Snow over Little Mt. Ida

Kia ora tatou:

The workshop season is underway…..

1. Winterlight Workshop One is almost full, but there is room on the second workshop. If the thought of  working in the fabulous Central Otago landscape and making stunning photographs, eating great food and drinking fine Otago wines appeals, then be in. We have moved this year’s workshop nearer to the beginning of July to  get the hoar frost. And Ken Ring reckons this winter will be amazing (ly cold)… Read about the workshop here. I dare you OZ readers to come across for it….
   
2. The Innerlight workshop at Lake Waikaremoana is filling as well. If you saw the results of last year’s participants in the exhibition now open, you will know the amazing results they achieved. A few places remain.Note: entry to the workshop is by portfolio or to those who have participated in Winterlight or a freeman Patterson workshop, since it follows on from topics taught on those. Read more here.
3. Towards Creativity- From Photography to Art.I have a new workshop planned for mid-April at the Braemar Lodge in Hanmer Springs, a result of people asking me how  I go about making images like Religion is… It  will interest all of you who want to take your picture-making to a new level, beyond pure photography/representation to art/expression. I have been evolving a new set of techniques and approaches over the last 18 months and I am itching to share them and work with you, before I leave for South Africa to get married. You can read about it here. Strictly limited to 12 participants.

Out There

I have begun following a new line of enquiry.

I have been thinking (already I can hear the intakes of breath, the hisses of concern, sense brows beginning to furrow, and hear the sounds of hooves disappearing over the horizon). But there is some thinking I need to share with you, a discussion I would like to open, one in which hopefully you will all participate. If it engenders discussion, debate and especially disagreement, then all well and good, because I believe that all of us need at some point in our photographic journey, to look at what we are doing and consider it in a wider context. In doing so we may well find the threads of a new path, one which is uniquely our own. I very much doubt that I will be able to get through all of this in a single post, and I expect these musings may require several essays on the subject.

So, without further ado, let me launch. Realise, however, that this is the beginning of a journey and my opinions may change at any time…it is a work in progress, but I sense a need to share.

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Kia ora tatou:

I am currently in Rotorua, New Zealand, preparing for the official opening of the Innerlight Exhibition, an exhibition of work from students who atended last year’s workshop at Lake Waikaremoana.

Frankly the work has surpassed my wildest expectations. At a time when the medium is in transition, when digital photography has offered us a new direction which we are groping towards ( blog post in production), to see work which moves the medium into a new place, is very exciting indeed.

Do take the time to visit the show if you are close by.

Otherwise, have a look here, and enjoy the work, all of which has moved from photography as representation to another space altogether.

There are still places on this year’s Innerlight workshop….

Nga mihi

Kia ora tatou:

I need help(I imagine there are one or two of you who would agree with that statement).

Now that I am settled into Hanmer, more or less, and beginning to get back in the groove, I am keen to begin expanding the range of workshops I have to offer. To that end I have been doing a little informal market research, asking people what they would like me to offer. There is bound to be something one of you would like to see, which is never occurred to me.so if you have any ideas, you might like to either e-mail me or make a comment below. I would love to hear what you think.

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Homer Tunnel, 31/10/1937

I am here now.

The last month has been a wild roller coaster, what with moving into a new home and dealing with my mother’s passing. What truly helped were the  telephone calls, e-mails, texts and cards which many of you sent me. I cannot begin to thank you enough for your kindness and support. I am deeply grateful. But, bit by bit, things are beginning to settle down, and bit by bit, I am beginning to get on the road again. Because of you. Because of your kindness.

My profound thanks.

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Wagamama window, Wellington

Kia ora tatou:

The last few days have been both painful and revelatory.

Little did I realise  how my post of Saturday morning would generate such adeeply-moving and generous response from all of you.

In that time you have posted, sent me emails, phoned me and goivenme massive support.

I am deeply honoured and deeply grateful. My thoughts being elsewhere, and having  access to the Internet only from my Blackberry, thanking you all sufficiently has not been easy to do.

May I express my heartfelt gratitude and hope that you will forgive me for not replying on an individual basis.

Namaste.

We can only wait.

While i do so, I have  begun to write again. I hope the previous two posts will give you something to read and enjoy.

Nga mihi ki a katoa

Sony A900. 24mm. ISO 100, f8 @ 1/320

The future was rushing towards me, drawing ever closer, arriving on the horned wings of an approaching storm. I looked up in horror, in ghastly realisation, and knew that there was nothing, nothing at all I could do to escape, to turn it away….

I am more convinced than ever that whatever we photograph, we need to be passionate about it, we need to embrace it.

Being a restless soul and a Libran to boot, and thus deeply aware of the duality which dwells in all of us, I cannot help myself. I need at least one other way of photographing. I love photographing the landscape, being out there with Creation and drawing it, drawing from it what it is saying to me at the time.

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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”.

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Kia ora tatou:

As a few of you know, Heather and I have been journeying for the last few weeks, looking for the right place to settle and begin again…or continue what has been begun. For some time I have  had a dream of building a centre, a whare oranga, where I could teach workshops, write, guide/mentor,  and be of assistance. As some of you also know, I spent a portion of 2008 and 2009 studying mauri hau ora. Understandings gained from that, and from my time in South Africa, have been feeding themselves through into my work, and adding to a teaching philosophy I developed for myself while working for NatColl Design Technology College some years ago.

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Kamikaze, Rotorua

Relax, said the night man,
We are programmed to receive.
You can check out any time you like,
But you can never leave.

The Eagles: Hotel California

I am not sure what it is about circuses and sideshows, but they fascinate me. I think they always have. I would like to think it has something to do with a childhood fascination, from being taken to a circus as a child and steering in awe at the clowns and circus animals. But that would be untrue. I have a vague memory, as a child, of being led around the outside of a circus, but never actually getting to see the performance. So there is nothing in my past that Stephen King could use as a hook for one of his astounding horror novels. Yet, at times, whenever I spend an hour or so in a sideshow, I get this uneasy feeling that in some surrogate way, I’m participating in a Stephen King script. So, being a photographer of sorts, I use the camera to help me navigate a path through this sense of the surreal and bizarre.

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Oamaru Pony Club

Kia ora tatou:

It is that time of the year again ( isn’t it always?).With Christmas on us, the insane rush to shut New Zealand for a few days will see people buying as if the shops will be shut forever, and tradesmen working 28-hour days to complete work for clients ( you want it when?).

As a number of you know, I am on the road, seeking a new place to settle.Currently I am in Rotorua, spending Christmas with my mother (soon to turn 93!).

I want to thank you all for your support this year and in the past ( the blog is about to turn 400 000- I hope I do not!!). So I thought I would reprise this post from 2007.

I wish you well for  Christmas ( and indeed for all the year, every year.) Blessings to you all.

Things I do badly (the list is extensive) include remembering birthdays and writing Xmas cards. My apologies in advance.

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Christchurch1

Sometimes I forget. Sometimes I really do.

Over the years, as I’ve grown up, I’ve tried to avoid the fact that it was in Christchurch.

I guess my boyhood memories have not been very happy ones. I remember a city that was cold, unfriendly and not at all welcoming to a small boy fresh in from the country. I wasn’t used to schools that had more than 20 pupils, where nobody really seem to care whether you turned up or not. Certainly there was no sense of community, just variable friendship and competition. Furthermore, the winters, living down by the edge of the Heathcote River, were anything but warm and comfortable. Much of it had to do with the fact that our house was not insulated and, as a consequence, was an icebox in winter. I guess most houses in those days were like that.

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Swimming Pool, St. Francis, Eastern Cape

When is a colour photograph?

Colour photography is one of those things I imagine most of us take for granted. We assume, because we see the world in colour (or believe we do), that everybody else does, and that colour is a given. Because we see something in colour, we assume everybody else does and that therefore they see the world in the same way that we do.

I would venture to suggest that the reality is quite something else.

Over the years, as I have taught people photography, I have come to realise that some people have a natural affinity for colour, or for the colour in their photographs. I have also noticed that others appear to have no sense of colour and inevitably, when I play with their photographs and convert them to black and white, they turn out to be infinitely better when rendered as tones.

Some people quite naturally see in black and white.

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There is a saying: one thing is an event, two things a coincidence, and three things form a pattern. Over the last week or two I seem to have been having a recurring conversation with a variety of different people, all along the same theme. It is only after having yet another one yesterday that I’ve begun to perceive that there is a pattern here, that something is being put in front of my face.

The conversation goes something like this: the person will ask me whether I think that it is possible to be truly creative. What they’re really asking is whether I think they are creative, and if not, what they can do about it. Often the conversation will talk about technical expertise, and whether there is any possibility of being different, unique and making highly original work.

Well, there is and there isn’t.  technique is no longer the answer. Things have certainly changed. Let me explain.

Back in the day, the difference between a professional and amateur was generally perceived as being one of a difference in technical expertise. With a lifetime’s experience behind him, a professional photographer usually had a more profound understanding of photographic process. So, the people who taught me had, between them, nearly 80 years of experience to pass on. Back in the day, mastering film-based technique was something similar to climbing Mount Everest. You looked way up into the sky, and since there had to be a summit somewhere (there wasn’t), you began climbing. When people looked at your prints, with beautiful deep blacks and subtly-toned whites, their respect  for you would grow because they were knew you were further up the mountain than them. Mastering film-based process was a long, involved and never-completed process. Mind you, it’s not that different with digital.

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Tiresias

I often wonder why so many of us are drawn to photography.

I never cease to be fascinated by the reasons, by the motivations, and by all the myriad-and-one reasons why we take up photography. Over the years when I ask people why they have do it, some have answered confidently, while others have dithered and become tongue-tied. There is no question in my mind that occasionally the reasons I asked those questions were as much for my own benefit, to explain it to myself, as it was to hear what you had to say. I apologise to all of you who thought I was genuinely interested in hearing your particular reason for being in photography, when what I really wanted to hear was an answer to my own question. Such are the ways of ego.

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