Of all the traits which I think are vital to being a documentary photographer, I think an unhealthy curiosity or, simply put, sheer nosiness, is core critical and fundamental. Shyness isn’t necessarily desirable either. And you can only do fly-on-the wall for so long. In the end you simply have to poke your nose in.

I had been driving past it for the last couple of weeks.

There, on my right or left, depending on which way I went around the square, was a dusty marquee sitting by itself on a dusty square of dirt in the middle of town. Its faded blue and white stripes told of years of use and a degree of neglect. What on earth, I asked myself, was a marquee doing in the middle of Smitville?

(more…)

Cell Block, Robben Island

It was during those long and lonely years that my hunger for the freedom of my own people became a hunger for the freedom of all people, white and black. I knew as well as I knew anything that the oppressor must be liberated just as surely as the oppressed. A man who takes away another man’s freedom is a prisoner of hatred, he is locked behind the bars of prejudice and narrow-mindedness. I am not truly free if I am taking away someone else’s freedom, just as surely as I am not free when my freedom is taken from me. The oppressed and the oppressor alike are robbed of their humanity.

-Nelson Mandela  (Long Walk to Freedom)

We all need heroes. And I have three.

(more…)

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…)

Kia ora tatou:

Sometimes the stories around here are massive and mind-boggling, tributes to big money and breathtaking ineptitude, sometimes they  are small stories about stubborn determination.

Welcome to Africa.

I was driving south from Port Alfred, heading to Port Elizabeth and thence to Tsitsikammer for the night, when I hit the motorway, about 20 minutes north of PE. It is one of those amazing motorways with 6 lanes each side and a broad grass strip between them. You can cover long distances at the maximum speed limit of 120 km/h here and feel as if you are going nowhere.

(more…)

A ghost town, a town of ghosts

“Heaven wheels above you, displaying to you her eternal glories, and still your eyes are on the ground”

-Dante Alighieri

I said ‘mama I come to the valley of the rich
Myself to sell’
She said ’son this is the road to hell’

-Chris Rea

Somewhere back in the 1860’s they found gold in Central Otago, in a little place called Gabriel’s Gully. Of course the word got out and in no time, towns had sprung up all through the area, staffed by the hopeful, the industrious, the greedy, and the foolish. A steady stream of prospectors poured across the hills from Dunedin, all come to make their fortune.

Such are the ways of men. (more…)

Weave me a rope that will pull me through these impossible times.
Tim Finn

None of us knows what will happen each morning when we step out the door. The wind may be bringing us good fortune. Or it may not. So there is an excitement in every day, anticipation, a hope. It is the beginning of a new journey and the continuation of an old one. While we may think we know where it will end, there is no certainty, there are no guarantees. Maybe that is why we like travelling so much. Maybe that is why train journeys are so popular. (more…)

Seagulls pivot and pinion on the edge of the wind

Draw quivering wingtips through the air

Soft fingers through Tawhiri’s hair

stitch sky to land

and brand the morning light

with blue and golden promise.

Messengers all,

envoys,

bearing Rangi and Papa’s pledges

To each other.

“Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before.”

Edgar Allen Poe

Love, all alike, no season knows nor clime,
Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time.

-John Donne

It was a morning like any other. (more…)

For the first time in a fortnight (or maybe it is the second), the sun comes out. As I glance down at the skunk cabbage at my feet, uncharacteristic black markings lie across the leaves. I look at it for a moment, somewhat stunned by the strangeness of what I am seeing. Then I realise what it is; shadows have grown on the leaf. The sun has made a rare appearance, teh second time in a fortnight. It augurs well for the day ahead.

Sitka lies in the back corner of a fjord on Baranof Island in southeast Alaska. There is a gap of around 12 miles from the town out to the edge, to the place where the land lies behind and only the ocean is before. The next stop from here is Vladivostok. From Sitka to the outer edge is a trip of around two to 2 1/2 hours in one of the local fishing boats or about a half hour in something faster. (more…)

 Kia ora tatou

I have been in training.

After a lifetime of being owned by cats, I am free now. I do not have to come at their beck and call. For all their larger-than-life personalities and unique character traits (Beastly was just that, a cunning tormenter of the local dogs, especially smaller ones ,and Lucky The Bionic Cat-he carried a lot of steel in his hind-quarters after going mano a mano with a car and losing- still kept his no-retreat, no-surrender attitude), cats have their own thoughts and clutch their secret lives close to their chests.

Dogs are different. (more…)

I have seen

Summer’s fire slump slowly sideways,

slide into the cooling embers of the year.

I have witnessed

The last fragile fingernail of autumn’s grasp,

A red-rimmed leaf,

Release its grip,

Slip slowly to earth and lie smiling,

Face-up under the yellowing sun

Coming later each day around the corner of the house.

I have heard the birds that daily

Wake the sleeping trees

Struggle to arouse and enthuse them

As they calmly wrap winter’s damp mantle around themselves

And retreat into their memories.

And all the time the wind

Is coming from further and further

to the south.

Kia ora tatou:
It had to happen…spammmers find blogs. I have had a number of offers which relate to health and virility issues ( which I do not believe I have!). For that reason I intend to enable moderation for all comments. This will mean a delay between you submitting and your comments appearing on the site. I apologise for that, but I am sure you receive your fair share of such offers….

A number of you have asked me about upcoming workshops, both here and abroad. So here is a summary to date:

-I will be offering a range of courses for people in and around Canterbury through the University of Canterbury. These include landscape photography, digital skills and digital workflow for working photographers. You can find out more and sign up on the university website

-There are still places on the Sitka workshop. Fees for the week are a very reasonable $US395 -(plus travel and accommodation of course). You can read about it and download a brochure here

-I will be running a workshop in the Maniototo in the first week of August, in beautiful Wedderburn in Central Otago. If you fancy 6 days down there, studying photography, along with being in fabulous scenery, experiencing a barbecue in the snow ( true!), a little curling and being pushed (photographically, not over), email me to book a place.I will post details and a brochure over the next few days. Numbers are strictly limited to 12 participants.

Ka kite ano

“God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks to us in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: It is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world”

-CS Lewis

“We need to find God, and he cannot be found in noise and restlessness. God is the friend of silence. See how nature – trees, flowers, grass- grows in silence; see the stars, the moon and the sun, how they move in silence… We need silence to be able to touch souls.”

-Mother Theresa

An artist must possess Nature. He must identify himself with her
rhythm, by efforts that will prepare the mastery which will later
enable him to express himself in his own language.
-Henri Matisse

It was scum, ordinary scum on the surface of a lake. (more…)

And soon I heard a roaring wind:

It did not come anear;

But with its sound it shook the sails,

That were so thin and sere.

The upper air burst into life!

And a hundred fire-flags sheen,

To and fro they were hurried about!

And to and fro, and in and out,

The wan stars danced between.

The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner -Samuel Taylor Coleridge

“Remember what Bilbo used to say: It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there’s no knowing where you might be swept off to…”;

- Frodo to Sam

Sometimes you just have to go with the flow, to follow the wind. Sometimes a chain of events flows from a single decision, from a single choice, and sometimes that choice isn’t really one at all. (more…)

A very receptive state of mind… not unlike a sheet of film itself – seemingly inert, yet so sensitive that a fraction of a second’s exposure conceives a life in it.
-Minor White

It was one of those serene mornings that yawn and stretch into life on the West Coast. After a day of rain, the weather had come to a standstill while the high rolled gently onto the land. A sense of expectation and an eerie calm had settled over everything. It felt like the weather was holding its breath.

I had meant to be up before dawn to follow the transition from night to day but I overslept and wasn’t ready until after 7am. I went out anyway.

As often happens for me, I wasn’t sure quite where to start, so I stood there and looked around, waiting for the image to come to me. The great American photographer, Minor White, once said “Be still with yourself until the object of your attention affirms your presence.” Over time I have learned the truth of what he said. Sometimes an image has to come in its own time and we have to be willing to wait for it. Rushing around will only keep it at bay. So I waited.

I went and stood down by the water’s edge. Ruth, the elderly whitebaiter in the deerstalker hat and bushshirt who has been coming down there for many years and continues to do so after the death of her husband, looked sternly at me.
” You should have been here earlier,” she said. “The light was really nice then. You missed a good show.”
I got the point. But the photograph was still eluding me, even though I sensed its presence nearby. I didn’t even know which lens I would use. No clues at all.

Then, as if accepting my contrition, the image began to show itself. I looked up at the sky and the early-morning clouds dawned on me. A jetstream far above was drybrushing the clouds into koru-shaped wisps that tumbled and frolicked like carefree children across the sky. At my feet the sky checked itself in the mirror-calm estuary. I felt as if I was standing on the edge of eternity. Land and sky had become one. Now I began to understand why Tane and his siblings might have wanted to push apart their parents, Rangi and Papatuanuku. All that eternity could get to you. The view was huge and wide and all-encompassing, and I felt at once elated, at once diminished by it.

I wondered where to begin. Then the scene told me what to do. It was both intense and panoramic, wider than it was tall. It seemed to go on forever and draw me into some sort of limitless zenlike being, where sea and sky had become one, and the only link with reality was a thin line of darker-toned land forming the horizon.

I went back to my vehicle and got my camera, the 24mm shift lens and my tripod. I slopped through the mud to the water’s edge and set up my equipment. As so often happens, no matter how hard we work to narrow the gap between what our eye sees and what the camera exposes, the viewfinder will often reveal a different truth. (I learned a long time ago to always look through the lens when there was a story to be told; the hard part is knowing which lens will best tell it). I wanted to make a stitch panorama with enough information in the file to make a really big work, at least A0, so I made two overlapping images, shifting left for the first one, then right for the second, and using identical exposures for both.

After working for several minutes, I stepped back, and Ruth, who had been obviously watching me, commented on how much effort I seemed to be putting in, and how she could have done it in much less time. Helpful soul.

Taking a break, we talked about the whitebait season (bloody terrible) and the spring weather (also bloody terrible) and the sandflies( becoming bloody terrible).

Then I saw her net.

It floated there, a drawn-out piece of material reality lying contentedly between sea and sky. Its gossamer tail rested, ethereal, sublime and serene, in the translucent waters, while its glowing, skeletal head basked in the morning sunlight. I went back to The Zone. Lost in another Place and Time, I roamed, making more images, using the same laboriously technical but absorbing shift-lens-stitch method.

When I returned to the Now, I looked around, hoping to talk to Ruth, but she had lost interest. Her back was pointedly turned away from me, the tails of her bushirt, flapping disdainfully, and she was bent over, fiddling with her spare whitebaiting equipment.

One day I am going to find Ruth. I want her to see this image.