Professional Work Experience

Wow Photography · , Auckland, New Zealand
I am only as good as my last image so always aspiring to exceed my reputation of producing unique, quality photographs while providing outstanding value. I am achieving this by focusing on my customers’ real needs and delivering my best work. In pursuit of my goal to become a leading portrait photographer I choose to treat business partners, customers and stakeholders with respect while listening to the marketplace. I am only as good as my last image so always aspiring to exceed my reputation of producing unique, quality photographs while providing outstanding value. I am achieving this by focusing on my customers’ real needs and delivering my best work. In pursuit of my goal to become a leading portrait photographer I choose to treat business partners, customers and stakeholders with respect while listening to the marketplace.
Wow Photography had been awarded Finalist at the 2012 Auckland North Business Awards in the Best Emerging Business Category. This category recognises a business that has implemented effective business processes and is able to provide clear evidence of sustainable success through its business result. Organised by Auckland Tourism, Events and Economic Development [ATEED], its vision is to “improve New Zealand’s economic prosperity by leading the successful transformation of Auckland’s economy
Feb 2010 – Dec 2010
– Writing Detail Design documents for the European market. The project included listing of the product features while addressing capabilities at a feature and configuration level.
– Writing Functional Description documents outlining the functional capabilities required in customising the existing New Zealand and Australian platforms to the European market. The documents were used as a negotiation base for a potential customer contract, outlining the features that would be included in future product versions.
– Working on the Definition Phase of the customisation project. The main tasks included:
o Writing Use Cases to describe As-Is system behaviour.
o Analysing Gap Analysis documents to describe Functional Business Review documents.
o Generate Business Process Flow documents required as part of the SDLC methodology in delivering the requirement documents.
– Developing the design for managing Customer Hierarchy. The project included writing the following documents: Functional Business Requirement, Business Rules, Use Cases, and Business Process Model.
Orcon ·
• Documenting Number Porting and Provisioning processes using ProMapp.
• Writing business requirements and designing enhanced Debt Management system.
• Capturing business requirements and designing a system to enable compliance with Copyright Act 92A code of practice.
• Developing Credit Cards handling policy to comply with Data Security Standard [PCI DSS]
• Drawing network architecture diagrams: Hosting, Provisioning, Storage, Billing, Voice, etc.
• Capturing detailed requirement for a new Ticketing System to handle external and internal customer issues.
• Initiating, designing, and ‘selling’ an inspiring and highly cost effective marketing campaign to engage and retain existing customers while attracting new prospects through viral networks.
• Testing Orcon’s legacy core customer management and billing engine.
Jan 2006 – Nov 2008
Responsible for gathering Requirements and analysis of data. Conducting workshops and facilitating brainstorming sessions. Writing Business Cases and developing Business Requirements to support users’ needs and to improve business performance. Building powerful presentations and acquiring stakeholders sign-off. Supporting the development team, writing test plans and test cases. Managing users’ expectations, project scope and timeline. Delivering the most cost effective solutions. Implementing disciplines and structure to ensure stable environment and best practice throughout development.
Initiating, promoting and coordinating the selection, customisation and implementation of a budgeting, forecasting and reporting system that extract data from Oracle db. I have effectively identified the client needs and offered a cost effective solution. I established contact with potential suppliers, facilitated contract negotiations and took an active part in comparing and selecting the best alternative.
Producing the Business Case and Business Requirements documents, designing the project plan and defining the project scope.
Taking an active role in managing users’ expectation, facilitating conference meetings, ensuring systems are in place, data is provided and delivery meets user expectations. My responsibilities included managing day-to-day activities, providing internal liaison with the supplier, Finance and Infrastructure. In addition to supporting Finance in defining their requirements, I facilitated consultative design workshops and coordinated resources and activities ensuring successful delivery.
I have initiated, promoted, designed, tested and deployed the following systems:
• A new Key Performance Indicator which became a strategic focus and intellectual property. First Call Resolution proved to be the most critical attribute for impacting customer satisfaction and one of the best measures of service quality. Measuring FCR helps in identifying root causes and broken practices. It has dramatically changed management focus as it revealed new dimensions in benchmarking customer interactions.
• A Task Management System to enable delivery of improved customer service while reducing the required effort. The system provides enhanced capability to allocate and monitor the status of tasks throughout the business using extensive reporting system. The system also improves performance by ensuring all after call activities are identified, captured and managed in a way that is consistent with the expectation set with the customer and that tasks are completed within agreed service levels.
• An enhanced Call Tagging application which has proven to be vital in providing unique insight that enabled powerful and knowledgeable decision making. I became a subject matter expert in measurement and analysis of handling time.
• An elaborate bonus scheme and a powerful report engine that has proven extremely helpful in staff benchmarking and in identifying gaps in individual skill set. It enabled achieving optimum balance between quality results and handling time efficiency, paving the way for skill based routing implementation.
Project Manager in establishing decision support systems for the following areas:
Production management, Inventory provisioning, Procurement management, Alternative components allocation, Telephone calls trend analysis, Electronic traffic signs control and Financial credit scoring.

Faces of Jerusalem Artist Statement

Beggars and scholars, slaves and warriors have all walked the narrow streets of the Old City of Jerusalem. In early 2015, Auckland Photographer of the Year Ilan Wittenberg set out to capture the stoic nature of its inhabitants. The result is a compelling collection of portraits – ‘Faces of Jerusalem’ – which will go on display at Te Uru Waitakere Contemporary Gallery.

Born in Israel, Ilan has visited the UNESCO World Heritage site on numerous occasions. However, it was during a recent family trip that the idea to produce a portfolio of portraits (for his fellowship application to the Photographic Society of New Zealand) first took form. Not wanting to hold up the family, Ilan returned by himself in January 2015 and spent days exploring the winding, cobbled streets and tiny, dimly lit shops of the Muslim, Jewish, Armenian and Christian quarters.

While his collection of striking monochrome images captures a range of people going about their daily lives, it was the city’s merchants that Wittenberg was particularly drawn to. “Many people are not happy, you can see that,” says Ilan, “but that’s for good reasons: the economy is down. There are very few customers and very little foot traffic because there is a lot of stress in the streets. Wars, religious tension and the ongoing political conflict scare the tourists away.”

Wanting to create quick rapport and a relaxed environment, Ilan introduced himself as a New Zealander (which he has been since arriving in the country in 2001). “Oh Kiwi, welcome” would be the typical response, which cleared the opportunity to create a photograph. Where language permitted, he engaged his subjects in further conversation, to produce more engaging portraits than candid documentary photography usually does. “These photos were taken without a flash or a tripod, using ambient light only. I chose to present the prints in monochrome to eliminate distracting colours and help focus the viewer’s attention on the people, their body language and their expression. The sepia tone also provides a timeless atmosphere to the images, which reflect the rich culture and turbulent history of Jerusalem.

His journey as a photographer started relatively recently in 2011, but Ilan has already been given the honour of Fellow of the Photographic Society of New Zealand as well as a Master of the New Zealand Institute of Professional Photography. Selected prints from ‘Faces of Jerusalem’ portfolio contributed to the body of work that won Wittenberg the prestigious title of NZIPP 2015 Auckland Photographer of the Year. The collection also took first place in the Documentary Book section of the 2015 Moscow International Foto Awards, a competition that attracted entries from 84 countries.

‘Faces of Jerusalem’ was exhibited at Te Uru Gallery from February 20 to May 1.

In August 2016, Ilan won the title Travel Photographer of the Year by the Cathay Pacific Travel Media Awards which are organised by Travcom (New Zealand Travel Communicators) to celebrate excellence in travel writing and photography.

The photography awards were judged by a panel of three; Rob Lile, director of One Shot image library, Jenny Nicholls, Art Director for North & South magazine and Tessa Chrisp, past winner of the Cathay Pacific Travel Photographer of the Year Award. The Travel Photographer of the Year is judged on the entire portfolio of published work.

Rob Lile said: “This year a clear and unanimous favourite appeared amongst the many images put forward for the scrutiny of a tough judging panel. While there were many images that caught our eye and invited second and third viewings, one series stood out, indicating the work of a master visual storyteller. Ilan’s images transported us to centuries-old locations to examine modern lives intertwined with layers of time. They displayed patience and sensitivity as a storyteller becomes immersed in the worlds of people going about their ordinary daily lives, as unobtrusively as possible. His presence is accepted; images are not overtly posed nor awkward and each subject is entirely comfortable with the interaction. The creative journey continued through careful post production, printing and mounting, all reflecting the skills of a professional determined to present his vision as perfectly as possible. This was a powerful series that will live in our minds for a long time.”

Additional Links

In April 2016, Faces of Jerusalem was featured is issue 53 of the prestigious f11 Magazine with 38 pages covering the portfolio.

Check out D-Photo magazine article from September 2016: Within the walls of the Old City

Listen to Standing Room Only with Lynn Freeman (10’51”): RNZ Interview

Photos from the exhibition Opening Event

Faces of Jerusalem Artist Statement

Faces of Jerusalem