Blog

Peter was a great believer in communicating about photography and got into blogging in its early days.

His blog ran, with some gaps, from 30 November 2006 to 2 September 2018.

You can visit the earliest entries via archived links on the right hand side of this page.

More Taranaki Hills

 
 
This follows on from my previous post.
 
Particularly near the coast in Taranaki
many of the hills still show the terraces
that were cut into them by Maori as they
built pa, their fortified villages.
 
As the decades go by, these pa are
probably becoming less distinct,
less defined. Earthworms alone
can have an effect.
 
The photo below shows a largish one
at Tongaparutu, on the coastal highway
south of Awakino.
 
There has been some discussion
recently about the preservation
of these baches, classic examples
of their type.

Taranaki

 
 
 
I often drive along the road from Auckland to New Plymouth.
It’s a long journey but my heart always lifts when,
as I leave the King Country and approach the coast
the landscape changes and these distinctive
hills begin to appear.
 
In my enthusiasm, I took this photograph
through the windscreen of my car hence
the shading in the top left of the image and the bonnet
of the car running along the lower edge.
 
Try as often as I do, I have not yet taken
a photo of these hills that I want to keep.
Still, I will keep at it I’m sure.
 
 

Plumbing

 
 
 
I took this photo in New Plymouth, recently.
These pipes are on the side of a building there.
I’d noticed them several times and finally
thought I had to take a picture.
 
Plumbing often catches my attention, this is
the latest example.
 
But then perhaps it’s not the pipes that attract me
at all, but the spaces that they
draw, the shapes and their rhythm.
 
It is often the case that I take photographs
of arrangements like this to see what
they look like when I take photographs
of them.
 

Change

 
 
Yesterday I was in Takanini in South Auckland and had
the experience of revisiting the site of a dairy
farm once owned by my parents. I lived there
for a few years when I was a small child.
 
The farm is now almost completely built over
by a variety of enterprises. The car wrecker’s
yard I could do without, but to see this
Sikh Temple built on one of the paddocks
really did delight me.
 

Clouds

 
 
Last year when I lived at Henderson House
in Alexandra in Central Otago,
the views from my balcony were
spectacular.
 
The cloud scenes especially were so remarkable
that for the first time in my photographic life
I almost became a cloud photographer.
 

The Fernery

 
 
 
In the Auckland Domain, near the museum, there is a fernery,
an area where the light is soft and shady and the air is still.
In this sanctuary is a collection of ferns, thriving.
 
This is the entrance.

Turtle Again

 

 
 
I don’t know what’s causing it but turtles
in some form or other keep
popping up in my life. I don’t know why, I am
not even especially interested in them.
 
However, they are most welcome anyway.
 
This particular one was given to me
by a young boy many years ago.
I had admired it and in a most generous action
he gave it to me.
 
It has been one of my most valued possessions
ever since.
 
Thank you Pippin.

Whangamomona

 
 

 
 
Recently I went on a day trip
into a remote part of the North Island.
I visited Whangamomona, one of the few
settlements in the area. It is on the road
from Stratford to Taumaranui, a 150 km
road through a rugged hinterland.
 
The road is now being promoted as
 
This topographical map will give you some
idea of the land surface in this area.

Bats



Here is a photo I took from a boat in a river near
Darwin in the very north of Australia, when I was
fishing for Barramundi. It was about 5 or 6 years ago.

Directly underneath this tree
was a scarily large crocodile patiently
waiting in the hope that
that one of these large bats
was going to plop on to the ground. I was glad
that I was in a boat with a big engine.

If I had had a longer lens on my camera I think
that I could have taken a better photo than
this.

For many years I’ve been wanting
to do a close up portrait of a bat.
as it hangs upside down. It’s not
a photo that I have given up on.

Waves at Riverton



Today I have been trawling through some
photos that I have taken but not done
anything with. This one, from Riverton,
close to the bottom left corner of the
South Island is almost 2 years old.

The weather in this region can be so bleak
that on days such as this it can
appear very monochromatic.
This photograph is actually

in colour.
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