Like many photographers, Amber-Jayne started taking photos when she was a child. The compact camera she saved up and bought still sits on a shelf somewhere, however the results of those first photographic explorations were simply awful – fuzzy, badly composed – nearly all resigned to the rubbish bin. She didn’t bother with the impossible business of photography again until many years later.

Art mad in her youth, Amber-Jayne went on to University to study History of Art and English Literature, before training as an Art History teacher. A teaching position she took in Fiordland marked the turning point in her life – while teaching, she was given control of the school SLR, and responsibility to photograph school events. Simultaneously, her mother Marie-Jean was setting up the photography school. After a few years of teaching, Amber-Jayne decided to take a break and study photography for six months. She returned home to Paekakariki, and enrolled in Mel Phillips School of Photography, and never looked back.

Finishing Practical and Advanced Photography, she started her own commercial and wedding photography business. At the same time, she began teaching pinhole photography to the photography school students. A year later, the position of digital tutor became available, and Amber-Jayne had the skills to manage it. Since that time, her business has grown, she married a wonderful man, and she continues to teach all of the digital and pinhole photography for the school, teaches Photoshop and digital photography for Whitireia Community Polytechnic programmes from time to time, and manages the marketing for The Photo School.