from datetime import datetime


def vips_datetime(date_time: datetime) -> str:
    """
    This utility takes a Python datetime object and
    converts it to a datetime string for VIPS.
    VIPS uses a non-standard datetime format.
    Like this: 2019-01-02 17:30:00 -08:00
    """
    dt_string = date_time.strftime("%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S %z")
    return dt_string[0:23] + ':' + dt_string[23:25]