Author: Peter Peryer

This author has written 801 articles

More Geology

 

 
 
 
Here are some rocks that are in the Southland
Museum. All of the samples have been
found in Southland.
 
I took this photograph a couple of years ago
when spent 4 months living in Invercargill as the William
Hodges Fellow.
 

Fossils

 



For a long time I’ve been curious about fossils
and as often seems to happen to me, my camera follows
my interests. It’s as if my photography
is about my life, not my life about my photography.

Considering the number of times that I have
attempted photographing
fossils the pickings have been very slim.

Here I am today, working again on the subject.
Again, just not enough grunt to the photo.

It’s good to keep picking up the camera though,
it’s like practising scales.


The top fossil,
between 3.1 and 3.2 million
years old, was found last Saturday

in a cliff on the Taranaki coast, about an hour
south of here. I was on a geological society
field trip to the area. We studied the cliffs
over a 2 or 3 kilometre stretch. They are notable
because they illustrate much of the geological
history of this area.
This is not a fossil at all, but a scallop
that I cast in lead some years ago.

Barn

 
 
 
I mentioned a couple of posts back that the photo
I had taken of the Neenish Tarts was one of the most
popular that I had ever made.
 
Here is another one that was popular as well.
It is about 7 years old.
 
The barn was in a paddock somewhere to
the south of Martinborough, at the bottom
of the North Island.
 
I often look at barns and around here in Taranaki
there is no shortage. I almost a connoisseur of
barns. The one in the photo is one of the most
perfect that I’ve ever seen. It sits there with
such clarity.
 

Fish

 
 
 
Up until the last two or three years
when I took a new photo I always printed it up,
in an edition usually, and then moved on.
 
More recently though I’ve been stockpiling images,
doing no more than making draft prints
and putting them on my studio
walls for my own personal pleasure without
going any further with them. The photo above
is an example.
 
One reason for this situation is that
I seem to be photographing more
now than ever before. I’m not sure why but perhaps working
digitally has increased my output. Another
reason is that I now see images in colour as
well as black and white. For a long time
I worked exclusively in the latter.
 
This photo I made about 18 months ago.
Lately, I’ve been feeling that it needs printing up, quite
urgently.

Cliff

 

 
 
 
Today I am in my studio and working on
some fake cliffs that I bought at a pet store.
They are meant to be added to aquaria.
 
I worked on this material before, in a
post called Trunk.
 
I’m struggling with making this work
and will live with this image for a while.
Then I’ll know whether or not to abandon
this direction or not.
I’ve made a black and white version to see
if that helps me to recognise anything that
may be there.

Neenish Tarts 1984

 
 
 
A print of this image sold at an auction last week, in
Auckland, at Art + Object.
 
I can still remember how, when I bought all these
tarts, and some doughnuts, and some jams rolls,
the owner of the Devonport bakery asked me
if I was having a party.
 
This image would be one of the most popular that
I have ever taken.

Headless Chicken

 
 
 
Something about the images I used in the previous
two posts brought
this 1995 photo into my thoughts.
 
At the time I made a few silver gelatin prints
of this image.
I think that I’ve got one left,
in a drawer here in my studio.
 
I wish that I had made more, but at the
time I was put off by the amount of ‘spotting’
that each print needed. Spotting involves poring
over the print for hours with a fine paint brush and
a bottle of ink touching up imperfections, or spots.
 
The print is largish, I have an idea that I made the
chicken as close to life-size as possible.
 
Another reason that I didn’t make many prints
was that I predicted that it would not be an easy photo
to sell, not very suitable for the sitting room wall.
 

Pumpkin Again

 
 
 
Following the previous post,
here is another photograph of a pumpkin.
 
Let me explain how this image came about.
 
A pumpkin had been purchased with the intention
of making soup. However, in the artist’s residence where
I was staying there was a blue plinth. I like plinths.
 
This residence is in Invercargill, at the bottom of the
South Island of New Zealand and this was a couple of years
ago.
 
I had placed the grey crown pumpkin on the plinth
because I was enjoying its shape and colour.
 
However, I had purchased some inflatable toys, ones
that when blown up, projected spikes all over.
 
One of these toys, in a moment of over exuberance on my
part perhaps, had exploded, and as a result had a tear
along one side.
 
A couple of friends where there with me at the time,
we were enjoying ourselves. I looked up, only to see Buzz, one of the guests,
wearing the rubber balloon on his head like a helmet and looking hilarious.
 
As the evening progressed, I found that the helmet had been
transferred to the pumpkin and there it stayed.
 
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