Since late 2019 I’ve had the honour to work with Maori Television. One of the great flag bearers for kiwi culture.

Recently we’ve made a series of still portraits with a couple of different looks for each person. The first inspired by the early 19th century paintings of Lindauer, the second (which I’ll cover in a later post) a more contemporary ‘edgy’ look for the news room.

Painting by Gottfried Lindauer which I used for light and colour references

The setup for this kind of photo is quite simple. I use a very large parabolic umbrella diffused with a ‘shower cap’ to camera left. There’s a white reflector on the right, and a bare bulb flash behind pointed at the background.

Speaking of backgrounds this one is a sculpture in the Maori Television lobby. I loved the way it drew from indigenous flax weaving (Raranga).

Setup showing the background at the Maori TV lobby.

Post-processing was done in a combination of Lightroom, Photoshop, and a favorite of mine: 3D LUT creator, which I used to match the tones of the photos to the original painting.

All photos were taken with a Lumix S1R with thanks to Lumix New Zealand
I used a Lumix S 24-105mm lens, usually between 80-105mm, f/4
The Lights are ad600’s by Godox