I have known kate and her family for a few years, so when she told me she and her partner Matt were engaged, and asked me to shoot an engagement session for them, I jumped at the opportunity. She lives on a small farm in Whiteman’s Valley, Upper Hutt, so I decided to head out there to use the property for the e-session. We picked the right evening for it, but I didn’t realise how much shorter the days had become over the last couple of weeks, so the light was disappearing quickly and we had to work fast!

We made the most of hay bales, the tractor (which they REALLY wanted photos with), their private creek running through the property, and empty rural roads. We had a lot of fun, and it was a nice way to send them off on the three-month trip to the UK that they were leaving for the next day. Enjoy, and please feel free to leave them a comment!

Last Thursday I went to do this newborn photo shoot of seven day old Kahu-Ariki. At seven days old, he should pretty much just be eating and sleeping, which mum assured me he usually did. On this particular day, though, he wasn’t in the mood for sleep. During the three hours I spent with Ariki and his mum and dad, he must’ve only slept for a total of about 15 minutes! He was just wide awake and wasn’t interested at all in sleeping or posing for me.

Fortunately, we still managed to get some beautiful portraits of him with his parents. He thanked me by peeing on me, and then finally went to sleep so I could quickly get a few images of him with his eyes shut.

Here is my latest updated collection of HDR images. I have been experimenting with a few different techniques (not to mention having a play with my dream camera – the Nikon D3).

If you’re not aware, HDR is short for ‘high dynamic range’, a photographic technique used to blend multiple exposures of the same image to create a final image with lots of detail in the whole image. No more blown out skies or underexposed shadows. It’s not everyone’s cup of tea, but I like it.