2 posts tagged “photography”

Here's proof that a really professional passport photographer can make anyone, and I mean anyone, look like an escaped convict.

The photograph of the church in my last post started me thinking about Robin Morrison.  He's probably New Zealand's most famous photographer - certainly he's the one who, for me, best captured the spaciousness, the isolation, and the melancholy of the New Zealand landscape.  The people and buildings in his photos are dwarfed by their environment - part of it, yet separate.

He also had an eye for the quirky, for New Zealand's distinctive (odd?) buildings and people.

The way he lit his photos, catching the bright flat light of summer or the lurid light of incipient rain, combined with the sharp focus of his pictures, gives them a hyper-realistic quality. They're so real, so sharp and accurate, that they become almost surreal.  I love his work - looking at his pictures makes me urgently homesick for New Zealand's light and colour, and for its underlying darkness. Most of these pictures were taken in the South Island, in Otago, which is the province I'm from.  The pictures of the church and the people at the races were taken around Auckland in the North Island.  I copied these images from the official Robin Morrison website - I hope, not in breach of any copyright regulations.