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Vicki Leopold’s trio of images for the Samsung ‘When Screens Come to Life’ campaign each won a bronze for advertising concept at the One Eyeland Photography Awards 2019.

Auckland based commercial photographer Lee Howell is passionate about creating portraits that capture a person’s true character. So when Strategy Creative offered him a chance to work on a portrait driven campaign for Canterbury Medical Research Foundation (CMRF) he knew it would be the perfect fit.

Many photographers know the feeling; when you can just see a striking photo as it happens, but the stars haven’t quite aligned and you didn't have time to line up the shot. This is how Derek Morrison was feeling about an image he’d been trying to capture for a long time – a close-up shot of a sea lion surfing a wave. One day, he was out trying to capture that shot, and a cheeky sea lion called Vega made an appearance.

The International Photography Awards aren’t a walk in the park. You’re up against the best of the best photographers from all around the world. But in October 2018, Manja Wachsmuth received some of the most exciting news in her career. She’d been awarded an honourable mention in the food advertising category of the 2018 International Photography Awards for her work for Miele Australia.

Māori culture is something photographer Birgit Krippner has immersed herself in over the last five years. During this time, she’s not only been working on a long-term project photographing Ngāi Tūhoe — a Māori iwi located around Lake Waikaremoana — she’s also been asked on multiple occasions to shoot for The New York Times to document stories that discuss Te Reo Māori.

We’ve all heard the saying, "World famous in New Zealand." Troy Goodall’s recent shoot for mobile and broadband brand Skinny very much plays on this concept. With the ad campaign aptly titled Almost Famous, Troy photographed a series of portraits capturing the namesakes of Jackie Chan, Michael J. Fox, and Clint Eastwood — not the Hollywood movie stars, but the Kiwis with the same names.

Wellington based advertising photographer ​Joseph Kelly​ was recently given the task of capturing the natural beauty of New Zealand for ​Taste Pure Nature​. The brief was fairly loose, giving Joseph a lot of creative freedom, but it was vital that he deliver a cohesive series of images portraying various aspects of the brand for numerous marketing uses.

​If you didn’t already think the concept of kokedama was unique enough, try hanging kokedama. Photographer ​​Larnie Nicolson​​ was recently given the opportunity to photograph the kokedama-making talents of Coraleigh Parker, for the book that Coraleigh authored called Hanging Kokedama: Creating Potless Plants for the Home.

​It was at the time that Maegan McDowell was watching season seven of Game of Thrones. The quote “What is dead may never die” lingered. Maegan, who works in the floristry industry, had been bringing flowers home and letting them dry in her studio, so the concept of something dead never dying resonated. Stemming from this, the concept for her very first solo photographic exhibition came to life: The Rebirth of Flowers.

During October, also known as Breast Cancer Awareness Month, you likely saw this series of photographs throughout digital and print media — from television commercials to bus stop posters. They no doubt stopped you in your tracks. The artwork you were seeing was photographed by Steven Boniface, with art direction by agency Colenso BBDO’s Emily Osborne.

​It’s not every day that a photographer gets to capture the endangered New Zealand long-tailed bat (pekapeka-tou-roa) in flight. In fact it had never been done until Chris Hillock was assigned the task of photographing the native bats for the Department of Conservation’s (DoC) upcoming awareness campaigns.

There are peeling weatherboards and grimy concrete walls in need of a waterblast, pockmarked parking lots, squat motels and low-slung windowless pubs where a single fluorescent light burns over the door. Suburban and small-town New Zealand fosters a particular kind of architectural ugliness, and Auckland-based photographer Mark Barber is recording its details.