Autumn, Easter, War and ANZAC

As a landscape photography subject I find autumn very challenging, so this year instead of the obvious photos I've made in the past, I've been learning to "see" things a little differently.

Easter has given me some time to reflect on this, and also as ANZAC day falls in this time I've decided to visit the past for this post. To do so means examining just what Easter is all about too: the seemingly indisputable death of Jesus and his rising from the dead.

So as I compose here I've realised it is a three theme post. A trinity if you like!

Generally this shot typifies how I've framed the subject of autumn in the past...


My dad grew up in this sort of landscape above, and I knew that he loved it dearly. But here he is in another setting though - he's the one on the left holding the glass [beer I assume as it was always his favourite]...


This is a bit of a grim story so I want to intersperse it with some of the colours we all love [my "new" way of seeing autumn]...


Dad was a trained butcher, and I think this looks like him doing some work on dressing a cattle beast - on the back of the photo it says: "Before Florance"...




Africa may have been a lot of fun with his mates as above, but at Cassino in Italy he was the only survivor among them, and was wounded while in a railway station, during an engagement with a Tiger tank. I'm not sure if it was before or after this photo 'tho, probably afterwards. "26 & 27 Batt"...


He never wanted to talk much about the war, but as a kid I found these photos in the garden shed, and over the years he did drop the odd comment. "Cassino from the Front"...


There was one story that has stuck in my mind: it was how he described taking a day off of killing with the Germans to bury the dead. I was amazed on scanning this photo an hour ago to see, on enlarging, at least one person in this one, and possibly 3-4, and towards the right there seems to be someone carrying a body. "Cassino from the side"...




Somewhere in Italy. It says on the back of the photo: "tank knocked out by our Corp"


It seems as I upload these photos that the world back then had no colour, but it must have had, yet there is no evidence in the aged photos above


Roma...


"The way to Venice" - these people seem happy and I wonder why - did they feel "liberated"...




Many never came back, and then as now we use the cross as a symbol [that has such a link to our definition of Easter!], to remember them. "NZ Graves Sora"...


Sometimes the veil between different times or worlds seems very thin, and for myself it often shimmers...


So today we honour what our father's did. But in that knocked out tank as above, and in all the rubble there were other people too! The son's of other mums and dads.

It's complex even now, as we have the benefit of hindsight, to know the right or wrong of it all. The American Civil War seemed a clear cut "wrong" in that had it been avoided, the same outcome, sans the horrific loss of life, may have been achieved with the passage of a few years.

As I ponder this I'm reminded of the stunning example the Dalai Lama sets, as we continue to marvel at his love and patience, whereas he could have easily taken his people to war too!

Hinterland, heartland or just typical New Zealand landscapes

Seems I've missed a week re blogging. Oh well... always seems the same in autumn, when I sort of go to ground and wake up again when the first skiable snows arrive.

But I have been out-and-about - again on self imposed Otago landscape photography missions:

Mustering near Kyeburn. Tim brings in a bunch of sheep from the Soldier's Syndicate, that backs onto Otematata Station - which is where my uncle Jim mustered for about 44 years...




Drawing on a few older photos...

A collection of art works once belonging to Ralph Hotere, which are now on display on Observation Hill at Port Chalmers...




Horses are a hard animal to photograph - they sort of put their ears in funny positions and slouch their backs at the site of a camera, so here I've tried more to portray where they live. In this case in the bush behind Dunedin near Whare Flat...


Dunedin's St Kilda beach...


All this takes fuel, and this I normally get at a trucking station on the edge of Wanaka township. There are never any queues at night, and in winter it can be quite surreal...

At home in Wanaka

I'm always passionate about New Zealand landscape photography, but as I look back on thousands of colour slides of same and some 16,000 more recent digital images [still not enough for the library I have in mind!] I've come to the conclusion that landscapes are always there - but it's people that are precious!

I love capturing the moment, but there are many moments I see each day, yet I'm not quite in the right location, and don't have a camera. Then when you have these two ingredients, the next important one is a strong sense of anticipation. Multi exposures of maybe 2-4 per second even strangely just don't seem to cut it. The great shot too is usually the first one, which gives credence to the concept of planning.

So today's satisfying effort was of this family, that visited my office today on a work basis...


But then there is the other photographic phenomena - the "seeing" of something in nothing. This shot, same office desk, but obviously different lighting and subject...

On one of my recent local Wanaka walks I did rediscover a stone seat in memory of an acquaintance of long ago. Phil was a really nice guy...


Some years ago I meet his mum in another context, and remarked on the photos of Cerro Torre on her wall. As she had a different last name it took a moment to piece it all together. Anyway she had a stone seat made overlooking a beach on Lake Wanaka, and last evening I found it rather poignant.

And of course the autumn colours just get richer daily...


Today's Donald'ism:

In every event experienced in life we have two simple choices:

To view it negatively, or view it positively.

The former choice can also cause suffering in another, while the latter choice demands a smile, so we make someone's day a little better.

It seems a "no brainer" to decide which is best for our own soul, but sometimes it's harder than we think!

So take a moment to breathe in the experience, and distill whatever action we think we must take down to just the two choices! Then the final decision of positiveness, I find is easy!