Cardinal Tetra
I am beginning to assemble a tropical aquarium
and this is the beginning.
Cardinal Tetra are my favourites of this
species.
I will keep you in touch
with fish keeping developments.
The Suite
I have been asked to assemble a suite or suites of my photos.
It’s been more difficult than I would have thought,
but here is a start.
It may be that this photo is in itself an image.
Freesia
Here’s a new photo.
I like the negative spaces
for some reason or reasons.
I’ll print it quite small.
Apple
Several years ago I found this apple
tree right at the back of a plant nursery.
It had been put there and to a large
extent, forgotten. The owners offered
it to me for $50. I hesitated, went home,
but then decided to go back a buy it,
a decision I have never regretted.
It’s a compact form, not having
many side branches, in fact the type is called
Ballerina. This particular variety is
know as Bolero.
Although close to being 2 metres tall
it has much of the bonsai look to it.
Ideally suited to growing in a pot
it has barely increased in size in all the time
that I have had it.
This photo I took perhaps 6 years ago,
but the one with the blossom I took
yesterday.
Puriri Moth
New Zealand’s biggest moth, it was
always an exciting moment to find one
of these when I was a boy and living in
the country.
It has been several years since I
have seen one. They are also
known as Ghost Moths.
Sometimes, at night, they flew inside
our house, laying pearly eggs
by the hundred it seemed.
The moth lives for just a few nights.
It does not feed, it has no mouth parts.
Their caterpillar stage
can live for five years, in a burrow
in a tree, not just a Puriri, even in
some introduced species like oak.
can live for five years, in a burrow
in a tree, not just a Puriri, even in
some introduced species like oak.
Recycled Hare
Recently this photo was
reproduced as a billboard
and displayed on the outside
of the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery.
Once the exhibition was over
the vinyl billboard was sent
away to be turned into
shoulder bags.
Earthworm Studies
More than ten years ago
I made some closeup photos
of earthworms,
it was Herald Island days.
I have the negatives
and a contact sheet but
apart from making a couple of quick
prints, I didn’t pursue the image
further. I don’t know why,
perhaps it was because other photos
were coming along and crowding it out
and I was distracted. I don’t know
where those two prints are at the moment although
I would like to. They are somewhere in the
drawers here though.
But the idea has constantly gnawed away,
so recently I bought some clay
and began making shapes
based upon the photos that I had taken,
and drawings that I made from time
to time such as these below.
The photo at the top of the page is
my first clay version.
I would like to see it turned into
bronze, or even marble. Or
perhaps a photographic image.
I’m not sure, so I’m exploring it now.
Black Nerita
Shellfish huddled together
after the tide has gone out.
Farm Study
A view of some cows.
The quality of the image is not good
because I took it with my phone
camera, and the wind was very strong,
making it extremely difficult
to keep steady.
I don’t think that it is really
the cows that I am interested in
as much as the way that
they are dispersed.
I recognise this image, I’ve taken it
before, except that time it
was a view of ants.
Stick Insect
The Auckland Art Gallery
has just published a small book
entitled I Spy NZ Art.
It is a type of alphabet book,
the letter H,
for example,
is accompanied by a Peter Siddell
painting of a house.
All of the art works used
are in the gallery’s collection.
On the page illustrating
I, there is a photograph of a
stick insect.
I took this photo in 1992.
I