Home | Technical Notes | Aperture
December 2005President's ExposureWell, the end of the year is almost upon us. Have you noticed how as you get older time seems to go by faster and faster? A friend once said to me that "time goes by at an ever accelerating pace". Well it certainly seems to, doesn't it? Actually there are still "thirty-one million five hundred and thirty-six thousand minutes" in each normal year. Where on earth do they all go to? If we shot images for eight hours at the rate of 100th of a second each we would take two million eight hundred and eighty thousand photographs. Let's put it another way. If you shot 100 photographs in a day at 100th of a second, you will only have used the camera's technical image collection for one second. What a waste of a thousand dollar camera. Only one second for every 100 pics. Of course, it is more than that as we use the camera for much longer, but it makes you realise what a fleeting thing this life is. I was cogitating on this at some length as I realised what my age was at my last birthday. I have a dog, as I have had most of my life, but when I got her I realised that she would likely be my last one. There are only so many dogs in a man's life. It reminded me of that wonderful poem of Rudyard Kipling's "The power of a dog". We were talking about this up at the cemetery on our field trip and I promised to share the poem with some of you. This is the poem:
What's all this got to do with Photography? You might well ask. Not much in one way, but well the way my dog loves to fill every waking moment with activity or worship of her "Owner" is a simple analogy to the amount we get from our hobby whether that be Photography or some other interest. Janet and I are likely in the coming year to be away more often than we will be here. We have bought a camper and will be travelling to other parts of the country on a very regular basis. There is also a more than fair chance we will travel to Papua New Guinea for an extended period for me to carry out a special study on crocodile/human interactions and for Janet to do admin at one of the Mission hospitals in the area we will go to. We need to go and do this kind of thing now while we are able and have the energy, or we will never do it. My challenge to you all is this. You will get from Waikato Photographic Society what you are prepared to put into it. If you just come and attend and go again and/or whinge about what "the Committee" or "they" should do, you will get little from it. If you are prepared to put some energy back into it you will get back much more than you give. I am now coming to the end of my third year as your President. While I am happy to continue on I cannot do this unless one of you is prepared to become Vice President and stand in when I am not here. The same applies to Janet as Secretary. Someone is going to have to pick up her responsibilities. The notice of the AGM is included with this Aperture. Also a nomination form for all the officers of the Society, from President down. Leave it to the other person and you will likely get the kind of Society you don't want. Why not put your hand up and have a go. We need committee members who are prepared to "get their hands dirty"! Of course there are many of you who are always there to help with seating and clean up and you are really appreciated. I learnt through my surgical experiences over the last two years that you can and do pull your weight when it is needed. Now is your chance to show a little bit more, what your photography means to you. Put your energy into this organisation and it will pay huge dividends, to you and to and us all. Have a blessed and fruitful Christmas and a great new year. Don't forget to keep taking pics John November 2005Creativity in PhotographyI wonder how many of you like to think of yourselves as "Artists" as you take your photographs or print images you have taken for competition, exhibition or just 'cos you like the image. I thought of this last night when at our club committee meeting we had a communication from the Hamilton Arts Council to join their organisation. Our discussion centred around whether we considered ourselves artists or if we were some other kind of animal! I for one consider myself an artist using a camera. Otherwise known as a photographer. We then started to debate the issue of the differentiation of digital and slides as I mentioned last month and the discussion came around to the point that a digital image is no different than any other in the final analysis, but that creativity beyond the camera was far easier in this medium than we used to do in the darkroom. Well, I got to thinking back to some of the creative stuff I did with my camera or with the enlarger. Yes I have made "Photograms" using the lens of the enlarger to create the final image in one action rather than several. I still have prints of some of my early Photograms, of trout flies in silhouette, for example. I have also distorted images through the enlarger to make something even more interesting. Now we have even greater opportunity to do some really creative work with our digital images, either taken on film and scanned or from a digital camera. There is really no difference. So how can we stimulate creative work in our digital darkrooms or, for those of you who are still using that wonderful medium of real film, doing it in camera or in the darkroom or ordered from a professional lab'. These are all legitimate. Last month Amos Chapple was cautious about how much manipulation he and his editors could accept. His is a different situation to us as creative photographic artists. So how can we be creative in our photography? Start in the camera. When we frame up a picture, focus the lens, select an "F Stop" or shutter speed we have an almost infinite number of options to make the image we want to create into something that is pleasing to us. Every photograph is effectively different to how our eyes see it. As we stand taller, climb a wall, lie on the ground or even hang over a bridge balcony to get a more interesting angle we are being photographic artists. As we change a lens we change perspective. As we do close ups like some of Don Horne's work we saw last month, we are creating an image that the eye cannot see unaided. That alone is creating a photographic art work. Now add to that the scope in the darkroom. In black and white, simply changing the grade of paper can make a different image to what our eyes saw as, after all, we see in colour, not black and white and that perhaps is the wonder of the black and white images we see. In colour simply try changing the filtration and you will get derivations you never thought possible. I well remember the first time I saw a "Bass relief" colour slide. I was gob smacked although I had not even heard of that term in those days. In the computer, experiment. Try playing with curves. (Well, I like curves anyway, let alone the computer ones)!! There are wonderful images to be made like the one I had in competition recently of the sky tower re-coloured via curves. Try combining images to make montages, try distortions of various kinds. Try filters and see what happens. You can always undo the ones you don't like. (Just one word of warning though, don't use your base image to do this. Make a copy and work on that.) Play around and you may well be surprised just what sort of creativity you can generate for next year's competitions. Well, now I must quit writing this and get back into Photoshop. I have stimulated my own creative ideas. See you Tuesday evening. Happy shooting. John October 2005Recently as I contemplated putting images in the Dunedin Festival Salon, I was reminded of the major changes that have taken place in the art of photography over the years and which continue to stimulate me today! How about you? Is your photography stimulating you or are you in a rut? Years ago when I took my first photograph of a train pile up in the Hawera Railway Station I knew nothing of the processes of photography. But it did stimulate me and a few years later I purchased my own first camera as opposed to my Dad's "Kodak 116 Box Brownie". My first camera was a "Subita" 6 X 6 folding camera with two shutter speeds and two apertures. And you think you are short changed with your modern ones, eh? A photo opportunity that led to a sale to the Taranaki Daily News set me off on a pathway of photography that has maintained my interest over more than fifty years now. The Subita gave way to an Agfa Super Silette which produced some wonderful pictures before I progressed into the SLR business and started horse trading from camera to camera up the line. On the way I had other cameras including two 4 x 5 inch Linhof cameras, a Linhof Standard Press and later a rail model,both with a variety of lenses. When digital arrived on the scene I waited a while before moving into it, but maintained my film camera battery, although that is being gradually whittled down by obsolescence. I found the change stimulating and creative, just as I had when using large format cameras or the diminutive Olympus OM cameras. Why am I telling you all this? Well Dunedin Festival Salon is a long-standing and prestigious salon. It draws fairly high entries and is acknowledged throughout New Zealand as a premier event. This year for the first time they are including a digital event. They are testing the water, as it were. Unlike slides and prints, though, which have "Open", "Photojournalism" and "Natural History", the digital section is restricted to "Open" only. This, of course, follows the highly successful "Canon On Line competition" which is in its second, or is it third, year. What Dunedin has done is to recognise Digital Photography as a legitimate part of the "Photographic art suite" and are leading the way for other Salon organisers to do the same. What we really need is for the "Photographic Society of New Zealand" (PSNZ) to take the challenge and include a digital section in the next National Salon. However, the entry forms have just come out and sure enough there is no digital section included. To say I am disappointed is the understatement of the year. Surely the time has come for this super conservative position to be put to bed - no, buried deep with a decent funeral. Now is the time to review the rules and regulations and for there to be just two genre. Prints (which do include digitally produced images anyway.) and projected images whether slides or digitally projected images. There would still be only two sections, but those stalwart members of the PSNZ who have embraced the newer technology should be able to have a place in the main stream of the National Salon. For the 2001 Convention that we ran, we asked Tauranga Society, who organised the National Salon, to include the option of transparencies in medium format being allowed in the Salon alongside 35mm images. There was no PSNZ bylaw to prevent it and we even offered to provide the projector for this purpose. Did they take it up? No way! That was just too radical for the organisers to contemplate. If we in WPS were to follow the lead of the National Body, PSNZ and other conservative clubs, we would be a dying club. Our present healthy membership and growing enthusiasm for the digital medium is evidence that the time has come for the changes to take place. I would like to suggest to the members of Waikato Photographic Society that we sponsor a remit to that effect at the next National Convention. Let's challenge this "head in the sand" attitude right now. Happy photo hunting John September 2005Well two months have gone by since I put "fingers to the keyboard" (sounds much more professional than "Pen to Paper") and shared some of my thoughts on happenings in the photographic world and the world in general. No, I am not going to mention the elections except to say, "please get out and vote". The last two months have been very eventful for Janet and me, as many of you know already. Our trip to the South Island to attend a National Parks and Reserves Rangers Association re-union in Te Anau, which just happened to be a cruise on the southern fiords of Fiordland National Park, on board the Milford Wanderer, in the company of some very knowledgeable characters, was extraordinarily successful. People like Wally Sander, a previous Chief Ranger at Fiordland, was amongst them and many of the other rangers who were on the cruise had worked at Fiordland too. One woman ranger is now an air New Zealand captain flying Boeings on the Tokyo, Singapore runs, among others. As a result there was more corporate knowledge of the Fiordland National Park and particularly its history and ecology than may ever be assembled there again in the foreseeable future. Even the staff of the cruise boat, Milford Wanderer, were awed at the extent of the knowledge of the Park among the participants. As a result, of course, we came home with heaps of images from the cruise and the rest of our time away. You will get to see some of them in the future. In July's "Presidents Exposure" I spoke about the exhibition of photojournalism I saw in Wellington. Well, as we visited the "Greenwood Motels" down the east coast of the South Island, (that's the rellies for you uneducated masses) we got to see another photo exhibition of a different character. This one was in the Dunedin Museum and was photographed by Otago Daily Times Illustrations Editor, Stephen Jaquiery, who recently won the 2005 Qantas Media Awards Senior Photographer of the Year Award. Called "City Birds" it features photographs of birds that can be found within the environs of Dunedin city. To say that this was a good exhibition would be the understatement of the year. It was superb. Jaquiery set himself a challenge and photographed all these images over a very short timescale (about two months I think, from memory). All shot on digital too. Not only that, but the museum, in mounting this exhibition, complemented the photographs with stunning diorama of mounted birds, pictures of the city environment and things like an old row boat with lighting and sound effects to simulate it moving across the sea near a bird area. Also other areas with creative lighting and sound, able to be played to your request, of some of the bird species. I have never seen a better mounted exhibition of photography anywhere and that includes in my overseas travel where we saw many exhibitions. Mostly these exhibitions, like our photographic exhibitions tend to be, were simply walls full of images. Good images nicely mounted and framed but really quite boring when compared to what Dunedin Museum produced. Sure the way it was mounted restricted the number of images that could be displayed, but that was more than compensated for by the total creation of the exhibition. So what did I get from all this? Mainly this. "There are more ways of killing a cat than choking it on cheese". Yes, there are creative ways of exhibiting our photographs if we but stop and allow ourselves not to be constrained by what has gone before us. At our last meeting Judith and Ngaire showed us another way of using our photographs with scrapbooking. I don't think I would have the patience to go down this track, but there are other creative ways we can display our work that will surprise all of us I am sure. Then last Monday at the Mountain Safety Waikato Meeting I had the privilege of seeing some of Club member Don Horne's "Sound slide" programmes again. Many of you will never have seen these and Don deserves an invitation to bring a programme and surprise us all. Your committee is working on it. But meanwhile my challenge to you all this month is to start thinking outside the square about what you do with those pictures. Yes, your work is worth displaying as I have done in my home and through commercial sales. What about having a go, eh? May your creative juices run wild. Regards John July 2005Last weekend Janet and I travelled to Wellington. - No it was not to see the test match against the Lions, it was for family reasons. However, I had to go into Wellington to the NZ Mountain Safety Council Office on Saturday morning to sort out a photographic competition ready for judging and, yes, Courtney Place was alive with people. On the way back to the Wellington railway station I called into "Shed 11" where the exhibition of "World Press Photography" was on display. I coughed up the paltry two dollars and was able to browse these images to my heart's content. What an interesting kaleidoscope of photographs to feast my eyes on. As Roger Taylor has commented so often, you need to be looking at other people's photography to stimulate your own thinking. I was stimulated, believe me. The Tsunami pic's, of people in abject misery after this titanic event. The effects of war, dead, dying and deprived people as a result of war, mostly undeclared wars, but wars nevertheless. People going about their business, people laughing or crying. Major natural events like a set on "Tornado hunting in America". It was all there. As I walked around I reflected on the images I saw. Some powerful ones certainly, but others that could have been taken by you or me if we had been at that place at that time. I was reminded of the statement, and I forget who I should credit it to, that the key to good photography and, in particular, Photojournalism is "F8 and be there." What a wonderful thought. Certainly some of the photographers may have put their lives in danger getting their pictures, but for others it was just the fact that someone was paying them to be there, or they had gone on spec' and hope to pay for the trip from sales of the images they take. As I walked around the Wellington waterfront, both directions (Mountain Safety Office is away up in Tory Street - twenty minutes fast walk from the Railway station), the place was alive with "Pommy rugby supporters", most wearing red tee shirts with "Zurich" emblazoned on them. There was the giant P&O cruise liner, a floating hotel to 1100 British rugby fanatics where staff were serving $35,000 worth of alcohol daily to this rugby crazy crowd. What a photographic opportunity. Te Papa Museum car park with no room for cars - it was all taken up with motor homes of the so-called "Barmy Army". And Queen's Wharf, likewise covered with either motor homes, or marquees to expand the selling areas for food or plonk. So what PJ images did I take? A few. Not as many as Cartier Bresson or Cornell Capa might have taken, but I did get some of Lions' supporters doing their "tourist thing", looking at the goings on of Wellington and trying to drink one bar dry. They were lined up several deep outside this watering hole! I also took the safe stuff - reflections in the water, the motor homes, things like that. Good safe stuff that no one could object to. Could I have, or should I have been more aggressive in getting interesting images of the goings on? Perhaps. Perhaps also I am a bit sensitive about poking my lens right in someone's face unless they look super friendly or I have an opportunity to make the contact with them. I guess like most of you I need to learn to be a bit more pro-active in this area. However I am also aware that in Photojournalism, some things should be out of bounds unless I am an "Authorised Photographer". People's misfortune should be out of bounds if they can be identified in the image unless you are prepared to ask their consent first. This should probably also apply to people in intimate times of life. In some situations the Police will move you on if you try to take pictures where they are dealing with a major event. Move if you are asked to, or you may get arrested, even in good old New Zealand. If you want to be absolutely certain, you should be asking for a "model release" whenever you take people pictures where the subject can be identified in the finished image. My agency in Christchurch asks their photographers to obtain a model release whenever possible as that makes the images that much more sellable. I think that we should do no less. So with all that information, get to work and make some Photojournalism images for our PJ competition in October. Be creative and try to get compelling images that will challenge our judge that night. Happy hunting John June 2005Another month has rolled round and I was wondering what to write about this month when I went to the Library at Chartwell and found, among others, a book entitled "Digital Photographer's Handbook" by Tom Ang, published by Dorling Kindersley. I booked it out and eventually got round to having a good old read. I expected it to be the normal sort of "how to" book that was away over my head but I was pleasantly surprised. It is written in plain English and is quite concise about how to's of Digital Photography. However much of the first half applies equally to film photography and is a delightful exposition on the basics of Photography. In particular, I was pleasantly surprised by diagrams illustrating how depth of field works. Wonderful stuff! I am going to purchase a copy as it would be great to have on my desk for a reference volume. It also had a simple clear explanation of "compression of images", the old JPEG file problems. Now I really know what happens to the images and why I want to save my images in another format. Actually, I am a bit of a bookworm in some ways. I don't know about you, but I have certain books that I go back to again and again. Like "The Old Man and the Boy" by Robert Ruark. I have read it numerous times, but am still likely to read it again within the next six months or so. Then there are my Photograhic books: The "Life" series, "Life goes to War", "The Creative Black Book", and on and on they go. In particular I like to look at books with lots of photographs in them. I look at them and wonder, "how did they do that" or how could I ever achieve such magnificent images? Last month we had a screening of the slides Roger Taylor used to gain his EFIAP distinction. A small group of images, most of which I thought were superb. One image has haunted me ever since. It was the almost monochromatic image of a miner of some sort covered in black and grease with those piercing eyes. I described the image to my self as "stunning". I will never forget that image, Roger!! The challenge to all of us is to try to create one or two images that will make people say "wow". This cannot be done in a vacuum. We need to be exposed to the work of other photographers in salons, exhibitions and competitions. We need to suffer the ignominy of having all our entries rejected at the National (like I did this year) and going and looking to see what the judges liked. We need to put images into our club competitions and try to get good comments. However, as Roger Taylor rightly pointed out, the ones overseas salon selectors like may not be suitable for New Zealand competitions or salons. You will never know if you don't enter. So if you have not yet had a go at a competition, have a try. All you need is a thick hide - cos as I have commented before - "All judges are stupid anyway if they don't like my images". If I had had a thin skin I would never have entered past the second night I attended WPS way back in 1977. Righto! Now get to it and take some more pictures. This time it might be the winner!! Happy shooting. John May 2005The first Saturday in May is an auspicious day for me. It is the date of opening of duck shooting season, a time I wait for with great anticipation. Well this year, like last year, opening day is not going to be too great. Once again I have been put out of action due to surgical procedures. Yes, my left arm has been operated on and I am already using the computer as the surgery was not as extensive as last time. I won't be able to wield a gun though. However, I was asked to do another night class at Fraser High school called "An introduction to Duck Hunting". What has this got to do with Photography? Well just this: I prepared a Power Point presentation - a continuous one for the four nights of the course. However, I cannot just do a programme of words only, so I started to dig into my archives to see what hunting images I had accumulated over the years. Wow, what a surprise. I found to my joy that I had indeed taken heaps of pic's on all sorts of cameras and formats that were just the sort of pic's I needed to make the whole night class series come alive. Photographs of guns, gun dogs, and there are plenty of those. Historic pic's of the Colonial Ammunition Company's Shot Tower at Mount Eden. Pictures of ammunition being loaded in the machines - and on and on they went. Many of these pictures were taken on quite primitive cameras by today's standards. An old Agfa Super Sillete range finder, a "Subita" 6 X 6 cm folding camera with two shutter speed and two apertures only. A Practica Nova 1B, a Pentax Spotmatic, then when Pentax stopped making the 42mm screw thread lenses I bought the first of a long line of Olympus OM Models the latest of which I still use sporadically. There were also plenty of digital images strangely enough. There are black and white prints, colour prints, 35 mm slides and more recently 6X6 cm colour transparencies and negatives. My scanner worked overtime, as I scanned anything I thought looked like telling part of the story. I was amazed at the range of the images that were available to me. Many were so so, but others were breathtaking in their beauty. Some are lovely and sharp and others are soft or outright blurry (try taking a sharp photo of a flying duck if you like, it ain't easy). These may well still be useful and worth using. What this brought home to me very clearly that we need to review the old photographs in our files regularly. I have often wondered what image I might use for a competition or perhaps for presentation to a client and often find the ones I like in the most unusual areas of my collection. We do not necessarily need to have a fresh image for every competition or other use, but may well find exactly what we need in our older images. Sure we need to be discerning and had better have good records of the uses we have made of them in the past, but don't overlook past images as you look for an image for a set subject entry in the Club or even National competitions. Roger Taylor would probably also say use them for International Competitions too. Well that, dear friends, is a big job, but winter is upon us and there will be some long dark nights. Instead of watching TV, why not get out some of your old images and sort out some for future use in competition, etc. By the way, high quality scanners to scan both slides/negatives and prints and there is no excuse for not being able to use old images. So go to it. Perhaps we should have a competition set subject entitled "My first Photograph". I can find mine. Can you? Keep up the photography - it is not only clicking a shutter. John April 2005Last month a member asked a very interesting question about the validity of an image that had been adjusted in the computer, like taking out a power pole in an area where that is the norm. Not unexpectedly this provoked a somewhat heated discussion that we did not complete. So, for what it is worth, here are my views on the issue. Part of my view was challenged last month also. So let me take you back to the early 1970s when I first joined WPS as a novice although I had been taking photographs for several years and had quite a goodly number published in newspapers and magazines. I knew a woman in Taranaki before I came to the Waikato whose profession was retouching black and white negatives particularly of weddings and portraits. She used a huge magnifying glass and very soft sharp pencils. She did beautiful work and I know her clients, who were professional photographers, were very grateful to have such a skilled artisan in their reach. No doubt the end clients were equally satisfied. The issue of small blemishes in an otherwise good colour slide were the first to be challenged. I was told by Irene Cooper and others that you could remove these with vegetable dyes and a very fine artist's paint brush. I did try it once or twice with what were to me indifferent results. They were also making sandwiches of slides which were magnificent, along with a great range of colour copying options. Then I was shown how to retouch prints, both black and white and colour, with special dyes and small brushes and you used "spit", yes "spit" to moisten the dyes. I still have them in my cupboard. Perhaps we should demonstrate how they work sometime. I was working for the Department of Lands and Survey at the time as a Ranger and was required to do all sorts of photography. For one publication I added clouds to five or more of the thirty or so images of mine that were included in the publication. What's more, all those clouds were from the same negative at differing scales. I can show you the work and I defy you to pick which they were. Then a request came to photograph the Redwoods at Hamurana Springs for a departmental document. So I did, but realised that the images would not be great due to the converging slopes of the tall trees. Graeme Conway gave me the clue to fix this, by sloping the enlarger baseboard and making the tops of the trees further away from the enlarger lens. It worked. I have a copy of this cover in my records. So now we come to the issue of the use of digital cameras for our photography and the potential to adjust or otherwise the images in our computers. Firstly, all digital images need some adjustment in the computer. The recording medium in the camera has a slight blurring effect due to the design of the system, which I will not go into here. So you actually need to apply an unsharp mask to every digital image including scanned ones before sending them to the printer or projecting them on the screen. What else you do is really up to you. The sky is, in fact, the limit and we need to accept that not all of you are going to reach for the sky. Who would argue that Felicity Rogers pictures of swans made from photographs of her hands are not incredible works of art? I have no desire to emulate her but can still succeed in achieving awards in National Competition without going that far. In our competitions you are of course at the mercy of the judge of the night. Just because I do not like your image is no reason to think it is a failure as another judge might well think otherwise. Now, to the issue of the manipulation and adjustment of images that may well become part of historical archives. Back to my Lands and Survey days. One of my pet projects was the Karangahake Walkway. Yes I designed it and manipulated the system to make the first two stages happen before I lost control when the Department of Conservation was formed. As part of the research for this historic walkway, I needed to collect as much data and images about the area as possible. I employed an archivist historian (who now works in the National Library in Wellington). Her criteria for a piece of information whether written words, photographs or drawings, as there were plenty of these too, was this: "Nothing is accepted as fact until it is confirmed from three independent sources". So, too, should any reputable archivist historian today either professional or amateur. Over to you then. In my view, what you do with an image before it gets printed or entered in a competition is your business unless the rules of a competition declare otherwise. And don't forget, if you are working in digital - Metadata on an image is stored with the file. It can be checked if you know how to do it. So keep making and, if you want, adjusting those images. All the best for the forthcoming competitions. John March 2005It is always interesting, at the start of a year, to see what sort of energy has been built up for our photography over the Christmas/summer season. What with trips to the beach, less stress from work for those of us who do not need to work over this period, and opportunities to get the old (or new Christmas presy) camera out and try something new. The first meeting of the year after the BBQ at Vic & Pat Rosser's, was something of a surprise. A surprise for me for several reasons. Firstly, a number of new faces attending for the first time. I trust you all received a warm welcome and were not "left out in the cold". Secondly, the large number of prints, slides and digital images that were presented for spot judging by yours truly. It is always a challenge to do the spot judging. I have long been one to make spot judgements on images and sometimes repent at my leisure. However, with photographs I like to allow the emotional impact of the image to address me directly and I respond in kind. I dislike intensely the pickiness we sometimes engage in as we look at an image. Like that hair on her head should have been combed before you took the picture, and so on - you know the kind of comments eh! I remember an older judge telling me many years ago that if you half close your eyes as you look at an image you will cause the image to blur. As a result, the key features of the composition will stand out clearly for you and you will be less likely to be distracted by the minute things like hairs or lack of a highlight in a subject's eyes. You will be less likely also to be put off by excessive application of "Judge catching" inputs to an image, things some people know a particular judge will like so they do that as they hope it will lead to a better result. Now I am not saying do not worry about sharpness, clarity and contrasts in your images, but let's not be so enslaved to it that we miss the point of the image. A few years ago I went to watch a world record attempt at Clay Bird shooting. I won't go into the details, but it was very interesting and I took lots of pics (black and white). As I was leaving the venue I realised that I had not seen any press representatives there. So when I got home I phoned New Zealand Herald and after some discussion was asked to send them my film post haste, like using their courier service. I had what I thought were many great images among the two films I sent up to Auckland. However, just on dusk when the light was fading and the record was well and truly broken, the shooter stopped and everyone gathered round as he drank a beer. He sort of flopped across the front of a car. The picture I took was not sharp, it was too dark for that, but that was the image NZ Herald printed the next day. The moral of the story is this, "It is not how good the picture is, it is the story it tells that makes the difference". What is even better, they paid me well for it and processed my films at no cost to me. So this year why not try to make some of your pictures tell a story, like some of us tried to do at Glenbrook Vintage Railway, recently. A great day out, good company and great photographic opportunities. My van also stopped at Huntly to photograph "That Sign" - you mean you don't know what I am talking about? A lovely sign just on the outskirts of Huntly: "Aucklanders heading South for Summer - Waikato's Annual Disaster" May you get many great images this year. John February 2005The Joy of the Pitter Patter of Tiny feet! Or - I ain't getting any younger.Late last year we got news that our son, daughter-in-law and two adopted grandchildren were returning to New Zealand after Evan had been living in Japan for thirteen years. They arrived on 20th December and had to find a house in Auckland and await the arrival of the container of household goodies before they could move up there. So we had a house crammed full of family. And most of the rest of the family also had to come, some to call and go, others to stay a while. Of course I had to get the camera out eh! Sure, Janet and I had been to Tokyo and stayed with them and taken photographs, but this was different. Number one, these two kiddies, five-and-a-half and two-and-a-half, were learning to be "real Kiwi Kids". Can you imagine arriving at our place in Hamilton "down under" having experienced living in a small apartment in a multi story block. The only yard room was concrete about four metres by three metres. The local park did not have grass, but only light sandy metal or concrete. No pets other than a budgie that didn't last long. Our home and yard had, among other things, grass, a sand box (specially made), our dog, trees, stones, etc. We had to take the dog walking or to the river each day and these "learning to be Kiwi Kids" got wet, followed the dog, got dirty, annoyed each other and both of them fell in love with Isla, our Golden Retriever. So I took photographs galore, not only of these two new "Kiwi Kids" but of our other Grandkids and Great granddaughter. Oh, a few of our Kids too. Look out for the pictures in competition. I have some very good ones, particularly of our Granddaughter with the dog!!! Well time has gone by. Evan and Eunice eventually rented a house in Mount Roskill. We took a few trips up with them. The interminable wait for Customs and Ministry of Agriculture to clear their container and car was a real struggle. Eventually, though, the call came through that the container would be at the house at 9.00 a.m. the next day. Evan was by this time camping in the house. So we got up at 5.30 a.m., loaded the van with the rest of the family goods and managed to arrive in Mount Roskill at the same time as the container. Several hours later I came home leaving Janet to help sort out the chaos of unpacking about 180 packages from out of the container. I drove home with mixed feelings. It had been great to spend the time with our family from Japan. The two kiddies in particular were a real joy to us. It was interesting also to see our son and daughter-in-law struggle with establishing a new home in what was to Eunice a new country. But oh, arriving home to a quiet house, a dog that gave me her undivided attention (well, sort of - I didn't have to share her now) was a great relief. I scurried round and tidied up and did washing so Janet could enjoy the peace and quiet also. Then I sat down and checked over the images I had on the computer from that month. I realised that I had taken an awful lot, but they are a wonderful reminder of the pleasure I received from the sojourn of our returning family as they spent time trying to re-establish "home" in "God's Own Country". I want to encourage you all to make sure you take plenty of photographs of your family while you can. Next thing you know you will be saying goodbye as they go on an O.E. or leave home to set up home, hopefully with a wife or husband. Or the grandchildren are teenagers and off doing their own thing. The years go by far too quickly. The experience of the last year, two grandsons married, the birth of a great granddaughter, and a large part of our family returning home, leaves me with one major thing to reflect on. "I ain't getting any younger". Happy family photography. And a happy New Year. John |