Trees and stuff.

Happy new year y’all.

We’re back in the swing of things at TMP after having some much needed R&R up North (ish) over the holidays. Time was spent in Kerikeri and around the local area including some of the kauri forests there. What a fabulous place to head to when you’re a bit over time spent in the city and although the weather was tumultuous and turmoiled it did the trick of recharging batteries.

So this isn’t some big fancy shoot with wardrobe stylists, makeup people,  deadlines, any of that stuff, just a dude with a camera walking around forests. Which, for me, is almost how it all began except replace forest with city and you pretty much have it. I’ve done these photo walks all my life, or ever since I had a camera I should say – just grab a camera, a lens, take an open mind and see what you see.

When I was in college we studied Flâneurism a little bit. Basically, and if I remember correctly, it’s looking objectively at a city or urban environment you feel you know pretty well, instead of looking subjectively through the same old eyes. Forgetting what you believe about a space and imagine you’re seeing it for the first time, or removing any preconceptions and just seeing what it has which interests you. I’ll throw something in here which makes this look a bit more academic:

The photographer is an armed version of the solitary walker reconnoitering, stalking, cruising the urban inferno, the voyeuristic stroller who discovers the city as a landscape of voluptuous extremes. Adept of the joys of watching, connoisseur of empathy, the flâneur finds the world “picturesque.”