In the early 90s, a promising photographer travelled to California to study at the Brooks Institute, a prestigious and specialised college that has made a name over the past 70 years for giving its students uniquely tailored instruction. A few years later that photographer, Adam Custins, set up a studio in Grey Lynn that many local photographers and creative types will know simply as Kingsize. Today the building hums with four studios and a photography and film rental business. An industrious team of eight swells to many times that number when big shoots are taking place. The action sometimes spills out on to the footpath and some lucky pedestrians might be treated to impromptu jazz concerts as musicians wait their turn between set-ups.
"When I opened Kingsize I wanted to create a sense of community, a home for photographers," says Custins.
"In the late 90s there were only movie studios or movie studio rental houses. The whole rental market was new to NZ."
Though this business of renting high-end photographic gear may sound prosaic, Custins is at heart a romantic and adventurous man who'll happily sleep atop an ice-clad mountain in the faint hope he might capture a moon shadow on film.
One of his chief motivations opening Kingsize was to support his fine art photography without having to be continually bogged down with commercial work.
