Winter light fills the lounge of the Forest Lodge as kids play and tired parents attempt to relax on the morning after a friend’s 40th birthday party. Joe Harrison waited for the right moment as the children bustled around the lodge—a classic mountain hut originally built by the Mount Cheeseman Ski Club.

Steven Tallott and his daughter, Sophie, play around on an evening break during the summer harvest on the family farm. Joe Harrison had been hoping to document the harvest for several years, but the timing never worked out. Last summer, he got a text message from Steven’s wife inviting him out, and he jumped at the opportunity. “Just took three years,” he says.

Alana Thomas stands on her marae ātea, the open area in front of the largest meeting house, after completing the ceremony appointing her a judge of the Māori Land Court in the presence of her whānau and iwi. Her friend Te Rawhitiroa Bosch was there to document the event.

One of Simon Runting’s favourite photography subjects is the pāpango, or New Zealand scaup, a diving duck with a silhouette like a bath toy. “I like to drop in to Western Springs lake when it is raining to look for just this type of image,” says Runting. “These small ducks tend to look a bit grumpy when pictured head on.”

“I was walking down K Road on my way to uni one morning and noticed this woman sitting outside a cafe reading the paper with the most impressive boots I’d ever seen,” says Louis Macalister. He kept going but, thinking better of it, made a U-turn, struck up a brief chat, and took a couple of pictures. “I’ve never seen her again on K Road.”

The aurora australis forecast predicted an incredible display of the southern lights, so Ryan Domenico and a couple of friends decided to head to the highest point in the area: the summit of Single Cone, in The Remarkables. “It turned out to be the largest solar storm in over a decade and a night in the mountains we will never forget,” he says.

On an unusually calm day on Cook Strait, Ian Harrison was passing the time on the ferry. He took this picture with his phone with the sea framed within the window, making sure the lines were square. “Post-processing has proved to be a real challenge,” he says. “I’m used to using ‘proper’ cameras.”

These emperor penguins had been sitting on the pack ice for some time, while Richard Young glimpsed orca surfacing next to them. Finally, some of the penguins decided it was safe to get back in the sea. “Shortly later, they came flying back up out of the water,” says Young. After noticing one penguin jump up in this spot, Young trained his camera on it and waited.

Crispin Middleton was at home when he spotted this praying mantis grab a wasp and begin to chew it, still wriggling, face-first. He wanted to get a close-focus wide-angle picture of the action, but whenever he got too near, the mantis stopped feeding, and looked like it would drop the wasp. “We eventually found a distance both the mantis and I were happy with,” says Middleton.

Julie Chandelier has been photographing dusky dolphins off the coast of Kaikōura for four years, but this was the first time she’d witnessed them mating in front of her camera lens underwater. “They didn’t seem to be bothered by my presence at all, and they kept circling me for a few minutes,” she says.

Jason Grant was sitting watching a duck and her ducklings when the mother corralled them into a group. While her attention was diverted, a pūkeko stalked up, grabbed one of the ducklings and scampered away. “I was lucky enough to catch an image just as he looked back to see if he was being pursued,” says Grant, “or had got away with his crime.”

Anna Naygrow hangs out the washing at her tiny home on the hills near Wakefield, Nelson, where she lives with partner Christoph Riedel and daughter Molly. Braden Fastier first met the family in 2017 when they were building their tiny home. Six years later, he returned to see how they were getting on.

Brendan Taylor relaxes while James McMahon warms up during the 2023 NABBA Christchurch Classic Bodybuilding Championships. Kai Schwoerer was working on a photo essay on bodybuilding in New Zealand, and followed the athletes for the entire day of competition.

When George Heard got news of a young pilot whale that had stranded on a Banks Peninsula beach, he jumped in the car, not knowing yet exactly where the stranding was. He found members of the non-profit Project Jonah crew and locals attempting to refloat the whale, which was eventually euthanised.

On holiday in Auckland and strolling through the Samoa Village at the Pasifika Festival, Urlin Mulitalo caught the attention of photographer Dean Purcell, who was documenting people the festival for Viva magazine’s street style column. Mulitalo’s cousin Blessing (left) and brother Gideon (right) hoist an impromptu backdrop.

At a workshop held by the Christchurch Photographic Society, Nicola Jackson had the opportunity to work with a model, Georgia. Jackson had Georgia look through a piece of shower glass under natural daylight. “For me, photography is all about mindfulness and being able to leave all of life's challenges elsewhere,” she says.

Shannon—bartender, bouncer, and handyman—was out the back fixing the door of this Motueka pub when Louis Macalister walked past. “I think for these kinds of street portraits the challenges are usually the same,” says Macalister. “Gaining trust, building up the courage to actually approach people, getting a nice frame from an uncontrollable environment.”

Alana Thomas stands on her marae ātea, the open area in front of the largest meeting house, after completing the ceremony appointing her a judge of the Māori Land Court in the presence of her whānau and iwi. Her friend Te Rawhitiroa Bosch was there to document the event.

After spotting Annie at the Point Chevalier Bowling Club, Jessie Casson was struck by her sense of style. “A few weeks later, I approached her and asked to photograph her,” says Casson. The two began collaborating on a project “celebrating getting older with vitality and optimism”. The hardest part? Deciding on Annie’s outfit. “She had so many to choose from!”

In autumn, the leaves on the poplars in Wānaka turn bright yellow. Richard Young has been documenting this spot every autumn since 2017, and in this image, he frames the background trunks with the leaves of another tree in the foreground. “This photograph has come from knowing these trees and developing my expression of them,” he says.

Jeng-Shiang Lin spent eight nights alone in the muddy, cold Waipu glow-worm caves in order to make this picture. It took many evenings just to find the best composition. “I felt like I was in the world of the movie Avatar, spending several nights with these glow-worms,” says Lin.

Roger Wandless was on a camping trip to photograph the Fiordland landscape when a different subject captured his attention—or rather, demanded it. The swirling cloud and misty sunshine provided a dramatic backdrop to a circus of kea which arrived to investigate Wandless’s campsite—and divebomb him as he made this picture.

It could be an art gallery façade; instead, it’s a water treatment plant and storage facility supplying water to the city of Hastings. Alex McVinnie-Maidment arrived early in the morning to photograph one of the storage tanks at Waiaroha/Heretaunga Water Discovery Centre. Just as he had composed the image, a flock of birds flew into the frame.

Tori Harp was on her morning commute to work—on skis—when she caught sight of this frozen chairlift. A cold, windy morning combined with fresh snowfall had encased the chair in ice. “Luckily, I skied with my camera clipped to my pack, along with a telephoto lens,” she says.

On his way to meet his family in Hanmer Springs, Joe Harrison noticed these hay bales beside the road. “The sun was starting to set and the light was perfect so I stayed about 10 minutes shooting photos before leaving so I didn't miss dinner,” he says. The fence and road limited the framing of the shot, and he had only one lens with him—a 40mm prime.

When Danny Rood heard the news that a sperm whale had washed up on South New Brighton Beach—a rare event—he decided it was worth documenting the scene. When he arrived, diggers were cautiously moving the whale in advance of it being transported to a burial site. It was a damp, blustery November day, but Rood gambled on putting his drone up and captured this shot.

The Royal New Zealand Air Force’s No. 5 Squadron conducts a final P-3 Orion flypast over the North Island before the retirement of their fleet. Naomi James captured this image from the back seat of a T-6C Texan, shooting through the canopy as it rolled and inverted over the top of the P-3 Orions. Working with the heavy G-forces during the roll was a challenge, she says.

On a clear April morning, Mitchell Clark’s assignment was to document Wings & Water’s Cessna 206 floatplane for the Te Anau-based scenic flight company. “As fun as it looks to shoot from aircraft, it does come with its challenges,” says Clark. In his case, that involved photographing through a small gap in the front window from the back seat.

With a storm approaching, members of Youth Search and Rescue struggle to raise a radio mast ahead of a weekend of intensive training. Though it was February, it was cold and windy on the tops of the rugged Kaimai Range. “It was difficult even standing up,” says photographer Adrian Malloch.

Six miles off the coast of Kaikōura, photographer Simon Lucas found a pod of some 200 Dusky dolphins and decided to shoot upwards to capture “the dolphin’s perspective”. In two and a half years guiding dolphin watching trips in Kaikōura, Lucas has only encountered visibility like this once.

On a trip to summit Mount Tongariro, Rebecca Kempton passed by a rocky peak overlooking the South Crater, and a couple of members of her group decided to climb it for a better view. Just as they reached the top, the sun shone into the crater, and the cloud lifted in the valley below.

November 8 is the most important date in the Rātana Church calendar, marking the day the prophet Tahupōtiki Wiremu Rātana was visited by the Holy Spirit. Today, it’s celebrated by hundreds of people making the pilgrimage to attend the special service at Te Temepara Tapu o Ihoa, the pā’s temple. Many are dressed in blues and purples, colours of the Rātana Star and Moon.

In October 2023, thousands gathered in the centre of Aucklanders for a rally opposing the killing of Palestinian civilians in Gaza. It was to be the first of many protests after hostilities in the region began on October 7. “Negotiating the large crowd that had gathered was the most challenging,” says Dean Purcell. “With that many people, it is very easy to miss key moments.”

It started when Joe Harrison was pushing his newborn son’s pram around the neighbourhood: the idea of documenting Christchurch's two main rivers from their sources, through their urban catchments, and finally to the estuary where they meet and flow out to sea. Along the way, Harrison met various people who interact with the Avon River/Ōtakaro and Ōpāwaho/Heathcote rivers.