There are many great places on Earth for photography, and though I live in one of the best, New Zealand is such a special place for landscape photography because there are so many extremely dramatic landscapes packed close together.
Ever since my first photography trip to New Zealand in 2013 (photos at the bottom of this gallery) I sought a way to return for an extended period. An opportunity arose to spend 2.5 months in New Zealand devoted entirely to shoot landscape photography. This amount of time allowed me to dig into certain areas and wait for just the right weather and light. And that’s a good thing because the Spring weather during my mid October through December stay was challenging nearly every day. There were only brief windows of good photography conditions that I had to be in place and waiting for. The work that I was forced to put into these photos made me covet each one more, and deeply etched the memories. Visiting this time of year let me capture the mountains still snow-capped, empty roads that gave me the whole country to myself, sprawling Lupines, and the chance to do astrophotography before the Earth’s tilt concealed the Milky Way’s galactic core (though nightly clouds prevented much of this).
I lived out of a small campervan, and got most of these photos on day hikes or multi-day backpacking trips. I lugged a 17.3″ laptop to NZ and edited photos in my campervan whenever I waited out bad weather. Life on the road, out of a tent, and tramping from hut to hut in New Zealand was as big as adventure gets. New Zealanders, Kiwis as they’re called, are the most helpful and friendly people that I’ve ever encountered…TRULY. One of my highlights beyond photography was meeting Kiwis on a regular basis who invited me home to experience daily New Zealand life.
During my stay in New Zealand I lived through a 7.8 earthquake, barely mastered making right turns while driving on the left, got 3 traffic violations, met scores of fellow adventurers and photographers, wore the soles off brand new boots, had a giant eel try to bite off my pinky, and left with about 60 portfolio shots. Now that you’d think I got that out of my system, I’m only pondering how and when to return.
Loaded Landscapes, the online landscape photography journal did a cool write up of my trip to New Zealand, check them out.
