Tell us about the five projects you’ve chosen as your favourites. What stood out about these in particular?

Sam: A good job, like anything, is one that has a story or personal connection behind it. One that, when you leave, you’re not only happy with the photographs but happy in your work too.

Ao Marama cabin by Common Space was a fun job. I didn’t know much about the project before I got there. I’d been sent a link to look at but was too busy on other shoots to do any research before I showed up. Clare sent me some directions to the cabin… they looked a little daunting. She was going to meet me on the road to guide me up to the cabin but she couldn’t make it down so she gave me a call and said “just don’t turn right” or maybe left. I started up the road, which turned from a dirt road into no road very quickly, crossed a river and then continued over paddocks, I thought I was lost for sure but, after some time, the cabin popped up on the horizon. It was in the middle of nowhere, such a great little retreat. Poor Clare was pregnant and was suffering extremely bad morning sickness. She spent most of the time lying down, feeling terrible but, occasionally, she would surface and chat for a while until it all came on again. I bought a bottle of wine and some cheese and bread to use as a prop and then have for dinner. I think the smell may have been pushing Clare over the edge.

Going back down to Ruatoki to photograph the Billy Apple and Tame Iti collaboration at Te Ranimoaho, Te Rewarewa Pa was a great experience. My grandfather was from Taneatua and my cousins still had the farm when I was a kid. My brothers and I used to go down to the farm and learn to ride motorbikes and shoot guns during the school holidays. I hadn’t been back there for around 30 years, so when curator James McCarthy asked me to document the project, I jumped at the chance. Being welcomed on to the Ranimoaho marae by Tuhoe was amazing and being able to photograph inside the marae was a real privilege. We ate roast pork and kawakawa salad in corn bread and there was mist hovering around the marae all day.

I have been documenting Ben Daly’s projects since he did his first “slow architecture” project in Wellington, then to the Railway Cottage in Eskdale, then to the Shearing Shed. We would shoot the process, doing multiple visits, mostly to have dinner parties and drink wine and listen to records, but we would fit a few shots in here and there to capture his beautifully crafted work. We’ve been friends for a long time now and it’s been great to shoot all of his work over the years. The Shearing Shed on Dulia’s family farm may be my favourite of his places so far. I first saw it when we were down there for his wedding, years before he lived there. That was the first thing I photographed for him – he made the chapel for them to be married in. The shed is so unexpected, you would never tell from the road what was inside, every bit of it is completely considered, even the exposed grey plastic kitchen plumbing.

Photographing Francis and Martino was a great day. I was commissioned by a UK magazine called Disegno. The pay was terrible but I wanted to go down to Driving Creek and see what was happening there. I took my friend, photographer Conor Clark, as an assistant. We left Auckland around 4am, went to BP for some terrible coffee and hit the road. We came over the hill to Coromandel township just before sunrise – we had to get there early as the kiln was being unloaded first thing and I wanted to photograph that. It was great to see them work. They are constant makers, they just didn’t stop all day. Martino went from making hooks to making stools to making pasta. There was an energy and the work looked great. At 8pm, after they had fired up the kiln again, we decided to head back to Auckland. As we were packing up, Francis asked if we wouldn’t mind freighting all the work back to the gallery in Auckland for the show as they were catching the ferry. So we seat-belted-in all the pots and boxes and stools and hooks and drove quite carefully on the way home.

I was up at The Landing, shooting the art and Toanga collection for the owners and doing a few architectural shots to give it context. We were there for a couple of days shooting. While I was there, I couldn’t help but notice the tower at the end of the house. It was amazing, there was no art in there but I excused myself and spent about an hour in there photographing the light and shadow on the staircase that circles inside the structure. It’s just such a cool building. I had to get back to my actual job inside though. I saw a large leather-bound book on a lectern in the lounge – it was a visitor’s book and the first page was signed by Obama. He said he thought The Landing was a magical place… I wanted to sign it underneath him and say I do too.

How did you get started with photography? Did you always have an interest in architecture and the built environment or has that evolved?

Sam: I always had an interest in taking pictures and I dabbled in photography on and off for years. I did a short course in B/W photography at ASA when I was about 14 and learnt the basics and some printing skills and it went on from there. I would walk around the city a lot, shooting people and places on my way to and from work.

My older brother had the book The Unseen City by Gary Baigent and I was really inspired by that. It was gritty Auckland, black and white, and I was walking the same routes to my job downtown and photographing the same streets, 30 years later. I would develop and print in my garage at night.

I decided to study photography and, in my twenties, I interned at the Auckland Art Gallery with Jennifer French. She taught me a lot about art documentation and I went on to do that full-time, freelancing for galleries and artists around Auckland. Architecture came afterwards. It was thanks to my sister-in-law who was editing Houses magazine at the time. She gave me a lot of commissions and I probably screwed almost all of them up but it was a great way to learn and get my head around what the job is.

Tell us about your approach to capturing a space. How do you manage to convey the sense of being there for your viewers and readers?

Sam: You have to spend some time in the space. You have to be there when the light hits and changes. You can pretty much shoot a house in 30 minutes but you might spend three hours looking at it first. It may seem like you’re not doing any work but it’s the hardest bit. As soon as the light hits, you fly into a panic and rush around shooting, trying to get a set of images that communicate not only how the building works but also the mood of the spaces within it.

What inspires you outside of work?

Sam: Unless the country is in lockdown, I don’t have time outside of work and the small amount of time I do have, I spend with my kids. Staying inspired inside of work is the tricky bit. On a shoot day, you will go through quite a few emotional states. Firstly, you probably don’t want to go to work, then you get there and there is cloud so you feel very despondent, then you want to pack it in and reschedule, then suddenly the sun comes out and you’re all invigorated and on top of the world, thinking to yourself that this is going so great, then the light goes and you get worried that you haven’t got enough, then you just say, oh well, whatever, because you’re exhausted. Usually works out OK though.

Can you name a project that you would love to photograph?

Sam: James Turrell’s Roden Crater [in the Painted Desert region of Northern Arizona] would be an amazing thing to photograph – time, light, and space.

See more of Sam’s work at samhartnett.com. And, see more from the Viewfinder series here.