Jonathan Bourla is a fine art photographer, born in 1966 in London, England. Following education in Engineering Science at Oxford University, and some years in industry, his life took a change of direction in the early nineties.  Some time spent travelling overseas led to the decision to emigrate to New Zealand, to start a new life. Photography had long been a hobby, but Jonathan now decided to take it further.  Inspired by the works and teachings of the American Master Photographer Ansel Adams, he learnt Adams’ Zone System, and also the use of a large format view camera, which is similar to the plate cameras of one hundred years ago, where the photographer stands beneath a dark cloth to compose the image on the camera’s viewing screen. One interesting characteristic of these cameras is that the image on the viewing screen is upside-down and left-right reversed.  Jonathan finds this aids composition by simplifying the scene into forms and lines. The photographs convey an overall sense of lightness, and portray textures well.  This requires good detail throughout the tonal scale, from shadows through to highlights.  To obtain this characteristic, he usually photographs in the soft, enveloping, quiet light under cloud-cover at the end of the day.  This often results in returning, carrying heavy backpack and tripod, on dark hillside tracks by torchlight. Jonathan’s particular fascination has been the landscape of Auckland’s West Coast.  It’s an exciting and invigorating area that he loves, despite the fact the windy conditions there make photography with such a large camera challenging.  Shielding the camera from the wind is an effort. The physical prints for this current collection are made using a technique relatively new to photography.  This technique, also known in some circles as Giclée, combines long-lived pigment inks on the stable, naturally acid-free base of 100% cotton rag paper. Below are a small selection of works from the exhibition. Please note other sizes are available.