Vogue Living
Vogue Living (Australia) was really how it all started for me. This is where I learned how to shoot architecture–and in general how to see the light. Daylight that is. Budgets were tiny and looking back, it was a blessing in disguise. We were forced to get the best out of nothing and it turns out there’s a lot of beauty in nothing. Pure, raw images all shot on a Pentax 6x7, which was quite a strange choice, if you think about it. And I didn’t. It was simply a way to inject my personality into the work. Nobody was shooting architecture on a Pentax 6x7 with color negative film (Kodak 400VC + ¾ in processing, as that gave the best chance to push contrast and blacks). It was also the only camera I had.
I was very lucky to be guided in those early years by editor Helen Redmond, who gently pointed me in the right direction whenever I went down the wrong track, which was fairly often. We worked together for at least a decade and some of those stories are included in the archive. We traveled more or less all over Australia and I loved every minute of it. The more complicated, the better for me and I think for Helen too. She was (and still is) a master at finding the most amazing places you can imagine. I couldn’t have wished for a better start as a photographer.
destinations
I absolutely love doing travel stories. The challenge is that you can’t set up the scene. You have to find it, wait for it, and be ready. In my early years, I roamed all over Australia with my camera. It was the perfect icebreaker with locals, explaining I’d be running around like a madman for the week. Flying over Uluru in a helicopter still gives me goosebumps and that’s probably when the addiction to exploring kicked in. The rush you feel at night is impossible to explain, you just want more. And I was lucky to get it—Boar hunting in Umbria, hot air balloons in Queensland, landing in a seaplane on Turtle Island, 4am fishmarket in Tokyo, the first barefoot photographer to be seen at the Four Seasons in Bali, and I could go on.
Arriving somewhere new, I always chase the perfect light and revisit the same spot, café, or viewpoint over and over to get the right feel. If the light’s wrong, it just won’t work. Light is the secret sauce. Travel stories are never really finished, which is tough. I always remember what shots I didn’t get and at some point in every shoot, I think ‘this will never ever work.’ But I’ve learned that doubt is part of the process, I just have to go with it, rain or shine.
DONNA HAY
My work with Donna Hay began in the early 2000s. I was in my twenties, and lifestyle photography as we know it barely existed. We needed something new. I wanted to bring energy and life into it. I wanted people to eat, drink and laugh. I wanted it to look real. Working with Donna was a dream. She gave me near-total freedom. We traveled to New Zealand for a fly-fishing story, the Snowy Mountains for a horse shoot, a chestnut farm, cricket on the beach, the Cook Islands. I could go on. We kept things loose, real, and believable—words that still guide me today.
The secret was beautiful daylight, a handheld Pentax 6x7, and a more relaxed, natural setup. We let people be themselves. And we had a lot of fun. We’d set a scene then let the ‘talent’—often friends or people from the team—eat lunch, play cricket, fish, and ride horses. The horse-riding shoot was tricky. For once, we had real models. The problem was they had never even been near a horse. So we went back to the guy who brought the horse and threw in a horserider from our team. And it worked! Of course, the price of that golden daylight was brutal. Painfully early mornings and endless evenings waiting for the sun to set. But it always paid off. Back then, our way of working felt new and we felt like pioneers. Maybe we were, I don’t know. But then a couple of guys called from New York. They needed some lifestyle photography.
Gourmet
Then the phone rang. An American magazine called Gourmet called at 11 p.m. on my landline. They wanted their photography to feel like what we were doing in Australia. They were at a turning point; Ruth Reichl was the new editor and it was time for them to move on from the look they had. We shot on Pentax 6x7, 35mm, 4x5, 8x10 polaroids. Everything that could be put into a camera, we used. It was a different way of portraying people, food, and locations in America and it was fun. They gave me complete freedom for a couple of years until the rest of the magazines caught up. And it was my excuse to go to New York. I’m still here.