JONATHAN CHERRY: What did you have for breakfast this morning?

BOB O’CONNOR: Yogurt and tea. It’s the same thing I’ve had every day for breakfast for the past 17 or 18 years. I don’t see my routine changing any time soon.

JC: What was the last photography book you picked up?

BO: Olaf Otto Becker: Above Zero. Greenland looks beautiful. I hope I get to visit before all its ice melts.

JC: What is your current project all about?

BO: I’m not working on any specific projects right now, just my ongoing explorations into the built environment and how we interact with it.

JC: What has 2011 got in store for you?

BO: Nothing is scheduled yet, but hopefully I will get to take a trip somewhere new to make some work. I need to see something that looks different than the east coast of the USA (which I haven’t left in a long time). This winter has been especially brutal. Any place warm and sunny would do right now. I’m also starting to shoot a bit of still life (instead of the large scale spaces I normally photograph) but that’s still in the early stages of the game.

JC: What initially drew you to photography?

BO: I went to school for architecture, but was terrible at the physics side of it. it’s the only class I’ve ever failed. I was still interested in the built environment though so I turned to photographing it.

JC: What do you think the future of photography looks like?

BO: It’s all changing so fast. who knows what the future will look like? There was a time in the recent past when polaroid made instant slide film (how crazy is that?!) now they don’t exist at all. I hope film (and the labs necessary to process it) can stick around a while longer. I’d like to see it make a come back in the commercial world, but I doubt it’ll happen. It’s becoming more and more a niche type of thing. I haven’t shot a job on film in over a year. I miss the process a lot. I don’t ever see myself feeling sentimental about digital cameras or spending time in front of a computer, but I love my view camera and peeling apart a polaroid will always be exciting.

JC: Any emerging artists inspiring you lately?

BO: nobody specific, but there’s always great work on the humble arts site.

JC: Any words of wisdom to recent photography graduates?

BO: Find a mentor out in the real world doing what you have aspirations to do. There’s a huge disconnect between what you learned in school and what you need to know to survive in the real world. the technical side of photography is easy. It’s the making a living at it part that is hard.