Panoptikal*: Sailing--Abel Tasman National Park (January 23, 2010)

Sunday, February 28, 2010

Sailing--Abel Tasman National Park (January 23, 2010)

I'd always wanted to visit this National Park, and here I spent the day on a sailboat (small catamaran actually) being steered around the coastal areas. We started at Kaiteriteri with about ten people on board, almost all of whom were from the same Stray bus that I'd joined at Picton the day before.

After the lunch break on a beach (I had a quick swim), a number of people opted to hike back while about three of us stayed on the boat and we were joined by two new "passengers", a middle-aged Canadian couple from Alberta.

This picture was taken on the afternoon leg of the trip. The front of the boat did not have a solid 'floor' for sitting; rather, there was a flat black synthetic mesh, slightly springy, which was very comfortable for sitting or lying (as shown above).

The only issue was that water could permeate it, so you had to be careful if you didn't want to get splashed. Since there were very few waves large enough to produce that effect, several of us ended up relaxing on the front of the boat in the sun. The fellow in this photo ended up with an impressive sunburn in irregular stripes across his legs and feet.

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More about...

The pictures I post here were taken between 1994 and today. There are some breaks during that period, generally because I had no working camera, or because I processed many negatives and made few prints (generally this is the case for 1994 to 2000 or so). I also have many prints from that time that have not yet been digitised.

The reason I call this a "photojournal" is that I tend to document my life with images, where possible, rather than words. I find it much easier to remember moments, and then events, when I have some kind of picture with which I can associate them. This is probably why I've always taken pictures when I could--even when there was "nothing" to photograph--and why I have such a difficult time keeping up a written diary or journal of any sort.

Technicalities

I've used a number of cameras over the past 15 years or so. The bulk of these were SLR, manual or semi-automatic, and of course non-digital (35mm film) cameras (photos shot from 1994 to 2004, roughly), though for a period I used both (low-quality) digital and film (around 2002-2003).

I first used a fully manual camera when I was 14, which was borrowed; the first SLR that I owned was a Vivitar, which rapidly deteriorated. It was followed by a Pentax, and after that, the Minolta XD-11 that I have used for film ever since. I use it with a 35mm or a 28-70mm lens with telephoto and macro. In addition to these, I also used Mamiya 220 and 330 medium-format (120 film) cameras while at NSCAD in 1997-8, and very occasionally, I used an old Agfa range-finder (from roughly the 1940s) which produced 6x9cm negatives on 120 film.

The first digital camera I used would probably have been in 2002, and I used it periodically over about a year (it was borrowed). In 2004-05 I again used a digital camera (also borrowed; specs not available); I stopped shooting on film beyond 2004 because of the expense. Finally in October 2006 I bought a Sony CyberShot, 7.2 megapixels, a very small camera (not an SLR) that I used for almost 4 years before replacing it with a CyberShot DSC-TX5, in July 2010. This camera now travels with me almost everywhere and is the only camera I use regularly.