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Blog Archive

Check out some of my recent work, and my essays on Photographing The Arts!

Lost & Found #40: Nico Hulkenberg at the A1 Grand Prix, Taupo 2007
Lost & Found #40: Nico Hulkenberg at the A1 Grand Prix, Taupo 2007

This week's Lost & Found is jumping back to a weekend in Taupo in 2007 - I was there to cover the launch of a (yet-to-be-completed) film about the life of Bruce McLaren, the great Kiwi grand prix driver, and founder of the McLaren Formula One team. 

But, it turned out that my accreditation was for the whole weekend of A1 Grand Prix action, so I stayed - and this weekend, the winner of that race won the 24h of Le Mans, along with a Kiwi driver (and another Kiwi came second), so I thought it was worth taking a look at those images again to see what I found...

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PhotographyRobert CattoTaupo Motorsport ParkGrand Prix, Taupo, New Zealand, North Island, A1 Grand Prix, Nico Hulkenberg, Loic Duval, Emerson Fittipaldi, Jonny Reid, Lost And FoundComment
Lost & Found #39: Glenorchy near Queenstown, New Zealand 2014
Lost & Found #39: Glenorchy near Queenstown, New Zealand 2014

Today's Lost & Found is a quick exercise in contrasting weather - the same scene in New Zealand's South Island just outside Queenstown, taken with the same camera & lens combination, just three days apart over the Christmas holidays last year.

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PhotographyRobert CattoPhotography, New Zealand, South Island, Queenstown, Glenorchy, Nature, Scenic, Landscape, Panorama, Lake Wakatipu, Mountains, Fuji, Fuji X-Pro 1, 35mm f/1.4, Lost And FoundComment
Lost & Found #38: Sonny Rollins at the Wellington Jazz Festival, 2011
Lost & Found #38: Sonny Rollins at the Wellington Jazz Festival, 2011

This week's Lost & Found post is from my last Wellington Jazz Festival - who are kicking off again today, over in New Zealand! 

Our major draw card in 2011 was a one-off concert with Sonny Rollins and his band at the Michael Fowler Centre. He may have been 81 (REALLY!?) at the time, but he put on a heck of a show - and as you'd expect from someone of his calibre, the band were top notch as well...

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PhotographyRobert CattoMichael Fowler CentrePhotography, New Zealand, New Zealand International Arts Festival, Jazz, Michael Fowler Centre, Canon, Canon 1D Mark IV, Concert, Live, Performance, North Island, Wellington, Sonny Rollins, Lost And FoundComment
Lost & Found #37: Wellington Jazz Festival, 2009
Lost & Found #37: Wellington Jazz Festival, 2009

The Wellington Jazz Festival of 2009 was quite a different beast from the previous festivals I've mentioned in the last couple of Lost & Found posts - this time, the management of the New Zealand International Arts Festival took on the programming and running of it, so the scale of production and calibre of performers was substantially different...

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PhotographyRobert CattoWellington Town HallPhotography, Wellington, New Zealand, North Island, Jazz, Concert, Live, Wellington Town Hall, New Zealand International Arts Festival, Canon, Canon 1D MkIII, Canon 1D Mark II, Lost And FoundComment
Apocalypse Theatre presents The Dapto Chaser - and you can help!
Apocalypse Theatre presents The Dapto Chaser - and you can help!

I posted a couple of weeks ago about a shoot I did with the guys you can see here - Noel Hodda, Jamie Oxenbould, Danny Adcock, & Richard Sydenham - for Apocalypse Theatre's upcoming show, The Dapto Chaser, coming up in July as part of Griffin Theatre's independent season. At that point the first image had just come out, but the social media campaign has (naturally) been continuing since then, so I thought I'd post a few more images that have been doing the rounds recently...

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PhotographyRobert CattoGriffin TheatrePhotography, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, Theatre, Griffin Theatre, Apocalypse Theatre, Dapto Chaser, Canon, 5D Mark III, 50mm f/1.2Comment
Vale Jack Body, New Zealand Composer & Arts Foundation Icon
Vale Jack Body, New Zealand Composer & Arts Foundation Icon

I was very sorry to hear yesterday of Jack Body's passing, in Wellington; he was a New Zealand composer of great talent (though he'd never admit to it himself), but also boundless energy and irresistible enthusiasm. Whenever I saw him, he always had a project on the go currently, and invariable one or two more waiting in the wings for when he had a free moment. (I honestly have no idea how he found time to write music, as well!)

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PhotographyRobert CattoNew Zealand, Wellington, New Zealand International Arts Festival, Composer, Music, Jack Body, North IslandComment
Lost & Found #34: Wellington International Jazz Festival 2002
Lost & Found #34: Wellington International Jazz Festival 2002

With the Wellington Jazz Festival set to return in just a few weeks, I thought I'd have a look back at a few of the earlier editions for the next few Lost & Found posts. I was their photographer for a few of the events - 2002-04, and on its rebirth in 2009 when the NZ International Arts Festival produced it for the first time...

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PhotographyRobert CattoJames CabaretPhotography, Jazz, Music, Concert, James Cabaret, Wellington, North Island, New Zealand, Canon D60, Canon, Lost And FoundComment
Apocalypse Theatre presents The Dapto Chaser
Apocalypse Theatre presents The Dapto Chaser

I'm really pleased to be working with Apocalypse Theatre again on their upcoming show The Dapto Chaser, by Mary Rachel Brown. We did a studio shoot recently for this promo / social media campaign announcing the cast for the show, which opens in July at Griffin Theatre as part of their Independent series...

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PhotographyRobert CattoGriffin TheatrePhotography, Theatre, Sydney, Australia, Apocalypse Theatre, Griffin Theatre, Dapto Chaser, Canon, 5D Mark III, 50mm f/1.2, Alien Skin Exposure 6Comment
Lost & Found #33: Arts Foundation of New Zealand Laureate Portraits, 2004
Lost & Found #33: Arts Foundation of New Zealand Laureate Portraits, 2004

In 2004, I was asked by the Arts Foundation of New Zealand to make a series of portraits of their Laureate award winners for the year - a disparate group of people from around the country, who had been nominated quite without their knowledge to receive this new award. They got a phone call out of the blue one day to say they'd won, there was no application process or requirement to produce work and report back - they'd simply been chosen because of their contribution to the country's culture.

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PhotographyRobert CattoGryphon TheatrePhotography, Wellington, New Zealand, Arts Foundation of New Zealand, North Island, Portrait, Artists, Jack Body, Ann Robinson, Derek Llardelli, John Pule, Barry Barclay, Canon 1D Mark II, Canon, Lost And FoundComment
Lost & Found #32: Orchestra Wellington Circus Proms, 2007 & 2009
Lost & Found #32: Orchestra Wellington Circus Proms, 2007 & 2009

I was Orchestra Wellington's photographer from 2004-2011, documenting concerts and rehearsals for them with a range of guest soloists alongside music director Marc Taddei, a marvellous conductor, and a hilarious guy to work with, too.

In 2007, General Manager Christine Pearce got in touch to say they were working with a circus school on a kids' concert, and would I like to photograph it for them - naturally I was intrigued, but I'm not sure I expected THIS!  Sure, why wouldn't you put hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of delicate instruments on stage with a flying trapeze, kids on unicycles, and stilt-walkers? What could possibly go wrong...?

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PhotographyRobert CattoMichael Fowler CentrePhotography, New Zealand, Wellington, Michael Fowler Centre, Vector Wellington Orchestra, Circus, Concert, Symphony, Live, Orchestra, Canon, Canon 1D MkIII, Canon 1D Mark II, Orchestra Wellington, Lost And FoundComment
Lost & Found #31: Dead Letters, Wellington 2005
Lost & Found #31: Dead Letters, Wellington 2005

This is the third instalment of my Lost & Found series dedicated to Dead Letters, a beautiful short film I worked on nearly ten years ago now - but the more I dug into the files from this one six-day shoot, the more I liked what I saw (if I may say so myself)!

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PhotographyRobert CattoGareth Reeves, Dead Letters, Paolo Rotondo, New Zealand, Film, Wellington, Yvette Reid, North Island, Short Film, Photography, Lost And Found, Canon 1D Mark IIComment