Travelling Light

One of the biggest frustrations of being a photographer when traveling is often being at the mercy of others around when and where and for how long you can stop. This is particularly true when you’re traveling for work, not fun. And the frustration only grows when the landscape you’re passing through is visually spectacular.

The key to any good picture, and definitely true to landscape photography, is the need to move yourself into a position to make the most of a scene. Is that tree better placed on the left or the right? Should I get in close and use a wide angle, or stand off and zoom? If I wait here another five minutes, is the sun going to break through and hit that particular part of my composition and make it take off? Photography is the art of scribing light. You need to be in the perfect position, and the perfect moment.

And that perfect position and perfect moment is almost never through a car window. Or a car windshield. Or, for that matter, an airplane seat.

I’ve sadly had to score my fair share of shots from car windows. I hate it. They are always sub-standard to what I would like, or the vision I have for the scene, and unless you’re very fortunate, there’s almost invariable motion blur, particularly in the foreground. On my most recent trip through north-western Ethiopia, it was doubly painful. Not only was the landscape glorious, but the lighting was spectacular. It was variable and changing, we were on the road early and late as the light turned golden, and you really would have struggled to find more dramatic combinations of scenery and sunlight at times. I just wanted out of that vehicle and to be taking my sweet time framing up the shots I wanted to take.

Alas, there are only so many times you can ask the driver to stop and your colleagues to wait patiently in the car while you grab your snaps.

And the toilet-break excuse has a ceiling.

Sometimes you just make do with what you’ve got, however, and in this case, several of this little series of light-captures were snapped from the moving vehicle, the others grabbed during brief moments when we were stopped at the side of the road. Not my favourite option, and given the quality of the light, I wish I could have positioned myself better- there were some epic opportunities. But thems the breaks. Here’s what I got out of them though, and I quite like how some of them turned out. As much luck as anything. One of these days I hope to be out on the road myself here, able to stop whenever I feel like it. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy these ones.

Photos:

1. The Golden Hour: Morning haze gathers in folds of the landscape lit by a morning sun just on the Amhara side of the border with Benishangul-Gumuz
Note: If you click on this image, I’ve included the link to a larger size of this image which is worth linking through to- the small frame doesn’t capture the landscape well.

2. Traveling Light: Shooting straight into the sun, hanging out of the side window of the Land Cruiser

3. Out of the Burning Dawn: A man walks along a road at sunrise not far from Chagni, in SW Amhara Region; shot through the car windshield into full sun.
Note: Same for this one- click through for larger image.

4. A tree, captured out of the side window of the truck, stands silhouetted against the overexposed sky, smoke and dust from the road swirling at its roots

5. Metalled road west of Chagni, Amhara Region, at dawn

6. A painted truck, caught with the rising sun ahead of it, through the windshield of our four-by-four

7. Truck headlights at dusk in Mandura Woreda, Benishangul-Gumuz

8. Smoke and clouds blend at dusk above a burning rubbish tip on the outskirts of Bahir Dar

The Play of Mists

Another collection of photos from a recent ballooning trip over Victoria’s gorgeous wine-growing Yarra Valley one early spring morning.

Perhaps the most gorgeous aspect of the trip was the mist at dawn, and how it interplayed with the landscape as the sun rose, transforming the landscape and changing the mood as it changed.

From the ground, the pattern of the mist is harder to discern, but from 3,000 feet, it’s beautiful to watch it steaming off waterways in the cool morning air, spreading like a threadbare cotton blanket over the ground, or catching long shadows from the sun low on the horizon.

As we first took off, we passed over a small flooded waterway. The sun was still below the horizon, and we were low enough that the mist still wrapped us. I took a first shot of the mist running off the water (below), and as we skimmed along its surface, snapped the image at the top of this post of reeds reflected in the still surface. Still low, I shot a third image of  a tree at the water’s edge (beneath), again enjoying the utter stillness of the water’s surface as the balloon breezed over.

As we gained height, the waterways gleamed silver against a dark green backdrop, while mist clumped over low, damp areas.

As the sun first began to rise, it sent low shafts of light across the valley, catching treetops and lighting the topside of the mist while depressions remained in shadow. These next three images show the interplay of light and shadow, of mist, tree and water. You can see the mist boiling off the top of the rivers and ponds, much warmer than the cold air sitting atop them, like steam off a cauldron.

As the sun rose further, the mist began to burn off, swirling in those pockets of sheltered vale where the air was still and the sun’s reach weaker. The patterns left in the air look like currents in a slothfully meandering stream.

In this shot, you can see the local airfield as the mist slowly burns away.

Sometimes, as in the below image, the relationship between warm water and cool air was obvious, reminiscent of boiling lakes in Rotorua or Yellowstone, circles and puffs among the striations of ploughed fields.

Poplars slice upwards through the fug and sunlight streaks between the boughs, casting long shadows across the top of the mist.

As we come back down and the sunlight grows stronger, it seeps through to illuminate the ground, where strong colours struggle through the bleaching mist. Here, rows of vines and orchard trees greet our descending balloon, and a few minutes later we’re through the mist and back on terra firma, watching the last tendrils of fog burn off to a blue sky.

Death Valley Diversion

There’s been a lot of words on my site recently.  I mean a lot.

I’ve been nattering about everything from sending T-Shirts to Africa to the impact of New Media on Aid Work, on why it’s better to give cash than stuff, and even the odd anime review.  And while posts on the building crisis in Niger or why our water usage is killing the planet both had photos, they also had a ton of verbage wrapped around them.

Hence deciding to post some more pretty pictures.

I went to Death Valley in 2007.  I had a layover in LA on the way back from a work trip to Haiti and Central America, and decided to stretch it out. I rented a car, and I drove for 4 days solid, taking in the Mojave Desert, Death Valley, Yosemite National Park, Mono Lake and a bunch of other little detours along the way. It was fun, refreshing and an awesome photoshoot.

I came in from the south, rather than (is more common) from the east and Nevada.  This took me through the sweeping southern part of the valley, with the salt-flats that mark the lowest point of the United States, and the rock formations along the eastern rim of the valley.  It was late afternoon in May.  The air was hot and dry.  I had a plastic one-gallon jug of water in the passenger footwell, and I drove with the windows down and the air-con off, and drank the water profusely.  By 7pm, when I reached Furnace Creek- one of the centres of habitation in that desolate landscape- I was overheated and dehydrated.  One of the worst I’ve ever been, actually.  I was quite shocked.

I hadn’t booked ahead, and the motel was full, so I checked myself into the campground down the road.  I had no tent and the car was too cramped to sleep in, so, worried about snakes and scorpions, I lay myself out on a picnic bench near my allocated site and waited for my body temperature to drop.

I was hot, dry, and trembling.  I had a cracking headache and felt light and dizzy.  It was a ghastly feeling.  I wet a sock and lay it over my forehead, periodically splashing water on myself through the night.

I woke, uncomfortable and with a headache, but feeling normal once again, some considerable time before dawn.  The previous evening I had scouted further north and west, and found an overlook near the town of Stovepipe Wells which gave views of the Mesquite sand dunes.  The light had been hazy and poor and I hadn’t been able to get any decent photographs.  But I was awake, so I set off.  It was about 4.30am.

I reached the dunes and began hiking.  The sky was just growing light, so I wandered out among them until I found some vantages I was happy with.  Then I waited for the inevitable dawn.

I was largely alone.  A couple of miles away on a large dune I could see half a dozen people sitting doing the same as I, but they weren’t intrusive.  I never saw them close up, never heard them.  They didn’t get in the way of my shots.

As the sun began to come up, I was briefly disappointed.  The air was hazy, not crisp as it had been in the Sahara, and this softened the light.  I had been hoping to catch sharp contrast in the ripples of the dunes, in the first few minutes of the day.

But my disappointment was short-lived.  When the sun came up, I got those low-angle shadows and contrasts within the folds and contours of the windforms.  The cloud-streaked sky added far more interest than a blue palette would have done, contrasting nicely with the shapes in the sand and aligning themselves perfectly.  And better still, the softer light cast an almost painterly mask over the landscape.  All up, that morning shoot was one of my favourite and most productive sessions, and I got more than a dozen photos I was really proud of.

Not that I can really take the blame.  I wasn’t the one that created that landscape.  Just borrowed a bit of light from it.

All up, Death Valley was a spectacular locale.  What it lacks in grandeur (compared to, say, Yosemite) it makes up for in harshness, wilderness, and sheer otherworldlyness.  The diverse, rugged landscape is photogenic, exciting and hostile, and I’d love to go back and spend a week exploring its nooks and crannies.  It remains a highlight of my trip and is high on my go-back-to list (together with Yosemite, the Annapurnas, Canada… it’s a list surpassed only by my ‘need-to-go-to-next’ list).

Ah… colour… that’s a nice change from all that black-and-white text!

The Quest for Windmills Continues

I’ve mentioned before that I have a bit of a thing for windmills and the Australian landscape.  They add a piece of visual interest to a spreading landscape, and at the same time communicate a strong sense of place and time.

Therefore, almost any time I see a well-placed windmill, I experience the urge to photograph it.  Sometimes it’s too impractical to do-so (because I’m doing 100kph on the highway, or because there’s a fenceline in the way), and I wrestle with deep frustration.  Often, there are ugly features in the way, like watering holes or power-lines.  And from time to time I’m able to take the time, hop out of my car (or whatever) and line up some shots.

I came across this one travelling near Geelong (there’s a few out that way; I should re-visit) and had a few minutes to spare, so I was able to wait out the sunrise and snap off a few shots.  I share these ones with you.

They are certainly not the classic windmill shot I am looking for.  That quest continues.  When I find it, I’ll share it with you.  But it’ll have to do for now while I keep my vision alive.

*Yes, yes I am perhaps a little obsessive about windmills.

[More] Snapshots from Nepal

My trip to Nepal remains among my favourite of all time, and sits right at the very top of my want-to-go-back-to list.  Each year that passes makes me itch a little more.  I revisit my photos often as they trigger an array of memories and feelings.  I’ve posted quite a few from Nepal over the months on this site, so here are a few more which take my fancy, and I hope interest you as well.

The image at top is of the unmistakable Macchapuchare, also known as Mt. Fishtail.  Nicknamed the Matterhorn of the Himalayas, it is one of the singly most beautiful mountains on the planet, in this blogger’s humble opinion.  At 6,997m high, it isn’t among the highest peaks of the Annapurna Massif (many of which tower well into the high 7,000s and even top 8,000m), but its prominence is so striking and dramatic that it remains an icon for all those who have visited this region of Nepal.  I couldn’t get enough of it.

Here, early-morning side-lighting shortly after sunrise casts horizontal shadows across a rural landscape.  These little stone cottages made a lovely foreground to add a sense of place to the dramatic sweep of the Annapurna Range at back.  The vista includes (from left to right) Annapurna South, Annapurna I (at 8,091m barely visible behind the peak of Annapurna South), Hiun Chuli, Annapurna III and Gandarbha Chuli (tucked into the saddle between Hiun Chuli and Macchapuchare), Macchapuchare, Annapurna IV, Annapurna II and Lamjung Himal.  Note that the Annapurnas are listed not according to proximity or geographical succession, but altitude, with I being the highest and IV being the lowest (not that at 7,525m we would call Annapurna IV ‘small’).

Here, early morning dawnlight catches on the south face of Annapurna South.  At 7,219m, Annapurna South is one of the smaller peaks in the Annapurna Himal, but its presence is a constant during the 10-day Annapurna Base Camp trek, never absent for more than a few hours at a time while behind an inconvenient shoulder.  Burning like vapourize copper in the angular light of a rising sun, the fierce edges of a mountain scoured by millenia of wind, ice and crustal uplift can be seen in dramatic contrast.  Poking into the jetstream, high-altitude winds whip past the peak tearing off a tail of snow and ice granules which hang like a blowing scarf in the morning air.  Up close, the sound is audible as the roar of powerful engines, but at the distance I took this shot, the calm quiet of a village dawn belied the fierce battle taking place among the jagged heights.

(click to see detail)

This next photo for me captures three things that make my heart ache just a little.  The first is the beautiful north-east face of Annapurna South (and across to Annapurna I at right) as viewed across the dry basin of the Annapurna Sanctuary.  It remains one of the most beautiful, spectacular locations I have ever stood in in my entire (and moderately well-travelled) life.  The second is the marvellous blue sky which accompanied us for most of the trip and made both the trekking and the photography so memorable.  The third are the prayer flags, so symbolic and such a powerful marker in my memory for that place, as well as being a visual feast with their bright colours, and their ethereal spirituality in the face of such intense and tangible physical beauty.

Back in the lowlands, and I snapped this rather undramatic shot of the terraced fields which are the only way in which villagers can farm a living out of the steep-sided valleys.  Among the foothills of the first few days of the trek, before the landscape gave way to rock and glacial moraine, these terraces were the main geographical marker and the symbol of a hardy resilience that the mountain peoples of the Himalayas have had to adopt.  I enjoyed the play of afternoon light across the terraces, and wish I could have done more exploration of them, both on foot and with my camera.

Perched in a village on a rideline overlooking Annapurna South and Hiun Chuli, the name of the teahouse at centre is “Nice View Lodge”.  Talk about understatements…

(click to see detail)

Trekking into the Annapurna Sanctuary, one of the joys was that after five days with the mountains slowly getting larger, but appearing largely unchanged in terms of appearance, suddenly we had come around behind the peaks we had been watching during our uphill slog, and they appeared totally different.  While not the tallest mountain in the Sanctuary, Annapurna South viewed from the north-east was certainly one of the most beautiful of the peaks we saw, with a certain elegance to its primal and inhospitable face.  I loved shooting these mountains in the strong sunlight against a blue sky, as it cast the details of the rock and ice into sharp contrast and allowed for some lovely textured detail.

(click image to see larger)

And back to the prayer flags.  I really can’t get enough of them.  I took a series of shots of Annapurna I viewed through the tangle of prayer flags at the shrine above Annapurna Base Camp South, and the combination of vast mountain (8,091m), blue sky, white ice and coloured flags was spine-chilling in its impact at the time.  I could post these images all day long…

Nepal is a spectacularly beautiful country, with photographic surprises around every corner, and so much to explore.  As you can see from the amount I post & talk about it, it impacted me deeply.  I am still plotting my return…

The Desert in Black and White

Photos taken during a single shoot at the sand dunes of Mesquite Flats, in Death Valley National Park shortly after dawn.

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Moments in Space and Time #4: Macchapuchare Morning

The ascent from Phedi to Dhampus is a two-hour slog up stone staircases winding their way through the lush overgrown forest of the Himalayan foothills. Upon attaining the ridgeline along which the village’s little stone cottages are spread, a magnificent panorama opens up in the fading afternoon sunlight. The entire Annapurna Massif is laid out, from left to right some of the most magnificent peaks in the world. From Annapurna South and Annapurna I in the west, crowned by the dramatic Macchapuchare in the centre, and around to the enourmous Annapurnas II and IV in the east, the view is simply staggering.

Pemba, our Sherpa, booked us in at a sweet little guesthouse atop the ridge, where the views remained staggering. This was only our first evening on the Annapurna Sanctuary Trek, and it was already delivering the goods in spectacular fashion. The accomodation was rustic- wooden beds and thin mats in what felt like a converted stone barn, accessible by a ricketty wooden ladder slippery with years of tred and woodsmoke.

I got up early the next morning with Lydz and Laura to watch the sunrise. Our vantage looked over the east-facing flanks of the mountains, so as the sun slowly slipped above the distant horizon, they were washed in fresh sunlight, the low angles emphasising the details in the relief. We were standing four and five thousand metres lower than the peaks at which we stared, and the sunlight kissed their tips while our stretch of hillside was still very much swathed in shadow. The air was very still, and hanging with the smoke from early morning fires.

Macchapuchare, or Fishtail Mountain, is known as the Matterhorn of the Himalayas for its distinctive shape and prominence. It is an awe-inspiring peak, and as the sun rose, the light seemed to finger every little crevice and feature on its jagged face. After a little while, the light reached us as well, and a bush exploding with pink flowers in front of me was suddenly bathed in soft light. I balanced a shot with the flowers framing the mountain peak in the background- the sun-splashed petals, the shining peak and the blue sky contrasting with that deep shadows of the valley. The memory of that morning holds a place as one of the most beautiful sunrises I’ve ever witnessed, in one of the world’s most moving settings. The itself photo sits for me as one of the top two or three I’ve ever taken, and I hope you enjoy it as well.

Moments in Space and Time #8: Arapiles

On the way home from a road-trip through South Australia, my brother and I stopped for the night at Natimuk, a small town close to the climbing Mecca of Mt. Arapiles, near Horsham in north-western Victoria. Raps is situated on a vast flat plain known as the Wimmera, a patchwork of open fields and salt-flats edging towards the semi-desert of Sunset National Park and on into the Outback proper. It sits, a vertical hunk of sandstone granite, like a monolith jutting out of this billiard-table expanse, the only feature of relief for a significant distance in any direction. Surrounded on all sides by textured rock-faces up to two hundred metres high, it has a legendary diversity in climbing challenges and routes, from some classic beginner scrambles, through to highly technical ascents that only the country’s best climbers would be able to conquer.

We had planned to do some climbing together, but five days on the road had left us tired, so we spent the night at the country hotel in town. I woke early the next morning looking for photography opportunities, but was disappointed to see a mist hanging over the fields in the cool of the springtime dawn. Ever the optimist, I went for a quick drive anyway to see if some atmospheric shots might reveal themselves.

As I pulled up alongside one set of fields, the mist began to rise. Beneath a cloudless blue sky I could see Arapiles in the middle distance, as if floating on a fine bank of fog. As I watched, the low sun behind me painted the east-facing flank of the mountain in hues of gold and orange. I sprinted across the field as quickly as I could to line up the solitary tree that I felt would complete the composition and was able to capture this image of the mountain at dawn. It remains one of my favourite moments in space and time, when all the visual elements just came together perfectly to give me the shot I wanted to capture.

A Morning Moon

Photography is fun.  At the end of the day, you take images you like to look at yourself, or you enjoyed taking, or to capture a memory that makes you feel something significant.  I guess that’s why there’s such a huge variety of photos out there, and why so many people enjoy it as a hobby.

Nothing too grand about this shot above.  In  fact, as quality goes, it’s pretty rubbish.  I shot it handheld at about 5.30am outside Siam Reap, in the temple complex of Angkor Wat, facing away from the temple itself where the sun would shortly be rising.  Being dark, I ramped the ISO to 1600- never advisable on non-pro-range Canons- and still ended up with a little camera-shake to add some blur to all the noise.  That canvas texture was there even before I processed it from the RAW image.  Somehow, though, it still appeals.  Not your typical moonlight shot, terribly underexposed and artificial, yet something about the noise and the poor quality makes it different from the usual gunf I post.  Like the sunrise below.

Of course, half an hour later, the view facing in the opposite direction was the more cliched of the pair.  Dramatic to watch.  But I think I might almost prefer the first one…

A Nomad’s Footsteps (3 of 3)

More pictures from different axes of the globe we wander, a sampler of some of my recent travels…

Mauritania (2005)

Sunrise over the city of Nouakchott, the capital of Mauritania.  Half as big again as the US state of Texas (slightly smaller than the Northern Territory, half as big again as the nation of the Ukraine, or roughly the same size as France and Spain combined, depending on the audience and frame of reference…), Mauritania has a population of just 3 million mostly-nomadic people.  In true Sahelian fashion, it straddles the line between civilizations, with a thin southern strip home to a significant population of African ethnic groups, including the Wolof, and the rest drawn from north African groups with roots in the fairer Moorish, Berber and Tuareg peoples.  Sadly, as with many similarly-divided nations, a sense of superiority aligned with the lightness of skin has developed, such that in Mauritania there are ‘white’ moors and ‘dark’ moors, the latter of whom tend to be subservient to and occupy economic positions below the former.  Mauritania has the dubious reputation of being one of the last bastions of societally-condoned slavery in the world.

Mauritania is a fascinating place.  Much of the population is truly nomadic, and while the African agriculturalist groups have settled close to the Senegalese border (about a third of the population), and another million have begrudgingly accepted a sedentary life in the country’s nondescript capital by the sea, this leaves the final million to be finely sprinkled throughout the rest of this vast Saharan nation, with the result that it is, predominately, devoid of anything.  Just vast empty expanses of desert.

We love it.

I took the above photo with my Canon Powershot G6, the little digital point-and-shoot that kept me company during my year in West Africa.  No polarizer, no special lenses, and no post-processing.  The image of the sky you see there is exactly as it came out of the camera, the colours as they appeared, as the sun came up from beyond the desert above the eastern end of the city.  A phenomenal view.  I will talk more about Mauritania some other time, as it’s a country that has captured my imagination and left me thirsty for more…

Nepal (2007)

Another trip I will doubtless spend more time talking about in more detail is my brief stay in Nepal, trekking to the Annapurna Sanctuary.  Three of the best-spent weeks of my life.  The scenery was spectacular, the culture fascinating, the weather perfect, and the company pretty stellar as well.  Many very, very fond memories.  Among which is not the fact that my camera died forty-five minutes after arriving at the crux of the trip.

Fortunately, on this morning my camera was working.  I snapped this of one corner of the enourmous Annapurna Massif, here capturing at least two seven-thousand-metre peaks just as the sun’s first rays lit their crowns.  Howling winds tear across the tops of the peaks, whipping snow and ice crystals into the air and leaving them hanging like a fine veil for the sun to get caught in.  I have always been a fan of the mountains, and Nepal remains one of my favourite destinations on the planet.  Stupefyingly beautiful.

South Africa (2007)

One of the images I carry with me that reflects the grandeur of the African landscape is the awesome skyscape that accompanies it.  No memory of the open drylands of this continent is complete without taking in the drama of the clouds that hang above, lending a sense of scale to the scenery beneath.  I snapped these cumulus towers building in the early afternoon near Pretoria, when a hot and humid January day promised to turn into a thundery downpour, and which it subsequently did, with gusto.  In this image I love the deep blue gradient towards the top of the frame, and the tangible texture of the clouds themselves…

Haiti (2007)

I took this photograph in a small village that was being rebuilt by the NGO I work for after it had been destroyed by a cyclone.  We were on Haiti’s Ile de la Gonave, a small island a short distance off the coast of the nation’s capital Port-au-Prince.  While Port-au-Prince remains one of the world’s more unsavory destinations, replete with riots, kidnappings, political violence and general criminality- not to mention substantial poverty- Gonave couldn’t be more different.  A laid-back Afro-Carribean island with friendly people and gorgeous tropical scenery laid out on coral-white rock and ringed by azure seas, the only thing that reminded me I was actually working while I was here was the fact that we spent eight hours a day rattling around inside a regulation Toyota Land Cruiser, on what I maintain are the very worst roads I have been on.  Anywhere, anytime.  And I decry anybody to find me a worse set.

Great place though.

Canada (2006)

As we’ve already ascertained, I love mountains.  So I’ve actually been pretty restrained in this collection by not just launching a whole ream of mountain photos at you.  Though truth be told, as my photography skills (and equipment…) have improved, the amount of time I’ve had around mountains has sadly dwindled, an error which I plan to remedy as soon as I get the opportunity.

I took a few weeks out from my stint in Niger to join friends in Alberta for some quality mountain time.  This generally meant strapping on two pieces of carbon-fibre onto the undersides of my boots and hurtling down steep slopes.  I find it hard to conceive of a better way of engaging with God and creation.  I snapped this shot of a mountain whose name I’m unsure while we were driving out to Lake Louise (or was it the Bow Hut area…?  My memory fails me).  It’s not a technically remarkable shot.  But the sheer scale of rock, snow and ice is awe-inspiring, and that blue sky behind the white snow gets my heart beating for more.  I am desperate to get back to the Rockies with my new Canon EOS 5D…

Ecuador (2005)

One of the downsides to travelling to lots of exotic places in my job is being there, and having to spend most of the time working.  One of the upsides is those rare days off.  On this day, a colleague drove us up to the jumping-off point for the ascent of Cotopaxi, Ecuador’s second highest mountain, a stratovolcano of 5,897m in altitude, and one of the world’s most threatening volcanoes.  Part of my trip had to do with supporting a project which is working with communities to be ready for a possible eruption, and so I felt it was particularly justifiable that I spend some time on the volcano itself.  A real hardship, given my earlier observations about my love of mountains…

And hardship it was.  Quite aside from the powerful winds, the altitude was an absolute killer.  We foolishly drove up from 2,000m to 4,500m in the space of ninety minutes, ignoring all calls for acclimitization.  Then we hiked up past the hut at 4,800m, eventually tailing off around 5,200m just short of the start of the ice-cap.  By the top, I was taking five paces, then stopping for two minutes to catch my breath.  Then another five paces…  We ended up coming down of the mountain fairly shortly after that, when my colleague began to complain of difficulty breathing.

This woman was one of the villagers with whom the project was working, one of several who wanted to accompany us on our little excursion.  I caught her in this brief moment of reflection at the mountain hut at 4,800m, and her bright clothes against the grey stone just stood out.  I’m really fond of this photo.  It captures something of the mountain spirit of these gentle people.  She seemed right at home up there, on the edge of where people survive.

South Australia (2006)

The Flinders Ranges, in South Australia, capture for me the rugged beauty of the interior of this continent.  Barren, dry, wild and isolated, they grab my imagination and make me want to explore some more.  The five days that my brother and I spent driving around the southern part of the SA outback only whet my appetite.  Such a beautiful country, right on my doorstep, sometimes I wonder why I spend so much time jetting away from it.  But then I think there’s beauty wherever we end up in the world, we just need to learn how to see it.  Certainly for those of us who’ve ended up here in Australia, we have no excuse to complain.  It’s a pretty amazing country, really.

Am I allowed to say that as a wandering Kiwi…?