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It’s a shame to have my early work that documented the New Zealand & Australian ultra running scene from 2010- 2014 hidden away on my hard drive. So with a new blog, I’ve decided to share the images as I’m super proud of them. During this period I spent a fair bit of my time, energy and money traveling around the country capturing imagery for ultra running events, and some running brands. Looking back, this series of images is more personal work than commercial, but taught me a lot of skills that I still use today. They were captured in colour, but I have a fascination with monochrome so that’s that. I had some opportunities though to work with athletes such as Anna Frost, Grant Guise, Matt Bixley, and Anton Krupicka and events such as the Tarawera, Northface 100, and the Northburn 100. I wish I had made the opportunities back then blossom, but in all honesty I was new to commercial image making, and did not really have a clue what I was doing on the business side either. Even smart phones and social media was new to me a decade ago!

These days I’m comfortable when it comes to business, and I guess it’s true what people say, things really do take time to master. Over the few years of shooting ultra imagery I was also published across multiple trail running magazines in NZ, Europe and Australia, which was great. After the long distance focus I then moved onto more commercial orientated sports work with brands such as Nike, Fitbits, Salomon Running, Blackcaps, and shorter distance events. As for future long distance running image making, I guess you will have to watch this space. Rest assure though, that if I do return to the ultra running scene, I’ll be shooting it with passion, vigour and a new developed aesthetic!

Selwyn is a super talented and intensely passionate fellow. Majoring in Film making at Ilam, he’s also an actor, advocate of Mens mental health and numerous other worthwhile endeavours. You guessed it, we met at Ilam back in 2018, and Selywn just turned 21 and reached out to find out how much I charge for portraits on film. He wanted a set of images that would capture this very special milestone in his life, and also a printed gift to his Mother.

We met at Waikuku Beach, that’s about 30 mins outside of Christchurch and what a spectacular place to take it all in! There is sandy beach as far as the eye can see as well as forest, sand dunes and marshland full of bird life. We were also blessed with a spectacular sunset that seemed to radiate 360 degrees. We captured another set of images on film too.

I’m not a Facebook user, so I’d really appreciate it if you could share to your page? Please use the sharing buttons on the right side. If you do download images of yourself and friends, please can you credit me, give me a share, add a link back here, or tag me on Instagram. Thank you.

That was now five years ago, and for most of that time I’ve been a bit of a recluse as I worked out what to do next. During this time I slowly focussed on re-building my photography business in both Christchurch and Auckland, and enrolled to study a photography degree, where I’m now just 3 months away from graduation. I’ve worked part-time commercially the whole time to pay for the studies, and after a good think about where to in 2022, I’ve decided to now focus my energy back to commercial outdoor image making part-time once again.

The last outdoor sports shoot that I did before taking some respite, was for the infamous Kepler Challenge in 2017 as an official photographer. I’ve had a fascinating relationship with the Kepler event as a runner, and completed the 60km challenge in a day, for three consecutive years from 2009 – 2011. I’ve always wanted to capture the event from a photographers point of view and jumped at the opportunity. I’ll never forget it. I drove my camper van to Te Anau, and was graced with a chopper ride to the Hanging Valley Hut right into the mountains before the route towards the descent into the forest. The wind was so strong that day, and on the way up that it made me very nervous. The pilot knew exactly what he was doing though, and at several points of the flight he literally hugged the mountain side to avoid the wind currents I guess? Regardless of his skill, it was still terrifying being blown around in such a light weight machine. Exiting the chopper, myself and other image makers, were greeted with gale force winds, rain and freezing temperatures. I’m pretty accustomed to the New Zealand mountains, but on this day the weather was some of the worst I’ve experienced.