Professional Work

Hawke's Bay Arts Trail

This year I was honoured to be asked to be the photographer for the 2025 Hawke's Bay Arts Trail. I was set to visit a as many from a list of artists across Napier, Taradale and Te Awanga as I could from 10-4pm. Here's a handful of the images that came out of the day!

Artists in order shown: Jo Fisher, Suellen Gifford, John Staniford, Lesley Melody, Emily Armstrong, John Gisborne (Taradale Pottery Club), Lucie Anderson and Catherine Jurgens.

MTG Napier, "Earth and Fire".

I was fortunate to be approached by the Napier Museum Theatre Gallery to help them produce a cover photo for their up coming exhibition of their ceramic collection "Earth and Fire".

They wanted a black and white image that would match the photos of the ceramic practitioners they were exhibiting from their archives. I thought the best way to get a good black and white look, was to do it the proper way. I used Ilford Delta 100 film through my medium format camera to get the desired incredibly high detail stunning black and white finish.

This was the first time my personal nerd passion for film actually managed to cross into my more professional side of work.

Vanessa Arthur's cover photo:

Our gallery's graphic designer got me involved in capturing a set of images that would be used to front Vanessa Arthur's show that was coming up in a months time.

Vanessa had selected her new Wonder Goggles piece as well as a piece of card painted the colour she wanted to represent her show (a find choice might I add), it was just my job to try get it in image form. I deployed the hilarious Chinese clone flash/soft-box that had been given to me by another showing artist Vivienne Haldane to try light the work as best as I could.

The images came out great. The addition of decent light meant only basic colour and tone adjustment was required in post.

While the images where fine for posters and print, unfortunately the files my camera was outputting just weren't big enough to fully cover the billboards we post outside our building during an exhibition. The conclusion was the photos were great but the camera wasn't up to the challenge... a rare time I can actually blame equipment, and possibly the greatest complement I'll ever receive.

Heidi Brickell cover photo:

At a loss for any high resolution photos of Heidi's work on show, I was asked to try and get detail shots of her new work to be the exhibitions hero image on branding and marketing.

Maioha Kara Video:

Initially the exhibitions team was interested in me shooting some detailed glamour shots of Maioha Kara's work. They wanted me to try capture that special sparkle you get from seeing her work in person that you just can't see in exhibition photos. I tried taking close shallow depth of field photos which tend to be the exact opposite of a broad exhibition shoot. They were good, but I felt I could still get more out the work. I hatched a plan to make a video of the work.

Using my high tech set up (and after explaining to a member of the public this was my job and they don't need to call the police) I put together a simple video that explored the painstaking detail of Maioha's work. After involving the marketing team this and another video focused primarily on her new central work were used on our social media.

Kamaka Kilns and "Burning Grounds"

I was tasked photographic envoy to visit the first refiring of one of Bruce and Estelle Martin's anagama wood kilns. The kiln was being fired as a part of the up coming "Burning Grounds" exhibition booked for the Hastings Art Gallery. The photos were to be filed and await possible use the following year during the exhibition for advertising if needed. Only a handful were ever used, but they remain some of my favourite photos to revisit.

I visited a handful of times, for the lighting, a couple times during the firing, and for its unloading. Most excitingly I stayed over a nightshift while the aurora borealis was passing overhead. I pulled the absolute most I could out of my poor old Sony, only calling it quits after I'd killed both its notoriously short lived batteries. Absolutely a once in a life time experience that was totally worth freezing myself stiff until 2 o'clock in the morning to capture.

Arts Inc Heretaunga: Richard Brimmer - 40 vintages:

I was thrilled if not quite mortified to be asked to shoot four opening events at the Hastings Community Arts Centre/Arts Inc Gallery for the exhibition of local photographer Richard Brimmer. Richard is a photographic legend of Hawke's Bay, so I was rather nervous to be shooting his openings- but I could hardly say no!

There were four opening events planned: A more traditional exhibition opening, two small concerts and a wine tasting in collaboration with local vineyards he'd been photographing over the years.

It was a fantastic experience! It was great to get to meet Richard, very interesting shooting in the complete dark for those concerts (much to the videographers annoyance). The photos came out great though. Some of which Arts Inc still use for advertising to this day as shown in this years Arts Guide!

(For some reason image carousels hate different orientation of photos so I've split up portrait and landscapes)

Jasmine Togo-Brisby Lightboxes:

Just after Jasmine Togo-Brisby's exhibition opening in 2024, I was asked if I'd be able to supply higher resolution photos to be used for use on the lightboxes that show outside our gallery. Naturally I said yes!

Of course I could have probably gotten high enough resolution photos straight out of camera, but I was asked especially for high resolution... so of course I went completely over the top. I decided to use something I knew of as the "Brenizer method", where you take a number of photos of slightly different angles of a scene with the camera lock off on a tripod and use software to stitch them all together in post to make one truly massive photo.

In the end I combined around 40 photos to create a single 150 mega pixel image. The result means you can get right up to this image printed at over a metre across and still see huge amounts of detail in the art work show. I doubt anybody ever got close enough to the boards to notice, and even if they did they wouldn't have known. It was completely over the top, and yet I'd still do it again.

Hastings Art Gallery: Openings, Floor talks and anything else in between...

I also lend a hand with all sorts of photographic things that aren't quite as glamourous as having photos in publications. The bulk of the work is photographing work for our shop, documenting openings and floor talks, kids events, artists studio's and all sorts of things besides, including Venessa Arthurs Dog...

Hastings Blossom Parade:

On the down low I was asked if I could get photos for Arts Inc, who run the Hastings Blossom Parade. I wasn't able to entirely escape from my actual work for the day, but this is what I was able to get standing outside work! I have no idea whether they'll find use for these photos, but I'll land some here for entertainment.

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