Screw the algorithm. Screw the blog content strategy. I’m just going to use this journal as - spoiler alert - a journal…

As I look forward to the new year, I feel excitement and zero regrets for the best and worst year of my life so far. While I typically wouldn’t go into very personal details about myself, this year I feel it makes sense to because it’s affected my work so monumentally. 2021 has been a mega year for me; I grew and birthed my little girl Lola, bought a house with my partner Mark (and subsequently moved house with a 10 week old baby), I’ve experienced the highest highs and the lowest lows of my life so far as I’ve…

While 2020 was the year that brought us many challenges as a global society, it marks a year of change. A year that, perhaps we’d all secretly been waiting for. How else could we sustain the rapid destruction to the planet that our modern lives involve? For a virus to destroy travel and air traffic as we know it, to give in and let nature run…

A romantic weekend getaway in the Coromandel turned into something even more unforgettable. Follow along in photos on our East Coast road trip and see the places we stopped along the way.

My name is Lou (@louloubphoto). I live in a beach town in New Zealand called Mount Maunganui, named after the extinct volcano just down the road. I’m originally from England but New Zealand is where I call home now. I work full time for a tech company and spend as much of my spare time as possible documenting the ocean and nature locally and across the region here in the North Island of New Zealand.

New Zealand. August 2019. It was time to escape winter for tropical climes.

Almost a year on, hopping on a plane to a small South Pacific island just three hours north of our home country, seems like a distant dream.

1 June 2020. The winter begins again…

On 13 March 2020, I headed down to Ohope Beach for the inaugral West End Wiggle longboard comp where I was set to shoot action both in and out of the water the following day on the 14th. Mark (my partner) and I headed down to Whakatane with our good mates Chris & Jess (and Jess’ frother of a Dad who was over from the US at the time) where we settled in for the night with beers, nachos and a few treats from…

But it turns out our wild adventurous souls were destined for grounding with a day on the land and in the shore.

We packed up the car the night before. The surf reports showed swell would be headed our way. But when we arrived at the beach on the cusp of the Coromandel peninsula - that we planned to have a cruisy day at on the logs - just before the break of dawn, the ocean told us it had other plans…

It took me 30 years to journey to New Zealand.

At 18,695km away, and the antipodal point to my home country England, United Kingdom, some might say it’s no surprise I hadn’t set foot on NZ soil yet.

In this journal post, I’ll share with you a little bit about where my passion for nature and photography began and how and why I started LouLouB Photo many years later...