Studying drawing at night school to enhance my New Zealand landscape photography

Last Wed. night I attended my first night school session to study drawing. The idea being to immerse in art to increase my awareness of light and form for my passion: landscape photos.

Here is my second attempt at drawing two apples, done with an emphasis on observation of all details. The two hour session went very fast. Apples I guess did represent a landscape as they sat on a sheet of A4 white paper. I did eat one right after the session though...


My tutor is local artist Robyn, and here we see her colourful work in the background when I attended a party during the week at her place. On the left are Mike and Michelle, then my old and dear friends Diana and Pamela...


At the party there was a request for my camera skills, and I'm essentially a lover of photographing the New Zealand and Wanaka landscapes, but I do quite like dabbling with portraits, and find the key is to develop a strong empathy with the subject so they relax and develop trust. Here we have Sue, who did all the food prep...


As the party photos all turned out so well [yes I admit wine also helped my subjects relax], I was inspired to continue the theme even to today, when I had to take Dougal to soccer in Alexandra...


Many friends tell me Dougal looks a lot like myself, but I'll leave it up to you to ponder this...


On closing life here is now in winter mode: the skies have cleared revealing a good coating of snow down low on the local hills, I've just had a lovely Romanian couple stay over en-route to the Snow Farm where he'll be, among other things, a Biathlon coach, and in a couple of weeks I'll have a Russian - he's the cross country ski coach for the kids for the season and is coming from the US where he's lived for a few years. I've always loved the winter season and they're so enriched these days with the international flavour and ideas these people bring in my office/home.