This will be the last poodlewalks for a week or so as we are off to Wellington, New Zealand tomorrow for a few days. We managed to obtain some dirt cheap promotional air tickets, and we decided to use them to drive north to explore the Tongariro National Park —and, hopefully, to walk the Tongariro Alpine Crossing.
A friend–Heather Petty-— is staying at our Encounter Bay house and looking after Kayla and Ari for a week whilst Maleko is staying at the house of a dog minder in Victor Harbor. That enables Suzanne and myself to get away together, which is a change from the separate trips we have done recently.
Although I grew up in Christchurch NZ, and worked in Wellington as an economist, I haven’t been to the Tongariro National Park nor the North Island Volcanic Plateau. I did travel though the plateau by train to Auckland once. It was at night so I didn’t see much.
So I’m not sure what to expect photographic wise whilst walking the Tongariro Alpine Crossing, as many of the images that I’ve seen are from the air. From what I can see from the pictures on the internet most of the walk is on raw volcanic terrain with no vegetation.
It’s a quick trip as it is a photographic scoping exercise as well as a short holiday. Though I will be carrying a digital camera I will be mostly using my old Rolleiflex medium format film cameras. I’m more interested in the detail of the landscape rather than the panoramic views. Others do the latter better, especially from the air, with their DSLR cameras.
The detail is what I focus on when photographing the Fleurieu Peninsula:
However, I doubt that I will doing still lifes in an open air studio whilst walking the Tongariro Alphine Crossing.