Friday, July 20, 2012

Photographic sequences, take out your camera and stalk a friend


Background
My husband Graham and I sometimes go  down to Kuirau Park market about 9am on a Saturday.
We  buy some samosas at the Indain stand closest to the foot baths, (me vegetarian, him meat) and sit down with our feet in  the  thermal water, while munching.


 The story
I took Wieland (photographer) to Kuirau Park market one Autumn morning for a photoshoot for a video I  was envisaging creating.
  He didn't want to try the samosas so I  sat with mine beside the footbaths.

                           It  was a perfect day,  a perfect time for  "people shooting"
                  The birds were singing, the sun was out,  the steam was billowing
              
                   But then suddedly someone else unexpectedly popped into the picture. 
               
                      

                  You were too busy capturing the way the light was dancing on steam

                                 to notice the stalker


                              Until it was too late and she had  rubbed her tail against your leg.
                               


 It's important to have good interpersonal skills when you are the Kuirau park tabby

                             because you are never quite sure whether your next meal or scratch


               is coming or going.


The world is full of friends you haven't met yet.

"Don't walk behind me; I may not lead. Don't walk in front of me; I may not follow. Just walk beside me and be my friend."Albert Camus




Surely someone around here has something for a kitty for breakfast, they should carry pieces of smoked fish  around in their pockets instead of smart phones .


   Smart phones  kill conversation with people who are present and they don't smell anywhere near as nice as smoked fish.



           Alone time is just as important as together time

    But not for long

     Maybe if I pose well enough

                           a picture of me will be

    make it onto the front cover of a


 Friskeys Cat Biscuit box.





What's happening as a consequence of me trolling through my photo archives and embellishing  this story? 

I'm going back there this Saturday, with my husband at 9am if he isn't working; because  I have made myself very hungry writing this post.
Maybe I can get a good sequence with him doing something exciting like devouring six meaty samosas.

 Well yes folks  we did go to Kuirau Park market yesterday for a  Samosa eating adventure.


 I know you've all been sitting on the edge of your computer seats waiting for it.


                          Of course it's an indulgence you probably wouldn't  have every day or you'd be as             big   as                        a  giant samosa.
                            But once in a while it's lovely. The warmth of the water on your feet

                                  the warmth of the samosa in your tummy

                            The aromatic smell of samosas mixed
                          with sulpherous steam from the bubbling  thermal waters.


                             It's heaven;  there's no doubt about it.

Family Outing.
Going to the Kuirau Park market is a fantastic idea for a family outing, or a date with your significant other or someone you would like to be significant with.
It's inexpensive and  it's a great melting pot of  food and people.
You can try all sorts of  other morsels at reasonable prices, (it doesn't have to be about samosas and if you are a health  nut there are tons of veges to choose from that are super big, super well priced and super fresh).
It's run by Rotary North Club so the profits go back to the community.


There are creative gems in your own back yard; you just need to get out a metaphorical spade and dig them up.


Creative Cat Quotes of the day 
Don't think that I'm silly for liking it, I just happen to like the simple little things, and I love cats! - Michelle Gardner

 Cats do not have to be shown how to have a good time, for they are unfailing ingenious in that respect. - James Mason

God is really only another artist. He invented the giraffe, the elephant and the cat. He has no real style, He just goes on trying other things. - Pablo Picasso

Sunday, July 15, 2012

Waimiha Sawmill photographic adventure with Rotorua and South Waikato Camera Clubs (plus others)

Waimiha Mill just past Bennydale on the road to Te kuiti about 2 hours drive from Rotorua was this Saturdays Creative Adventure.
 It's like going back into a giant dishevelled,  yet intensely beautiful  time warp.
I love the colours that  occur on man-made objects that are left to decay out on the weather over time.



          Rusty  metals melting into swamp

             Patchwork of corrugations against the wheel of misfortune. 

                                     Crustations of  concrete,  slowly  dissolving 

                          Wall paper stripped by  fingers of weather

                           Fantail, a sentinel on her  crusty post

 
              requires a lightening fast shutter speed for sharpness,  not attained in this snap




                Miniature orange grove survives on lichen

              Vermillion, teal, ocre-an artists palette on a fender

                                Collapsing with the weight of a rain filled watertank, with no-one left to drink it.

                                    A chute for woodchip smoke, smokes no longer

                                  The once whirring balls and blades,  broken and bent

                Rusty  funnel, discarded, like a spent shuttlecock after a  lost game of  badminton.

                              Peeling paint, like sunburned skin  two days after  too long a day at the beach

 

                Crash landing the old truck rests in a graveyard with other old timers

              Orange marks the spot in this cemetery of cog and wheels



                                       Layers of rust, eating cars for breakfast, dinner and  lunch

   A straw and orange coloured  picnic spot for so many sheep

     Favourite truck in the heap
   Which ever angle  you look 
  it's beauty calls out to be

        celebrated  by  the clicks of a thousand cameras.
                        A web of discarded junk that was once valued
                               now forgotten like old people placed  into a Rest Home.

                The tyre falls off and is left, languishing in a field full of sheep

     Memories of getting stuck in black sand at Raglan beach in a Ford Cortina as a kid with the pareants  and a bucket of  pipi shells.

            Boards dying to be cut up and

              re -fashioned  as Rosalie Gasgoine  masterpiece on
                          a Fine Art  Gallery wall.  ( See previous posts about Rosalie Gasgoine art pieces in the Auckland City Art Gallery)

                                  An unexpected blurry  encounter

                                    with a fellow photographer and his
                      wood  retrieving  wooley best mate.
             Happiness,  the definition of a dog with a wooden bone


                                    Doors, the portal to another room in a past long forgotten

                              Teal;  a fifties decorative favoured shade by refined tea drinking  ladies of the era.

                       What went on inside number two between two people when the mill closed down and they   had to move on, do these walls remember?


 Fantails pop up from clouds of  midges released  from  feet of photographers who trample through tussock in search of the next killer shot.
It  is their village now and we are the intruders.


Wood and iron houses, chamelions, gradually  molding into the landscape  instead of clashing.

 From the back it could be a mini

From the side it could be a painting

 From the front it's a Bedford having it's last laugh.

 Chainsaw teeth no longer capable of biting


           A tryptich
         of Lichen on metallic
     blue grows like seaweed on a tropical Queensland Reef, could the rust spots be fish?


This place is still haunting me, it's one of the most interesting places full of  rust and decay that I  have ever seen.
 With photography there is always another day and moment in time where the shots would all be totally different because of the power and the quality of the light.
I will be returning some day but it will be early in the morning or just on dusk.

Thanks to the organisers at the Rotorua and South Waikato Camera Club.

 Creative Quote of the day

A truly good book is something as wildly natural and primitive, mysterious and marvelous, ambrosial and fertile, as a fungus or a lichen.
- Henry David Thoreau