The Wedding

I went to a wedding last Sunday. There were about 150 there. One of the everlasting memories was being in a room that was in part, a nursery. Children were congregating there, though not exclusively, there was food and general conviviality, it was also the exciting room where the presents were piling up. It really struck me to see how relaxed the children were with each other, introductions clearly not necessary. I would have liked to photograph these two in more detail but I was using the flash, and didn't want to disturb them.

While the wedding was in New Zealand, there were Bangladeshi and Muslim facets. I came away from the event thinking that if there were more International weddings like this, the world would be a better place.

Te Papa, Last Sunday Evening.

This was the view from my Wellington accomodation last Sunday. I was in Wellington to go to a wedding. When there I went to the City Gallery to see "Reboot'. I felt that it was a show of great clarity. I visited it twice.

Kaikoura Coast

I drove down the Kaikoura coast a few days ago and stopped several times to take photographs. It has some spectacular rocks. When I saw this rock my photographic geiger counter was registering. I'd like to see this as a largish print.

Leaning Pine

On Tuesday I was in Canterbury on a lonely road near Hanmer Springs driving, travelling on my own. I'd seen a lot of landscape over the previous few days but these sturdy pine trees, all with a precise lean to the left, totally captured me. The prevailing winds in this area are admired for their force, there is even a settlement called Windwhistle. This wind, over the life of individuals such as those in this forest, have, bonsai like, shaped them. I've never seen anything like it, their powerful trunks, all at I would say, 15 degrees from the vertical.

This particular forest is very tidy and precise. The trunks have been groomed, the timber has less knots that way. But equally importantly, in this forest there are black cattle grazing on the undergrowth and making it lawnish. One is there as a small black dot right in the middle of the picture. I thank them because they helped this photo concentrate on the tree torsos and helped in giving this landscape, for me, a rush.

When I was little I used to go to the movies every Saturday, in a tiny Northland town called Ohaeawai, this was post-war rural New Zealand. The programme always included a black and white newsreel. For only a few minutes, one Saturday night, I might have been about 10, there was a clip about a garden in Japan where a gardener was, at the top of a tall elegant ladder, using equally elegant scissors, tenderly clipping the dead needles and twigs from a very large pine tree. Over decades it was being made into a work of art. The gardening ethic could not have been more different to that in which I was being raised. Those few electric minutes educated me in a way that has enriched my life.
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Studio View

Here is the entrance to my New Plymouth studio. The entrance is in the centre, right below the power line, one has to duck under the Tamarillo which I've been training to form an arch. The pendulous warm-looking red fruit, when left on the tree, are decorative in winter and great for breakfast too.

The blue that you see is the only colour used for the entire house, inside and out, except for the ceilings which are white. It's Resene Tranquil. I particularly didn't want to have the window frames looking different.

Below is a photograph of a New Plymouth view that I enjoy, across the road from where the proposed Len Lye centre is to be built, next door to the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery.

Old Man Range

I've been transferring photos from my Alexandra computer to my New Plymouth one and came back to this image. Photographed just above Alexandra, a month or so ago it continues to remind me something man made.

It reminds me too of this photograph of the Three Sisters landmark in North Taranaki, an hours drive north my New Plymouth studio. A month after this photo was taken one of the Sisters collapsed during a storm, the middle sister, the 'skinny sister'.

I have a trust called 'The Three Sisters Trust'.