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

 

 

 

 

 

More Aerial work (Grafton) - April 2008

Well after 2 weeks off turned into 7 weeks off a little too quickly we finally got back out on the road for more aerial work.  This time the target area is Grafton.  God damn there is some chilly arsed weather going about at the moment.  On the ground I’m mostly wearing a jacket but get up a hundred meters in that plane with the door off and the wind chill factor makes for some rather less than pleasant shooting conditions.  Still I only have a couple hrs work a day to do (max) so I can’t really complain too much.  We are staying in rather a nice hotel on the river at South Grafton and there is a big L-shaped balcony that overlooks both the sunrise and sunset.  Had a bit of an adventure when the door lock on our room broke and locked us in.  I had to climb out the window and scurry across the roof top to climb in another window in the common area and open our door with the key from the outside.  Anyways as I was on the roof a girl in another room must have glanced out and got an awful fright at seeing someone climb across the roof because I heard a loud scream followed by some curses I can’t repeat here *chuckles*

 Anyways we got our lock fixed now so it’s all good. Found this sign, which made me laugh:

 

Seems that if you want to get up to mischief now is the time to do it.

Next up are a couple aerial snaps, first one of a road winding through trees, second one of a house we came across on fire and third is just a general pretty shot of some sugar cane farms:

 

 

 

When I haven’t been up in the air, scurrying across rooftops or laughing at funny signs I’ve been taking some advantage of the river outside our doorstep to snap off a few sunset shots: