Sony DSC R-1, ISO 160, 1/640@f8

I know that I have blogged about this many times, but there’s only so much you can do when you’re stuck on a ferry for 3 hours, with nowhere to go (unless you fancy a long swim). You can sleep; you can read a book; you can sit there inside the tin can, watching the family-friendly movie which they supply and which I inevitably do not want to watch. You can sit in the bar and get quietly drunk. Or you can head to the cafe and beat up your gall bladder on a diet of fat-enriched fat.

Or you can watch all the other people on the boat and make photographs of them…

I must be getting old (well, I don’t feel old) but it seems to me that every time I make the journey across Cook Strait, either I have attained the status of a Methuselah or the other passengers are all getting younger. Or both.   The number in my age group seems to lessen with each trip and the number of Gen Z’ers to be on the increase. I watch from my own life perspective and, of course that gives me the chance to be “objective”.

There is a ritual to getting on the ferry, which involves firstly lining up our vehicles in rows and waiting to be called on board. We all stand around while the didymo guy marches up and down the lines of vehicles, asking us if we know all there is to know about this fearsome infection of the rivers. Yes, of course we do. My best friend is a didymo ranger. That usually sends him on his way. Eccentrics to a man, in their unique dress and out-there attitudes, the didymo guys seem to me to be the clown prince face of New Zealand Biosecurity.

We hang around, bored and itching to get aboard, standing there in the sun until the call finally comes. The fact that the boat is half a mile away from where we are lined up has a certain quality of the surreal that has never ceased to amuse me. But then, I am easily amused.

Then the race is on. Nose to tail, or tail to nose, we charge towards the boat as if we are afraid it will leave without us. It never does. We hand over the large plastic tokens and head for the ramp. We shudder and shiver our way up the ramp, while it tests the quality of our fillings. Then we slide into our appointed place, sardines being squeezed into the can, until we are all aboard, cheek to jowl, or rather bumper-to-bumper. Next comes the ritual of choosing what we will take upstairs, a task carried out with care since we will not be allowed near our vehicles for the duration of the trip. Signs all the way up the narrow, rickety stairs sternly warn us that under no circumstances will we be allowed down into the vehicle hold during the trip. Okay, we get the message.

But then, having shuffled our way up the stairs and read the signs along the way, which make it clearly obvious the Santa Regina was once a ferry somewhere in the Mediterranean, and a long time ago to judge by the freshness of all the fittings, what to do next? Some passengers head off to watch the Family-Friendly Movie (probably for the umpteenth time), the alcoholically-challenged head to the bar, and the rest of us fan out through the boat, looking for somewhere to while away the journey.

The thrill seekers inevitably head towards the bow of the ship, to sit out on the front deck and find adventure in what is essentially quite a mundane journey. But it might be. Something might happen. They park themselves on benches screwed firmly to the deck, small islands of carefully fabricated and varnished timber in a sea of green-and-blue-painted steel. And then we wait. And wait. And wait.

Being one of the last category, and knowing that the front deck is a target-rich environment, I am enthusiastic about the possibility of adding to the slowly-growing library of documentary images I have come to make while making the crossing from Picton to Wellington or back. . One of these days I will perhaps do a book about people on ferries. Or the cafes of southern Malawi. Or the Dog Lovers of Southern Patagonia.

It does not really matter whether it is going to be a smooth glassy crossing, or one of those crossings we will share at dinner parties for years afterwards where, with a little improvement upon the basic storyline, we faced the raging elements and survived. The possibilities are there. It is my job to see them.

The ropes are pulled aboard, the boat begins to shudder, and we are underway. Short of some horrible disaster or a burning urge to demonstrate our swimming skills, we are all in this together. Subliminal it may be, but there is a sense that for a short time we are all in this together. Being trapped on a boat seems to create a sort of artificial camaraderie, a willingness to get involved with the other passengers, people we would normally have nothing to do with. Being on the sea and away from land seems to awaken a normally-suppressed sense of community.

This was what I call a reverse crossing. From Wellington to Picton always has for me a quality of going home. Do not get me wrong; I love the North Island for all sorts of reasons, but when I am on the ferry, when it turns right and crosses the Tory Rip, when I can see the soft grey-blue outline of the South Island, I know I am going home. In the last few weeks I have come to realise just how much a part of me the South Island is. I have also come to realise that each island has a unique and special energy. When friends from Auckland or the Hawke’s Bay or Wellington or the Naki (Taranaki) talk with passion about how much the place means to them I nod, agree and understand. But I do not really feel the same sense of attachment that they do. The South Island, where I was born and where I have lived most of my life is the place that resonates for me. Te Wai Pounamu. The Green Island.

So, knowing I am going home, wherever that home may be, fills me with a certain contentment and allows me to disengage from that sense of attachment and longing. And I find myself becoming more and more interested in the people around me, watching them and seeing how they react to their environment. Being something of an inveterate people watcher, I cannot help wondering who they are, where they come from, what their life journey may be and why they are here on the boat. Inevitably I explore that curiosity with my camera.

It seems to me that if I look long enough at all the actions and interactions taking place before me, if I watch carefully enough, I will notice Moments Between, and in that observation find the symbolic and universal in the specific and temporal. That is, after all, the core business of social commentary photography. If I am sufficiently observant and sufficiently acutely aware, and I am fast enough on the shutter, then sooner or later I am going to nail down when of those decisive moments to which Henri Cartier-Bresson  refers. It usually takes a large number of attempts before anything happens, before I get that moment of understanding, inspiration and revelation

This particular day seemed to be National Young German Travellers day. The front deck was full of them. There was the tall thin German with a 1950s retro style, looking rather like an emaciated Fonz.  The Bay City Rollers crossed with Mink Deville. I am sure he had the complete Jerry Lee Lewis collection on his iPod. He and his girlfriend probably spend very little on groceries, and probably took 10 minutes to walk behind a telegraph pole. They stood there, alone and palely loitering, looking for all the world as if they had just dropped out of a Michael Jackson video. There was a couple (also German) who were obviously experiencing the joy of being the angst-ridden and in love. They were obviously seeing New Zealand on a very tight budget, probably driving around the country in a clapped-out Mitsubishi station wagon, sleeping in parks or the back of the vehicle, using candle wick bedspreads as curtains. With his red afro, pale complexion, mournful expression and love-sick calf eyes, he was probably enjoying the pain of amorous obsession immensely. She was carefully cultivating a style which was a clever combination of grunge and rasta. Faded torn jeans, Che Guevara T-shirt, German army surplus jacket and an amazing set of dreadlocks. As I watched, they took out a small plastic snap-locked container of peanuts and spent the next 20 minutes sharing the 30 or so in it. Each act of selection and consumption seemed to me to be an offering to the God of Joyful Misery. They huddled together, unable to be separated from each other for more than a few seconds, miserable and anorexic and obviously thoroughly enjoying themselves.

But they were not the only ones travelling. There were two girls and a young man, probably not more than 22 or 23, who gave the lie to the idea that travel should be a miserable experience. As the boat left the dock, the strong norwesterly began to play with the boat, heeling it over to starboard as we sailed out of the harbour. On the long run down past Seatoun it pushed the boat back over to port. Then, as we rounded the last of the rocks at the harbour entrance, and the ferry pointed itself towards the entrance to Tory Channel, the wind, now free of the hills around Wellington, threw itself at the boat shaking it, covering it in spray and giving it a hard time.. The three of them stood there, facing into the wind, squealing in delight and laughing with the sheer exhilaration of being young, alive and out there in the elements. But not too far.

Waiting for DiCaprio

I was waiting for it to happen, and sure enough it did. James Cameron has much to answer for. There they were, in the wind, as close to the bow of the boat as it was possible to get, and the idea finally struck them. Suddenly the three of them were Leonardo and Kate on the bow of the Titanic. They spread their arms wide and leaned into the wind. For a moment I could have sworn I heard the theme music to the film coming down the wind. They perched themselves as far off-balance as they could get without falling over, and managed to get some quite extreme angles. One of the girls, who seemed to me to dress more for function than form, stood right in front of me, surfing on the wind coming in over the bow. Her laughter was pure, unadulterated and joyful. Her companions were every bit as gleeful. It was wonderful to behold, if a trifle cheesy. But the moment belonged to them. And me and my camera.

The wind continued to increase in strength and intensity, thrashing at the boat, thrashing at us. Then it happened. A crewman arrived, and hustled us off the foredeck, explaining that the captain was expecting extremely high winds and wanted us to move to safety. I know the young Germans would have gladly stayed and taken on anything nature threw at them, bu,t like the rest of us. they moved obediently back into  shelter. For a while.

Then, as we crossed the Tory Rip, they re-emerged and huddled on the leeward side of the ship, watching the ferocity of the wind as it sliced the tops off all the waves. The Fonz and his girlfriend, being made of tougher stuff, moved out onto the windward side of the boat, and huddled together while they attempted to light and smoke their cigarettes. The rest of us lurked in whatever corners we could find which would protect us from the wind and spray.

And all the time, as I watched all these profound moments, I was attempting to photograph them. The Sony DSC R-1, which I so love for doing this kind of work, has its LCD on top of the pentaprism, and it can be used as a waist level finder. Coupled with the ability to turn off any noise from the shutter (not that you would have heard it in that wind), I can often make photographs without appearing to do so. To an observer it looks as if I am fiddling with the controls when in actual fact I am making photographs. Having this function can mean the difference between being an observer or a participant in a Moment.

Father, son and sign

Then the excitement was over, as we passed through the narrow opening to Tory Channel, and slid slowly up the series of passages leading to Picton. We were allowed back on to the foredeck, and I set up near the front observing the passengers returning to look at the view and photograph it. Directly in front of me was a sign telling us all not to climb on the rail. A father and small boy moved up beside it, and he lifted his son onto the rail, to help him get a better view. For a moment I wondered whether he was deliberately ignoring the sign or was so entranced by the light that he never saw it.

Then the light levels defeated the ISO-ability of the camera, so I put it away, sat back and watched the passengers lined up against the rail, photographing one of those classic South Island sunsets, where the Norwest wind piles the clouds up into giant dreadlocks across the sky and dyes them with a fierce saturated orange light.

It seemed beautifully synchronous.

But I doubted the redheaded King of Angst and the Deadlock Queen would ever be aware of or appreciate the visual irony.