Fishing at Fuji

I have a dumb Mount Fuji question! Does it ALWAYS have snow on the top bit, or are there times when it melts off. I can’t think of a time I’ve ever seen it without snow… but I am not a Fuji-san expert… thus the question! What’s more scenic than fishing with that amazing mountain in the background? It’s so cinematic and dramatic all the time. I can just picture these guys pulling fish out of the water and everything is in slow motion and majestic.

The Painted Landscape

There are a lot of people that want to get up to this spot to take photos, but it’s all closed off. You can indeed sneak up here, but it’s not all that easy. For one thing, I saw a buffalo on the way up, and you don’t want to run around those guys… no telling what they will do. Just a few years ago, you used to be able to drive up here and take food to feed all the animals that run around these hills, but sadly all that has been closed down. Here’s another photo that was taken atop Deer Park Heights in Queenstown. It’s virtually inaccessible since they closed it off because of family fighting. I just want to go up there more for artistic purposes… quite innocent… I’m not interested in the family squabbles — there is art to be made!

Across and Through Milford

I remember sleeping outside one night in Milford. I was pretty cold, but I had a great sleeping bag. There was a tiny little hold in the top of my sleeping bag, and around 3 AM, a possum came and stuck his face and mouth into the hole! It scared the living Jesus out of me… man, I’ll never forget that one. I love sailing through the fjords of Milford! I’ve done this a few times now, and there is always something new and a different kind of light. I think a lot of people are disappointed if they get to Milford Sound and it is raining. I would not feel that way if I were you because things can perhaps be at their most dramatic! There can be a ton of little waterfalls and crazy clouds even in the middle of the rain. So don’t let the rain dissuade you from taking the boat out and about!

The City Blocks

I was wondering if you use YouTube Playlists in your own life? I mean, even if you don’t make videos yourself, do you use it to keep track of funny or helpful videos? I have a few playlists on YouTube. Some are of my own stuff, but most are things from other people… funny videos and whatnot that you might enjoy. While I was up on top of the few buildings in Beijing, I made special care to use my zoom lenses as well. It turned out the be a lot of fun to zoom in and find cool things that were getting lost in the wide angle. This building you see here is part of the strange overhang part — this place is known as the infamous “metal underpants.”

Evening approaching the Chateau

Don’t forget to check out the website of the great Miss Aniela! I know many of you have been there already, and most of you already know we spent the weekend together teaching a class at the chateau. Thanks again to everyone that purchased the video in the store or came to the actual event. If you go pop over to her website, you’ll see some of her more recent amazing work… This was a nice evening with a bunch of new friends at the chateau! I feel like we should do events like this more often… I was actually also loosely thinking about doing something crazy like this in Venice one day. I love Venice, and I haven’t really been back since I’ve been serious about photography. I really enjoyed taking a ton of photos around this place and coming back to post-process. It’s fun going back in and seeing new angles and stuff… I get re-excited about the whole thing once again!

The Giant Buddha

I don’t usually get all wikipedia-ish on the blog… but I did look up more things about this most fascinating statue. Maybe the coolest thing is that 8 meters (over 25 feet!) of this statue are underground, buried, and never seen! It was carved out of a single trunk of white sandalwood, and 18 meters of it stick up above ground. It’s from 1744 and it took over three years to ship the trunk to Beijing! There were over 8 million taels of silver spent to build it and 1800 meters of yellow satin to make the kasaya… amazing! This thing was a pleasure to photograph! While I was in this temple, monks were taking huge long red sashes and walking around the upper areas and draping them around different parts of the enormous statue. It was all in slow motion and most interesting!

Walking down to the Lake

The fields around Queenstown and Arrowtown become multicolored between any shade of yellow and green. There are even orange and red… so strange and interesting that the grass itself becomes as colorful as wildflowers.