Richard Wood and Emily Rose | Wellington Family Photographer

Richard Wood won New Zealand Institute of Professional Photographers Photographer of the Year Last year.  I am a huge fan of his work and his favourite muse is his gorgeous daughter Emily Rose.  Luckily he is a sharing sort of guy.  He brought me up for a talk to the Hawkes Bay members of NZIPP this weekend and we chased it with a photoshoot.  Here are a couple of my faves from the day. 

Georgia on my Mind | Wellington Portrait Artist

I am loving playing with blending my illustration with my photography it creates something just a little bit magical to me and I know it is what I am meant to me doing because I loose track of time when I am drawing.

Nummy Noelle | Wellington Fashion Photographer

Noelle was one of our model for a day winners that we met at the Wellington Wedding Show.  She is on her way to get married in Germany and wanted to get some lovely shots done for herself and her partner.  We had such a good time on this shoot and lucked out.  As I was taking her to my favourite black wall to shoot on there was this gorgeous mustang parked in front of it and the owner / friend of the owner / some dude on the street was standing by the car and let us use it for the shoot.  LOVE the result. 


When Noelle came to collect the images this week she was laid out with a cold and then wrote us this, " Thankyou again so much for the beautiful makeup, hair and photos! I love them! My cold is going away and I am pretty certain it is because my body figures it has to feel at least half as good as that woman in my photos looks."


Glad you are feeling better Noelle and I hope you have a wonderful trip to Germany.

Simple truth #1 | Wellington Kids Photographer

Source: Uploaded by user via Michele on Pinterest

Free Range Kids Book | Wellington Childrens Photographer

For the last couple of years I have been collecting images to create a book of visual poems about childhood in New Zealand.  I have an idealized view of it as a Kiwi by choice but not by birth.  I know I had quite a Free Range Childhood in the Suburbs of Atlanta but America was not looking at all like the sort of place I could give that sort of an upbringing to my Sam.  That was one of the reasons we moved to New Zealand in the first place.   We eventually bought an organic farm in the Akatarawa Valley.  This was where my photography business started as I would record the beautiful children who would come and pick blueberries on our farm.  I got the idea to do the Blueberry Farm Kids book...but wasn't quite organized enough to get all of the kids I needed in one season (I was running the farm and an Environmental Education program as well as working at the Hospital and teaching myself photography....go figure.)  So this project I thought would take just one year has spread into four and I am keen to see the book published but I am finding that after organizing the images I have less children than I thought I had gotten for it and would like to get some more to round out the picture I was shooting for.  

Just click on the book below and you will be taken to a page that will give you all of the juicy details on how to sign your favourite littlie up for the book.

Photographing for Craft Sales: Lecture for Handmade

Happy Mother's Day Janine

Janine and Sophie came for a mother daughter shoot the other day and we had such a good time.  As per our usual pattern we started with Sophie and went out and had a great time in the last day of sun before it all turned to custard. We posed on Graffiti walls, in gardens, and old bricks...I really love petone.  We decided that a trip to the beach was in order when Janine finished her shoot only to be met by completely gale force winds.  They almost got sand blast facials by the end of it.   I think we lasted about 7 minutes on the beach in the end and were afraid we were going to take off like kites but it was good fun and then we ran back to the car to warm up.  Janine I think is more of a kid at heart than Sophie and she got back to her roots riding my bike around the mean streets of Petone.  I so love doing mother and daughter shoots....but it makes me miss my mommy......

A Chocolate Story and a Lazy Sunday

I love lazy Sundays.  There really is nothing better in my mind.  Once in a blue moon the stars collide and I am given a morning of decadence.  This morning I used it to play.  When I am given unstructured time...as rarely as that happens I find that I want to paint...either physically or digitally.  Today it was a digital painting day.   I am taking a digital illustration class to learn how to do vector illustration.  We were given an assignment to create a vector mascot for a food brand.  I started off wanting to do a bit of a piss take on the Honey Badger, but then realized that I really had no interest in illustrating a badger...and the whole reason I took the darn course was to be able to push my feminine drawings and create a modern take on the beautiful graphics of Mucha.   So I changed my mind and decided that I would do something to help the new chocolate boutique that opened a couple of blocks down from my studio.  I would create a poster for them featuring their chocolate.  Something beautiful and inviting and luscious.   Who better to be a model for it than the glorious Salacious Sugar herself.   So off we went on Saturday after my official shoots,  I draped Miss Sugar in some flowy fabrics we had around the studio and stuck her against a beautifully distressed wall down a side road in Petone.  Late afternoon sun reflected off of the wall in front and gave a very soft lighting.  Beautiful!  She looked like a goddess.  You would never have known that there were some sort of animal bones to her right, traffic driving past every couple of minutes, and random shoppers walking by.  It was good good fun.....and we got to eat the chocolate afterward.  Yummmy!  The Chocolate Story is the name of the boutique and it is a lovely wee shop down on Jackson Street In Petone.  YUMMMMMMMMMMYYYY you need to go in and try their Hot chocolate....delicious!  This is the first stage of the illustration, I now am going to try and convert it to vector graphics...Not sure I want to but I do want to make a vector frame about it.  I will post the final one when I have finished for you to have a look at. 

Jen and Jono | Engagement Shoot Wellington Royal Golf Club

Oh we had such a good time on this shoot.  Jono picked the site and I can't believe I haven't found this spot before.  How beautiful was the Royal Wellington Golf Club.  Stunning...but nothing next to our gorgeous Jen with her beautiful red hair.  This was my colour before it decided to go all gray in the front so I just looked lovingly at her and remembered when I was a red headed bride...Awwww. Her composer finance Jono has some seriously good taste not only in locations but in girls too.   We had such a good time and the weather decided to put on an amazing Indian Summer display...lucky us!

Pin Up Model For a Day Course

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