5. How did the travel begin?
That was a commission funded by Panasonic and assisted by Unesco and the guy knew my dad, knew that I had no house or partner so would just be able to travel. That was about nine years ago. I started in Ireland but the most exciting place in the early days was Russia. I really connected with the people and it felt like I could start afresh as a person. I wasn't the naughty kid from school. I'd been a socially nervous guy but my inhibitions were gone.
6. Do you come up with your own ideas for images now?
Yeah. The Unesco work finished in 2012 so now I come up with ideas and put them into packages which the agencies sell. I spent about six weeks in the coldest place on Earth, a village in Eastern Siberia called Oymyakon where it was about minus 50 degrees. There was a reindeer herder who sleeps outside at night sometimes if the reindeer are spooked by wolves. He just builds a big fire and tucks himself into a little pocket in the snow.
7. Where, in your opinion, are the happiest people on Earth?
That would be the Khasi who live in northeastern India. I spent a lot of time with them. They are devoutly religious, Christian. They have a great communion with the jungle, live in an extremely clean and healthy area. It's a matrilinear culture where the women pass property down to the next generation. Great food.
8. And the most at risk?
That would be anyone in the sphere of influence of Russia. Armenia. Ukraine. I lived in St Petersburg off and on for a couple of years, that's where my girlfriend is, but there is an attitude being engineered through the state-run media in Russia and people have this real hatred of America. You come to Mairangi Bay or somewhere and everyone is all 'good morning, hello' walking along the beach and no one seems to realise how tense the world is right now. It's like something that just happens on TV. I love that.
9. Do you have to tell people you're not American all the time?
Absolutely. During the Iraq war it was pretty full on. I was staying in a village in Kazakhstan and they knew I was coming so had slaughtered a lamb and there were tables of food and these two Muslim elders were saying 'yadda yadda George Bush' and pointing at me. I had a fork and a knife and I held them up trying to explain "New Zealand fork, America knife, different".
10. Does it get lonely, being on the road so much?
It can do, if you're working alone all day then go back to some three star hotel where it's all an empty long corridor. I drank a bit too much for a while there. Even when people are paying my expenses I stay in hostels now where there are people around, people talking. I've made amazing friends all over the world.
11. What have you learned about people from your years of travel?
I think it's that we need a goal and an adversary. That adversary might be poverty but when you're in a country where there is a national goal, like India, where life is hard but everyone is looking to the future and striving together to overcome that adversary, there's an energy and it's exciting to be in that. You go to the manicured suburbs of Holland and there are beautiful cul de sacs and it's very safe but there's that question hanging above everything, 'what next?'. In England, most of the young kids in London just want to be the toughest little thug on the block. In Iran the adversary is changing the government. In Russia, it's the West, though you don't get that feeling of a collective goal or energy in Russia.
12. What brings you most joy?
Getting on a plane after leaving a new country with a trail of goodwill behind you, some new friends, some solid work and thinking that was a month well spent, a job well done.
