The massive earthquake of last weekend in Christchurch is still very much in our minds right now. Here are some images from the area still cordoned off, taken at a happier time. The Christchurch Arts Centre in fact used to be the home of Canterbury University. When my wife and I attended that university the [...]
A highlight of our trip to Kaikoura last weekend was the fur seals. There are hundreds of them, all down the Kaikoura Coast, but one spot in particular had hit the news the week before. A small stream at Ohau Point has provided a safe refuge and playground for the last five or six years for groups [...]
Off to Kaikoura last weekend with the Nelson Camera Club. Five of us went out with “Albatross Encounter” for a couple of hours. Here are a few examples, and I have posted some higher quality images on my wildlife gallery. (The first 10 images are from that trip.) We stopped not a huge distance offshore and [...]
Not far from Greymouth is the little mining village of Blackball, famous for its hotel called the “Blackball Hilton”.
Just a few minutes from Greymouth, alongside the Grey River, the site of the Brunner Coalmine is clearly visible from the main road to Reefton. This heritage area has seen a great deal of restoration effort in the last two years. Access is via an impressive bridge, now in its fifth or sixth reincarnation after [...]
A recent camera club competition had the theme “photojournalism”. I entered this image, taken on my very first visit to Moore Park.
The speaker at my Rotary club meeting last week had a remarkable story to tell, one in which I had an intense personal interest. Paul McNabb of the Cawthron Institute spoke about the discovery of New Zealand’s most poisonous animal, an inconspicuous little sea slug.
Have you heard of the “I write like” website? It has recently gone viral and I can see why. It’s a lot of fun. You simply paste in an example of some of your writing which it then analyses for style, vocabulary etc, comparing it with the writers in its database. I tried it using the [...]
The day after the Blessing of the Fleet ceremony in Nelson, I went out fishing with the “Serious Fishing Club”. It was a day trip with Seabird Charters, with hosts Barry and Lyn. An excellent day, starting off a bit lumpy and grey then clearing up to give flat seas. We even managed to get up [...]
Carrying on from the last post, here are some of the earlier images from Moana and Lake Brunner. The first pictures were quite dramatic, low light levels, cold colours and lots of mist everywhere (the air temperature was around -2 C).
