Glenn Dobbs

Jan 31, 20235 min read

Picture Taking

January 31-February 1, 2023

“Photography is a way of feeling, of touching, of loving. What you have caught on film is captured forever... it remembers little things, long after you have forgotten everything.”

- Aaron Siskind

Years ago, many years ago, when you went on vacation taking pictures was a different thing. In order to get better shots you needed a few things. You invested in a SLR 35 mm camera which was not cheap. You had to learn about arcane things like “f-stop” and “light control”. Most importantly you had to buy canisters of film. Lots of them.

Kodak sold the most. Fuji, its nearest competitor, was slightly cheaper. You selected film rolls that came in 12, 24, or the more expensive, 36 exposures. That was all the shots you had available to you. You would always be looking around and seeing people loading film during an event.

There were more hurdles. After taking the shots, you did not know what you had. The pictures would need to be developed. You couldn’t put your film rolls through the X ray machine at the airport. You had to haul back dozens of the things from your trip. Then, you waited. It would take around 2 weeks to get them back. You go to the store, usually a pharmacy, pay your bill, and rush home with the envelope of fresh prints. It was then, only then you saw if any of the pictures were good. Usually about 1/2 were rubbish. You would take the rest, carefully glue them in a photo album, and put them on the book shelf never to be viewed again.

Or worse, you made slides!

Today, you can take hundreds, even thousands of pictures daily without any of that hassle. You instantly know if you have a satisfactory composition. Your only limitations are knowing which button to push and the amount of memory your device holds. There is no thought to wether or not it would be a good shot and if you should save the exposure because your rounds are limited. Hardly. You will often take repeated shots of the same thing at only slightly different angles! It is excessive to say the least.

As of today I have taken 2,334 pictures of this trip. And we still have a month to go! It ridiculous.

Sometimes I wonder if I am taking too many pictures. I get anxious about it sometimes. I don’t want to miss ‘a good shot’ so I add work our trips trying to get the perfect image. I try to arrange our travel to achieve obtaining the perfect picture sometimes. More than a few times I think to myself, “Put the phone down and just look!”

You get excited when you see something new and you want to capture it, at least for a moment. If it lives as a digital file on my computer, then “I own it’. The thought is foolish I know. The real picture is filed not on your camera but your soul. The scene changes you and you feel yourself stretching and growing in new ways.

So, I will likely continue to take shots and capture moments - even the little parts that make each trip so memorable. Mostly, I really enjoy telling stories and the pictures help. So, I will just try to not be so obsessed about it. I will try to look more and photograph less.

The brown fluffball that looks like a furry soccerball is a live Kiwi bird. It was larger than I thought it would be. They are very difficult to photograh since they are nocturnal, fearful of light, and are surprisingly quick

The last two days things have slowed down. The rain which we have so far avoided with great success, has at last found us. It looks like the remainder of our time in New Zealand will be feature daily intermittent showers. It doesn’t matter. Although it will slow us down, it will not diminish the time we are here together.

We spent a rainy afternoon watching the Bengals lose dramatically to the Chiefs at a local sports bar we watched episode 3 of “The Last of Us” on HBO. — (Highest recommendation by the way - a very moving episode). We drank leftover wine and ate chocolates left over from an earlier part in the trip and watched the rain fall.

Yesterday, before the weather moved in, we took a lovely hike. We visited the Kotakaki Gorge. This is a beautiful wooded area that runs by a glacier fed stream. The water was cerulean blue due to the silt of the glacier mixed into the runoff. it was striking against the rocks and dense trees.

We continued driving South to the Franz Josef Glacier. It was named after the Austrian Emperor by a European geologist in 1859, coincidently also named Franz Josef. The Maori name is ‘Kā Roimata o Hine Hukatere’ which does not exactly roll off the tongue.

This morning the clouds were less heavy. The rain stopped. So after breakfast we got out and explored. We wanted to look around some more.

A short distance down the road was the glacier. It was a shadow of its former glory. As i discussed in an earlier post, when it comes to climate change glaciers are one of the most easily seen evidence of change. This once huge force of nature has diminished be 25% in only 5 years! If you ever doubt global warming, just come look at one of these things for yourself. The evidence is plain to see.

Still, despite the clouds we enjoyed the walk to the foot of the valley and I was able to get a few images. There are dozens of “Helicopter Tours” here. they are expensive but offer you a chance to land on the ice flow. Few were flying today.

Our last stop was Lake Matheson. This is a unique glacier lake due to its ochre black color of the water. The color is cause by the tannins and humus of the organic matter of the surrounding rain forest that runs into the lake. The result is the lake, even on cloudy days like today, makes for a stunning reflecting pool of the surrounding terrain.