Lost & Found #50: Te Whare Runanga at Waitangi, New Zealand, 2006

Waitangi. The word is weighted with meaning, in New Zealand at least, as the treaty between the Crown and the chiefs of the many Maori tribes was signed there in 1840, or at least a number of signatures were made there; and it's also home to annual celebrations on Waitangi Day (6 Feb) each year, which are sometimes controversial, or marred by protests against the government of the time.

But it's also now a scenic reserve, open to the public most of the year; and, in 2006 on a road trip with my parents (who were visiting en route back to Canada from a trip to Australia), I drove up north from Auckland to the Bay Of Islands area to see it...

PhotographyRobert CattoAugust 27, 2015Wharenui, Architecture, Building, New Zealand, Maori, Sculpture, Waitangi, Canon, North Island, Canon 1D Mark II, Lost And FoundComment

Lost & Found #42: Pointe-au-Baril Lighthouse, Canada

As it's Canada Day (if you factor in the date line, of course), I thought I'd post something from one of my visits back to 'the old country' where I grew up for today's Lost & Found.

This is from an area about 3h north of Toronto on the Great Lakes - Georgian Bay, to be specific, which is part of Lake Huron but practically a lake unto itself by any normal standards of measurement...

Lost & Found #41: Opononi, Northland New Zealand, 2006

Today's Lost & Found is going back to single images for a change - though in fact this is a stitched panorama of several frames, so in a way it's more than one! I was on a driving holiday in the Northland region in 2006, when we passed through Opononi (former home of Opo, the Friendly Dolphin!).

PhotographyRobert CattoJune 25, 2015Canon, Panorama, New Zealand, Photography, North Island, Opononi, Canon 1D Mark II, Hokianga, Lost And FoundComment

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...

Lost & Found #36: Wellington International Jazz Festival, 2004

As I mentioned in last week's Lost & Found, the Wellington Jazz Festival is about to happen again in a couple of weeks - so I thought I'd have a look back at some of the earlier editions when I photographed the event for them...

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.

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...?

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)!

Lost & Found #30: Dead Letters, Wellington 2005

As I mentioned in last week's Lost & Found, I didn't need a lot of convincing to work on Dead Letters, the short film we made in 2005. The film follows Ngaire (Yvette Reid), whose job it is to take letters from families during World War II and transfer them to microfilm before sending them overseas, to the New Zealand forces in Europe at the time...

Lost & Found #29: Dead Letters, Wellington 2005

In mid-2005, my friend Gemma Gracewood got in touch to say she was working on a short film called Dead Letters, with fellow producer Fraser Brown and director Paolo Rotondo, which was going to be shot in Wellington - and would I be interested in doing some stills for them...?

Lost & Found #27: Cuba St Carnival, Wellington 2009

Today's Lost & Found images come from an event I was just attending, rather than working on - the Cuba Street Carnival night parade in Wellington, New Zealand...

Lost & Found #17: Cotton Grass at Pointe-au-Baril, Ontario Canada 2006

I can't choose between these two at the moment, so I'm doing a double-post for this week's Lost & Found - hey, it's my website, right? I honestly don't know the true name of this plant, I think of it as cotton grass but it's a some kind of marsh grower.

PhotographyRobert CattoJanuary 8, 2015Canada, Canon 1D Mark II, Lost And Found, Ontario, Photography, Pointe au BarilComment

Lost & Found #13: Toetoe in Breaker Bay New Zealand, 2006

Another for the Lost & Found files: these grasses are one of those things that New Zealanders recognise immediately - though I'm sure someone told me recently they're actually not a domestic plant, they're South American pampas grass! I'm not sure about that - I think there are a few species which are similar, some of which are local to NZ - I just can't be sure which one happens to be in this photo.

PhotographyRobert CattoNovember 27, 2014Breaker Bay, Canon 1D Mark II, Lost And Found, New Zealand, North Island, Photography, Seatoun, WellingtonComment

Lost & Found #11: Lensbaby at Seatoun Wharf, Wellington New Zealand 2005

I was just saying in the last Lost & Found that I probably had more photos of the Ferns sculpture in Civic Square than anything else, but then I remembered this: Seatoun Wharf. I would walk down there every morning for many years in Wellington, just as a good way to start the day, but of course the light was nice, and I usually had a camera with me - probably one I was trying out, too.

PhotographyRobert CattoNovember 13, 2014Canon, Harbour, Lensbaby, Lost And Found, North Island, Seatoun, Wellington, New Zealand, Canon 1D Mark IIComment

Lost & Found #10: Neil Dawson's 'Ferns' sculpture, Wellington New Zealand 2004

Another sculpture is this week's Lost & Found, from my old home town of Wellington New Zealand. I've always been fond of Neil Dawson's Ferns sculpture, which hangs above the city's Civic Square in the centre of town - I was at the unveiling of it at the dawn ceremony to launch the 1998 New Zealand International Arts Festival, which was my first festival in that country not long after I'd arrived there.