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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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Cool Granny Has Taken Up Flying — The Little Old Lady Collection Grows Again

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Cool Granny in Her Biplane — © John Corney 2026 Our cool granny is back, and she has done something the family has been quietly worried about for a few months now. She has taken up flying. A Brief Recap for New Readers If you're new to the series: she first appeared in a beautifully kept yellow Austin A35 on the corner of Queen Street and K Road in Auckland , waving cheerfully out the driver's window as she went past. That piece was, in its quiet way, a tribute to my own mother, who in her fifties bought her own motor scooter in Whanganui and never looked back — and to every older woman who has ever decided it was finally her turn. Then she showed up in a pink-and-yellow flame-painted monster truck, waving out the driver's window in exactly the same spirit, but with rather larger tyres. Same silver hair, same coral scarf, same oversized sunglasses. Same little red heart pa...
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Faces of Pasifika 2007 — A Day at Auckland's Pacific Festival

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The 15th anniversary Pasifika Festival poster — a collage of the Pacific cultures the festival celebrates. On Saturday 10 March 2007, I spent the day at the Pasifika Festival at Western Springs Park in Auckland. It was the festival's 15th year — an annual celebration of Pacific Island cultures that has been part of Auckland's calendar since 1993, and which typically draws crowds of well over 100,000 across the day. Nine Pacific villages are traditionally represented — Samoa, Tonga, the Cook Islands, Niue, Fiji, Tuvalu, Tokelau, Kiribati and Tahiti — with music, dance, food, arts, and craft from each community sharing the same park for the day. I usually visit New Zealand earlier in February, but in 2007 I was there in March and it was the first — and, to date, only — time I've been able to attend Pasifika. I hope to make it back one of these years. But I came away from that single visit with the str...
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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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