Inspiration

Shadowed. Transcendent. Masterful.

Fan Ho

Ho worked the streets of Hong Kong in the 1950s and 60s with a medium format camera and an eye for light that has never been equalled in street photography. His images — smoke, shadow, lone figures caught in shafts of light filtering between buildings — feel less like photographs and more like paintings that happened to be real. He understood that the street is a stage, and that light is the director. Looking at his work doesn't make you want to copy it. It makes you want to go outside and look more carefully at the world around you.

Monumenta. Precise. Timeless

Ansel Adams

Adams taught me that patience is not passive. His landscapes aren't found — they're waited for, returned to, worked. The tonal range he achieved in the darkroom showed me what it means to treat light as a material, not just a condition. My approach to black and white — whether in a Hanoi market or a mountain range — owes more to Adams than anyone.

Empathetic. Vivid. Intimate.

Steve McCurry

McCurry showed me that colour is not decoration — it is meaning. His ability to find humanity in a single face, to make a stranger feel knowable across every cultural distance, is something I return to constantly. He also showed me that the most powerful images are often the simplest ones.

Decisive. Instinctive. Observationalist.

Henri-Cartier Bresson

The decisive moment. The idea that photography is about recognition — seeing the geometry, the tension, the story — a fraction of a second before it resolves. Cartier-Bresson didn't chase images, he positioned himself and waited for life to walk through the frame. That instinct is at the core of everything I try to do on the street.

Authentic. Prolific. Documentary.

Gianni Berengo Gardin

Gardin spent decades photographing Italian life with the quiet authority of someone who believed that ordinary people in ordinary moments were the only subject worth having. His work is documentary in the purest sense — no drama manufactured, no moment forced. What strikes me most is the dignity he gives to every subject, regardless of circumstance. He showed me that the camera doesn't need to be clever. It just needs to be honest.

Dramatic. Theatrical. Emotive.

Pedro Luis Raota

​A less-known name outside South America, but one of the most emotionally powerful photographers I've encountered. The Argentinian master worked in black and white with dramatic light against dark backgrounds, and his portraits carry a depth of human feeling that stops you in your tracks. Raw, tender, and completely his own.

Panoramic. Luminous. Grand.

Peter Lik

Lik was born in Melbourne, the same city I grew up in, and I've watched him grow from local photographer to one of the most recognised landscape artists on the planet. His images operate at a scale and drama that most photographers wouldn't attempt — his commitment to the grand statement, to making a viewer feel genuinely small in front of an image, is something I deeply respect. There's also something personally meaningful about watching someone from your own backyard redefine what landscape photography can be.

Innovative. Luminous. Ethereal.

Matthew Pillsbury

Largely unknown outside photography circles, Pillsbury works with long exposures in public spaces — cinemas, museums, restaurants — turning human presence into ghostly traces of light and movement. His work sits in a space between documentation and abstraction that I find quietly extraordinary. If you haven't seen his work, look it up.

Patient. Epic. Intimate.

Sergio Leone

Leone taught me that the space between action and stillness is where the real drama lives. His films move between the epic and the intimate with a confidence that most directors never find — a face filling the entire frame, then a vast empty landscape, then back again. That tension between the grand and the personal is something I think about constantly when I'm framing a shot. Leone also understood patience — he would hold a moment far longer than was comfortable, and in doing so made the viewer feel every second of it. That's not a bad philosophy for a photographer either.