Matariki Gardening

With the arrival of Matariki, the Maori New Year, and the passing of the shortest day of the year, it is time to prepare for Spring. It is a little optimistic but I think a little positivity does not hurt.

Chris wanted to replace the Dietes along our internal driveway with a Camellia hedge. And so we made use of this long weekend to get stuck in. My usual photography practice when we work on our property is to tuck my camera into my gardening bag which holds my gloves, secateurs, scissors, gardening twine and a bottle of water. This way, I can pull out my camera and make photos as we progress. The one downside of this practice is that I’m not in the photos.

I love documenting our life and for the most part, I’m happy to be featured in the photos by way of inference, as the photographer in the scene. However, I’m very much one half of the working team and sometimes, I like to be in the pictures working side by side with Chris. And so, I thought that this weekend job is a good chance to use a tripod in my photography setup. The job to do is simpler, involves us primarily working in one sport and I have time to set up the tripod trigger a 30sec interval shooting sequence. This way, I can set up the composition, forget about the camera and focus on the job at hand. While I lose the ability to select which moments to capture, the reward of not fussing about with the camera with dirty hands and being in the photos is a good bonus.

I repositioned the tripod a few times and also captured a few video sequences.