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.