Simon Williams, as featured in Nikon’s ‘I Am New Zealand’ series.

LAURA WILLIAMSON

Most kids in Wanaka know Simon Williams as the man who comes to their schools and teaches them cool things like how to make a compost bucket using an old milk bottle, newspaper and some worms, but other people are starting to get to know him for something else: his photographs.

Simon’s work is currently featured in Nikon New Zealand’s ‘I Am New Zealand’ series, which so far has showcased eight photographers from around the country and is part of the larger ‘I am Nikon’ campaign, which runs in more than 60 countries (www.iamnewzealand.co.nz/simon-williams). His work is beautiful, and unusual, but it’s something else too. As the Nikon site explains, "Simon has used photography to navigate difficult moments in life; his internal feelings being captured to discover himself.”

Simon is the enviroschools facilitator for Wanaka Wastebusters, a job which sees him spending a great deal of time working our region’s children. His aim is "to create a generation of people that instinctively think and act sustainably,” but when he talks about sustainability, he means more than just trees, recycling and the colour green.

For him, sustainability is also about communities in general, and about ourselves, especially when it comes to our mental health - ideas he connects to in his photography as well. 

Originally from North Wales, Simon moved to Yorkshire, where his mother is from, when he was 18. He went to the University of Leeds where he did a degree in Astrophysics, which didn’t lead to a career in science, but did, in the long run, help with his photography.

"I haven’t studied photography, but I have studied light,” Simon said, pointing out he did two papers on waves and optics as part of his degree. "When I’m going to manipulate something, I can understand how the colours are interacting; for example, when the cloud comes over, that will change how the light comes through. 

The degree also exposed him early on to the internet. "The first image I ever saw on the internet was from the Hubble Space Telescope. We crowded around and waited three hours for it to download. It was probably 3 MB. It wasn’t very clear,” he laughed.

When Simon began to engage with the visual arts in the mid-nineties, he didn’t start with photography, but with videos, centred around skateboarding, a passion since his teens. Back then, he said, you shot something on tape, digitised it, edited it on computer, then put it on a CD and gave it to your mates. It was slow going. One 13-minute video he made - on a Pentium90 computer with 24 MB of RAM - took two days to render.

His first "proper job” was working for Planet Online, a business internet service provider in Leeds, on their electronic marketing team. It was when football clubs first started to have websites, and the ISP had Leeds United as one of their clients - Simon would interview players and put the videos, which ran at about eight frames per second ("everyone was still on dialup back then”), online. He then got a job with the UK’s biggest bookie, William Hill, as their frontline designer, helping to set up the world’s first fully-functional online bookmaker. It was early redundancy from that job that gave him the chance to travel. 

Simon decided to come to New Zealand about twelve years ago, a decision he started to regret after six months in the North Island where he found nothing but sheep and rain, reminding him of home. "Things started to change” as soon as he went through Arthur’s Pass, and in Wanaka he "stood at the lake and took a ride in the forest, and I knew that it was right.”

The photography began in earnest about seven years ago. "I think I started to understand the DSLR market was in place, it was achievable – all of a sudden the price was doable, plus having had so many year of experience using photoshop as a digital design tool, it wasn’t that big a leap to start editing photographs.”

In the beginning, his work was a lot about the mountain biking scene in Wanaka. But for Simon, photography, like sustainability, has become a much broader thing, a source of community, and a way of looking after himself, and others.

Through his website and Instagram, Simon posts regularly and honestly about depression, grief and mental illness, speaking to these both with words and images. He has used selfies, for example, as a way to navigate his state of mind:

"If I wasn’t doing great, or I even if I knew I was doing good, I would shoot a selfie. I understood that I intuitively would do what needed to done, and once I was finished I would say, ‘what do I look like?’ It would help me unpack what was happening.”

He believes strongly in openness and honesty as mental health solutions. "Depression is something that community solves,” he said, adding that people often write to him privately in response to his work, which, along with selfies, focusses on places, landscapes, bikes, and, delightfully, sneakers (he calls himself a "sneakerhead”).

Simon’s work has to date been primarily high-volume and shared digitally, but on Friday (June 23) he launched a new project, ‘Authentic As’, producing limited edition gallery-quality prints.

They are stunning, and profound: landscapes that are not just landscapes, sunsets that are more than pretty light. 

So does Simon have any tips for us? "When the sun goes down, look the other way. Some of the best sunsets I’ve done have been looking east,” he said.

PHOTO: Simon Williams