february/april 2015
43° 14' 13.4664'' S 171° 28' 20.2728'' E
i must have done a grand total of three weeks of traveling over the six months i lived in New Zealand. i went camping around the North Island for a few days, but the bulk of my adventures happened around the South Island.
as an exchange student, i was chronically broke. going on a trip longer than a couple of days sounded like an impossible financial undertaking. yet the stars aligned and right around the time i received a refund for a failed flight ticket, a fellow student suggested a longer trip over the easter break. naturally, i was all in.
driving around the South Island in a campervan felt unlike anything i’d experienced before and there is much i have to thank my fellow travellers for - the good humour, the positive energy, the appetite for life. but what stood out to me was their tolerance of my obsession with photographing everything. they were equally tolerant towards my over the top reaction to finding my camera soaked (and in effect, pretty much dead) one morning. fortunately, the nikon d7000 i used at the time sprung back to life several days later, albeit with very few automatic functions. there was no visual feedback either: the primary lcd had given up. the screen on top of the camera, however, had not. while i could no longer rely on automatic metering, i could at least set the exposure. perhaps that’s what nikon had gone for when they released the df - “pure photography.” there was definitely something intriguing about being forced to handle the entire process on my own. in a way, the challenge was thrilling: i was shooting blindly as the trip of a lifetime unfolded.
to my delight, most of the files i uncovered back in Auckland were perfectly usable. the biggest surprise must have been a long exposure which had subtly captured the aurora australis - the latter could not be seen with the naked eye. i was just as delighted to realise i had nailed exposure on most occasions. framing had been satisfactory too. in an outburst of enthusiasm i vowed i’d switch to all of my settings manually, “pure photography” had just become this thing i would peg my artistic evolution to.
once i realised i could borrow cameras from my university, i forgot about all of that in a matter of days.
february/april 2015
43° 14' 13.4664'' S 171° 28' 20.2728'' E
i must have done a grand total of three weeks of traveling over the six months i lived in New Zealand. i went camping around the North Island for a few days, but the bulk of my adventures happened around the South Island.
as an exchange student, i was chronically broke. going on a trip longer than a couple of days sounded like an impossible financial undertaking. yet the stars aligned and right around the time i received a refund for a failed flight ticket, a fellow student suggested a longer trip over the easter break. naturally, i was all in.
driving around the South Island in a campervan felt unlike anything i’d experienced before and there is much i have to thank my fellow travellers for - the good humour, the positive energy, the appetite for life. but what stood out to me was their tolerance of my obsession with photographing everything. they were equally tolerant towards my over the top reaction to finding my camera soaked (and in effect, pretty much dead) one morning. fortunately, the nikon d7000 i used at the time sprung back to life several days later, albeit with very few automatic functions. there was no visual feedback either: the primary lcd had given up. the screen on top of the camera, however, had not. while i could no longer rely on automatic metering, i could at least set the exposure. perhaps that’s what nikon had gone for when they released the df - “pure photography.” there was definitely something intriguing about being forced to handle the entire process on my own. in a way, the challenge was thrilling: i was shooting blindly as the trip of a lifetime unfolded.
to my delight, most of the files i uncovered back in Auckland were perfectly usable. the biggest surprise must have been a long exposure which had subtly captured the aurora australis - the latter could not be seen with the naked eye. i was just as delighted to realise i had nailed exposure on most occasions. framing had been satisfactory too. in an outburst of enthusiasm i vowed i’d switch to all of my settings manually, “pure photography” had just become this thing i would peg my artistic evolution to.
once i realised i could borrow cameras from my university, i forgot about all of that in a matter of days.
the North Island
the South Island
