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White Swan

 
 
About three months ago
I bought this object in Eltham,
South Taranaki. 
I was immediately intrigued
by it.
 
After a couple of months, 
I turned it
around, suddenly realising
that the reverse side was 
just as interesting.
A little while later 
I also realised that its
shape reminded me of
another photo, one that
I had posted on my last post
way back on February 21st.
 

Revisiting

 
The photo above I took last year,
called Budda’s Hand, one of the names
for this extraordinary citrus.
However, earlier this week, a visitor
remarked upon how reminiscent
it was of Thea’s Hand, a photo
from 1997.
Thea’s Hand was taken in Christchurch. Thea’s
parent asked if I could take a photo of her
hands.  I agreed, finally deciding to use this
marble background with her hand above
mine.
Surprisingly, I hadn’t noticed this similarity,
or even thought about it.

Sabre & Socks

 
 
The lower photo I took today. I’m sorting
my socks, trying to match them up,
and make pairs.
 
The upper photo I took of a Napier Sabre
engine, 2000 horse power plus. This is
in a museum in Christchurch.

Slaughter 1981

 
 
 
I am involved in a major project where I am 
going through all of my old negatives
to see if I have missed any images
that could be printed up, or, in some
cases to find negatives that
I knew, or rather hoped were
there, but have been lost for years.
 
I was very glad to come across the negative of Slaughter 1981,
taken at a time when I was in my early
days as a photographer. I think that I made,
one, maybe two prints mainly for my 
personal enjoyment. I don’t know where
the prints are now.
 
It was taken on the same occasion
 that I took Farm Study. In fact
all of the sheep in Farm Study were
on their way to be killed.
The top photo shows one of them.
However, it would be remiss of me 
not to include another photo in this post, the colour one
below and called Carcass, taken a couple 
of years ago.
Needless to say this image has not
been one of my big sellers.
By the way, this sheep in not real.

Calla Lilies

 
 
When driving past a roadside
flower stall I noticed these 
Calla Lilies. One snap with
my iPhone and I was happy.
 
 Below is a photo that I took in 1981, 
just after I had started 
photographing. These Blood Lilies
were in the grounds of Auckland 
University.
 
In this case it was the leaves
that I was interested in, not
the flower, attributable
probably to working in black
and white and not colour.

Tower of Song

 
 
 
This is my latest photo, taken
in Auckland last Saturday.
 
First thing that I was reminded of
was the work shown on the contact
sheets below made sometime in the eighties.
I unearthed these during a recent
tidy up.
 
The structure in the top photo is a coat stand,
the objects in the contact sheet are the
legs of a small table.
I’m going to print the top photo soon,
quite large.

Whittling

 
 
Some years ago I 
cut a privet down
and selecting as many
little branches 
as possible I 
whittled away at them until
they came out in these shapes.
 
Lately, as I wrote in the previous post,
I have been in the
mood to carry on with this work, don’t know
why after all this time that it has come upon
me but I’ll just get on
and enjoy the process.
 
In the last few days
I decided to scale up size to see
what would happen.
 
Here is a branch awaiting the
treatment.

Sticks

 
 
This morning I have been cutting
away at some dead Whau trees
right outside my bedroom window.
 
I’ve saved quite a few of the branches
in case I can manage to whittle them into
shapes that I like.
 
Here is one at the beginning of its 
transformation, big word for
what I hope will happen.
 
 

Makomako

 
 
I have a high balcony that projects out
into some native trees.
 
This tree is a makomako,
known in English as a 
wineberry. The berries
when ripe are the colour
of red wine.
 
I planted several of these
trees to entice
birds into my
garden.

Lanterns

 
 
 
I have just printed an edition of this
photograph. In this case
I made 10.
 
Originally I thought that it
might be my Christmas
photo but the more I 
looked at it the more I felt
that it needed to be bigger.
 
This is Albert Park in Auckland
and the lanterns are there
because it is the Chinese New Year.
 
Two years old, I treasure
this picture, it touches my heart.
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