Proffesional and amateur photographers had a rare opportunity to hear from one of New Zealand's leading landscape photographers this week.
Andris Apse, not one to give many public talks, fronted up to audiences yesterday as a special guest at the Festival of Colour in Wanaka.
With a career spanning more than 30 years, work reproduced in The New York Times, National Geographic, New Zealand Geographic, Time and Newsweek, Mr Apse has published many successful books and won numerous awards.
Originally from Latvia he came to New Zealand with his mother when he was five.
He said this week he ''fell into photography'' when working for the Forest Research Institute as a map technician in remote areas of New Zealand, particularly Fiordland.
''I was awestruck when I went first there, a wilderness untouched for thousands of years, it really affected me emotionally.''
He has spent about 500 nights in a tent in Fiordland over 30 years to capture his award-winning emotive images.
''What I try to do in one frame is to show the location and the feeling of how I felt about that scene. It's the mood mainly, the emotional content that I strive to get.''
''It's not a snapshot where you drive past something and click and think that was great, it's something I plan to the absolute finest detail that I can.''
His best piece of advice to photographers was that the heart and mind were the true lens of the camera, ''in other words plan your photo and make it emotive''.
The greatest reward was not only being able to make a living from photography, but the responses from those who have seen his photos, Mr Apse said.
''I get a lot of letters but one that particularly affected me was from a young Japanese person who wrote in broken English to tell me one of my photos had profoundly affected him.''
-By Kerrie Waterworth
