Sunday Drive: Taking a trip out of town for a mini photographic adventure to Te Ko Utu Park Cambridge. .

             In support of National Novel Writing Month 
 (I am committing to writing a blog post every day with photo's for one month. )
                         Te Ko Utu Park Cambridge.
How many of you who live within the Bay of Plenty or the Waikato know about Te Ko utu Park and lake in the middle of Cambridge? 
My husband Graham  has been living in this area all of his life and he had never heard about it or been there.
 In my opinion it's one of Cambridge's best kept secrets. 

                     The exotic tree specimens are really beautiful and perfect for backlit phtograpraphy.

                                                             Beautiful spring shoots

I have  many fond memories of it as a young child because I went to St Peter's Catholic School in Cambridge. 
 

I  spent lots of idyllic moments with the Nuns and my school friends doing nature studies around that lake.
 In those days it was an overgrown wilderness filled with  dragon flies as big as your hand and millions of croaking frogs and screeching cicadas. 

It  was  here that I had my first experience of collecting  tadpoles, putting them into preserving jars and watching them develop into baby frogs. 


Considerable  development of the site had been undertaken in the fifteen years since I last visited it by the Waipa council and Cambridge Tree Trust amongst others.

The bull rushes have been cleared, the perimeter has a wooden base around it, and carp and catfish have been added to keep it clean.
 A large aerating waterfall with pump has been put in to help alleviate stagnation and by the looks of the relatively clear water, it's working. 

Hundred's of varieties of European trees  have been planted around the perimeter. 
There are lillipads and weeping willows, copper beeches and elms, oaks and spruces, silver birches and too many other trees for me to name 
 The place could have been picked out of pages from a book about English country gardens. 

 
The leaves of these beautiful trees had that newly minted Spring freshness of colour about them and the day was hot and sunny. 

There were no frogs to be heard at all but in their place were nesting Pukeko with their young Scaups and Dab chicks. 
Apparently they released a set of white swans a number of years ago but they escaped.
 There were small collections of ducks and I'm sure I saw an eel.
  Maybe it was a catfish but I didn't see any whiskers. 

Copper beech heaven

The walk around the lake was civilised and not too difficult and I was in heaven snapping reflections in the water, back lit leaves and to other vegetation. 

After the walk we went up to the band rotunda  and the rose garden and the hot house up the top of the hill near the bowling greens.

I used to go to Brownies just down the road from this site so I knew the area very well. 
Graham and I spent some time going around the rose beds smelling roses.
It's  a wonderful thing to do. 

Smelling roses, one of our favourite things to do when we visit the beautuiful botannical gardens of  New Zealand.

If you haven't done it so far this summer don't waste any more time. Head off  to a rose garden near you.  
There are plenty of them around the Waikato and Bay of Plenty
Mine are just starting to come out.
I can't want to bury my nose in them. 

 Creative Quotes of the day. 
“One of the most tragic things I know about human nature is that all of us tend to put off living. We are all dreaming of some magical rose garden over the horizon-instead of enjoying the roses blooming outside our windows today.” Dale Carnegie

Nature will bear the closest inspection. She invites us to lay our eye level with her smallest leaf, and take an insect view of its plain.

 Henry David Thoreau 

I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars.

 Walt Whitman 

 All photographs and  images on this blog are for sale.
Email me at jkeen@clear.net.nz with your enquiry. 
Phone 07 3463435 
All photographs are copyrighted by Janet Keen and may not be used  for any purpose without written permission. 

National Novel Writing Month Landscape Photography

Already its the 4th of November and I  am two days behind with  my commitment to write a blog post with photo's every day.

So I'll do three today. 
Here are my favourite shots from the two day Landscape Photographic workshop that I went on last weekend with the Rotorua Camera club and professional Photographer Craig Robertson. 

This is at Waiotapu.
If you take someiIdentification, Rotorua residents can get in for free.
 This is a pretty good service I think.
I would go as soon as it opens up.
 It gets pretty hot out there and make sure you go to the loo begore you go for the walk because its huge and there are no loos out in amongst the geothermal features.

 This lake looks like spearmint icecream.

Very chocolatey
 
Custady perhaps?





This is my favourite shot I love cracks, it looks like a jigsaw or mosaic
 
The yellowish green in this peasouper lake is the wierdest colour I have ever seen.
You can't stop looking at it because it looks like it shouldn't be this colour.
It smells very sulphury.

Last Thursday night we finished off the workshop with Craig Robertson with a shoot out at the boardwalk at Lake Okareka.
 I love this boardwalk.
 There are lots of water fowl and beautiful vegetation to look at.
It is so peaceful out there.
 If you haven't been, go this summer, it will fill you with delight for hours.
There is such a cool bird hideout there with a little swallow's nest in it.
You can just sit in there eating something nice like a tangelo and watch all the birds.
Fantastic.

           My current obsession is grasses and tree foliage.

                                    Cabbage tree seed heads.

Flax new seedheads

                                   Love these reed colours

        Whispering grass

                                Soft evening light

     More reeds

     Swan manipulated

        Swan raw

     More reeds

                          I t's the texture

       This is my favourite landscape and cabbage tree shot

                      Spider and reed shot

Light is crucial so shooting on the early hours of the morning one half hour before dawn and an hour after and half an hour before dusk through to dusk and half an hour after are the best times for the light.

 The middle of the day is the worst.  The light is too flat.

                                               Look at theis gorgeous Toitoi in the setting sun.

 Like a comb

On the boardwalk, this boardwalk goes for quite a long way .
A few joggers  use it after work 

Back lit flaxes are great as are all types of grasses that are overlooked by most people.

Creative Quotes of the day

Landscape photography is the supreme test of the photographer - and often the supreme disappointment.
Ansel Adams

Any landscape is a condition of the spirit.
Henri Frederic Amiel

When travelling the path of life, and finding love along the way, Everything looks new and different. Little do you know it is the same old landscape you used to see all of the time; Love has just given you new eyes.

 Unknown quotes 

 

All photographs and  images on this blog are for sale.
Email me at jkeen@clear.net.nz with your enquiry. 
Phone 07 3463435 
All photographs are copyrighted by Janet Keen and may not be used  for any purpose without written permission 

 

Landscape photography workshop with Craig Robertson

                                                   NANOWRIMO
This post represents my commitment to write a blogpost every day for the month of November in support of National Novel Writing Month.

                                                  Landscape Photography
Tonight I went out with a group of people from the Rotorua Camera Club with professional photographer/tutor Craig Robertson.

We as a group spent last weekend together on a Landscape Workshop and it was amazing because I learned so much, especially about how to use lightroom and how to rank shots and store them.

Craig was very generous with his information and he had a great teaching style.
His images are really stunning for their simplity and grace.
It is special to have a photographer of his standard living in Rotorua. 

We went to  the Lake Okareka boardwalk
What a lovely evening, what a stunning place to take photographs.
 It's a place that really lifts your spirits and there are plenty of paradice ducks to spy on from the bird hide.
These are some of my favourite photographs.
I will post some more tomorrow.
                                                    
                                            Grasses I have met at Lake Okareka

                     

Creative Quotes of the day
“See how nature - trees, flowers, grass - grows in silence; see the stars, the moon and the sun, how they move in silence...we need silence to be able to touch souls.
Mother Teresa 


“Sitting quietly, doing nothing, spring comes, and the grass grows by itself”

 Zen Proverb quotes

All photographs and  images on this blog are for sale.
Email me at jkeen@clear.net.nz with your enquiry. 
Phone 07 3463435 
All photographs are copyrighted by Janet Keen and may not be used  for any purpose without written permission 

National Novel Writing Month, November.I'm doing it my way.

I did NANOWRIMO two years ago.
50,000 words of blood sweat and tears.
A novel called Skeletons in my cupboard.
1666 words per day, it was a special type of torture.
GOOGLE IT NOW IF YOU DONT KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT IT.
It's not too late to sign up.

                           Human Skull photograph by Janet Keen

What did I end up with after this month of frantic key tapping?
Pages full of typos and an autobiographical and an unpublishable splurge about my life from the age of five to thirty-five.

It was cathartic and probably good therapy but I wouldn't inflict the reading of it on my worst enemy. Another reason I didn't dish it out for public consumption is that I was concerned  about being disinherited.

I go into the file occasionally and read some of my ramblings and have the odd laugh.
It is black humour for sure.
My writing mentor Jenny Argante has read a lot of my work and she thinks it's really hilarious and she's always urging me to put a collection together and to illustrate it.

However I have found that not everybody appreciates this style especially if the subject matter is about them.

 Manipulated poster photograph by Janet Keen

It's ok to be self deprecating and sardonic about yourself  but when it involves others I feel that it's important to not use written words to intentionally or unintentionally hurt or expose others.
 The door on that cupboard is now firmly shut so that the skeletons for now are out of sight and silent.

I realise I probably would never make a very good tabloid journalist or lawyer.
In my heart of hearts I  really just want everything to be nice and peaceful and full of good will all the time and I know it's not realistic but living in that sort of bubble is my ultimate aim.


Bubble photograph by Janet Keen

  People may say this is boring, unrealistic and that an interesting life is full of drama and conflict but in my books it's something  I can well do without.

So it's a matter of deeply breathing in good vibes and breathing them out and trying to dodge anything or anyone who is duplicituous, bullying, controlling and negative. 

I am reading a fantastic book at the moment which I think that all budding and experienced writers should read and it's called Writing From the Heart, by Joy Cowley.
  I have a collection of around 10 books about creative prose and poetry.
 This is one of the best ones because it's  simple, to the point, concise and the proceeds from it go to Storylines which is a charity for organising authors talks in schools.
If you want to be a creative writer, read it today.


The title Skeletons in My Cupboard is still a good one  for a book I think.
It would be great to go around various famous or interetesting, creative people and interview them about their family skeletons.

I didn't do NANOWRIMO last year, I was too busy and disorganised, not to mention exhausted from the year before.
I also felt I didn't have another novel in me, having mined quite extensively many memories of my tumultuous life from five to thirty five.

I don't mind admitting that when I married my husband at the age of thirty six, everything clicked into a  place of relative peace and positivity, so I have a lot to be greatful to him for.

 Man silhouetted  at the beach photograph by Janet Keen

I've signed up to do it this year, but I'm cheating or should I say rebelling.

I'm going to commit to writing a blog post with no set amount of words every day for a month  with some photographs and perhaps a haiku and some  creativity quotes of the day.
 I'm also going to provide a brief synopsis of what I have achieved each day using the Q and A format.

Here goes for Wednesday 31st, which is a day before the official event start.

What significant things did you  achieve today Janet?
I went for an hour long walk with my artist friend April in the morning and I did some work on my angel and deer acrylic paintings.
These paintings are going towards an exhibition I am having at Essence Cafe in Ngongotaha with my advanced pupils on Friday for three weeks.

I tidied up the main table in my studio and sorted through some of my books in preparation for the art lesson I am giving my class of nine students on Friday.

I had two meditations, one morning, one evening  and cooked my husband pork chow mein for dinner, using some silverbeet out of my organic vegetable garden.


 Manipulated abstract photograph by Janet Keen


I watered my potager garden and had a cup of freshly brewed coffee in my Japanese garden.

I read a couple of chapters on Joy Cowley's excellent book "Writing From the Heart."
 I read a chapter on the amazing book April bought me from America called Creative Illustration Workshop by Katherine Dunn.

I  half watched and fell asleep part way through a bit of television programme that was so mindless and uneducational  I don't remember  it's name.
 Some crime ridden thing with women being butchered by a serial killer  gouging out their eyes and storing  them in jars of formeldahyde.
 I often wonder why they don't depict men being brutilised in this way by women.
 I often wonder why they bother to make these programmes at all.
 I  have my theories but this isn't the time or the place since im keeping it positive.


 I doodled a rabbit with buck teeth and a smiley face eating carrots in a vegetable patch full of silverbeet and sunflowers.

I had a long conversation with my cat Gary  about his latest adventure which comprised being dragged through the mud and water of my next door neighbours' spring by his deadly enemy,  a long furred, black tomcat with yellow eyes and orange teeth who I call Slinky.

I had to wash the mud and water out of his fur in a warm bath after the fricas.
We have had to do this a couple of times  in the past so he is used to it.
His ego was a bit bruised for a while, but he was fine after a few cuddles and a session of blow drying.

                    Pet cat Photograph by Janet Keen
 My husband, Graham said he shouldn't have been poking his nose in other people's territories but I never believe these skirmishes are ever his fault, no matter where he is.
That cat walks on water, pardon the pun.

My goldfish are all preparing themselves for breeding and they are very hungry.
I  started off  four years ago with  8 and now have 23.
 This could kind of qualify me for grandmother status.


 Green and gold bell frog by Janet Keen


My green and gold  Bell frog has returned  from his hibernation and keeps sitting on the edge of the pond in full view of my cat.
We have had a couple of instances in the beginning of the pond's life where Gary went fishing and which resulted in some premature orange fatalities and a screaming frog.
 But the frog was resucued the cat dunked head first  in the pond for a couple of seconds and harmony has returned.


 Black humour Creative Quotes for the day
 I fear the ignorance of others has stifled my genius.
 Chris Capozzi

 Diplomacy is telling someone to "Go to Hell" in such a way, they look forward to taking the trip.
Model UN Motto

Experience is that marvelous thing that enables you recognize a mistake when you make it again.

F. P. Jones

Lord, grant me the serenity to accept the things I can not change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to hide the bodies of those I had to kill because they pissed me off. 

F. P. Jones

All photographs and  images on this blog are for sale.
Email me at jkeen@clear.net.nz with your enquiry. 
Phone 07 3463435 
All photographs are copyrighted by Janet Keen and may not be used  for any purpose without written permission