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We had a big night on Thursday night, opening an exhibition of ten prints at The Greenspace, a beautiful meeting venue in Te Aroha Street, Hamilton (NZ) that is operated by Annie Perkins of Groundwork Associates. A year ago I sat next to Annie at a dinner to celebrate a mutual friend’s graduation, and somehow the conversation turned to photography. One thing led to another, and Annie very generously invited me to exhibit some prints at The Greenspace. Although I was very keen to take up her offer, somehow pressures from my own consultancy work got in the way of me assembling the set of prints I wanted to put up.

Another chance encounter with Annie earlier this year finally spurred me into action, and once the exhibition got higher up my priority list, progress sped up. In March I fired a set of candidate images to Annie, and after some discussion we decided to use large prints of some of my recent images from Tongariro National Park in their main meeting room, with a selection of other images of New Zealand’s coasts and mountains spread through the rest of the venue.

Lance Enevoldsen from Imageland in Hamilton oversaw the printing of the selected images, which were all printed using archival inks on a heavy textured art paper. A few tips from Lance about how to fine tune the print files paid big dividends, with the larger prints of my more recent images showing just how extraordinarily capable the Sony A7RII is as a landscape camera. The largest print is over 1.3 m long, and although printed from a stitch-together of two images, shows a level of detail and subtlety of colour gradation that I would have previously thought only possible with a large format film camera.

The Greenspace is a gorgeous place to hang large prints, with big clean wall spaces painted in a neutral colour, a mix of natural and tungsten lighting, and oiled woodwork to complement the overall look. Annie and her team were fantastically energetic, organising display space, publicity material and refreshments, and we hosted three sessions over the weekend – separate events on the Thursday and Friday evenings, followed by an open day on Saturday that combined guided walks through the nearby Seeley Gully. We had lots of visitors, with many stimulating conversations about different aspects of photography and its use to illustrate New Zealand’s wilderness riches. A second open day will be held on Sunday 29th May – see The Greenspace link above for details.

In parallel to putting on the exhibition, I’ve also updated the blog to allow readers to order prints of a selection of images if they wish. Details of prints that are available for purchase and how to order them can be found under a new menu item at the top of this page.