We Can Create speaker Patrick Reynolds is an architectural photographer, known for his work with both built and unbuilt environments, and an exhibiting fine arts photographer.

The art and creative industries showcase is on in Auckland on August 26-27.

Read his TBI Q&A and his answers to The Big Idea community questions in the comment box below.

During what hours of the day do you feel most inspired?

Varies of course, though usually a bit vague around the middle of the day, but that could be the need for a good lunch.

How would a good friend describe your aesthetic or style?

Rich, complex, startling, inspiring, arresting; haha, depends how much of a good friend I guess.

What aspect of your creative practice gives you the biggest thrill?

Collaboration.

How does your environment affect your work?

It’s everything: all I do is respond to the environment.

Do you like to look at the big picture or focus on the details?

Big picture is the exciting bit, the devil’s in the detail.

What's your number one business tip for surviving (and thriving) in the creative industries?

To thine own self be true, as the man said.

Which of your projects to date has given you the most satisfaction?

The next one, I hope.

Who or what has inspired you recently?

There’s a lot of great selfless work going on online, if you can find it among the oceans of dross.

Tell us a bit about your background.

I grew up in suburban Auckland, escaped to Art School then abroad, and back again. I am particularly interested in how we shape our world then it shapes us; or perhaps the other way around….

Tell us a bit about your latest projects.

Working on my fifth architecture book, in the middle of shooting the new Art Gallery here in Auckland, writing on urban design for various journals and teaching a bit at the School of Architecture, engaging in a little light lobbying.

Tell us a bit about what you’ll be talking about at We Can Create.

Certainly about how the camera always lies, probably about the end of the world and why that’s exciting [mostly], photographing on the moon [really], and why police photography is so unreachably cool.

If you could go back and choose a completely different career path to the one you've chosen, what would it be?

Do you choose your career? That’s a bit of a fantasy isn’t it? chocolatier? Vintner? Wildly successful actor who only plays villains?

What place is always with you, wherever you go?

My Turangawaiwai is a little place on Auckland’s west coast; Anawhata.

What's the best way to listen to music, and why?

At the movies when they get it right is pretty good. On headphones when you’re sad in cemetery is hard to beat too. Live, of course, is unbeatable.

You are given a piece of string, a stick and some fabric. What do you make?

A mess, or possibly a fire.

What's the best stress relief advice you've ever been given?

Good whisky still works for me.

What's great about today?

Possibility.

What’s great about We Can Create?

Looking forward to seeing the speakers and I am flattered to be asked to go along and bang on for a bit.

What’s your big idea for 2012?

Well survival aside, I am looking forward to seeing how this century unfolds, it’s looking like a wild ride.

Further information:

Patrick Reynolds has cemented his place as one of New Zealand’s most renowned photographers.

He is perhaps best known commercially for his architectural photography. His exterior and interior work shows up regularly in Home New Zealand and Vogue Living, as well as in work for Huka Lodge, Mighty River Power, Mercury Energy, Louis Vuitton and BMW.

Alongside his ubiquitous industry work, Reynolds is also an exhibiting fine arts photographer. His imagery regularly explores themes of landscape, nature, architecture and pattern; preconceptions of what constitutes beauty and the utilitarian, and the space created by the fusion of both. As Reynolds puts it, “photography, like architecture, desires the ideal but confronts the mundane.”

His work can be found in a number of collections throughout New Zealand - the Wallace Collection, Te Papa, the Auckland Art Gallery and Waikato Museum. He is represented in Auckland by Gow Langsford Gallery and John Leech Gallery.