A new year and and new resolutions to break! One resolution I have kept from last year was to get fit and I am still going to the gym three days a week and an hour on Saturday morning at XFit. I have found that I actually enjoy the exercise and am eating better. Now that I am not coming home from work at about 7:30pm too tired to bother to make a decent dinner I have all the time in the world to make a healthy dinner. It pays off.
I have also promised myself to read some of the books I have always wanted to read. But there are times I feel like butter on hot toast. Reading and trying to do too many things but not completing any of them. This is the year of consolidation.
In November I took a trip with a photography group to National park to take some landscape photographs. It was dreadful weather the whole weekend and only cleared on the last day when I was leaving. From this trip I really realised that I am not a landscape photographer. I am more of a fine arts/impressionist photographer. So that is the style I have decided to concentrate on this year. Attached are three of the photographs I took up the mountain.
Over the Christmas break we went on the usual family trip to Whangamomona via Ohura but went the opposite way going inland at Uriti a rusty shed at a turn off inland just north of New Plymouth and we returned via Stratford. A small town south of New Plymouth. We stopped in Ohura for a wee look but as usual there were no people about so continued towards Whanga and fish and chips as we were all very hangry. For a place so far from the sea they do do nice fish and chips. It rained during the drive which dampened the trip a little . The next photo is one I took while driving through the Tangarakau Gorge in the rain.
Last year (January 2017) I pinned a list of photography resolutions to the fridge read them once and then ignored them for the rest of the year. This year I am revisiting those resolutions as they are still relevant. The first few were/are
1. Put more ideas, meaning and emotion into my photographs;
2. Take fewer photographs to make more impactful shoots (Not sure I agree with this approach.);
3. Make photographs more like paintings.
There are 31 of these resolutions but I am not going to bore you with the full list.
On the reading front I haven't found anything to read that I can really get into like I did with H for Hawk. I have started to read Mythos by Stephen Fry. I like Stephen Fry for his erudition and our mutual interest in Greek gods and myths. So I am enjoying this book as I prefer non-fiction.
Until next time or Slater as some say.