Being recognized by the photography industry is always great but to be recognized by the camera brand that you use is something special.

https://www.iamnewzealand.co.nz/wayne-boardman

I pour a lot of time, effort, dedication and money in to what I do to showcase this amazing country New Zealand, that we now call home.

5 years ago when I stood at a beach in Torbay on Auckland's North Shore and watched the most amazing sunrise unfold, I took pictures on my Nikon D40 and then edited them in snapseed on my mobile phone and posted them on a fairly new social media platform call Instagram.

From that moment on I knew I had to get better and began exploring software and other hardware solutions, I became fascinated with long exposures and as a birthday gift received a B&W 10stop filter and after weeks of trail and errors managed to get an image that I could post.

I quickly outgrew the Nikon D40 and purchased a used Nikon D90 and at the time was still shooting with kit lenses and a tripod with a leg that had masking taped up as the locking mechanism was broke, but that did not deter me from going out to capture sunrise before work and sunset after work, I was hooked.

In December 2013 I entered a photo competition from the local camera store and won the landscape category, the winning prize was a Canon camera, I was able to swap this for a Nikon D7100 and then things grew from strength to strength.

2014 was a crazy year from organizing and running meetups to traveling with my job around the North island but still finding time for the photography and spending as much time in the outdoors as possible.

2015 started off with another upgrade, to my current camera the Nikon D810 this was an expensive purchase as at the same time I bought all new lenses as well it was getting serious.

I made my first trip to New Zealand's south island and spent week's traveling around the very frequented locations with a camper van with good friends and learned so much about photography and photography business.

2016 was a turning point and my photography started to take a turn away from long exposures to the art of photography its self and learning how to shoot other genres and has been so good, another long trip to the South island helping out on a photo-workshop cemented how I want to continue in the field.

2017, what a year so far, so very diverse in many ways from photographing warehouse spaces to shooting from the tops of New Zealand's tallest building to portraits and purchasing a full studio set up and a drone its been awesome so far.

So many people to thank on my journey to date, mainly my wife Joanna without her constant support, understanding and push this wouldn't be possible.

 Photogear for their continuous support in equipment from filters to tripods and lighting.

Nikon New Zealand for support in equipment and for showcasing my work to the world.

And last but by no means least all the amazing people I have met along the journey,  special thanks to Bev for being so kind and generous before she moved South.

Paul Reiffer for constantly being a huge inspiration, mentor and Friend.

Anupam Singh for diversifying my photography and approach to being different and thinking differently.

And all the Nikon ambassadors in New Zealand whose work is spellbinding and amazing Chris McLennan Mike Hollman and Esther Bunning