Nau mai, haere mai

We're Emma and Simon, and authenticAs is ours - built from scratch, shaped by this place, and run entirely by us.

We're not from here. Simon has been in the Whakatipu for over 21 years - long enough to know he'll never be a local, and grateful for it. That position, just outside belonging, keeps you paying attention. Emma arrived later, but settled just as deeply. Between us we've put down the kind of roots that take time: a property under Pā Hā Raki where we grow food, rescue animals, raise a youngest child who turns out to be the most committed animal rescuer of the three of us, and learn from the seasons in a way that quietly shapes everything we do out in the field.

We came to photography from different directions but arrived at the same belief - that a photograph made in the right conditions, with the right understanding, is something quite different from a snapshot. That's the craft we've been building, and it's the craft we bring to every tour.

Emma is at the centre of how this works. She guides, she photographs, and she feeds people well - kai prepared with the same care we bring to the rest of the experience. She has a particular gift for making people feel at ease in unfamiliar places, which turns out to matter enormously when you're standing in the dark at midnight waiting for the Milky Way to clear the ridge.

She is also, without question, the reason the property works - the growing, the animals, the rhythms that keep the place alive between tours.

Simon holds a BSc (Hons) in Astrophysics and has spent over two decades learning this landscape from the inside - its light, its weather patterns, its dark skies, and the te ao Māori understanding that gives this place its deepest context. He has studied Kā Taka o te Marama and Tātai Aroraki under various tohuka as part of a summer school paper developed by Professor Rangi Mātāmua through Massey University, holds LPSNZ accreditation, and authenticAs operates under DOC concessions across the Deep South. Before guiding, he spent twelve years facilitating Enviroschools and Zero Waste programmes across the region.

He shoots, he teaches, he drives JAS - a 2015 Defender and one of the last six of its kind imported into Aotearoa - and he takes the night sky seriously enough to have made it a life's work.

What we believe

We believe everything is connected. The light at golden hour and the frost on the tussock and the stories that belong to this land and the photograph you'll take home - none of it stands alone. That's not a marketing line. It's how we actually see things, and it shapes every decision we make about how to run a tour.

We take the time to find out who you are before we take you anywhere. We want to connect you with this place in a way that feels right for you - at your pace, in your language, with your people.

Te toto o te tangata, he kai; te oranga o te tangata, he whenua While food provides the blood in our veins, our health is drawn from the land

Mā te wā