Sam McAdam-Cooper is a Sydney based creative specialising in photographic stills and short form motion projects. Her work has been published internationally and widely within Australia in editorial and advertising contexts. She works with a variety of commercial and arts based clients to make impactful imagery.
Has working as a professional photographer made you see the everyday world in a particular way? 
I notice everything. It’s exhausting. I notice great lighting in everyday moments, and am cursed with an eye that’s always looking at a scene as if I had to shoot it. When I meet people I’m always wondering how I’d photograph them. 
Is your own life like your photos? 
Maybe in the sheer variety of situations and subject matter, but the level of finish in my photos is sorely missing from my everyday life. 
Has anything changed since you started out as a photographer? 
I started shooting on medium format film and spent a lot of waiting for polaroids to process to check lighting and composition, buying painfully expensive equipment, taking trips to the lab and back. It was a time where you really had to have a level of technical competence to survive. Also quite the boy’s club. The information superhighway was just a goat track back then, so there weren’t any of the Youtube tutorials to help you research equipment or techniques. I came in at the tail end of all that and was lucky to carve out a niche shooting artists and their works while I picked up other clients. There’s been an incredible democratisation of the craft with digital technologies, and that has brought with it many wonderful advantages, but also so many more people joining the industry. I don’t want to be one of those people that moan about the past being great, as things always change and I’m thankful for many of those changes. We adapt or stagnate!  
Now that the world is awash with the images produced by everyone carrying a phone camera, what qualities set artists like you apart? 
This indeed is the question! Everything that has informed me as a human informs the images I make. All of my interests and everything I’ve found interesting sit in the back of my head and pop out to spark an idea, from early cinema to contemporary architecture, cultural studies to political discourse; it’s all in the melting pot. I think for a lot of creative people, we are creating conversations with visuals or concepts that we’ve encountered through our life, either expanding on those works or pushing up against them. We’re all riffing off sounds, ideas and images. So I think that the very large bag of things I find interesting that I dip my hand into makes my work different. 
Your images are impeccable, even the deliberately ‘messy’ ones. How do you achieve that? 
I think it’s just an attention to detail that you’re picking up on! 
What is your idea of ‘beauty’? 
Beauty is anything that elevates me from the mundane. Sure, I need to do housework and prepare my BAS, but it’s the beautiful soundtrack I’m listening to or the colour of autumn foliage against the sky that makes it more bearable. Beauty is the counterbalance to the crappy parts of being human. Real life is messy and exhausting, tragic and unfair and I’d say that my images are like excursions into imagined realities. 
Many of your images represent aspirational lifestyle. What do you think people desire? 
Desire is such a loaded term! Rather than luxury items that occasionally appear in my work, I think the real objects of desire are ordered spaces with everything being just right, even if it’s just for a fleeting moment. Real life is messy and exhausting, tragic and unfair and I’d say that my images are like excursions into imagined realities. We all desire to live a safe and comfortable life however grandiose or modest those ambitions are, and sometimes a moment of peace and quiet is the ultimate luxury (I am raising children and I fantasise about peace and quiet all the time!). I’m not a documentary photographer, I make images for viewers to escape into 
You make great use of colour, composition, lighting and mood in your images. How do you decide what is needed for a particular commission? 
I try to bring the lighting and stylistic treatment that is suitable for each project, and it’s a conversation that’s had with stakeholders beforehand. If I’m shooting a built project I’m trying to convey what it feels like to be in that space or site, so the decisions I’m making are about creating mood and a sensory reaction. Knowing where the images will appear can affect artistic decisions. If it’s being printed on uncoated paper stock, treatment of shadows will be different than if it’s for social media and seen backlit on a screen. Needing to crop for a web banner will affect composition, and so on. We’ll look at what the client is wanting to achieve, and decide on an approach. That’s where the collaboration lies; having a defined problem and working out the best solution for it. A lot of professional shooting is looking for potential problems and resolving them in advance.  
How do you secure such prestigious major clients as Qantas, David Jones and the NSW government? 
What do they value in your work and work ethic?
I just chip away at promoting my work and honestly that is the hardest part of my working life, as extolling my own skills isn’t something that comes naturally to me. Being reliable and operating from an honest place generally stands one in good stead.
What have been your best and worst moments in your job? 
The best parts have been the human interactions and photographing incredible people like Tim Storrier, Margaret Olley and Phillipe Starck but also meeting so many real people and hearing their stories. Journos and photographers are often air dropped into meeting a stranger and they’ll open up with their personal journey. That’s been such a privilege. The worst parts have been equipment malfunctions and not being as prepared as I would like to have been.
Knowing what you do now, what advice would you give to someone wanting to do what you do? 
Staying curious about the world, other fields of practice and staying engaged with your contemporaries will help you stay motivated and relevant. 
Article by Tamara Winikoff
Tamara Winikoff is an independent consultant with extensive experience in arts advocacy, policy, and cultural leadership. She was a a founding member of the Inner West Creative Network and served as Executive Director of the National Association for the Visual Arts (NAVA) for 22 years, championing artists’ rights and sector development. As Co-convenor of ArtsPeak, she coordinated national arts policy initiatives. Previously, she managed the Community, Environment, Art and Design (CEAD) program at the Australia Council for the Arts and lectured in Cultural Environment and Heritage at Macquarie University. Based in Sydney, she continues to influence the cultural landscape through strategic consultancy.