Take your camera…
Nope. I’m not dead or too busy to post postings. We’ve just spent a month in New Zealand and the reason I’m mentioning it here is: if you are a landscape photographer don’t go there because you will very seriously consider staying forever if you do. At the very least, your career will be ruined because you’ll never stop thinking about how whatever it is you’re shooting at the moment is second best.
Look, we toured only the South Island. Before I get into how beautiful it is, let me just say New Zealanders or Kiwis are so good-natured and helpful, plus they know how beautiful their country is and have tremendous pride of place. Even better? They love sharing it with visitors. They love sports, so if you are a photographer AND enjoy hang-gliding, trout fishing, bungee-jumping and any other sport (how could I forget RUGBY/SOCCER/FOOTBALL?) you have two reasons to book your flight. Now. And two reasons to stay forever.
Everyone who had already been to NZ told us it was the most beautiful place on the earth and we believed them. I will tell YOU that there is no word in the English language to describe such a place. Every day we figured we had seen the best, most jaw-dropping beauty this earth had to offer, but then the next day…. it was “OH MY GOD” all day long. Déja vu of the best kind. Except every day offered something totally different.
Here’s the closest I can get: PRIMORDIAL. There is something about every type of landscape on the South Island that just gets you in your soul in an atavistic way. Here’s what you see driving along any old road, for example:
From the side of the road…
Whether it’s the plains, valleys, mountains, rolling hills, pastures, seascapes, beaches, coasts, farms, trees… it’s just too, too beautiful to imagine.
One morning, we drove 45 minutes up to Glenorchy from Queenstown to go on a 3 hour horsetrek in (almost) Lord of the Rings country (we’ve never seen the films, but will get them out now for nostalgia’s sake) and I took this from the van window:
En route to Glenorchy from the van while moving…
Are you getting where I’m going with this posting? If I, in a split second, with a whatever-little-digital-camera and trust me, NOT being a photographer AT ALL, can take pictures like this, don’t you just have to wonder what YOU could do with a camera?
Go and find out. And when you do, I’ll post them here. If you ever come back.
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Horsetrek scene from the horse! While moving!
Lake Hawea, from the van while moving…no Photoshop color adjustment here!
February 11, 2010 at 3:46 am
B.T.W. I was driving on the WRONG side of the road while the photographer was doing her thing. I kept gently urging her to NOT drop the camera out the window. She didn’t. And yes, I agree, it is a most amazing place!