..and so the Stream Jumping begins..
The shots from this section have been interesting to edit and put together, we now have 3 monster cameras (Canon 5D x2, plus Nikon D3s) capturing the action from every angle. This means I have 3 times as many photos to wade through when making the final selection for the blog (hence recent delays..), but it does mean we caught a lot of ‘action’ that sometimes gets missed. Looking over this section the thing that stands out is stream jumping shots, we took a shit load! This is the first, but won’t be the last :)
Ollie Engages Warp Drive!
It was a long, long wobbly-wire and slatted-wooden bridge through the forrest from one side of this roaring river to the other. I took Nico’s Swedish Army training lead and we warped-it accross in no time. Well, my camera zoom did at any rate ;-) I on the other hand held onto the wire tight, only remembering to breath when the startling view below made me auto-exhale into the gleaming sunshine as it twinkled through the canopy of leaves and onto the meandering swash (technical terminology i believe for warp-speed water what wanders ;-) making me giddy with brunch o’clock fright ‘n’ delight.
Milky Way and Frozen Tent in the Morning
“WOW Look at that sky!” You can see soo many stars here in the mountains, with it’s clear air ( and very ‘lean’ atmosphere shall we say ;) ). Stunning and mesmerising. With that and the flickering flames to gawp at, who needs tv….“Ooo! Shooting star!!!“.
Waking up in the morning in my Rab bag felt super cosy. It’s a struggle and a half to convince yourself it’s a good idea to get out into the freezing cold outside for sure! There was even a bit of ‘crispy tent’ action, as we’d frozen over in the night. Oddly though I slept really well! One of the few nights I’ve not been too hot ;) But nipping out for a wee in your pants in the dark is only for the brave…
Photography Frenzy!
Peeeoow Peeooow Peeeow! Shots firing off left, right and centre. Two slick Canons and one almighty meaty Nikon are stomping round these mountains, recording every detail, getting the best angles, and capturing the perfect ‘magic hour’ light.
Right a bit, left a bit, hold it…that’s right - if the glacier could now just show a bit more profile over the horizon and the sun keep moving down the lake to the west…perfect, we’re all set! Snapsnap!Capturing the Narrow Ledge Action!
“Jump!”,“Eh? You what?”,
“Jump it!”,
“…Er…”
Cookie pointed out that he never gets to see himself ‘in action’ so to speak with his camera. In all the photos on the blog the one thing that I see all day long that’s been missing, is Cookie brandishing a big black camera around shooting off film and photos. ( We’re making a film too! ). I always say “You always know there’s a tricky or scary bit coming up as Cookie’s getting the camera out” :)
You can see the eroding force of the rivers very clearly when the trail disappears off a cliff like this! I like this shot (cheers Nico), it’s a rare view of me actually filming Nicky, something which happens a lot, but I rarely see from this angle.
I have the shoulder strap as short as it will go so I can hold the camera taut against my neck providing a third point of contact. Seems to work pretty well at keeping the camera steady while filming.
Nico Photographing an Inquisitive Kea
I love this shot, it’s got it all - Sunrise, Mt Aspiring, Nico and Kea.
Perfectly describes this morning in one image :)
Cookie Gets His Shot on the edge of ‘Heads Leap’
Amazing scale in this shot. It helps show how enormous the features of the landscape are here. Very hard to express that to you in the shots. A lot of the time you feel like tiny ants walking around in a giant’s world made of rock and ice. Except on big climbs. There you feel like Zeus, or some kind of giant, looking down over your miniaturised kingdom. I can imagine the inspiration for Gulliver’s travels could have easily come from mountain climbing. And your constant sense of physical proportion in fluctuation.
Lagoon-atics
So, it was getting pretty warm. Time for a dip perhaps? Break out the snorkel? Sitting down for too long after walking, walking, walking every day was only possible for so long. The weirdest thing? Having the same scenery for more than about an hour starts to confuse the brain. You can’t tell what time it is, oddly. A confused sensation of timelessness arises from not having the last hour’s progress across the landscape to look back on. If space doesn’t change, then neither does the time. Strangely, time and space have become linked in my perception. And being lost in time - paused - we don’t really know what to do with ourselves!
Hmm… Fancy a walk?
The lagoon was warm, shallow and full of coral reefs and fish. I was expecting such, so before we left New Zealand I bought a little underwater camera to capture some of our aquatic antics.
The minuscule GoPro camera is fun to play with - there’s no focus or other settings, no view finder, I just set it to take pictures every few seconds (or video) and see what comes out. Best of all, it has a hilariously distorted fish eye lens!
