New Years Resolutions, a hot time in Wanaka and heading bush, to snow and ice country

Dear Readers

It's been a very special few days here in Wanaka. Not because of the sudden influx of party goers and holiday makers, most relaxed, sadly many drunk. No, not the many nubile young woman on the lake's beaches either!

Instead my friend Bob McKerrow, humanitarian with the International Red Cross and mountaineer, and his family have been here; and then our mutual friend Brian Miller, a publisher [Lifelogs] and author from Dunedin called in. From the left: Bob, Brian, and me...So amongst many dreams mulled over and dispatched comes the thought: New Years Resolution!I think I'll make one to keep having great trips in our Southern Alps...

Bob, letting his hair down perhaps, has had a great trip getting to Wanaka [after being a an earthquake magnet in Christchurch] including a flight over such peaks and valleys covered by the names: Mount Cook, Godley, Murchison, Tasman, Whataroa, Butler, Franz Josef and Maccaulay valleys. In short a lot of Mt Cook National Park.

But for myself I have a resolution to honour, and so rather than being surrounded by nubile young bodies / beautifuls, and guys with their eyes velcroed to their breasts - all oblivious to the brutal sunburn possibilities. No its time to go bush! I doubt it'll include rock, snow and ice as per images here, but I can dream!

I'm not sure where yet, but I'm leaving this town for a few of the crazy days of summer, and it gives Bob a chance in my home to take his well earned rest from disaster recovery housing schemes in Sri Lanka a step further.

Traditionally this is a time to climb a few good mountains. Especially since the weather is so settled here and we've avoided the tropical cyclone up north over Nelson and Wellington etc.

One area I love because of it's close proximity is the Ahuriri Valley Conservation Estate - the perfect place if you have four wheel drive. Here are a few more photos, the first ones taken recently and the others in another passage of my life... A trip I learnt a lot on in this area many years ago - a Search and Rescue exercise with the Dunedin Face Rescue Team of the time... Yet another trip - we traversed the whole of the glacier under Mt Barth looking for a safe route up the face of Mt Barth on the left on an avalanche day. We "gave it away" as too risky, but it was a fun walk...Sometime later I did a solo ascent of the face of Mt Barth - it went well, but I knew on the descent I'd have to tackle this stretch with no protection, unlike when Hank led it on my first traverse of Mt Heim and Mt Barth in a day. Anyway a couple of careful moves across a brief void, and I was on the easy ground just above where he is in this photo...On the above traverse - Mt Aspiring in the background...

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More>>Bob's blog on his Godley flight [as mentioned above].

More>>Brian Miller's LifeLogsWherever you are, whoever you are - to you and yours I wish you the Very Best for the New Year. Stay Safe too!

A cheerful Christmas collection

Merry Christmas dear readers.

Please find below an eclectic collection of recent images I quite like for various reasons...

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Motion, and impulse

Much has been written about the fact that photography is a two dimensional representation of three dimensional scene, or at least if we walk among our "landscape" it's not flat!

But everything in my perceived world is dynamic [and becoming more so], so I've been playing about with ways to capture how I see landscapes, objects, animals and people that are far from the usual common static representation in most photos. It's all too easy to point and click and freeze the moment! I want us all to feel an emotion, or at least wonder "just what is this image about?"

Working with low light and a slow shutter speed...Working with wind, low light and a slow shutter speed...

And to take the impulse of motion, the emotion of the dynamic to another level, I quite like this quote I found recently:

Redefining God

Using the word God is always tricky as it's a very charged term that means different things to different people. I like to use that word to represent the idea of an absolute principle.

In an evolutionary context, we could choose to describe that absolute principle as "the energy and intelligence that initially created and is continuing to create the universe." In the way that I understand it, that driving force is more an impulse than it is a divine being. In that impulse, there is no predetermined plan at work. It is a directionality, a momentum, a reaching towards. This definition of God does not depend on any kind of metaphysical belief or faith.

All we need to do is look into the truth of our own experience and what science has revealed to us. 13.7 billion years of cosmic evolution has given rise to 3.8 billion years of biological evolution, which has given rise to tens of thousands of years of cultural evolution. We're on a moving train.

We're all part of a process that's going somewhere. We don't have to believe in a metaphysical deity to feel the drive of an evolutionary impulse as a tangible energetic presence in our own experience at different levels.

At the lowest level, the sexual drive can be recognized as an evolutionary impulse. At a much higher level, the uniquely human compulsion towards innovation can be recognized as an evolutionary impulse. And finally, at the highest level, the spiritual impulse, which is a compulsion towards higher consciousness, can be recognized as an evolutionary impulse.

Something miraculous is going on here and it's trying to happen in and through all of us in every moment.

—Andrew Cohen

Working with a waterfall inclined grassy bluff, low light, deliberately induced camera movement, and a slow shutter speed...Working with a slow shutter speed only. Trying hard to judge it so the water does not appear to be like chewing gum [which seems fashionable of late]..Working with a slow shutter speed, sharpness [or not] and water...To me I find horses to be very spiritual beings, and indeed we've used them as symbols of power in countless cultures, so here I've introduced some deliberate blurring by using a slow shutter speed in low light...