Religion is

The first winds of winter

Then let my name be called

Traveller

-Basho

From time to time I think about those people who, having found the photographic path that works for them, and fascinated by it, compelled to follow it, do so happily for the rest of their careers.

Lucky them.

The remaining few of us, restless souls that we are, and never quite content with any one direction, move from one thing to another, exploring, learning, then, having found what we wanted to find that period of time, moving on.

(more…)

In the clarity of wilderness light, my mind and my heart are soothed and uplifted by the serenity of creation. These are the landscapes of, and for, my spirit.

-WILLIAM NEILL (From Landscape of The Spirit)

What can I do in the morning?

I can put on my coat;

I can make a cup of coffee;

And light a cigarette;

I can kneel down like a camel

On the grass beside the fence;

I can eat and walk and sleep;

-James K Baxter (from He Waiata o Hemi) (more…)

This image is nearly a year old but I am bringing it back for a reason. Perhaps it is because it has taken me all this time to begin to understand it, and perhaps it is because of the conversation I had yesterday which led to me hearing some absolutely fascinating information. Since writing about my pictures is a way for me to synthesise them and come to some understanding of both them and myself, I want to share some of the things around this image. I call it an image because, while it began life as a photographic file, it’s not really that any more.

About two years ago I was having a short break from photographing the grand landscape, probably because, at the time, I was feeling somewhat over the GL This happens from time to time and Iam OK with it. It was the middle of winter in the Maniototo, and after days of looking at snow-clad mountains, blue skies and crystal clear lakes with amazing reflections, I was feeling somewhat as if I had eaten too much pavlova (an iconic Kiwi desert). So I turned to photographing the ice at my feet along the edge of the lake margin. When I downloaded the files, I looked at them, saw nothing special and put them away. They sat there for nearly 2 years until, one day, I realised what they wanted to become. (more…)

Updated 18/12/2008

Kia ora tatou:

A number of you may remember a post where I drew attention to the fact that I had been challenged to pick up my film camera again.

The results were exciting and opened me to old/new possibilities in picture-making. I will restate that: it opened me to revisiting old school technologies and incorporating them into a new way of working. Can I try that again: it offered the opportunity to take old-school technologies and use old methodologies to make…O, forget it.

When I walked away from film some 3 years ago, I never thought I would return, and all that knowledge gathered over a 15-year stretch with fil would become redundant. For  some reason, I held on to my EOS 1vHS. Back then I could have got a reasonable amount for the camera. Today a camera (hardly-used) which cost me $4.5k to buy is worth, at best, $300 to trade. All that time it has sat there, forlorn and forgotten, in my gear safe. In the last few weeks, however, it has had more work than my 1DS Mk III.

And I am loving it (are you reading this, Doc? Stop sniggering). (more…)

When you come to my fights and I’m under the lights
and you see that my footwork is false
don’t count me out, at the start of the bout
I’m just doing the secondary waltz
doing the secondary waltz

- Mark Knopfler (from the Kill to get Crimson album)

I blame Mark Knopfler. It is all his fault.

Sometimes I am as influenced (read: informed) by music as I am by what I see, and sometimes music affects my perception of the landscape. Heaven knows what I will produce if I start listening to Metallica or ACDC while I am on the road!

Lately I have been giving myself permission to move beyond the representational, to move further into post-visualisation and expressionism. Let me explain. (more…)

Data: Canon 1DS Mk II, EF 100-400/4.5-5.6L, 1/640 @ f5.0, ISO 100

Paint what you really see, not what you think you ought to
see; not the object isolated as in a test tube, but the object
enveloped in sunlight and atmosphere, with the blue dome of
Heaven reflected in the shadows.
::: Claude Monet :::

Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the
artist, not of the sitter.
::: Oscar Wilde :::

It has taken me 2 years to get back to this image, to finally understand the feelings I had at the time I made it, to realise what was in my heart at the time and bring it out into the light. My photographs are like that, which is probably why I have so many in my catalogue (>120 000) and why I only ever delete the duds. I never know when an image that has been sitting back there in the shadows, patiently (or impatiently awaiting its time, will stir restlessly out there on the corner of my vision, will shuffle grumpily in the darkness, raising a small cloud of dust and attracting my attention. (more…)