Simon Upton on what designers need to tell photographers

0:03This is Business of Home. I'm your host, Dennis Scully. Every week I'll be speaking with leaders and innovators from all corners of the home industry. My guest this week is photographer Simon Upton. A veteran of the industry and a master of his trade, Simon's work has appeared in every major shelter magazine. and his list of high-profile clients goes on and on. Gil Schaefer, Bobby McAlpine, Rose Uniac, Robert Keim, and countless others have turned to him to capture their best work. Simon's new book, A to Z, Interiors, is a retrospective on more than three decades, organized alphabetically. I spoke with Simon about what designers need to tell their photographers, why daylight is always the best light, and why a little imposter syndrome might just be a good thing.

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2:45But before we jump into the A to Z of Simon Upton, let's get to know Simon Upton a little bit first and find out a little bit about where you come from, how you got into all of this, and some of what has shaped your taste and style, which we'll be talking about a great deal, Simon. I come from a very artistic family. A lot of painters in the family, from my father, a cousin, an uncle, my grandmother, all artists. The other side of the family were nearly all in education. And the education part side, let's say, didn't rub off as well as the artistic side. That didn't stick as well? Didn't stick nearly as well.

3:38I spent my childhood and school years thinking I didn't really need to have that depth of learning. Because if you're going to be a painter, you don't need these things. You just paint. And I got to art school and I didn't know what to paint and sort of lost my way and looked across the corridor. This is a very potted history. Looked across the corridor to sort of audiovisual department. And what I love about photography, which I saw early on and I still love about it, is it's very outward. It's all about looking out. All of your interest is going outward. So that outwardliness is just something that I absolutely fell for from the get-go because it took me out of my own sort of head, which was a much happier place to be rather than thinking, what what what am i what am i going to paint why am i going to paint it photography you could just go out and look at new things every day and work it out in a totally different way and ended up doing a degree show which was about explorers and their homes and that degree show was was something that i didn't realize it was doing that but would completely inform the next steps because it was a documentary piece but it gave me an interior's portfolio of sorts so I had this portfolio I wanted to get out I wanted to work I knew that even before getting to the end of my degree I wanted to just get into work and so I went and sort of touted that portfolio around and in that sort of naivety open to obviously suggestions trying to learn from people I got to chat with.

5:23It was a great time, lucky me, to go and see magazines because they had far more time, bigger art departments at the time, more time to actually see people who came in with portfolios. I believe in many magazines through, this is like at the end of the 80s, they had a specific portion of every day just to view portfolios in the art department. I just don't think they have time to do that anymore. That time is all gone. And even if they were looking at them, it's not as if they could bring everybody on. No, no. So it was a more expansive era for that area of media, you know, for magazines where they were growing, titles were opening up through the late 80s all over the place.

6:10some were closing too and but there was there was a host of opportunity and and lucky me um i went into world of interiors and and to have the staff members of that magazine the world of interiors willing to give you time and constructively criticize and and help you hopefully get a bit more you know to get some insight and so i kept went back several times sort of almost shamingly went back again like back again uh with a slightly different portfolio and and just one day um i was given a shoot and actually in the same afternoon they confirmed a second shoot and i did back-to-back shoots and one of them went straight onto the cover and that was my introduction into the world of of sort of interiors magazines as a whole a cover shoot for the world of interiors like that was your first roger banks pie um of ex-colfax and that that's a page that's in the book so so it's nice to have it in the book because it points out that that this you know it's nice to put together i know we'll come to that but it's nice to put together pictures that span a long period of time and actually also see that there what and how we did things then i think that was probably about 1990 i think i get i get the model but it's roughly around then and and how we did things then and and how they look um and how we do things now we go a very different route to get there this is obviously all film it was so different in many ways and yet the end result probably looks almost exactly the same Well, this is what I'm fascinated by is how you did it then and everything that was part of your setup and how you thought about light and daytime photography versus nighttime photography and all of that versus sort of what you do today, to your point, to often create the very same look or attempt to do so.

8:14Yeah, I think that what they were already doing right, in my mind, is the use of daylight. Daylight is the best light there is. You know, homes were designed with windows of certain shapes so that you could see the light in the room in daylight. The architects were actually probably pretty good. You know, they made beautiful shaped windows to shape our light. They thought about that, didn't they? They thought about that, allegedly. You know, amazing. So if you click the lights on, not only are you changing the colors, but a lot of people quite care about color. You know, you make a beautiful green room and you switch tungsten lights on it and it's a yellow room.

8:53I mean, our brain translates it back to the green and hopefully you remember the green that you intended. But it's not that green in reality because you've got to stop yellow light on it. The principle that didn't change was daylight is best. It's a reportage. You're trying to record what you see. If it's not looking good, probably point your camera somewhere else. These are really good principles, and you're not fighting the nature of light. Typically, if you look at a lot of particularly old world of interiors, you rarely look straight into windows unless the light was an angle that could make that possible.

9:30Because funnily enough, the windows were much brighter than the entire of a room, particularly if the room was a dark color. but at certain lights and certain angles of sound you could but rarely and if you look at what so many people love about i think the imagery of world of interiors it's side light it's angled to side light it's not back light very flat it's not front light too contrasty it's mostly side light and everybody so many people in this say oh my god i love those images and you know what is it why are they so amazing well side light and not messing with it and letting dark bits be too dark and light bits be too light so leaving things alone and i think to get back to what you're just saying how we did things then i think how men and others worked out it looked best then has not changed in that intervening you know 35 odd years it really hasn't changed so now we do it with a very different bits of kit we don't have the variables of film we can have some wonderful slight variables and slight flaring mistakes inverted commas of digital and it doesn't do certain things terribly well doesn't do backlight terribly well at times so so it's not so wildly different from film in that it has foibles and sometimes those foibles throw up really good things.

11:03So the intent hasn't changed, which I think is the nice part. Well, and it's so interesting that you say that so many people, you ask designers their favorite magazine, and so often the answer is World of Interiors, even though they do projects that are completely different in style and appearance and would never actually fit into World of Interiors. Right? There's something about it that they love and aspire to perhaps. Yes, and I think I don't pretend to know why people like it, but a little observation around that may be that where World of Interiors went slightly different to certain other magazines is that it was from the get-go a magazine about inspiration.

11:51You weren't going to necessarily fill your living room walls with shelves and make your living into a grotto, but you may have taken a portion of the idea and done something elsewhere. You weren't going to make papier-mâché to cover your entire house, but you might have taken that essence of that idea and bought something that was papier-mâché-based mirror. So it was about inspiring people and sometimes, let's face it, sort of having something to rile against as well. So like great style more so than taste, I think we're supposed to all, roughly speaking, be able to agree on taste. Taste is something that we can actually put down to a, you know, this is good taste.

12:33Essentially, that is bad taste. And bad taste can be brilliant, by the way. But style, certain people's style can really push other people's buttons. And I think that magazines that are more to do with inspiring can, as it were, afford to upset people more. you can be either inspired or absolutely loathe something thinking god i would never do anything like that in a million years and that's fine and i think where so many of the magazines that i absolutely love and admire and i think do such an amazing brilliant job whether it be you know ad whether it be house and garden the old american house and garden uh it's so many of the magazines that I think are brilliant in this marketplace, they are trying to show us what we do, what somebody has actually made, how brilliant that is.

13:24They also, of course, inspire, but they're trying to represent more the brilliance of the trade. And that's just that little subtle difference. I don't think people at World of Interiors are really even expecting that you're going to look at this house and go, oh, I'll have one like that. partly because it may be a you know a 400 room sloss in germany now most of us aren't going to buy one of those but it doesn't mean we can't like it whereas typically house and garden ad look they do make exceptions to that um and they do and i'm inspired by them all the time but typically there there is a side of it which is saying we found this brilliant house you can take lots of elements from this house as brilliant ideas for your home.

14:12And that just makes that slight separation of different magazines in my mind's eye. I think that's such an insightful point because I think often magazine shoots or spreads today come across much more like a designer's portfolio than an insight into a colorful and eccentric character who lives in this home and all you're learning about them as you as you look through the images yes i mean it's like that i know if i was if i was suddenly in the position where i had suddenly had somebody had given me a lovely home somewhere and i could think oh goodness lucky me i know of and know a lot of great decorators i think well great i've i've been given money with this thing i would like a house like blah and i've just seen one in house and garden i'm just going to call him and say, please, would you do me a house like that?

15:04That's a fantastic thing that the industry does. And you can try and do the same thing. Or do you think you could apply what you did for so-and-so in this lovely house that I've got here? Wow. I mean, I would be as happy as, you know, happy as I could be to have somebody just do that. But it is quite different from looking at a magazine and feeling like you've seen a portrait of somebody through their home and you're not going to want to take it. So I'm not going to come and go and be that eccentric, wonderful, whatever they may be person. They're them. But it doesn't mean I don't love looking at it.

15:44I can enjoy looking at that person's life and story through their home, through their home imagery. Well, many designers will tell you, as they've no doubt told you over the years, that they get to know their clients really well, everything about them and then they create a space that is uniquely for them simon yeah and yet and yet remarkably their work seems to look as if it has a very clearly identifiable style and so the the pushback that one wonders about is are all of your clients so similar in personality that all of your projects end up looking the same or is there something else at at work here and i think what we When we look at a world of interiors, just as an example, that that's not, you don't see, oh, I can clearly identify this person or that person.

16:37Or often you don't even get a sense that there was a decorator or a designer involved at all in some of these homes, right? Because they're so personal. And to your earlier point about great travelers and adventurers and the things that they chose to bring home, you see spaces that are so much more filled with that than a clearly identifiable liegue sofa and pieces that we would just be able to quickly identify. Yes. I mean, going back to that, the former part of what you were saying, I do think as I work, lucky me with so many designers and decorators I really admire. I think one of the great things that makes sense about this industry is that people fit or rather if they're not fitting with their designer, they'll find out pretty sharply, pretty quickly.

17:26So if the help of magazines and books and media is just to help marry the client, and I think it is a great role, helping to marry the client with the appropriate designer and decorator. And of course, there have been sort of famously, things don't work. But let's face it, it is amazing how regularly people want to join with that designer and decorator's vision. And they have selected them well. They found somebody and then they do go on there. But it is still recognizable as the designers, as you say. You can recognize often people's work. There are so many threads that continue through. But if they found the right match, a client, they're often a new flight of fancy with somebody else and creating their dream home.

18:25And which, just to add for a second from our side as sort of photographers that come in right at the end of a project and see the realization of all of that work and all of that design. And maybe, you know, the result of certain battles that somebody said, I really want, you know, this blue room and I've got this one family heirloom of art that I want more than anything else to be in. And sometimes you hear the story that, oh, yeah, that ended up in the loo and the blue room is the yellow room we're in now. And the battle was sort of was shifted to a different area. That was the compromise. That was the compromise.

19:05and that's part of the genius of of the the decorators i think and and very often let's face it the genius of a client thinking this person probably knows quite a lot of what they're talking about and maybe we should give it a whirl even if it's the last thing in the world they thought they had won you know we get taken on journeys by by imagery but and but by good design all the time and and challenging ourselves of the things we think we like you know and don't like it's really really good i think that whole thing of of of kitsch is so fascinating that you look at something you're like oh god oh but god you know goodness it's quite interesting too so so that sort of looped me around for a second to the idea that i of course like certain things don't like as much other things that i record but it's really important that I don't get all caught up or anybody else that's in our side of the industry to get caught up about thinking we need to like it to do a good job recording it and I think being challenged with what you like as a photographer or challenged by what you have in front of you more importantly I think right here we are in and you know not my cup of tea but wow what is it and then of course So often you in that process of what is it that's so interesting about where we are.

20:37And in that process often comes so much more appreciation. That's something that you somewhat ignorantly, in my case, thought I didn't really like. Exactly. I mean, I can imagine over the years, what you liked became a much broader spectrum because of what you saw executed so well, even if initially it wasn't to your taste or style, But you looked at it and you thought, but look how extraordinarily well done this is, even though it's not to my taste. Exactly. And isn't reference such an interesting thing? I think initially I'm trying to think of it could be. Oh, here's a here's a funny one. Years and years ago, this is somebody else, certainly not me.

21:19But I was I was I'd moved to Italy early on in my career and spent nearly a couple of years there and then toed and froed back to London a lot. but shot a lot of things in Italy. And I took a couple of projects. This is really, this is 80s. I took a couple of things back to an art director who was at House and Garden. And he looked at them. He just said, Italy, not very House and Garden. Now, in the 80s, that was somewhat true. What he was probably quietly telling me as well, let's be fair, was that maybe the shoots that I'd done weren't the best thing in the world. And I'd take them on Spectre Magazine.

21:55So I take it lightly. But I think that if you look at that time, you know, House and Garden was very Kensington, Chelsea, Provence, maybe. Right, right. And a few, you know, Cotswolds. And things change. And things change. And so, yeah, I know I've walked off on a slight walk from it, but it just made me think the idea of being challenged of what you do and you don't like is what I was playing on. And I think it's great to go to something that really brutalist is an easy one, an easy example, going to a really brutalist house. It's there to challenge you. But of course, as soon as you put a camera on it, it's fascinating.

22:41It's actually great. and you can play with that sort of juxtaposition. You can play with the idea that people probably won't like these great big blocks of aggressive cement or whatever it may be. They're not supposed to make you go, ooh. They're supposed to make you think. And then by the end of a shoot, I find I've learned always from every shoot that once you have the reference, a bit more reference, a bit of why. Why did somebody do that, I wonder? And why is that in any way appealing to them? Right? And what does it say about them that that is what they wanted to be surrounded by? And one of the compliments that you're so often given is that you have this extraordinary ability to capture how a room or a space actually feels beyond just how it looks.

23:34And I wonder if you can speak to, did you learn that? Is that part of a process? Ever since I started doing, you know, quite early on at the shoots, I felt there was a responsibility to make this thing a document. But very quickly, that document is not about trying to see exactly the contents of a room. because one, there's not the space to cover that and it's not a catalogue. You're having to sum up a room in often a couple of images and if there's some extraordinary things in there, you might get a sort of a midshot to a detail as well. So if you're taking it down to that, really the only thing that can be your honest reportage is to try and get the feeling of being in the room.

24:31and in the same way as can happen in all image making. I think if you've got a sense of feeling people, we as a viewer can look at an image and kind of know what's there without seeing it with bells and whistles on it or lights pointing to the important bits. You just don't need that. You know, something like in Praise of Shadows, that wonderful sort of treatise on things Japanese, that actually as you get into the shadowy areas of an image and you think, oh, that looks quite an interesting picture in the corner or piece of furniture, it doesn't have to have a light shined on it just because it's interesting.

25:11It can look all the more extraordinary because it sort of looms out of the darkness. And the whole is so much more important than those parts, that the whole room and the feeling of being in the room is more important than its constituent parts.

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26:12I'm dying to jump into the book because there's a whole series of wonderful essays in the book. Various letters are attached to various people at times. And there's a wonderful essay from Beata Heyman, who talks about, first of all, who talks about driving the poor photographer quite mad, the poor sod, as I believe she refers to the photographer, and demanding so much, all because she thinks initially that she can capture everything all at once. And somehow all of her hard work that she poured into this project will also be conveyed through these photographs. No, exactly. Right? And then she learns photography herself and discovers, oh my goodness, of course you can't do that.

26:58And that you have to take away so much more. But it speaks to the appreciation that she came to have for the process of photography and the role that it plays. And also, of course, the incredible importance that it has. Yes. I mean, I think it is, again, I think it's really interesting, the journey that people go through during a shoot. Because, yes, it's at the end. It's like the sort of the cavalry scene from a battle. You know, all of the hard work has been done. Everything has been sort of laid out and done brilliantly and maybe been redone and rethought and reworked until it is in its finished state.

27:40And in we troll and weirdly get lots of praise. You know, as if we've made it. And of course we haven't. But that translation of spaces does seem to be potentially a thing of learning for everyone. And I wouldn't dream to say that if it hadn't been said time and time again to me, because it's not for me to say that. It's for me to take on that other people can see it. And, yeah, Beata is a great one on that. It's like, but what she will say is, as we've worked on lots of shoots together, What she will say now is, what I love about here is this. Now, that's such a huge help. Because if she's tried to get one element above everything else into that room, into the sense of what that room is, whether it be to do with the function of it, whether it be to do with the surfaces and colors, or whether it was actually celebrating an extraordinary item that she's built things around.

28:42and all the intricacies of that. It's a huge help to hear that because, of course, that's fast-tracking for us as photographers thinking, right, yeah, well, this room really is about that. And every now and then we have to go back and say, we're trying it, but you know, I don't think it comes across as you want it to. What I think can come across. And so you go on this shared journey to try and see what the camera, as we know, does not see as our eyes see. And homes are very experiential things. I've ended up working with people who've been house editors, I'm not going to name names on this one, but for many, many years.

29:29And the illustration, which doesn't really work on the radio, is looking up to their extreme upper right and then to their extreme lower left and saying, can we get all of those bits in? And the double answer is one, no, and two, if we could, it would look absolutely awful. Right, because your eye wouldn't go to anything. And you'd be just filled with too much information and you wouldn't have done any editing or steering people to what the essence of it is. So that's our job, I think, is to arrive into a space and actually think, what is it that's interesting? how do we get it across? Does the light suit it?

30:10Or do we need to rethink timing or how we go about it? Or is it too sunny now? Whatever it is, does it like having strong light? Does it like having soft light? So we're making all these little editorial decisions, accepting that everything that we're recording has long since been achieved. And how to have that delicate conversation about, I understand what you think or what you want or what was so important. Here's what I think we can capture in this and how close we can get to a better understanding of that. Which brings me to the question of, so, and throughout this book, clearly you've worked with such extraordinary decorators, some of what history will no doubt record as some of the greatest decorators.

30:52And I'm a huge fan of Beata's, both personally and professionally, and so her work is extraordinary. And you various letters in Simon's book refer to various great decorators who he's worked with and photographed. And I wonder, what do you wish decorators understood better about what you are trying to do, what you're ever going to be able to do? What do you wish they understood better about your whole process? and how ideally can they best work with a photographer, partner with a photographer? Yeah, those are really good points because you've really hit something that I spend a lot of time pondering, shoot by shoot and away from it.

31:46But I think a lot of people have talked about the idea that so many areas of photography and this area included, you could say is let's not put it down percentages but some percent some portion is you know your talent is your eye is and an awful lot of it is diplomacy because whether the designer is there or not and indeed whether a homeowner is there or not you are in effect in a sort of diplomatic correspondence with them in their absence or not, you are trying to go through thinking, what is it that is interesting to you? What were you wanting for this? What were you going for? So when it is in actual dialogue, it's a wonderful process.

32:33So in a way, going to the point that you were saying about what would I like to impart, to decorate, the imparting process is the bit it's so lovely to listen and then try and translate listen translate listen translate because it's great to be in dialogue with with the decorator and indeed homeowner about the space their home because that informs hopefully and wonderfully how we're going to actually get it get it across i can then point out what i think are some of the limitations of photography sometimes people see those limitations as completely opposite to that and oh my goodness this looks better and you think i promise you it's not better than your home the best i can do is record it well it's you know i can't but it's a lovely thing that people say and the other thing that i wanted to add to that is it's really great being wrong and i think it's that that that could be true of everything in life can't it i mean i i love it but having a in the evening having a chat with somebody and having a strong opinion because we've all had a great day and having a strong opinion and then somebody saying something that's way outside my sort of values or whatever and thinking wow I love that opinion and I hadn't thought of it that way and I think that I've had those as we've mentioned by us it could be so many others but by us it's a great one saying, I love it from here.

34:07You know, I promise you never again will I not go and try a shot from where somebody or how somebody sees it. Because I think that would be ridiculous. It may well be that I might steer back to the shot that I was looking at too saying, but look at here too, because that's a great, it's not a fight, but that's a great discussion to have in life is to actually push for your corner and say look this is going to look amazing and the great thing of having screens today in the same way as polaroid back in the day is that you could pop a shot onto polaroid you pop it onto the screen now and somebody go oh hopefully every now and then they don't but mostly right thankfully they go oh oh no yeah that looks good and i love going across to the room to where somebody else has seen something get a camera on it look on the screen.

34:58And funnily enough, I look at the screen and go, oh, oh yeah, no. Oh, I think that could work. So learning is lovely, isn't it? Learning and allowing oneself to be wrong, I think is fundamental to success in anything. The things we get wrong probably inform us much, much far more than the things we get right. Yes, which I think so often I want to hear about that side of things. I want to hear the things that people got wrong and learn from. And often people are too busy sort of polishing and correcting and not letting on that there, of course, was this whole process. As there no doubt was for you, we got distracted from your career.