Latest / PropMedia Podcast / Slowing Down to Capture the Soul of Architecture w/ Simon Devitt

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Slowing Down to Capture the Soul of Architecture w/ Simon Devitt · PropMedia Podcast

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_04: Welcome to the Prop Media Podcast.
• 0:01
  SPEAKER_04: I'm Maddie.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_04: This is Moses.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_04: We are the co-founders of propmedia.com and pixelmob.com.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_04: And we're here to talk about property media.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_03: Today we have the privilege of talking with Simon Devitt.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, if you don't know that name, Simon is an internationally recognized architectural photographer.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_03: And this is a very different episode.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_03: So if you're in a frame where you're hustling between six houses and you're a go, go, go and you're wanting business principles, this is not the episode for you.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_03: This is for when you want to slow down and think and think about the philosophy and meaning of beauty and what it looks like for you to bring your soul into your work.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_03: So if you are able to get in that space, you will enjoy the episode and hearing from the soul of an artist.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_03: And I would highly, highly recommend to you, before you listen to the episode, you should go to Simon Devitt's website and look at his portfolio.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_03: Because the the context, like when we start the conversation, is uh he is talking about how he incorporates people into scenes and how that's very important and special to him from his family and life.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_03: And without the context of seeing an internationally renowned portfolio, you may not even understand what he's talking about.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_03: So check it out, slow down for a minute.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_03: Simon would be proud.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_03: Slow down from the hustle and pause, look at his portfolio, and listen to what he has to say about art, beauty, rest, and pace.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_03: So when you're in that meditative frame of mind, come along.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_03: You learn something.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_03: Simon, welcome.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_03: We're excited to have you on the podcast.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_03: And you're you you do a little bit different, uh or maybe a very different um take on property media than many of the people we've had on the show.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_03: So I'm excited to hear from you.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_03: And tell tell us a little bit about what the focus of your business is uh in practice.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_03: Like what do you do?
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, thanks, Moses.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_00: Uh Maddie, thanks for having me today.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: It's great to be here with you guys.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um what do I do?
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: It's uh, I mean, property's one one way to look at it.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_00: I I guess there are different lenses, excuse the terrible pun we can put on this.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um for me, it's always been strongly related to where I've come from.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: And where I've come from is a dad that always took his 35mm SLR camera loaded with slide film wherever we went.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: He wasn't a professional photographer by any stretch, but he was very curious, had a good eye, and he made sure he recorded where we went as a family and what we did.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: And that came from him doing that as a young man, traveling around.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: He's Canadian, he came here as a merchant navy man and didn't get back on the boat.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: He stayed in New Zealand.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: Oh wow, and became a computer engineer, and uh, and so you know, my childhood is filled with memories of slideshows, you know, images projected on the wall.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah uh for most kids, probably quite boring.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: For me, I was pretty, pretty excited about the whole thing.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: Seeing us as a family and where we went projected on the wall in a pretty, you know, social setting, in a sense, because photography is is quite typically a solo event.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: It's in a book or it's on our phones, it's on our monitor in front of our eyes.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: And so we have this very intimate personal experience with photography typically when we're viewing it, but a a projected image on a wall in a room with people in it, that's a different, that's a different beast.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, these were literally, you know, the fan sound, I'll never forget, the clicking and the clunking of the slide, moving to the next slide.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it's all very atmospheric and it and it builds kind of a um almost a reenactment of the photograph being taken, that that that click and that moment, that finality, which I really, I really love still.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and that's what I love about film photography.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: I'm veering off your question, Moses.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_00: Hope you don't mind, but that kind of finality of a of of a film camera click, the shot is done.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_03: It's done.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_03: There's nothing you're gonna do to it right then.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_00: At that point you're done, and and you're not even seeing it unless you've shot a Polaroid to have a quick look beforehand.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_00: But largely, you know, the the distinction, and it's a mindset more than I think more than a mechanical aspect to to photography is that with digital photographs, when we click the shutter, it's only just begun.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_03: It's infinitely mutable, like it branches a it can branch an infinite number of ways from there.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_03: It is it is different.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_03: But this this all does track with more of your uh accent of where your business focuses.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so coming back to that that kind of family as the foundation, I think.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I look at what I do now uh largely as an extended family photograph, you know, these moments where even if someone isn't present in a picture, because quite often there is no one around.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: We're all at work paying off our enormous mortgages.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_00: Um but every now and then I can wrangle a few people, you know, and get them into some pictures.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_00: Uh might be an assistant, might even be me sometimes, or or the family, hopefully, that's in the house.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: And it turns sort of one chute into two or three different shoots, because suddenly there's a family photograph that they never had before, which I really love.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_00: And so for me, it's always centered around the idea of of uh people and photos, the family photograph, and and yes, the architecture, you know, yes, the interior spaces, yes, the exterior, sometimes the threshold between the two that gets met.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but always with that in mind, with someone in mind, and that helps me, I think, create a lot of um uh atmosphere and um and and leans really heavily on how it felt to be there.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you can imagine too that that can go quite pear-shaped quite quickly, you know, in the wrong hands.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_00: Suddenly things can look um with people in them, can look too staged, can look too too curated, too posed, too cheesy.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_00: There are a number of things that can go wrong.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_00: So r risk and reward here for sure, like it's not lost on me that a lot of people don't like having their photo taken.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: So how do you manage that?
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um you know, it's up there with public speaking for people.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: They really don't like don't like that.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_00: So um you know, have that in mind and and from one moment to the next, one family to the next, um, one person to the next, you know, it's it's treating that situation like it was their first time having their picture taken ever, you know.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: Not not a blanket kind of approach to um staging a scene, setting a scene, asking someone to redo something they just did because it looks so good, you know.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_00: So it has to feel natural, has to feel like I found that moment.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_00: And for me, I would call that creating opportunities for chance encounter.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_04: So what does that look like?
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, you're trying to put some things together and then kind of provoke uh something um in and captured in the moment.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_04: What what does that process actually look like?
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: Some sometimes, again, there's no kind of one approach to it.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_00: Even in New Zealand, it's a small country, right?
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_00: But we've got you know a different way of living down south than we do up north.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_00: And so people live differently.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_00: Um there's even a slight there's a different accent down down south here, and and most people probably don't know that from outside of New Zealand, but there are there are subtle you know variations on how we do it down here, and and and and that depends on where you are.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_00: And so my approach might be different uh in one country or one part of a country to another, um, one family to the next, you know, hundreds of other shoots before this one, but also never this one.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_00: And so I'm very mindful that there's an opportunity to connect, and and usually that comes through asking some good questions or engaging in a in a conversation to sort of you know seek out what they love, what they enjoy, how they might naturally react to something.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_00: You know, if there's a a nine and a ten-year-old boy living in the house and there's a swimming pool, there's a good chance they probably want to, you know, jump in the pool.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_00: Probably even if it's winter, knowing a nine and a ten-year-old, right?
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: So um there's an opportunity for for um, you know, stills, but also perhaps moving image too.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_00: Um lot of people in our busy lives have overlooked having a family photograph taken, you know, where everyone's in the same shot at the same time.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_00: And and so presenting that as an opportunity for people gets people to engage in a way that they wouldn't normally.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_00: And I love that.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so it's a chance for um people to be themselves.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_00: They get relaxed around me pretty quickly when when that kind of um conversation happens.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_00: Um Mealtime Card games, you know, anything that the family would would naturally and normally do, I'll find out about.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_00: And and um then there's really no there's no posing, there's no there's really nothing unnatural happening, and so it's a good starting point for for uh other things to follow.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_00: And uh suddenly, you know in a in in quick time, I'm sort of I've become a part of the family, and uh and um often invited back, there might be dinner, you know, see them at the supermarket the following week.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um yeah, it's all it all feels very natural very quickly, and nothing ever feels proposed.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_03: I all this sounds it sounds lovely and very even like pastoral, but in the United States and many parts of the world, and I think in New Zealand as well, it's pretty atypical to have people in architectural photography at all.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_03: Do you ever get pushback around um just wanting you wanting you to do it uh a more standard way?
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_03: How do you how do you engage with your clients to get them into this mold?
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_03: Or do you ever not and just do more of what the client's wanting with with less human interaction?
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_00: There's always a conversation with the client about what they like, especially if it's a new client.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, there's a lot of good questions that that you know need to be well aimed, so that I'm prepared for you know, sometimes a shot list, sometimes um renders come out.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_00: Can you please recreate this render?
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes there's floor plans with with uh arrows and lists of things that didn't go well that please don't cover, you know, the any any number of different directions come out from a client.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_00: And if I don't know those, or if I have a feeling that something's missing, then you know that's on me.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_00: And and those are questions I need to ask.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_00: What we're dealing with in terms of um architects, interior designers, um, engineers, developers, everyone's busy, right?
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_00: Everyone's got these very busy lives.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_00: Um, they're not going to always think of all of the things that they probably would like to get across in a brief.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes they do.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_00: I never assume one way or the other.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm I'm always armed with good questions, and that starts with really good listening.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_00: I never assume that someone's going to have the brief that they imagine they need to give.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um, if there's a homeowner involved uh and the homeowner's happy for me to get in in touch, I'll I'll call them three weeks out because I know the architect probably hasn't been there for a while, and that house will be quite different.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_00: And when I show up, I don't want to show up to a massive trampoline in the front yard.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_00: I don't want to I don't want to show up to the irrigation going off at 5 p.m.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_00: just at that very moment.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_00: And so if those things did happen, if the trampoline was there and the irrigation did go off, whose fault is that?
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_00: It sits with me.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_00: So planning is imperative, asking good questions, but that starts with good listening.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_00: You've got those three three important elements in any shoot, right, or any creative uh pursuit at all.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_00: You've got um preparation, execution, and reflection.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes the execution part is relatively brief compared to the the preparation and and then the reflection, that's where it gets a little bit more mysterious sometimes, but also we can design the reflection part too after.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_00: What does that look like?
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_00: How do we how do we learn from the pictures we made?
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_00: And typically what happens is that things are going at such a rate of knots that there isn't any conscious reflection going on because we're on to the next one.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_00: Some real estate photographers are doing three, four, five, six shoots a day.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_00: Like that's rapid.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_00: But even with the work I do where it's one shoot on a day, sometimes the shoots are two or three days long, it's still pretty quick, you know, in the scheme of things.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_00: And there's no real opportunity unless it's created.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_00: There's no there are no conscious artifacts after the after the fact.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_00: So what I mean by that is if if we did have time and we were to design this in a way that we did really value and measure reflection after the shoot, what would that look like?
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_00: If you were making a photo book, which is an incredibly slow process, there's a lot of reflection designed in the making of a photo book.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_00: And and by reflection I mean well-designed feedback loops.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_00: I know when I'm making a photo book, you know, one of them, the first one that I made, took seven years to create.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_00: That's a long time.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_04: Wow, yeah.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_00: You know, and that's that's fairly unreasonable.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_00: Who has that sort of time to make a photo book?
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_00: But the book was for me.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_00: The subjects didn't live in the same city as me.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_00: And they were two homeowners who just beautifully kept saying yes to me, which, you know, I look back on reflection and I wonder why the hell they kept saying yes, but they did.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_00: And they had a lot of trust in me.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_00: And so we made this really beautiful photo book.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_00: Seven years later, I was able to, you know, um enter that into awards and sell it in bookshops and and send it out to friends and family and and to the people that very generously sponsored money to make this experiment real.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_00: Um and that's not lost on me that that that those people did that.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_00: But to get to that result took a lot of I mean what's self-evident out of that process is that there's a lot of time making pictures, visiting the site, spending time with the people.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um the shoot started, well, the book started on film and ended on digital.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_00: So how does it all marry, you know, in the end?
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um the pictures I thought would be absolutely key to the book, the hero images, most of those never made it.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_00: Why does that happen?
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_00: How does that turn out to be that way?
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_00: And it's a lot of um in this very slow process of making a photo book, it's it's very much about spending time, of course, but also coming back and make for me, making cheap six by four inch prints that fill the living room floor often so that I can get physical, get real with the work, start pinning them up on the wall, you know, somewhere where I would walk past daily and and and look at these things and spend time learning from my own work by being able to handle them.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_00: What happens to this photo when I put this one next to it?
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_00: You could reasonably argue that that same thing could happen on a monitor, on a screen, but it doesn't work.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, there's something about a physical, tangible thing that's in your space with you uh that and in what you're talking about, I think too, is this kind of like processing over time.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, in your case, you're talking your first photo book, that being multiple years of process, and you kind of I don't know, there's something a little bit more tangible, uh well, not more, not kind of more tangible, it's fully more expressly, expressly tangible, yeah.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_04: I I think that's so interesting in our medium for real estate photography, which is people going and taking taking photos, not the architectural photography that you're talking about in your process, but it's almost intentionally throwaway.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_04: Uh, we take the photos and they're gone in two months.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_04: And uh is some part of your business, you know, your career actually shooting for real estate sales?
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_04: Is it almost all architectural and magazines and photo books?
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_04: What does it look like for you in if and when you do kind of like a real estate thing?
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_04: And you don't get the same kind of satisfaction uh satisfying, tangible then time for reflection, like it seems like it's a it has a very different kind of feel.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_04: Um, and when you're trying you you're coming at this with a much a lot more artistic intent, how do you uh handle those two very different kind of uses of a very similar, well not very similar, but it's a very similar property, it's a very similar subject matter, right?
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_03: But it's a radically different approach and results.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well described, um both of you.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_00: And I think it's a great example when you look at the contrast and the distinctions you might make between real estate photography and and and architectural photography, let's call it.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um it's a great example of how two things can look the same or similar, but be so completely different.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_00: Um, as you pointed out, Moses used the word commodity, and that's that's a pretty fair summary of of generally how that goes, what the intention is and what the outcomes are.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um in a very different measurement photography of architecture has a different playbook, different outcomes, different people involved.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_00: But a very similar subject matter.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_00: In one hand, it's sort of semantics, the difference between them.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_00: It's just the words we wrap around it.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_00: Uh it's it's the mindset we turn up with when we are photographing anything.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, there's a a speed difference between them, but even what I do is very quick.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_00: I've talked about a photo book that took seven years to make.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_00: Can I spend the same time using the same processes with the shoots I turn up to, you know, commercially?
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_00: No, absolutely not.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_00: There's there's just no way.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_00: In the same way that a real estate photographer couldn't even, you know, entertain the idea of of much of that process either.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, like many realtors m might not want, they might not want a full day.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_03: Their seller might not want to leave for a whole day.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_03: Like it's it's different, different need, I guess.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, different outcomes, um, different purposes, um, different budgets as well.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_00: But the mindset we can turn up with that's that's that's for us.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, you could take some of the things you're describing and apply it into what might be otherwise a commodity business and shift and move in a in a different direction.
• 21:59
  SPEAKER_03: But before we move on.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_03: I I want to make sure the people listening understand like most real estate photographers in the states are they are in one place, they shoot houses in one area, um, and then and the similar the commodity kind of idea that we're talking about.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_03: But you you shoot you've shot all over the world.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_03: Like I I think uh I think we might want to take a step back that I don't know that everyone listening even would understand all of what you do.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_03: So you're talking about two steps removed from them, where if someone's just doing um commodity real estate photography, then architectural photography in itself is different in its mode and its thought process and its mindset.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_03: But then you're another step removed where not only are you doing architectural design photography, you're also incorporating people and settings into the spaces to get an even different like I mean that's unique amongst the architectural space.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and so my my curiosity is like did you choose that and that grew into an international practice because it was unique?
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_03: Or did was your path more excellent and more normal architectural design or something like that?
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_03: And then as you excelled, you were able to do these more unique projects with people and things that have become kind of your signature.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_03: Was it was the cart first or the horse?
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_03: Or like how did that work in your career?
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_00: Hasn't changed um in terms of the intent.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_00: Um, what I know about that is significantly more layered now.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_00: I look at photography and and the labels we give them in a similar way to music labels giving their musicians.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_00: It's really for marketing and positioning things.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_00: So I've never called myself an architect photographer.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_00: That sounds more like a prescription from a from a pharmacy.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_02: What do you call yourself?
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_00: I'm a photographer.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_02: Just photographer.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_00: We all talk a, you know, the opportunity is that we all talk a different dialect within that language, is kind of how I see it.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_00: And I think if you're looking for being seen for your own style, if that's one of your desires, one of your the things you dream about as a photographer, and a lot of photographers would would hope for that when they look at a picture, they go, Oh, that's that that's definitely shot by Moses.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_00: There's no question.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_00: Then, you know, and not everyone, because some people, this is very much a business focus, and I understand that as well.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_00: But for some photographers, they'd really like to be uh identified with having a certain style.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_00: And so uh the opportunity is that then we have our own dialect within a a a greater language of photography.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_00: What I'm aware of when I show up, particularly in that this genre, if you like, of of of photographing architecture property, is that we're often taking pictures that really just add to a much bigger pile of other photographs of architecture and design.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_03: They're just documenting the space.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_03: They're not they're not really capturing uh moment.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_00: And we're all we're all doing it.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_00: Like I'm not I'm not immune to that, but I'm aware of that, and that's that there's a massive difference there.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_00: Because I'm aware of it, I'm looking at, you know, a beautiful one one point perspective, a lovely elevational view, that for all intents and purposes is a document type shot, you know, of of a building.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_03: There's there's only so many ways you can do a one-point perspective of the front of a building.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_00: And and and when those are beautifully executed in the right line, you know, they they elevate a project for sure.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_00: There's no question.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_00: It's not that I would avoid those sorts of pictures that you could argue are, you know, being added to this pile.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_00: But what else is there?
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_00: We might get a a brief, like a a shot list, very detailed brief that we have, you know, that's premeditated.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_00: It was designed by the client, maybe by the photographer as well, on a on a uh, you know, a visit to the site before the shoot, everything's detailed within an inch of its life.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_00: And in some cases, from what I understand from the you know, different photographers that I work with in a in a mentoring capacity, that's typically how it goes, and that's usually about it.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_00: There might be in in most cases tethered to a laptop or an iPad.
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_00: Um, there might be a client or two over their shoulder.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_00: There's the shot list, sometimes there's a powerful amount of lighting that's been brought in.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_00: Not to suggest any of that is is is the wrong way to do it, but I think if that's all that happens, at which point do you really feel like you're being a photographer and not a button presser?
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_00: Because I think if there's any definition a photographer can stand by when they pick up a camera, at its at its spirit, the essence of being a photographer is is exploring something and holding up a mirror to what's going on around us to reflect back something that we didn't know before.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_00: And for me, that's at any moment the question that has to be held.
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't need to be answered, just needs to be held so that I'm I'm aware that that's the opportunity.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_00: I might have a shot list too.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_00: I might I'm never tethered and I don't use lighting, except for uh what's on site already, what's coming in the window from outside.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_00: But it always has to be about exploration.
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_00: It always has to be like when I'm on site and I'm in the in the um the flow, whatever you want to call that, of of things going well and feeling good about the shoot.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_00: The question is always, I wonder what this will look like as a picture, you know, and that voice in my head, that that kind of momentum that gets built, that question that's being asked, that that force of creativity hanging over my shoulder.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_00: And the moment that stops, I know something needs to be uh adjusted or I need to pause and and and and look around again, change something.
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_00: But really, the essence of being a photographer is I wonder what this will look like as a picture.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_00: So it's that holding the very highest levels of creativity and being present to that and not premeditating, preordaining the shoot too much, or you know, maybe it is delivering on some of those those expectations, that shot list, but then what else?
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_00: What else is going on?
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_00: What else have you set up with the client so that when you do show up, you can do the the fast and quick and get the shots that you know are needed and wanted uh for that in this case, you know, commodity.
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_00: But if this house is um, you know, got s got a bit more potential, and I dare say a lot of houses do in different ways, then what else is there that you find that you can explore, spend a bit more time with, even if it's half an hour, even if it's 10 minutes, it's really um then your opportunity to make some new discoveries, to find other things outside of that brief, outside of that that this is usually how it goes.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's important.
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_00: So it's it's then it's up to us how we set that up.
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_00: And the question I always propose, and it shows up in different ways, but it's largely before the shoot, how I make my best work is dot dot dot.
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_00: And then it's about the art form, largely for photography, that I've worked out over the last 30 years, is this is largely the art of asking for what you need.
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_00: What's happening in the setup?
• 30:25
  SPEAKER_00: Do you give yourself permission to ask those questions?
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_00: There's only two answers, one of two answers that someone can give when you ask anything.
• 30:34
  SPEAKER_00: It's yes or no.
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_00: But what do you need to make work?
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_03: What's an example uh that you're thinking of where you're asking those kind of pre-approach questions and things before the shoot that are critical for your process?
• 30:47
  SPEAKER_00: Could be anything, right?
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_00: Like a lot of the we're never too far from the ocean here in New Zealand.
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_00: And so coastal houses or houses near the sea get blasted by salt air.
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_00: The windows often look just dreadful, you know, and in certain lights, it just looks like goddamn mess.
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um, has the homeowner had a window cleaner come over?
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_00: You know, some of these big houses, that's you're talking thousands of dollars to clean the windows.
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um, that day you book the chute might not be the day the shoot happens because the weather changed, you know, and you had to come back.
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_00: So there's there's a there's an ideal, there's a best case scenario.
• 31:27
  SPEAKER_00: What is the best case scenario given what you know about the house before you turn up?
• 31:33
  SPEAKER_00: Um, there's some fundamental stuff like, you know, have the windows been cleaned?
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_00: Are these people hoarders?
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_00: Is the living room just full of stuff that's just going to look dreadful when you when you get there?
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_00: So for me, it's again, it's that three weeks out moment with the fundamental stuff.
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_00: Can you please take a few pictures of the living room, kitchen, master bedroom, and and a couple of external elevations so I can see what's going on?
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_00: Three weeks out, it's easy to ask for the trampoline to be moved.
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_00: It's easy to ask for the irrigation to be turned off.
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_00: If there's a bright red, shiny leather couch that looked really great in the old house but looks terrible in this new one.
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_00: Three weeks out, you could probably still change out that piece of hideous furniture.
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_00: Two weeks out, maybe, maybe you can still change some stuff.
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_00: One week out, forget about it.
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_00: You're done, you're cooked.
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_00: It's already there.
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_00: That's what you're gonna deal with when you show up.
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_00: So there's that fundamental stuff that you can influence, you can change.
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but that's you know, again, something you have to be aware of and and have that ability to be able to ask and confidently and in a way that people get it.
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_04: What's your approach in finding a balance between working with what you're given versus uh setting up for a moment, you know, like you're trying to capture this this moment in time, and you're trying to capture this what that looks like in a as a picture.
• 33:08
  SPEAKER_04: Um and sometimes it's environmental.
• 33:12
  SPEAKER_04: A bird comes through, or there's a wave, or the trees are bending, or whatever, and you capture it.
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_04: There's other times it's an ugly red couch, you know.
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_04: Like, where where do you kind of find that balance between when do you intervene and when am I gonna work with this?
• 33:29
  SPEAKER_04: Or even in the editing process, you're like, I know I don't have to, if it's there's a big, you know, bird poop on the window, you know, like is this part of the you know, it has a rustic vibe, or do I I'm working with it, you know, like where do you find the balance?
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_04: Haven't seen too many rustic bird pose on windows, but uh well, you know, it's a if it it truly, if it is like a a seed-swept, you know, rustic kind of like all that can have its own beauty and its own context.
• 33:59
  SPEAKER_00: You can organize things till you're blue in the face, but it doesn't mean it's gonna go well on the day.
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_00: But if you can rule out some stuff, then you're you've you've done as much as you can, you've set that day up to be as successful as it's gonna be.
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not one and done in a room like I'm there the whole day from early till late, from dark to dark.
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_00: And I will see that same room, maybe with that red leather couch that I couldn't move, I'll see that it you know a dozen times in different lights.
• 34:30
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't know from one moment to the next when that's gonna be at its best.
• 34:35
  SPEAKER_00: I haven't been there before, I don't know that house.
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_00: But in the moment I see what I see, and I see uh the beauty in that moment or not.
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_00: And if I feel like that red couch really could, you know, be better served hanging out with the clothesline where I'm not gonna be photographing, then my assistant and I will get rid.
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_00: It's gone.
• 34:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um, if there's a chance that we could change that out for something better that's more appropriate in the house a few weeks out, we'll do that.
• 35:05
  SPEAKER_00: But on the day, certain lights, certain uh times of day, um if I have to deal with the red couch, there's there's different strategies, you know.
• 35:16
  SPEAKER_00: I can I can um downplay it you know with some directional light that's coming in very early in the morning where it's not glowing like a beacon uh on on a mountain.
• 35:27
  SPEAKER_00: Um other times I'll completely ignore it because it's just like it's it's shouting in the middle of the room.
• 35:35
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, I'm there the whole day.
• 35:38
  SPEAKER_00: I will see different opportunities to make sure that that um that living room where that red couch is will look the best it can look.
• 35:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um where that architect or that interior designer or both and the homeowner often have connected to create that you know beautiful atmosphere, my responsibility is to to elevate that, to make sure that when someone looks at that picture, whichever picture it is that gets chosen by by me or the architect or the magazine, conveys in some way how it felt to be there.
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_04: Well, where's the trumping vision, right?
• 36:22
  SPEAKER_04: So the architect, the designers, they all have a part in they made the space, and then this person furnished and made the space come to life, and you're bringing something out.
• 36:34
  SPEAKER_04: This is your artwork, this is your frame, and partially at times you're there to document, but then uh at times you're there to be an artist, and so like I wonder how these conversations go.
• 36:50
  SPEAKER_04: I've never been in your shoes.
• 36:51
  SPEAKER_04: Like, you think you don't think that piece of art is working for the composition?
• 36:58
  SPEAKER_04: What what takes precedent in an architectural photographer's mindset?
• 37:02
  SPEAKER_04: You know, like are you are you kind of you have to work with what's there?
• 37:07
  SPEAKER_04: Uh you kind of walk us through this con you know, this scenario with the red couch, but like um at the end of the day, it's that's your frame.
• 37:16
  SPEAKER_04: And do you always just work with what's there, or are you in the moment you have to kind of make a decision that might step on someone's toes or something like that?
• 37:25
  SPEAKER_00: It varies, you know, significantly from shoot to shoot.
• 37:28
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes in most cases, we're there when the house has been finished, the owners have moved in, they're only really starting to learn about how to live in the house because the demand and the appetite for newness is is prevalent, right?
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_00: That that's uh I get to shoot some old houses too, but mostly what we're dealing with is something that's not really um bedded in yet.
• 37:51
  SPEAKER_00: The landscape sort of pops up quite fresh, too.
• 37:54
  SPEAKER_00: You know, the trees are young if if if they've got any at all, the lawn's kind of you know just just sprouted.
• 38:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um there might be some artwork on the walls, sometimes there might not be any, and it hasn't arrived yet.
• 38:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um so there are huge number of variations, um, but the walls can't talk yet.
• 38:15
  SPEAKER_00: There aren't haven't been any memories made.
• 38:18
  SPEAKER_00: So it's really that um, you know, in that moment, if that artwork in the living room isn't working for whatever reason and it would look better without it, I'll I'll take it off the wall.
• 38:34
  SPEAKER_00: I'll, you know, beautifully ask the homeowner that it's okay to do that and they don't mind.
• 38:39
  SPEAKER_00: But you know, to qualify this, I don't turn up with my taste hat on.
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not there to have an opinion.
• 38:45
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not but I'm not being paid for my opinion.
• 38:47
  SPEAKER_00: No one gives a shit about what I think uh about their interior design, just that I make beautiful pictures.
• 38:54
  SPEAKER_00: If I turned up and had an opinion about that interior designer's work or or that homeowner's tastes in artwork, I mean it'd be a pretty short-lived career from from my standpoint, from my perspective.
• 39:09
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so my intention is to find beauty in every moment.
• 39:17
  SPEAKER_00: And there is.
• 39:18
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes you turn up, you know, I can't guarantee the weather's gonna be the weather that I want.
• 39:24
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes it'll be the weather that I get, but always without fail, there is something that I can uh some layer of beauty that shows up, and I'll find it.
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_00: You could give me an empty packet of cigarettes and you want some pictures of that thing, I'll photograph.
• 39:41
  SPEAKER_00: I don't care.
• 39:41
  SPEAKER_00: Give me, you know, I'll make some beautiful pictures of that thing.
• 39:45
  SPEAKER_00: Um that's the challenge.
• 39:46
  SPEAKER_00: That's what we're faced with.
• 39:47
  SPEAKER_00: We're given these subjects.
• 39:49
  SPEAKER_00: We haven't in, you know, we haven't self-initiated that work.
• 39:53
  SPEAKER_00: It's come to us, and we've been asked to uh and we're responsible for making the most out of that situation.
• 40:02
  SPEAKER_00: We're we're there to play the ball in front of us.
• 40:04
  SPEAKER_00: There's no other, there's there's nothing else.
• 40:07
  SPEAKER_00: You know, if it's completely pissing down and it's just like, well, this is a disaster, then you've got to call it right and probably come back.
• 40:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um in 30 years in the different countries, different parts of New Zealand, Australia, states, Asia that I've worked in, I haven't really had to stop a shoot very often.
• 40:27
  SPEAKER_00: Like, you know, uncanny how few times actually.
• 40:31
  SPEAKER_00: But there's always something, and that's what we're there for.
• 40:34
  SPEAKER_00: And if we're not explorers and we're relying on certain things to show up, we're just going to be disappointed.
• 40:42
  SPEAKER_00: And then the client will be disappointed.
• 40:43
  SPEAKER_00: And then what have we got?
• 40:45
  SPEAKER_04: I'm hoping there's some photographers that are listening to you talk and they're inspired by this vision.
• 40:51
  SPEAKER_04: I think there's a lot of people that uh they truly think of themselves as photographers and not documented or uh they're not there just to shoot catalog photos.
• 41:01
  SPEAKER_04: They they are inspired and want to capture those moments.
• 41:05
  SPEAKER_04: Um, they find themselves doing five shoots a day, and they're not spending 30 minutes in a room, they're spending 30 minutes in the whole house.
• 41:12
  SPEAKER_04: And they're hearing this now, and they're thinking, and they see your work and they're inspired.
• 41:17
  SPEAKER_04: Um Do you have any advice to them before we wrap up here on how to kind of push themselves to go find those moments in and start exploring like you're you're talking about?
• 41:31
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and that's fair what you're saying, and I I totally get it.
• 41:35
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and in the mentoring capacity that I that I work in almost daily with different photographers around the world, a lot of them are photographing real estate, and they really want to make that that that shift into photographing more architecture for architects.
• 41:52
  SPEAKER_00: Or maybe they're just looking to, you know, that they love what they do as photographers of of real estate, but they're looking to ship, you know, sharpen the view or or feel more like they're being themselves on a chute or able to make the pictures they want to make.
• 42:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um, both are very relevant.
• 42:09
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, I came from a period um of large format, eight by ten transparency, uh, six by seven roll film, Polaroids.
• 42:22
  SPEAKER_00: It looked like I needed a Sherpa to help me move all my shit around.
• 42:25
  SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of stuff, you know, and and that that was very slow and intentional.
• 42:30
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, the film lab bills were enormous.
• 42:34
  SPEAKER_00: The only thing I changed were the batteries and the light meter and the film and the camera.
• 42:40
  SPEAKER_00: Nothing else changed.
• 42:41
  SPEAKER_00: And we talked about that finality of the camera click in those times.
• 42:46
  SPEAKER_00: That was it.
• 42:47
  SPEAKER_00: There were, you know, we weren't on our phones because they really weren't there in the in the way that we use them now.
• 42:55
  SPEAKER_00: We weren't in front of our monitors on the screens behind cameras every hour of every day.
• 43:03
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we there's not a lot about this process at the moment that I can see that's very related to being a photographer.
• 43:15
  SPEAKER_00: It looks like it does, but it doesn't perform like that, it doesn't behave like that, it doesn't, it doesn't engage our neural pathways, and if it doesn't do that, it doesn't it doesn't really ignite any of the wonder, the curiosity, the play that is so strongly related to photography, and probably what got us excited in the first place.
• 43:41
  SPEAKER_00: So we need this stuff, you know.
• 43:43
  SPEAKER_00: I've got a couple of good monitors here and a laptop and all the all the all all the gear that you need to do this well and quickly in this day and age, but also I've got some pretty strong rituals and routines, some good habits around.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_00: Getting away from this and making it physical.
• 44:06
  SPEAKER_00: The most important pictures I've probably ever taken were the ones that no one will ever get to see, the ones that I took really early on and still take.
• 44:16
  SPEAKER_00: When I literally get a camera, and it could be a film camera or a digital camera, and take it for a walk.
• 44:24
  SPEAKER_00: Probably somewhere I'm really familiar with.
• 44:26
  SPEAKER_00: In this neighborhood where I live, it's all very familiar to me.
• 44:29
  SPEAKER_00: But unless I train myself to engage with fresh eyes, with a fresh, fresh view of what is already familiar, the world's just going to become incredibly predictable wherever I go.
• 44:44
  SPEAKER_00: And that's that's antithetical.
• 44:46
  SPEAKER_00: That's counter to my intention of being a photographer that explores to find things that are new, so I can sort of make sense of all of this in a way.
• 44:57
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I've been called a photographer of architecture, that's fairly self-evident.
• 45:01
  SPEAKER_00: I said earlier that I would never intentionally call myself a photographer of architecture.
• 45:08
  SPEAKER_00: My motivation, you know, don't get me wrong, I really enjoy architecture and design.
• 45:14
  SPEAKER_00: There's a lot to love about that.
• 45:16
  SPEAKER_00: But if that's all that I was showing up for, if that was my sole motivation, I probably would have been done with this a long time ago.
• 45:23
  SPEAKER_00: What I'm really curious about, what I really wonder about, what causes me to keep my highest levels of curiosity high, is a much bigger picture view on all of this of what we're up to as humans, the human condition.
• 45:44
  SPEAKER_00: It's more anthropological, sociological, kind of two nerdy words, but it's just more or less what the hell is going on here?
• 45:53
  SPEAKER_00: What are we up to?
• 45:54
  SPEAKER_00: This is weird.
• 45:55
  SPEAKER_00: This is wonderful, it's amazing, and I wonder what this will look like as a picture in that moment, and then the next moment.
• 46:07
  SPEAKER_00: And so it's as much as I can engage with encouraging the kind of behavior that leads to that, I will do.
• 46:17
  SPEAKER_00: And so I love making photo books.
• 46:20
  SPEAKER_00: I love making book dummies.
• 46:21
  SPEAKER_00: I like the simple act of picking up one of my film cameras and going for a walk and and seeing what I see and finding what I find.
• 46:31
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes I'll go for a walk and there won't be any pictures made.
• 46:34
  SPEAKER_00: Other times I wish I had six or seven roles more rolls of film.
• 46:39
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes uh it'll be a digital camera.
• 46:43
  SPEAKER_00: Whatever I can do to get away from what is demanding too much of my attention that makes me the kind of photographer I don't want to be.
• 46:55
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, it's not going to be the same for you guys or for anyone listening, what that might look like that gets us off these monitors.
• 47:02
  SPEAKER_00: It might be that you go and play, you know, a card game with the family.
• 47:05
  SPEAKER_00: Fucking brilliant.
• 47:07
  SPEAKER_00: Do that.
• 47:08
  SPEAKER_00: Just get off these goddamn screens.
• 47:11
  SPEAKER_00: Because that's not being a photographer.
• 47:13
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sorry, it's not.
• 47:14
  SPEAKER_00: However you define it, we need this to a point, but we've also got to turn our back on it, do other things.
• 47:22
  SPEAKER_00: And the more physical we get with the photography, the better.
• 47:24
  SPEAKER_00: Print your work, hang it on the wall.
• 47:28
  SPEAKER_00: Your client won't be expecting you to make a beautiful print and have it couriered to them.
• 47:33
  SPEAKER_00: But when they get that print, they're gonna be over the fucking moon.
• 47:37
  SPEAKER_00: And why would you do that?
• 47:39
  SPEAKER_00: Why wouldn't you do that?
• 47:40
  SPEAKER_00: It's fun.
• 47:41
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it it it doesn't get more fun for me and playful and satisfying and delivering on my promise to myself of getting something printed.
• 47:54
  SPEAKER_00: They're all around me in here, like I you know, they're everywhere.
• 47:58
  SPEAKER_00: And I've just sent off, I think 12 prints from the lab that I use um to clients just because I can, and I love doing it, and they absolutely love it.
• 48:08
  SPEAKER_04: That's awesome.
• 48:09
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, I I think that's uh I think a disconnect that I think a lot of people probably feel um and may not even realize it, you know, and some people have gotten into this industry for uh for the creative outlet to nurture those things.
• 48:26
  SPEAKER_04: And it I think it's easy to kind of get lost into the I go and I shoot and uh I come home and I've got to process all these photos and I gotta deliver it the next day.
• 48:37
  SPEAKER_04: You're talking at a very different pace, a very different philosophy.
• 48:41
  SPEAKER_04: Um and I think the I think there's gonna I think there's a lot of people that resonate with that and want to pursue that.
• 48:49
  SPEAKER_04: And I think the thing that gets lost um when you really are abstracting it, the points you're making here is uh looking through your portfolio, you know, and in as diverse as it is, and all these homes and uh it really is kind of this collection of places we live in real estate photography.
• 49:11
  SPEAKER_04: We don't think about that.
• 49:12
  SPEAKER_04: Like it's about it's business, it's transactional, it's sell the house.
• 49:17
  SPEAKER_04: And I think this conversation is really helpful to uh those are listening that are, you know, they're running the rat race of kind of just in and out of houses five times a day and in and out of every room to really kind of stop and appreciate that.
• 49:33
  SPEAKER_04: And I'd highly recommend if you can go and check out uh Simon's portfolio and take a moment and be inspired by the work he's done over a career here and he's developed.
• 49:46
  SPEAKER_04: And uh are your books still being published?
• 49:50
  SPEAKER_04: Can can we find your books?
• 49:52
  SPEAKER_00: I think that'd be very um I'm I'm very um lucky, but they all sell out, which is great.
• 50:01
  SPEAKER_00: I you know, um means I'm doing something right, and you know, the most recent book was my attempt at uh creating something that retains the sort of artfully minded approach that I have to the previous photo books that I've made, which are incredibly niche.
• 50:18
  SPEAKER_00: You know, the first book I made, that one that took me seven years to make, was about One House, you know.
• 50:23
  SPEAKER_00: It's never gonna be a New York Times bestseller, but it's it's beautiful and it um it's something I still cherish and love.
• 50:31
  SPEAKER_00: Um that was quite a long time ago now.
• 50:33
  SPEAKER_00: So my most recent books are more commercially driven in a sense, but they retain all my intention around the viewer engaging with something that they want to return to, or maybe they they're halfway through the book and they have a memory of a photo that was eight pages and they turn back.
• 50:57
  SPEAKER_00: Those sorts of photo books perform differently, and they perform differently for for good reason.
• 51:04
  SPEAKER_00: That it's not a marketing-driven idea, for one, I think that helps.
• 51:08
  SPEAKER_00: I'm the publisher, I'm the decider of of all of the images, the projects, the colour of the cover, um, the graphic designer and the writer who wrote the words in the book.
• 51:19
  SPEAKER_00: And so everything's exactly how I want it to be, no compromise.
• 51:23
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so I'm making those books, and and they are largely about how we live in different houses, and in this case, in New Zealand.
• 51:35
  SPEAKER_00: And the second volume of of this series is about to come out in May.
• 51:40
  SPEAKER_00: We're having a launch, it'll then begin its life and get sent out into the world.
• 51:45
  SPEAKER_00: Um, the first volume took uh three months to sell 5,000 books or something.
• 51:53
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, it's been it's been good with the books.
• 51:56
  SPEAKER_03: All right, Simon.
• 51:57
  SPEAKER_03: Well, thank you very much for a uh more philosophical conversation than we typically have.
• 52:02
  SPEAKER_03: It's always a pleasure to kind of talk about why someone does what they do that they're passionate about and creating beautiful things in the world.
• 52:10
  SPEAKER_03: Um, I think it'd be a little different for many of our listeners, but I hope it's inspiring to others that if there's something in your soul that you want to see happen in the world, a way of looking at it that you want to share, I mean, it's possible.
• 52:23
  SPEAKER_03: Like, check out Simon's site.
• 52:27
  SPEAKER_03: It is different than what you are used to seeing in production real estate photography.
• 52:33
  SPEAKER_03: And if you've never even if the world of architectural photography and and like even this distinction that we're trying to make in the podcast doesn't even make sense to you, like just beginning to experience it will make you a better production real estate photographer and maybe open up an entirely different path um in photography that may interest you.
• 52:53
  SPEAKER_03: So I hope this is captivating for someone and check out what Simon, the beauty Simon, has brought into the world and shares with the world, um, and enjoy it.
• 53:03
  SPEAKER_03: So, Simon, thank you so much for joining us.
• 53:05
  SPEAKER_00: My pleasure.
• 53:06
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's a it's the beginning of a much bigger conversation.
• 53:08
  SPEAKER_00: So if anyone wants to reach out and talk further, I'm I'm available.
• 53:12
  SPEAKER_04: And where's the best place for people to kind of view your work and uh follow along with what you're doing?
• 53:18
  SPEAKER_00: Well, my website, as you've mentioned, is a good place to start.
• 53:21
  SPEAKER_00: I'm I'm often um you know updating that.
• 53:24
  SPEAKER_00: So that's that's you know, more of a deep dive, a quick kind of look, and uh a very convenient, engaging way to look at my work is um on Instagram.
• 53:34
  SPEAKER_00: I also um have become fairly well known for posting memes on my Instagram, which uh seems to have a bit of a following.
• 53:44
  SPEAKER_03: So uh did those do you slow down and thoughtfully process your memes, Simon?
• 53:50
  SPEAKER_00: I do, I do that's good with uh a curatorial mind.
• 53:57
  SPEAKER_03: Excellent.
• 53:58
  SPEAKER_04: Thanks for sharing your uh very early morning, uh Saturday morning with us, and uh we hope you have a good weekend.
• 54:04
  SPEAKER_04: Thanks so much.
• 54:05
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you, Simon.