Last weekend I had the pleasure of spending two hours with a really special dog. Norton is a 15-year-old black lab and longtime friend to owner Emma, who has had him since he was four. Sadly due to Norton’s advanced age he is suffering from a number of chronic health problems that severely affect his mobility and his breathing. A brave and loving decision was made to give Norton a humane exit from this world, before he has to undergo any unnecessary suffering.

Knowing this was on the cards fairly imminently, Emma contacted me about having some portraits done of Norton. It’s a privilege to be able to create keepsake portraits for animal owners and something that really touches my heart as a photographer and animal lover.

Because of Norton’s limited mobility, we did the photo session at his home, capturing pictures of him in his familiar surroundings.

Norton was asleep when I arrived. I liked that the cards were still on display from from his recent 15th birthday (that’s 105 in conventional dog years or a sprightly 73 in age-adjusted dog years)

Norton’s back legs don’t work so well any more. I love this photo him sitting (mostly) on his bed.

Norton and his owner Emma.

The hallway is another one of Norton’s preferred snoozing spots.

Norton was such a lovely, agreeable model. He was more than happy to hang out and be photographed.

Emma told us that despite his age and frailty, Norton still likes to try to ‘escape’ every day.

And even with his mobility issues, Norton still gets super excited about his official daily walk.

It’s walk time!

Norton still insists on stopping to smell the flowers … and the bushes … and the telephone poles…

After his 1-block walk, Norton gets his daily bone to enjoy in the yard.

Norton and Emma – over a decade of friendship.

Emma had some very kind words to say after receiving the finished photos:

“Thank you so much for Norton’s photos. You have captured the essence of my beautiful boy so well. It’s going to be so hard to say goodbye to him and it’s lovely to be able to enjoy the photos while he is still here…  I really love the photos and love the way his different ‘looks’ have been caught. You can really see his amazing personality.

Norton is a stoic and very special pet. He really enjoyed the photo shoot – he hadn’t been so animated in a while. He was having a blast! All the stardom wore him out – he didn’t move from his mat until his tea time. I even had to wake him up for dinner … a first, he is a lab after all!”

I only spent two hours with Norton and Emma but it’s clear to see they have an incredible bond and Norton himself left quite an impression on me. He’s just that kind of dog. I’m so glad I got the chance to meet him.

I had a an email enquiry recently from a lovely woman named Hannah. She wanted to know if I would be able to do outdoor lifestyle portrait photography of her family – which included herself, her husband Andrew, their wee baby girl Aubrey … plus two dogs and a donkey!

I thought it sounded like amazing fun

After a couple of postponements due to wet weather, we finally got the sun to coordinate schedules with us, and my ever-awesome partner-in-crime Brence Coghill and I packed up the gear and headed for the hills.

Hannah and her family live just outside Little River, a lovely picturesque green hilly spot between Christchurch and Akaroa, on a lifestyle block – a hobby farm of sorts.

We spent the afternoon with the family, dogs in tow most of the time, capturing relaxed images of mom, dad, wee baby Aubrey and of course the ever-present pooches.

Hannah wondered if we could possibly get a photo with everyone in it: the three of them plus their two dogs, and their beloved pet donkey. No problem!

It was a great day of shooting and Hannah is over the moon with the pictures, saying: “These are so lovely! The one of Aubrey and the duck brought a tear to my eye – you are amazing.”

I was recently visiting my hometown of Chilliwack, British Columbia and was asked by my good friend Kristen to do some casual outdoor portraits of her with husband Chad and their two gorgeous dogs, Sammy and Maggie.

The autumn colours were in full swing and made a fabulous setting for portraits. We did doggie pictures first, which were a little challenging because neither Sammy nor Maggie are fans of ‘sitting still’, or indeed the concept of ‘looking at the camera’, or even in my general direction at most times!

Patience always win the day when photographing animals though, and we got some great pics of the pooches, capturing both their gorgeous looks and their quirky personalities. The picture at left of Maggie pondering a falling leaf is one of my favourites – it’s just cute as hell!

(The dogs’ leashes are visible in the photos because technically we were not in an ‘off leash’ park so we needed to leave the dogs at least semi-tethered)

Then it was time for the family photo – we wanted to capture a portrait of everyone together which, again, involved a fair bit of canine-wrangling and me making increasingly louder and crazier cat-like noises to capture the dogs’ attention. Apparently there was a very smelly spot on the ground nearby that was FAR more interesting than anything were were doing.

Finally we put the dogs back in the car for some quiet time and so we could do portraits of Kristen and Chad together, once again making the most of the amazing fall foliage. I love the photos against the purple and orange leaves – magic!

It’s always fun and rewarding to see your pictures in their final print incarnation.

A couple of weeks ago I did a location photography shoot for PSIS, a New Zealand banking co-operative. Or, as they like to say: “PSIS is not a registered bank, but a very co-operative co-operative.”

PSIS needed a photo of three Christchurch branch managers for an upcoming print ad campaign. The image needed to fit with the style of photographs used in previous ads – showing the managers looking happy, approachable and down-to-earth, and shot outdoors using a window of a PSIS branch as a backdrop.

I scouted two local PSIS branch locations and chose one with the best setup – specifically a larger physical working space right outside the window (so I wouldn’t need to shoot it wide-angle and could therefore get a more flattering picture and better DOF separation).

I turned up 30 minutes before the start time to set up and get everything dialled in. The main trick was finding just the right angle to minimise any unwanted reflections in the window (like the giant yellow and blue logo of the Blockbuster video store directly across the road). A combination of fine-tuning the camera angle coupled with a polarising filter cut out any unacceptable reflections.

Lighting was by way of a single umbrella-plus-speedlight to my left triggered with a Pocket Wizard. The angle of the umbrella was feathered so that the nearest person didn’t get overexposed compared to the person on the far right of the photo.

It happened to be quite a cold day and the three branch managers did a stellar job to keep smiling while we took the photographs outside – they were all so nice to work with and I can’t thank them enough for their time and efforts in making the shoot go so well.

We did the group shot specifically for the upcoming ad, then took a little extra time to do single shots of each manager so PSIS could have extra pictures up its sleeve for future  print or web campaigns.

Here’s the tearsheet of the final print ad.

Yesterday I did a fun location fashion photography shoot for one of my favourite clients, Jane Henry Merino.  This boutique New Zealand garment company produces the most gorgeously soft and delicious merino wool scarves you’ll ever find.

We’ve got a shortlist of fab new images to sort through, but I couldn’t resist posting a few sneak peaks.

As always, Brence Coghill provided lighting tech and did a stupendous job. We had a crazy day where the sun was in and out of clouds from minute to minute – balancing the on-set lighting to the constantly changing ambient light was no mean feat!  Hair & makeup by the lovely miss Callie Sandford.

More to come soon…

Every now and then I trawl through the photo libraries on my computer and find stuff I’d forgotton about. Like these pictures of the main branch of the Vancouver Public Library, which I took aaaaaaaaages ago on a trip home to Canada. I’d always intended to ‘do something’ with them, but of course life gets busy and the best intentions of finishing off personal projects tend to give way to rent-paying work.

Well, my rent is paid up until the end of the month so what better time to dig through the dusty folders of my hard drive and shine the light of day on some forgotton treasures.

If you ever visit Vancouver, the central library building is worth a look. Reminiscient of the famous Roman Colosseum, it’s quite a fantastic place just to walk around, whether you even feel like perusing the books or not. Film and TV buffs may recognise the location as it’s been used in the films The 6th Day and Mr Magoo and also the recent Battlestar Galactica TV series.

The local weather was typically dreary and wet when I was there, but I think it lends a certain cool starkness that I quite like.

The interior areas of the main building are well used by students and acadmics who populate the many study desks scattered around. From the higher levels you get an amazing and somewhat voyeuristic view.

I really enjoy doing actor headshot sessions. Actors are generally a fun bunch of folks to work with, who often bring a willing and vibrant energy to portrait sesssions.

Actor’s headshots are an important marketing tool, and play a pivitol role in whether their resume even gets looked at. The image  has to jump off the page and be instantly engaging – especially at thumbnail size in a sea of other headshots on agency websites.

Standard actor headshots need to fit certain parameters. Although some photographers are shooting horizontal format headshots these days, I think that a vertical format is still the default, go-to style. If you only have one style – go vertical I say. It remains the industry standard, it’s best for printing as a full-page image to accompany a resume, and it works best as a thumbnail on talent agency websites.

You’d think this next point would be obvious, but it bears repeating that actor headshots need to look like the actor. That’s kind of the point. Some photographers go way overboard on the retouching, treating the images as if they were commercial advertising shots. But there’s nothing a casting director hates more than when an actor walks in to the audition and they look like a completely different person to their headshot.

The pictures here are from a recent headshot session I did with a lovely actor and voice artist by the name of Susannah. We did a two-hour session with a few different wardrobe changes to get some different looks. Susannah’s got a fabulous smile and these well lit, crisp and polished images really show off her charm and professionalism.

If you haven’t yet heard of American street photographer Vivian Maier, you might want to check out my previous post about her and her fascinating story that’s only just coming to light.

I’m proud to be an official financial supporter of the Vivian Maier project (funded through Kickstarter), and I’ve just received word that the trailer for the documentary has gone up online (the film is still in production – I’ll be getting a copy when it’s released in 2012).

Vivian’s work is some of the most compelling street photography I’ve seen, and she’s become something of an enigma, with people all over the world eagerly following as John Maloof, the almost-accidental owner and now curator of Vivian’s negatives, travels the world to try to shed light on Vivian’s full story. It’s a real-life detective stuff.

Anyway, here’s the trailer, to whet your appetite for her work and her story.

Trailer: Finding Vivian Maier from John Maloof on Vimeo.

For more info on Vivian you can check out the official website at www.vivianmaier.com

It’s Easter long weekend and so far I’ve spent half of it wrangling and wrestling with my website – doing some tidying and getting some long-overdue updates in place.

Most notably I’ve added a new Travel section, which currently has galleries for Vietnam and New York (my two most recent jaunts), and will be expanded in future with new content as I go to new places. I haven’t included a New Zealand section as of yet, but probably should work on that, seeing as I live here and all!

On the down side, I’ve noticed that in some of my older blog posts some of the photos are missing in action. This is most likely due to my incompetance using WordPress (keywords = accidentally, deleted, pictures, oopsie). However, I am hoping to rectify this situation soonish, with a complete overhaul of the blog area that will make it much prettier as well as way easier to read and navigate (keyword = hooray!)

And because I can’t do a post without including a photo or two, here’s a couple of pictures from the vault, taken last year here in New Zealand and left to gather dust in the depths of my hard drive until I re-discovered them this weekend. Enjoy.

Stormcloud over the Port Hills, Christchurch. It was so windy I could hardly stand upright to take the picture.

Twilight, Arthur’s Pass – shot out the car window as we drove back to Christchurch from the West Coast.

I got a call recently from the editor of Two Cats One Dog magazine – professional magazine for the veterinary industry with a circulation of about 30,000 in New Zealand.

They were doing a story on the Abyssinian cat, and needed photos for the cover and inside story. They’d tracked down a breeder of this unusual type of cat, and would I be able to do a photo shoot?

There’s an old adage that says ‘never work with children or animals’ – but as a self-confessed animal lover,  I do pride myself on being able to work with animals that are usually pretty hard to photograph. 99% of it is patience.

My assistant-turned-cat-wrangler Brence Coghill and I turned up to meet Gail, the breeder, and her 30+ cats. Yup, it was cats a go-go at Gail’s house!

The Abyssinian is unique in its temperament – it’s the “border collie of the cat world” – meaning it’s extremely smart and active. The cats follow you around, and always want to be into whatever you’re doing. They’re essentially walking fur-covered bundles of curious energy.

I started with some typical shots that might make for a good cover – close ups of the faces and some full body shots.That in itself was hard enough because of course the cats were not huge fans of sitting still, or being any distance away from me.

The Abyssinian has quite large ears and is very long and lithe – they look quite cool when sitting at attention – so I wanted to get some photos showing off these qualities.

Once those photos were in the bag, it was time to try something a little different. Because Abyssinian cats are super-active, I wanted to try to get some shots showing their crazy frisky nature.

We set up a little play area on the stairway landing. An off-camera flash was on camera left, and Brence stood just off-camera wielding a cat toy consisting of a long plastic wand with feathers on the end. We’d get a few cats on the landing and Brence would work them into a frenzy by twirling the feathers over their heads, enticing them to leap in the air trying to catch it.

It took many, many frames and a lot of total garbage pictures, but in the end we got some really some cool shots, especially once I perfected my timing of capturing a flying cat mid-leap.

The photo shoot was hard work but lots of fun at the same time. Oh, and did I mention I’m allergic to cats? By the end of the shoot I was sniffling and snuffling and I coughed and spluttered in the car all the way home – but it was totally worth it.

The magazine ended up running a nice close up portrait shot for the cover  (reversed left to right from the original) and a full bleed image of one of the crazy jumping photos for the inside story. Interestingly, the photo credit lists the name of the cat (Kemenkat Rox my Sox) rather than my name as photographer – I guess Abyssinians just can’t stay out of the limelight.

To find out more about Gail’s crazy cats her Abyssinian cat breeding website is here. And finally, here’s some shots of published mag: