The Story Behind The Decision Maker - My Gold Award Winning Image
May 18, 2026
Some images are planned down to the last detail. Others arrive when life hands you the perfect scene and you're smart enough to grab your camera.
The Decision Maker was somewhere in between.
We were clearing out a family home. The kind of job that's equal parts exhausting and emotional - decades of accumulated life sorted into four brutal categories. Dump. Donate. Keep. Sell. I had written the words on pieces of paper and stuck them to the wall, a practical system for an impractical task. Clothes were piled up. Board games were stacked. The "I Hate Mornings" mug sat on the side table like a quiet protest.
And then my cat walked in.
Well - I placed her there. But only just. She took one look at the scene, assessed it with the particular authority that cats reserve for moments like these, and sat down. Perfectly centred. Completely unbothered. Surrounded by the evidence of a life being sorted and utterly uninterested in any of it.
I threw a sheet over the chair, adjusted a few props, and made the image I could already see in my head.
What the judges said
The Decision Maker was entered into the NZIPP Iris Awards - New Zealand's most prestigious photography competition - and awarded a Gold. The judges recognised the storytelling, the wit, and the technical execution. But honestly, I think they just understood the cat and the emotion of clearing out the past.
Why this image matters to me
There's something underneath the humour in this image that I find genuinely moving. Clearing out a family home is one of the most human experiences there is. All that accumulated life - the games nobody plays anymore, the chairs nobody sits in, the mugs with their little declarations. And in the middle of it all, a creature who couldn't care less about any of it.
Sometimes that's exactly the perspective you need.
The Decision Maker is now available as a fine art print
Printed on museum-grade archival paper in a range of square sizes, this is one of the most personal and most awarded pieces in my collection. It's the kind of image that makes people laugh the moment they see it - and then think about it long after.
