If was an absolute delight to be back photographing the NZ Aria. After a couple of years out of the the Sir Howard Morrison Performing Arts Centre due to earthquake refurbishment and then 2 missed years due to COVID-19, it was fitting that the first performance in the new facility was the Lockwood NZ Aria.

The guest artist for the evening was Rotorua’s own Christian Thurston, who I have photographed on this stage since 2006, including as a competitor in a previous NZ Aria.

The young talent on display is always amazing and uplifting. The winner in the end was Emmanuel Fonoti-Fuimaono with Michaela Cadwgan runner up and Samuel McKeever in third place.

Images from the night are on the NZ Aria 2022 Gallery page.

From a technical perspective, this was the first show that I have photographed with a mirrorless camera, specifically the Nikon Z9. I used this with my old Nikkor AFS 70-200mm F2.8 VRii on a FTZii adaptor. The huge advantage is the totally silent operation as I always felt conscious of the shutter and mirror sound on my DSLRs.

Issues for me were the EVF which is just not as nice as an OVF – preview with auto white balance was quite different to the stage lighting colour temperature which made me feel a bit detached. Banding with LED lighting on stage was an issue but largely dealt with by turning on flicker reduction. This could be fine tuned further with some work. All images were captured with manual exposure making batch output from Lightroom as quick and efficient as possible after editing one and using those settings to creating a preset to apply to all others.