Happy Holidays

...from my roommate and her snake.

Beach Babe

This is the beach on the highway to Paraparaumu, New Zealand. In the background is Kapiti Island, also known as 'King Kong's Island' from the Peter Jackson movie.

This photo was taken in the middle of June, aka Winter in New Zealand. It would take a soul braver than I to get any closer to this water.

No Explanations...

...just aesthetic engagement.

Maritime Museum, Byron Bay, Australia.

Sunset, UBC, Vancouver, Canada

Sunset, Lake Tekapo, New Zealand

Accidental photo of my mitten, Tekapo, New Zealand

Mrs Parker and the Vicious Circle

It's intimidating when 1000 hungry parrots fly around your head. It made me feel like Antonio Banderas' mother-in-law in that Hitchcock movie. But I managed to get some fair photos.

Oz-trail-y-a

My Marshall... My Marsupial... Mr Wallaby. He is my ever so best friend. When another Marsupial tried to play with us, Marshall growled at him. I didn't know Kangaroos growled.

My sister and I sat on the beach in Maloolaba and watched the sun set. This girl was doing some sort of sundance (actually... she was trying to wash the sand out of her crocs).
Digging Wallaby. Or maybe it was a kangaroo. I am confused.

Marshall.

Someone who was not Marshall, and he was cute. And itchy.
Dragons aren't that scary.

MIA

I have been in Australia. I have some beautiful pictures, but intermittent internet at home lately. I promise, I will upload them soon. I promise.
I know I make a lot of promises.

That Voodoo that you do

So I totally disliked the last post I wrote. I deleted and rewrote it.

This is Wellington. It drives me crazy.

I am in Christchurch, going home tonight. My souvenir: impetigo.

I ran into Roger Rees today when I was leaving a secondhand bookstore with the film script for Lolita.

I can't wait to sleep in a room all by myself tonight. Goodbye, hostels.

There And Back Again, Part 1

In the soontimes, I will post pictures of all the Lord of the Rings things that I have seen, I promise.


For now, I just wanted to brag. I met Sir Ian McKellen! I was a total mess, and even though I practiced my conversation for a whole month I completely forgot everything I planned to say to him.

Ngati Tuwharetoa

Back from my noho (stay) with the Tuwharetoa iwi (tribe) in Taupo, New Zealand. I am now back home in Wellington.

Perhaps the most interesting thing about this weekend was the cultural dynamic--as an anthropology student, this was one of my first cross cultural experiences, but what really made it fascinating was how it was a melding of two cultures; Maori and Pakeha (European/Western/Colonial). I knew I was amongst people of another culture; the rules I had to learn and the feeling of being a child and not understanding was there, but we were speaking English (most of the time), wearing jeans and t shirts (okay, sweaters most of the time) and navigating through our interactions in a manner that was largely derived from Western cultural norms. I am still reeling from this almost post-modern look at defining culture.

Anyways, here are my photos.

The roof of the wharenui.
A pretend moko (tattoo) on this girl's chin runs from a day full of rain and messy eating. This photo was taken by this girl's older sister, Hinekorako.
I'm not in the habit of posting pictures of myself, but look how happy we are! My classmates and I (center) at Huka Falls. Huka means snow in te reo Maori (the Maori language) and eventually came to mean sugar.Huka Falls, Waikato River, Taupo. The water comes gushing in from Lake Taupo, which is filled by the snow melting off the volcanoes Tongariro, Ruapehu, and Ngaurahoe (the latter two were used as Mount Doom in Lord of the Rings).

Slow is Beautiful (aka what the Quakers did for the Solstice)

Tomorrow, I go to Taupo until Sunday. I doubt very much I will have internet access so I thought I would get this out now. I had the most beautiful weekend.

I learned how to hand-spin wool from a lady named Eedi (the sign in the background says Eedi's handcrafts). We talked so much. We connected immediately and she is one of those people I know will just stick with my soul no matter where I go.

I slept in a room with 20 people and did not watch any movies as I usually do but rather enjoyed everything that was real and I built community with the people around me.

I was slow and in the moment and purposeful.

It is not the beginning of happiness.

It is happiness.

Today

I have been asking myself some of the following questions lately.

The first one is about blogging. The second--yet intertwined--one is about my career.

I am always conscious of getting too personal in my blog. It has less to do with creepy creepers and more to do with the fact that I am a really private person. That is part of the reason why I deleted my previous blog and kept this one mostly to pictures. I have thought about the post below for a while before I decided I was comfortable sharing.

Recently, I have been asking myself why I am blogging; on a surface level, certainly, it is to showcase my photography... but I am not a photographer, nor do I plan to be. I have dreams of either being a policy analyst/academic or an actress; the latter seems like a wild childhood fantasy but I actually have done some movies and plays in my time.

Photography in itself is not a vehicle through which I can achieve my goals. But it is a way in which I practice looking; looking and taking things in without passing judgement. It is also a way in which I can look at the world through different perspectives. But sometimes I feel like that is such a far-flung connection.

So what does this have to do with anything? Today is going to be a day of meditation and of beauty. Er, well, I need to return some books and movies to the library and I'm going to a fashion lecture, but it's also the Maori New Year (Matariki) and my Quaker meeting is holding a sleepover. I became a Quaker because of the way meditation centers me, and I always come out with a clearer picture of things at the end.

Hopefully, I can gain some direction in some aspect of something or... something.

Tori

Tabula Rasa

Some photos from nature (or in some cases, nature telling architecture what's up) from my time in Australia and New Zealand.


Every night the sunset in the bay of Wellington just astounds me. It's like a reminder of where I am, both literally and in life, and about the supremacy of nature and how small I am in everything I do.
Pond by the Sydney Harbour in Australia. I just love this.
Vines in the Karori Sanctuary, Wellington, New Zealand
Karori Sanctuary

how I love les personnes

This photo above inspired something that I have been exploring with my recently; when I first took it (at the Halifax market in February of 2010) I was really frustrated that this girl looked at the camera. After a while I began to appreciate it, because I realised that people never behave normally in front of a camera (at least, when they know you are taking photos of them).
This boy was assisting a street performer (Manners Mall, Wellington, NZ, May 2010).

My sister doesn't give me the time of day when I take pictures of her (Treehouse, Ontario, Canada, April 2010).
This was taken in our room at the Grand Floridian in Florida. I took a lot of my sister but her legs kept looking disproportionate. And that's how I learned about angles (May 2010).
One day in April, my friends and I took our friend Hannah out for birthday brunch. It was a beautiful sunny day, and I saw some friendly looking bikers. I asked them if I could take some pictures of them and they gave mer permission. Of course, they looked at me and thought it was the bee's knees--and I got this lovely gem (Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada.)

Pigeons are People too

In New Zealand, pigeons seem to think they are people. I had some trouble with the colouring so I left it mostly as is instead of editing them. I was inspired by the last one and tried to sort of wash the colour out of most of them but eventually I amped up the colour in some... That's enough from me!

Edit: In fact, I only like the last one. Think of the other ones as Simon And Garfunkel-inspired warmups for it. I hear 'old friends' in my head the entire time and then the last one jars it.

This guy on the left was shaking his face and got rather blurry.





These were in the Wellington Train station. The pigeons live there and most don't have feet (like the lad on the right).
This one reminds me of 'old friends' by simon and garfunkel.
Ilike the awkwardness of this one. Kind of reminds me now of this image by photographer Barrie Hullegie (Marjorie Conrad is the model)--not because it looks similar but because it makes me feel the same as I do when I look at the one above.

I know this isn't Canada, but...

I just got back from a family trip to Florida. Here is the first group of my favourite pictures. I tried editing them a little (in one man's words, "to make the colours pop") but if they look hokey, I would like to know.

Any ideas?

Fun in the Sun

The following are some of my UNB photos from New Brunswick:

Outside the Old Arts Building at the University of New Brunswick.

During the day, we play frisbee.

Winston's Here

For the newer folks, check out the introduction here.

In February, I went to Halifax to visit a friend, when I ran into another one; Sir Winston Churchill.

After I took this photo, I was just enthralled by the power and tension in his legs, but that doesn't really translate into the side view.

Why so much tension lil buddy?