Winter wonderland

There have been more than the usual photographic opportunities this winter, but work gets in the way some of the time. The photos you see often in this blog are usually far from snap-shots. Most require my mono-pod [one legged tripod] or a very steady pose, and intense concentration. The camera I use has the facility [yet another computer] to join together 2 or 3 frames for the panorama effect, and it's the matching of each frame in relation to each other that is the challenge.

So some days although I might see something special I pass it by, but yesterday [Sat.] the continuing severe winter and a hoar frost made it impossible to ignore the landscape possibilities. The more so as fellow photographer Roger was in town, and since he's now in layout mode for his second book, there was a fair bit of inspiration about.

Dougal has just got new 2nd hand downhill skis, and wanted to try them out so we went up to the Cardrona Ski Area on Sat. at 1pm just in time to be in an awfully cold bit of bad weather, so we looked across the cloud tops of the 2 week long inversion and the Cardrona valley to the Snow Park [a short in vertical ski area of modified terrain, sporting many huge jumps, pipes and rails], and headed there instead. It always gets different weather which is quite amazing, so we bought a couple of hours of sun and fun! Dougal got lots of air, and I tried not to watch! I'd not done any downhill for a few years, but was soon carving my way past getting the feeling back and some stiffness accompanying the first runs. After all skiing is one of the few past times where you play with gravity, so each time some more playfulness should kick in. But my - times have changed: I found myself with a skier in front of me going backwards! This may seem elegant done in the context of a little air and a spin then landing backwards, but I can assure you it's not any easy technique to fulfill the basic needs of navigation, but it could score you a job as a movie camera operator for adventure skiing videos.

Having got the fun bit done we adjourned back home early when the weather finally closed in, and this change meant photo opportunities in the Cardrona valley were plentiful.

Today was the first perfect day for weeks so we stayed at home to relax, but it's still cold. Terre, a client/friend called in and where she lives on the Omarama side of the Lindis Pass, they've had 5 conservative days recently of minus 16. That's cold by NZ standards, but it makes for very unique photo opportunities as well as frozen plumbing!