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: