THE IMPERFECT SHOW NOTES
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I saw a lot of buildings getting burnt in Tehran. There was a lot of bombings on our street and many other streets. The Revolution caused havoc. But the moments that I remember is actually through the photographs that I was able to archive. And I would ask my parents, like, how often do we go to my uncle’s garden?
Achim Nowak 00:22
Welcome to the my fourth act podcast. I’m your host, Achim Novak, and I have conversations with exceptional humans who have created bold and unexpected lives. If you like what you hear, please subscribe on any major podcast platform so you won’t miss a single one of my inspiring guests, and please consider posting an appreciative review. Let’s get started. I am so delighted to welcome Halle show up to the my fourth act podcast. Hallie is a certified professional photo manager and the owner of picture lean. She and her family fled Iran during the 1979 revolution, bringing only their cherished photo albums. These albums were lifelines to the past, and they’re only tangible reminders of the life they laid behind these experiences helped shape Holly’s passion for storytelling and memory keeping after a successful career in advertising, she followed her heart, transforming a side hustle into her full time purpose by founding picture Lee, which is a photo organization, archiving and design studio in Los Angeles, through picture Lee, Holly has helped countless celebrities, families, individuals and institutions to safeguard their legacies By organizing, curating and preserving their most meaningful moments. And I just want to add, we’re recording this conversation as fires are raging in many parts of LA, which means objects, things that are important to people, are being destroyed. And I want to end our conversation by talking a little bit about what you think folks need to do to safeguard the things they can safeguard. Let’s stop now. Just want to say hello,
Haleh Shoa 02:28
hi. Thank you so much for having me. I’m
Achim Nowak 02:31
delighted to speak with you the question that I always like to start with you. What’s interesting is, who did you think you wanted to be as a grown up when you were a young girl, a teenager, thinking, I wonder, Is she going to ask from when she was in Iran or when she got to the States? Because they may have been two very different stories. What were you thinking about as a young girl,
Haleh Shoa 02:52
a young girl in my life, can be defined, sort of before coming to United States and after, because I came here when I was 10, I sort of always envisioned being famous, but I didn’t know what kind of fame. I didn’t know if I I’m an extrovert, so I’m not particularly shy, but then being on stage as an adult, and now I’m overcome that, but I have dabbled with doing his speaking engagements and things like that, and it would make me really nervous, but I always sort of envisioned being like a dancer, and which I always dance. I came out of the womb dancing. Apparently, I love the joy of watching people create music and dance and performances on stage. But yeah, I sort of always in my fantasies, I sort of wanted to be bring that kind of joy on stage. What I was
Achim Nowak 03:43
thinking about you talking because you’re talking about performance. But when we see a great performance, to this day, I have memories imprinted in my mind. Remember seeing Dustin Hoffman and Death of a Salesman on Broadway and that I will never forget and if I want to name now for a moment, when I was 23 I perform on stage with Rudolf Nureyev in Romeo and Juliet, eight nights, eight performances you’re on stage with. And I will never forget those memories, and they’re amplified by the power of performance, right? Because it amplifies emotion. It’s
Haleh Shoa 04:19
such an interesting question, and I feel like that question always lends itself to an answer of creation. Think, when we’re younger, we sort of dream about these things that we want to do, and we dream it with boundless imagination. It’s often about creating something, right? And of course, as we grow up, and as we go through the different stages of psychology and the ego and all those different stages hamper our creation in a way, then we work with coaches like you to dig deep and to get back into the heart of who we really are, so that we can create the life that we’re in that’s intended for us. Yeah.
Achim Nowak 05:00
What you actually remember about Iran before you attend? And it’s a pertinent question for me, because I back from the United States to Portugal last year. I left Portugal when I was nine. I’m surprised by the memories that come up that I hadn’t thought would come up, but I’m going to throw it to you, how many memories do you actually have about Iran, before you were dead,
Haleh Shoa 05:25
because of the situation, of how we left? There’s such a thing called the trauma brain, which sort of, like you kind of forget. I have forgotten so many things because the visuals that I saw. Now, I don’t remember these visuals, but I did see people. I saw a lot of buildings getting burnt in Tehran. There was a lot of bombings on our street and many other streets. Revolution caused havoc. The moments that I remember is actually through the photographs that I was able to archive. And I would ask my parents, like, how often do we go to my uncle’s garden. So a lot of city people own these sort of gardens right outside the city. It would have a groundskeeper that lived on the grounds, and the garden would have some fruit trees. And apparently we would go there, and especially in the summers, because the city would get really hot, we’d go there every weekend, the women would do their thing, and the men would do their thing, and they would lay out the kilims on the ground, and everyone would be sitting down playing, and the kids would be running around. And I have very fond memories of that. In fact, one of my earlier photographs is of me just sitting surrounded by all the trees in my uncle’s garden, and they just took some photos of me there. I remember that very fondly.
Achim Nowak 06:48
I’d love for you to connect some more for our listeners, the power of photos to memory and stories. You just gave us a good example about it. But as you were talking, I remember my grandfather, on my mother’s side, had a little garden behind their apartment building where he kept animals and he planted the garden. But I probably wouldn’t remember it as well if I hadn’t seen some photos of it, because the photos help me make that real. How do you see as a professional in the photo business, the connection between photos the memories and stories that they evoke,
Haleh Shoa 07:29
you know, you just explained it as well. It’s kind of like when you go traveling, and perhaps you haven’t been to that country or to that place in a while, like you with Portugal, all of a sudden, you pass by a store and you get a whiff of a smell, and it evokes all these memories that you’re like, Oh, my God, that smells. I went to Turkey, and all of a sudden I get this whiff of smell. I’m like, Oh, this is like my father’s pharmacy in Iran. I had no recollection of that smell until it came to me. It’s the same thing with photos, and what’s amazing about the archiving photos is that a lot of ancestral photos is basically things sort of before 1950s is what we call the ancestral photos. Of the photos that of people that perhaps may not be in our lives anymore. They’ve passed. You know, when they get archived, and you can really blow that up, and you can really see their faces, and you’re able to really be able to explain some of the stories a lot better. We had a collection of one of our clients who actually had a photograph from every photographic iteration in history. She had a daguerreotype, she had Amber types, she had tintypes. She had everything dated back to the 1840s until now. Her grandmother had tried to basically say who everyone is behind each photo. However, when we actually scan, because we camera scan everything in our studio, and when we scanned it, and we could blow it up, and we were able to see, well, that’s actually the other person. It’s the sister, and not the person that your grandmother thought it was. It’s such a wonderful way to bring families together. I have seen also be a very healing process for those who lost loved ones. And when I say loved ones, I’m talking about people who’ve left this earth untimely, perhaps a child or a husband that was young. It’s so difficult to be able to go through those memories yourself. So it’s really helpful for someone else to be able to do this for you, and you can sort of relive the joys of having that person in your life
Achim Nowak 09:40
well and you really become, in a way, an expert guide to people, honoring their stories more deeply. You bring a curatorial eye, which is fantastic, as you were talking about the different photo types of different eras, I just sensed your passion for that photography. In your adult development, did you notice that photography is a passion, and then how do you go from there to Okay, let me do something for this
Haleh Shoa 10:12
really good question. My sister was a really good photographer, and I have two sisters, the one who’s older than me, she’s six years older. She’s always been sort of left brain, right brain. She picked up photography, and that sort of became my passion, because I’ve always been interested in people’s stories. My family just says, You’re just nosy, because I just want to know where you come from. Like, you know, what was your favorite food when you were a kid? Like, I come from a different culture, and I’ve traveled to countless countries on earth. Everybody has a different way of doing everything. It’s just so interesting to me that it’s really when I held my own camera. My style of photography was always to capture people and to really capture, not to be afraid to get in their face, to get really close up, I really enjoy the being able to see those emotions. That could be a child crying, it could be my mom being angry at me, and I’m capturing her like sort of mad face at me. It was that that evoked me to wanting to archive my own family photos. As you mentioned, I worked in advertising. We had available to us these incredible scanners that were really high reps when things were not so busy at work, I would bring the family memories in, and I would start scanning them, going into Photoshop, repairing the tears and the smudges and things like that. And I would send that to my family at large. We are in four continents, email that to my family, and everyone would be so amazed at not only the quality, but also like, wow. How did you get that photo? And it sort of became a thing in my 30 years ago, I started to do my own things, my own family archive. Slowly, I shamelessly, have to admit that I’m still not done with organizing all of it. But can they say the cobblers kids don’t have any shoes kind of like that, but, but it’s everything’s archived.
Achim Nowak 12:21
What strikes me your passion for photography’s evident in your I mean, it’s probably your notes and interest in other people and the stories. And I’m asking this question for you, but also for all of our listeners, because there’s a leap from having a passion to them saying, Gosh, let me offer service related to it. No, let me go out and tell people that I do this and they can hire me. That’s the whole other How. How did you get to that?
Haleh Shoa 12:57
As a I always had a little camera, and I’m, I wasn’t like this professional photographer. I just had a camera like everyone else, and I would, I never had my own kids, but all of my really close friends had their kids, had kids on their own, as I would go to their homes. I was always official photographer. You know, kids are cute and you want to capture every moment. I would sort of take a lot of photos of their kids and them, and then I would start making photo books and calendars every year. I just loved it. And I started working with a coach in 2015 My goal was to just come up with a business that I just would love to do on a daily basis. We dug deep and deep, and she’s just like, What do you just love doing? And it was in January. It was right after I made everyone’s holiday calendars and year end books. I said, you know, I just love making photo books, and I’m really good at it. I have a really good eye. I’m a good designer, and I loved doing that. And so she says, Well, let’s see if we can make a business out of it. I thought it was silly, because I had a very big girl job in advertising, and I thought, who’s going to pay me? But of course, like an 1800 square foot studio in Los Angeles and six employees later, there are plenty of people who would love people to make photo books for them. But the thing is, like when I got into it, I just wanted to do photo books. However, I had my first two clients going, but what about all these old boxes and what about my DVDs and VHS tapes and all the tapes that I have? What about those? I can’t enjoy those anymore. It sort of forced me to learn the tenants of archiving. The advertising agency that I sort of what I say I grew up in was TB W A shy day, and that was led by the world most renowned creative teams. And our sort of tagline was good enough is not enough. So that’s where I grew up. And, you know, for me good and like a scanner, that was good enough was just not enough. I had to learn, like, what did you museums use? Oh, they use a camera system. Because it’s great for being able to manage, you know, really delicate memories. Of course, the good enough is not enough is always in my blood, and that’s how I sort of established my business.
Achim Nowak 15:14
So I want to speak from my perspective as a serial entrepreneur in their personal development history, I’ve had several businesses in my wildest dreams. I didn’t think that would happen. I sold one, but doing that changed how I see myself. 20 years ago, I would not have been able to say one of the things I’m proud of is being an entrepreneur, and I am, and I’m proud of it. So the question to you is, how is creating your passion growth into a business with six people working for you?
Haleh Shoa 15:46
I don’t think there’s an entrepreneur out there who has either succeeded or failed that hasn’t been changed by that journey. I love that question. I wasn’t able to get here by myself, I always have to remind myself of the people and circumstances for which I’m very grateful, but it was me who made those decisions, whether it was turning left and failing or turning right and succeeding, whatever it was, and it’s really important to take note of those instances and to see the stepping stones that I noticed, and I stepped on those stones, and I grew that much more or failed. It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done, even though I’ve survived a crazy, insane revolution, it’s still the hardest things I’ve ever done, even though I’ve gotten my heart broken, because with this business in particular, it’s like nobody knows that there’s a certified professional photo organizer that can help you essentially archive your entire family history, like it’s not a known thing necessarily. It’s really letting people know that that exists and that I do that in my gratitude. I’m always very grateful for having the fortitude, the intelligence and the heart to receive the help that I needed in order to get here. So I’m very proud of myself and I as an entrepreneur, I have to constantly remind myself the highs are great and the lows are great for teaching me lessons. No matter where I am, it’s just the ying and the yang of where you are and all of it, like enjoy the highs, but learn from the lows. I think that was the hardest part. Is not to give up when you are hitting a lull or low for a while. Yeah,
Achim Nowak 17:41
I want to ask you, think, a pretty impossible question. I want to ask it anyway, if you had to think of maybe a recent client, and you can mention their name or not mention, doesn’t matter, but where you afterwards went. This is why I do this work. This is in the deepest part of me why I do what I do.
Haleh Shoa 18:03
This week alone brought so many text messages, phone calls from clients saying, I am so grateful that I found you and you were able to save my entire family collection, because it all burned down, but it’s all digitized and it’s in safe. Obviously they lost their hard drives too, because some of them weren’t able to retrieve their hard drives. But make sure everything that we archive is in the cloud somehow for my clients, it’s this week alone. Was the answer to your question, is that the things that we cannot replace though, our loved ones, our pets, our time and our memories, literally, everything else is replaceable. I mean, I ended up making it heart based business. It fills my heart all the time when I deliver a client. I’m very grateful that this also the studio is not near any of the fires. We’re right by the beach. So yeah,
Achim Nowak 19:04
since we’re talking about the LA fires right now, some of our listeners may be in near La, but some may be anywhere in the world, but they might also be thinking, Gosh, what are some things that I should make sure I properly protect and save? So God forbid if something happens and they have to leave my house, suddenly, it’s not lost forever. What kind of guidance would you give people if they have, say, just 15 minutes to get out of their house? I
Haleh Shoa 19:34
urge everyone, whether for a disaster or not. I mean, do it for your kids. If you have children, just do it for yourself. Is really especially for people with really large collections. Go through your entire memories and put them all out and see what you have. And put all the Like for Likes together. Put all the albums together, put all the loose photos together. Put the tapes and the DVDs and the films together. Right? That way you kind of can assess what you have. So that’s the first step. And the second step is, if you have things in albums, an album Typically holds anywhere from 300 to 500 photos, where a box service shoe box of photos can fit up to 1200 photos can fit a lot more in a shoe box, and it’s a lot easier than taking four or five albums with you, rather than shoebox. And also, when we go through our clients albums, we always curate there are going to be photos in there that you thought were really amazing, like the picture of the sky in Hawaii that you’re not going to care about. Like, okay, we’ve seen so many skies of a light or essentially scenery shots. Unless you’re a phenomenal photographer, you want to only keep one or two scenery at least, keep a lot of scenery shots in our albums you want to call and curate as you go through and like if you have slides and carousels, a small, a very small box of slides, an archival box of slides, can hold up to 220 slides, whereas a carousel can hold up to 140 and it’s so bulky and big. Really think about being agile, trimming down and of course, make sure it’s archived right as you go through it. Make sure that you can find someone to be able to help you archive it, and that way you’re not so attached to what if it gets lost, and you’re able to recreate that.
Achim Nowak 21:28
That all makes perfect sense. But I, certainly in my own life, often haven’t considered those very simple considerations. Thank you. Now just looking to the future for a moment when you think of the future and picture me, do you want it to grow? Do you care if it grows? Is it perfect the way it is? Because there are all these stories around us about what we should do with our business. What do you think about
Haleh Shoa 21:55
I want to be able to grow a production company and be able to film people talking about their legacies. I want to be able to offer that service, to be able to and there’s services out there that do this, but I’m in Hollywood. Hollywood is my backyard. On the one hand, it is extremely expensive to produce a film with people in the union. I’ve done it with several directors who are in the Union, and it costs anywhere from 250,000 to 350,000 and the archiving of the photos is a very small portion of that. It’s just that you have to hire everyone in the Union, the gaffer, the light, the editor, the sound and color, but there’s other, I mean, there are ways of doing it. That’s non union as well. That’s one of the things that I hope be able to grow in my business, is that, do I want to be like? I mean, I’m already a global business, and that I have clients in the Middle East. I have clients in Europe and in Asia because we can help clients, especially with their digital assets. We can help clients globally in terms of their analog and the tangible stuff. Of course, we can help them if they want to ship that to us, but we can also help them to figure out local resources for that. But I mean, I have room to grow the business a little bit, but I rather grow my alliances with being able to provide more bespoke type services.
Achim Nowak 23:33
Now I’m going to ask you a non business question again. If I offer myself an example, I’m good at a whole bunch of things, so I often get phone calls to do those things that I’m good at, and have a little voice that says I’ve done that often enough I don’t need to do that anymore. And by saying no to some things, we create space for other things. How do you decide I want to do more of this? I want to do less of this. And the question behind it is, if we create more space for other things, what are some of the things you would like to explore?
Haleh Shoa 24:07
I love that question. I am also a certified life and business coach. I have helped a handful of women coaching, and it just brings me so much joy. I want to be able to carve and I have some time to be able to I don’t really feed that business. It just comes to me through word of mouth, the referrals. I’m not taking too many clients in that arena, but I just love being able to help other women be able to make their dreams come true. May see themselves in a different light, and whatever else that I need to do for them in order to help them grow and achieve what they want to achieve, that’s something that I love, and there’s been so many. Are interesting people in my path who have always said, you’re going to be a writer. One day, I constantly ask myself, what is it that I’m going to write about?
Achim Nowak 25:11
Beautiful if you had a chance to give some advice to the younger version of you, not to change the direction your life, but almost like the fairy godmother who could share some words of wisdom. What would you want your younger self to know about life?
Haleh Shoa 25:30
To be kind to yourself? Is the place to start just having the certain traumas in my childhood, with a revolution, and then living an area that a lot of people of color did not live in. I was bullied for seven straight years. It was like sort of trauma from nine and a half until about 16, when I realized, Oh, I could drop out of high school and go to college. What it took many years for me to self heal from that. I just want to be able to tell my younger self to find those moments of joy, be proud of myself and stop beating myself up. We’re all spiritual beings having a human experience in a way that was all the lessons for me in order for me to get here.
Achim Nowak 26:24
I want to wrap it up with an la question. Because you were displaced from the country and culture where you were born, you’re in the middle of a traumatic event in the city that you live in. La, you’re referred to Hollywood as your backyard. So I get a sense of how important this is, but as you look to the future, do you see yourself staying LA?
Haleh Shoa 26:47
Yeah, I talk about this often. My mother is 84 my dad’s 97 it’s really difficult to be able to move my parents in to a different country at this point, it’s really not an option, although planning something is always an option. I love this state, I love California, but this country is changing a lot. All the countries in the world are changing a lot. Not just this. The world is changing. It’s sort of like it’s difficult to choose a place through the lens of global warming, which is very real, and sort of figuring out where to go from here that is aligned with my politics, is aligned with my social values and aligned with my financial values, as well as global warming. I haven’t done that, but it’s sort of, I haven’t chosen a place like you have going back to Portugal. It’s interesting that you are in Portugal, because I have so many Iranian friends who have bought homes in Portugal. And it’s like sort of the just in case, perhaps I’ll end up in Portugal.
Achim Nowak 28:01
That would be wonderful to have you as a neighbor. I can’t imagine that there aren’t listeners who want to learn more about picturely. I also happen to and say, I’m not surprised, because it’s a photographic business. So your website is gorgeous. I love your website. So where would you like to direct people who want to learn more about you and the work
Haleh Shoa 28:23
well, they can certainly visit my website, and it is spelled very oddly. It’s picture Lee is with an eyes. If you just spell it picture, Li, you’ll get to my website. And from there, I have composed a seven step guide to if you sign up for the seven step guide, it’s p, i, c, t, u, R, L, I, that’s how you spell picturely. Picturely com, slash connect, will take you to the right page. And you can sign up to get the seven step guide. And there’s some good nuggets in there as to sort of the steps you want to take in order to start thinking about archiving your photos, but I’m here book a complimentary consult with me. You’ll talk to me directly. Yeah, I hope to hear from as many people as who want to learn about how to archive their memories.
Achim Nowak 29:15
Very cool. Thank you so much for this conversation and thank you for the really amazing work you do.
Haleh Shoa 29:23
Thank you so much for now. Thank you.
Achim Nowak 29:29
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