Steve was born in Christchurch New Zealand in 1981, and since his early teens has aspired to be a photographer.

Brought up alongside New Zealand’s native forests and the oceans, in the core of an ancient extinct volcano, Steve developed as a nature lover and explorer. His passion for photography started with a fascination, as a child, for wildlife documentaries that his grandmother would record for him to watch.

Walking around on the lookout for birds and wildlife, Steve started observing and then imagining himself as a storyteller. He wanted to be the man behind the camera, making beautiful pictures.

In his final years of high school he took Photography as one of his bursary subjects, hoping to gain one of the very limited spaces at the Christchurch Polytechnic Professional photography school. Not only did he get accepted to the school, but he was also rewarded scholarship marks as one of the top high school photography students in the country.

He spend two years at Christchurch Polytechnic and emerged with Level 5 and 6 diplomas in Professional Photography.

Since then Steve has worked on many projects that have taken him all over the world. He has had numerous solo and joint exhibitions. Steve continues to push himself to never stop learning and to constantly strive to make the best images he can.

Despite all the passion and talent photographing, Steve was also a very keen cook and working in kitchens came naturally to him. So, even though all his studies where in photography, by the age of 24 he had opened his own restaurant and, 9 years later and many lessons learnt, he sold it and decided it was time to pursue his other dreams.

That is how Duende enters in this story. She is a beautiful dutch built sailing yacht that has sailed to New Zealand by a lovely young dutch family. When they decided to stay in the country, Steve was lucky enough to acquire her.

He spent a couple of years living and working on Duende, while photographing around and teaching at the Akaroa Cooking School.

But it was time to take Duende to the high seas again and, after some hard work preparing her and the crew for the journey, in May of 2017 they set sails for the pacific islands.
It was floating around the islands of Tonga that he and Ali met, and that is how their story begun.

The rebuilt Walkabout Photos website and its blog came to life after this new couple realised how similar their dreams and projects were.

Now, that is were you join us on this story!

Email him at
steve@walkaboutphotos.com