Rhino

The rhino enclosure at Auckland Zoo
caught my eye, but not because
of the rhino. The rhino are there, two of them in the distance,
but they were only
part of the overall attraction.

Playground

A post or so ago I showed a photo of a headless
turtle, in a children's playground in Whanganui.

Here is another animal from the same site.

Turtle 2

Once again a turtle has caught my eye.
This behemoth lives at the Auckland Zoo.

Although, oddly enough, when I look
at the photo now, the turtle looks
quite small. Well, not massive anyway
as it is in reality.

Something, in the course of making the photo,
has changed the sense of scale.
I think that it is one of my themes.
I've noticed it in other photos, the one
below for example.

Turtle

There is an intriguing children's playground
in Whanganui, with all sorts of animal sculptures, some,
like this one, have been well loved.

If you happen to be in
Whanganui you can't miss the spot, it's on the banks of the river,
on the inland side.

The first question that I have about the image, is of course, the
usual one. Should I just discard it or should I stay with it,
maybe make a print and have a look.

The next question is, should I Photoshop out some of the white marks, the toes
for example? Try tidying up the paintwork and see if I like it better, or not.

I especially like the sun flare on the body, and the solid disc of shadow
on the ground.

Portraiture

The urge to take portraits is, for me,

one that only comes intermittently,

alas.

One rush came in the mid to late 70's.

Then there was an extremely large gap.

Another rush came about 5 years ago.

In this case I took a photo of my grandson

Stan who lived in Darwin at that time.

Now he lives in Brisbane but later this week he

will be in Auckland.

Right now I am feeling that I would

like to make some more portraits.

I'm in the mood.

But, all the same

I don't think that I have a future as

a baby photographer

Central Otago

I'm finding that I am missing Central Otago.

I had the experience of living for a year

in this Ernst Plischke house overlooking Alexandra

and the Clutha River and a year like that gets

into your bones.

The top photo is from the driveway, the lower

photo is from the balcony on the opposite side

of the house. There were often magnificent clouds,

these reminding me of Dali.

Happy New Year

I wanted to wish you a happy new year

two or three days ago,

but I couldn't find a happy photo in my archives.

Have dug quite deep and found this one, taken

in 2005, in Whanganui.

I did print up an edition I remember, the image

being roughly the same size as you see on your

screen. The edition will be somewhere in the many drawers

that I have in this studio.

Stony Batter, Waiheke Island 2008

Back here in my studio in New Plymouth and in the

peace of the New Year holidays, I'm able to trawl

through some photos that I took a couple of years ago

but not ever printed them up for show.

Here is one that I took on Waiheke Island.

The graffiti is old, dating back to the Second World War.