New Backyard, New Visitors Last year I posted about a pretty cool visitor to my backyard (check it out here) and when I had to move from Whenuapai I was a little bit disappointed that living closer to the city I might not get as many opportunities to see New Zealand bird life quite as close up.  My first day in the new house brought with it some beautiful Kingfishers flying about outside the kitchen window. I was busy unpacking however, so just took it as a good sign of things to come.  So the bad news first. Having an (incredibly small) portion of bush area behind your house isn't To View More >>

I've shot the McKay Family for many years now, starting with Jen & John's wedding way back in... let's just say way back. Previously we've used the park and beach as a backdrop, this time we set up in their home. This gave the kids the chance to choose their own props, which worked really well. We got some great shots!  Next week I'll be putting out a Friends of Jen (& John!) portrait special so keep an eye on the Facebook page. It'll be an in-home special like this shoot, so it'll include me coming to your place plus some digital images. Will be interesting to see what kids choose To View More >>

Winter Party 2015 - A Night in Bollywood With colour so bright and vibrant it literally sent my camera's white balance mental, the Ruapehu Ski Club's annual Winter Party brought the bright lights of India's Bollywood to the moutain. Inspired by marigolds, incense, elephants and a vodka laced mango lassi, the building was transformed into the Lodge Mahal for the evening. Despite the weather conditions, and a closed mountain, we were still able to get the decorations up the mountain and ensure the party continued for the 85 members of the club who attended.  The amazing chefs, Kirsty, Mike, To View More >>

I went along to both Huntly & Western Springs Speedway tracks and photographed a different type of motorsport. These ones go round and round, not just in straight lines! So weird, these speedway racer types.  So a very different experience to drag racing. There's certainly a lot more dirt flying around and a lot more opportunities to take photos for each race. Seven seconds isn't exactly a lot of time to get the shot right. There's also a lot less fuel fumes to blind you on the start line, but despite all that I'm still on the drag racing side of the fence so they'll be no allegiance To View More >>

Living in Auckland often earns you the derision of the rest of the country, but it's home and I love it. I don't doubt the beauty of the rest of the country, NZ is beautiful, but Auckland has it's little gems too. One of those places for me has always been Bomb Point. Up until recently Bomb Point has been open to the public. Thanks to urban sprawl and the current construction going on over there, it's been closed off, so I was pretty lucky one of my previous flatmates showed it to me before that happened. It's 11 hectares of land, at what used to be a munitions dump for the Royal New Zealand To View More >>

It's not often I'm out of a coverage zone for any length of time and never usually in a place that I would describe as breath taking. Pawarenga, in the very far north of the North Island of New Zealand, definitely fit that description.  My cousin and I made the journey, getting up very early in the morning to this beautiful sunrise. A stunning start to a long drive.  Many hours, and a very long and windy drive, later we made it to the bay and marae at Pawarenga where my cousin's family are from. The area is simply amazing. The historic St Gabriel's Church (featured in the David To View More >>

In the past few years I have decided to expore a bit of New Zealand and one long Easter Weekend I took off to the Bay of Islands with some friends. The very first day, I was standing with my back to the window chatting to Mickey as he managed to spit out the words, "camera, sunset, now". Spinning around, this is the view that greeted me. I raced down to the beach and managed to catch this single shot before the light disappeared completely for the day.  The next day my friends decided that one of the things we should do while on holiday in the Bay of Islands was to go sailing, I was less than To View More >>