Simon Woolf is one of the most energetic and engaging people I know. When I interviewed him he was in Auckland as official photographer at our previous Prime Minister Helen Clark's investiture to the Order of New Zealand. He got a hug from Helen because they know each other that well and he's that nice a guy. A couple of nights earlier I'd spotted him on TV in the media scrum at Willie Apiata's Victoria Cross ceremony. Again he was the official photographer. And to complete the picture of a guy who's everywhere, one of his landscape images, of an unusual sunrise, had featured the day before in his local newspaper. Trust Simon to be up with the birds. He's a stalwart of the Photographic Society of New Zealand, offers workshops and seminars (including photographic walking tours around town), gives generously to the community and in his spare time heads up Photography By Woolf, one of New Zealand's longest-standing and most successful photographic studios. And dammit, he blogs. Simon is an extraordinary networker. I believe that's a major factor in the studio's ongoing success, and it's what I focussed on in our interview. There is so much you can learn from this man. Please click here to listen (30 mins). Cheers, Ian PS Simon and I date back to 1986-7 when I walked into Photography By Woolf for the first time, to be confronted by portraits of Queen Elizabeth and Pope John Paul II. That doesn't happen often! Those shots were taken by his Dad, Ronald, who'd run the studio with his wife Inge since 1960. I remember liking Simon for lobbying Ronald to buy Queensberry albums ...