The Nameless

Vaughan Brookfield and Tom Lynch did what most of us talk about doing and actually did it. The photographers took their frustration with the boundaries of their everyday work lives and produced something really strikingly beautiful. See those images that look photoshopped on waterfalls, mountains and cliffs? They’re actually projections. Vaughan and Tom venture out into the middle of nowhere and project images onto nature’s finest faces, then photograph them for your viewing pleasure. They call the project ‘The Nameless‘.

“The Nameless was born out of pure frustration from one of us running a production company for the last 8 years and doing a lot of cool shit for clients but always having this gnawing desire to do something “different”. When you work with projectors all the time you start seeing literally everything as a projection surface… And when you don’t have to pay to hire them that’s a real bonus because that shit aint cheap.”

After some discussion over some beers and camp-fire flames, the two realised they were on the same page creatively, and agreed New Zealand was the best location to bring the project to life.

“We were both keen to stick to interesting natural locations, and content-wise we were pretty open to anything we could think of that might fit a chosen location. A week later we were down at the Shotover River in Queenstown waiting for sunset with a small generator, a 14000 lumen projector, a laptop and a camera with literally no fucking clue what we were up to.”

After some trial and error, they realised they only had about a 20 minute window to work with where they could match the natural light and the projected light, which made for “fucking mad rush every time.”

The pair ended up shooting all over the place, from Lake Sylvan in the Mt Aspiring National Park, to the wishbone falls, followed by the Blue Lake at St Bathans, and Kopuwai Conservation Area near Alexandra. “Each place has been massively different and we’ve pretty much just been making it up on the fly the day of, or sometimes even once we get to the location, which has been fine up until now for a starting point. We’ve intentionally set no rules, and we aren’t trying to make money out of it. We’re just letting shit happen.”