I'm really brutal. If people haven't got the eye, which you can look at in a contact
sheet or in a set of pictures, don't bother. I mean, when I go to Griffiths, I've got
the first intake of 30, 40th year of the year. I'm really ruthless. If there doesn't
appear to be a certain eye, a certain lick, whatever that means. I tell them, like, get
into something else. You're not going to make it because you don't have the eye. You've
got to have some sort of lick or eye of passion. If you don't have the eye and you don't have
the passion, don't bother. I think you've got to be insanely passionate about photography
to keep going into it. My first comment to the new intake of students is, how many of
you have got a camera with you? Two out of 30? The rest of you leave. If you don't carry
a camera all the time, what the fuck are you doing? I mean, the only few times I've met
Cartier Bressau, it always goes like a woman. I shoot 60, 70, 80% of my best pictures when
I'm not on assignment. When I'm mucking about, no, when I'm living and mucking about, excuse
me, I'm not trying to be ridiculous. When I am out on my daily walk, when I am farting
about, when I go to the supermarket, I take my camera. You're not supposed to, I know.
But I shoot everywhere. And the images that sell as stock pictures tend to be the mundane
image. I mean, I'm not saying the gonzo, the alternate, or the different. It's images
which are just an everyday life, with a bit of a quirk on them. And there's, there's
actually a factory, I mean, I've worked with, you know, magazines for a number of years and
we've never stopped from the start. You know, the stock photo, it was definitely that type
of image that was. How do you, how do you put, I mean, how do you teach people to see the
ordinary? Yeah, yeah. I don't know, the ordinary in a different light, though, as well. Yeah,
and just to find, to find things which are, sort of, these are a little bit amusing. Yes.
A little bit quirky. I mean, you look at, like, Elliot Irwin's pictures and his animal pictures
and the dogs, some of the strange in the image. Yeah. What? How do you catch onto that? What
are your quirks? I mean, whenever I get a story to a profile in a different city, I
shoot doorways, windows, I shoot things in the threes, I shoot, you know, a lot of those.
I've got a certain amount of stock images that I shoot to make an essay. But you're
still looking with inside each of those sub-titles, sub-tags, I suppose. You're still looking
for the quirky, as well as the quintessential, you're still looking for a classic, you're
looking for, somebody's got a little bit of a, oh, the doors have got a weird knob in
the shape of a penis. I'm trying, I'm like, you've got me stumped. I mean, I don't know
what to say. It's got something which is only you might have picked up on, and that's your
strength, it's your pickup, not his pickup or her pickup. That's what makes this difference
between us with the pickup on, and what you push the shutter on for that 25th of a second.
I don't really know a big picture of me, because I start going to the back of what I just shot
and then I shot. Okay, I've shot a picture of all the people I've probably involved with
here, so at least I can. Okay, and I've shot, okay, the first picture I shot of Watkins.
That's the first picture I shot of Watkins. Oh yeah, it's a billboard or something. Yeah,
it's colourful. It wasn't terribly good exposure, so I shot that. Oh, okay, yeah. And then the
next picture is? Another stop, yeah. Oh, no, that's the Japanese restaurant last night.
Oh, okay. Japanese restaurant, Japanese restaurant, it's quite amusing. I'm probably going to
bin those, but they're not going to get used, I might save that. I thought the building next
to my hotel was quite interesting, because it was wrapped like crystal. There's plastic
over a building being renovated. Yes, yes. Oh, so it's, and I shot crystals running fence first,
two weeks in California, so I could put that next, not that, but that kind of image next to
a crystal picture. Well, that's what I was flashing. Yes. Now, do you teach people to do what I don't
know? I mean, you just got to give them essays or subjects to shoot. When they come back in,
I want to see like a good essay on hands and doorways, whatever it happens to me,
and see if they can get those parameters straight. Yeah. Which is not, I mean, I seem to do better
teaching. If I'm teaching in Vietnam, I do it in Australia, where they seem to have got it very easy.
Well, they're not the same driven as a bunch of kids in the third world.
They will get a second rate degree. They will go on to do whatever, and they don't really care.
As long as they stay in the school system as long as possible,
or being supported and having a fat life, and dreaming of becoming that way, or whoever,
that they're going to be able to make the cracking shot and get ahead of the game.
There's a dream in there. Can I just ask you one question?
