Kia ora tatou:

it has been raining a lot over here, so I have had time to look around on the Net, hence the new posts. I will be offline Sunday through Wednesday next week in the Tankwa Karoo. In the meantime, here a few links you might like to follow:

1. Those of you who wondered why you can’t get particular lenses, and why, when you can, they cost more, might like to read this article. makes sense to me. Even though it is US-specific, it is happening everywhere. And if you kiwis thought Canon gear was expensive, spare a thought for what they pay here in South Africa ( conversion rate: divide by roughly 5). Makes these guys look really great.
2. My favourite must-read-every-day blog is the Online Photographer. Great articles on depth of field. Guaranteed to make your brain water.
3. If you were starting to foam at the mouth and see yourself as an indie Peter Jackson with a D90/5DMkII, you might want to have a look at this article on Luminous Landscape, which clearly lays out when you really need a camcorder (or not)
4. Mary Jo has uploaded a video of her photographs of a pole dancing event. You can see it here.
5. And from the Land of the Long White Frost ( Doc’s words),the post header image, just in. Given my last two posts, I detect synchronicity and a certain delicious irony here (LOL).

With infinite complacency men went to and fro over this globe about their little affairs, serene in their assurance of their empire over matter. ..It is curious to recall some of the mental habits of those departed day

-H.G Wells, War of the Worlds

The earth is 12000 km in diameter; the atmosphere which surrounds it a mere 10km thick. We are creatures living in a microscopically thin film, transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water.

There is a book which has followed me around over 25 years. Written by the science fantasy writer, Roger Zelazny, Roadmarks charts the journey of the protagonist, Red Dorakeen, along the road of time. Driving his battered pickup truck, with a copy of Baudelaire’s Les Fleures du Mal and Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass on the dashboard, he enters and exits the road of Time at various points along its continuum. In the course of his journey, dragons appear to offer him advice.

I haven’t read it for some years now. It is packed away amongst all my other books in a friend’s garage. Even though I haven’t looked at it in quite some time, it still maintains a presence in my imagination, and the metaphors within the book still have an influence from time to time. The journey the hero makes, it seems to me, reflects in  many way our own journeys, and when I think about how the various elements in the box are in some way metaphors for the human journey, then it comes to inform me. I think our photographs can do that as well. (more…)

Kia ora tatou:

Here, for you Mac users, is the wonderful advice Donald has sent me about keeping your Macs running sweetly.

BTW, the evangelist on the right is Steve Jobs. Mac fanboys genuflect to him daily. PC users may know of him….in the same way we may have heard of Knockemstiff, Ohio..but who wants to go there ? (LOL)

Make sure you have 25-30% free space on your primary hard drive, otherwise things can get flaky.

1-2 Gb free suits most people, and if this gets compromised the machine will warn the owner, by suggesting they free up some space, however many people don’t understand the message and ring me. Cultural language differences sort of cause this. I’ve seen disks with zero space free and the machine runs fine, but of course you can’t save anything. Despite it saying zero, memory management systems probably are still doing things like creating scratch disks or virtual memory, so may be this accounts for the continuing stability. (more…)

Kia ora tatou:

A friend gave me this poem the other day. Prophetic, somehow.

It seemed appropriate to accompany it with this image…

The Journey

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you (more…)

Kia ora tatou:

The news will be out soon enough, but for those of you interested, the commissioners have reached a decision on the Lammermoor windfarm project .

It will go ahead.

No doubt there will be appeals.

Those of you interested can find out more here or ,if willing to wade through the paperwork, read more here.

Kia ora tatou:

As some of you know, I am a (woefully inactive) member of Greenpeace, and do what I can ( not enough, really), to support them and what they stand for.

I received this email newsletter inviting me to participate on their new website and invite all my friends and family to participate.

Rather than do that, I have decided to include the newsletter verbatim, and invite each of you to participate…

…On Friday we launched a major new climate change campaign in collaboration with Oxfam and Forest & Bird called “Be The Change”.
Be The Change is focused on encouraging people all over NZ to take action against climate change by making changes in their own lives. To kick things off we’ll be touring the country in the Be The Change bus. We’ll be promoting the campaign and highlighting solutions from Bluff to the Bay of Islands but more about that later.
What’s important now is that you get on board! We have a fantastic new website that, with your help, will become a vibrant online community focused on combating climate change. You can submit ideas, take pledges, write a blog, make friends, post stories and much more.
As a Greenpeace member you know that climate change is more than an environmental problem; it’s also social, economic and political. It is not “his” problem or “her” problem or “their” problem; it’s our problem, and it will be our children’s problem and their children’s problem if we don’t do something about it.
That’s the bad news. The good news is that it’s not too late. We still have time to avert the worst of it if – and only if – we all start taking responsibility now. We all need to make changes if we want to turn climate change around.
With Be The Change we want to spark New Zealanders into action.
There are a thousand things we can do and they don’t have to be drastic. Everything from changing your light bulbs to energy efficient mini fluoros, to taking public transport to and from work, to starting a worm farm…all these things will make a difference.
Be The Change is about critical mass. We need as many people as possible to join us and start making change. With the combined membership of Greenpeace, Oxfam, and Forest & Bird we’re off to a good start but what we need you to do is get online and start inviting your friends, family and workmates to sign up as well.

Kia ora tatou:

It has been some time since I posted on the subject of the environment, a subject about which I am passionate and not a little concerned. I guess my artist’s statement, a text I revisit from time to time, which is still the source code for my work, sums it up for me. it is about using such talents as I have to do what I can.

In the debates on the Lammermoors, a number of you commented on how you could make a difference. Judging by the response to my posts, there is plenty of passion among you as well. I think it is important to do whatever we can and not to feel that because our efforts are infinitesimal, that they are of little or no value ( alot of negative statemants there). They are of value. If each of us makes an effort, however trivial we might consider it to be, then collectively we can make a difference.

We owe it to our tamariki and mokopuna to do so.

(more…)

In December I wrote a post decrying the proposed windfarm on the Lammermoors above Ranfurly. I talked of the visual pollution that would result from erecting 170+ wind turbines in a place that is relatively visually pristine. I commented on the need to clutter the landscape with windfarms, when other measures, such as active promotion of tidal and solar generation could take their place.

Then I saw An Inconvenient Truth and began to realize how critical, complex, and global the issues for the environment and the planet really are, a problem for which we are individually and severally liable. I began to think about matters from a different angle.

Shortly afterwards a letter arrived from Jeanette Fitzsimons, outlining the Green Party perspective. It was pragmatic and realistic, and a nagging disquiet with my stated position grew. I have spent the last few months reading around the subject and trying to form a more objective opinion. I think I am there now. (more…)

Kia ora tatou:

Some time ago I wrote to Jeanette Fitzsimons, leader of the New Zealand Green Party on the subject of the windfarm on the Lammermoors. Today I received a reply.  Here it is in full. I have to say that my position since then has changed, that I am seeing the whole issue in a new light( no pun intended) and that I think there are bigger issues at stake… More on that later.

Dear Tony

Thank you for the link. Your photographs of the Lammermoors are really stunning.
As proponents of empowering people the Green Party are pushing for micro-generation options and the solar hot water programme is a part of this approach. (more…)

Kia ora tatou:

If you thought global warming was a myth, have another look. I received this email from Virginia. Enough said!

Dear Tony,
Part of my heaven has disappeared! Ivory Glacier has gone. It lay couched in its little cirque in a hanging valley, 600 ft above the Stag River inland from Hokitika. Beautiful striped brown, white and grey ice carved schist lies on the glacier’s terminal moraine where wonderful ranuculus flower profusely. All this is still there, of course, but the little cirque where the snow precipitated, froze, compacted and flowed into the lake, is bare, reminding me of Old Mother Hubbard’s cupboard! I was deeply saddened to hear this devastating news from the man who had take me there early in 1995.
The global warming became a reality for me.

Do yourself a favour. Go and see An Inconvenient Truth.

Ka kite ano

Kia ora tatou:
Last weekend, I went to see Al Gore’s movie An Inconvenient Truth. I am still somewhat in shock after seeing a potential future for the planet, our planet, laid out so graphically and chillingly.

I spent a couple of days trying to find the flaws in it. I want to see the flaws in it! But so far, zip.

And it has me thinking about my position on windfarms. So before I shoot from the lip again, I want to do my own research and think a position through.

In the meantime, read, Roger Ebert’s review in the Chicago Sun-Times. Then go and see it for yourself.
And someone tell me (please) how and where he has got it wrong! (more…)

Alex (16, and new to photography) wanted to post this image and make his own statement about it. He would appreciate your comments.

Personally I do not believe in God, but after taking a picture like this I can’t help believing God exists. When we reached the top of the hill and had a look around, I realised that this would be the only chance I would ever have to capture this, because there would never be another moment exactly like it. At no other time will things look exactly the same as as they did when I pressed the shutter; the light, the clouds and very soon the landscape. For me it’s worth a 2 hour drive up rugged tracks just to be able to get a picture like this. To put 176 wind turbines in a landscape this heavenly is murder.

Tawhirimatea kept his promise, and he continues to do so to this day. Sometimes he is content to listen to advice from his parents and forgive his siblings. On those days the weather is fine, clear, and calm.

But sometimes he is reminded of the pain his parents endured when they were separated and the longing they still have for each other. On those days he sends tornadoes, hurricanes, and cyclones to bring havoc to his brothers’ lives and to hound their children.

-Maori myth

The purpose of art is washing the dust of daily life off our souls.
Pablo Picasso

How can anybody in their right mind to do this? (more…)