Flowers

It's hard to take photos of flowers because it is so easy. You don't need particularly fancy equipment, and anyone can do it: just find a pretty flower, let it fill the viewfinder and press the shutter button, and there you have it. Another flower photo, pretty much indistinguishable from the other 10 billion flower photos taken on the planet today. Flowers are like sunsets, in that the subject matter does all the work for you, and you can get a shot you're kinda proud of without having to know much about what you're doing. But because there's so many flower pix and so many sunsets and because they all look the same, most fail to convey the wonder and beauty and subtlety and colour and detail which made you reach for your camera in the first place. You hope for a masterpiece and end up with a cliche.

We are surrounded by flowers. Our garden had 39 rose bushes last time I counted and I've planted another 3 or 4 since then. I think there's a couple of dozen rhododendrons, and then there's cameleas and peonies and azaleas and clematis and goodness knows what other things, that Clemency knows the names of and I don't. So all around us is this slow motion ballet, as each in their turn takes a week or two to unwrap themselves, put it out there for the bees to find, then crumple away as they get on with the real business of making hips and seeds and berries. In all this arc of change there is beauty - of veins and sheets and curves and lines and shades. I try to capture it. I try to show how wonderful it is. Mostly though I end up with another damned rose pic.

"Ooohhh, that's nice", they say.
"Yes it is", I agree, and sigh. I've missed the point again.

Photo: Nikon D7100; Micro Nikkor 105 F4; 1/2500, f8, iso200. I made several versions of this shot of a peonie. The flower was backlit by the morning sun and I was interested in the shadows as much as in the flower. In retrospect a smaller aperture would have been better, to bring the back petals into sharper focus, but you know what they say about hindsight.

Comments

Living the lies

In 1969, when I was 16 I left school and got a job as a labourer. My wages weren't high but to me they were a fortune and within a few months I bought my first car, a 1938 Morris 8 sports, this one here. It had a minuscule 4 cylinder engine and a wood framed body which meant it was slow and it flexed so much when going around corners that the doors would sometimes fly open. Nevertheless I thought it was pretty damned cool, especially with the modifications I made to the muffler for performance and advertising purposes, ie, removing it. Back then, the most popular TV program was The Avengers, in which the suave and resourceful hero, John Steed drove a 1928 3 Litre Bentley. Which looked kinda like my car, right? Yeah, right. Anyway, John Steed usually entered his car by leaping nimbly over the door, so I emulated him whenever possible. Now all this is preamble. I want to tell you about something that happened to me one day in Papanui Road, Christchurch. My car ...

How To Walk 800 km

John is just walking the 80 metres back to his bike here, but you get the general drift. The question I get asked more than any other at the end of the Hikoi is "how are your feet?" It's nice that people care, but my feet have never been an issue on long walks. Good shoes and socks prevent blisters and cushion the effects of long distances on hard surfaces, but I have had other issues. When walking the Camino Santiago knees, Achilles tendons and shin splints have all at one time or another given me trouble. This time round, these have all been fine and I finished feeling as though I could just keep on going indefinitely; to Cape Reinga if needs be. Over the last couple of years I have learned 6 things that have made all the difference. Namely: 1. Footwear. On the Camino I wore walking shoes - Salomon in 2009 and Asics in 2012. A year ago I changed to full walking boots - Salomon Cosmic 2 - and the difference was instant and major. When walking more than 15 minutes...

Why I Hold the Views I Do

St. Hilda's Collegiate School, taken with my phone after a recent meeting. This picture has nothing whatsoever to do with what follows, but I like the interplay of shapes and particularly the shadow on the wall. My mother is a Methodist, liberal in her theological and social opinions. My father was a socialist, just slightly to the left, in his politics, of Karl Marx. My siblings -there are 5 of us- are all bright, eloquent and omnivorous in their consumption of books and other intellectual fodder. One of my most cherished childhood memories is of mealtimes in our little state house. The food was ingested with copious amounts of spirited, opinionated, clever and sometimes informed debate on whatever subject happened to catch the attention of one of the family that day. Or whatever one of us thought might get a rise out of someone else. So, sex, politics and religion it was then - oh and motorbikes, economics, international relations, demographics, cricket, company ownersh...

I See Satan Fall Like Lightning

It happens sometimes. I have a question or am pondering some conundrum or other and the right book arrives at pretty much the right time. In a session with my supervisor a few months back Paul mentioned an article by Rene Girard, whom I had never heard of. I read the article and over the past month have read two of his books, The Scapegoat and this one. I have another couple sitting on my shelf and they have elbowed all others in my to be read pile out of the way and sit firmly on the top. Girard has pulled a number of threads together for me: he has enabled me to rethink the atonement in a way which is consistent with an evolving Universe: he presents a view of scripture which is again consistent with what I know of science but is also faithful to the Bible as the Word of God; he has given me, for the first time in my life a theology (if that is the right word) of Satan which makes sense to me. Most importantly for me, he is consistent with my own lived experience of God's s...

En Hakkore

In the hills up behind Ranfurly there used to be a town, Hamilton, which at one stage was home to 5,000 people. All that remains of it now is a graveyard, fenced off and baking in the lonely brown hills. Near it, in the 1930s a large Sanitorium was built for the treatment of tuberculosis and other respiratory ailments. It was a substantial complex of buildings with wards, a nurses hostel, impressive houses for the manager and superintendent and all the utility buildings needed for such a large operation. The treatment offered consisted of isolation, views and weather. Patients were exposed to the air, the tons of it which whistled past, often at great speed, the warmth of the sun and the cold. They were housed in small cubicles opening onto huge glassed verandas where they cooked in the summer and froze in the winter and often, what with the wholesome food and the exercise, got better. When advances in antibiotics rendered the Sanitorium obsolete it was turned into a Borstal and...

Available Light

Search This Blog