Who is The Flying Kiwi?

The Flying Kiwi is Richard Seaman, a professional photographer from New Zealand who now lives in southern California.

He's spent the last 15 years traveling the globe and taking photos which have been published in many books, magazines and calendars, on History Channel and Discovery Channel TV shows, and even on postage stamps!

The Flying Kiwi has taken many hundreds of thousands of photos over the years, and we're now pleased to present the best of these to you on CD-ROM.

Each CD-ROM contains 100 photographs covering aviation, wildlife or travel, so let's find out what it takes to get these different types of photos.

My father trained as a pilot in the British Royal Air Force before he emigrated to New Zealand and joined the Royal New Zealand Air Force, so perhaps that's where I got my interest in aviation.   Over the years I've had press passes and other special access to photograph military and civilian aircraft around the world, including historic and modern warbirds from the USA to Russia, and even NASA equipment like the space shuttle.  This takes me into military airbases and places most people never see, like the control towers at Edwards Air Force Base in the USA and the once top-secret Zhukovsky Airfield outside Moscow in Russia.

I've also visited dozens of aircraft museums around the world in countries as diverse as Australia, the Czech Republic, Egypt, Japan, New Zealand, the Philippines, Russia, the United Kingdom, the USA and Vietnam.   Here you can find some of the most extraordinary aircraft in the world, including the world's great historic aircraft, as well as experimental aircraft and monstrous failures.

It didn't take too much hiking through the mountains and forests of New Zealand and traveling overseas to make me realize how much beauty there is in the natural world, but it took a while longer to learn how to photograph it.

And there's beauty underwater too, like this giant Napoleon Wrasse on the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, so the Flying Kiwi can swim as well as fly!   For fifteen years now I've been free diving and scuba diving with a camera in hand, not just in the daytime but also at night when the darkness of the ocean is pierced only by the narrow beam of an underwater flashlight.   Photography is even more difficult than usual at night, but the many weird animals which only come out in the darkness make it all worthwhile.

As well as underwater photography, I'm fascinated by macro photography of bugs, enlarging these amazing creatures to a point where they confront us eye to eye, opening up a whole new world which is literally at our feet.   And since New Zealand has no snakes or turtles, I've had a special interest in reptiles, searching for hours in jungles and deserts for snakes, while trying not to be bitten!   As with diving, so at night the jungle comes alive with many bugs and reptiles which you would never see in the daytime.   Many people find the thought of going into the ocean or the jungle in the darkness terrifying, but it's my idea of night life!

While living in New Zealand I somehow became infected by the travel bug, and this appalling and incurable affliction has dragged me kicking and screaming to Australia, Belize, Brunei, Cambodia, Canada, Costa Rica, the Czech Republic, Egypt, Fiji, Guatemala, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, the Philippines, Russia, Singapore, the Solomon Islands, Thailand, Trinidad and Tobago, Turkey, the United Kingdom, the United States, Vanuatu and Vietnam.

Here I am with a lady friend, traveling somewhere in the world.   I can't quite remember where this was, but perhaps you can figure it out!

When you travel you get to see the world's most interesting cities, ancient ruins and natural sights, but you also experience the wide diversity of other cultures around the world and learn gratitude for the comforts of life in the United States when so many people elsewhere live with far fewer material possessions.