On the side of a mountain in Oregon in 2017, I found myself overwhelmed by the beauty of the place, the moment, and my existence there. I decided it was a tragedy that I didn’t have a camera to share what I had experienced in that moment with the world. I arrived home from the trip and immediately bought a Canon A-1 35mm camera for about $60 and fell in love with shooting film. I shot this camera for a year, taking photos of anything and everything I found interesting, until I was gifted a Yashica-D 6x6 medium format camera by my friend Kyle.
While in Uni in Seattle, I dabbled in digital photography for professional use, shooting some techno and bass parties around Seattle as well as concerts and festivals in Washington, and doing the odd job shooting product photos and portraits for friends and acquaintances. Though my true love is in film and nowadays, the digital camera only sees use as a light meter for my film cameras. During my time in Seattle I continued to experiment with different subjects, traveling to Europe and Asia to satisfy my insatiable curiosity, using my camera as a tool to inspire my imagination, and to look more closely, more deeply at the way the world is and why.
In 2020 I moved to NZ amid the Covid-19 pandemic and was (very fortunately) stranded in Queenstown. During this time I began highlining which added a new element to my keen interest in landscape photography, a new angle, and a new reason to approach, speak with and attempt to understand the mountains. I was unimpressed by my attempts to capture the epic, terrifying, brilliant and emphatic nature of this new passion of mine with the cameras I owned at the time. As a bit of a gear head, I find that your relationship with your tool of choice, whatever it may be, informs your style and your vision. Van Gogh couldn’t have made Starry Nights with nothing but a green crayon now could he? I knew I had to find the most epic camera in existence and happened upon exactly the camera I was looking for, the rare Fuji GX617. This camera takes photos that are 30x the size of the best digital cameras available today, truly the only tool that can come close to expressing what if feels like to build a magic bridge between 2 mountains. With this new tool, I began to explore new compositions as well as new experimental exposure methods and unique lighting. My work with the Fuji GX617 has been displayed in galleries from Auckland to Queenstown and now hangs on the walls of friends and family.
I’ve since added another camera to the collection, the Hasselblad XPan, so that I can take my panoramic vision to more remote and extreme places. I hope to once again be able to travel soon and use the XPan as my main camera for capturing both the beauty of the natural world as well as the creativity, peculiarity and vibrancy of the human world.
