Raewyn Hillier on Latitude cover Winter 2010

Another cover on Latitude mag: over the last couple of months I’ve had fun photographing Raewyn Hillier.  She is a very interesting woman, recently seen with husband John on a  ‘Country Calendar’  episode featuring their high country hunting / guiding business.  I also photographed her working with Erewhon’s clydesdale horse team, riding her Harley and working at her day job as a flooring consultant in Christchurch.  It’s worth buying the mag just to read this article and see my photos of her!

Today Bruce Redmond proved he is the best ploughman in the world with a big win in the 2-day World Ploughing Competition held in Methven. It has been a huge event for Methven with competitors from all over the world converging here. Bruce thoroughly deserved the win. I spent the last hour of the competition fixed in a prime spot photographing only him and was surprised that maistream media were busy elsewhere – so I’m confident I have the best photographic record of New Zealand’s latest World Champion!

Bruce Redmond ploughing champion, Methven

The best ploughman in the world at work

Bruce Redmond, World Champion, with the trophy to prove it

Mt Hutt, late spring snow

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.

Late light, Glenfalloch

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.

I have not spent as much time out photographing as I would like lately due to some big changes underway. If you are not plugged in to the Methven grapevine you may not have heard that we have sold our house.  We love living here but decided we want to be able to pack up and travel more easily.  A house with 2 acres of garden is not very conducive to that idea!  Having sold the house, we spent a lot of time deciding where to live but ended up realising Methven has everything we want: a great community, all the shops & essential services yet still retaining the small town ambiance, and a location central to all points of the South Island.

Having decided to stay here we looked for a smaller house to live and work from but couldn’t find the right combo so once again will go through the building process.  I’m excited to be able to incorporate purpose-built printing room and studio space.  We have found a great architect to work with and are at the early planning stage, expecting to take most of the year to complete the new property. We will live in a nice little rental cottage on a farm just out of town for the year.

With a disrupted year on the books we thought why not really mix things up.  So we have ordered a large (25′) caravan that we hope to spend a lot of time in this year, doing a slow crawl around the island(s).  NZ is not that big but there are endless little communities and interesting pockets of country dotted all over.  We want to take the time to get to know as many of them as possible.  And of course be photographing life and land along the way.  I’m not sure what the end point for this photographic journey will be, but it will develop along the way.

I am hoping to connect with a lot of people on the road.  This blog will be a lot more active than it has been, with updates of where we are and where we are going.  So if you are somewhere near us and feel like sharing your part of  paradise do get in touch, we will  head your way.  And if you have any suggestions for places not to miss, we’d love to hear those too.  Here’s to an interactive tour.

We will be heading off in early March once we have fully moved out of our house and settled in to the cottage.  I’m busy trying to figure out the best mobile internet solution because much of area we plan to go is not near cellphone coverage.  If you have suggestions, please let me know.

All this means my other ‘regular’ work will be a bit disrupted during the year, but we will have short periods back in Methven now and then, so if you do have a project you need help with let me know.  I might just need a bit more notice than usual.

Snow on Mt Taylor and Pudding Hill, mid summer

And for the visual of the day I have a photo I took just out of town this morning looking towards Mt Taylor and Pudding Hill. Yes it is supposed to be mid summer with harvest getting under way but fresh snow makes a joke of that. I am reminded once again why I class my 20 years farming as ‘character building’.

Frosty sunrise, Glenfalloch

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.

Life imitates art, Methven Rodeo

Cowboys from all around descended on Methven today for the annual rodeo.  This bull earned my respect for the best impersonation of the graphic on the wall.

Chas watches a good throw

Dietlind from Glenfalloch phoned early yesterday to let me know they were shearing in case I wanted to head up and take some photos.  Of course I did.  It is one of my favourite areas and one of my personal projects is to keep building up images around shearing and woolsheds.  This was special with merinos being shorn; the super fine wool is beautiful to handle and great care is taken with the preparation and classing.  Apart from recording the process I really enjoy meeting the wonderful individuals involved, they are my kind of people.

Now I just need to sift through the dozens of great images and add the best to my woolsheds portfolio.

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.

Seems like curves are everywhere. Yesterday I was photographing some equipment for a contractor and this arc jumped out at me.

Chopped grass