Dani Martin: How has your photography evolved? I.e., how did you land on interior photography?

Stephen Johnson: I actually didn’t study photography in school. I studied graphic design and English. I always loved the visual arts and thought I’d be a painter or something when I went to school, but I took a graphic design class, and I loved the sort of mass aspect of it. I liked the idea of doing something that lots of people saw and might enjoy. And so, I studied graphic design, and I’d always loved magazines, so when I graduated, I worked for a small branding firm called the Valentine Group as a designer, and then I moved to Martha Stewart Living, where I was for eight years. And I loved that I was so nerdy all the cooking, baking, gardening, home stuff. And the crazy thing about that job, unlike most magazines, the art directors were on every shoot of every story they worked on. You’d sort of start a story from its conception where you’d hire the photographer, get the team together, concept the shoot, and then work with the photographer on set. So I got to work with some really amazing photographers during that time. And in the back of my mind, I kind of always wanted to make the shift. Then, I had a brief stint working at Mac Cosmetics as an art director, where I also got to work with some cool still life photographers. But then I went back to Martha, and then I was working at a little food magazine called Everyday Food. I started freelancing, and I realized that I didn’t want to be a designer anymore because all the work I could get I wasn’t enjoying, and it was a lot of catalog work. I wasn’t on many sets, and I realized the part of my job that I actually liked was the photography. So I bought a camera and started harassing all my friends to shoot their spaces, or I was friends with lots of food stylists, so we would do shoots on the weekend. And I just loved it. I realized I wanted to make images. And that’s how I sort of fell into photography. And I think what I had going for me was that I always knew what I wanted the picture to look like, and that’s what I learned as an art director, but I had to hire people to teach me the technical stuff. I had to hire an assistant for a day and say, “Okay, I want to shoot a hallway with no light, what do I do?” Or what if you’re shooting into a window? What does that mean? I feel like I’m an honorary RIT graduate because a lot of the assistants I worked with went to Rochester Institute of Technology. So that’s how I fell into photography. And after shooting for a while, I realized that after a couple of years, I fell out of love with the food aspect of it. I had some good opportunities there, but it wasn’t floating my boat anymore. And I always loved interiors, it’s like my favorite thing, so I decided to focus more on that. I started testing more and got a good couple of breaks like with Elle Décor and then weirdly, the Jack story, I think was the first story I shot for Architectural Digest. I found that I just followed what I liked, and then thankfully, it has worked out where I get to work with people I really respect. I feel like such a nerd always asking people where’s that from? Where did you get that? But that’s what I love about my job; I’m always learning new things, even if it’s about sofas and stools.

Dani: Jack Pierson’s lovely blue living room has so much intricacy and detail. How do you capture a space’s integrity as a whole while also honing in on particular features?

Stephen: I feel like as a general approach, my goal is always I want you to feel like what it feels to be in the space. I think a lot of interior photography is about documenting a super-wide experience in a space, which is a different thing. But I like to try and make you feel what it’s like to be there as a human, sort of a human scale. So that means I’ll use lenses that are not as wide as a lot of photographers use, and another way to do that is to focus on some of those details. I think that can give you a real sense of space. In the front hallway of Jack’s apartment, there’s that crazy wallpaper, and we just did a little shot of some crystals, and there’s all this weird stuff, and if you don’t get tight on it, then it’s kind of hard to focus on it. I think those still life’s can say a lot.

Dani: Especially when dealing with smaller spaces (like a New York apartment, for example), how do you create space and depth in your images

Stephen: Some of it is just trying to be physically nimble; honestly, it’s trying to get the camera back as far as possible. So I’m often opening a closet and shoving the tripod in there. Part of it’s getting back, part of it’s using lenses. It’s just not glamorous; I’m always squatting over some toilet, just shoved as far back. Often will take a door off its hinges to get a little bit of extra space.

Dani: The apartment also boasts lots of beautiful, natural light. How do you maximize natural light, and how do you compensate in its absence?

Stephen: I would say 95% of the pictures I take are natural light. And people are often super surprised, like, “It’s pitch black in here.” But if you do a 30-second exposure, you can pick up whatever. So you shape whatever light is there, and then it can look super bright. That’s one way to do it, and then another is that I always have some lights with me, so I can always sort of fake it. But my style of photography I generally like soft light, and generally to look day lit too. Like I said, I want to feel the space, and that’s why I think soft is good because it lets you look at the objects and the furnishings in the space.

Dani: How do interior photographers and designers collaborate on a space?

Stephen: There are a few different ways that it goes down. What may be my favorite way is what happened with Jack’s, where we were able to scout the space. I think I pitched the story to Architectural Digest just because I knew Jack personally. But I was able to work with my friend Michael Reynolds, who is a stylist, and we work a ton together. And for me, that’s the best way to work because Michael, he’s a creative director, and he also has this magical eye, and he’s able to sort of direct the shoot in a great way. But it’s also nice to have someone who has a great eye to come in and sort of put their stink on something. Because often the designer or the homeowner’s been in it so much they can’t really see it as photographs, they can see it as a gorgeous space that they’ve done. But Michael has this magical ability to parse out what will photograph well and put the flowers that will work well, or if he has to get some pillows or some accessories. So that’s one way that it works, and I often do that with Michael, and that’s more of an editorial way. I have a lot of relationships with designers who maybe don’t want to shell out the money to have a stylist on there, and they’re great stylists themselves. I did a book with Robert Stilin, another designer, and he has someone who works with him named Rajaie, and he would do all the flowers, and they’re both great stylists. And I feel like the most important lesson I’ve learned from a business standpoint is finding people you jive with taste-wise. Because there are so many different styles out there, and I don’t feel like anything is better or worse, but I love it when I can find a relationship with someone where we’re simpatico on what we think looks good. I was on a shoot years ago, and the stylist was like, “Should we put another hat above the bed?” Like a straw hat. And I was like; I wouldn’t have put the first five… And it wasn’t that it was bad or good. It just wasn’t my thing, so it was hard to weigh an aesthetic. So when I can work with someone like Michael where you shoot an amazing place like Jack’s, or you find clients like Commune or Atelier AM, and they have the most flawless taste where I’m so thrilled to be there, it’s just so much easier because you’re all sort of on the same page of what you think looks good.

Dani: Are you allowed to manipulate certain aspects of a space? Or do you shoot mostly as is?

Stephen: It really depends on the space. My favorite places to shoot are places that are someone’s own home, like Jack’s. The people who have an aesthetic and have had a heavy hand at decorating are the best because they’re often layered in a way. Something like Jack’s, very little, just more the flowers or layering what is there. There are other clients and editorial jobs, where you’ll walk in, and there’s a semi-truck outside, and they’re bringing in giant plants and temporary paintings. It’s a different game to decorate a space to live in and to photograph a space. It really ranges.

Dani: After you’ve taken your images, how much photo editing goes into the final product?

Stephen: That’s such a good question because I had no idea. My best friend’s name is Chris, and he was a fashion photographer, and I’d always call him on the weekends like, “Let’s get together what’re you doing” and he’s like, “I’m retouching.” And now that’s my life. Always retouching. There’s often an equal amount of time spent retouching the images to shooting the images, which really shocked me. So it is quite a process, and it’s from removing light switches and plugs to retouching imperfections on the walls. There’s a lot of shaping of light, and I mean, it’s basically fancy Instagram, like custom Instagram filters. It’s literally like selecting things, lighting them, changing the color. Often if there’s a window, you’ll take a frame for the darker exposure, and then I’ll cut that out and put it in. It’s quite a bit of work, but that’s the one maybe saving grace of my profession for a little longer, that you can’t always do that with your phone. I like doing it; I think it’s a fun process to shape an image past what you’ve made it.

Dani: What are some of the biggest challenges of shooting interiors in Covid-19?

Stephen: It has affected me in lots of ways, the biggest way I would say in 2019 I was probably sleeping in hotels four or five months of that year just on travel jobs. The number of travel jobs has obviously decreased. I’ve been lucky on the other side from a lot of my friends in the photo industry because the nature of my work is I don’t have a ton of equipment. I don’t have giant lighting setups. Some photographers have three assistants; I often don’t even bring an assistant. So, that’s been really lucky to keep numbers down. And the other unusual nature of the business is often not shooting people’s primary residences. Like, oh, it’s their third house, so they’re not even there, which is good from a practical standpoint from not interacting. But it’s weird, to wear a mask all day is weird, but I feel super lucky. A year ago, in April, I was thinking no one is ever going to hire an interior photographer again. I can shoot on my own for fun, but I have to become a UPS man or something to make money because this industry is over! But I was shocked after those early days that things really picked up because, thank goodness, a lot of people were still making and documenting spaces.