NorCal and Shill
A podcast where NFT artists tell stories, hosted by NorCal Guy. https://twitter.com/GuyNorcal
https://twitter.com/norcalandshill
NorCal and Shill
Brynn Alise
Episode 80: Show Notes.
Nature, wildlife, skiing, and photography; these are a few of her favorite things. Today, we are joined by NFT artist, photographer, and conservationist Brynn Alise. To start, we discuss why NFT conventions need to be more evenly spread throughout the year before Brynn explains why she’ll never stop using a hardware wallet. The conversation then turns to our guest’s initial thoughts on NFTs, how she got into photography, the other jobs she’s worked along the way, and why dolphins, chocolate, tacos, and Whitefish rank at the very top of her list of favorite things. After hearing the great advice that Brynn received from her father and the words of wisdom she’d offer up to aspiring NFT artists, she questions Guy about how he manages to achieve a healthy work-life balance and the advice he would give to emerging artists in the NFT space. Finally, the sensational Brynn Alise gives us a taste of her upcoming projects that she is extremely excited about!
Key Points From This Episode:
• A warm welcome to wildlife photographer and conservationist Brynn Alise.
• Discussing the current state of NFT conventions and why they should be more spread out.
• Why Brynn loves using a hardware wallet.
• Her initial thoughts on NFTs and crypto art.
• Why she chose art and, specifically, photography.
• The jobs she’s worked in her life’s journey, aside from photography.
• Why Brynn would be a dolphin if she could, and how she came to love chocolate and tacos.
• How her father is a never-ending well of incredible, life-changing advice.
• Her advice to aspiring NFT artists.
• Why Brynn chooses Whitefish, Montana, and Southern California as ideal home destinations.
• Brynn’s first question to Guy: How does he achieve a healthy work-life balance?
• Guy’s advice to emerging artists in the NFT space.
• The upcoming projects that Brynn is most excited about.
Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:
EPISODE 80
[INTRODUCTION]
[0:00:31] NG: Hey, everyone. Welcome to the next episode of NorCal and Shill. Today's guest is Brynn Alise. She is a nature and wildlife photographer with a focus on conservation from Boulder, Colorado. Her goal is to draw the viewer into the scene she captured in a realistic style, so that they can feel like they were there with her in the moment. She believes this is a strong way to connect people to care about conservation issues. Her photography focuses on the greater Yellowstone ecosystem, the Rocky Mountains, where she lives, and the beaches of California and Maui, where she grew up and has strong connections. Everyone, please welcome Brynn.
[INTERVIEW]
[0:01:15] NG: Hey, Brynn. Welcome to the podcast. How are you doing today?
[0:01:19] BA: I'm doing great. Thank you so much for having me today. I'm really excited.
[0:01:22] NG: Yeah. I'm glad we could make this work out. It was a long time coming, I think. I was trying to think, I think the first time I met you was in Denver. I want to say Denver.
[0:01:31] BA: It was.
[0:01:32] NG: Okay.
[0:01:32] BA: Yeah. We met at – I don't even honestly know what event we were at, but we met at like a happy hour event there.
[0:01:38] NG: Yeah. I don't even remember. It was just a ton of photographers. I was keeping my mouth shut and just following Joelle around.
[0:01:46] BA: That's how I met you.
[0:01:49] NG: Right. Yeah.
[0:01:53] BA: Yeah. I had a chance to talk with you there, which was really fun to meet you in person.
[0:01:56] NG: Yeah. That was great.
[0:01:57] BA: That feels like forever ago.
[0:02:00] NG: Yeah. It was like five years ago, I think.
[0:02:02] BA: Yeah, I know. It was actually end of last February.
[0:02:06] NG: Right. Right. Yeah. Are you going to the East Denver again? I take it.
[0:02:12] BA: You know, I haven't heard anything about it this year, because I'm signed up for it, but I didn't know if having NFT NYC in April was going to make people choose not to come to Denver.
[0:02:22] NG: Right.
[0:02:23] BA: I'm totally up for going – I definitely have photography friends here that I went with last year. I'm up for going if other people go. How about you?
[0:02:30] NG: I don't know. I'm really up in the air about it right now.
[0:02:33] BA: Yeah.
[0:02:34] NG: I want to go to Frieze LA the next weekend. It's like, I have to do one or the other and I don't know. Sometimes I'm like, “Oh, I probably shouldn't.” Because I got to do all this other stuff later in the year.
[0:02:45] BA: Exactly. It feels close to April with New York. I don't know what people will decide to do.
[0:02:52] NG: Right. I think, wait, isn't NFT LA in March?
[0:02:56] BA: You know, I don't even know, because I knew I couldn't go to that one. I looked at it on my calendar and my husband's traveling, too. I was like, “That's not going to happen.” I don't even know. I can't keep up.
[0:03:07] NG: I feel like all these events moved to the beginning of the year, except for BAZL. Then you're like –
[0:03:15] BA: I know.
[0:03:16] NG: Why can't we space these out?
[0:03:18] BA: Exactly. It would be more helpful for sure.
[0:03:20] NG: Yeah. Well –
[0:03:21] BA: Well, let me know if you end up coming out here.
[0:03:23] NG: All right. I will. I will let you know. Well, on to the questions. Do you use a hardware wallet?
[0:03:30] BA: Okay. I do. I'm really proud to say, I do, because I'm not the most technical person. I definitely had to have a couple friends help me with setting it up and helping me understand what I was doing. I think I bought it well over a year ago or 15, 16 months ago. Then it sat in the box for probably like four months, but I've been using it for probably a year now.
[0:03:51] NG: Oh, nice. That's good.
[0:03:52] BA: I'm pretty good with it. I'm pretty good with using it. I keep everything over there. I get a little lazy with – especially art that I buy, additions and stuff that I want to move so that it's all safe, but I don't have too much of value in my hot wallet.
[0:04:07] NG: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We all get a little lazy. I know my hot wallet is full of stuff and I'm like, “Oh, can I just revoke everything and do a new hot wallet?”
[0:04:17] BA: It is a thing. I know. Totally. It's definitely a pain to transfer things over, and then with the different things that you're like, “Oh, wait. I need that back in this hot wallet for an allowlist.” It's a little much, but I am doing well with my Ledger. I'm pretty proud of myself.
[0:04:34] NG: That’s good.
[0:04:36] BA: I even have my seed phrases in California somewhere.
[0:04:39] NG: Oh, all right.
[0:04:41] BA: If anything happens here, they're safe somewhere else.
[0:04:43] NG: Perfect.
[0:04:44] BA: I feel like I've even gone that extra step.
[0:04:46] NG: Right. I think there's something to help out with that, so you don't have to – it's like delegate.cash, I think. I have to go look it up, but it's where you can delegate from one wallet to another wallet that you have permissions in, or whatever that you own in or whatever, so you don't have to move stuff.
[0:05:06] BA: Oh, that would be helpful.
[0:05:08] NG: Yeah. Something like that. I have to look that up.
[0:05:11] BA: Okay. I don't know that, but yeah. I do and I'm fairly good at it, which I'm pretty proud to say at my age.
[0:05:20] NG: What were your first thoughts when you heard about NFTs or crypto art?
[0:05:26] BA: I was so clueless, because I really hadn't paid attention to crypto. Then this NFT term came up, and I don't think I would have found it if I wasn't active on Clubhouse, that audio app. I was leading different spaces there or whatever you call them, on different clubhouse groups on conservation and different landscape photography and things. I started seeing these spaces for NFTs and have no idea what that even meant or what it was. It probably took me a good two or three weeks before I even looked into a room on what NFT even meant. Then they started popping up everywhere.
I think the funniest thing is, I ended up in this group of friends that we call ‘the just chilling group’, because we all found each other on clubhouse, because none of us wanted to be in the NFT rooms. We started this ‘just chilling’ room where we could all just hang out and talk photography and then we pretty much all got into NFTs together. It wasn't something - I didn't think I would understand it well enough to get into it. Once as a group, we started processing it and learning about it and understanding it. We all got really excited and it was really fun to come in together with a group of people who were all going through it together.
[0:06:45] NG: Interesting.
[0:06:48] BA: Yeah. I know. The best part was that we all found each other because we didn't want to be in the NFT rooms, but that was still early. That was like March. Well, I think fairly early March of 21.
[0:07:02] NG: Okay. Yeah.
[0:07:03] BA: I think that probably lasted about three to four weeks before at least half the group was investigating NFTs and before we all ended up doing it together.
[0:07:13] NG: That's awesome. Why did you choose art? What brought you to photography?
[0:07:20] BA: I came to it a couple of different ways. It's always a little hard to explain how I ended up with it. My husband was actually a photographer, just a hobby photographer. When our kids were little, he did a lot of photography and we did a lot of wildlife. We have to spend a month in Montana each summer up near Glacier. He had really bought a lot of gear and I would wrangle the boys a lot and be hanging out with them while he was doing photography. We had all the gear.
Then as my boys got older, he got really into rock climbing with them all the time. I had had a back injury and I would go with them sometimes and I used to climb a little, but I didn't climb anymore really. I mean, some simple stuff, but not a lot. A lot of times when the three of them would go, I wouldn't go. I eventually just decided to take his camera gear and go up to Rocky Mountain. He taught me some stuff early on, because he had two cameras, so when we were on trips, I always had the second camera. While I wasn't a photographer when we were in Africa and most of our photos from a trip that or his, I still had the backup camera with the smaller wildlife lens. I was still taking photos.
I'd been taking photos for fun, but not really knowing what I was doing up until about 2015, 2016. Then suddenly, I had more time to myself. They'd go away or they'd go for a weekend to climb. I suddenly realized how much I loved alone time and just having that solitude and nature. I've always, I've grown up in nature way before photography. I've really grown up in adventure and backpacking, camping, hiking, anything ocean related and everything. That part was natural. It was just suddenly just picking up a camera and taking that with me up to the park.
The first night I went up, I was up on Trail Ridge Road in Rocky Mountain National Park, which is a really high road. It goes up to about, I want to say 12,000 feet in the park. Toward the top I found about seven or eight male big horn sheep, so some rams up there. I took the wildlife lens out and I sat down and I literally didn't move for about three hours. I didn't think about anything else. I didn't think about any stresses in my life, anything on my to-do list. I struggled with a lot of anxiety. I didn't – all of that was, everything was just gone. I was in the most peaceful situation I feel like I had ever been in. I was honestly hooked that night and just continued from there.
The more time I had even – I don't know, we got a really good rhythm down on family trips, because a lot of our family trips would be around climbing. I would climb with them some, I would take photos of them climbing. Then I would head off my own way or get dropped off somewhere, I'd drop them off somewhere and I'd go take photos. I think that same year I started doing my own solo trips too, to just get out and do photography. A lot of those were to the greater Yellowstone ecosystem, Yellowstone Grand Teton National Park in the surrounding areas.
Then, I've always done photography when I go back home to Southern California as well. It just – I don't know, I feel like in a way, just fell into it. I mean, how many people say, well, the gear was sitting there and I just picked it up. I was very fortunate that he'd put a lot of money into gear and then he'd gotten much more interested in being back outside. He was a big climber when we met and everything. It just worked out really well.
[0:10:54] NG: Nice. What jobs have you done along the way?
[0:10:57] BA: Well, I'm older than a lot of people in the space, than that you've had on your show. This one could take 20 minutes if we wanted it to. Okay, I'll be quick with this one. I didn't like being inside. I was a swimmer growing up, competitively. I did a lot of ocean workouts and swimming. I grew up at the beach like every day, all day. I had a really hard time when it came time to work. Unfortunately, in college I found a job where I could be a camp counselor all summer, each summer, and be outside all day. Take the kids - we had a huge water park we took them to in the morning and then horseback riding and art and ATVs, and all this stuff.
I got to be outside all summer and I did that all through college, and had a couple other jobs during school. I didn't always work during school. Then I was a project manager for an environmental law firm. Then became also project manager for the Orange County Environmental Management Agency and worked on a lot of projects, the passion projects that my boss had. He actually wrote part of the Endangered Species Act. I was able to be really involved with the county and with his own work and manage a bunch of projects. I did that for a couple of years. Then I dropped everything to be a ski bum and I moved to Vale, Colorado. Went from having a real career path to working as a lift operator, so I could ski all the time.
[0:12:24] NG: All right. Perfect.
[0:12:27] BA: I know. Then I worked at a ski tour company when I moved to Boulder so that I could keep skiing for free. Honestly, I did that up until having kids. Then I was a mom for 10 years and I pretty much was just a mom and loved it. I loved being home for those first 10 years. Then my husband and I started this non-profit where we serve in Gabon and the Democratic Republic of Congo in Africa to just help pour a needy through various social and medical outreach. I've been doing that for the last 12 years. Then photography became another part of that. Now I've added Me Llamo Art in there as my latest thing.
[0:13:08] NG: Yeah. I mean I wouldn't say just a mom.
[0:13:10] BA: That's the quick rundown.
[0:13:11] NG: That one stage, because that's, I mean I'm just a dad, I guess. It's a lot harder than –
[0:13:18] BA: Yeah. You still find a lot of things to be involved in, right? It's not like you're just at home parenting, you find other things to be involved in and to give time to, but it's yeah, it's crazy busy.
[0:13:31] NG: Yeah. It is. It is. I don't know if I can tell you –
[0:13:34] BA: Honestly, I would never trade it. It was –
[0:13:36] NG: For sure.
[0:13:37] BA: I loved that time.
[0:13:39] NG: Yeah.
[0:13:39] BA: I still was able, you know. I was only working part-time as they got older. I still was able to be around all the time and working from home for our non-profit.
[0:13:49] NG: Yeah. That's huge. I mean it's formative years you get to be there.
[0:13:52] BA: Yeah. I had a son who ended up – he got really sick from Lyme disease, but we didn't know it for a long time. It took forever to get him diagnosed in a million hospitals and doctors and everything. When he was in fifth grade to a sophomore year in high school, I spent a lot of my time just being an advocate for him medically. He couldn't really get out of bed for two to three years and that's an entirely different story, but I can't even imagine if I had had a career. I was still able to do my part-time work at home and be there for him and everything he needed. I will never regret that.
[0:14:26] NG: Right. That's rough.
[0:14:27] BA: Yeah, fortunately. He's so healthy now. It just took a long time.
[0:14:31] NG: Yeah. Switching gears, if you were an animal what would you be and why?
[0:14:38] BA: I think, I love this question. I go through different ideas at different points, but the one I've always stuck with is a dolphin. I don't know if it's because I grew up at the ocean and in the ocean. The amount of times I've just seen them in the waves, I mean even this last weekend, I went out of home in California and I was down at the beach at sunrise and they were right there in the waves. In high school and college, any time we saw them, I lived at the beach in college, too. I lived three houses off the sand. If we saw them, we would just throw suits on and run out and try to get out to them to swim with them. I only got close to them once, but I just love them. They're the most playful animal. I just love seeing them and watching them in the ocean. I think their life looks pretty awesome. I think that's what I would choose.
[0:15:25] NG: They definitely seem to be having a good time, all the time.
[0:15:28] BA: Yeah. Just the way they play with boats. I mean they seem so engaged and –
[0:15:33] NG: Curious.
[0:15:33] BA: They're so inquisitive. Yeah, they're curious. Yeah, they're just fun. Yeah, I love everything about them. I would say dolphin.
[0:15:40] NG: All right, I like it. I like it.
[0:15:42] BA: Okay.
[0:15:42] NG: Do you have a favorite food?
[0:15:44] BA: Chocolate. Is that a food?
[0:15:46] NG: Is that a food? Yeah, I mean that works to me.
[0:15:49] BA: Well, it's not like every time I say chocolate someone goes, “Well, no, like you're real food.” My real food.
[0:15:55] NG: Growing food, come on.
[0:15:58] BA: My real food would be - like tacos are my favorite meal.
[0:16:02] BA: Oh, okay. I like that.
[0:16:03] BA: Anything with chips and guacamole and tacos, but yeah, and chocolate.
[0:16:11] NG: The Choco Taco is made for you.
[0:16:13] BA: Yeah, exactly. I've never even had one of those.
[0:16:18] NG: I don't even know if they make them anymore.
[0:16:20] BA: I know what you're talking about. I've seen those packages before.
[0:16:22] NG: I know.
[0:16:24] BA: Yeah. So really like, all kinds of Mexican food is my favorite kind for sure.
[0:16:30] NG: Yeah. Mexican is –
[0:16:30] BA: That probably is also from growing up in California.
[0:16:33] NG: Yeah. That's my go to, as well. I love Mexican food.
[0:16:36] BA: Is it?
[0:16:36] NG: Yeah.
[0:16:37] BA: It’s the best.
[0:16:38] NG: It's so good. What's the best piece of advice you've been given?
[0:16:43] BA: I think, honestly, my dad is so full of wisdom. I'm really close with him. He's just given me such great advice over the years. I think there's a couple things from him that I would say are the best pieces of advice I've been given. I struggled a lot in my early twenties with having grown up where I did and having all my friends, we graduated from college and everyone was getting their master's degree in law school or in their careers. I had started my career and like I said earlier, I ended up going and working in a ski town.
I remember going through that process and I was really struggling with it and feeling like, “Well this is the path I'm supposed to be on and how can I go just ski? Because that will ruin my path and everything.” I remember my dad just really saying two things. One, “You need to be you, you need to be authentic, your authentic self, who you are, all the time. If that means going and moving to the mountains when no one else really understands that and is career focused, then do it. If that is staying here then do that.”
Then along with that, honestly in the same conversations we were having about this move, I would get almost paralyzed by the decisions I had to make, that everything seemed, at that point in my life, very life changing. Like, “If I do this it's going to change everything and what if it's the wrong path?” I remember my dad saying, we used to talk about what if that's an open door and this is a closed door? How do you know? What if they don't seem closed? I remember my dad saying, “There can always be more than one open door.”
Somehow, that just totally clicked with me. He was like, “Why does there have to be one door.” I was like, “Well, because there's one right path and the other paths are wrong.” He said, “Why?” I said, “I don't know.” As we started talking about it and I started reframing my thoughts, I realized that's totally true. There are times that they're definitely closed doors and you realize that's not the path you should be on, but it doesn't mean there's only one path to be on. I was like, screw it. I'm going to go ski. I made that decision and honestly, it really did, if I look at where it led, it led to where I am now. It led to how I met my husband, eventually. If I hadn't been in this adventure world for a couple years my life wouldn't look like it does. I don't know that I'd have found photography and continued the adventure lifestyle I'd been raised in and everything.
That was the best advice I had, and just being myself in a world that I was in that was very driven and everyone was very career and money focused and that didn't matter to me. It wasn't what I saw as bringing value to my life and being bold enough. I don't know if I could have done it without my dad really helping me walk through it, so that's probably the best advice I've been given and that was a long time ago. I still hold that when we've looked at different things like buying this house or that house, or living here or there. There’s not just one right choice, and for some reason that was a really hard thing for me to learn. I don't know why I thought there was only one path.
[0:19:47] NG: Yeah. That's really solid. I like that a lot, because I personally have not heard - I always heard one door closes, another opens. But also, there's always more than one door open.
[0:19:59] BA: Yeah. I guess, I don't know, I've never thought about it. I think I just always thought there was a right way and a wrong way. I had so much fear about going the wrong way that I think it kept me from doing some things in my life early on. So just having this new way of thinking that is really pretty simple, but it made a big difference to me. It didn't mean I was going to choose something wrong there could be five doors open, you know?
[0:20:22] NG: For sure.
[0:20:23] BA: Five paths to take. Yeah. I think that's the best advice.
[0:20:27] NG: I like it a lot. Do you have advice for artists joining the NFT space?
[0:20:33] BA: I mean, I think there's so much advice. There's so much that I hope that we can teach new artists coming into this space. I'm really excited to be a part of Me Llamo Art and the way I think that we will be involved in helping emerging artists in the future. One of the things I've been thinking about a lot and even with this new job with Me Llamo Art is something that I think is really important and basic that one of my friends was talking to me about at one point was, just making sure that people that come into this space are here for the right reasons and that it's right for them.
I think we just assume everyone should come in and jump in and get involved, but having been through it this long already, realizing what it can do to your mental health, how much it messes with you over time. The amount of dedication and commitment it takes to stay involved and to grind every day and work really hard at it and to also not lose our passion for why we do what we do. I think my biggest advice is for anyone getting involved in this space, I think you need to be a fairly strong person. I mean, I don't know, maybe that's not the right word, because there's so many different people in this space. But you have to have the perseverance to keep going when it's rough and when it's hard.
There are times that we've all wanted to just walk away because it feels too tough, or we have imposter syndrome or different things. I think just knowing that you're here and you want to persevere. Just making sure that this space doesn't allow you to lose the passion for why you create. I think if it starts doing that, it is time to back off, whether it's a break or choosing a different path. I think, this second, we lose the creative passion that drove us to ever find this place was because of this passion we have for our art.
I think if anyone loses that or isn't coming into the space because of that, it won't work well. I think we've seen and a lot of people that have tried to come into the space just for money and some of them have made money and left, but that's not what this – this is such a community and there's so much joy and fun. Like I've just had the best couple of years doing this. If you want to get involved and get into the community, I think it's incredibly great, but I just think you have to make sure you're, again, probably just staying true to who you are not losing what you love and your passion, and that you can handle the ups and downs because there are highs and lows, a lot.
[0:23:01] NG: Yeah, for sure.
[0:23:01] BA: A lot. That gets hard as an artist. I think just knowing how to navigate that. Finding a group, a group of friends to be a part of or a group that can help support you when you are struggling, when you're feeling down about your work or the space, and that you have people that you can bounce off of and can help you through those times is, I think, very important.
[0:23:27] NG: Yeah. I definitely, agree. I mean getting the right group of people around you helps a lot.
[0:23:30] BA: Definitely, yeah. It's made all the difference for me.
[0:23:33] NG: Yeah.
[0:23:34] BA: I mean these are like, I love that these are real life friends now, that these people I met in Clubhouse, in these audio rooms getting to know them that way like, I've seen so many of them in real life and others I can't wait to meet. I mean, we share really deep stuff now and it's just been really cool to have a group like that to go through this with and just be in this space with, it's really fun.
[0:23:55] NG: Yeah, definitely has been. I've definitely enjoyed it. Enjoyed meeting, making new friends from it, as well.
[0:24:02] BA: Yeah. It's just been really fun.
[0:24:05] NG: It has. If you could live or move anywhere, where would you live and why?
[0:24:11] BA: Well, I'm not the world traveler that a lot of people here get to be. I mean, I have been to some cool places and have been to Africa a couple times, but there's so much of Europe and places there. Then Patagonia has been my bucket list for over 20 years, so I can't say I'd want to live there, though, because I haven't been there, but I feel like I have so many places I still want to visit and that I'm hoping to at this phase in my life, but from my experiences and what I know and love, I would love to live in Whitefish Montana, although I don't know if I can handle more than the summers and the falls.
[0:24:43] NG: That's fair.
[0:24:42] BA: We almost moved there when our boys were young. That's where we used to rent a house there for a month each summer. We'd spend all our evenings and weekends in Glacier, and hiking, and camping, and backpacking and everything, doing photography. I love it up there. I love how close you are to so much in Canada. I love that you're a half hour from Glacier. It is a beautiful little small town. I love Montana, just has everything for me. That would probably be it. I mean, my dream would be to split and live like summers and falls in Montana. Then winters in Southern California, near my family, near the ocean. If I can have two places.
[0:25:22] NG: All right.
[0:25:22] BA: If I can split my time.
[0:25:25] NG: That's fair. That's fair. Do you have any questions for me?
[0:25:29] BA: Yeah. I have a couple different ones I can think of. They're very different, though. So let's see.
[0:25:34] NG: That's okay.
[0:25:35] BA: Okay, yeah. I do have one I want to know. You are a dad with small children.
[0:25:39] NG: Yeah.
[0:25:40] BA: You are incredibly involved in this space. You have multiple podcasts collecting. You're curating. You do so much in this space. How do you balance it all? Do you find that you struggle to balance all of this with parenting? Do you find that you separate it out or that you found certain tricks to keep doing all of it?
[0:26:01] NG: I mean, it's definitely hard. I feel like I'm getting better at time management on it, but definitely when the kids - my daughters in preschool, so that helps. Then I also have a nanny that comes for a couple hours, three days a week.
[0:26:16] BA: Oh, that's awesome. Yeah.
[0:26:17] NG: That helps, a lot. I try and focus on getting stuff done during those couple hours, during nap time. Then the weekends, I try and be more family focused until kids are in bed.
[0:26:31] BA: Right. Yeah, that makes sense. Then at their ages too, a lot of times you do have quite a bit of time in the evenings if you want to do more, but I look at all you do and think about that face of life with little kids and it just seems like so much.
[0:26:43] NG: Yeah. Yeah. I definitely, I mean I'm not on twitter a whole lot, compared to some other people. That helps a lot.
[0:26:50] BA: I’m not, either. It is a time suck. I mean I try to stay active. I think, it's important, but I can't. I cannot be on there all day. I won't get anything done.
[0:26:59] NG: Right. Right, for sure.
[0:27:00] BA: Okay. I have one more question. Can I do a different question to you?
[0:27:04] NG: Yeah. As many as you want.
[0:27:04] BA: Okay, so my other question would be, just like you asked me about advice for artists coming into the space, maybe someone's already asked you this on a podcast I haven't heard, I've heard a lot of them, but not all of them. What advice would you give to an emerging artist in the space?
[0:27:22] NG: My go to is like take your time. Then use your own contract whether that's manifold or I'm sure –
[0:27:31] BA: Yeah. We've talked about that a little.
[0:27:33] NG: Transient Labs is coming out with something I'm pretty sure in a little bit, so either of those definitely is a must, but something I just thought about after – well, I didn't think about it. Icky did. I was interviewing him the other day and he was like, he basically has a collecting address and a minting address. He has his minting address.
[0:27:57] BA: That's a great idea.
[0:27:58] NG: Also, on a hardware wallet. It's not a hard wallet.
[0:28:02] BA: Okay. That's a great idea, because I've only recently – this is where that tech part of me isn't super bright. I hadn't thought about that part of it of like the things I've minted that are out there, right? I mean, that's very simple. I feel like I maybe heard that once and didn't remember it, but I think that's brilliant advice.
[0:28:22] NG: Yeah.
[0:28:22] BA: To have a collecting wallet and a minting wallet.
[0:28:25] NG: Both on hardware wallets. Yeah, protect that minting wallet and the profits that it has.
[0:28:32] BA: Absolutely. I think that's such great advice. I love that and I'm going to start doing that, because I do need to do a new Manifold contract. I only have a couple pieces out there right now, but I think that's a brilliant idea, because I did start worrying about that they're out there, they're on my hard wallet right now. That's not good. That's great advice.
[0:28:52] NG: Yeah. I just got that from Icky. I will attribute that to him.
[0:28:56] BA: Okay. Keep sharing it, though, that's a good one.
[0:28:59] NG: Those are the main two.
[0:29:01] BA: Okay. Yeah, those are good.
[0:29:03] NG: Beyond that, break some rules.
[0:29:06] BA: But that's a piece of advice.
[0:29:08] NG: Yeah. Because I feel like, so many people are like –
[0:29:09] BA: Break some rules.
[0:29:11] NG: You can't, you should do this, you shouldn't do that, and clearly that was the wrong way to do it or not necessarily the wrong way, but there's multiple ways to do stuff.
[0:29:21] BA: No, I know what you mean. Definitely, yeah. I think the whole thinking creatively, there's obviously so many people in this space that we've seen do incredible things and push the boundaries, and a lot of them really probably did exactly that, broke the rules of how we're supposed to do this as we started when really there were no rules. We just all came in, but so many artists end up just following each other. I think it's really important to find our own path, too.
[0:29:48] NG: Yeah. You definitely need to. I think there's not enough experimentation going on, everyone plays it a little safe.
[0:29:54] BA: Right. Yeah, I think that definitely makes sense.
[0:29:56] NG: Yeah. Any other questions?
[0:29:57] BA: Yeah. Those are really good advice. I think that's it.
[0:29:59] NG: All right.
[0:30:00] BA: Those are the ones that came to mind.
[0:30:02] NG: Cool. Well, do you have any shout outs? Do you have any upcoming projects? Anything you want to talk about.
[0:30:08] BA: Shout outs, I'm just going to give a shout out to my ‘just chilling’ crew. They all know who they are. We share it with each other on twitter. We use that term some, but there's too many to list. I hate listing people, because I will forget.
[0:30:19] NG: The anti-NFT group.
[0:30:20] BA: Some people that I love in this space and I don't want to do that, so projects. I am working on a project right now. I don't know how long it's going to take to release. It's definitely taking time and it is a passion project and different than my other work and it's more on this beach area called Crystal Cove that I grew up at and that my family goes back, if you count my kids who have been raised in the cottages there, we go back five generations. It's an extremely special place to me. I've tried to do a lot of work capturing it.
I'm working on how to share that and how to do something that's a totally different type of work for me in the space, but I'm really excited about it. I think the biggest thing I need to really work on and figure out is just my messaging, my writing about it. I love to write. I actually love to write as much as I love to do photography, so one of the things I am doing, but this is obviously – well I'm going to make a smaller book, but I do have goals of really writing a real book about this life and this history at this spot. That is a very long-term goal. But for now it's more within this space is a collection and a smaller book I'm going to put together and stuff. Yeah, I'm excited about that. It's definitely different for me.
[0:31:31] NG: Cool, well –
[0:31:32] BA: Just pushing my own boundaries.
[0:31:34] NG: Hey, nothing wrong with that. Get out and try some new stuff.
[0:31:37] BA: Yeah. That's about it.
[0:31:39] NG: That's great. Brynn, thank you so much for your time and spending a few minutes with me and coming on the podcast.
[0:31:46] BA: Thank you so much for having me. It's such an honor to be here and get to chat with you. I really appreciate it.
[0:31:50] NG: Yeah. I loved it. I hope you have a great rest of your day. We'll be chatting soon.
[0:31:54] BA: Thanks. You, too.
[0:31:56] NG: Okay. Bye.
[0:31:56] BA: Thank you, so much. Bye.
[END]