Feilding Plane Crash

One minute he's doing barrel rolls and living the dream. Then in a horrible moment is the certainty  there's nothing to be done. I arrived at the plane crash just minutes later.. he crashed about 500 metres from my house... yet there's a sense of shock, of loss, and inappropriate voyuerism.  He and his family are in our prayers today. Ray and Kim

BeePee at rest

Very recently someone said to me "I'm just an amateur" - but the word Amateur is highly under rated, because it means "for the love".

 I can't think of a better reason to do anything at all, than for the love or sheer pleasure of it

Digital cameras and software like Photoshop, Lightroom, Paintshop, level the playing field to some degree with professionals. It certainly helps to know the rules in order to break them, but never let inexperience stop you from leaping out of a plane - amateur or pro - you are still going to learn alot on the journey!

So no matter how good you are or how crap, give it a try- if something you see moves you, then do your best to capture the moment and represent it.  Ray

Fan Club

Its been so hot the fan has been out to move air around at night. This image is actually the shadow of a fan, which has distorted the image giving a slightly eeirie feel. Highly overprocessed to torture the pixels.... just the way I like it

December Moon

This shot was totally handheld, but has been manipulated to give it a grainy sinister look. I love grain... its good for you :-).   The tall tree adds to the effect

Makino Road

I use HDR photography carefully being an old school guy trained in the dark arts of Darkroom, and the belief that you get the exposure right at time of  taking.. and the rest follows from that.  Digital breaks all of the rules around tonal ranges, but Im still careful not to shoot with an expectation of fixing mistakes later.  This shot was taken on Makino Road near Feilding, and would have been too difficult to achieve in the darkroom. Process steps include shooting RAW, multiple expoures 2 stops apart, sandwiched in Photomatix with tonal adjustements and HDR applied. From there transferred to PSP3 and layered several times to achieve exposure and tonal banding.

The fishermans glove

Photography is the art of translation, taking what you see and interpreting it for others, either completely and faithfully - or with your own interpretation.
An old discarded fishermans glove buried in the sand can still live on in a new form....

Old Mesilla

Usually Im not a big fan of HDR images, but the age and grittyness of Mesilla required some thinking about. Lovely old town

Poppy and her Boys

To you? Shes just a sheep, but I remember when she turned up as an orphan lamb needing 2 hourly feeds from a bottle and living in a cardboard box by the fire. The two littel rams behind her are  this years lambs. Poppy eats plumbs, mandarins scones and bread. No wonder shes a podgy girl.

London's Ford

London's Ford crosses a stream near Kimbolton, and is a happy place in Summer with people camping near the water, swimming and fishing

I love Wellington... As the sun was setting in a cloudy sky, this image of silver on dark grey just popped ina quik flash if sunlight. Two minutes later it was all over.. photography is about 'the instant'

The Cuba Street Carnival- Wellington

I like that this image is grainy and washed out, it had just rained, the colours were amazing, and if you know Cuba Street, then you can imagine the smell of the street- something like Bananas' mixed with pee and coffee.

On the Desert Road in July, winter, temperature at -2 with the sun going down, Mt Ruapehu looked pretty in pink.. I wasnt outside long, but got an amazing set of images beofre, in an instant, the magic was gone

Its been awhile, work so busy, but I have been taking photographs! The danger of digital - so many images, and so little time to publish. These two are colour, justto show Im not so biased about black and white. At Omokoroa on a cloudy heavy morning, the dampness darkens the greens and makes the other colours pop nicely. The top one is slightly manipulated to take out an ugly tarpaulin..otherwise they are much as I saw them

The Water Series

These three pictures were taken as part of a larger series using warm and cream tones. L very patiently wore a heavy evening dress in the ocean, peeling the outer layer and using the under-petticoats for the final shots. There were around 80 images in total...


I would like to recreate these shots using some different techniques with a different model. Overall some of the photos (not shown) were rather stunning, and this set has remained a favourite since they were taken in 1998.

New Mexico - Mesilla and San Xavier del Bac

Antique Store, Old Town Mesilla, NM.

San Xavier del Bac Mission. The light here was amazing in the early morning.

I imagine about 4pm would be an exceptional time also with the angle of light passing in the sky

Turkey Run State Park, Indiana

These two images, originally in colour, have been given a slight warm tone, similar to Agfa Fibre-based papers that I have used. Warm toned papers are more sympathetic to the eye than pure black and white for some subjects.

Walking near this lake, we had stood a moment in the silence watching the wind patterns on the water shifting, when a young buck deer quietly trotted into view about 10 metres away, looked right at us, stopping briefly, and then continued on into the trees. Disappeared in moments like he had never been there at all. Somehow, it made the silence around us more complete

My Favourite place in America ?

In California I saw lots of pretty girls and fancy cars, fine houses. I've already commented below that we found exceptional hospitality in Arizona New Mexico and especially Texas. We saw some great stuff in Indiana, met a bubbly Navajo Indian, met firemen, Policemen and Border Patrolmen, total fruitloops and genuine folks. We saw folks smoking in gas stations and had the biggest damn breakfast on the planet, but my favourite place was this stretch of road between Douglas and Lordsburg, where Arizona becomes New Mexico at a little town called Rodeo.

This was Geronimo's hide out, and the place he surrendered, which is now Coronado National Forest, and not far away from where Cochise hung about. Tombstone and Bisbee are testament to the harshness of the frontier as it was not that long ago, and not very far from here either.

I step out of the car and onto the road, hear total silence. No trees, no birds, no wind, no cars, nothing moving except the big sky ..... and I realise that what I see hasn't changed much for hundreds of years. Looking up I noticed the sky. It goes from blue to grey really fast. The road stretches towards Granite Gap ghost town in front of me somewhere, behind me was Rodeo.

I'm all alone, yet there is a sense that this is not a lonely land. Somewhere beyond the foothills, perhaps in that canyon or along the prairie ,life is steadily and quietly going about its business without me. Here are just five images that tell the story

If I could go anywhere by closing my eyes, it would be here - in the middle of nowhere I feel I have found the faded glory, the heartland I sought when I started this journey with Kim. Nowhere tells me more strongly that the heartland beats and is alive, long after I am gone the rhythm will continue.

Auburn and the far north of Indiana

Okay, so this picture is of an Indian motorcycle I took at the Indy 500 racetrack. I realise I didnt tell you Stubby and I had gone there and although some cars were racing around, the action was pretty quiet on the day as the qualifying times and poll positions had been set the previous day. But the museum on site was fun with all kinds of hot stuff to see.



But we also ventured into the far north of Indiana, again taking the small roads and small towns from Nappanee across to Auburn where the Auburn,Duesenburg and Cord Car Museum is. WOW! There is a 1928 Cord in the Southwards Museum at home but nothing prepared me for the sheer opulence of cars made in this era - 1920's and 1930's mostly. Style, elegance and freakin gorgeous! Why can't someone make cars liek this anymore ? I though the line up of straight eights and straight twelves was stunning but there were also some 16 cylinder engines as well

and to give you a sense of size, here is a sixteen - admittedly made for an aircraft but you still get the picture

Nappanee

Nappannee was not the only town we saw Amish, but this photo is classic because it shows that this town has hitching rail, so people can leave their carriages tied up outside supermarkets to go grocery shopping. Some carts had small trailers for groceries, and on some roads they have their own "lane" so they dont hold up traffic.

At Amish Acres we took the tour and leant about some Amish ways of life and culture....

The boys are chatting. The turkeys and rabbist were less inviting but you really have to watch out for the geese and goats - they bite!

Turkey Run

Turkey Run State Park is over near the border, and a really pretty spot. I finally got to see Racoons, squirrels,chipmunks and deer, even a buzzard along the highway

The old covered bridge in the State park which you can walk on. Later Kim and I also drove over the Cox Ford covered bridge which was as solid as the day it was built in the late 1870's.



There were also some little cabins like this one in the forest, but although it was boarded up it obviously belonged to someone, and I didnt want to trespass. But really pretty in the State Park


We spent all day here, and its beautiful. I took so many photos of the swing bridge, the limestone rocks and the sunken forest.. far too many to add here

Meeting in Indiana, and off to Turkey Run

So here we are - the family around a barbeque meeting for aslmost the first time. Its really weird to have been married eight years and only just getting to meet your father in law and brother in law over a few beers and a BBQ, but we seemed to get along just great !

And then there were more introductions to Kims old friends from Indiana University.

A few days later we headed out to Turkey Run State Park. Indiana is damn flat in the central part, lots of dutch barns because of the population of German settlers with Amish and Menonite communities scattered about all over the state

We came across these two wee men taking a roll of fencing material somewhere. The boy driving the cart may have only been 12, with dark hair and the brightest blue eyes. The little fella was hanging on for dear life

Deep in Northern Texas across to Graham,Jean and Jermyn

Kim Jean Jermyn in Jean...just down the road from Jermyn.

Named from someone in the distant long ago family. Not much here anymore....

If you're stopping around Graham - WOW. Pretty little town, green, lush, lakeside. This is Civil war and Indian war territory, alot of proud history here. Elm Street Bed and Breakfast run by Karen McMillan we would highly recommend to anyone. This is a beautiful home , well appointed and a real treat. She was a gracious host who teed us up with a visit with her friends Caroline and Fred Mayo at the Paradise on the Brazos.

We spent a lovely night with Fred, Caroline and guests with Texan hospitality. I cannot speak highly enough of Texan hospitality and manners. I guess further South the state is dry dust, but this far north its greener than at home in some respects. But its the people we will take away as the standout feature.

The morning we left I wanted to photographed more of Graham, but it was softly raining and the light was too poor. I regret that a great deal... the main street was pure hometown Americana and exactly what we have been chasing this whole journey. The "Faded Glory" is still alive, we followed some of Route 66 early on in this trip ,visited some backwaters and dying towns, but we have also seen some stunning scenery and met some darn nice folks. Some of these small towns are far from dying or still

We left for Kansas City and Indianapolis sorry to say goodbye to Arizona, New Mexico and Texas. Adios....

Claremont and Aspermont Texas onward......

When we got to Claremont we found this old jail and a courthouse. You can walk inside and the cells are all iron banded, the locks still work.. Amazing really. Claremon is an officially listed ghost town although we could hear someone on a drumset somewhere in the mesquite down the country road.

We also kept coming across old cars just parked up all along the roads in Texas..... I took hundreds of photos and have attached a few here for the auto nuts amoungst you

A funny stop for us was at Aspermont Tx. A truck was delivering fuel at the local shell when we gassed up and went inside to pay. Guy standing inside smoking looked and sounded alot like Cooter from Dukes of Hazzard (the original series) I'm not running this guy down, because he was just being himself and he was nice and polite as pie, though he did ask where y'all from, discovered my wife was a damn Yankee, vowed the South was 'just restin' . We were incredulous to say the least, but the folks here were genuine friendly and down to earth which we respect.

Just down the road we came across the old gas station... I guess times have changed somewhat.