New Zealand Brewery

Hello! My name is Jonathan Bourla and I'm a fine art photographer. My forthcoming project "New Zealand Brewery" will be a fine art photographic expos� of breweries around the country. I'm very excited about this project. Social beer drinking is a big part of Kiwi life, but we only get to see the finished product. I've been quite amazed to discover quite a large number of breweries all around the country, set up by enthusiastic owners who love beer, and set up their breweries to create the beer the way they like it. My project will give me an inside look at breweries, and record what I find from an artistic point of view.

So far I have nine breweries who have given permission for me to photograph, and I am very excited about getting underway. The $1700 in pledges via Boosted will enable me to acquire the film and printing paper for the Brewery project - please donate here to making "New Zealand Brewery" a success.

The camera shown in the picture is my own and is my primary camera. It's made by an English firm called Gandolfi. As you can see it resembles something from a history lesson, but is still invaluable today for the type of photography that I do. I have had interesting responses from people seeing me photograph: a group of retired people out on a bus trip to Devonport's Northhead got excited on seeing a camera that looked remarkably like ones their grandparents and great-grandparents had. Another time a young boy ran up to me and asked if I had a proper camera hidden inside, and was the outside just for show?!

It must look funny for onlookers when I set up the camera, as I put a dark cloth over my head while I compose and focus on the camera's viewing screen. This can take quite a while. The time exposures with my camera also tend to be long. These range typically from a half a second to times in excess of an hour. I remember one time at Piha, on a hillside overlooking Lion Rock and the beach, that the light was getting dimmer, and I had to keep adjusting the exposure time. In the end it went on for much more than an hour. It finished just before the light had gone, leaving me to pack up and walk downhill by torchlight.

The Brewery project is a very important stage in my career. It builds on the "Romance of Industry" theme set by my previous collection, called "Hydro Electric". This is a fine art photographic expos� of New Zealand hydro electric power stations, in the warm-toned black and white that my work has.

You can see my work online at www.jonathanbourla.com , along with Artist's Statement and R�sum�. But please come back to me here at Boosted to donate to my "film and paper" fund for the New Zealand Brewery project.

Now for a bit of background information, for those keen readers and donors. In 1994 I made the decision to pursue fine art photography with determination. Motivated by a strong sense of self-directedness, this drive continued through even years battling Major Depression. Although I had thought my life prior to Fine Art Photography was unrelated, I think now that my photography may have been influenced, albeit subconsciously, by it. I studied Engineering Science at Oxford University, but after a few industrial years, life events led me to a reevaluation of goals and aspirations, leading to both emigration to New Zealand and pursual of an artistic life.

My photography and my photography career are incredibly important to me. Your donation here will be invaluable.

The techniques used in my photography are based at the first stage on Ansel Adam's Zone System. Ansel Adams, for those who haven't heard of him, was a wonderful photographer, from America, whose work and teachings provided the inspiration and foundation for my own photography. I know in this day and age it must seem odd to be using film cameras, let alone one looking like my Gandolfi, but there are very good reasons that I do so, as do other similar photographers. The Zone System lets you work out the film exposure and development - yes, you change the development depending on the scene being photographed. The next stage after developing is what I call the Interpretation stage, where I change the tonal distribution of the image, in other words how light or dark individual parts of the photograph are. I used to do this in the darkroom, but since 2007 I have done this digitally, using the same techniques, such as dodging & burning. I build up the effect very slowly. Then printing on lightly textured cotton rag paper with long-lasting pigment inks, for subtle yet detailed prints with good tonality. I have been inspired by an American photography movement and its photographers. They choose to create sharp photographs, with everything in focus, and where the dodging and burning etc are done seamlessly, not noticeable to the viewer. I also want the viewers of my photographs to have the impression the subjects are bathed in light. All of this is not as straight-forward as it sounds, and usually quite a challenge. The photographer who has influenced me the most is Howard Bond, himself a student of Ansel Adams. I travelled to America for tuition by Howard, and am very grateful for everything I learnt.

I hope that gives you some background information. Thank you so much for reading, and I hope I have convinced you of the value of my New Zealand Brewery project. If I have, please click on the "DONATE" button - Thank you so much for your generosity. If you have any questions, feel free to email me on jb@jonathanbourla.com . Website: www.jonathanbourla.com