Nostalgic Surf: A sunset photography workshop in partnership with Fujifilm
In October 2022, I joined up with Fujifilm New Zealand to offer a photography workshop in Papamoa, New Zealand. In this blog post, I’ll give you the TLDR from the event, outline the ideation and production processes and showcase some of my favourite stills from the event.
We invited established and budding photographers in the local community to come along, free of charge, and try out any Fujifilm gear they wanted. No hard sales pitch. Just good times making connections and getting playful with photography.
The intention behind the event?
To nurture collaboration between creatives, learn from one another, bond over everyone’s mutual fizzing for golden hour light, capturing some fun shots from a styled scene, get their hands on some Fujifilm gear (because online shopping for cameras just isn’t realistic) and hopefully go away with a few learnings to take forward into their creative or photographic endeavours.
A bit of background
In August 2022, Bingham invited me along to a casual photo meet up with the sales team from Harvey Norman Tauranga. It sparked my interest when he said there would be an old mustang there. I don’t know what it is about old cars, but they spark interest for me. I love how well-cared for they are, the attention to detail and clues as to the history of the object. Must like analog cameras, the design is simple yet beautifully complex at the same time.
Not to mention the fact I am super interested the 70s at the moment. It was the 80s for a long time but in recent years I’ve dropped back a decade.
The idea of exploring an object from the era had me saying a massive ‘YES’.
The car was incredible, a beautifully sexy red mustang. So polished, so evidentially well-loved and cared for that I felt I needed to ask the owner before I so much as breathed anywhere near it. The car demanded respect. Trying to capture that in a still image felt so unnatural to me though. It was so still. So opposite to the moving subjects in nature and portraiture that I am so used to capturing. Honestly I didn’t know what to do with the thing.
I was desperate to photograph a living, breathing, moving subject in there. So I told Bingham to go change his tee, grab his Mamiya analog camera and get the heck in my frame. Warren (legend from Harvey Norman Tauranga) is extremely knowledgable with lighting and, with his hands on the lighting tools, we got some shots I was stoked with.
How the idea was born
The next morning, Bingham and I caught up for an early morning coffee before work. We started throwing ideas back and forth - “how cool would it be to get a couple surf chicks, boards, an old car and. create a vintage surf scene somewhere in the Mount?” Remembering the early days of surf (before either of us were born lol) and indulging in our mutual fantasy of photographing a styled vintage surf scene. We both ended up going off into our day absolutely fizzing for the Nostalgic Surf event we had just planned.
Ideation development: How we transitioned from vision to production
This is probably one of my favourite parts in the creative process making my vision (and in this case, also Bingham’s) into reality. My job was to set up the scene - and then photograph it LIVE in front of an unconfirmed amount of people - no pressure at all.
1.First, I chose the models
This one was fairly simple. I did a shout out on Instagram and I chose the models based on personality and surf ability (in case we actually got waves). Luckily there are two wahine in my surf community who are super comfortable in front of a crowd and also great surfers. Jenna and Kiri were the perfect fit and I was so stoked to include them in this project.
2. Then I booked the car
We explored a few options for the car, but turns out my post natal doula’s partner has the perrrrfect surf wagon - a 1960s Ford Falcon. And he is a surfer so he could appreciate full intention behind the use of his car. He was in. Bingham and I were stoked. We’d have room to fit the board/s to create a compelling and authentic story.
3. Then the swimwear
We linked up with a local swimwear brand called Ilo Flow which makes eco-friendly active swimwear for women. Although a modern swimwear brand, Ilo Flo had some prints which I thought would look really cool in a vintage scene - a classic check which feels like 70s Dogtown vibes and a fun 2-colour floral. Ideally I would have loved cuts which were more reminiscent of 60s and 70s garments, but I was so pumped to support local so we borrowed some swimwear and returned it after the shoot.
4. The final touches
Maybe my fave part of the process has to be the final touches. After getting all the must-haves organised, this part is about the nice-to-haves. I hit up a local op shop and struck gold picking up a vintage leopard print one-piece, 70s print hand towel (which we styled in the hair) and a Super 8 camera.
Fast forward a couple months, and with some solid organising (and thankfully, sunshine on the day), our vision became a reality.
Bingham (Fujifilm) travelled down from Auckland with a couple Pelican cases jam packed full of Fujifilm gear (drool) and about 15-20 local photographers rocked up to come hang out, collaborate and shoot. Thank you SO much to everyone who came along, it was such a vibe with everyone there.
I’ll leave you with a few stills from the night. As always, my favourite moments were captured in the approximately 5 minutes available when the sun is low in the sky and has lost. its intensity, giving way to a soft golden glow.
