Todd 'The Selby' Selby

In the years since he started The Selby, Todd has travelled the world on almost 600 photoshoots, with the resulting images featuring in the four books the project has spawned. His latest – The Selby Comes Home – focuses on the homes of families, and all the chaos and colour children bring into them. For a guy who once considered shooting with kids his "nightmare", it's a reflection of where he's now at in his own career, and his own life.

"When I first started taking pictures, I didn't know anything, I wasn't very good. There's very technical aspects to it, you know, setting a focus and exposure and composition and lighting and all these things. And the kids – kids are moving and unpredictable. The same way shooting cats or dogs is – it's not for beginners. So I had to get better. I had to get better at my craft. I had to put in my 10 years and 20,000 hours or whatever the thing is to be an expert."

Since then, Todd's not only put the time in – he's had two of his own children, a guaranteed way to grow accustomed to the whirlwind of activity little bodies bring to a space. It's helped make capturing those scenes fun for him.

"So now I can. I like that. I like the challenge of it – I like that they're moving and they're close and then they're far and then they're jumping and then they're on the ground. And you're composing photos through it. I like that now, but in the beginning – not for me."

Kids are one thing, but there's a donkey inside a house in one of the new book's shoots. Was that any easier?

"The people who have Strawberry [the donkey] – he kind of wanders around and does come into their art area, and wanders in and out. But he's definitely not usually allowed in the kitchen. So there was a bit of, how would you say – it's not 'pure documentary' that I do, if that exists. But we enticed Strawberry into the kitchen, where he's not usually allowed. I found it humorous."

Was Strawberry excited about that?

"I think Strawberry was a little nervous as to what we were up to. But he was very excited about the treats we were offering."

Bribing donkeys to get the shot and capturing a kid mid-skip can only come from a combination of experience and natural instinct. Especially as nothing is planned at his shoots – the only direction Todd gives subjects ahead of time is to have three different outfits prepared. He'll have seen recce shots of the location in advance, but it's only once he's there that he starts to feel out where the shoot takes him.

"I don't plan anything. Because if I walked in with a preconceived notion of what I wanted to do, then every shoot would look the same to a certain extent. I want it to be as different as it can be basically."

“Some people put a lot of time and effort in – I’ve found people’s to-do lists of all the things that they're doing to prepare. Or some people try to make, like little vignettes that they think are gonna lure me in. But most people barely do anything, maybe they clean up a little bit. And some people do nothing, which I really prefer.”

And while what he captures isn't, as he says, pure documentary, he doesn't move anything around to make for a better scene. Unless it's to save people from themselves.

"Of all the shoots, maybe like one time I hid some – somebody had some illicit drugs clearly out, and it seemed like they did it on purpose to be kind of like a 'cool move'. And I hid that. I was like... you might think that's a good idea right now. But other than that, no."

So a couch in an awkward position, or an ugly phone charger that another photographer might want to tuck out of view, stay put.

"I like all that stuff. I think it's funny, because it also dates the photos instantly to a certain thing. And you know, if they had that Sidekick¹, or they had the phone with a keyboard or your Nokia brick with the snake on it. As soon as I take a picture of it, it's already outdated, you know?"

His subjects, though, do sometimes preempt him and make their own adjustments.

"Some people put a lot of time and effort in – I've found people's to-do lists of all the things that they're doing to prepare. Or some people try to make, like little vignettes that they think are gonna lure me in. But most people barely do anything, maybe they clean up a little bit. And some people do nothing, which I really prefer."

“We’ve done somewhere between 500 and 600 shoots in people’s homes, and I think one of them was someone who submitted. And you know, self submission is not a great way to find subjects. It’s more of a journey that I go through ... I've tried to do a lot of work finding interesting people.

Given the extraordinary success Todd's had doing this work, it might seem that being a photographer was something he was always destined to do – but his journey here has not been straightforward. It wasn't something he always knew he wanted to do as a child.

"No – I think I've always just been really flexible, and interested in a lot of different things and I just follow my interests. So no, I was never very good at drawing, and I was into you know, arty stuff, but I was into ceramics more than anything else. So I kind of just happened upon it, I guess."

There must have been a first time holding a camera, a first photo – but he can't remember exactly what it was.

"Well, my family travelled a lot. And my dad was a hobbyist photographer. So we would take travel photos, and he was into National Geographic, so I knew about photography in that regard, so it probably was taking a picture on a family trip."

Okay, so odds are Todd first clicked the shutter on a holiday scene – the kind of subject matter that presents itself to you. From there, he's become renowned for work which is kind of the opposite. The homes featured by The Selby are hard to find. The types of people who live in them aren't really looking for exposure. Part of the project's appeal is the treasure hunt that's evidently happened behind the scenes to find these gems.

"We've done somewhere between 500 and 600 shoots in people's homes, and I think one of them was someone who submitted. And you know, self submission is not a great way to find subjects. It's more of a journey that I go through ... I've tried to do a lot of work finding interesting people. And a lot of it is word of mouth just from my circle of friends. And they tell me about people. And those people tell me about people. And pretty soon it's a pretty wide network."

Todd's network would undoubtedly reach into some fascinating places. Before he found his niche documenting personal worlds, he cycled through an eclectic list of endeavours – work as varied as "Japanese clothing designer", "Costa Rican cartographer", "consultant on political corruption to a Mexican Senator", "exotic flower wholesaler" and "translator and Tijuana tour guide to the International Brotherhood of Machinists". So where would that list have ended up if The Selby hadn't taken off and become this big thing for him – what sort of work does he think he'd be doing instead?

"Well, I have thought about that recently. And I think I would be an Australian customs officer. I'm very into like, catching people red handed and kind of ferreting them out – I have lots of theories about people and I consider myself – I like to be a bit of a detective. So people like hiding, or budgie smuggling or sneaking in mysterious powders across the borders. I would like that."

This is... not what you expect one of the coolest creatives in LA to say. But he's been watching Border Patrol – the Australian and Canadian versions of a reality TV show documenting the work of customs officers. And he's hooked.

"Yeah. Oh yeah. Big fan. I get excited when I go through customs. I try to look for the guys off the show. They're kind of like my Kardashians. And the Australian ones – they're so nice. They're always acting really tough, like they're going to do something – but then it's almost an advertisement for smuggling because they're always like 'Oh, they were trying to take in 50 snake eggs and with a stern warning we let them go'."

Such a sharp career and continental change at this point, though, is unlikely. Especially as even after so many years of doing The Selby, he still finds it a creatively rewarding pursuit.

"I mean, I started it because I'm a curious person, and I love going to people's houses and seeing how they live. I still feel love to do that. I imagine I always will be into that."

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¹ The Sidekick FKA The HipTop: a phone-cum-mini computer with a switchblade-like screen that was conceived and launched by some ex–Apple employees in the early 2000s and, for a time, was the 'it' device.

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The Selby Comes Home by Todd Selby is published by Abrams Books.

To find out more visit theselby.com‍