Hi there and welcome to the site, I hope you enjoy the images as much as I've enjoyed making them. The sites been in development for about a month and there are probably still things to do so please don't dispair if you find something not working, just mail me and let me know.
My name is John and although this site is named Living In NZ, I'm origonally from Scotland, born in Glasgow I moved to New Zealand in 2003 after deciding it was time to find a new job (I'm an engineer by day!) and I guess a new life, really the whole thing then is about my life in NZ and what it means for me, my family and the people I've met along the way, but mostly for me , it's about the stunning landscape that is New Zealand.
Until Moving to NZ I'd never taken photo's, well I'd taken snaps etc. but never real images. I really started photography about 4 years ago now after attending a course run by Tony Bridge (www.ThisTonyBridge.com) and I just got hooked on it. I'd gone to the course to try and find a way of chilling out and also meeting people, what I got out was a passion for making images that make people say.. ooo I like that , even once in a while.. wow! I like the fact that you have to be 100% involved in making the image, so you can't think about anything else... esepcially work (i.e. not my day job). It's been an escape for me then I guess and I've enjoyed almost every minute of it, not sure about it at 5am in the morning when its -15 but you get some nice images at sunrise I'll tell you.
It's an on going journey for me to get out and capture the perfect image. What is the perfect image?.. I guess it's different for everyone but for me it's one that wraps up the moment, the feelings, the sensations of what is happenign at that point. It doesn't matter if your capturing the awe of another stunning sunrise, the windswept hills or valleys or the look in someone's eye's the aim is to tell the story abotu how the subject of the image came into being, and how you as a photographer felt part of it. I've been told many times, that the photographer should show as much of themselves in the images as they do the image it's self, if that makes sense. I think for me, lately that has very much started to come to be and I hope that continues to grow and improve.
So yes, thanks for visiting the site, I hope you spend some time here taking in the images and hopefully enjoying them. Please feel free to contact me and let me know what you think!.