Tim Shand

Written By Campbell Mattinson

The room – upstairs at The European/The Supper Club in Melbourne – has dark furniture, tables with white table cloths, and large windows, the latter providing a single source of soft, expansive, natural light. It’s perfect for photography. Add to this that I had just enough time with Voyager Estate winemaker Tim Shand for his facial expression to change from staged to more natural, aka charismatic, aka “are you still taking photographs – I thought you said just one more about ten images ago.”

This is one of my favourite portrait images and, indeed, one of the most popular. I’ve had more comments on this image than probably any other, saving perhaps for Iago. I used this image to accompany the article here. There was an apricot-coloured lamp-shade in the original image which I’ve subsequently removed; I like the shade and it added something but, ultimately I found it distracting. I also in post-production changed the wall panelling to match the colour of his jacket; if this was straight journalism I wouldn’t do that but in a portrait context I’m happy to.

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Haven’t checked by I’m pretty sure that this was taken on the Sony A1. It’s definitely taken with the Sony 85mm f1.4, at f1.4.

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I’ve followed the winemaking career of Tim Shand for maybe 15 years or so. A more astute winemaker you never would find.

Campbell Mattinson

This post was written by Campbell Mattinson. Mattinson is a former chief editor of the Halliday Wine Companion book, former editor of Halliday magazine, former editor of Australian Sommelier Magazine and founder of The Winefront business. He is the author of five books on wine – four of which were bestsellers (The Wine Hunter, the Big Red Wine Book 2008, the Big Red Wine Book 2009, and the Big Red Wine Book 2010).

Mattinson is also the founder of the Mattinson Photography business.

Campbell Mattinson has been an independent journalist, wine critic and photographer for forty years. He’s the only Australian to have won the Australian Wine Communicator of the Year Award more than once. He’s a past winner of a Louis Roederer International Wine Media Award; is the author of the award-winning book The Wine Hunter; and is the author of the best-selling novel We Were Not Men. He’s also a winner of a St Kilda Film Festival Award (as writer-director) and is a former winner of the national Best Australian Sports Writing Award. In 2026 three of his photographs were short-listed for the World Food Photography Awards.

Campbell Mattinson, who is 100% independent, has tasted between 5000 and 10,000 wines each and every year for the past 25 years. He tastes blind, in comparative brackets, as often as is practicable.

Campbell Mattinson is a journalist, a photographer, a filmmaker and a wine critic. In all of these mediums his prime motive is to tell people's stories.

https://www.campbellmattinson.com
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