Over the past few months, I’ve been pre-occupied finalising my latest time-lapse titled Terrestrial South New Zealand. These are must see awe-inspiring scenes from New Zealand’s less frequented areas and a “marriage of beautiful scenery with fitting music” attributed to award-winning New Zealand composer, Rhian Sheehan.
‘Terrestrial South: New Zealand’ depicts the beauty of nature in some of the less frequented areas of Aotearoa New Zealand. The scenes show the change in light, the beauty of unusual rock forms, unique clouds, reflective lakes, and the clear night skies as seen in the world’s largest dark sky reserve. Further, the movie is complemented with some stunning aerial views over glacially braided rivers and untouched rain forests found only in the South Island. I was aiming to get this in a few competitions but that did not eventuate for several reasons. Coming soon will be a short behind the scenes movie where I talk about my setup.
Getting inspiration to go out and shoot time-lapse is challenging lately, particularly through the winter. Inspiration is hard to find when you’re faced with challenges like cold, level of fitness, battery issues, and heavy gear just to name a few. Having said said that, I’ve been lucky to have the latest Panasonic Lumix S1R on loan to trial. But even then, I’ve had setbacks for me to process the raw images with an outdated version of Lightroom classic which won’t import them. All the same, I did get some inspiration of attending the New Zealand Mountain Film Festival held in beautiful Wanaka. What I’m desperately lacking in the need to upgrade my gear from camera through to a new PC, software and more efficient workflows.
Getting to good locations requires lots of planning and preparation. Finding and getting to those locations is something I’m protective about. They’re like good fishing spots. Getting to them requires travelling further into the back country, and that doesn’t come easy for some of the reasons I’ve mentioned above. You either fly their by helicopter (very expensive), or you walk. Now this brings me to a post I saw in the “Tramping in New Zealand” Facebook group recently. For those who don’t know what “tramping” is, it’s the same as hiking – another one of my favorite pastimes. I read the story of photographer friend about my age who tells of his recent experience in the back country. His story resonated with me and many others with some practical advice too. It’s a good read, so go check it out here.
Lastly, having been on Instagram for nearly 4 years, I’m almost at the 1000 milestone for followers. It seems harder to get followers there than it is on Facebook. Something to do with the algorithms I believe. Who will be my 1000th Instagram follower ?