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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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: