The Home

Happy New Year to you all.

After 5,954 kilometres, 21 rolls of 120 film, 152 sheets of 4x5 film, and 5 rolls of 35mm, I'm home again. Back in Wellington. Yay.

Cos I'm a really anal-retentive type of person I can tell you the exciting news that last year I shot 138 'films' (I have a loose definition). This year I have already shot 146 'films'. Isn't that just fascinating? Naturally it's going to take me the rest of the year to develop them all. And I'm really looking forward to developing all those 4x5 BW negs.

The South Island is a pretty neat place. I started three new bodies of work – maybe five, depending on how things work out. Hopefully one of them may be seen in the not too distant future. I also continued with a couple of on-going series, and a bunch of shots for no reason whatsoever. So many of them will probably end up here.

One thing I can tell you is that the South Island mid-summer is not a good time to be doing long-exposure night shots – the nights are just too bloody short. Go to bed at 11.00pm. Get up at 1.00am to start the exposure. Read until 3.30am, end exposure. Go back to bed. Get up at 7.00am to decamp.

Of course I ended up buying a ‘new’ camera too – a Konica Eye. A nice little half-frame camera from mid-60s, with the lens well whacked so the images will no doubt be artfully soft/blurry.

Much to my disappointment, I wasn’t required to wake up too early to go chasing birds in the pre-dawn. Fortunately black stilts (kaki), the world’s rarest wading birds, like wandering around and feeding in more pleasant hours. Admittedly, I spent most of my time with Nic accompanying him around the 526,481 predator traps he had to check (okay, it may have been the 150 or 200, but you don't know that), and not a huge amount hanging out with the birds. But they’re lovely wee things – photos may follow.

South Island scenery is rather pretty too. More on that later. When I will actually be able to show just how pretty some of it is.

I did more than just take photos. I also drank coffee – though not as much as usual. Omarama is the place to go.

I also did my usual rounds of second-hand bookshops. I was pleasantly surprised to see that prices were much cheaper (and more realistic in my opinion) than in Wellington. Though I do have to profess a surprise in the almost total lack of art and photography books available. Very disappointing guys. And I had so much money I wanted to give you too.

But at Smiths in Christchurch I did find a decent copy of the late Peter Turner’s ‘American Images 1945-1980’. At Read in Dunedin I found a near mint copy of Ans Westra’s 'Wellington : city alive’, with text by Noel Hilliard. And at Limited Editions in Ashburton I scored a four volume set called ‘The Photographic Negative’ by Herbert C. McKay, F.R.P.S. from 1945 – check out the design feature on the spine. I may get around to flicking through it at some point in the next fifty odd years.



All in all, a grand wee trip. It was disappointing that Nic was unable to join me for our planned week of road tripping. But it was perfectly understandable given the circumstances.

And I'm already kinda planning my next trip down country. We'll see what happens.