[00:36:17.260] - Big Rich Klein

What I found is some of my standard clients that I'd had for two, three years and shooting their catalogs every year, all of a sudden they had somebody in house with a digital camera that was now their photography expert. Then I'd see their catalogs come out and I was like, This sucks. You guys went from this to this and couldn't convince them otherwise.

[00:36:52.020] - Boyd Jaynes

I think for good or for bad, it has taken that learning curve and nearly flattened it out because like we were talking about when you had the time between you shot and between you actually saw the images come back from the lab, it took a while for you to learn something. You didn't learn something until you saw that film. You saw your results and you were able to judge what you did. Whereas now it's in real time and it's a whole lot easier to learn things that way. But it's also made it a lot more accessible. You don't need to know as much in terms of technical. Sure, there's lots of stuff you need to learn, but not like when it was film.

[00:37:40.640] - Big Rich Klein

True. What was the photography that you did once you graduated to make it a living?

[00:37:52.310] - Boyd Jaynes

Well, I think we missed a very, very pivotal part of my life. You mentioned Brooks Institute. When I was in high school, our photography teacher used to take us to Brooks Institute on field trips. And I think really his motivation was to show us, hey, there is pathways for you to make a living as a photographer. This is a legitimate profession. And that there are very serious schools that train photographers and you can learn photography in a commercial sense. And so he took us to Santa Barbara to go see Brooks. And I think I went on at least two of those field trips and came in Namurke with that school. So when you said you graduated from there, I understand what a big deal that is. That was a very, very it was one of the most highest regarded schools of photography in the country, perhaps in the world. But yeah. So then fast forward a little bit further, I learned of a place called Art Center College of Design in Pasadena. And I think I had visited Art Center one time. And the difference between Art Center and Brooks Institute is that Art Center had all disciplines of art, not just photography.

[00:39:14.410] - Boyd Jaynes

And when I went and visited there, I felt I was immediately inspired by all the other art that was being made and that was happening in that building. And it still is a very special place. And I decided that I wanted to go to the Art Center. Couldn't afford it, thought it was a pipe dream. I ended up going on a program called Semester at Sea, which was... I learned about it in a photography magazine. There was an article about a college professor, photography professor, who went on Semester at Sea and taught students photography. And that was what the article was about, was about this professor and about this dream job. And the whole time reading the article, I was like, Okay, never mind this guy or this person. What is this semester at Sea? And at that point, I had gone and backpacked through Europe a couple of times on my own with a skateboard. My original plan, first time I went to Europe, was I was going to go and skate all these famous skate ramps and parks in Europe. And I ended up digitally using my board underneath a bunk bed in a hospital, I think, in the first week I was there.

[00:40:37.160] - Boyd Jaynes

I left my pads and my skateboard underneath the bed and just left them because I realized that there was more to see. There was a lot more to learn than just going and doing what I did at home. So I dips my skateboard and did these trips in Europe. I did a couple of them. And I became infatuated with travel and just couldn't get enough of it. And so when I read this article about Semester of Sea, I was like, Wait, what? I could go around the world on a ship and learn photography at the same time? So I applied for that and got in and somehow was able to afford it. I did work study on the ship and I had a cabin that was just the tiniest shoe box with a bed and shared it with another guy. But the work... And they had a dark room in the belly of the ship. And what we would do is the ship would... We started in Vancouver, ended up in Fort Lauderdale. So we went all the way around the world. And a whole semester of college, you got a semester of college units from University of Pittsburgh.

[00:41:43.420] - Boyd Jaynes

And every day you were at sea, you did classes, except for Sundays. So if there was a two week passage, which we had two of those, whether it was actually two weeks without land, we went to school every single day for six days. And they had classrooms on the ship. They had multi purpose rooms where they did big ship board meetings and all kinds of stuff. They had a bar that was open where international waters, all the 18 year old kids went nuts. Even had a swimming pool where in calm waters they'd fill it with ocean water. And anyhow, we would go into port and then you would have X amount of time to go do whatever. You could just sleep on the ship and go out during the day, or you could actually put a backpack on and even jump on an airplane and go somewhere close by as long as you're back to the ship in order to get on it when it left. And I would shoot all these amazing places. I actually had an architecture class. And for my term paper, I decided I was going to shoot as many of the seven wonders of the world that I could.

[00:42:48.060] - Boyd Jaynes

In terms of architecture, I did a paper on the architecture of these structures and photographed them. And that would be like Angkir Watt and the pyramids and the Great Wall of China and things like that. But also just lots of very cool travel stuff. I went to places that back then were crazy to go to. As a seasoned correspondent, they would be crazy to go to. And here we were just students. I went to Cambodia when nobody went to Cambodia. It was a scary place. And Pol Pot was still alive and we were advised before we got off the ship not to go there. And every time they told us not to do something, that's exactly what we did. Do not go to Cambodia. Okay, we're going to Cambodia. Do not go to the north side of the island in Sri Laka. That's where the tandem tigers are. That's the geographic shift. That's exactly what we did. Do not climb the pyramid. I was like, You can climb the pyramid? Sure enough, at two o'clock in the morning, we could quickly climb the top of the pyramid, all that stuff. But the photographs, I digress, I could tell stories all day about that journey.

[00:43:57.680] - Boyd Jaynes

It was amazing. Changed my life for sure. But the photographs that I shot and the portfolio I produced on that trip is what got me into Art Center. I had this really cool portfolio of amazing travel photography. Again, very exotic, crazy fucking places that nobody went to. And that got me into Art Center. And I had aspirations to be a National Geographic photographer or a con man or something. I wanted to shoot those kinds of magazines. And that's what got me into Art Center. And I got this really crazy envelope in the mail. And it was this really, of course, very high end designed package that came in the mail. It was this translutant foil, and you could see through it and say, congratulations. I could tell when I was walking from the mail box, said, congratulations. I could see it inside there. I was like, Holy crap. I got accepted to this school because I knew that they only accepted one out of 50 or 100 people that applied, it was something crazy like that. And I couldn't believe I got accepted. And then I was like, Well, this sucks because I can't afford to go there.

[00:45:11.680] - Boyd Jaynes

It was very, and still is a very expensive place to go. And it wasn't until I went and met with some guidance counselors there and financial aid people when they were like, It's okay, all you got to do is sign here. I actually took my mom was very h, she was very good. She couldn't afford to really help me, but she was smart enough to get me to attend some workshops on how to navigate the financial aid system. And that was really, really helpful in how to work that system and how to work it into your benefit and take advantage of everything you have in terms of your financial position and your background to get the most financial aid that you could. And yeah, I went in there and signed my life away. And I admittedly, only just recently paid off those student loans. They were 25 year mortgages, basically. I could have gone... I could have gone to medical school for what it cost to go there. And that was even with... I started out with some decent basic financial aid, but I applied for all the scholarships, the school, the internal school scholarships, and I actually had a benefactor about halfway through my time there that my tuition was completely paid for by some very generous philanthropist who paid my tuition.

[00:46:45.340] - Boyd Jaynes

But it was a great place. It was everything I'd hoped it'd be and more. Again, talk about pivotal moments, I think that semester of C trip and then going to Art Center just changed everything. I learned and saw things. It was like photography boot camp, too. I'm sure Brooks was very similar. We weren't allowed to touch anything other than a 4x5 camera for the first year and a half or something like that. Even to the point where we had one gallon of D 76 film developer that we had to maintain, we weren't allowed to mix a fresh batch. We had to keep this single gallon and run control strips with a tensitometer and replenish it and keep it. It looked like mud at the end of the semester. And if you cheated, the instructors there were very smart and they would find out and you would get in trouble and get demerits. In fact, my black and white instructor was a gentleman named I'm struggling to remember his first name, but it was Mr. C an. And he was very involved with developing black and white process. Processes and in fact helped Ansel Adams and developing the cold head light and larger and all this other stuff.

[00:48:07.420] - Boyd Jaynes

But they had amazing faculty there. And in fact, I met an instructor there who... Well, back up just a little bit. One of the things about Art Center is that it is the premier school for transportation design, meaning that the majority of car designers, automobile designers who design the automobiles themselves all come from Art Center. They're the number one school for training transportation design. People. So that was a sign of things to come, too. But one of my instructors who taught location photography, he was an automobile photographer from Southern California, and he was an instructor there. And I was enamored with what he did. And his background is very similar to mine. He was from Huntington Beach, and he was a surfer. And he talked like me and sounded like me. And we hit it off. And I was always his teacher's pet and helped with all demonstrations, helped him set up lights and everything. And when I had semester off, I asked if he had any work, if I could come work to sweep his floors or whatever in his studio. And he's like, Oh, yeah. Why don't you come on down and we'll get you involved.

[00:49:28.900] - Boyd Jaynes

And I did. I came to his studio in Costa Mesa and when I walked in the door, there was that year's winning Le Mans Porsche sports car was sitting in his studio ready to be shot.

[00:49:44.600] - Big Rich Klein

Wow.

[00:49:45.400] - Boyd Jaynes

And I had just seen it at the auto show and you weren't allowed to touch it or anything or get close to it at the auto show. And then first thing he said was, why don't you go out and there's a cove and clean the windows and straight the seatbelts and all this stuff, get ready to shoot it. And I was like, Wow, I get to touch this thing and climb around in it. And I was hooked. I mean, I was just, you know, I came full circle. I've always loved cars. And then I learned, fuck, I can make a living shooting automobiles? This is so cool. This is the coolest thing. And it combined a lot of the things I loved about photography or a lot of things that I loved. Automobiles, photography, action. A lot of automobile photography is action, photography, much like I was shooting skateboarding and surfing. And so, yeah, I was hooked and I ended up, when I graduated, I ended up going to work for him full-time as a third assistant or something. I worked my way up eventually to be his first assistant and then an associate shooter for him.

[00:50:46.870] - Boyd Jaynes

And after some time, I actually was a partner in that studio. And he's speaking of the masterpiece of metal that I used to shoot for Dirt Sports. That was really in the inspired by that same shoot he was doing for the Porsche was for Racer magazine. They had a center spread called In Focus. And I learned how to shoot cars like that. You saw in Masterpiece of metal, it really was something I learned from him. And it was really in the same vein. So yeah, that's how that happened. And I never looked back. I met a lot of people in the industry in the automobile space editorial space, magazines, etc. Through that job, that relationship with him. And it wasn't until some time later when I met a gentleman named Mardi Fioca, where I really started to find a pathway into offroad. My first professional, call it job shooting offroad racing was the 1998 BA1000, I think, I think that was it, maybe even earlier in that. But yeah, it turned out that I realized that there wasn't a lot of really high end photographers or a lot of proficient photographers shooting on an advertising level and off road.

[00:52:17.660] - Boyd Jaynes

And I thought I would take my skills that I learned. When I first went out on my own, I was shooting a lot of indie cars. I was shooting sports car racing. I was shooting drifting. I shot lots of Japanese tuner stuff for Super Street and things like that. I went to Japan quite a bit. And then offroad racing thing was just it really brought yet another passion of mine. I loved driving offroad. That toy truck I told you about, I beat that thing offroad every chance I could get and was enamored with offroad racing as a young kid. So again, it just brought so much joy to be able to go and make a living doing that, albeit not a great living, but the ser certainly isn't the same money in that as there was in, say, Indy cars or some of the other formulas of motorsport. But yeah, I loved it so much.

[00:53:13.400] - Big Rich Klein

And your time into the magazine industry, where did you get your start there?

[00:53:22.390] - Boyd Jaynes

Well, for sure, I shot a bit for Racer magazine. Again, as my relationship with Rick Riggs, his name is Rick Grace, who owns that studio. And he shot a lot for Racer. And they threw me a bone here or there. Then I was shooting a fair bit for Auto Week. It became a very a regular gig for me. It was Auto Week. And then, like I said, some of the Japanese tuner magazines, European car, Super Street, and things like this.

[00:53:54.950] - Big Rich Klein

So.

[00:53:55.720] - Boyd Jaynes

Freelancing? Yeah, everything was freelance. Everything was freelance. And then fast forward again with my relationship with Marti, we started out as a client and photographer relationship and professional relationship. And then we became fast friends. And he approached me with the idea that he had with Jim Ryan to start Dirt Sports. And yeah, so then that's how that came about, which was, again, very cool. I mean, we, M arty and I were both enamored with the quality of Racer Magazine. And why wasn't there something like that at that level for off road racing with very, very thoughtful articles that were well written and well photographed and very sensible design and things like that. So that was the creative brief for for Dirt Sports.

[00:55:02.590] - Big Rich Klein

Perfect. And at Motor Trend, were you an employee of Motor Trend or did you... Because I saw that you were an editor, but you were just a contributing editor.

[00:55:19.960] - Boyd Jaynes

I was not. It's funny because I'm guessing you googled me because I do remember seeing that in a Google search. I was never an editor, but I did shoot for a lot of the Motor Trend books. Over the years, I probably shot for just about it. Most of those books back then, Road and Track, Motor Trend, Truck Trend, 4 Wheeler, you name it, I shot for all, especially a lot of the back then, Peterson books. But I was never an editor, never full-time for any of them.

[00:55:58.500] - Big Rich Klein

And from your contact and Dirt Sports with Marti, that's really when the whole media side of it... Because what I'm getting at now is your relationship with Godfrey and Dusty Times. You're shooting for Dirt Sports. How did you end up with Dusty Times?

[00:56:28.610] - Boyd Jaynes

Okay. That's a long time in there. There is. I think it's important to transition to something else that has become a very big part of my life, and that's racing my vintage Bronco. A friend of mine and actually someone I had a business, person I did business with, who was a graphic designer, him and I worked a lot together on projects. And him and I were both these guys that were enamored with motorsports and and were involved on a professional level from a media side of things and design side of things. But we weren't involved from a racing side other than being there or attending those races and chasing them and things like that. But Mike Proman announced that he was bringing back Nora and it was a vintage race. And the format was announced and all that. And it sounded very attainable for guys like us. And we're like, shit, this should be cool. We should find an old truck and try and do that. And we decided, well, we should get an old Bronco. That would be really cool. And that's what we did. We searched high and low. And back then, early Broncos were very affordable.

[00:57:49.870] - Boyd Jaynes

Nobody really wanted them. So there was lots of them to be had. And we were looking for something that was racy. When as far north as North Northern California, Pizna Beach, and looked at some. Finally, I found this one on Craigslist in San Diego. The irony was it was only like 10 miles from where my then partner, the craft designer, where he lived. We've been looking so far and wide for these things, and the one I ended up finding was right in his backyard. And it bought it for just in today's money, just absolutely stole it. And it looked really racy, but it wasn't really full race car and needed a lot of stuff. And yeah, that's how Norris started, or now how we got involved in Norris to begin with. But eventually we ended up parting ways with that truck and I ended up buying him out and now didn't have a partner. And at the time, Brian got free work for Fox and he'd been helping us out with some shocks. And we were at some event, some industry event, I think it was at the Oakley Building and there was an open bar.

[00:59:07.990] - Boyd Jaynes

And over some drinks, Brian had come up to me and I didn't really know him that well. He'd come up to me and say, Oh, how's that cactus crusher? And we started talking and laughing and having a good time and realized that we really clicked and enjoyed hanging out with each other. And so before the night was over, I asked him if he wanted to come race with me. And he was like, Well, hell yeah. And not even recognizing that he actually had been involved in a lot of trophy truck racing, and his family was deeply involved in offroad racing. And he brought a wealth of knowledge to our stupid little race program that really transformed it to some different level. But I guess fast forward again in terms of Dusty Times, when Brian went through a couple of different positions at a couple of different companies and ended up at Method Race Wheel and Custom Wheelhouse with Kevin Fitzgerald and Bud. I'd done work for them. I was doing advertising, photography for them. And I'd been on several wide open Baha trips with Kevin and Bud over the years back when they were involved with KMC.

[01:00:32.550] - Boyd Jaynes

But they called me into their office and said they wanted to share something with me. And they said that they had the Dusty Times name and the URL, and we should do a brand book with this. We should do something cool with this. And I was like, Dude, you have that? I was like, We absolutely got to do something on another level. And at this time, the magazines were dying off. But really, the only things that were really thriving or that were getting any attention were these really high end magazines, much like Surfer's Journal. And there were some motorcycle ones and a couple of others that were just really, really nice books. And I think that the concept of that was smart that if you were going to do something in print, then it had to be on a really high level in terms of the quality of the paper and the printing and the presentation and the content that it has to be something special or really you couldn't justify it. So that was what I brought to them and said, we should do something really cool and do I called it a magazine back then, but it's really it's evolved into a book, an annual book now.

[01:01:55.360] - Boyd Jaynes

And yeah, I mean, thankfully, they all shared a similar vision and that they believed in those types of passion projects and were willing to stick their necks out to do it. And to this day still, it's not a cheap thing to do. There isn't any money to be made in it, admittedly.

[01:02:25.030] - Big Rich Klein

Preach it to the choir.

[01:02:27.130] - Boyd Jaynes

Yeah. But it is an effective marketing piece in many ways. And it's as much a gift to community than anything, really, in that we exist in this space, this really cool amazing group of individuals and amazing technology and amazing locations doing these extraordinary things, racing these cars in these crazy environments. And it wasn't just racing, too. It's really the lifestyle that crosses over in the periphery of desert racing, call it. There's also rally racing. There's also people who use 4x4s for recreation and all the other things that are very similar and that a lot of those people share as a passion that we could just roll into this one presentation and really that's what Dusty Times is all about.

[01:03:37.610] - Big Rich Klein

Yeah, taking it from what it was with just being a... I'm not sure how often they did it, but it seemed like it was almost weekly newspaper. It was monthly. Monthly, okay. Monthly newspaper because I can remember submitting articles when I owned Vora and had a couple of photographers that would follow the Vora and we'd get photos down to them and we'd get the articles in about the races. And to take it now full circle to where it's just this outstanding coffee table, President Great presentation. Periodical is just awesome.

[01:04:20.440] - Boyd Jaynes

Well, I have to say it was daunting. What Dusty Times used to be was not lost on me. What it was was a revered publication, perhaps the only one that was dedicated to desert racing, almost exclusively, although they did cover other, again, other forms of formulas of offroad motorsport, rally, and etc. Even mud bogs and stuff like that. But I remember it when I was, like I said, trying to make my Toyota pickup truck look like Ivan Stewart. I used to go to those shops where they sold stuff and had shocks hang out on a wall to oogle at those things and dream about parts I couldn't afford. And one of the things I regularly did was pick up a Dusty Times. They had always had them in the little rack there at those shops. And I loved to get Dusty Times to go and then go to the back and look in the classified and dream about, Oh, shoot. Look at this. You can buy these off our race cars. I remember it. And I do recognize how important it was to the community. And again, I think part of me wanted to reinvigorate that, having something that was dedicated to this community.

[01:05:37.860] - Boyd Jaynes

And it was scary because I knew that a lot of people were going to go, Oh, you can't do that. And some people did say that. You can't take Dusty Times and call it Dusty Times. This isn't Dusty Times. But I think hopefully, over the years now, that people have come to realize that we do, hopefully, do the name justice, but in a different way.

[01:06:01.470] - Big Rich Klein

I think you did. How many have you put out now? Five. Five, okay.

[01:06:11.940] - Boyd Jaynes

Five years. And it's crazy when we did the issue five last year. It just blows me away how time flies by. It's like, Wow, we've done five years of this.

[01:06:23.600] - Big Rich Klein

And it's.

[01:06:24.670] - Boyd Jaynes

A fairly, as I'm overstating this ridiculously, but it's a huge effort. It's just myself and a designer, a friend of mine, and we do it all ourselves. Obviously, I lean on some contributors in the beginning. It was almost exclusively everything. I did everything, wrote it, shot it, but that became very evident early on that wasn't sustainable. And also I didn't want it to be about me. I think back then, I don't think I could have gotten people to do stuff for Next to nothing just because they knew what the heck this project was. But now, I think people understand and are eager to want to do stuff with us. Now it's a lot of contributors, which is awesome because I love getting just as much of other people's vision and perspective in it.

[01:07:29.550] - Big Rich Klein

That's great. That's what we try to do with our magazine. It's not about us or even the rock crawling, which is where my heart is at. It's about the enthusiast. I look for those enthusiasts that say they're posting up, Hey, I'm going to this Jeep run, or I'm going to go do this trail. I'll shoot them a message and say, Hey, do you have a camera? You're going to take pictures while you're out there? Don't write about it just on Facebook. Let me know. We'll publish it. And it's working out really well doing that. The magazine industry has totally changed since the big ones have gone away. But I think it's still viable. It's a different market.

[01:08:25.620] - Boyd Jaynes

It is. And again, I think the reason why... You guys still do a print version, correct?

[01:08:30.050] - Big Rich Klein

Correct. Only print.

[01:08:32.890] - Boyd Jaynes

Only print. Okay. The fact that it still exists is indicative of the quality of it. It must be because I truly believe that only good books still exist because it's a big ask for consumer to go and either go to a bookstore, which are also dying breed, and buy a magazine, or find a newsstand that carries magazines and buy an actual magazine to haul it around and open it up and look at it. But it has become something extraordinary. Whereas it used to be so ordinary. Now it is extraordinary. Everything is viewed on a phone or some a screen these days. And to have an actual print piece, it has to be extraordinary for people to go to the lengths to acquire that, to get that and to want to have that. So yeah, I mean, that's really, I think, yeah, it's a shame. I still love to go to the bookstore and thumb through magazines. I have no intention of buying because I just love all of them. I would love to walk out there with all of them, and I still do. If I go to the bookstore, it's inevitable I'm going to walk out with two or three magazines, and then I bring them home and I might flip through it once.

[01:09:50.170] - Boyd Jaynes

And then I put them in a big stack and I'm staring at stacks of magazines in my office right now. That is ridiculous in this day and age. But I do. I love them. I love the feel of the paper. I love sitting and looking at the printing and trying to figure out what process they use for various things. And that's one of the things that we decided early on at Dusty Times that the printing would be extraordinary and that we had to find the edges in terms of the capabilities of printing presses and techniques and things just to add that extra special something to the book where people go, Oh, wow. I've never seen that. Or, Wow, that's super cool. This is tactile. I can rub my hands on this and feel that embossing, things like that. And in fact, a funny funny not funny story was that my partner and I, Dusty, Brett MacMillan is a very, very talented designer who I met when I was working on the Kau Saki account. I did Kau Saki for years and he was one of the art directors at the agency that had Kau Saki.

[01:11:03.460] - Boyd Jaynes

So we met there and he went on to work for many other really big brands after that. And I approached him with this project and he was like, Hell, yeah. Do this sounds amazing. Let's do this. And neither of us had any experience in magazine production. Obviously, he designed many, many layouts of things that got printed. And I for sure shot lots of stuff that went into magazines, but we didn't know anything about going and hiring a printer. I did have some classes about four color printing at Art Center, where I learned lots about the process itself, but never actually done it. And we hired a printer to print the issue one of Dusty Times. And the palette of magazine showed up and opened the box and pulled out the magazine. And my jaw hit the floor because it was so bad. It was so not what we envisioned. The quality was just not there. And we were crushed to the point where we decided that we were going to use our own money and reprint it. And so that initial run of magazines all ended up in a dumpster somewhere. Wow. And at great expense, I might add, we reprinted the whole run with our own money, and we ended up finding a printer.

[01:12:32.120] - Boyd Jaynes

As soon as we visited them, I was convinced these are our guys. We walked into this plant there in Southern California, too, which was, I think, critical for us because we wanted to be involved to the point where we would be able to would show up there. So picking a place that was local was important. And they had one part of their printing, the big giant room with the huge printing presses. One part of it was they had giant ceilings, 30 foot ceilings or something. There was this huge black curtain that was around the entire portion of their facility. And they're like, Oh, sorry. I'd love to show you that machine. It's a really cool machine in there. And I said, But we're printing some stuff for Apple that you can't see. I was like, Oh, shit. These guys print Apple stuff? And then everything we saw, we were taking our tour, there was just high end car brochures for Cadillac and stuff for Disneyland and all the movie studios. I was like, Okay, these are our guys. And we've been with them ever since. They're just amazing printers. And I love going to press check.

[01:13:36.170] - Boyd Jaynes

I go to all the press checks. And every time we've got our theme for the magazine, I still say magazine. It really isn't a magazine seeing. But every time we have our theme for the book, we go down there and meet with our print salesman and ask him. And I'd say, Hey, you guys got any new processes? And he's like, Oh, I'm glad you asked. Let me show you this we've been working on. And inevitably, we ended up doing something definitely different or cutting edge or in some ways risky. It's issue 4, which was the issue that had the Joe Gibbs motor on the cover that's got a Holographic foil that we printed on top of that was something experimental they were messing around with and thought it was appropriate because it seemed like the shimmer you see when oil hits water, but things like that. And we always try to find something that we can add in, something that normally you would just cut out because it's expensive. But we try to make sure that we leave something in terms of budget to do something that's really cool or something that's unexpected or something that gives it that tactical feel.

[01:14:58.250] - Boyd Jaynes

And we spend a lot of effort in picking papers and, like I said, going to the press checks and making sure everything's perfect and really leaning into the expertise of these guys of what is really a dying craft. These guys are dudes that there may not be a new generation of guys who know how to run four color print presses or that know how to do that stuff on that level.

[01:15:23.780] - Big Rich Klein

What is your distribution model?

[01:15:28.900] - Boyd Jaynes

Our distribution model, admittedly, we give most of them away, really. It's become something of a corporate gift. Part of my original creative brief for Dusty Times was I was very inspired by the Pirelli calendar and what they had done with a high end printed piece and that it was an annual and that it was a select mailing list that nobody knows how to get on it, but everyone wants to be on it and everyone wants to receive this thing in the mail. So that was something that I was very inspired by and wanted to somehow have that incorporate, something like that incorporate. And that we do every issue, every year, we do what we call the VIP box. And it is a list of industry people, business partners, key people within our space that are on this list. And they get this box in the mail that has in the box is, again, my vision for that was that the box itself was receiving that box was the beginning of the experience. And so the box needed to be identifiable in the stack of mail that you would see it. And they would immediately go, oh, cool.

[01:16:55.290] - Boyd Jaynes

The new Dusty Times is here. I got the box. I wanted that to be a whole experience, much like the Pirelli calendar. They do similar thing where it comes in some really elaborate packaging, and it is a whole experience to open that up and get to the calendar itself. That, again, was the inspiration for it. So the VIP box has identifying marks on the outside. And when you open it up, immediately the experience continues with the magazine in die cut foam. And then underneath there's some a gift or an item that is on theme for the magazine. And the very first one, as an example, had a little ditty bag or a little bug out bag type thing that had little items in it that all related to the content of the magazine. When you unzipped it and opened it up, it had a Baha map that actually was able to get National Geographic graphic maps to print a custom Baha map that had Dusty Times on the cover of it in our own design. And it was a Baha map. And then there was a snake bite kit, and there was a high lighter that we got Sharpie to put Dusty Times on, customize the highlighter because we had a story about rally navigation and how using a high lighter is very key in that or used to be.

[01:18:27.910] - Boyd Jaynes

Now it's become digital. So over the years, this box has become something that people look forward to receiving. And I still, every year, get calls, Hey, am I on the list? It's worked out just the way I hoped it would. But that's part of the distribution. We obviously sell them online because we want them to be accessible to people, but we can't afford to give them away to everyone. So you can purchase them. And I'm grateful for the people that do. And it makes me feel warm and fuzzy that people are willing to buy it. We also give away quite a few at Ormhoff. We have the last few years at least at Ormhoff because that is a very special group of people that gather at that banquet and want to make sure that we could share that with them.

[01:19:19.140] - Big Rich Klein

We appreciate that.

[01:19:21.910] - Boyd Jaynes

We've done different races. We've put them in. I've made arrangements to put them in the driver's bags at different races over the years. Really, the distribution model is we want people to have this. We want people to experience it and to get it in their hands. And it doesn't do any good sitting on a shelf in a warehouse. This isn't some commodity that needs to be counted and distributed in that sense, I don't believe. It's something that we hope that people will enjoy and want as many people see it as possible and many people to enjoy it as possible across our entire space and hopefully people outside of our space that can appreciate it. And I think that I hope the hope is that even if you don't know anything about offroad racing and zero interest in offroad lifestyle, or you're not an enthusiast in this segment, that you can appreciate a Dusty Times because of what it is, because of, Wow, this is cool. Again, I haven't seen it a book like this and could appreciate the photography, appreciate the writing, appreciate the design and the printing. So I think it has broad appeal even outside of our space, I would hope.

[01:20:45.240] - Boyd Jaynes

But it is, again, I'm very fortunate that people share that vision and share that enthusiasm for a piece like this because it doesn't make any sense in a business sense, really. But it's indicated indicative of the folks at Custom Wheelhouse and their passion for what we do and for the products that we make that serve this community, that this is indicative of that. That we're not just producing stuff that we don't care about or don't care about the usage or the enthusiasts that use them. We really are as passionate about this as the people in the community.

[01:21:32.170] - Big Rich Klein

Excellent. That's admirable. I find that to be true in our community. For the most part, there are, of course, there's always going to be companies or people out there that never had a passion for offroad but have realized that maybe they're really good at marketing or whatever and have stepped up and done the SEO properly or whatever because that's what their background is. But for the most part, the companies that are out there were founded on the passion of the industry.

[01:22:16.930] - Boyd Jaynes

I think it's reflective of the people in our space. We, as off roaders, we're very generous lot of guys and girls know. It's a very common story to hear about someone who's having some difficulty at some place somewhere, some far off place, and they're in a pinch, and someone steps up that they may not even know or never even met before that is willing to give them the shirt off their back to help them out. And it's a story you hear over and over and over again. So I think this is reflective of that.

[01:22:55.460] - Big Rich Klein

Perfect. Yeah. Well, Boyd, I want to say thank you you so much for coming out and willing to be a guest on conversations. I really appreciate it. I hope to catch up with you somewhere, somehow, again, and sit and have another chat. This has been great.

[01:23:21.890] - Boyd Jaynes

Yeah, I really enjoyed it. Thank you so much. I'm honored to be on this show, Rich. Yeah, it was great. It's fun. I love telling stories.

[01:23:32.150] - Big Rich Klein

That's obvious. You're very good at it. Well, thank you. Besides being a great photographer, you're a great storyteller. Those are key things to have in your arsenal. Question, are you going to be able to make it to the Aramhoff Gala this year? It's in September.

[01:23:52.500] - Boyd Jaynes

I hope to. I thoroughly enjoy that event. It's just, boy, I'm always in awe to be in that room. There's so many legends. There's so many great people, and it is like a big family. I hate to miss it. There's been some times I couldn't, but I hope to this year for sure.

[01:24:14.020] - Big Rich Klein

Great. Hope to see you there. And Boyd, have a great day and thank you so much.

[01:24:20.390] - Boyd Jaynes

Cool. You too, Rich. Thank you.

[01:24:22.810] - Big Rich Klein

Well, that's another episode of Conversations with Big Rich. I'd like to thank you all for listening. If you could do us a favor and leave us a review on any podcast service that you happen to be listening on, or send us an email or text message or a Facebook message, and let me know any ideas that you have, or if there's anybody that you have that you would think would be a great guest, please forward the contact information to me so that we can try to get them on. And always remember, live life to the fullest. Enjoying life is a must. Follow your dreams and live life with all the Gusto you can. Thank you. Thank you.