Cardrona 18th July 2008

Well it had only been 2 days since I’d hurt myself boarding at Coronet so when we went up to Cardrona I didn’t even take the board off the car.  Just spent the day hiking around taking photos.  I did manage to get a free day pass out of them by flashing a few shots though so that made it easier to get up to the kickers and rails to shoot the boys.  There was also a big air comp on that day which I managed to get a few shot of some riders warming up on.  Unfortunately I managed to loose my spare battery that day so by the time the actual competition started I’d run out of juice.

Boarding Coronet - 16th July 2008

Well the 16th saw me on a snowboard for the first time in over 8 years.  It took so long to get up the mountain as I’ve been trying to negotiate a season pass out of NZski in exchange for some advertising photos.  We ended up compromising on a complimentary week pass on a trial basis, if they like what they see from there then it’ll be extended into a full multi-resort season pass, so fingers are crossed.  Only ended up getting the one day up at Coronet and none at The Remarkables due to a combination of bad weather, injury and a day spent at another resort.

RE the injury, it was my own silly fault for not paying enough attention to where I was going.  To cut a long story short on my first run of the first day on the snow I crashed into a ditch and did a good job of pulling a muscle in my side/back.  I’m starting to feel better now though so hopefully I’ll be back on a board within a week or so.

The models in the following shots are good mate of mine and room mate for 3 months (9 years ago) Mike, and another fellow Aussie, Eddie - cheers guys!  Without further ado, here is Coronet:

 Mike on a rail:

 

The Coronet base building:

 

The view:

 

 

And a few of Mike & Eddie  being part snowboarders, part fashion models!:

 

 

 

 

Christchurch to Queenstown 1st & 2nd July 2008

Flew in to Christchurch on the last night of the financial year and because I’m a cheap bastard I decided to spend the night in the airport rather than a hotel as I had a camper van booked the next morning 8am.  Well I didn’t end up getting any sleep in the airport but the night passed quickly enough and before I knew it it was time to start my wander south.

 The first thing that hit me on exiting the terminal was the COLD, and yes it does need to be capitalised, my appetite immediately turned into a fat Italian mumma, saying things to me such as “you need to eat”  “you have to get fat”  “insulation is gooood”.  So after a breakfast of a cottage pie, blueberry muffin and 3 piece feed from KFC I was finally off.

The highlights on the way down being the very windy Mt John, home to the largest telescope in the country and also the fastest recorded wind speed (256kpm until the wind speed sensor broke) and the very very very BLUE Lake Pukaki.

Here are some shots:

 

 

 

 

 

The end of an era - June 2008

Well not exactly an era but I have finished up work for my Aerial client.  Why?  Because I decided on the spur of the moment that doing a snow season in NZ would be more fun.   It’s been too long since I’ve been on a snow board.  So here I am now in Queenstown, Sth Island.  I don’t have any pictures edited up yet of my drive down here but I’ll get to them in due time…for now here’s a shot of me set up as I am in the plane when I shoot, this was taken on my second last day by the pilot:

 

An afternoon with Soph - 15th June 2008

I always grab every oppurtunity I can to work with Soph and so when she was up in Brisbane recently for a few days of work I did just that.  We had some makeup artist issues with a late cancelation but Carla came to the party and all ended well.  After we finished up with the car shots we filled ourselves up with an awesome homecooked meal (thanks Anne!).  The goal for the evening then was just to fit in a bunch of different beauty looks in a fairly short shoot (about 3hrs from makeup start to last shot).

 Model : Soph
Make up : Carla