An appreciation for engineers and engineering
Representing the excitement of technology
I specialise in engineering photography. That’s the only form that I offer commercially. (I do enjoy other forms of photography, but as a hobby). That includes production plants, machines (stationary or mobile), materials handling (manual handling, automated), engineers & operators at work, engineering landscapes (mines, forestry, agricultural engineering), and close-up views of technical features.
Engineering photography requires an engineering mindset to be able to appreciate the technical intent of the subject, and a photographic eye to extract interesting compositions.
As a professional engineer I enjoy the creativeness and energy that goes into the development – and operation- of complex technical systems. And I enjoy the challenge of capturing that on 2D photographs.
Engineering machines and people
Representing machine capability
Vehicles and mobile machines are designed and built for a particular purpose. Representing that functionality in an image is a special form of photography. Composition and technical photographic skills make the difference here. I call this machine portraiture.
Similarly the people who design, build, and operate the technology have a story to tell about their attitudes. Pretty much everyone I encounter who is working in engineering loves many aspects of their job. So I also do professional portraiture, which seeks to capture moments of people in the workplace.
Engineering at the small scale
Small features of technology
Macro photography makes small features visible. This can get down to sub-millimetre sized features. Or the techniques can be used to isolate one feature or part within a larger machine, perhaps some special feature of the design.
If you need images at the next level down, that requires microscopes. I can facilitate, through separate contract for service, access to optical microscopy, electron microscopy, and even atomic force microscopy.
Engineering heritage
Technology of the past
Where I can, I am happy to provide pro bono photography to support the documentation of engineering from the past.
Scope of works
Range and type
I primarily work in the Christchurch, North and South Canterbury areas. Further afield by arrangement.
The type of engineering disciplines I cover are manufacturing, production/operations, extractive, materials handling, electrical, electronic, construction & infrastructure (vertical and linear), process, engineering design offices, agricultural technology, biomedical/clinical engineering.
After the photographic shoot, I will typically post-process the images to clean them up. Then the images are over to the client. I do the image acquisition – I don’t offer detailed editing of pictorial elements within the image, i.e. high level artistic photoshopping.
Somewhat out of scope is consumer product photography, event photography, or artistic architectural (other than the engineering aspects). There are many other photographers who do a better job than me at those aspects. I just focus on the highly specialised area of engineering photography since that is where my background and passion lie.
