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For those of you who don’t immediately recognise the name, Garth Badger is a New Zealand photographer. Specializing in the area of fashion photography, Badger has taken the scene by storm since embarking on this career path four and a half years ago. His images are now featured in Remix magazine and he has taken a shine to making short films for many of the major fashion labels in Auckland, with World and Kathryn Wilson being among the most recent additions to his repertoire. Badger, however, was not always so artistically inclined. As he tells Georgie Fenwicke, he originally trained as a bee-keeper and it wasn’t until he was about 24 or 25 that he picked up his first camera.
 
Of late, you have been working with a number of different media – movies, film, 3D technology – why the need?
I think the reason I enjoy what I do is the fact that I can mix it up. What I am finding is the more I shoot video, the better my stills become. Each different medium deepens your knowledge of the other. I think it means that you can draw on aspects of one and use them in another.
 
What do you like about each medium?
Obviously, I started out with still imagery and I think it is the creation side of it. I am far more interested in creating a scenario or a setup than capturing documentary style. I quite enjoy the fact that everything about a photograph that I take has been through my decision and my doing. Then, moving into video I found everything I loved about film, it moves and something happens. Video is basically composition which is exactly the same as film but it's an issue of moving movement into that equation which, creatively, I find very exciting.
 
The use of light in your photographs is quite stunning, what do you try to achieve?
What I found with light [is that] I go through phases where you develop a new technique or you find something a bit new that bring something different to your work, and you tend to use that for a certain amount of time. For me, it's important to almost create work in batches; I don't want anything to seem like a one-off.
 
By taking an idea and developing it through, does it allow you to fully explore the technique?
Yeah, it does. You find the more you use anything, the better it becomes. Everything is tested first in little projects for a start and a lot of those things never see the light of day. Often I'll do tests with a model or a friend or just go out and do these little camera jests just to start perfecting it before you start showing everyone what you have done.
 
I think these days, we live in a generation where everybody is starting to upload onto the internet, onto Facebook or onto their blog, every last photograph they have ever taken. There is no refining of their work, there is no editing. It is almost like everyone wants to show everything they have ever done and I think it is really important that you show the cream of the crop, that only the very best of your work should be shown, not every last test you did of your mum's friends and all that.
 
You've spent a bit of time in Canada I understand, what did you do there?
I was a bee-keeper. I hadn't actually picked up a camera until I was about 24-25. I had trained and worked as a bee-keeper until then. It wasn't until I moved to Canada that I picked up a camera and started shooting.
 
So how did you get into it so late?
I was travelling and I wanted to have better photographic memories than the ones I was taking and I realised at that point that I had no idea, I was taking terrible photos. I thought I'd like to buy a proper camera and learn. So that's exactly what I did. I had never considered it as a career; it was more of a hobby originally. But it wasn't long before it developed into an obsession where I just thought “I could take this better”. I remember thinking other people are photographers, so there is absolutely no reason why I couldn't do it as well. I just had this blind devotion to it.
 
Then, you got in touch with Jackie Meiring and Steve Chilli and went from there?
Yeah, well I also did an internship in New York which was quite handy. I went to New York for a short internship for several months. I was in the East Village working with a guy called Nicholas Wagner, who is well received in the fashion photographer over there. I learned a few of the industry ins and outs there, before realising it was time to come back.
 
Now four and a half years into it, would you replicate that path again?
Would I go back and train? No, not at all. If there is anything I should have trained for, it’s business. The photography side, I mean, I use a lot of assistants for it who are studying and some that aren’t, but really there is not a lot of difference to be honest. It's the business side of the business that is difficult. As photographers, we want to work creatively and all the accounting and businessy things are not what you think of when you become a photographer.