Presenting at the New Zealand Photography Show
There’s something slightly terrifying about standing in front of a room full of photographers and saying, “Right, now I’m going to show you how I do this.”
This year I had the opportunity to present at the New Zealand Photography Show, with a live shoot followed by a live edit taking everyone through my process from beginning to end.
I’ve photographed people for years. Put a camera in my hands, give me someone to photograph, and normally everything else disappears pretty quickly. But doing it while a room full of professional photographers watches? That feels very different.
Sharing finished work is one thing. By the time someone sees one of my photographs, I’ve made all the decisions. I’ve chosen the image, edited it, changed my mind, probably changed it again, and eventually decided that I’m happy for someone else to see it.
A live shoot removes all of that protection. People see the awkward moments. They see you move something that doesn’t work. They see you change your mind. They see the frames that aren’t the frame. And when the people watching are other photographers, there’s definitely a vulnerability that comes with that.
You suddenly become incredibly aware of things you normally do without thinking.
Where am I putting the light? Why did I move her hand there? Is this actually going to work? And have I completely forgotten how to use a camera? But then something happens. You start shooting.
Once I had my camera in my hands and started working with my beautiful friend Karolina, who very bravely agreed to be my model, the nerves started to disappear.
I stopped thinking quite so much about the audience and started thinking about the photograph. And that’s when it becomes natural again.
You move something. You take a frame. You look. You adjust. You talk to the person in front of your camera. You notice the light.
And slowly you get into that familiar groove where you’re no longer consciously thinking about every little thing you’re doing. You’re just creating.
I actually think that was one of the most valuable things I could have shown.
A successful photograph doesn’t necessarily appear perfectly formed on the first click of the shutter. There’s a process to getting there. Sometimes it’s tiny adjustments. Sometimes something isn’t working and you need to change direction completely. That’s photography.
After the live shoot, we moved into the editing part of the presentation the following day. This was probably just as vulnerable as the shooting.
Editing is such an individual process, and over the years I’ve developed a workflow that has become almost instinctive. I know what I’m looking for and I tend to work through an image in a particular way without necessarily stopping to explain why I’m doing each step. Doing a live edit meant slowing that process down and taking everyone through it.
Starting with the image straight from camera, I could show how I assess it, what I notice first, what I want to change and, importantly, what I want the finished photograph to feel like. For me, editing isn’t about applying a magic formula. It’s about making lots of small decisions that gradually move the photograph towards the image I had in my head when I pressed the shutter. Being able to show that complete journey – from photographing Karolina live on stage through to the final edited image – was incredibly rewarding.
We see so much finished photography. Social media, websites, competitions and portfolios are full of polished final images, but we don’t often get to see everything that happened before them. And I think that’s where so much of the learning actually is.
The frames that didn’t quite work. The adjustments. The decisions. The experimentation. The moment when everything finally comes together.
Presenting at the New Zealand Photography Show pushed me outside my comfort zone, but I’m so glad I did it. There is vulnerability in showing other photographers how you work. But there is also something really special about being able to pull back the curtain and say: This is how I do it. It isn’t always perfect. It’s a process. And this is how I find my way to the finished image.
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