Rosalie's pictures go on tour of Europe | Manawatu-Wanganui News | Local News in Manawatu-Wanganui

Fashion designer, pilot and amateur photographer - Rosalie Gwilliam chooses subjects as diverse as nude men in bondage and Mob leaders with bulldogs for her pictures.

"I photograph anything and everything, and I would go anywhere for a photo," she said.

Gwilliam, 72, has been a keen photographer since the age of 8. Now retired, she spends nearly all her time and money on photography.

She has just had 53 of her photographs accepted for the Trierenberg Super Circuit - a personal best.

She submitted 70 images, aiming to get 50 accepted. She has been entering since 1998 and won a gold medal there in 2003.

Gwilliam has had an eventful life.

She has been married and divorced twice, owned land on Great Barrier Island and travelled the world - to Hawaii 19 times, to Australia 15 times, and to Amsterdam, London and Romania.

Born and educated in Wanganui, she has taught home economics in Turangi, designed clothes for Hamish Erskine, flown planes with Wanganui Aero Club and owned a sewing shop in Guyton St.

Since 1990 she has been exhibiting her photographs internationally, and in 2000 she was the first New Zealand woman to receive an award for excellence by the Federation of International Art Photographers.

She now has photographs in permanent collections in five countries. In New Zealand, they are held by Auckland arts patron James Wallace.

Her pictures can be of anything from an animal to city lights.

"I will photograph anything and everything," she said.

One day she was walking past the former Federal Hotel in Taupo Quay and saw two huge bulldogs lolling on the footpath. She went into the pub and asked who they belonged to and whether she could photograph him with them.

She got a picture of the Mongrel Mob president of the time, sitting on the steps with dogs in studded collars on either side.

The nude model for her bondage photo was not gay, she said, "but he was kinky as all get-out". She has many photographs from Wanganui's "huge, underground" gay scene.

"I'm totally fearless when there's a photo available. I take anything."

Even her friends were not immune, she said.

"I show no mercy at times."

All her photographs are taken with old-fashioned film, with her favourite brand, Agfa, now unavailable. She loathes computers and will never switch to digital photography.

"I call digital picture taking - and film is photography."

Trierenberg Super Circuit

- Based in Austria

- Tours Europe, September 19 until October 7

- Huge international photographic competition

- Tens of thousands of entries

- Open to amateurs and professionals

- See www.supercircuit.at