Artist's Description
New Brighton Pier, Christchurch, South Island, New Zealand. September 2005
I consider this photo to be my one in a million shot.
It does nt always snow in Christchurch city, once every 3 years if your lucky. It snows more often on the surrounding hills, not in the city.
It never snows at the beach, and birds usually fly away when you get close to them. But on this day…
Slide Film, Fuji Velvia 100
Canon AE1, 28mm lens.
This morning I drove to work while it was snowing lightly. After 2 hours at work the snow was coming down fast, and we where sent home because of the fear of people being stuck at work and not being able to get home at the end of the day.
I went straight home. Grabbed my camera and tripod and headed for the beach. A slow 15min drive, snowing all the way. The beach was white, and the tide was out, a good 1 inch of snow and still falling from the sky.
I took some photos down on the beach of a snowy log and the Pier in the background, and then walked up on the pier. At first I thought someone had left a mini snowman on the railing. At a closer look it turned out to be a dove that had not moved in a while.
I put up my umbrella and took out my camera, set up my tripod. I had to move forward quite a bit because of having the wide angle 28mm lens on the camera. Still the bird just looked at me and turned his head from side to side. I Took 3 photos before running out of film. This was the one.
Perfect exposure, and bird looking at the camera. Of course with film you never knew if you got it until it was processed.
Thanks for visiting, and thank you for all your comments.
desktop
tablet-landscape
content-width
tablet-portrait
workstream-4-across
phone-landscape
phone-portrait
desktop
tablet-landscape
content-width
tablet-portrait
workstream-4-across
phone-landscape
phone-portrait
Artwork Comments
what an awesome image
Well captured Michael I have visited the beach at Brighton Christchurch and this looks surreal.
awesome! I lived in Chch for about 7 years.. only snowed twice I think. Once, was nothing to write about, the other was a pretty decent snowfall, but this one looks like it beat the pants of it. Lovely capture
Nice depth of field with this shot. I also have a Canon AE1…film cameras outlast digital.
Stunning image :)
great image
Yeah nice, this has always been one of my favourite images of yours.
beautifull picture !
perfect capture Michael, beautifully done!
Great shot and title, well done, Michael! AMR