Almost Famous

Kiwi band Fat Freddy's Drop topped the official New Zealand annual music chart (albums) this year (see!) - so I'm pretty pleased to see a bunch of my photos from their August concert in Wellington are on exhibition on their website. Have a look at the gallery here...

On that note, I'm on photographic hiatus from now until the 5th of January. Thank-you everyone for visiting, and watch out for some new developments in 2007.

And so it is Christmas

Christmas visitation time featuring lunch at Robert and Jenny's place...

1 - Tattoos applied to a (slightly reluctant) grandmother...


2 - Robert and Caleb


3 - Keeping an eye on things...


4 - Meanwhile, Lulu looks on

Look Up

1 - Santa Claus beckoning all and sundry (and their money) to Whitcoulls. The finger moves, by the way. It's very... strange...


2 - the Skytower, cutting a swath through a foreboding sky


3 - KZ1

Khartoum Place

... in Auckland City, featuring a cascading fountain celebrating the Women's Suffrage movement

Visitors

A brief visitation from two nieces and one nephew, collectively known as 'bedlam':

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2 - is that a Nikkor 105mm f2.8 AFS VR IF ED?


3 - blue steel? What on earth is that?


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Danaus Plexippus

This Monarch Butterfly made a quick pitstop in front of my camera...

Flight

Heading Auckland-wards for Christmas


Dramatic light and clouds over the South Island

Party in Ghuznee

Christmas is coming, and there was a wild party at the flat to celebrate...

Gallery 1 (from the first half...)
Gallery 2 (...and the second half)

Deraleak'd - Part 2

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Deraleak'd - Part 1

A few macro-ish studies courtesy of some sorry looking fishing boats in Evans Bay...


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2 - the boat on the left should be recognisable for anyone who has seen the movie King Kong


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I See Dead Triangles

Hey, it's art - don't question it...


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26 Hour Days

...aren't good for me.


1 - Alert readers will remember this photo from October - it looks like they've painted the wall, and given the plant a haircut. The difference in composition is satisfactory, considering I was standing in the same place, with the same unzoom-able 50mm lens


2 - purrfect numberplate (hmmmm...)


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Breaking the Silence

1 - Cuba St. doing an unusually good job of labelling itself...


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5 - 'Then with the coming of darkness, the bay opened up beneath us, like a shell splashed with beads of light'


6 - Iris Wilkinson:

"Yet I think, having used my words as the kings used gold,
Ere we came by the rustling jest of the paper kings,
I who overbold will be steadily bold,
In the counted tale of things."

Painted Black

Stacked coloured filters combined with duotone conversion provides a bit of a different perspective:


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The poem is Hone Tuwhare's No Ordinary Sun:

"Tree let your arms fall:
raise them not sharply in supplication
to the bright enhaloed cloud.
Let your arms lack toughness and
resilience for this is no mere axe
to blunt nor fire to smother.

Your sap shall not rise again
to the moon’s pull.
No more incline a deferential head
to the wind’s talk, or stir
to the tickle of coursing rain.

Your former shagginess shall not be
wreathed with the delightful flight
of birds nor shield
nor cool the ardour of unheeding
lovers from the monstrous sun.

Tree let your naked arms fall
nor extend vain entreaties to the radiant ball.
This is no gallant monsoon’s flash,
no dashing trade wind’s blast.
The fading green of your magic
emanations shall not make pure again
these polluted skies . . . for this
is no ordinary sun.

O tree
in the shadowless mountains
the white plains and
the drab sea floor
your end at last is written."