Neil Fitzgerald: Wildlife photographer
I've had an interest in photography and the outdoors since childhood. When given my first SLR (a Pentax Spotmatic) as a teenager, I set out to document the natural world surrounding home near the world famous Waitomo Caves. As is often the case, initial results were disappointing, to say the least. However, practice, patience and perseverance have led to a large and growing collection of quality images of New Zealand wildlife and landscapes. Patience might be the most important skill of a wildlife photographer, and it is often tested by the hours spent waiting uncomfortably in cold wet mud and the like, hoping for the opportunity to capture wildlife expressing interesting behaviour in beautiful light. I have a particular interest in birds but also enjoy exploring the macro world of the more easily overlooked but extremely important and interesting components of New Zealand's fauna, such as spiders, insects and other invertebrates.
I started photography with colour transparency film, but moved to a complete digital workflow in 2005. It is unfortunate that "digital" and "Photoshop" have, to many people, become synonymous with the creation of fictitious photo illustrations. The modern tools of photography give us the opportunity to produce images of the natural world of incredible quality, and some which were simply not possible to capture at all with older technology. Paramount in the processing of all of my photos is the aim of producing an image that is faithful to the original scene, as it was for a moment through light and lens.
My photographs have been used in magazines including New Zealand Geographic, as well as books, websites, calendars and more. I hope my photographs are able to convey some of the beauty in nature, in even the least likely of subjects, and ultimately instil in the viewer a greater appreciation of the need to conserve what we can of our environment.
I have a BSc in environmental science, and when not obsessively pursuing new photographic opportunities I work for a crown research institute on a wide range of terrestrial ecology projects.
— Neil