Another couple of awards. Beauty.

I feel like I might harp on about the shoot I did with NZ Olympic Triathletes Andrea Hewitt and French athlete Laurent Vidal in Wanaka over the summer, but now someone else is harping on about it too. My image of Laurent which featured on the cover of NZ Triathlon magazine a while back just picked up a gold at the Kodak Gold Awards. I also managed to grab a silver for a wedding album shot up at Boomrock near Wellington. I know judging photos can be very subjective, but it's still good to win stuff!

Not rugby.

My photography with Olympic Triathletes Kris Gemmell, Laurent Vidal and Andrea Hewitt down in Wanaka over summer has proved pretty popular. Kris' images were all through the press and plastered on his sign-written Suzuki, Laurent's images were used by the French Triathlon Union, press and on the cover of Triathlon magazine a few months ago. Now Andrea is on the cover of Triathlon magazine as well. She's the first New Zealand triathlete to qualify a spot for next year's London Olympics so she's definitely worthy of the cover. But honestly, I'd be finding another career if I couldn't make a triathlete look good.

Out shootin'

A few weeks back a series of images I photographed of deer in the lower North Island was judged finalist in Photo District News' Faces portrait competition. One of the images has previously been in the winner's circle a few times both internationally and domestically but this time, the images were judged finalist and worthy as a series amongst some absolutely stunning images from around the world. Check out the gallery of winners and finalists gallery here.

I clearly spend far too much time shooting animals. Long may it continue.

Gettin' sign off.

Over the past six weeks, we've been working away on a small video project with Ocean Design for Living Legends. It's all about planting native trees around the country during the big ol' rugby event later this year. After a week of postponements and 6am starts during filming, we finally got a stunning winter's day to film in Greytown. It'll be broadcast on TVNZ breakfast television as well as numerous sponsors websites. Sign off feels good!


Production: Jet Productions. Agency: Ocean. Soundmix: Bonfire Audio

The weekend off, sort of.

Last weekend I headed to Taranaki for a weekend filming four surfers on a wave seeking mission as a follow up to last years video 'Dropping In Up North'. My self-impossed challenge was to create the video without me actively filming any surfing. The waves never really arrived but good times ensued and thankfully no camera gear was lost to the sea.

A bit of fun

Thought I'd share a bit of light relief from a couple of recent shoots over in the Wairarapa. The first is an outtake from yesterday's early morning video shoot and the second, was shot using a GoPro camera on the way to a shoot in Masterton. Happy long weekend!

The clever kids at Assembly

It's been a pretty varied week so far with six commercial shoots, meetings, a personal video project, video pre-production and another shoot today with a certain little white kiwi. One of the commercial shoots was for the clever kids next door at Assembly Architects. They commissioned me to photograph their very cool new structure at Wellington Zoo. It's a good'n and these images will feature in Architecture NZ magazine (amongst others hopefully). I could shoot buildings like this all day (and night).

Manukura - the little white kiwi.

It's been a pretty exciting couple of days. Three weeks ago at the Pukaha Mount Bruce wildlife centre, the thirteenth kiwi chick of the season was hatched, and he's a little bit special. He's a North Island Brown Kiwi who just so happens to be white. His name is Manukura and he's not an Albino, he's just got pretty cool genes.

After a 19-hour working day on Sunday and a fair bit of running around and planning, the story will break today and be featured on tonights Close Up program (that's Tuesday 24 May) and in Wednesday's media. I had a 5 minute session with Manukura for photos and then 10 minutes to shoot video. A very busy 15 minutes with the little guy, but very cool.

If you get the chance, get to Mount Bruce before the end of May as he'll likely be able to be seen in the Kiwi House. It's definitely worth the drive.

The all new Jet Weddings site

It's finally live... the all new Jet Weddings website. I've wanted to get this done for a while and it makes sense to have two (virtually) separate commercial/editorial and weddings sites. So here it is: www.jetproductions.co.nz/weddings

5 months of sport, crammed into 2 minutes.

For the past five or six summers, I've travelled the country chasing athletes around shooting the Contact Triathlon Series for Triathlon New Zealand. It takes me to some great spots and the challenge is keeping the work fresh and coming up with something new every event. Thankfully it's a pretty photogenic sport. I've crammed a bunch of moments from the latest series held over the 2010/11 summer into a two minute video. Check it.

In the mood for a wedding

Here's a little something headed for the upcoming new Jet Weddings site (soon hopefully):

Jet Weddings portfolio from Mike Heydon on Vimeo.

Hot times in the Moroccan Desert

I've been fortunate enough to escape the declining New Zealand weather for three weeks in the Northern Hemisphere. The highlight of the trip was definitely Morocco in Northern Africa which is probably the most amazing place I've ever been. It's as far away from urban Wellington as you can possibly get and a real culture shock. Thankfully Marrakech only got up to around 37 degrees while we were there (apparently it hit an unofficial 60 in some parts last summer). I'd love to return one day soon and do the place justice with camera in hand, but in the meantime here a few images from the overnight camel trek in the desert where we drove for nine hours to over some very narrow roads in the High Atlas Mountains and then slept on the sand dunes under the stars (The local Berber Tribes call it 'The Hotel of 10000 Stars').

Jet Photography has become.... Jet Productions NZ Ltd.

Jet Photography is expanding. We’re now a production company offering a wider range of communication services including video production. So...we’re proud to announce the launch of Jet Productions NZ Ltd.

This is what’s changing:
We offer video production services.
We have a professional writer and Producer on our team.
Our business name.
Our bank account number.
Our email address (mike@jetproductions.co.nz)

What’s not changing:
Our stunning photography.
Our ideas to get your message across, drive your brand and get noticed.
Mike is our creative force and principal photographer.
Our central Wellington location.
Our phone numbers.
Our commitment to producing our best work every day.
Our flash new website (www.jetproductions.co.nz)

If you’re in our part of town, call in and say hello. We’ll provide the drinks if you provide the jokes (best not to leave those up to Mike).  If you're not in our part of town, follow us on Facebook or Twitter.

More from altitude

Last week I was up at altitude at the Snow Farm near Wanaka yet again, shooting another couple of world class triathletes - Andrea Hewitt [NZ] and Laurent Vidal [France]. Having already photographed Kris Gemmell up there a month before, I already knew where the good spots were and the second shoot gave me chance to capture the locations we couldn't get to on Kris' shoot. A big day finishing with me literally running to the plane but it was definitely worth it to squeeze every last minute from the day.

More television shenanigans

I feel like I'm living and breathing campaigns based around sport at the moment - it must be that time of year. The latest project for Wellington Rugby hit the small screen last night. We've produced a series of four 15-second TV commercials to promote the first bunch of home games for the Wellington Hurricanes in the Super 15 season. With almost no time to turn these around and with no existing footage to use, combined with players having pretty hectic schedules, I reckon the results aren't too bad all things considered. These will air during primetime on TV3 over the next few months on-and-off so check 'em out.

Canes 2011

It's January, it must be rugby season. Last week was a big week of post-production on the 2011 Hurricanes poster campaign (with EyeQ Design and Wellington Rugby) but we got there. Making set-in-stone concepts work can be tough as it's largely about making someone else's vision a reality. The final image is made up of over sixty layers which all had to be meticulously worked over, shadows and shading added and then tweaked. And tweaked again.Then tweaked a bit more. There's plenty of back and forth on projects like this but we got there (and hopefully nailed it).

Kris Gemmell - pro athlete

I spent a few days last week up at the Snow Farm near Wanaka shooting a project with olympic triathlete Kris Gemmell. It was a bunch of fun and I'll hopefully head back there next month to finish things off. I'm also shooting a video which will need a few months of production but keep an eye out - I'll be sure to post it here when it's finished.

The setting for last weeks shoot was breath taking - quite literally. At 1600 meters above sea level the air is thinner than at sea level which is enough to make breathing a bit tougher than usual - like chasing a speeding triathlete. We were interupted during a 7am session in minus 4 degree temps so Kris could be interviewed on radio and even he was out of breath. More proofs from the shoot here.