About Paul Kettel

I was born and raised in Auckland, New Zealand where I continue to reside with my wife Robyn and daughter Melanie. Although having travelled widely, Auckland is a place that I feel most comfortable and provides me with a good balance of work opportunities and access to landscape and wildlife photography subjects. My interest in photography grew with my love for surfing and windsurfing, which increasingly took me into environments that I felt needed to be captured with the camera.

My camera allows me to connect in a very personal way with the world around me. It is a conduit that allows erroneous noise and detail to be stripped away allowing me to produce my view of a subject in its purist form. It allows me to freeze time and present a subject or idea that can be studied allowing insights that are sometimes impossible or very difficult observe in "real-time". A bird caught mid turn, at a fraction of a second, with feathers rippling where the physics of gravity and lift are fought. The patterns that emerge from surf breaking on the shore compressed through a long exposure.

To me a photographic image is not complete until it is realised in the form of a print. A print completes the image creation process and gives a tactile and tangible entity that is becoming rarer in this "digital world". My favourite material for printing is either canvas or heavy weight fine art rag paper.

The best thing about photographing nature is being outdoors. Generally in locations that are remote, isolated and raw. I live and work in a city. Photographing nature gives me reprieve from the urban world and allows me to recharge and reconnect with the world on a simpler less chaotic level.

I'm fascinated by the concept of edges. I'm often shooting on the edge of day, the coast where water meets land or animals transitioning between air, land or water. I have always loved to be by water, it would be difficult to live remote from a place where land meets the sea. The best times of day for me are at the beginning and end, be it surfing at dawn or walking my dog at dusk. Maybe it is this place of transition that most engages my curiosity.

Colour dominates my photography. The world we live in is full of colour and that's the way I see the natural environment. Part of the challenge is to tame the colour and present it in a way that doesn't overwhelm. I try to achieve this by limiting the colour palette within my images. Some of my favourite images are very limited in tone, sometimes a single colour, or have a couple of complementary colour bases. - ©2007-2009 Paul Kettel. All rights reserved.