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Sky Tower Casino, Auckland

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A moody Blade Runner-inspired digital artwork showing Auckland's Sky Tower at night, lit in cold silver-white against a deep purple-black sky, with a full moon glowing softly through cloud cover at right and vertical rain streaks overlaying the entire scene. The composition has a cinematic neo-noir atmosphere.
Auckland Sky Tower Under a Full Moon — Moody Night Artwork

Auckland's skyline has rearranged itself more than once. For most of the 20th century, the landmark that dominated the view across the Waitematā Harbour was Rangitoto Island — the perfect volcanic cone that rose from the sea around 600 years ago and remains the youngest of Auckland's fifty-odd volcanoes. Then in 1997, something different appeared on the horizon.

The Sky Tower

The Sky Tower at SkyCity opened in August 1997 and immediately rewrote Auckland's silhouette. At 328 metres, it's the tallest free-standing structure in the Southern Hemisphere, and from almost any vantage point in or around the city — North Shore, Mount Eden, the harbour bridge, the Devonport ferry — it punctuates the view. For better or worse, depending on whom you ask, the Sky Tower has become the primary icon of Auckland.

The tower is floodlit every night, and special occasions get celebrated with a new colour scheme. When I was visiting in March 2011, the tower was lit in an unusual bluish-green cyan, and my friend — whose apartment I was photographing from — said it was the first time she'd seen it that colour. We never did find out what was being commemorated that night.

A Blade Runner Treatment

I took the photographs soon after the full moon rose, on a typical partly-clouded Auckland evening — the kind that softens the city's edges without quite obscuring them. In developing the artwork afterwards, I leaned into a dramatic, neo-noir treatment inspired by the visual language of Blade Runner: deep purples and near-blacks, the tower lit in a cold silver-white against the darkness, the moon glowing softly through cloud cover to the right, and vertical rain streaks running across the whole scene.

The rain streaks read more strongly in print than they may on screen, but the moody intent comes through either way. It's a piece that wants to live in a hallway or stairwell rather than over a sofa — somewhere it can catch you slightly off guard.

Available at Redbubble

If this dark, cinematic take on Auckland's most recognisable landmark is your style, the artwork is available across a range of products at my Redbubble shop — canvas prints, framed prints, posters, and a variety of other formats.

👉 Auckland Sky Tower Under a Full Moon — Redbubble

View all my work on Redbubble by searching @kornkobart.

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Samoan Youth

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This young man was preparing with his friends for his moment of fame on the stage at the Samoan Village at the Polynesian dance festival called Pasifika in Auckland in March this year. Samoan Youth Canon EOS 20D 1/30sec at f/20 ISO 200 Canon 70-300mm lens at 300mm More photographs from the same Pasifika Festival day can be found in my new post, Faces of Pasifika 2007 — A Day at Auckland's Pacific Festival .
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A Grunge Botanical Collection — Five Painterly Garden Pieces

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Over the past few weeks I've been building out a small collection of botanical pieces using photos taken in my garden here in Irvine, California, (and in one case out on a hiking trail here in SoCal), and using AI assistance to give each one a grunge, painterly treatment — dark, richly textured backgrounds with warm gold light breaking through, turning garden snapshots and trailside finds into something closer to old varnished still-life paintings than straight photography. Here's the full set so far. Epiphyllum oxypetalum — Queen of the Night, Painterly Botanical Art A night-blooming cactus that flowers just once or twice a year, for a single night — three blooms at different stages caught in one frame from a night it happened in my garden. Kangaroo Paw — Painterly Grunge Botanical Art Australia's velvety-flowered native, grown in my own garden, its stems reaching in different directions the way it actually grows rather than posed into symmetry. ...
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A Steindachner's Ebony Tarantula at Crystal Cove

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I crossed paths with this fellow on a hike at Crystal Cove State Park this morning, along the Fenceline trail. I posted it to iNaturalist as soon as I got home, and within a few hours had it confirmed by several people: a male Steindachner's ebony tarantula ( Aphonopelma steindachneri ). Turns out the timing wasn't a fluke. Males of this species leave their burrows specifically to search for mates between July and October, so this was a textbook-timed encounter rather than an unusual one — good to actually check that before assuming, since my first instinct was that a July sighting seemed early. After his photo session, I gently nudged him with a stick and he scurried off the trail into the chaparral, safe from being run over by a mountain biker or stomped by an arachnophobic hiker.  Aphonopelma steindachneri is native to the coastal ranges of Southern California and northern Baja California, and it's one of the tarantulas you're genuinely most likely to run into ...
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