What if you had 6 minutes in the Oval Office to photograph the president—while the communications team is shutting you down and the Secretary Of State and Joint Chiefs are waiting by the door to contain an international incident? Ben Baker, who’s photographed five US presidents, recounts the stories behind his iconic images of Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and Donald Trump.  

Ben’s story begins in the Australian outback where as a boy he often accompanied his father, a mediator working with Indigenous communities, on trips that honed his skills for observing, listening, and connecting.  

Those formative experiences laid the groundwork for a career defined by resilience, adaptability, a flair for storytelling, and a talent for getting people to reveal themselves. 

Ben recalls key lessons about discipline and preparation, gained in working with legendary photographers like Annie Leibovitz, Harry Benson, and Mark Seliger. And how, early in his career, Rupert Murdoch taught him the importance of owning the room and taking charge when dealing with people in power.  

Approaching photographs as historical documents, Ben talks us through the strategies he’s developed to find the connection point with each subject to capture the person and the moment. We discuss the art of slowing the environment down in high-pressure situations in order to get the job done. “Take the steps,” Ben says. “The ladder needs to have the steps on it for a reason, not to slow you down, but to give you a chance to absorb it all.” 

TESS’S TAKEAWAYS: 

• The skill of getting presidents, business leaders, and celebrities to engage.   
• Creativity thrives with discipline, preparation, observation, and resilience. 
• Some tension and pushback opens your mind to other options and angles.  
• A lesson from Annie Leibovitz: Prepare and be at your best to be able to take the shot.  
• Dress to be ready for anything. It's your job to get to the next room. 
• Seize every opportunity: Own the room, step up, and ask for what you want.  
• To keep people in the room and in the moment, find the in with them. 
• In high-pressure situations: Slow down the environment. 

ABOUT BEN BAKER 

As a photographer and director, Ben Baker has captured iconic images of the last five US presidents, leaders of over 50 other countries, and countless business luminaries and celebrities.   

A childhood in South Australia and the Northern Territory ignited Ben’s interest in exploring and documenting the richness of our shared humanity through photography.  

After getting his start in Australia, Ben moved to New York, where he assisted Annie Leibovitz. He went on to work with some of contemporary photography’s most respected figures, including Mary Ellen Mark, Harry Benson, and Mark Seliger.  

Striking out on his own, he’s spent the last 25 years pursuing meaningful human engagement by telling stories with his camera.   

Ben’s images have appeared on the covers of over 100 magazines, numerous books, and in editorials and campaigns for Time, Newsweek, Forbes, Fortune, Politico, Oprah, and Esquire.   

His portraits are displayed in the permanent collection at the National Portrait Gallery of Australia and in the African American Museum of History and Culture in Washington, DC. Exhibitions include the National Geographic Museum in Washington, DC. 

CONNECT WITH BEN 

Website: https://www.benbakerstudio.com/ 

The People’s Portrait Studio: https://thepeoplesportrait.com/ 

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/benbakerphoto/ 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/benbakerphoto/ 

Meet Tess Masters:  

Tess Masters is an actor, presenter, health coach, cook, and author of The Blender Girl, The Blender Girl Smoothies, and The Perfect Blend, published by Penguin Random House. She is also the creator of The Decadent Detox® and Skinny60® health programs.     

Health tips and recipes by Tess have been featured in the LA Times, Washington Post, InStyle, Prevention, Shape, Glamour, Real Simple, Yoga Journal, Yahoo Health, Hallmark Channel, The Today Show, and many others.   

Tess’s magnetic personality, infectious enthusiasm, and down-to-earth approach have made her a go-to personality for people of all dietary stripes who share her conviction that healthy living can be easy and fun. Get delicious recipes at TheBlenderGirl.com.  

Connect With Tess: 

Website: https://tessmasters.com/  

Podcast Website: https://ithastobeme.com/   

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/theblendergirl/  

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theblendergirl/  

Twitter: https://twitter.com/theblendergirl  

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/theblendergirl  

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tessmasters/  

Get Healthy With Tess 

Skinny60®: https://www.skinny60.com/  

Join the 60-Day Reset: https://www.skinny60.com/60-day-reset/ 

The Decadent Detox®: https://www.thedecadentdetox.com/  

Join the 14-Day Cleanse: https://www.thedecadentdetox.com/14-day-guided-cleanses/ 

The Blender Girl: https://www.theblendergirl.com/  

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Oh, Ben, thank you so much for joining me. I am just so interested in how you see story and capture it, and so take me inside that it has to be me moment as a child where you were growing up in Adelaide and traveling around the Northern Territory, going to these remote places with your father, you know, in touch with indigenous communities. How did that inform your love of story.

Thank you. Thanks for having me here. I'm excited to there's a lot. There's so much we can get into. Yeah, it's so funny. So it all started off, I don't know. I was lucky. My parents are both social workers. Had a real calling to work in indigenous communities when my dad was a younger man. And my wife, you know, my wife, my mother, met my father, and they went to the Northern Territory, and they had their kids, and my sisters, all of me, and I'm the middle child. And then my father used to go out to remote communities and work as a mediator, and he was a mediator for the Northern Territory land council. So his job was to he wasn't a lawyer, and he's not obviously an indigenous elder. He's a white man who's there to help facilitate a solution, because it's very complicated for our American friends, you know, is probably the dream time, and the indigenous connection to land and to title and to ownership is a concept that isn't how a Western person would see it, and clearly not the white people that got off the boats, and clearly not a mining person who even governments and miners and farmers who even have the greatest intentions. It's very challenging, and even between indigenous communities. So my father would his job was to get in a car, be old Land Rover, and drive out the middle of Northern Territory, or wherever he had to go for weeks at a time, and literally sit under the tree with elders and hash it out. And like, literally, like I've seen, actually, footage of very famous American statesman Richard Holbrook, who was doing really early work, really powerful work, in Afghanistan and all these different tribal communities in the Middle East. And there's just footage of him sitting in a circle of elders in the middle of the desert. And that's really what dad was doing. And I'm really grateful that he knew that, as I like about I was about 10, 810, 12, there were pivotal learning times. He knew there was more I could learn in that space than in a classroom. Yes, and so he wouldn't, I don't think he really asked permission. I think just took his truck, take your toys, take your food and take your book. And I'm pretty quiet. I was a pretty quiet kid. I knew how to keep it just, just chill.

Is that where you learnt your skill of observing and listening?

Yes, I had, I had to listen to I was told not to make any noise. And when I'm called to come over and say hello, and when food is brought to, if I'm offered some local food, then you eat everything on the plate with a wonderful smile, and you say, Thank you, yeah. And that was it. And that was pretty idyllic days sitting in little creeks and streams and playing with your toys and jumping back. And you know, you get to have a campfire with your dad, and your dad tells you don't go down the billabong in the morning because three days. But then we would just, yeah, literally jump in the truck. And you know when your kid, when kid, you don't know what's normal or not. Like I hear read things that people who kids who had a different upbringing, even challenging ones, even hard ones that weren't probably healthy, you just, you're a kid. You just do it. You don't you're normal to you at the time. And then when I did go to high school in a we'd move to a smaller, more a town, not in the outback, went to Adelaide and a Catholic Boys School, and kids who never been exposed to any of this culture, yeah, sort of it was a an incredible shock to me, what their perceptions of culture was, yes, and they kids weren't bad kids. They just didn't know, like, I just had no idea, like, clueless to it, because I've never exposed to it and it was and I didn't know at the time how pivotal and how powerful it was. But you know, you know that that foundational sort of experience is there. So yes,

and so when did you pick up a camera and fall in love with capturing story that way.

I had my first camera around about 12 or 13. I had a, you know, again, always again. It comes back to right place, right time, right environment, right friends, right connection. This school, somehow someone wasn't, it wasn't a very fancy school. Someone approved some very fancy dark room. They just, I guess they got some money they need to spend. Wow. We had this incredible dark room, and we had this really Peter Wheatley Dawson, this teacher in Adelaide who was one of those inspiring art teachers that we all critically need, whether it's a history teacher, English teacher, whoever it is, one of those people that I remember that when I said, What is the right answer to art? And he just. Up To Me goes, I don't answer that. You answer that. The kid your teachers, no, you have the answer. I don't have the answer to that. There's no way I can answer that. For you, you find the answer like my mind was blowing. But also too, and the idea that I could either be in a maths class or I could be in a dark room creating things out of chemicals and light and shaping, yeah, with my hand under it and some magic would would come out. My best mate was a really talented cinematographer in Australia, shoot some big films. Now he was my, my buddy who was the was inspired as as I was in that environment, and made that teacher,

yeah, yeah. And so talk me into the next it has to be me moment where you went, Okay, I'm going to go and study this. I want to actually think about doing this as a career. And I hate to ask you about that rejection at the little TAFE in Adelaide, but I think it's such a great example of okay, reject me, but I'm going to keep going. What was that in you when you got that rejection, when you applied to the TAFE, to their little photography department and you weren't their flavor?

Yeah, yeah, it's okay. I guess I was so fired up, and so I'm probably pretty cocky. Maybe I went to an interview a little too confident. I mean, I had achieved high grades. It was, I put everything into it, and it was so important to me, and I had a, what was a poor, more experimental art program at the school, you know, hence Peter Willie Dawson, and this sort of sense of creating, what comes from here. It's not, it's not judged in a by a computer or a textbook. And this was a very dry technical course. It was a real technical foundation for commercial photography. And so I was presenting some pretty wacky stuff, scores and marks, and I was proficient. And I think they just when he's just an oddball, I guess he's not. He's clearly not an idiot, but he's not what we thought wouldn't he doesn't fit that. You know, there was only 15 or 20 spots. So I guess 15 other kids fit.

But, you know, other people would have let that defeat them and go, Well, okay, somebody tells me that I'm not a good enough photographer. I guess I should go and do something else. But instead, you went on to go and go to Sydney, you know, and intern with someone that was a really great photographer,

yeah. But before that, actually, locally in Adelaide, I got a job for two young photographers, very, very young who just started out. So, I mean, I literally got a letter on Christmas Eve, and it was like two lines of No. Next year. Maybe I was like, no, no, no. I was crushed. Christmas, not a happy Christmas. Yeah, in that. You know, the year kicked in, and I went around and these two young Mike Otto, and Mike and Essie and Chris Otto, two young guys who gave me a chance. I didn't know what I was doing, and I, I was happily washing their cars and and cleaning the studio every day, though, and I it was the greatest learning curve, because they'll make, they'll photograph in cars and wine bottles. You're in Adelaide, right? So, yeah, doing that like even you're de Troy. You shoot cars. If you're, yeah, you shoot one. And Adelaide has this great wine history, and so we're shooting that. But I now look back, when I go back to Adelaide, there is about five men who are my mentors, and they're lifelong, like them. They're close, close, close, mentors and friends. And the correct the Wild Thing is, is they have only ever had my best interest. They've never. It's hard when you're a younger when someone's assistant goes on and achieves a lot more than maybe they've achieved a lot, incredible amount. But, you know, stay in Australia and and they've never once been awkward, or they've always just been like, the first person to call me, send a message, send an email, post on the socials that we're so proud of you, and you just, I don't know, I didn't know how special that was. And now, after all these years, yeah, now get it like, even I get young assistants who are coming from, say, a smaller markets. I'm in New York here, and they're in Chicago, or they're in Indiana or somewhere, and they're like, I want to leave. I'm like, Well, tell me about, you know, mayday, and I've kids still, do you have good crew around you? I'm like, you're really lucky to just look after those people and stick with them. It's okay come out for a couple of weeks. Maybe this isn't, maybe do the steps some kids, you know, I think now with technology, and we see the internet, we see the phone, like, oh, that's the best one in the world. Or you think you've got to No, no, it's okay. Like, take the steps, the steps, the ladder needs to have the steps on it for a reason, not to slow you down, but just to give you a chance to absorb it. So I had that great start. Didn't know how good it was. Went to Sydney, worked for a very, very successful like, the biggest advertise advertising photographer in the country. He was an Englishman who had a very old school way of making sure that discipline was adhered to in the studio. I mean, I think he was deeply caring, but just a different method. And. Um, and, you know, along the way, as a an assistant of young photography, you learn we've had beer since, and, you know, we're made some. I'm grateful for it, because that really was my because I didn't go to photo school. It was, it was my photo school. It was serious training, yeah, serious boot camp, you know. And he was, yeah, he was, you know, I remember sitting on a plane when I was, like, 19, and we're going to Tokyo, and, you know, this woman next to me is her life savings. This was her dream to go to Tokyo. She said, What are you doing? I'm helping someone take a photo in the fish markets. This is, you know, just seemed she was lovely, but I think again, I was like, Oh, wow. I guess I'm really lucky to be on this airplane. I'm like, a kid who's going to go and get paid to go and go to go and go to fish, go to go to all the markets of the world and all these crazy things for photo in an ad that it's important. So, so that was my step to that. And I worked very hard in Sydney. So I was very lucky. So my in many ways, had I gone to that technical school? Oh, what different story. But those relationships, those opportunities, connections, the kid, you know, the kick in the guts, the the knocking you down, the I wouldn't have been resilient anywhere near the fiber in me, that, that that little graduate would have had, yeah, maybe you would have found it another way. I don't know. Yeah,

yeah. Well, I mean, every experience gives you the tools for the next experience, for sure. And you know, you just keep looking at those breadcrumbs. So what was the it has to be me, I'm moving to New York.

Well, there was a little step along the way. I had worked so hard, and I had just it was that moment, especially when you're raising, raised in Australia, and you're that far away from the rest of the world. We don't go for two weeks, we go for two years, which is 20, yeah, you know, if it could be two lifetimes, we'd do it, and we just keep zipping home.

And decades ago, there wasn't the internet, there wasn't the immediate news. We didn't feel so connected to people way on the other side of the world like we do now. Look is like, whoa. You know, the world the biggest market, you know, I mean, it's, it's, that's a big move,

yes, so I went via South America. So I took a year of backpacking, and in many ways, that was the greatest thing I could have done. I needed it for my own sense of space. You know, Aussie kids don't need Aussie blokes don't need much. You know, you can do it. You know, if someone says you can sleep on the floor of the deck of the house, then that's fine. I, you know, usually you go, I intentionally went very slow. A lot of time in Bolivia, if I got on the back of the trucks with the chicken and the pigs, fine. A lot of pictures. So,

so you said you needed it. What did you need?

I just needed to. I just needed to breathe. You know, I just needed to, I needed to breathe. Yeah, I couldn't. I wouldn't have gone for I wouldn't know. I wouldn't have the transition from Sydney to New York would not have been healthy for me. I just needed, I've been going so hard, and I had these dreams, and I wanted to all this, you know, just wanted to go and, and the idea that, you know, what's the most foreign concept for me was, was a llama herder on the mountains of of, you know, La Paz Bolivia, on the mountains, you know, the height of the Andes and Sierra, Sierra Nevadas. So I just needed that. And then slowly went through and just like but again, even in that, I was just doing what my dad did, you just walk down with a camera. And camera gave her that license of, you know, you just walk into it and traveling solo, it's such an advantage, you know, when you're

the people you meet and the conversations you have, my invitation

is just incredible. Now, I'm like, I'm coming to dinner. Yeah, yeah. And then they're like, can you come to answer dinner tomorrow? And then you just go, can you get on that bus? And then you obviously meet fellow travelers, and you get to connect. Go on to the adventure with them. Then they go this way, you go that way, and you might meet up with them in another town. And just trying to deep, just slow down to learn, even not just the classic travel book, I need to know the history of this place, that's fine, but you can absorb it, and even just the language skills, you know, just to sort of, you know, be my, my broken Spanish was enough, but it was amazing if you delivered in the right with the right intention. People and people in South America are incredibly kind and endearing, and if, if you make the effort with this, with the heart, you know, other world is like that, but they are really, truly special. I was in a shop one day, and there was obviously a university level foreign, a foreigner of who could speak Spanish. And it was not, he was not polite, he was rough and demanding. And they didn't know. They said they didn't know where anything was in the shop, you know. And I think I said, Can I have the cigarettes inside the chicken in the shoe? And I got sense of self and sense of connection. And it wasn't even about it was just the joy of that little, that little eyeline of like, you know, the older, you know, the Bolivian grandmother, like these kids,

yeah, but I like what you're saying about learning to meet somebody and speaking from here and. Finding that connection point with anybody, even if there's a language barrier, a power imbalance, whatever it is I'm I feel like that's probably served you well in your career. So we get to New York, yes, and how do we get to intern for Annie Leibovitz? Just ask. Oh,

I need to get inside the story a bit.

Every business is pretty pointy at certain ends. If you if you talk to the right people, if you ask, if you communicate and put it out there. I mean, this whole put it out there in the world thing, sometimes, you know it's not, maybe true, but, but it is in terms of if your intention is there? If you make it clear and you make it without expectations, yeah, you're you have it. You have an opportunity that people see that open door, and they see that positive open door, so they can give it so a friend of a friend knew a person, Sebastian Thor, who's one of dearest friends, who's now back in Australia. He was, he had spent time working for Richard Aven and finger having pen a little bit, Mary Ellen a lot, Marilyn mark, like Arthur, real Gord here, like legends, like legends, really

great photographers.

He knew the studio manager at Annie's car, and he said, Let's just let me see. And you know, this, this person i i am a life to him very much, because he was a fellow photo assistant. He was going to go to Mexico for a month on a photo shoot at the height of these fashion campaigns. And he's like, my apartment's empty in his village. Stay there. I'm calling her. I'm doing this where this is going to happen. And then, you know, I wanted him one day, I had my only certain amount of time in New York. I was meant to go to the UK, as young Australians do at that time. And, yeah, typical visa and, and then I walked in, and this is very lucky. Two assistants met me, and they were basically, yeah, good, get out, and I'm going to the elevator. And then another assistant walks out, who was, who's become a very famous photographer, Martin Schuler, does these big, big heads, yeah, people. And Martin said, Wait here for a second, let me check. And then I sat out there. I guess they felt this kid so passes the test. I don't know what the test was, but yeah. Then he came out, and yeah, she asked me, What are you busy tomorrow? And I think I was like, oh yeah. I think I am, of course.

Are you up? Like a cool, I

was an idiot. And then, who was the actress? She was amazing Hollywood actress in a cafe in the street. Yeah, it was amazing. Anyway, beautiful little morning on the streets of New York, holding a light and a little thing, and she having a coffee and sort of Hollywood portfolio. And then a week later, two weeks later, no, within five or six days was between me and another person, and I got the job. Was a full time job working for her. I was pretty little green at the time, so it was definitely not the most fluid of the bumpy ride, because the it's such a hard role. But then a week later, what's hard about it? It's just it just never lets up. And

you were shooting on film back then, not digital.

No. God no. It was shooting multiple, multiple camera formats in um, yeah. So it's one of the hardest things you can do if you're photographing a celebrity at dusk, or if the sun is dropping and the lights going in and out of clouds, and it's hard, it's harder soft. It's harder soft. And that celebrity is running through a little field or scenarios of these free flowing images you might see in a Vanity Fair of celebrities having a moment. It's not that. It's not that big a production. There's five or six people, maybe some you know, clothes trucks out you know, all that back out there. But you know, she may have four different cameras, but those cameras but those cameras aren't the same. This one's big and slow. This one's fast. This light you've got this so you in your head, you're really doing like mathematical numbers in your head by turning up and turning it down. Got your light meter going. You've got all this happening. And there's no please or thank you. You could, you know, it's boot camp stuff you're going and if you're off by a little bit, you'll be told quite clearly it's not going to come out that politely, and so just, it's insane. I mean, there's anyone who's come through that school, and I was okay, and it wasn't great. There were people who were, you know, immensely more talented and more experienced, like I then went on and worked for Martin in his shoes. And I say to Martin, why would you use this light? He's like, buddy, I've tested every light in the universe. He that job is, literally, wake up at five, go into a huge set in the streets of, you know, some times square lighting like rigs. Throw that in bags perfectly. Race a JFK. Get on the plane to Paris. Get off a plane to Paris, set it up at, you know, the President's Palace, President, President, walk in for three minutes. You better make sure nothing, nothing can go wrong. Yeah,

so you are in a pressure cooker. It's insane. I

mean, you and you really rely on each other from not just in an emotional level, but from at all that level. So I wasn't. And so to give everyone credit, I wasn't able to keep up on that level. I wasn't, you know, they put me through my paces, and then I didn't, I thought, I think they sort of saw me as the first assistant, and they very quickly went, this kid needs more time. Yeah, a photographer assistant, Julian, who was in a car accident, and eventually, about a year in, he came in and took my spot, and I went and worked for other photographers, but it was an incredible a lot of people have asked me, like, what did you learn? And I it's really interesting. I don't think I learned anything about taking a photograph.

Ooh, tell me about that. I just

learned how you make sure you're always at your best to be able to take the photograph in terms of the level of

like, preparation, discipline, her

machine, and she's here criticism that she couldn't take a picture without this, this gigantic machine, and she can. I watched, I've watched her in under pressure. I mean her stories. She is American, contemporary history, and whether people like the photographs or not, I don't, it's not, it's irrelevant. She's a madam to such as a wax figurine of a photograph. I was there in one morning doing like, scouting for a shoot. And then this poor woman was like, oh, it's Annie again. And then, but like her archive of work, there's a story. It was public, so we can talk about it. But she actually faced some financial hardships a few years ago, and it was, it was in the press, and I was really there were some art funders who basically loaned her money, and she couldn't, shouldn't, pay it back, and the archive could have been taken and it was distressing to all of us, because it wasn't just that that's not fair for her career. She's worked too hard and done too well, but that's American history. That can't be in the hands of that shouldn't be. That's not a private thing. That's it's gone past that like they're iconic moments, when, yes, with civilization, if it just disappears in there, we put it in the ground. Maybe there's 10 pictures. She's going to have a couple of them of the Who are these people now. And she, she deserves that place. And it's a remarkable achievement for very male dominated business to have been that strong through that so many years. You know, just that founding story with young winner and Rolling Stone. You know, she was a knocks on the door again, right place, right time. But we can think about it with the computer that land right now. Like, yes, Bill Gates is a genius. But Bill Gates, yes, he says he was in the right place, on in the universe, at the right time, meeting the right people when he had the right set of skills. He's not he wouldn't have been useful 100 years ago, and he probably won't be useful 100 years but he's good now. And she, I guess, had at that moment with Jan 60s, Rolling Stone music, culture.

So tell me about, tell me about your place right time. So how did, how did you start taking political photos and standing in the White House photographing the last five sitting presidents? So going back to what you were saying working with Annie, how the biggest thing you learned was preparing to take the photo. How you've got to be on your A game when you've got six minutes to grab this photo? What was it like walking into the White House the first time and taking that with you? How did you prepare for that? Having learned that from working with Annie?

But that's the benefit of those those experiences. Because not only was so like, I think my first, I think my second thing I did for any my first was actress Hollywood, Hollywood legend, actress streets in New York. The name will come back Hollywood portfolio, Cate Blanchett, 65th floor of the Chrysler Building. And I'd worked on Kate's first magazine shoot in Australia as a young actress out of NIDA, so that we had this conversation anyway. And then she goes, can you get on the plane and go to the Vice President's House and scout it for me. I'll see you there tomorrow. You want? Like, oh, you know, I still the kid going, like, there's only one person, okay, I guess it's me, right? And like, literally flying to DC, straight into the White House. You know, it was Al Gore as a vice president. Then tipper, tipper comes out, says a G'day. Bennett, hello, Bennett. We do the tour. And you know, I'm just chatting to tipper, going like, okay, okay, great. And then he'll be here tomorrow. Yeah, great. And so I'm just saying that preps you for that experience. And then I did a project with with Martin Schuler photographing Bill Clinton for that goodbye portrait for The New Yorker, yes, for Simon. And I literally had, I had permission to drive a, you know, cedar van into the White House, through the gates, you know, I literally drove the seat. I was like, Oh God, I guess I don't go the front door. I go the press side, okay, and then I'm getting out of the van. And once you're in, you're sort of in, you can kind of wander once you're past it. And I didn't even I was knocking on doors, excuse me, I was really relaxed. So there was an administration before 911 right? So things were pretty different world. And then I worked for Harry Benson, who's one of my heroes. Harry photographed the Beatles in Paris. There's a very famous picture of the Beatles having a pillow fight. He was, yeah. Yes, he was in the kitchen in the hotel when Bobby Kennedy was assassinated. He was had he thought Kennedy saying, There's a famous picture going with Harry, not now. Like, wow, Harry, Michael Jackson, Ronald Reagan and Harry, Ronnie and he were mates. And Ronnie basically said to Harry, like, Here's your ticket. Just come on in you. They're very sort of male, these sort of dominant figures. And so I worked for Harry photo Newham, all these important people under an extreme pressure, very kind. There's great documentary on Harry Benson and called shoot first, I think anyway, watch it. The man's special. Very, very, very special. I mean, if you see the footage of the footage of the Beatles getting off the plane at JFK, look out for the fifth guy at the tall Scottish photographer. Yeah, anyway, so I've done all that, so going to these places wasn't abnormal. Yeah, that was a normal procedure. I understood the game, but, but here's the other test, and here's the difference what it was. And I could ask you this, because I've never, I don't have ever asked. I like asking this of people who are curious, if you get the New York Times or The LA Times or whatever newspaper is your son there is. It's changing, obviously, and change a Sunday morning. One of the greatest luxuries to me in the world is to have a Sunday morning clear, to receive the Sunday New York Times, which is a volume, and just sit there with a coffee, maybe another coffee, and just sit and just read that thing. But the question connected to that is okay, so if you get the New York Times Sunday edition, and you're sitting there with your friends or your partner, whoever, you gotta choose a section. What? What would you choose, in what order would your sections be? It's really interesting. People give me totally unexpected answers. I'm really surprised. Actually, what some people who I think I know their answer and I'm wrong.

Yeah, you do. Well, I like the food and dining section. I'm not gonna lie. Sorry. I'm like, where am I gonna eat this week? And then obviously the theater section, the entertainment section is and then I, you know, these days the political, the political stuff, is going to come last, because it just makes me anxious. But, yeah, what? What's the first section that you open? It

was the political stuff. Like I would go straight to politics. I'll go international affairs and politics. And then I it's kind of the mine. Mine is the obits. I love the obits. I find those stories. Tell me about that. They're the most powerful stories ever written. Like, if you think about it, like, do you want to if you want to read a story, just go to the obits. Like, go, go read that. I mean, the New York Times, they're usually fairly important people who've had intriguing stories to tell. And those writers are good writers. So it's fascinating, because you just think we're so preoccupied with us and ourselves and our daily moments and the, you know, the temperature of the coffee. Well, that's someone's 100 words, and it's rare to get not many people get it over. But New York Times anyway, right? So, yeah, so they're curious people who've done something different. So I'd go there. But so anyway, the point was, I go politics, and it means something to me, and I know that well. So I know that I know those people. I know that business. I know that I know I just know it. I know what they're doing, and I care about it. Because I grew up in a house where that we were very politically, Mum and Dad.

We're very political in my family as well. So I know these people. So I feel like we know the persona or the construction, or what is presented to us with by a PR firm that with an accepted narrative or a team of people. So when you're in a room with the president united states, Oprah, these very, very Warren Buffet, Elon Musk, all these very powerful people that you have photographed. How do you prepare to see them and then capture that moment where they allow themselves to be seen?

It's really basic. You just be, let them be like, try to get them, try to just slow it down. Just slow it all down. It's kind of crazy. It's a really bizarre thing that you get such a little amount of time. The most important thing you can do is slow it down and and it's a really weird thing, because you can't physically slow it down. You can't, you can't pull the clock back. It is going to go faster, but you can't feel it's moving. You've got to slow them down.

So how do you slow them down when you've got a machine of people in the room potentially going, Yeah, we got to be here by this time, and you've got six minutes, or whatever it is, how do you slow it down? You get really

close. I get really close, like I get up. I just don't let anyone in between. I don't get in their face. I've physically got to give them respect for space. But I just get close and I slow down. I might try to say something. I. I don't, I wouldn't speak to them from the back of the room, next to all my editors. I just would let my editors be back there, not to give you separate but just to get to them and just say, Hey, how you doing? How's your day? Like, what are you doing? How you feeling today? You know, it's um, you know, bit strange for me here. I love, you know, like, not just things that you'd find something we could there are things we can all bond on, right? So maybe there was a sporting event. Doesn't have to be a big one. There could be something you've read in the history like so my first introduction. We had spent six months trying to get Obama. We finally got him. First time, I photographed him on the road in South Carolina in a big cow shed. It was a photo studio. Was a cover project for fortune. And then I spent a lot of, fair bit of time in Indonesia as a kid. My dad, mum and dad would travel up there, because we're in Darwin. And he spent time in his he did spend some time in Indonesia as a kid. And Tim Geithner, his Treasury Secretary, development stuff. And so I said, you know, I spent time in Indonesia. I think, you know, I, I should try to find some common connection that from his childhood, not from his office, not from his fancy plane, not from all those sort of things, but from something that childhood sports, connection food, but things like, not just like, not food, there's an eye like, the best croissants in the world. Like, I'm like, so I had a croissant and I put in my pocket. Now, got croissants in my pocket. I'm sorry, man, I didn't mean to do that. You know, it's not trying to play the dance or the idiot, but it is trying to bring it to a place that's like, you know, or like, say, you are in the White House, and I have had to go go to people and be like, Oh, it's, um, it's quite the wallpaper. That's What's all that about. Like, I don't know, do you have you asked? Like, how many people, like, it's for all the, for all this fancy stuff. That's just the chair I had in my high school. Like, and then, like, you know, what's the, what's the, what's the drawings on that? Is there a cartoon in the bathroom? I don't know. Like, is there not to mock it, but just be like, he's just Barry from Chicago, and he knows that it's not just respecting him. We're all just kids from somewhere, you know, and those have done they're in a place that is of power and of note. And it's not just respecting them or mocking them or saying they're better than there's nothing I can there's nothing I can do that could impress them. I can't make it. I can't be better than or bigger than. I can't show I can't carry on. I do sometimes print out pictures in on paper. It's really interesting. For all the technology in the world, I tested it out, you don't show someone or not. You don't show technology. You show 10 you someone's got to touch something. So quite often, you know, these people get photographed a lot. If you're lucky to catch them at the start of their take off, you're going to get more time, and they're more willing to connect that first photo shoot with Brock. It was clear Hillary was losing steam, and he was it was coming, but he wasn't really coming yet. So he was willing like that. Went from 18 minutes to six minutes. That's fine. I respect that. That's a they're in a White House waiting there's 28 I literally had one day in a White House where, in the Oval Office, I had a very difficult thing that happened, which was not positive, but it was out of my control. We can go into, if you like, but and it

was, you can't leave that hanging now, you got to tell me, yeah. So I

photographed him on the trail and portraits. And then the magazine, another magazine had me going into the White House. I've often been brought in with an editor in chief doing an interview with right? So you're sort of, sort of a photo journalist. You're not there to do a big portrait, yeah, capture a moment. And for President wants to give you something extra that's for you to ask, and it's my job to us. People also forget that there's a big, big relationship here. This is where the pressure comes from. If, if we're going to put a president on a cover that didn't No one decided that yesterday. That's been strategically decided by publishers six months ago. Yeah, through these layers of really important people go to an editor who thinks highly enough of me, and they put it on my shoulders, just a bit of pressure right there, and he I'm grateful, obviously, and that I'm the person at the end. I'm lucky to be the point person so many people have given time and effort, and you know, so that relationship not only has to be good for me and him or her, it has to be good for the organization. I must not. It's very delicate, because if someone say it's at the start of someone's term, not that I say and take no for an answer, but I've got to be careful that keep that relationship even and I'm the freelance person. I don't work full time. I work for Fortune, a big relationship. I work for them a lot, and I was their go to guy, but it wasn't staff, right? So, yeah, so you're the piece that can be moved on if something goes wrong, and some of that, I'm not in control of that anyway, we're in the Oval Office. I had given the President a picture, a picture I'd photographed of him before. There's a black and white picture, and I he signed it. It was very nice. It was a wonderful exchange. Was it sort. Just a real moment to to get his attention. In the Oval Office, he was sitting with the editors and I'm standing at the resolute desk, and said, Hey, there's a print. Here's a print, and we'll take some pictures at the end. Sure. And his comms person as the interview starter, came to me and said, Ben, please don't do that. Don't don't do that like don't you today. And it was a night after there was an aborted terrorist attempt on an American jetliner, and I looked around going, No, no, I was promised a portrait at the desk. I was going to take the first portrait at the desk. It's my job to get that. I have to fight for that and my life. I went like, had a choice, like, do I do I argue with a comms guy said, Ben, if you go there, it's not going to go well, so don't do that. I'm like, but all my instincts and my training is, no, I go there because that's my job. Yeah, my job. And if I'm the one who, if I get the portrait and I upset them, but my magazine gets an exclusive, it's okay. That's a choice you'll make. I'm standing there. He goes, it's very serious. You know, the comms guys like, it's a very serious political situation, national security situation, so please accept that this is not your day, your day. That picture may come another day, but sadly, this is not that day. Get the pictures with your editors. Have a moment, but that's not going to happen. But again, I've had times when I fought back and won that, not with those stakes, and I'm looking out the door and there's that desk, there's a doorway where the secretaries will come into the Oval Office, basically. And there's Hillary and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. This is not your day, kid. Like you gotta, you gotta accept that. You gotta let this one roll. And it was, it went against everything I've been fighting for my whole career. And I was just like, it's came out. It's kind of the overall Office of the President having a conversation. And he had just, you know, just come into office in that peak of that Obama Pete mayhem. And, um, yeah, I did get on the phone and call my magazine editor, who wasn't there, the magazine chief, was the chief editor in chief, and just say, sorry, I couldn't give that to you today. And I explained to why. Explain why you did the right thing. That's the only thing you could have done, but it was, but I went back in there multiple times with Michelle and him, and it's okay, but I was very grateful for that. But you know, there's times you gotta figure out, gotta read the room, yeah?

Well, I know it's also the most famous room in the world. I mean, it's

how do you cope with that, that seeming power imbalance. I know that you say that he's just Barry from Chicago, but you have photographed some, some of the most powerful people in the world. So when you come into the room and there's all this pressure, and you don't know what else they've got going on, and there's a whole team of people, and you've got these very strict parameters, how do you release the pressure valve and find the air in the story that you need to be telling, or that you want to be telling, or that can unfold? Is that the right way to say it?

Yes, absolutely, I get it, yeah, absolutely. Um, it's pretty simple. It's not their room. It's my room for five minutes. Oh, tell me about that. It's just my room. I mean, they're, they're in my set. That's my set. You know, sometimes I feel like this is a funny like Dustin Hoffman in the wag the dog, where he saw, like, it's my war it's like, no, it's not your war buddy. But he was like, the Hollywood producers, like, it's my war it's like, I love that movie. I love that scene that when he's just told that he has to walk away now and he's disposable, and he's like, this, this Hollywood anyway. Um, so. But you have, if you don't have that mindset, you will fail, you know, like, if say, again, that's probably not a bad example. Like a Julie Taylor or a Hollywood, you know, a movie a theater director is asked to, last minute, step in and produce a Hollywood, the Academy Awards, and someone's fallen out, she has to come in and last minute it's her set. Like, it might be the academy set, like, literally, it could be two hours before, but she's like, you know, I'd film director must own that room. If you don't know if that film director even put out, puts out a ounce of weakness or not weakness, but just indecision, you're going to get crushed. You can't even if you don't know you're winning. You know, it's the synchronized swimmer who's smiling the whole way through a routine when he or she's fallen over or something, the ballerina who's like stumbled and but she must keep the you know, you've even if there's a mistake like, don't, you know, when no one screens fire, everyone smiles, and we have a good time. Even that first year with Obama, we had a major power out outage. But I was professional. Had backup lines. I had good crew, and I can back

up lights. Do

you feel like you you're going in playing a character?

Yeah, sure. Absolutely. I was like, you know, I gave Barry, Mr. President, my shtick from Australia, my sort of kid from the bush, but I was just trying to find a connection. And it is, it is a character. They're all different characters. You try to like, you just sort of tweak them for different people, but you've also stayed still. Have to stay true, like I. Don't think I've ever made up stories, and I don't try to be someone I'm not, but that person I'm not. The minute you walk out of that, that's room, you do it, exhale and go back to being you know, you hear stories of these actors on set who stay in character, and then what's his name? The actor from the apparently he's the best at the actor from breaking by bad. You know the lead that Brian Cranston. I only he's the best one. Apparently, this great interview where he was the most other actors stay in character, and they just usually gotta leave him alone. And apparently Cranston's so good that he just goes, he'll be like, character, character. Yeah, I like peanut butter sandwiches too. Hey, like, you want to come swimming on Tuesday? Back to the character, and when I don't, I mean, I'm lucky I can commit, because I do have to own the room. Like, it's really weird that when you are in those situations, in many ways, it's a craft. Yes, it's an art, but it's a craft. It's really physically intriguing, mentally, emotionally draining. I mean, I'm fairly flat after these shoots, um, but it does require, you know, we're talking about having multiple brains, and, I mean, Annie was the best at it, and because you'd have a brain thinking about your camera and your lenses and all your technical stuff, because you can't get that wrong, and then you're thinking about your crew, because you're communicating with them, but you're not really talking to them. And then you're talking to the subject who you need complete attention from. And then, you know, on the back of me, I've got a comms person and a PR team who at their job to control or they think they're controlling it, and so I've got to, like, play nice to them, but not let that get in my way, you know. And maybe the sun just came out. It didn't come through the window. I mean, that I actually had lights. I have lights coming through. I mean, I, you know, I'm prepared for that. Anyway, if the sun goes, you know, my guys are good, that men and women turn things on. We have things we do. But even sometimes, you just got to accept that. Sometimes the change is the best is something, and it's also about you've also got to let it's really weird. You've got to control. You've got to be very, very, very, very clear with your direction, very clear. But you've got to be willing, and you've got to be ears open to them saying something, because they may have something that's better than you. They may have something that's really special, like it was a day with Ralph Lauren in his house upstate, and I was determined. I heard he was getting on the chopper to The Hamptons that afternoon, and I was determined to get on the chopper. I kept annoying him. He's like, kiddo, you're not getting on the chocolate. I was like, oh, and I wasn't upset that wasn't on the chopper. I was like, Yeah, you What do you think we should do? Because somebody just throw it out there. What do you think? And he was like, Oh, I had him in his study reading books. Beautiful house. And he was really upset. He was really worried about looking like an older man. He didn't want to look like a frail man. Reading the book is, I don't want to be this book. Guy, I'm not done that guy, I said, What do you want to do? He goes, Oh, we got a basketball. He's got everything. This compound he has Upstate is insane. And he goes, Well, basketball, basketball, hoops. I went, Okay, we'll do hoops. You know, the crew had no ideas. I quick get cameras run. I mean, I have lighting gear and cameras ready for the running shot. It may not happen, but I can't say, give me these people. I I've got to keep their attention. They've got to stay with me. If they, if they, if they break, they, they shake your hand and say goodbye. You can't, you can't let them go, because you won't get them back. Even if they're physically there, they're not there, right? So at times I'm even my crew is like, we should do that shot, that shot and that shot. I'm like, no, no, we should do this shot. They're like, No, you're making the technical job harder. I'm like, I know. I know. I know. Because I've got to keep them here I mean, I even put up fake lighting that isn't light, but it just blocks them walking away.

And I'd say, So, how do you keep them here? Do you just ask? You keep asking questions. You've done your research, and you know a little bit about their history beyond you know their work, like you talked about the Indonesia that kind of stuff. And you get really close to them, you were saying, do you just keep asking questions until you find that connection point and telling stories too? Yeah, yeah. Telling stories about your own life, you've got to share it. So sometimes you're like, You got to

figure out, like, am I telling am I am I, am I? Is that real fun balance? Because you can't just be listening, because they'll wrap that gives them control to wrap it up and getting and then you don't, you can't look. You can't I can't take eyes off them. My eyes off them. I can't look at their comms person. I can't look at my I mean, my editor and I, the good ones, like Alex coller, who we worked, I worked with for years, was she was wonderful. She's very, um, this incredibly elegant woman, tall. She was a painter. She's had this incredible she's this power that is just and I would sometimes read the subject, would say, Oh, Ben, I've got to go like, Oh no, you can't. You can't go because then I'm going to upset Alex. And I don't think I'll work again at the magazine. I can't look at, I can't Alex. I kind of said, Alex, she's like, she's my boss. I don't mind lose my job. And Alex, you know, give me the wink, like you just play that. You just keep doing that. And then we'd like high five. But it wasn't like a real it was very, it was very because she had that gravitas and that power and that grace and that role, like we would have times we shot big, big, big, powerful, powerful CEOs and boards, and they would carry on. And you watch your power, just like down, but but with class and dignity and respect, but power and so you just got to, you know, when I get to, I don't get to work with writers very much, because we're it's a it's a page layout is done quite often, separate to the story sometimes. So you've just got to keep them going. I mean, I have one time with who Ted Turner that was, well, that was something else that was crazy, that he was in his house, in his office, in somewhere in the Midwest, Denver, somewhere not Midwest, in the West. And, you know, walking the Ted Turner's room, I had to go past the the Academy Awards, the America's Cup, the World Series Baseball, or the Oscars, the Emmys, the man owns the world. I started CNN, like, and I'm like, Jane Fonda owns half of Wyoming. I was like, I don't think I haven't done much. I felt so but I went in and I just kept sailing, sailing, saying, I do sailing downtown in Manhattan. And this happens, and that happens in Australia, and cowboys, and cowboys, cowboy, this, that. And I said, Alex, just get ready for this. You watch. It was, it was absurd. If someone had, if someone had videotaped me, I didn't stop. I mean, this is not normal. You just didn't stop talking. This is not the way to do it. This is not, I do not encourage anyone to just village idiot. But he's there's a, there's a research power play with some of the these men, these old school men, that they will say, We're done, and it's not because you're done wrong. They just want to run. They want to own it. So I was like, I'm not going to let him because they would even do it. There's like, I think they almost, they must go to the CEOs bar and say, I cut him off after two. No, I cut him off after one. Speechless from because, but the problem is that photo shoot is him going, like, Who's this guy? And Alex, we had a good chuckle afterwards, but you've just got to know, like it, and that's fine. Like, I joke with people, they're like, I'm really sorry. Ben, it's gonna, you know, it's gonna be a real shoot, short shoot, you know, it's only 30 minutes. And I joke, I'm like, I can't, I'm not very good after 30 minutes. So trained to do that. But your question before about owning the room, I had a pivotal moment where the very young photographer and photographer Rupert Murdoch, there's a portrait of him on his balcony at the at Fox News, in his office on in midtown Manhattan. And he actually came. I actually was directing him, and I was very nervous. And he actually got he he did the close thing to me. He got the he got close to me and said, This is going to work, but you have to own it. So I'll do anything you want me to do, but you need to say it now, and you need to step up and own it. And he's but he said it in really loving, Father fatherly way. It was not a he said it quietly, said respectfully. And he's on, he was on a little ladder on the edge. And of course, in classic there are a lot of Australian cowboy newspaper guys, and he's the comms guy saying to me, you guys, look, give him a nudge. Give him a nudge. You could be really famous. Now, I was like, wow, this is, like, this really weird. I got ruper Murdoch and some guys joking. I got to knock him off the edge of the bill, like, all these things about that portrait now, is in the National Portrait Gallery in Canada. Yes, very proud of

so, I mean, look, you've taken some really iconic photos. I mean, we talked about the iconic photo of Obama that's absolutely everywhere that they pull all the time, and those very seemingly intimate moments between Barack and Michelle Obama, yeah, yeah. I have. Can I share one little

moment that was sweet? Yeah? Please. So I never really told it, and it was, couldn't capture it. It was just like, the loneliness of that job, like that is a really lonely job. It's a hard job. And he was sort of, you know, he he is his story. He went to the White House with his wife, his two daughters, and his mother in law. And, you know, everything you wake up at three o'clock in the morning, there's an oil spill in the Gulf, and it's got nothing to do with you, and you need to fix it, or there's, you know, some something's happened in Pakistan. Was like, okay, okay, I didn't start it, but let's, let's see what we got anyway. So we were doing the shoot with them on the couch, and we had a good moment, very intimate. And that went well for a few minutes, and then he had to go, and Michelle would stay back and do a quick interview with the editors. And he walks. He goes, okay, because he's got that tall, Gang Up, gangly, but he's got to move a certain way. And then he goes, and I'm, you know, watching him, and Michelle's on the couch. He goes, Oh, Michelle. He leans on the story, are you. You, but am I having dinner with you tonight? Because that'd be nice. And she goes, Oh, I've got that dinner to go to. Yeah, okay, tomorrow night. Can I get dinner with you tomorrow then to go to? And he just went, Okay, okay. And there was no one around him, and he just went, the most powerful person in the room was just like, I just want dinner. Just want a little dinner. And it was really tender. It was really loving, it was really sweet, but it was that moment like again, right? So for all the power in the world, he just wants to sit down with his wife and his girls and just say hello. You know, that's all. Just how you doing, how you feeling today. Do you have a good day? You know? So which every person at every table in every city, community, country, in the planet. Is how you doing? So, yeah,

what do you do when someone comes in and just doesn't want to be there, they're not even going to meet you in the place of I can, right? So you told me that story about Joe Biden when you first photographed him. How did you turn that around?

You've just got to say it. You've just got to say it.

Say, what? What do you say?

What do I do? What? I'm not sure what to do. Now, you know, I just get very vulnerable, so I don't know what I say, Look, I'm very sorry that this doesn't seem to be something that you're enjoying. I said I'm here with the best intention to make you look good, and I'm and I'm not working for them. I'm working for me and I'm working for the magazine. I'm not actually, I'm not there for them. I'm not there for their comms team. They don't approve anything. They don't say no to like can say no to a concept, but I don't have screens. I don't have computers. I don't show them the camera. I'm not there for them. I'm there for my editor and my magazine. They're my that's who I'm fought for. Because it can get tricky. Sometimes you forget. And I've had him, I've times with him. I've had times with Iranian dictators. I've had times with rappers. I've had times with you know, I've had them, like, really shut me down and just tell me how like or they just be this awkward stress. And it's no point having there's no point going through five or 10 if you've got 20 minutes and you know, five minutes going in, it's not working, don't waste the 15 minutes just just just treading boards. Just say something. Just break it. And just, you know, you be careful, because you got to say in a way that they might go, Yeah, I'm done by I'm done by don't like you,

yeah, what did you What did you say?

Well, Joe was, Joe was a classic one, because I that that thing I said earlier about scouting the White House, for me as an assistant, was a big deal, but it was much bigger. A lot of people are photo assistants to big people, but to go back on your own steam, it meant the world to me that I went back into Joe's house. Me, I'm the photographer that's really hard to get to. It's a lot of people can be the assistant to someone big. It's very hard to then go on and have that moment. It's that I walked into the White House. I'm it's not an ego thing. When it just feel good, like, Hey, Dad, it's my turn. You know, it all goes back to just calling his dad, really, before or after, telling him how that is actually the most enjoyable part of any of those days is, I can. I know it, I can. There's the most vivid memories in my mind, is get out, get the cameras away. Hey, Dad. He's like, Yeah, how's it go, man, how'd it go? How'd it go? Have a go. Doesn't care. And then I sent him the pictures of the subjects, and he goes, Yeah, no, no, no, I don't want that picture. Why'd you send me that picture? Like, what's the president of an office? He goes, No, no, the picture of you with him. I don't know. I don't want all that well, I don't want that. That's what that's that's what

he wants to watch you doing what you love. He

just wants his kid. And there's actually a really sweet, it's really sweet. There's a really powerful quote that I cut out and I put it on my wall, found it somewhere. Stephen Chu was the just about, again, about what really counts and the work counts. And if you can get this to, I'll get back to the it does actually help with the Joe answer. I'm sorry but doing a long way around. No, it's okay, I but it goes here at all. Stephen Chu was the first Cabinet Secretary to win a Nobel Prize. Yes, Barack won one, but that's different. That was a Peace Prize. Stephen Chu was a science energy minister, and he won on for he won a Nobel Prize in Physics. I'm not the best at physics. That's pretty hard to get. Like you won the Nobel Prize in Physics, that's like a lifetime of gene. You're a genius your whole life, and you are a super rock star. And then he's been interviewed by the New York Times, and that back page, there's a lot standing like your photograph on wine. And then time said, Oh, how was it? The morning, the, you know, the Nobel Prize called you in the four o'clock in the morning from, what is it? Oslo or Copenhagen, yeah, gosh, and Oslo and, and I think I'd go, slow, um. And he goes, Yeah. And he goes, I was pretty good call. So what you do next? Goes, well, I call my mom. You know, obviously his mum, he goes, Oh, Mom, you know, I just won the Nobel Prize of physics. Who gets to deliver that line right to your mom? And his mom goes, that's excellent, dear. But are you coming home for lunch

on

Sunday? Nobel Prize in Physics. I don't get to say that again. That's it. Really proud of you, but I just want to make sure I got the right lunch for you Sunday, because I love, you know, it just was such, like, when they read that, I was like, bang, that's why we're doing all this, you know, yeah, no, why we're doing to be able to say to your kids or be proud, like, how many stories are just trying to make your make your people around you proud that you did good? Um, anyway, so Joe was frustrated. It's a Friday afternoon. It's such an intriguing conversation now, considering what he's gone through with his son, and that's a debate that will go on a bit more, I guess, now, and Joe was wanting to get home to Delaware. Famously takes the train the Amtrak from DC for all his career. It's Friday, and I was so amped up and so happy, and Joe was just in a terrible mood. And I tried this, I tried that, and I was like, Joe, i i And this happens all the time. It's happened today. I'm actually planning a trip this Christmas, and the email came in and can you it's like, I literally was like, book ticket. Get if you're freelance creative, you book, trust me, just book tickets. Book non refundable tickets. Work will come. It's a really expensive ticket. Yep, and the phone's gonna ring. So I literally was locking the door on my Chelsea studio phone rings. Karen edit a friend, dear friends like, Hey, can you go? Can you go to the White House for Joan three days? Close the door, open up the computer again. It airline, of course, but I was giving up. I found my I was going home in March. It's a good month. It's a family birthday. And then I said to show I knew that. So I gave up family, a family birthday, very important one. And when you're away from your family all year, outside the world, those days are really They mean everything to you. And then I stand there and Joe. I was like, Joe, I just we got 10 more minutes. I don't know what to do now, because I've obviously upset you. I don't want to upset you. I'm here. I gave up my I gave up my birthday with my father in Australia, just to be here. So I was let you know I wasn't trying to shame him or be mean. I was like, That's just it, like, I don't know. I'm out. So if you want me to go, I'll go tell me about your pops, you know. And then we talk about dad, his work, and he wasn't, he wasn't. Then he just went, light bulb. Went off, family connection. And then it was about The King's Speech. Joe was a terrible stutterer as a young man, yes, and it was actually a great story with Sully, the guy who landed the plane. And, yeah, that's and he was also, as well, he wrote an op ed in New York Times about about Joe being mocked for that and one of the campaigns and saying, That's not, we don't do that like that's not we just that's it's to the parents of children who who have discovered those two are pretty impressive men, you know. So then it went to this great shoot and baseball bats and this and that, and hung around and kept going and gave me a coin to give to dad. And when you get to Adelaide, there's a military challenge coin. It's very common with people, senior people senior people in the military, and of course, Commander in Chief can give them out. He's like, I see if I see your dad down the street, and he shows me the coin, I'm buying him beers right away. There's no question. I'll buy him a beer. And so I got pictures of that and Joe and the coin, and I gave it to Dan. So again, so I go back a year later, I was like, Dad, where's the coin? He goes, Oh, I think it's in the sock drawer or something. Just something, I'd say, somewhere. And I think, I think he did, like, quietly walk up later kid, you know, he's got it somewhere. Um,

that is

hilarious. I mean, I I just take your point about what is really important, and that there we can find that connection with anybody. I mean, it can be very intimidating when you feel like there's a power imbalance or you just don't know what to do. And I love, I love your tip about just slowing it down, kind of reading the room, talking, asking questions, just listening, speaking of people who mock people with disabilities. What was it like photographing Donald Trump?

Yeah, it's been a conflicting sort of feeling about all this, because whether you like him or don't like him, he's now in a consequential person in American history and world history, and that's just is, that's just a fact. That's just a fact I photographed. Him before he was a politician, so I had a very different lens on it, a mindset. Showed him for a bunch of financial magazines, Troy multiple times. You know, obviously from town checking out the gold everything. And it's very gold, very gold. It's. Um, but again, I've been around those people, so I know I've been around a lot. I've been enough, right? And again, his communications person came down, so I'll let you know that he's going to do the he basically will do the power trip and walk away. So he's going to do this, this, this, and this. I was like, Okay, again, not my first rodeo. I know how to do this. And again, I would quite often have printed pictures with people. I photographed just to say I'm I'm not a rookie, because I was very lucky. I started getting these big jobs when I was very young, younger. And so they would sort of look at you and be like, I don't know who this kid is. And then I get it done. But I do because of Harry Benson, I wear a very nice can I give a plug to someone? Yeah, Anderson and shepherd the suit menu, but they make suits in several row. They make, if you get a suit from them, you get to sign the book I have done, and that's a better that's like that book is it's a really big deal because I needed to dress Harry Benson made me wear a suit and tie as an assistant, even in 100 degree day on a race track in California, I was in big trouble because he this is a trick. An editor in a magazine can get you into the room. It's your job to get to the next room like a computer game, right? They can't do that for you. That's your job. So if they like you, there's a chance that they'll get you to go with them somewhere else. And it's happened many times. I'm like, hey. Like, even things like, if I've had an hour shooting, like, I don't need an hour with this guy. I don't want an hour with this guy. I'm like, You know what? I think I'll let you go earlier today. What if we just do 15 and Don't you have something at this aren't you going to Arlington Cemetery? Aren't you going to this like, thing tomorrow with these sports people can't come to that and have 10 minutes with you before. So same amount of time, 1010, 10, okay, and you get more than that. You get stories, and you bring that back to your magazine, you're making your editor look pretty good, and it's just better for everyone. So part of that is do bit shabby now, but, you know, suit and tie with my hands in a shepherd suit, because maybe they, maybe they want, maybe they were immediately going to say, Hey, you want to hop in the beast, and we're going to go to a meeting at the Pentagon. If you're not dressed right, and you're if you're not giving off the right look, you're not getting in that car, there's no chance you just killed yourself. I'll wear a chicken suit to get five minutes. I don't care what's wrong. I mean, also, Harry used to say to me, like I can be just as tough a bastard in a suit and tie than I am in whatever they think I'm meant to wear. Photographers are pretty poorly dressed people, most of them, so it's not that hard to up the game. And then so anyways, the point was, I'm there and I'm telling Trump how good he is, because it's he likes that. We all know that. And then I'm there my crew. I actually have in my studio, not presently, an extra suit and a nice pair of shoes for my crew. I often work with Italian photo assistants who don't need to be asked to wear at night because and they had, well, you know, just a natural Italian outfit is looking pretty good anyway. So I would have like for the kid who just thought it was because, you know, my crew is a, you know, there was a personal Chris I worked with for years was older and a bit more mature. I actually was, at one point trying to look for ex military people who had done tours of duty to Me, working with me, because they had the right sense of, because sometimes you might go for 12 hours in the capital for a five minute shoot, like, Man, I just really, mean, I spent 12 hours waiting for the Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, to go into his I mean, it was just like I said they were trying to get rid of me in this hotel and his people. And I said, I'm not I don't leave. I'm not going to move. They didn't physically pull me away, and that when he came back, we had him anyway, point of a really well dressed crew looking million dollars, and Trump just went, I don't think that. I don't think Trump reads. We know he doesn't read Briefing Books, doesn't, doesn't believe that he needs to. He give me a one pager, give me the key points. I'm off, but he has, I'm sure he's read books on psychology and influence and body language, because he just did this. He's big, you know, six four. He's a pretty broad fella. And he just got really close to me. He got really, really close anything. It was that space intimidation, things, I know what you're doing. I know exactly what you're doing right right there when what you're doing. I was like, I knew I hear what he saying. I was like, Oh, what am I doing? I know what you're doing, and it works to keep doing it

seriously. That's what he said to you.

What do you mean? Like? I was like, oh, no, I love wearing this. I wear it all the time. And he goes, I go, Yeah, I love wearing it. I think, why not? I said, also, respect for you. Why would I come into your house and skateboard outfit? Oh, that would be disrespectful. Would never do that. He goes, good. Thank you. And then I. We had a great shoot. We did this Melania and Baron. Baron was a little kid at the time at the first shoot, and Baron's walking out, and he goes, Baron, what are you going to say to to Ben the photographer? And Baron looks up. He goes, Ben the photographer, when I get back, we're going to do a deal. This was like, maybe a six year old Baron, or something like, well, thank you, Baron. I look forward to seeing when you come back. When you come back. Well, he was trying to get me to do his Christmas card, but Melania didn't come back in. She didn't come back fast enough. Then we had to go. But we had all the time we needed the comms person was like, I've never seen him just give more to a shoot. I've since gone back multiple times into there. I've given him princes. I've got my gold leaf ladder saying you're good. Ben. Thanks anyway. Conflicted, because are we

in the media complicit in normalizing some of the behavior? And again, like someone can have disagreement with me on ideology, and that's fine. I think I encourage it. We can't be polarized. You know, I think there is a pretty important conversation about how we make that argument, with how we are going to choose to make that argument, and I don't think you need to go to say what he says and does what he does. So I got stronger views on that, but I might just focus on the human stuff and the connection, but I so I do feel a bit conflicted because I made it incredible and fun and cool. But I didn't, he wasn't a president, then I actually was. I was meant to photograph his first cabinet at Trump Tower, at the first one, which obviously, you know, that lasted about a week before it all fell apart. And it was, you know, whole group. I just was talking to the press Comm, the comms. It was all dialed in in the last minute. It can fall apart, as it often does.

How do you

find something that you want to that you like about somebody that you do not like? So you know, if you if you are called to go in and photograph somebody, and you have read a lot about them, you've looked at what they stand for. You don't agree with it. How do you prepare for that meeting? Is it just the same principles we've been talking about? You just find that point of connection, that that point where you do have some commonality, to just find that space, that white space where you can meet? Yeah, it's

hard, because you don't want to go in with two preconceived story about someone, because how they are in person is important too. Not that I would be want to be manipulated, but their policies are their policies. And yeah, I don't have a great answer to that. I do have a good answer that I take better pictures of people I'm I struggle with. Tell me about that. I take pictures of people who I like. I'm probably too kind. You know, the last thing I want to do would have been made to make a young Barack Obama look bad. I didn't want to do that. But that's putting your foot on the scale too, right? So we're all putting our foot on the scale any way we do it. I

want to understand that a bit more, so I take better pictures of people that I struggle with. I want that tension because I

don't want to like, I don't want to lie someone too much. I want to have, I want to have push back like, I don't know, there's probably another similarities with there's probably, like, I'm sure you could get an actor and a director who says that, that director makes me do the best work, because they're kind of, they're not nice to me. They're kind of cruel, a little bit, you know, like, not cruel, not that you would encourage to be cruel. There's no, there's no room for that. But there's a bit of tension, like, a bit of tension, right? Like, that kind of, kind of back and forth is important. And, yeah, I think it's important to have that little bit of, you know, like, I spent a bunch of time with Mitt Romney and Anne Romney at different houses in different places. And I think they're wonderful people. I've really loved my time. I mean, obviously history is put him in a different light than that campaign, and the boys and the girls, women in that family are lovely, really lovely. And MIPS been a bit of a stick in the mud, but, um, it was all respectful and kind, you know, and it's been odd. And said there's some really awkward things, like front of his wife and kids like me, come on, he doubled down. And not cruel or sexist, but just like, just trying to be funny, he's not, you know, probably shouldn't be trying to get a stand up routine, but there was, there was a court that so I but I was trying to, but then his team was really unprofessional to me and treated me poorly and told me they were really unprofessional. They cut the time down. They were really, really not nice to me. I said, Why would you do that? Because I got a camera. They're like, don't make sure you don't show this, this, this and this. Don't show the billionaire in front of his big house in the lake house. I went, well, that's probably gonna happen now and but I put him in front of a backdrop. And not that I want to, but you also don't want to get thrown off by that you it's fine line, right? So treating someone as they're treating you for the 20 minutes is fair. But I'm not a sucker, so I don't want to be played, but I've also got a magazine that may have an editorial slant anyway. They may have been told by my editor, we want, we would like this to be a story that shows that there may be a bit confused or the or they went over their heads, or this is a positive piece about their family. The story The last project I did with Barack and Michelle was them together. It was about them as family. I thought I met Anne doing hot dogs with their grandkids, and Barack and Michelle on the couch talking about date night in Chicago like again, that was my opening line to the Michelle and Barack about, you know, I was dating someone who's living in Chicago. I was like, you know, that was the kid they were working on the campaign. And I said, What do I do? I need, I'm running out of ideas. What's, what's my date night? I'll get them in the mood for them to be in that space, right? So, yeah, yeah. I mean, you know, I'm a dinner dictator, another a few other dictators, a few other pretty cruel people have historically bad reputations because they deserve, um, yeah, but, you know, I did days with the congressional Republicans. I've done days with the Democratic Republic, you know, Congress, you know, they newly elected crew. I do a set up a studio in the Capitol, and, um, I give someone to benefit the doubt. If they want to, can they? I gotta get them to engage. I've got to elicit something, right? Like, you know, there was a who was, it was a really sweet mukowski, who's a Alaskan senator, yeah? Lisa Makowski, yeah. Lovely woman. I really like time with her, you know, and she's racing up from vote to vote through the Capitol building. And I was joking. I was like, I said, say that it's really solid granite, like the floor is really like, you know, they're big, they're big buildings. You got to walk a lot. And a senator doesn't get driven everywhere. They gotta walk through the thing. And she had a shoes like, how do you go? At the end of the day, she's so sore feet, she takes her shoes off and just is like, Ah, this is what I do, you know, photograph. We got a moment. We got a human, yeah, a woman who's, you know, five foot two, who's getting has to race between votes and meetings, and she got press hassling her, and she's in my little room. I was like, It's okay, you know, or even things like, I brought in. I needed a fancy stool to sit them on. And I got a I didn't have a fancy stool to bring in, so I, I found, like, an old computer box. And I was like, we we at politico, got all the money in the world. We even found an old box we just sit on. That's how cheap. Again, it's just, they're like, You are cheap. I'm like, We are the cheapest of the cheapest. And just,

but your question is humor a lot, yeah?

Like, I mean, I do say to other people that he's an extreme version of it, but I don't think I know he does get a lot of credit, but I still don't people see the subtlety of what Sasha Baron Cohen does. I don't think they get it in Australia. We have a very famous Australians would know this, a very famous person called Norman Gunston, yeah, who literally we had out throughout this is to the foreign audience. We had a moment where we had our, effectively, the version of a Nixon resigning and but this was different. This was not corruption. This was a blockage of supply. The governor general is the head of our country. Through the Queen's representative, she can dissolve parliament. Long story. Those in Australia know it, and Norman Gunson was literally an Ali G character, and somehow, somehow got on the steps of parliament house and at the pivotal moment, stuck a microphone in Gough Whitlam face. It's like Ali G getting

unbelievable part of Australian history, for

sure, and that was one. He's one of my heroes too, because I'm like, what he played, what a genius. He's not even just, he wasn't. It was never an angry character. He was never a gotcha character. He was a bit of a doofus, but he was this, like, bumbling man with his cuts and all the things.

Yeah, it was hilarious, the shape,

like, there's times where he was playing in some of his films. He actually, I saw him play Borat plays, Baron Borat plays. He did multiple characters, and he's in a lobby once where he was, like, I saw him do the four characters at once in a public setting which wasn't rehearsed and scripted. He's talking to someone in a hotel with that just that's hard to do. Obviously, I don't I'm not the idiot the dance. But

so, do you mean you admire the way that he's able to elicit these authentic responses from people?

Yeah. I mean, he does a very blunt level. I mean, I love that one. What was that one? He's like, he asked a really important Republican, how do you spell this, right? Newt Gingrich, and he said, and the guy's like, G, R, E goes, no, no, the first one, that's my Newton, because I'm sitting with a village idiot. And his guard dropped. It, and the interview was incredible because he just, we broke him not he didn't try to take him down. He wasn't cruel to him, but he he opened the door and got new to just be like, Oh, this will be fun. And he wasn't. Or it just became new and like, maybe with sometimes the best compliment I get. And again, this could be challenging when it's a public figure that we may not liking the public eye, but that's a choice that other people can make. Sometimes, when I get an email or a note, I was like, Hey, that's my you photograph my brother who might be a public figure. That's my brother. Like, somehow you got my brother? Well, that's my nephew. Like, that's my uncle. Like, that to me means everything. So if someone's brother saw a picture and said, Oh, that looks like him when he's at the barbecue. Doesn't look like him when he's in office. He might be in the suit and tie in the Oval Office, but doesn't look like him. But

again, how? How do you know when you got it?

Oh yeah, you know. You just know any guts, you know. You know you're just like anything. You know when you stay too long, you know when you've moved on. You know when you if you didn't get it by now, you're not going to get it. But no, I know it like I I've read a lot of books with I was, I was lucky to get the those. I'm lucky in my time to get the back end of the magazine industry. It's changed fundamentally now, but Harry Benson and these legends, Kate Winslet playing Margaret Burke, is it Margaret Burke? Why? No, she's doing. Lee Miller, yeah. Miller, one of our heroes to war. Photographer, what a, yeah. What a, what a, what a, what a superstar and an incredible, clearly human being too.

You want to talk about someone who saw the left of field story in a situation, you know, art, those photos are

they doc, they're like, but there's some compassion in there's a there's they're just really, there's ability that some of these people, it's quite often women. There's a woman right now just dropped her name, Lindsay. Can I believe to put on your show notes? There's a female photojournalist who wrote a book and her pictures that her pictures have humanity, deep humanity, even the middle of it, like, how do you tell those stories with this? Because she just it's there in her and cares about her subjects.

What would you want people to say about your photos?

Just that, yeah, that was him, yeah, that was her, yeah. I mean, I just don't think I need all the fluff. Like, okay, I see them as as I don't actually see them as photographs. I see them as historical documents. And there's a guy, Yusuf Kash, a Canadian, an Armenian immigrant to Canada. There's a very famous picture of Winston Churchill with the cigar. Yes, there's a really famous picture of him. There's a famous picture of Sir Edmund Hillary. There's a famous picture of Einstein. There is two or three others this man, because he was the first guy to take all the lights the studio, put him in a truck, drive him to the house, and set him all up, right? And if you do the who like the page in history of the man owns five of the most powerful historical figures in our in our 200 years, whatever we are span that we'll connect with, it's pretty big deal. So I sort of not to not, not to play the ego, but to try to say so there are restrictions that I will put on the photographs, like things like, I don't want my images to not that. I don't want them to be not date if they're photographed in a funny outfit, like if Bill Clinton was walking the Oval Office in a track suit that he'd been kicking around in his, you know, bad gym gym gear bag from he hasn't dated. That's awesome, but that dates it right? So I try sometimes to always do something very simple, something very clear, something very, just very, very clean, because I see them as historical documents. And yes, a place in the setting is important, but I'm trying to give them that gravitas that so a lot of my heroes are fashion photographers, incredible filmmakers, cinematographers, artists. I go to museums. I'm inspired, but they are reinterpreting something I don't see myself as reinterpreting them. That's not my place. There are people who do that, and I think there's incredible, powerful people. Yeah, I also don't put in many, in many ways I love, let my work in many ways. I don't really have a signature look. I feel. I have a signature feel. But there are other people out there who say, this is how I take a picture, and it's very clear. I know, I see it like you know, we know with a painter, we know with one hook of a song, and that's really important for their career. But I have intentionally gone I want these to remain historical documents so they'll I'll simplify them, because I think they have a I feel a responsibility, that these need to have the place and time I am the only. Person who will photo of that person there and there, and it does happen to be in a pivotal point in world history, maybe, maybe not. You know, that sounds like that's a lot of ego, but you've got to remember the place of time, hopefully, right? So

if you could only grab one photo to take to your dad that you've taken, what would it be?

I didn't take it. That's, that's, that's like saying my favorite child, I

think dad put it on a timer anyway. Like, there's a picture of us up in remote Australia. There's a family portrait that is probably my favorite. Yeah, sure, but I didn't take dad. Dad took it. No, we did put on time. Um, picture that I took. I mean, I did have a I did have my apartment burned down in New York, and my SIGN PRINT, the pointing picture, which is, people know of

Obama, yeah, which I gave to

his body. What's his name? Bucha was a really lovely guy. It was his body guy. For many years, I gave him a copy to give to Barack, and I, I gave him two, and he like, You want my back. Was like, you know. And six months later, the print site, the SIGN PRINT, came from the White House. I had my own moment, sending it to mom, and she was like, great, but you come on for Christmas. It was like, it was doing more than that's pretty much it.

That's, that's the conversion of the Nobel.

So I had an apartment in Chinatown and walking home one Friday afternoon, yeah, New York City sign. When, you know, you hear signs in New York all the time, so you sort of like, whatever. I got closer, there's many fires in Chinatowns. Was on my street. Oh, it looks like my apartment. That's a fireman smashing my window. That's that's water and flames. I'm like, That's my house. I guess that's my house. I guess that's my house. And in my house, I had a big closet with a lot of my photo gear and negatives, and it's like, and a few weeks before, someone very close to me had passed away unexpectedly and very dramatically. So I was in a zombie land. Anyway, I was a bit out of it, and it was funny, because there's the news, the TV on the news, are you the resident? I'm like, I'm like, it's just a house, whatever. And then I was like, Oh, the print, the print, the print, the print, print. I was like, and I was like, it was the sign, the original sign from that's a loss, isn't it? I don't I did you What pictures I take? You know, you photograph it, but the originals in there. And then they NY The fire department New York. You got to give them credit. They are very efficient crew. Their job is to get the roof down, water in, put it out. You don't want it to spread. So basically there was more water damage, and there was just fire. But it was the boat. And then classic moment, I was like, and there was, like, still a smoldering fire that was dangerous. And I waited for a cop to walk away from the door, and I snuck up the stairs. When I put a big had a big jacket, a winter jacket, and that's a big print. And I was like, and I was like, trying to work. It wasn't David, it was out. The fire was out, but it was shouldn't. It was a crime scene. Shouldn't be in there. And I come running up my stairs trying to because I'm like, they're gonna bust they're gonna bust me. And he's like, you know, classic, your cock, whoa, yo, yo, what? What are you nothing? And I'm nothing at all. I got this giant box in my jacket. I'm like, nothing, bye, bye. You can't go up there. Like, okay, I'll never go back up there. I got one thing I wanted. And then, and then I remember the Red Cross. Is like, Do you want a hotel room? I was like, No, I got my house. Like, you need a hotel room,

so you, you salvage the photo.

Yeah, but, but whatever. Even if there are so many stories of Albert Watson, all these legends, you just hear these, you know what is going to get you? So anyone who's got your fancy archive, it's someone's coming. Just enjoy, enjoy the moment, because they're just stuff. It's just, you know, they're just prints. It's fine. It exists. And that's the one thing about the digital universe. Yeah, they do live on. They're not something that is eventually, eventually, it's like, I was like, Are you working really hard? And you sort of say, well, you know, maybe one day one of my grandkids, or, there's no grandkids, someone's going to be like, someone's going to get the key to your storage. When I pass on, they're like, open up a box and a little hard drives. They're like, okay, just, just take him to the Sally's, you know, just like that. And this is not putting it in that. It's not sound like an ego chat conversation, but you know that classic moment of the end of the Raiders are Lost Ark, the first one, and after going through everything, it

just gets buried in that box in a big warehouse. Oh, and they're wheeling that box to never be seen again.

Matter like the film matters. The story matters, the this matters, but doesn't really matter. You can't take it with you. So, you know, it's really amazing to physically, and that's why I don't. I'm not I'm not longing for shooting film. I don't really need. I mean, I don't like storing it environmentally. I don't think it's a positive thing for us to be pouring silver down a drain and all. That cost of the packaging, and not that computers are less costly to our footprint, but it's not but even then, like, here's, I think I used to work with these old photographers who used to have the world's crappiest cameras. I'm like, Hey, helmet Newton and June Junior, these legends, the shittiest cameras. One day, we're photographing, we're assisting Pat Malachy and the kitchen of the plaza, and I got my light meter, and she goes, What are you doing with the light? All this fancy gear? Like, she's, like, got a cannon from 1982 or something. Just, guess what? This inside? It's free, okay, like, and I've been trained to be like, the scientist that knew everything that doesn't matter. Like, if there's a very famous drummer, Max Roach, miles, miles, Davis's drummer, we went to photograph him with Martin and I call the rehearsal space, hey, we'll rent the fancy this for that. They're like, Oh no, Max doesn't have any of that. Max doesn't have drums. Yeah, the kid had drums for 60 years. He doesn't need drums. But they're like, Well, get the fancy ones. They're like, No, he was. He only asked for the cheapest things. And we get there, and we're like, Mr. Roach, like, why is the greatest drummer in jazz history not? And he's like, Well, if I'm that good, can't I make anything sound good? Really, shouldn't I be able to do that? Because I enjoyed it? And he's like, why not? It's a bit of a challenge. Same with the older photographers with these I mean, they were just like, crap. Cameras. Like, hilarious. The lenses are broken, and it really upset me. And then when they knew it was upsetting me that, like, pushed me, like, Oh, watch it. Look, Look, kid. I can still just because at the end of the day, you start to realize the toys don't matter. Fancy stuff doesn't matter. It does not matter. And I'm going back to the to me now with equipment, I'm like again, parameters, one camera, one lens, one light, one room, one person, or even less, because you can get lost in all the you know, like I am a hero. I want to Basle Romans. Best Film is strictly boring. Ah, I love that film that, to me, is his masterpiece. And these other films are beautiful. They are beautiful pieces of art, but strictly boring stays here because he didn't have all the toys. Yes, now he's got the toys. He's using the toys. Maybe there's no maybe we don't need the toys. Yeah,

I could talk to you all day long about this. I close every episode with the same question, which is, for somebody who has a dream in their heart but doesn't feel like they have what it takes to make it happen, what would you say to them?

Yeah, of course you do. Of course you do. I mean, it's not easy. It's not easy for everyone who's got these like, gets up and says, Oh, look, there's some crazy days. There's some pretty dark moments. I've walked the streets of New York feeling pretty dejected. You know, I crushed, but that was, yeah, just be really kind to yourself. Just be really, really, really kind to yourself. If you're trying to do something that's not easy, just accept that and just say because it doesn't like again, let's go back to that story about, I know it's not the answering question directly, but the Stephen Chu and the mum and the Sunday roast, and I at the end of the day, it's just a picture and it's just a movie, it's just a song and it's just a book. It's not clearly, it's more than that. It means the world to you and but, you know, I grew up, a lot of people tell me I couldn't, and still, a lot of people tell me I couldn't. And there's a lot of and we're like this. We're all going through, like, the creative arts right now is going through really weird space, all the new technologies, and we're all trying to figure out where we are and what's our future. And so it doesn't stop, you know, that sort of questioning yourself, but, yeah, just enjoy like, do enjoy it. Like do just enjoy the you gotta enjoy the ride. You have to, like, you actually, Dad said that it was one of the best pieces of advice. It was actually the day before the White House. And he goes, You nervous and stuff. Sorry. I goes, Can you promise me one thing? Can you just have a good time? Like, what kind of a good time? I'm stressed out because of this. I got that because, okay, here's, here's what I'm asking you, even if you screw it up and it's a disaster, at least you'll have a memory of having fun. Worst advice, I hate you for that, but it was the greatest advice you've got to have fun. You just got it. And that sounds bizarre, but like, if you can't enjoy that little moment, you just never get it. Because I, you know, I again, I maybe I don't go back to the White House again. Maybe my maybe those days, maybe they do, maybe I don't, you don't get those times again. So enjoy it. And, you know, be sharing. And you get to share it with people. I get shared my crew, like my main assistant, Chris, is not with us anymore, and I don't get to even call him anymore because it was wasn't well. And these editors have passed like they're not in that I got cherished those moments. I wish I can't get them back so you just just if you haven't breakfast, you know, if someone's telling if you're doing a career. At a pursuit, or you're on a road trip making something. Just enjoy the, you know, enjoy the coffee, even if it's really shitty coffee, it's amazing cup of coffee. You know, like, go to go to the diner and go and sit on the I always like sitting at the the Waffle House diner in America, because you get a perspective on things. The women that work in their this small town America, and these women are, you know, most of them, that's a hard job. They're doing the best and they can. They're doing like a kid. Maybe a lot of them are single moms. A lot of them are just working, really, doing everything they can. And they're like you getting paid to go and make a movie or write a book or take a picture. Come on, let's put it in perspective.

Be in the moment and celebrate it. And yeah, I love it. Thank you so much for this wonderful conversation. Your great

work, too. We love your books. We love them. We do seriously,

you're very sweet.

Nancy Jo, yeah, Nancy, I'm have this American mum and she Nancy Jo, and she's obsessed with making your your recipes, and she hadn't connected the dots. I know, don't you know that's my book? Was like, No, that's my friend test. Okay, okay, so it's pride, and it's pride in the house. So thank

you, oh, thank you that I love to hear that I appreciate that i.