Two Years of Drone Photography

After two years in business a lot has happened, but it feels like just the other day that I’d woken up mad early and driven through the rolling fog of the Coromandel to Hot Water Beach for my first flight.

Photography has a wild capacity to evoke emotions and memories and, being a sentimental creature, whenever I’m asked for custom duos, I love looking at all the photos I’ve taken to curate a new pairing and it takes me right back. Whether that’s to the time I went to Whale Bay in Tutukaka and saw this gorgeous paintbrush of green/blue under the water or driving to Piha after work in summer with C and having so much fun that we completely forgot we’d worked at all that day.

Starting my photography business

There have been heaps of shoots since then, every one of them memorable for their own reason, but the first week shooting in the Coromandel lit a fire that burned all the way to Rotorua where I couldn’t sit still because I just wanted to get back to Auckland and my second screen to edit, set up my print files and publish my store. As much as the fire was lit, it was almost completely doused when I realised I had zero idea how to work photoshop which was, in my eyes, pretty much failing at the first hurdle and I thought it was karma for repeatedly talking to graphic designers about ‘pixel sizes’ on my creative briefs in the past. No regrets there though.

Luckily, at the point where I was going to break my work laptop, N came home and showed me how to place an image onto an art-board and my business’s future was saved. It was probably one of the most simple-yet-not-obvious-to-a-beginner things that I was struggling to do and whilst I wanted to just be able to do it and work it out on my own, asking for help got me there so much faster and was way less stressful.

I’d already chosen who to run my print store through, Queensberry based in Auckland, so this was the simple part. I still use them for all of my New Zealand print orders because their quality and service is so so great and their stance on sustainability fits right in with mine. Once I’d gotten this up and running, the next stage was to launch it, something that I thought I would just do and not tell anyone that knew me about because the imposter syndrome was absolutely out of control at this point. Clearly no way to launch a business and not the route I went down else I doubt I’d be here typing this two years later.

I’ve since learnt that people are generally extremely kind, encouraging and excited about others starting something new, with a few exceptions that make the rule, and that if you’re excited about something you should share it. The amount of people I’ve met that share the same passion is amazing and they’ve made my journey as a photographer these past two years so much richer.

Heres to the next 2 years. And more.

ps. This blog's thank you is to Cara for checking my test print files because I had no clue and didn't want to ask the printers. Eternally grateful for the laughs and lack of judgement.