The Maniototo is a stunning part of the NZ South Island, it's one of those places where you feel the NZ history. It's now sheep farm land,it's  harsh, dry climate, ranging from over 30°C in mid-summer to -15°C in mid-winter so it's a hardy place. The gold rush hit there in the early days, it's been photographed, painted and talked about for many years, and I can understand why, I love the place and really need to go back and do more!

This is an image I love, the clouds were starting to roll over a hill with the light just peaking round the edge, the pathway draws you up to the summit and into the coming storm. I like the way the light reflects off of the clouds and your left wondering what's at the end of the path, well I was anyway.

I'd travelled down to this area with Tony Bridge, a stunning NZ based photographer and a great teacher. This is an area he knows well and was happy to share it with me. This image was captured on the 1st day were were there but it wasn't completed for another 3 weeks after that by the time I got home, converted the raw files (300+ images! from the whole shoot) and then started to bring out from the image what i saw, what i remembered about the area and I guesss all the additional elements that your mind adds as you embelish a memory.

The resulting image is one I'm very happy with and one that I've got on my wall at home.

You can see this and some of the other images from that trip in the Maniototo Gallery under Places.

Enjoy.

A few months ago I took a trip to Tekapo with some friends in a photo club I help to run. We chose Tekapo because of how much many of us love the place. It's hard to explain the place really and why it's so magical. I've been there a number of times and have taken away from there probably 3 or 4 of my all time favourite images, the one here being a good example of one of those.

Each time I visit Tekapo the place is different, weather obviously plays a big part of that but so does the people your with and the place it's self. Tekapo it's self is growing and becoming a little more set up to cater for tourists and sightseers, with clear skys and the stunning vista's it's little wonder this is a magical place.

As I say this image was captured on a weekend away looking at the digital darkroom, so developing , forming, tweaking your images, even with digital, if you don't start with a great image, what you get out will not be a great image so the skill is still getting it right in the camera. That's one of the things I love about this image, it's taken directly from the camera with zero manipulation, this is how I saw it and made the image.

We arrived at the lake just after 6am, it was still dark, it had been raining all night so it was to say the least wet underfoot, but that's what boots are for! Looking around there were half a dozen photographers with me and they all very quickly, and quietly assume their points of interest, I settled on a small broken down jetty and waited... it was just a little too dark and even with a lot of over exposure I wasn't getting quite what I wanted from the hills and the trees, so i switched my focus to the jetty (see Tekapo Gallery for those images). After around 45 mins the sun started it's slow ascent to the sky... and what a scene. The sky turned blues, magenta's, reds, oranges, purples it was gobsmacking, couple that with the atmosphere of the mist and it was going to be one of those mornings that makes getting out of bed with the camera the best thing in the world to do. I slapped on my 17-85 lens and a grad to let me up the exposure of the water & mist but darken the sky and off I went.

In total I shot around 75 images of the morning sun rise, I threw 30 of them away in camera and the rest I got into the PC for a review, 14 of them made it to the gallery in here, there may be more lurkign around to bring themselves out, but sometimes that takes a little time to discover, so pop back often to check out the Tekapo gallery.