Not One, But Many

The Giro d'Italia starts this weekend. In 2011, I went to shoot my first Grand Tour, the Giro, with no idea what I was doing. I wasn't even sure I'd survive 21 stages of photographing the race, but I did. Back then, I had no inclination that I would start MR VEERAL. I didn't even know if I could film or make films.

Though I do know I was besotted with the films Rapha was making. That's where the inspiration for film came from.

When I first started out in architectural photography, the advice was unambiguous: use your own name. Put yourself front and centre. Let people know they're hiring you, not hiding behind some obscure moniker. I never fully agreed with it, but I followed it anyway. For years, veeral.com.au was the address. It felt practical, if not entirely truthful.

Film changed how I saw the work, but it didn't replace it.

Photography remains at the centre of what I do. It's the foundation, the discipline, the craft I return to on every project. But adding film opened a creative door I hadn't known was there. Not just technically, but philosophically. A photograph can be singular, complete in a single frame. A film, by its nature, is collaborative. It requires other voices, other hands, other sensibilities to bring an idea from seedling to fruition.

I think about the work Frameset shares through their interviews, the ambition in their storytelling. It's inspiring, but it's also instructive. What they're doing doesn't happen alone. It's the sum of individual experiences converging on a shared vision. A director, a producer, a colourist, a sound designer, a composer. Each contribution is discrete, but the whole is something greater.

That realisation reshaped how I think about my own practice across both photography and film. The projects that have mattered most recently, The International, Harry the Hirer, and Shawood, weren't solo endeavours. They were built in collaboration. With production team members who understood the vision. With colourists who shaped the emotional register. With sound designers who knew that silence could carry as much weight as score. With composers who found the rhythm beneath the images. The work improved not because I got better in isolation, but because I invited others in.

So, the domain changed. Not as a rebrand, but as a signal. mrveeral.com isn't an erasure of identity. It's an acknowledgment that, in this context, identity is plural. Not one, but many. Not a photographer working alone, but a photographer and filmmaker building with others.

The work ahead demands it. The ambition I have for what comes next is larger projects, richer narratives, work that reaches beyond Australia, and it can't be shouldered solo. It requires a team. And if I'm honest, it always did. I just needed the work itself to teach me that.