Capturing emotional scenes of the 150 year commemorations of the Battle of Gate Pa and Te Ranga has earned a top Tauranga photographer a national award.

Bob Tulloch is extremely happy with winning the Documentary of the Year in the New Zealand Institute of Professional Photography's national awards newest category.

Capturing the emotions of four kuia at this year's Battle of Gate Pa commemorations was part of Bob Tulloch's winning entries.

Tauranga photographer Bob Tulloch, with his NZIPP national Documentary of the Year award. Photo courtesy of Kerry Grant.

Photographs included in the portfolio are from the 150 year commemorations in May and June, where Bob was the official photographer.

'That was really, really quite nice to win – it was a big privilege to be the official photographer for the event.

'And it gave me opportunity to get pictures, which were really quite emotive at times,” says Bob, who won two categories titles in 1990.

The NZIPP Iris awards have 13 categories including NZ Photographer, Overseas Photographer, Highest Scoring entry and Rookie Photographer of the Year.

For each category three finalists are picked from a score of four submitted photographs, and each finalist's body of works is judged to find a winner.

'My entries were chosen to document the relationships between the Maori and British, and portray the highly emotional significance of these historical events,” says Bob, who had the highest scoring collage.

'I wanted to show several pictures – one is a very grief picture of four old kuia at the Mission Cemetery, they're all in black and there's little bit of interaction, it's quite a sort of poignant picture.

'Then I did a collage of nine pictures that showed the relationship between Maori and the British.

'The other [picture] is of a very full on Maori girl in haka – and that was at the Te Ranga commemorations.”

Fellow Bay of Plenty photographers to rate highly in the awards – but not quite win category titles – are Te Puke's Jodie Beattie and Tauranga's Nikki South, who both won a gold merit for scores of more than 90 in the portrait category while Tauranga's Mark McKeown scored gold in the landscape category.

Meanwhile, Waihi's Jake Thomas-Paterman won the Wedding Creative category.

'Those are pretty impressive scores, as they don't award many gold merits,” says Bob, who has been a photographer since his grandfather gave him a camera at age 12.

He is now in his 42nd year of being a professional photographer – first enjoying a two-year stint in Canada before returning home in 1974 and starting Tulloch Photography.

Bob's work covers thousands of family portraits, hundreds of weddings, many Tauranga businesses 'and I've published four coffee table books depicting photographs of the Bay of Plenty”.

But the 69-year-old father and grandfather-of-five isn't slowing down any time soon – he still runs his photography business and enters the awards annually.

'I do it every year because it's an organisation I've had a lot to do with,” says Bob, who has been NZIPP's chair of award judging and president 'and I'm still very actively involved locally”.

'It's a good way pushing your own personal boundaries as photographer – it doesn't matter how old you are, you still have to measure up not only to yourself but what else is happening around you.

'So I always try to challenge myself to challenge to enter a few pictures.”

The collage of nine photos from Battle of Gate Pa commemorations saw Bob Tulloch win an NZIPPnational Documentary of the Year award.

A Maori girl doing the haka at Battle of Te Ranga commemorations in June is the third part of Bob Tulloch's winning NZIPP entry.