One of the best parts of being an Auckland portrait photographer is working with other creatives. Recently, I had the opportunity to photograph Dasha, a talented fellow photographer who specialises in breathtaking couple and wedding photography. If you haven’t already, check out her work at Dasha Photo.

We met at the Auckland Botanical Gardens during the final days of cherry blossom season, and it turned out to be perfect timing. The gardens were alive with soft pink blossoms, vibrant greenery, and a golden evening light that added an ethereal touch to the shoot. Dasha brought such confidence and energy to the session—it’s always a treat to work with someone who truly understands light, movement, and composition.

The fleeting nature of cherry blossoms makes them feel even more special, and this shoot was no exception. Just a couple of days later, I returned to the gardens, only to find most of the blossoms had disappeared. It felt like we had captured something truly unique, preserving those final moments of the season in photographs.

Portrait sessions like this remind me why I love what I do. It’s about celebrating people and moments, especially the ones that pass by so quickly. If you’re looking for an Auckland portrait photographer to document your story, whether it’s at the Botanical Gardens or another stunning location, let’s make it happen.

Collaboration with stylist Sally Scott-Hopkins – Creative hair & makeup and colourful, studio portrait session with former Miss Universe Cayman Islands – Georgina Kerford. Myself, Sally and Georgina wanted to to see what kind of interesting looks we could create using various coloured backdrops and pairing the hair and makeup accordingly. The first look was a naturual, skin tones look, focusing on hair and a naturual, no-makeup look, then followed by a green a purple retro look, followed by a “Blue Iguana” inspired look with blue paint and a wet hair effect.

Collaboration shoot with Dragonfly Marketing – Artistic catalouge model photography for Swanky‘s Carnival costumes for the Cayman Islands’ annual carnival’s – Caymas + Batabano.

Although sometimes more challenging than family, couple or group photography shoots with multiple people to vibe off each other, portrait sessions can be so fun and creative like this beautiful session with Ying near Heritage Kitchen in West Bay, Grand Cayman.

The far end of Seven Mile Beach as in enters West Bay is perfect for a variety of beach town environments and shallow waters on the beach. As the beach curves North it also makes for some more interesting backgrounds with the sand, sea and sunset all behind the model, and on this occasion we had the perfect golden sky with pink clouds.

Although I still consider myself a “jack of all trades” when it comes to photography here in the Cayman Islands, I particuarly love commerical portrait shoots like this one. I worked with Ryde Cayman in Camana Bay, to create a catlouge of fun team/staff portraits, as well as professional images of their wild and colorful spin classes.

These ladies were a blast to work with. Not only we they enthusiastically sharing their creative ideas, but they would be so pumped whenever I showed them the images I had been capturing.

The light displays in their spin classes made some wonderful images, and paired with a softbox off camera flash captured the fun vibes of their classes whilst exposing a nice even light giving a professional look worthy of commercial photography.

Check them out at rydecayman.com

Seven Mile Beach Yoga Portrait Session with Kristina Shultsayte of Inlight Retreats.

I am a hybrid shooter, in that I shoot both photography and videos. This portrait session I was mainly focussing on video to create a cool promo piece for Kristina yoga retreat buisness. She works around the globe but the stretch of Seven Mile Beach during sunset made the perfect location for her yoga portraits and commerical video.

Studio photography portraits with Cayman Islands based Cuban Sax Player, musician and entertainer Denys Carbo.

Denys is an incredibly talented musician and possibly the most polite and friendly person I’ve ever met. It was fantastic to get him in the studio in George Town, Cayman Islands for these cool portraits.

After lockdown I was likely to be a bit rusty with portrait photography, it had been months since I had done any shoots or directing. This urban style photo session with Schilo was a great way to get back into the craft, with her experience in front of the camera it helped me get back into the groove and we got some cool images.

I wanted to get create images that were less typical of the Cayman Islands, and more like a city or urban model shoot. This spot at Carib Cafe in George Town worked perfectly with it’s colourful outdoor area and gave a variety of interesting angles for Schilo to pose.

As it was the middle of August we were in the rainy season, and quite soon into our shoot we had to hide undercover from a sudden downpour. Despite this we worked around the wet surfaces and images that don’t look typically like Grand Cayman.

After there we went down to the Kaaboo site near West Bay and I aimed to capture natural looking walking shots and some fun images on the beach. Looking forward to doing more shoots like this!

As a portrait photographer I’m always looking out for cool or interesting people to do portrait photography with. When I’m photographing one person alone I feel like I have more room for creativity, and when the subject has a passion like yoga, fire spinning or playing guitar then it gives then something to do in their photos without feeling too awkward, especially if they’re not an experienced model.

Though Andre is not an experienced model he has a cool look to him, and my aim was to get some authentic images that captured his personality and his passion for performing music.

Perhaps one of the most challenging kinds of photoshoots is one on one portrait photography, no friends or family members to help create the fun atmosphere needed to get genuine smiles and laugh. Even still I love doing photoshoots like this one where we got some cool portraits for a beautiful, young woman visiting Grand Cayman.

We got up early for sunrise so the usually busy Smith Cove was nice and quiet, we had the shore to ourselves and some wonderful golden sunlight shining through the trees.

As beautiful as Seven Mile Beach is I do recommend doing photoshoots somewhere like Smith Cove or South Sound Community Beach where there’s a lot more variety in backgrounds, the surrounding trees and the waves crashing against the ironshore make for some cool portraits.