Revisiting

The photo above I took last year, 

called Budda's Hand, one of the names

for this extraordinary citrus.

However, earlier this week, a visitor

remarked upon how reminiscent 

it was of Thea's Hand, a photo 

from 1997.

Thea's Hand was taken in Christchurch. Thea's

parent asked if I could take a photo of her

hands.  I agreed, finally deciding to use this 

marble background with her hand above

mine.

Surprisingly, I hadn't noticed this similarity,

or even thought about it.

Sabre & Socks

The lower photo I took today. I'm sorting

my socks, trying to match them up,

and make pairs.

The upper photo I took of a Napier Sabre

engine, 2000 horse power plus. This is

in a museum in Christchurch.

Slaughter 1981

I am involved in a major project where I am 

going through all of my old negatives

to see if I have missed any images

that could be printed up, or, in some

cases to find negatives that

I knew, or rather hoped were

there, but have been lost for years.

I was very glad to come across the negative of Slaughter 1981,

taken at a time when I was in my early

days as a photographer. I think that I made,

one, maybe two prints mainly for my 

personal enjoyment. I don't know where

the prints are now.

It was taken on the same occasion

 that I took Farm Study. In fact

all of the sheep in Farm Study were

on their way to be killed.

The top photo shows one of them.

However, it would be remiss of me 

not to include another photo in this post, the colour one

below and called Carcass, taken a couple 

of years ago.

Needless to say this image has not

been one of my big sellers.

By the way, this sheep in not real.

Calla Lilies

When driving past a roadside

flower stall I noticed these 

Calla Lilies. One snap with

my iPhone and I was happy.

 Below is a photo that I took in 1981, 

just after I had started 

photographing. These Blood Lilies

were in the grounds of Auckland 

University.

In this case it was the leaves

that I was interested in, not

the flower, attributable

probably to working in black

and white and not colour.

Tower of Song.

This is my latest photo, taken

in Auckland last Saturday.

First thing that I was reminded of

was the work shown on the contact

sheets below made sometime in the eighties.

I unearthed these during a recent

tidy up.

The structure in the top photo is a coat stand,

the objects in the contact sheet are the

legs of a small table.

I'm going to print the top photo soon,

quite large.

Whittling

Some years ago I 

cut a privet down

and selecting as many

little branches 

as possible I 

whittled away at them until

they came out in these shapes.

Lately, as I wrote in the previous post,

I have been in the

mood to carry on with this work, don't know

why after all this time that it has come upon

me but I'll just get on

and enjoy the process.

In the last few days

I decided to scale up size to see

what would happen.

Here is a branch awaiting the

treatment.

Sticks

This morning I have been cutting

away at some dead Whau trees

right outside my bedroom window.

I've saved quite a few of the branches

in case I can manage to whittle them into

shapes that I like.

Here is one at the beginning of its 

transformation, big word for

what I hope will happen.

Makomako

I have a high balcony that projects out

into some native trees.

This tree is a makomako,

known in English as a 

wineberry. The berries

when ripe are the colour

of red wine.

I planted several of these

trees to entice

birds into my

garden.