Photographer: Andris Apse

When it comes to a creative career, photography has got to be one of the leading choices. With digital photography now open to almost everyone with a few hundred bucks in their back pocket it seems anyone can have a go.

While beginners may not be able to earn any money from their photographs, many photographers are making a good living having never been formally trained. Among them is Andris Apse, the renowned New Zealand landscape photographer.

Apse was born in 1943 and arrived in New Zealand from Germany following five years in a refuge camp. He was just six-years-old when he arrived with his mother Kamilla to live in Pahiatua and Auckland before eventually settling in Paihia.

A turning point for Andris came in 1961 when he began working for the New Zealand Forestry Service in the South Island as an 18-year-old. He ended up at a research station in Rangiora and one day found himself in beautiful Fiordland.

“Once I got to see Fiordland I started taking pictures,” he says. “I just fell in love with that sort of scenery. I decided right there that I had to do something to record it. I wanted to show people what it was like, how wonderful it was and how it affected me. I thought photography is one of the ways to share it. Especially as I couldn’t paint.”

From that humble start he has gone on to win awards such as the Olympus 17th Anniversary Photographic Competition and the Gold Award in the Pacific Asia Travel Association travel photograph category.

“I didn’t know a thing about optics or films. What I have achieved has been down to experience and intuition. I didn’t really think of the business side of it which was stupid really.”

While he did complete a course on the theory of optics at Canterbury University, Apse has had no formal training as a photographer.

“I gradually became super critical of my landscape photography and realized that a lot of what I had taken was crap.

“I would look at my photos and think that’s not what I saw’. I would see something magic when taking the photo. But the print would be just a wide angled picture of a landscape. I didn’t know what was going on and it made me realize that I really had to narrow it down and analyse what it was that attracted me to that scene in the first place.

“Then I would have to isolate it and extenuated it. And that’s what you use weather conditions, seasons and the sun for.”

Apse has embraced digital photography although he’s the first to admit that he has ruined