Another find in my folder of ‘files to work on’ was an image I captured a few months ago.  It is from one of my nearby locations that I regularly visit to photograph.  It is always interesting to see how different the same composition can look under different light.  This day there was a combination of a late spring dump of snow, a setting moon, wonderful early light on soft clouds and content sheep grazing.  As I type this I have a 1 metre wide print on canvas emerging from my printer, it looks great.

I am still working through a backlog of photographs taken a while ago on a trip into the backcountry of the Rakaia river – this one caught some very special light one evening.  I have printed it along with some other new material to freshen up my collection at the Icehouse Gallery.

In this month’s NZ Geographic there is a large fold out map of Canterbury.  One of my Glenfalloch images was used for the information panels on the reverse.

In the Dec issue of Avenues magazine there is a feature on the best place I know of for a corporate retreat.  Glenfalloch Station is set in beautiful isolation and offers great hospitality, accommodation and conference facilities. It is also one of my favourite places to photograph.  The Avenues article only used a few (including this one as a double spread on the entry page) but if you look through my portfolio you will see Glenfalloch images popping up regularly.

The latest Latitude magazine is out now. Each issue I have a double page spread of one of my images, with a few words about what was going on in my head at the time.  Often it is not easy to articulate why I like something, it just seems right, so I find it an interesting exercise having to put pen to paper (actually finger to keyboard).  Here is this issues image, click it and you will go to a full 1600×1200 pixel version which you are welcome to ‘borrow’ if you need a new spring themed desktop.  Oh, and here was my ‘insight’ about the image:

“As a full time photographer much of my time is spent aiming for not only a creative composition but also technical perfection, coaxing the maximum detail from every pixel.  Now and then I enjoy stripping the composition right back to the basics, sometimes less detail works better to convey the mood I’m trying to capture. Too much detail can distract. There are still some people around who feel that photography should always be a literal representation of reality, but everyone’s own reality is very different.  The camera is just a tool to help show my particular view of the world.”

For the second year I have put together a calendar to help fundraising for the Methven Community Sports Trust.  It is out nice and early for those people who are organised and like to post overseas. This year we have streamlined the production and managed to reduce the price to $10 while maintaining the quality of last year.  Every cent goes to proposed new sporting facilities in our town so it is a good way to support the local community, promote our beautiful part of the country, and take care of a few Christmas prents all at once.  It is available at many retailers around town (a full list will soon be on my main website).  If you are out of town let me know, we can mail.

I have been all over the place lately (Sydney, Melbourne, Hokitika and Wellington in two weeks) and finally had a chance to sift through some of the images I have been collecting. Looking outside at snow now on Mt Hutt it seems hard to believe I shot this just a couple of weeks ago in Hokitika.

I am busy sorting through images captured on a quick trip down to Arrowtown and central Otago with fellow photographer Mareike Timm. Most of the time was spent in Skippers Canyon but these poplars turning colour in the Kawarau gorge caught my eye.  The light seems to have a special quality down there at this time of year.

One of my favourite areas in Mid Canterbury is back in the hills beyond the Rakaia Gorge.  I am just back from two days of photographing around the upper reaches of the Rakaia.  Approaching nor-west weather produced some magic at sunrise and through the day.  Many thanks to Chas & Dietlind Todhunter of Glenfalloch for their brilliant hospitality.  I’m quite excited to work my way through the images I captured.

Thanks to Laurie Prouting of Mesopotamia Station in the Rangitata valley I added plenty of great high country images to my collection yesterday. Laurie had to fly to the back of his property to do some work, I went for the ride with him and photographed some great country in between.