Robert Catto, Photographer
I’m a Canadian-Kiwi photographer in Sydney Australia, specialising in performing arts, live events, editorial and corporate / commercial work.
Just a quick note to say I can’t believe it’s been twenty years today since the premiere of Peter Jackson’s King Kong, at the Embassy Theatre in Wellington!
I was an accredited photographer in the media pen that day (as I had been for several previous premieres of Peter Jackson films by then), and knew by this time to get there early to have the view towards the cinema along the red carpet; and, as ever the sun came out and gave us all incredible lens flare when looking back towards the stage—but eventually it set…
Recently it was the 50th anniversary of A Chorus Line, the famous musical based on actual stories from performers working in the industry, their lives, their fears, and the challenges of getting that job and then actually DOING that job.
I photographed the Darlinghurst Theatre Company production in 2020—having flown back from my father’s funeral in Canada to be in Sydney for the dress rehearsal, only for the borders to close and theatres shut down just in time for their opening night—and again in 2021 when the show actually managed to happen, with an almost entirely different cast than the first version I’d seen a year or so earlier…
Essays from around the world by a collective of photographers.
New Zealand’s least-known, world famous producer/director/actor.
It had been nearly twenty years since my last visit to Spain (or indeed Europe) when we went to Madrid last October. On my previous trip, I had carried one camera and two lenses, but that time it was film—a Hasselblad X-Pan II, which meant I was able to take ultra wide panoramic images everywhere I went; which also meant finishing a roll of film twice as fast as usual.
This time, Fuji had recently brought out the GFX100RF with its massive sensor and ability to crop to that same 65:24 ratio, and I really REALLY wanted one. But…for 1/8th the price, I decided to try the Sigma 17-40mm f/1.8 lens on my current Fuji X-H2 body instead, and see what that zoom range and lens speed would let me do, partly as a simulation of the 100RF’s lens and in-camera crop range, but also as an opportunity to test out this lens and see if it might suit my theatre work as well when I got back…