I am back home, trying to readjust to another frozen Methven winter, and assimilate an overdose of creative stimulation gained from a 2500 km road trip over 23 days in southeast Australia.  As much as we kiwis like to ‘compete’ with our neighbours across the ditch we have no match for the amount of artwork they have everywhere.  The wealth of their country and the amount  of money it allows to be spent on public artwork collections has generated a cycle of creativity we can only admire with a hint of envy.  I especially like the way photography is respected as an artistic form, rather than being seen purely as a recording medium.   As a reminder to myself I want to detail a few highlights.

Melbourne: a visit to the NGV (National Gallery of Victoria) was worth the trip alone to see the Timelines exhibit. I could identify with the opening blurb:Time is a slippery notion. It is everywhere and always moving but this powerful regulating force cannot be seen. It is only apparent in context: in the changing seasons, in another wrinkle on our faces, in the growth of children. Photography has a unique role to play in our sometimes poignant sense of time passing. The camera’s ability to depict ‘a moment in time’ – to stop the clock for a brief moment – gives photographs a unique capacity to direct our consideration towards the mechanics and poetics of this pervasive and mysterious cosmic force.It was a brilliant collection of work including photographs from Imogen Cunningham, Edward Weston, Bill Brandt, Ruth Maddison, Rod McNicol and Rosemary Laing.

Bendigo: Where, you say?  It’s a nice town north of Melbourne, not a huge place by any means, but a destination because an ex-Lincoln friend of mine lives there.  But its local art gallery had collections of old masters and contemporary art that would put our big centres to shame – just another indicator of how valued art is in Australia.  And in nearly every gallery we saw school classes using the resources.

Sydney: what a creative hotbed this place is. My main focus was to see an exhibition of Bill Henson’s photography.  He would be Australias most respected photographic artist, and was great to see his large prints – around a metre square – selling for $30,000 each. And yes they were selling, 19 red dots at the time we visited.  I had a special interest in his work as an acquaintance of mine, creative and technical genius Les Walkling, is a long time friend of  Hensons and had quite a bit to do with him changing from fibre paper-based prints to digital pigment prints (the same system I use). Another of Les Walklings collaborators is very well respected, Poli Papapetrou.  I was excited to find her new exhibition had just opened at the Stills Gallery in Paddington.  I had seen early proofs of some of these prints at one of Les’s fine art print workshops so was thrilled to see the finished articles.  Poli’s work really does set my mind off, very though provoking. As a bonus we caught the end and beginning of two exhibitions at the Australian Centre for Photography.  They were portrait oriented, printed beautifully. Just another reminder of how valued photography is across the shores.

After all that stimulation I feel the need push my own photography a bit more; I have plenty of themes to keep photographing but need to work on getting more images printed and displayed. I have plans for a website upgrade but more urgently am anxious to get our new house with gallery/studio space built. Final plans are almost complete, hopefully construction will start soon.

I am sitting in a backpacker’s hostel overlooking Wanaka right now, cataloging and backing up a stash of images from the last few days. We just biked the 160 km Otago Rail Trail over four days. The weather wasn’t the best for comfort – norwest headwind on day 1, freezing rain on day 2, more wind on day 3 then finally a good tailwind on the last day – but is did create some magnificent light and sky landscapes. I hauled a stripped down camera kit (one body & 3 lenses) but it still seemed like more weight than I needed at times.

While on the trail we met many interesting people. A chance encounter with two traveling English photographers in the Ranfurly pub ended up with us comparing thoughts and ideas all evening. Escaping from the freezing rain to the warm reception by Ken & Helen at Glen Ida. A random encounter with a young woman who quit her job in the US a year ago and is now peddling her way around the world with only what she can carry on her bike. And of course the other rail trail bikers including our near neighbour Dave.

The plan is to carry on around the south for a while (autumn colour in Arrowtown is high on the list) then work our way north, maybe up the west Coast. I’m enjoying being able to carry out most of my essential work on the go; a couple of hard drives with copies of my entire archive and a very good laptop. Well it hardly qualifies as a laptop – an 18.4″ AW series Sony Vaio – not something you would open up seated on a plane! But it does have an amazing screen, one of the few that faithfully displays a full Adobe RGB colour gamut and has enough screen real estate to enable accurate image editing unlike most laptops. With this and a mobile wireless router I’m still in business while on the road.

Change is good – getting out of the usual routines definitely sparks the creative juice.

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.

Last week I had an brilliant day photographing two ‘Gardens of Significance’ on Banks Peninsula.  One was artist Nancy Tichbornes at French Farm, the other Jill and Richard Simpsons at Fisherman’s Bay. The images were commissioned for the next issue of Latitude, due out in early March.

While the gardens were different from each other the scale of work involved developing and maintaining them is amazing.  The creativity involved was a pleasure to capture.

‘Reality’ in photography is something some people spend a lot of energy talking about.  I try to avoid any discussions on the matter so am writing my thoughts here for reference to those who worry about such.

No matter how an image is captured, reality is altered to some degree.  Anyone who says “Oh I don’t use PhotoShop, my images are unaltered” is either ignorant, lying or disingenous. Even if they use a manual film camera and print straight from the negatives they have altered reality by all the decisions along the way: selective framing/composition of the subject, what sort of film was used (just how ‘real’ is B&W?), lens choice, processing method, type of paper printed on (is reality glossy, matte, borderless?).  Not to mention various filters – how did Ansel Adams capture those broody skies? – by using filters to enhance the tones among other choices he made.

Digital photography is no different.  Instead of film being processed the raw digital data is processed either in the camera (the only option for pocket digicams) or optionally later on the computer with PhotoShop or other software.  And contrary to what some people think, PhotoShop does not have a magic ‘unsuck’ button that transforms a bad image in to a prizewinner.  A good image still needs to be captured properly in the beginning.

Now this assumes that for some reason a finished image should convey something ‘real’. Maybe if you are a forensic photographer, or cataloguing artwork for a museum.  But for anyone who approaches photography as an artistic outlet the only reality to worry about is your own and you should use all tools & skill available to construct your reality. Ten people can photograph the same subject and come up with ten different images, because everyone’s reality is different!

When I find a subject that compels me there is a mood, feeling, or some emotion triggered that I want to capture in a 2D image. If I set the camera to ‘A’ for automatic (or maybe ‘P’ for Professional), push the button, and download my memory card at the nearest photo kiosk I’m going to be sadly disappointed with the results.

What I do instead is spend a lot of time getting the composition right. Then I often have to wait for good light. I decide what lens to use. I agonise about the right exposure to get the tones I’m after. When I get back to my office and download the images I pull them apart and reconstruct them to match my reality of what I saw and felt. If other people enjoy what I do that is a bonus and I’m glad that my reality resonates with theirs.  If it doesn’t, too bad, it is impossible to produce a universally loved image.

So do I use PhotoShop? Yes, of course I do, and I’m proud of it.

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.”

I have just done a minor tweaking to the image content here; some newer work added and some older removed. If you haven’t had a look for a while you might want to have a quick peek through the galleries.

Before too long I hope to do a more structured update.  I’m working my way through my images and assembling consistent, themed portfolios. Aside from being a satisfying way of completing my work, I plan to offer the portfolios as collections of prints on fine art paper.  It is so much more satisfying to hold and appreciate a print on a beautiful paper than only viewing on screen.  If this concept interests you, let me know and you will be on my list to be the first to know.

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.

If you are in Christchurch make sure you visit the Bryce Gallery at 122 Riccarton Road. It is a beautiful gallery with a wide range of art. While the photographs I print are generally open edition I am developing a new series of special images for the gallery. They are presented as archival pigment on canvas, framed with a luxurious wooden moulding. Each image will limited to a maximum of 15, individually numbered. Photographs on a website in no way convey reality but I will soon add a new gallery to showcase these editions.

I took a quick trip over to the West Coast with no particular aim, just needed a change of scenery. Photographing in a different landscape to the usual always seems to pleasantly surprise, images appear.  Late evening in Hokitika gave warm light, ideal to make this theatre glow.  I have always had an attraction to interesting buildings in nice light.  From an early age I admired Robin Morrison’s images from the road, his photography would have to be counted as one of my formative influences.