My previous post was about a shoot I did recently to create promotional studio portraits of a couple of very talented swing dancers. My assistant, collaborator and general partner-in-crime Brence Coghill came to assist with the shoot and ended up filming a lot of behind-the-scenes footage (on a Canon IXUS point-and-shoot, for those of you [...]

Portraiture is my favourite type of photography, but my absolute favourite-est types of portraits are promotional shots for performers – dancers, acrobats, circus folk – general ‘show biz’ kind of stuff. I had the great fortune to do a hugely fun dance shoot recently with Jess – she works as an event organiser but her [...]

A good friend of mine just bought her dream house and is looking for renters for the smaller house that she owns and has been living in for two years. She signed up with a real estate agency to advertise her rental, and while talking to them on the phone, asked if they had a [...]

On Friday night my phone rang. My friend multi-talented friend Alister (physiotherapist by day, sound engineer by night) wanted to know if I could come to Al’s Bar that night to photograph a concert by a New Zealand Led Zeppelin tribute band, aptly named “NZeppelin“.  Now, I don’t think of myself as a Zeppelin fan [...]

My partner Brence Coghill is also a photographer, which means a couple of things: 1. We have a lot of photos, usually with one or the other of us in them, but 2. We don’t have many nice pictures with BOTH of us in them, because one of us is usually behind the camera. To [...]

Author Allison O’Neill has a new book in the works and she wanted an updated headshot for her website and other promo materials. She didn’t need anything too fancy or overly creative,  just a good solid studio headshot. Allison was a lot of fun to work with in the studio, and she has amazing big [...]

A little while ago I posted about doing a location scout on Christchurch’s Port Hills for an upcoming portrait session. The client needed a promo shot for her business website – a consultancy that assists people in applying to immigrate to New Zealand – and she wanted to have some interesting local New Zealand scenery [...]

One of my favourite clients, the ever-popular Coffee Culture, recently opened a new cafe in the town of Rangiora (a short drive north of Christchurch, where I’m based). I went there this week to photograph the new cafe. It’s situated in a fantastic heritage building in the centre of town, and I’m sure it’s going [...]

This morning I went location scouting up on the Port Hills. In a couple of weeks I’m doing some headshots for a businesswoman who owns a New Zealand immigration advisory service, helping people who want to immigrate to New Zealand with navigating the paperwork and processes involved. For her website she wants a photo of [...]

I can’t count the number of times I’ve clicked on the ‘About Me’ page of an otherwise professional website and cringed at the out-of-focus snapshot being used for the headshot. Why go to all the trouble of designing a nice website only to let it down with a lackluster photo? I was in Auckland recently [...]