Adventure Magazine 226

At SUNY Plattsburgh was where I grew my appreciation and
understanding for the outdoors. It was a cold place, getting
to -30ºC sometimes for days or weeks at a time.
And yet every snowstorm, rainy day or rough weather day, I
was around the campus taking pictures.
Being at this school allowed my excitement for photography
to come back and the studies were going well. I spent a lot
of my free time outdoors and found new crews of people to
go adventuring with. Same story and same routine of going
out together, doing some awesome extreme sport, capturing
photos and sharing them with the friends on the trip.
People liked them...but not much more than that.
Sometimes they would occasionally share them on social
media and they’d say thank you but it didn’t seem like the
photos fully grabbed their attention. I knew what I was after
all along in sharing this human connection with others, but
I started to feel like it was ironic that these photos weren’t
really shared beyond myself and the person in the picture.
I wasn’t sure if it would go anywhere.
Again my interest in photography ebbed and flowed, I
graduated university to become a teacher and had my
sights set on coming to New Zealand and teaching here.
After two years teaching in NYC, I found a job in Auckland
and began my New Zealand career.
I immediately fell in love with this country and decided to
find fellow adventurers like myself. I knew New Zealand
had so much to offer in terms of untamed wild and I
couldn’t wait to explore it. The trouble was I read stories of
international hikers thinking they knew it all in the NZ wild
and giving solo hiking a go, only to get into trouble and have
to get rescued.
I wondered how to find a group that I could safely go with to
learn about the outdoors here. I found a social adventure
company based in Auckland and started going on trips with
them. I quickly fell in with this group and went on hikes and
snowboarded just about every weekend I could. It seemed
like the group for me.
Much like at home, I knew to always bring my camera with
me on these missions. I would of course focus on the
dynamic scenery, but as I started to form friendships with
people in the group, I noticed how easy it was to get them to
be in front of the camera for me.
Sounds familiar.
I quickly realised how effortless it was to leverage the
friendships I was developing in order to obtain these candid
photos.
We would have so much fun on our adventures and the
camera never seemed to get in the way, so I really felt like
I could get up close and personal to my friends in these
moments and create photos that showed what it was truly
like to be out in the New Zealand outdoors.
After each trip, I’d post the photos to social media and more
and more comments came in. I noticed people would save
them as their new profile pictures or share them with family
and the pictures would even get featured on the social
adventure company’s website and social media pages.
I was onto something once again, this time it felt different
because my pictures were being seen by more eyes and
being shown around the country to other adventurers.
What was similar about this situation to my photography at
home in the States was we were outdoors and having fun
together.
Those seemed like they were key ingredients to a
memorable trip and I realised as long as my friend group
and I were having fun on these trips, the content I produced
would reflect that.
I kept going on more weekend getaways and was exposed
to more and more adventure sports New Zealand had to
offer. I started learning how to prepare for and do overnight
hikes, and my adventures in the country grew more and
more extreme.
All with my camera by my side.
In the past three years of being in this country, I have
amassed a wealth of knowledge about the outdoors here
and engaged with incredible athletes and everyday people
while they pursued their hobbies and seeked to achieve the
benefits that come with being an adventurer.
I am happy that all of this time I have been able to be right
beside them in their journeys and figured out a way to
insert myself into sometimes very personal situations and
moments of achievement or even failure.
I have been lucky to shoot photos in the outdoors just about
every weekend since I arrived here, and everything I had
learned thus far would prepare me for my latest and most
intense adventure to date, hiking a portion of Te Araroa, the
NZ long trail that goes from Cape Reinga in the north island
to Bluff in the south island.
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If there was a time I needed to remember the hiker’s
mantra, it would be standing at the lighthouse at the Cape
up north, looking down the coast to the start of the track.
On New Year’s day 2021, eleven brave hikers and I set out
to walk the first major leg of Te Araroa for 10 days, from
Cape Reinga to Waitangi. This trip was slated to be the
hardest and most dynamic one I had ever done to date.
All of that time outdoors with my family and friends prepared
me for this adventure, and all of the practise getting in
people’s faces during the adventures and taking photos
would come handy here because I made it my personal goal
to document the hike for everyone with my camera.
I had never hiked with so much camera gear, 10kgs to be
exact, let alone hiked for more than three days at a time...so
much of what happened on this trip was entirely new to me.
Top to bottom: My Te Araroa hiking crew at the Cape...before we got sandy!
Looking south onto Te Araroa and 90 Mile Beach, from the northern edge
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