About Us

Welcome to JamesReardon.org, I hope you find what you’re looking for.

I’m a director, lighting and wildlife cameraman and filmmaker as well as a conservation biologist operating out of Te Anau, South Island, New Zealand where we live on the edge of the magnificent 1.3 million hectare Fiordland National Park.

Together with my partner who is also a conservation biologist we operate a production company, Last Planet Limited, through which we accept photographic commissions, cinematography contracts and in-house film production. We are able to provide content in HD and 4K. Some of our work can be viewed here on vimeo and at James Reardon.

Last Planet, a fitting name (we think) for all that we do commercially.

As well as providing stock footage we operate a large wildlife and natural history photolibrary. This is off-line at present as we try and find the time between work to develop a new more searchable format. If you have used us before and are looking for our library please get in touch and we’ll do all we can to help.

A Last Planet shoot about to send the drone up, copyright Last Planet and James Reardon

As well as film and photography we are extremely busy as conservation biologists working in New Zealand as well as internationally.

I have a strong personal and professional interest in herpetology (the study and in my current circumstances the conservation of reptiles and amphibians) and this focus is reflected in my photography and many of the contracts we have accepted. Both reptiles and amphibians tend to be small and often sedentary in habit. This predisposes them to behaviours and morphologies that are cryptic and take some intuition and sensitivity to fully appreciate, and I never cease to be enthralled by the intricate forms and colours they have evolved to match their specific niche. My partner specialises in avian conservation and has lead a number of ground-breaking conservation translocations.

When not filming or busy being a conservation biologist in New Zealand I am busy working with partners such as World Conservation Society in a remote area of Papua New Guinea and the Madagascar Fauna and Flora Group.

We are specialists and take pride in being skilled at working in remote or challenging environments whether they be sub-antarctic islands, alpine tops, cold boreal forests, deserts where it’s 42 in the shade or dense equatorial rainforest. We are also proud of our abilities to work in highly sensitive and challenging human communities where a certain sympathy and robustness is required. Have a look through the other pages here and the site archives for more of a feel for what we do. Apologies for any out-of-date information. With a very busy schedule I only get the chance to update content every so often.

I hope you enjoy looking over this site.  Please don’t hesitate to contact us if we can be of assistance at: james@jamesreardon.org