Author: Peter Peryer

This author has written 801 articles


Photo du Jour.

I was back in the butterfly collection of Central Stories, here in Alexandra, Central Otago, today.
Rows and rows of butterflies are always such a tempting subject, just about as bad as autumn leaves. For decades I’ve looked into displays like this and reached for my camera.

Today’s photo is one of the more interesting for me. One reason is that I have a new camera which is more technologically advanced than ones that I have previously owned. It can gulp up photos of close-up objects. It has a very good image stabilisation system that takes the shake out of photos being made at slow speeds i.e. dim light.

It also has the function of face recognition. I’ve never used this before and next time I am in company I will experiment with it. Principle is that the software running the camera can by some miracle recognise that there is in the frame a human face and that it will then ensure that that face is perfectly in focus and perfectly exposed. The software can recognise and adjust for up to 9 faces in the frame. Remember the days when you took a snap of your two favourite friends only to find that they were both slightly out of focus but the wallpaper between their heads was sharp.

What really clinched it for me with this camera was a reviewer who tested it for face recognition on monkeys, and it worked. The reviewer also said that face recognition will be standard on all digital cameras very shortly just as image stabilisation has become.

Now I am going to surprise you. I suspect that this photo is not about butterflies at all. Someone described one of my themes as ‘the aesthetics of dispersal’. I think that this is true. I seek out certain visual arrangements, they may appear in all sorts of subject matters, in some ways ‘subjects’ are merely the vehicle.

Two Taps

This is, I feel, a photo under development. These taps are on the outside of
Henderson House and even though I have been looking at them for four months
today is the first day that I actually swung into action and took a photo.

It’s interesting but not there yet.
Worth pursuing though.


In the Pink

A photo that I took today when even though the temperatures were very low,
the sun was shining. It reminds me of some photos that I have taken of flowers e.g. Fuchsia.

Rita’s Room

I have a two and a half year old grandaughter called Rita and on
Sunday I took this photo of her room.

Rita’s mother is Japanese, and as a result, I think that there is a Japanese influence on some of the toys that are here, particularly that of Anpanman.

Remember, that clicking on these photos will make them appear in a larger size.


Today’s Photo

Taken at Central Stories here in Alexandra. I think that this is equipment associated with gold mining.


Pony Tail
Four times in my photographic career I have really noticed a pony tail.

The first occasion was in my early thirties when, spending some time in Fiji, I saw village children whooping around, playing with a real horses tail. The horse had died as a result of a poorly applied tether strangling it. I think that at the time I had just bought my first camera and wasn’t up to even trying to photograph it.

On the second occasion an acquaintance who lived across the road in Ponsonby cut her long black pony tail off and laid it on some newspaper. I took some photos have negatives of the event somewhere deep in my files. I never did anything with the photo though. I felt at the time that it didn’t quite make it. I was probably right but I can’t be quite sure until I revisit it.

Some years later a hairdressr saved the pony tail of a client and then rang me. Again I felt that I didn’t quite make it.

Here, ten years later, I am back photographing the same subject. I’m pondering the result.

Hiroshi Sugimoto

I recently saw a documentary about this Japanese photographer and these are some snaps that I took straight from my television. I’d seen an exhibition of his at the Auckland Art Gallery a few years ago, photographs of wax figures from Madame Tussaud’s. Sugimoto has lived in New York since 1974.



Bull Sale

A couple of weeks ago I went to the auction of 90 bulls. If I had been doing it again I would have gone much closer into the paddocks where the bulls were on display, and done a close up portrait.

I also took this closeup snap of a poster at the event.

Arrowtown Last Friday Evening.

I went to the Nadene Milne Gallery in Arrowtown last Friday. It’s near Queenstown,
about an hour from here. Ans Westra is showing some work there at present. That’s Ans and Nadene in this photo.

Warwick Freeman was also showing some of his pieces. Here he is on the left. Luit Bieringa is on the right doing his best to stand on tiptoes. I’m in the middle. (Thanks for the photo H.)
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