Ngaire the star

I've now shot a few features about caravans for NZ Life & Leisure magazine, and the latest one was a bit special - the caravan was ours and it was for the Jan/Feb cover. We hit the road for a weekend shoot to the Central Hawkes Bay back in October in Ngaire, our 1955 Starliner bubble caravan and the mag is out this week. She's had some work done by the retoucher at the publishers especially for the cover - of course I don't own a pink caravan! It's quite a tough assignment shooting yourself for a magazine story, everything felt very set-up and contrived but hopefully the results were worth it. Ngaire in all her glory is in stores now - check her out.

Lucy and Brian

I photographed my first wedding of the season on Saturday and it was a good'n. I was so excited, I've turned the images around in record time [at least a record for me]. The wedding was at The Wellesley Hotel on a grey ol' day in the capital - perfect for an intimate indoor wedding in a grown-up setting. Love it.

Keep'n it real

It's about time I showed the blog some love after a busy few months. This week we finished production on a spot for Contact Energy to promote the Contact Triathlon Series. Produced with/for Zephyr WPD and Rainger Connect. We shot this sucker in Wellington, Tauranga and Rotorua on the Canon 7d at 50 frames-per-second so we could peg the action back to a gentle slow-motion. The brief was for a raw/photo-journalistic feel, fly-on-the-wall stuff and the triathletes we used were actual, real-life triathletes. When you want real, nothing beats reality.

Contact Tri Series promo from Mike Heydon on Vimeo.

It's on near the Tron

We're at day six of a ten day shoot at the World Rowing Champs at Lake Karapiro. Good to be finally shooting the business end and the real action after months of planning, shooting the campaign and video and working on logistics. It's a very slick operation up here and the media are well catered for - just as well as there's about 50 photographers and hundreds of international media. The next three days will be hectic during finals, but it looks like the kiwi crews will deliver the goods on home soil [or home lake]. Below are few highlights below along with a behind-the-scenes from the media centre including a familiar face.

Something I said?

Last months issue of Next magazine featured a shoot I'd done with Green MP Sue Kedgley at Parliament a few months back. The same month she announced she wouldn't be standing for Parliament after next years election... I hope it wasn't something I said?

The shoot itself was great. It was a fantastic team effort with five of us charging about the corridors of power photographing Sue wearing an array of 1920's garb. While we were rushing around inside Parliament, coincidentally there was plenty of rushing around outside as co-leader of the Green Party Russel Norman was caught in the middle of the Tibetan flag scuffle which featured in the news that day. All just another eventful day in the capital.

What to do with 52 cameras

This is awesome - aerial surfers photographed simultaneously with 52 different cameras all in a row. Produced for RipCurl, the result is a three-dimensional still image of the surfer frozen in space, Matrix-style. Check it out. Right, I'm off to work out who I can borrow about 49 cameras from.

Sneak peak: our first TVC's

Our first TV commercials hit NZ screens tonight. Initially produced as just a web promotion for this months World Rowing Champs at Lake Karapiro, they proved so popular we've cut them in to a 30-second and 15-second spot. They'll air on TVNZ over the next three weeks during the 6pm news, Primetime and Breakfast time slots. The full video has been used by SkyTV [who are official broadcaster of the event] as a promo and build-up for their coverage as well. It'll be nice to sit back, put my feet up with a beer and watch them on the box.

WRCH 30sec TVC from Mike Heydon on Vimeo.

Rowers drown in popularity

Only a couple of months to go until the largest sporting event in NZ for 20 years, the World Rowing Champs at Lake Karapiro. I'm official photographer for the event and have been spending quite a bit of time at the lake lately working on the ad campaigns and marketing imagery. The promo video we produced [complete with a hidden code for a discount on event tickets] has had over 5000 views and climbing and the ad campaign has featured on numerous billboards around Auckland and Waikato as well as being printed on 1.2 million [count 'em - million!] programmes for the event itself. This is going to be a big deal people and it's bound to be a great event - and not a rugby ball in sight. Get in fast to get the good seats.

The only good Ferret is a dead Ferret

Sad news reported in the DominionPost this morning, that eight of the thirty Little Brown Kiwi relocated to Pukaha Mount Bruce earlier this year have been killed by a couple of Ferrets. I photographed the relocation in May and at the time there was much excitement about having so many of these great little critters roaming the hills up in the Northern Wairarapa. Fingers crossed the Ferret on the run, get's her just desserts sooner rather than later.

Hanging about in trees

Yesterday I was shooting a brief for thoughtplanters - a horticulture training organisation. It involved swing about in trees capturing arborists at work. Big respect for these guys who do this every day. It felt like I was up around 20 meters for hours but in reality it was more like 3 or 4 meters for about 30 minutes. It was definitely impressive to watch the safety measures they go through and how easily they can get around and up some pretty tall trees. Respect.

Wellington on a plate

A bit of fun with food, we've just finished a quick video for Urban Harvest as entry into a competition run by Wellington on a plate. The competition is to create a recipe video along the lines of Jamie Oliver or Nigella so we flipped this on it's head and used an, um, er, unusual host. Shot in the studio over 600 plus frames, the recipe was created by Al Brown and voiceover is by the very french Julian from Simply Paris Bakery. Jet Photography takes no responsibility for the accuracy of the subtitles!

Randy Campell would be proud

I admire anyone who treks up an icey mountain, risks their expensive equipment or their own safety or stands in the freezing cold for hours to get that 'one' shot. Red Bull run a contest called Red Bull Illume which attracts entries from all over the globe for this extreme sport photo comp. Below are some of the semi-finalists. Thanks to DJ Nick Warren for sending this through.

A little slice of Country Calendar

This month, we've produced a promotional video for Blue Sky Meats in Southland. After much planning and going through every scene before it was shot, the filming itself ran really smoothly and we shot it in only three days and met the tight deadline. Ironically the Southland weather didn't play ball and we had three days of great sunshine - for a lot of the video we'd planned for clouds and rain rolling through. The video got a big tick from the client and was a great reminder of how careful planning can cut production time down later. Check it out.

Blue Sky Meats from Mike Heydon on Vimeo.

Some numbers

We've just hit the second of three big deadlines for this month by finishing production on the 2010 Wellington Lions Rugby Team poster for the Wellington Rugby Union in record time. Here are some numbers about the project:

34 players

2 stuffed lions

9 current or former All Blacks

Almost 60 layers make up the image

Over 30 hours of post-production time

Shot over 9 separate shoots in 3 weeks

90000 posters to be printed and plenty of press ads - phew!

A sport going backwards

We've just finished production on a promotional web video for the largest sporting event to be held in NZ since the 1990 Commonwealth Games - the 2010 Rowing World Champs at Lake Karapiro. Pretty chuffed all the weeks of hard work, early mornings and long hours were worth it. I think it's definitely worth a watch!

We shot the rowing footage over two (big) days and the interviews took another couple of days of production. A bit of a team effort this one which took a lot of organising. Something we've included is a promo code hidden in the video itself - people can quote the code to Ticketek for a discount on tickets to the World Champs. This'll probably also be aired on TV3, SkySport and The Crowd Goes Wild this week and we'll also chop it in to 15 second slots for SkySport closer to the event.

Someone open a window

The studio has an entrenched smell of fish after todays shoot involving a snapper and a bunch of organic produce for an upcoming campaign for Urban Harvest. It dawned on me suddenly that the windows in the studio aren't big enough to ventilate the space when there's been a fish sitting there looking at the camera for a few hours.

Who knew it's rugby season?

With all that round-balled action going on at the moment it's easy to forget every Saturday there are scores of die hard fans and supporters on the painted white lines of the boggy fields around Wellington yelling for their club rugby team. I've just finished a shoot to promote the Jubilee Cup - the Wellington Club Rugby comp for Wellington Rugby... and there's not a round ball in sight.

The Monstrous Red Dress

This issue's cover of Heritage magazine features a shoot I did at The Dominion Museum in Wellington which included an enormous red dress by designer and artist Lauren Skogstad. The dress is around 25 metres long and was a bit of a handful in the breeze - we had to use sandbags to keep the dress grounded. Great to see some risk taken with the cover concept to mix up the old with the new.

It's official: New Zealand is in fact beautiful

A couple of months ago, I was fortunate enough to be flying around the Mount Cook area in a Helicopter Line chopper with a couple of cameras dangling out the window. Some of the images can be seen in the May issue of Kia Ora magazine. I'm pretty sure I'm a Southener born in a Northener's body - the landscape in the south is so totally rad. It's interesting when I'm off around the country shooting these great places, I seldom rub shoulders with NZers. German, British, Australian yes, New Zealanders hardly ever. It seems kiwis are quick to see London or the Gold Coast but often overlook the best country in the world. Who's up for a road trip?

Bright lights. Friday night.

Last night we had a bunch of people in the studio for Telecom's in-house magazine 'Co.' published by Tangible Media. A group portrait of a dozen or so people conjures up visions of school photos or lines of school boy rugby players on stools in a school hall. It's fair to say it was going to be a challenge to make the photos interesting. With the help of a few props and bit of planning, I think it worked out. The folks in the photos are part of a film crew all from Gen-i who entered this year's 48-hour film festival. Thanks to Jason Casson for picking up the video camera.

Bright lights. Friday night. from Mike Heydon on Vimeo.

Sheep and mushrooms: the untold story

Over the past six months I've been working with Urban Harvest - a new online farmers' market. I shot a lot of the photography on the website [we had over 700 products through the studio]. We've been to a coffee roastery, a mushroom grower, a chicken farm and Al Brown's place. I've seen jam being made, sprouts being harvested and sheep being milked. It's a great concept and an excellent way to get top notch produce delivered to your doorstep. Check it out.

We've just finished production on the promotional video which has been a work-in-progress for the last couple of months. Hours of footage got cut to slim it down to a slender 71 seconds. Have a look.

Kiwi: they're popular

Pretty chuffed after photographing not one but thirty Little Brown Kiwi which were flown from Little Barrier Island to Masterton by the Air Force and relocated to the Mount Bruce Sanctuary today. It was part of a huge operation between DOC, Pukaha Mount Bruce, RNZAF, dozens of volunteers and plenty of others working behind the scenes. I ditched the camera to help lug one up to it's new home in the bush - definitely a privilege to be so close to so many of these very cool little critters.

Goats and gaffer tape

Over the last couple of weeks I've shot three stories for Next magazine. Each shoot has involved a fair amount of planning and styling which has made them pretty rewarding to finaly see the finished images. The shoots have involved a grumpy old monkey, an Italian Ballerina, a head butting goat and 120 metres of red gaffer tape. We hired a hotel room by the hour, we had lights almost blow over and gear almost peed on by dogs. It's been a bunch of fun and below are a few behind the scenes shots. Check out the June issue of the mag to see the final result. Right, off to rip down all that gaffer tape...

Dropping in up north

The weekend before last was my first weekend off in 2010. Something I haven't done much of over the last busy six months is shoot personal projects, not commissioned or paid shoots, just things that I think will look good, will be fun and photography that will hopefully keep the creative juices flowing. It's an important part of the process and something I'm hoping to do more of this year. This video was shot over two days near Ninety Mile Beach as a big swell attracted hundreds of surfers to Ahipara for the weekend. Big ups to Border Records for the soundtrack too.

Dropping in up north from Mike Heydon on Vimeo.

From the whiteboard to the water

Here it is, the finished image from the Rowing World Champs campaign shoot. Photographed over 2 (early) mornings at Lake Karapiro including a couple of pretty cold boat rides, 11 different NZ rep crews, 25 rowers including a bunch of world champions and over a day of piecing it all together in post-production. The image will be used in promoting this years World Champs in October in press and outdoor advertising. A real team effort onsite so it's great to finally see the final image long after we did the initial sketch on the studio whiteboard weeks and weeks ago.

Risky business

This week I've been at Lake Karapiro shooting the NZ Rowing Squad for the 2010 World Rowing Champs ad campaign. We were scheduled for a two day shoot although day one was a write off: I've never had weather turn bad so quickly on a shoot and we were left scrambling for lights set up right next to the water and rowers were scrambling for their boats. The weather and the brilliant sunrise on day two made up for the stress and carnage and we got through it and thankfully all the gear stayed pretty dry. Once the final image is all pieced together, I'll be sure to post it here.

The steep part of the learning curve

We've just finished production on a short promo video for the Wairarapa Balloon Fiesta as part of our new video production service. It seems shooting video with a photographers perspective is a real benefit, especially since we can combine video and stills during a shoot so they both have a similar look and feel. For this project, an early morning was endured, fun was had, characters were interviewed and lessons were learnt. It's the fifth year I've shot this event and capturing it with video adds a whole new dimension of planning and work needed. Leaving a camera virtually unattended amongst a crowd of thousands to capture the night glow time lapse was indeed an exercise in stress and paranoia. I'm pretty happy with the results though, take a look.

We're working on another couple of video projects at the moment which'll be finished soon. Be sure to check back as they'll be posted here.

Wairarapa Balloon Fiesta 2010 from Mike Heydon on Vimeo.

The good word

News of our second place in the Spider Awards earlier in the year has gotten around the printing presses. In this months issue of ProDesign and D-Photo magazines there's a bit of a mention of our success. Who says you shouldn't believe everything you read?

No two days...

Every job has it's own unique set of challenges and a shoot last week for a meat processor and exporter in Southland is a good example. The first challenge: to photograph inside the meat works without showing any meat or any obvious machinery, just to portray the clean and sterile environment. Challenge number two: to photograph a big Southland landscape with blue sky on a week when it was raining most of the time. The third challenge: To photograph true blue Southland farmers and plant workers who you'd expect to what their photo taken like a hole in the head.

Challenges are what sometimes makes my job interesting and no two days are the same. In the end, we shot the plant between shifts when things were absolutely spotless, the clouds parted long enough to shoot some fantastic blue sky and rolling hills and everyone we photographed in the two days was a natural in front of the camera - plenty of latent modeling talent out there in the rural sector.

I do not eat green eggs and ham...

The latest issue of Idealog magazine is out now and I shot TradeMe founder Sam Morgan for the cover. We were lucky to get Sam at a weak moment as he doesn't do much press and seems to do a great job of staying out of the limelight. It was great to hear what he's up to post-TM. I photographed him in studio and we were all really happy with the results and Sam was a trouper - a fun shoot.

Hurricanes 2010 - behind the scenes

We've just wrapped up production on this years Hurricanes Super 14 team poster and ad campaign for the Wellington Rugby Union. A big effort over three shoots including two hours spent on the Lyall Bay breakwater during a storm where everything got totally soaked. Check out the behind-the-scenes video:

Hurricanes 2010 team poster shoot from Mike Heydon on Vimeo.

Last wedding of the decade

On New Years Eve I shot a wedding in Gladstone in the Wairarapa. It was a big day - around 8 hours of shooting which I think might be a record, at least for me. It had all the elements of a great day, brilliant weather, cool people, a great venue and plenty of good times. The guys wore kilts, the wedding dress was spectacular, the church was small and the sky was big. Fun times all round and a great way to see out the decade. Congrats Jon and Georgie.

Giving an old girl a fair go

I photographed broadcaster and all round top bloke Kevin Milne for the latest issue of NZ Life & Leisure magazine. Kevin has overseen the restoration of a 1936 Tanner Deluxe vintage caravan and she's a beauty. Throughout the process, he basically learnt the entire life history of the caravan and met a few interesting people along the way. That's pretty much what the caravan lifestyle is all about - an excuse to live out some nostalgia and talk to people you normally wouldn't meet... and to take revenge and hold up long lines of traffic on long weekends!

High fives all round

We received some great news over the weekend with the announcement of the winners of the 5th Annual Black and White Spider Awards. I picked up runner-up in the 'wildlife' category - the highest placing achieved by a New Zealand professional photographer. A couple of my images were also finalists in the 'sport' category, but it was my image of a stag standing in bush that caught the judges eyes.

The competition is all about recognising excellence in black and white photography and this year's judging panel was made up of the most respected names in photography from around the world including Magnum Photos in New York and the Tate Gallery in London.

It's a prestigious competition so I would have been happy just to be a finalist, but to be runner-up amongst such beautiful images from around the globe is incredible. It's a huge thrill. The award will see the stag image published in the book 'The World's Greatest Black and White Photography, No 2.

If you can spare a few minutes take a look at all the finalists and winners at www.thespiderawards.com

NZ's favourite contact sport

If you browse through a magazine or look skyward at the moment, you'll possibly see an ad for the Contact Triathlon Series which we shot late in 09. The campaign of 5 different ads includes real life people who are competing or have competed in the National Triathlon Series. Plenty of latent modeling talent in the bunch of people who were involved and everyone really got in to it to help recreate the emotion we needed to capture in the images. We had people running laps in between photos and being sprayed with baby oil and water to replicate the sweaty tired look which is so hot right now.

Don't ask, don't get

Last year we photographed the Payroll Giving campaign for Inland Revenue with ad agency AIMProximity. The campaign involved six different shoots and Jet undertook much of the pre-production including wardrobe, props and location scouting. The thing that struck me during this process is it's amazing what people agree to if you just ask them. We had the run of a commercial bakery [thanks Mojo], a cafe [thanks again Mojo], a busy florist [thanks Woodstock], a room at Wellington Hospital, a metal recyclers and a science lab at Victoria University. All talent were Inland Revenue staff. The entire campaign could have been a total nightmare to organise but thanks to people who were willing to offer up their work places for a few hours, everything went ridiculously smoothly. Phew!

HRH

I don't shoot much news these days - I'm more of a slow food kind of guy. But this week I made the pilgrimage with about 70 other national and international media following HRH Prince William on his first official overseas visit representing Queen and country. First was the opening of the Supreme Court in Wellington where I was lucky enough to be one of only 4 photographers in the court itself for the opening and then it was off to Kapiti Island to chase Weka, hold Kiwi, chat to the PM and be ogled by school girls [that's Will, not me]. One of my images even made it to the front page of Tuesday's The Australian newspaper.

Lazy day at the beach

For the past four summers, I've travelled the country shooting the Contact Triathlon Series for Triathlon New Zealand. It's a great brief to shoot - fantastic locations [Whangamata, Wanaka, Kinloch...] and Triathlon is a really photogenic event. Here's the second round of this year's series from Whangamata: