One of our lovely couples, Pepita and Ben were featured on a fabulous wedding website called Pre Owned Wedding Dresses. There’s heaps of wedding-style eye candy on this site – well worth a look…

We are looking for someone to join our small team in a post-production and editing role.  EXCITING!!

The position is for a minimum of 30 hours/week for a period of 6 months beginning in October, although there is the potential for further employment beyond this fixed term for the right person.

We are advertising both nationally and locally, and so far the response has been great.  We are asking those interested in the job to fill out our application form and return a hard copy to us so that we can assess all the applications together.  We will then conduct some face to face interviews mid September, with the successful applicant beginning work on the 3rd October this year.

If you are the right person for this exciting opportunity working within a small and highly successful wedding and portrait studio on Waiheke Island, one of the most beautiful places in New Zealand, please email Emma for a job application form.  Applications close on the 9th September.

I have been working on my new website for a wee while and am REALLY pleased to finally have it up online.  It’s quite a different look from the last one and has all new images on it as well as facebook and twitter links, so feel free to click through and “like’ my ‘Emma Hughes Photography’ page if you are a facebook-er.

The new site has loads of lovely wedding photos, as well as heaps of cute children’s photos, baby photography, pregnancy shoots, family portraits, couples photos, boudoir and body shots and of course a whole lot of individual portraits (never really know what to call these – ‘adult portraits’ just sounds kinda wrong!).

A new portfolio section we added this time around is a called ‘generations’ – these are a selection of the multi family portraits of extended family that we often do at Christmas and other holidays when everyone is all gathered together.  Waiheke is the perfect location for these extended family portraits and they are always really special, involving everyone from the smallest babies through to the great grandmothers.

Check out the new site HERE

The “Classic Portrait” was a newly added category at the New Zealand Institute of Professional Photography Iris Awards this year.  It was added after many requests for an award that was about REAL photography, not about how good you were at photoshop!  The following images were the ones that earned me a place as a finalist in this category…

Sometimes with the Iris Awards, you can figure out who the finalists will be in each category, but in the case of the Classic Portrait, I must admit that I had absolutely no idea that I was a finalist until they announced my name at the Gala Awards dinner!

It was a great surprise, and means a lot to me because being a finalist in this category recognises how good our studio is at producing great, authentic images that don’t need to be photoshopped to within an inch of their lives to be good.  Nice.

Congrats to the super-talented Mike Hill who took out the title of Classic Portrait Photographer of the Year

My winning wedding album this year was from the absolutely stunning wedding of Stacey and Zac at  Cable Bay Vineyards on Waiheke Island.  Their wedding day was charming and elegant, emotional, heartwarming and just flowing in love from everyone involved.  And. so. much. fun.   I don’t think I laughed as hard at any other wedding this season, it was just a wonderful day to be part of and I am totally stoked that I won the Wedding Album of the Year award with it! 

More awards prints to follow over the next few days, including the images that got me a place as a finalist for the 2011 Classic Portrait Photographer of the Year!

Wow.  Just returned from the NZIPP annual convention and Iris Awards where I was awarded the Wedding Album of the Year trophy for the second year in a row!  This year I also received another ‘bar to my masters’, and was one of three finalists for the Classic Portrait Category, a new category this year which celebrates a ‘straight’ capture, i.e., an image that has not been digitally manipulated like so many of the current awards images are.

The convention itself was fabulous – a real treat, with heaps of great advice and inspiration from some awesome speakers.  Will post more info over the next few days along with my successful awards images and the details of the wedding album pages for those that have been asking me on FB.  Until then though, you will just have to look at my smiling (and slightly ‘stunned mullet’) face…