My Story

My name is Rory Laubscher.

I am the owner and principal photographer of Firefly Photography.

I’ve been in the business of professional photography since 2008, and have been honing my skills diligently since then to continually improve the quality of service that I offer my clients.

I was born and raised in South Africa, and grew up in Pretoria. I was always academically strong, and that talent coupled with my desire to do work that made a difference steered me towards a career as a doctor. I left High School to study medicine on a military bursary – which meant 1 year of military training before starting the 6 year MBChB degree at University. My student years were amazing and I graduated at the end of 2003 honestly believing that I’d be specializing in either General Surgery or Orthopaedic Surgery. I couldn’t imagine a life without medicine. At that stage I didn’t even own a camera, and if anyone had told me that I’d one day be earning a living from photography I’d have had serious reservations about their sanity!

However, life has a funny way of making light of your long-term plans.

One of the realities of being a doctor in uniform was that you were a deployable asset for the military.

My very first deployment changed the course of my professional career forever. In 2005 I was sent to Mozambique with Nelson Mandela for 10 days. The experience was as surreal and memorable as one would imagine. It was a big moment for me, and also my first time out of South Africa – so I decided to buy a good camera.

From then on, on every deployment I was sent on, my camera went with me. I spent time as a ship’s doctor, was deployed on a number of joint military exercises and even spent time with the United Nations in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. I loved what I could achieve with the camera, and it became an outlet for my creativity that I had up to that point in my life been lacking.

In 2006 I got married to my best friend and the love of my life (another military doctor) and we decided that it was time to resign from the military. (Regular deployment away from home is tough on married life, even more so when both people are deployable.)

So it was that we took a 3 month working holiday in New Zealand. The trip was never meant to be long-term, but we fell in love with the country and subsequently made the decision to move to NZ permanently.

And with that, our long-term plans changed as well. My wife, who had always wanted to specialise in anaesthesiology, decided to pursue a career as a GP, and I decided to see where my love of photography would take me.

That was 2008. Photography, and the pursuit of a career behind the lens has been an amazing experience.

Since then we have moved to, and settled in Auckland – a city I’ve absolutely fallen in love with.

Though I still practice medicine (mostly in the evenings at a local Urgent Care clinic), business photography has revealed itself as my real passion.

I have a desire to build a reputation as THE go-to professional photographer for business professionals in Auckland.

I truly hope that what you discover in this website strikes a chord with you, and if so, I look forward to doing business with you and forging a mutually beneficial professional relationship with your business.