This section provides some examples of the range of my photography
Te Rourou
- Twenty years of change
- Twenty years of change
Over the years Te Rourou (the One NZ Foundation) has partnered with hundreds of extraordinary kiwis around Aotearoa who are working hard to improve the lives of rangatahi. This project presented the stories of just 20 of them. Each is making a difference in their own way, whether providing safe spaces, fighting for equal opportunity, encouraging new skills or inspiring future leaders. I had the pleasure of photographing four of these wonderful people: David Graham, Maddy de Young, Joel Mudford and Sarah Longbottom.
https://terourou-one-aotearoa-foundation.webflow.io/#stories
Vaxathon
I had the privilege to photograph the October 2021 Vaxathon to encourage people to get vaccinated to flatten the curve of covid-19 infections.
Chasewild wedding workshop
I had a lot of fun at an NZIPP workshop run by James Broadbent of Chasewild, one of New Zealand's leading wedding photographers (https://www.chasewild.com/). This included a shoot of a "bridal couple" (two professional models). The wind and the rain (visible in some of the photos) were a challenge but accentuated the urban environment.
Dress by Sophie Voon (https://www.sophievoon.com/)
Kapiti Coast Arts Trail 2022
Here are some of the photos exhibited at the 2022 Kapiti Coast Arts Trail.
All of the photos are about A2 in size printed on Ilford Smooth Pearl or Smooth Cotton rag paper printed on my Epson 906 printer. I cut backing boards from 12mm MDF, router the edges, seal and paint with white primer undercoat and paint the edges matt black. I attach a film of Scotch special PMA adhesive to the back of the prints, cut them precisely to size, affix them to the boards, and finish with 2 coats of Hahnemuhle protective spray. Final step is to attach a stainless hanging wire to brass triangles.
The mounting is quite stressful as it needs to be accurate to 1mm and not trap any dust. But totally worth it! No reflective glass between the photo and the viewer!
South Island and Wellington Harbour from Kime Hut in the Tararuas
Ti kouka bracing against a nor-wester
Paekakariki at sunset
Milky Way of Wairarapa Moana
Fingers of God.
Marlborough Sounds from Kapiti #1
Waikanae estuary
Trees in the mist, Lake Alabaster
Milky Way over Paraparaumu
Paekakariki station
Marlborough Sounds from Kapiti #2
Steam at Paekakariki
Milky Way over Kapiti
Forest grotto, Tararuas
Kohekohe flowers
Dogs of Paekakariki
Something I've noticed when walking my dog on the beach during lockdown is that lots of others are also doing this: walking, or running, or cycling with their dog safely on the beach. So I took my camera, put on my mask, stayed at least 4m from people (I used a long lens) and very quickly took some photos. Here is a selection from the last week of level 4 lockdown 2021.
Stars and Surf
An exhibition at the Mulled Wine Concert in Paekakariki, 24 July 2021
Paekakariki is blessed with clear, clean skies and seas, providing spectacular seascapes and nightscapes.
Prints from these images can be ordered by contacting me at bob@momentsoflight.nz
Kapiti sunset from Paekakariki Hill Road
Kapiti westerlies
Kapiti dreaming
Marlborough Sounds sunset
Paekakariki surf 1
Paekakariki surf 2
Paekakariki sunset
Escarpment misty mood
Lunar eclipse 26 May 2021
Eclipsed moon and Milky Way 26 May 2021
Milky Way over Kapiti
Conjunction of Mars, Venus and the crescent Moon 12 July 2021
Milky Way over Mt Ruapehu
A wet day at Lake Ferry
A group of friends from the NZ Institute of Professional Photography had planned a weekend at Lake Ferry in southern Wairarapa with a focus on astrophotography. The rain and the clouds obscured the stars but provided a wonderful moody atmosphere.
The Bubbles of Paekakariki
In response to the covid-19 pandemic, New Zealand entered Level 4 lockdown on 26 March 2020. The primary objective was to isolate people in bubbles to stop the spread of the virus. During the last week of lockdown, I photographed 55 bubbles in my home town of Paekakariki - about one in twelve households. All photos were taken spontaneously from the property boundary using a telephoto lens to keep social distance.
A selection is shown below. A 60 page A4 book with high quality photos is available for $30.
Voices for the Future
During the 2016 Auckland Arts Festival, I worked with Joe Michael (installation), Rhian Sheehan (music) and others to project an iceberg onto the Auckland War Memorial Museum. The success of this installation led to the opportunity to project a living and dying iceberg on the UN buildings in New York, combined with the voices of young people around the globe (including Greta Thunberg) about their concerns about climate change. The installation occurred just in advance of the UN Climate Action Summit in September 2019. Here are some photos from this installation.
Helen Clark and the NZ Representative to the UN (with Joe on the right) were instrumental in the success of the installation.
Our canvas: the UN Secretariat and General Assembly buildings in New York
A huge amount of video editing and rendering was required.
Images were projected by 21 huge projectors onto both UN buildings
The projectors had to be aligned carefully.
We worked with seven young people from around the globe, including Greta Thunberg, speaking in the 7 languages of the UN. Here is Greta speaking to a huge climate rally in New York.
Klaus Thyman coordinated the voices from the young people, here with El Medhi Zairi (French - Morocco) and Ahmed Badr (Arabic - USA)
Their words were projected as their voices called out.
This scene showed the iceberg collapsing down the side of the 250m tall building.
The iceberg projected on the UN buildings.
Truly spectacular!
The installation finished with Greta's call to action.
Paekakariki Positive Pictures
In response to the Covid-19 pandemic, most of New Zealand locked-down on 26 March 2020, significantly restricting our movement outside our isolation "bubbles". My commercial photographic work ground to a halt. In response to ongoing media reports about actual and projected impacts of the virus, I decided to take a positive photo from within my community each day during lockdown Level 4. Here is a selection.
#1: Positive pooches
#2: Guard bee defending her hive
#3: Laughter is the best medicine: my daughter with a friend's son on Paekakariki beach last night
#5: Crescent moon over Kapiti
#6: Cheerful chooks: today is wet, cold and windy - today needs a cheery photo!
#8: The centre of my universe: Normally a bustling hubbub of coffee drinkers, hikers recovering after walking the escarpment track, and locals chatting after buying icecream from the dairy. 29 March 2020: clouds dissipating after the southerly storm - deserted as people heed the call to stay at home.
#7: A warm bubble: my father, a retired vet joined our "bubble" for lockdown.
#11: First flight: my camera records a sequence of up-down wing beats as a gull flies past.
#9: Smothered by fog A thick, damp fog rolled in from the sea yesterday, obscuring the sun and the outside world and imparting a wonderful stillness.
#12: Reflections and refractions
#13: Moonrise over Paekakariki surf club
#14: A bird with an identity problem: californian quail.
#15: Rampant rhapsody in blue: one of the worst weeds in our garden is agapanthus.
#17: There be dragons: northern grass skink into our garden.
#18: Symphony in orange: an hour after sunset.
#19: Industrious honeybee
#20: A royal visit: a couple of royal spoonbills visited our beach.
#21: The essence of Paekakariki
#22: Castaways Heavy surf driven by the cold sou'wester washed much seaweed and this colony of gooseneck barnacles onto the beach.
#23: Diversity in numbers I love the diversity of our village, something that is illustrated by the variety of our letterboxes.
#24: What do they do in shadows? Eels in the Wainui Stream.
#25: Working together in their own bubble: there are four different types of organisms, called polyps, each working together.
#26: Paekakariki bubble I've started a small project to photograph some Paekakariki bubbles (adhering strictly to isolation rules). The bubbles choose how they wish to be portrayed. Here is the first.
#27: Te Ara o Whareroa: my father (87) cycled this path each day during lockdown.
#28: Resilient ti kouka - In the 1990s, about a quarter of our ti kouka died but the trees developed a resistance to the phytoplasma bacterium.
#29: Te Ikaroa (Milky Way) above Paekakariki
