ngaur's photostream

I grew up in New Zealand, but now live in Tasmania.

Many years ago while living in NZ, I spent 11 months over a period of 5 years living in Tongariro National park, doing volunteer work for the Department of Conservation, and teaching myself a bit of photography, firstly on an old Nikkormat of my fathers, then on a Nikon FM. I was pretty seriously considering a career in landscape photography.



Around about the same time, I did a bit of travelling around Asia, notably Nepal, and brought back around 30 rolls of slide film.

So I've got a huge box of slides of Tongariro and Nepal to scan, and now I've got the scanner to do it. (Bit of a Daunting Task).

A few years back I got myself a little IXUS 50. Basically I wanted something extremely easy to carry. Most of the photos I take with it would never happen with a larger camera, because I just wouldn't have the camera with me. When you're not setting out explicitly to take photos, carrying a few kg of camera and lenses just doesn't happen. It's great for party photos, and I've been going to some great parties in Tasmania with good photographic interest: colourful people, fire twirling and so forth. It's not however the sort of thing that gets you chasing that magical light.


Recently I've been getting back to photography. I'm particularly interested in using photography to further some of the campaigns to save Tasmania's old growth forests.



A couple of years back I went on a bit of a gear buying spree, and gotten myself an Olympus OM4, a Widelux F7 and an Epson V700 Scanner.


I looked at digital camera options, but while tempting, they still don't come close to the quality of scanned film, even at 35mm. Certainly convenient though.

And looking over the digital options again more recently I came to much the same conclusions and got myself some really nice lenses for my OM4.



I'm still tempted by digital from time to time, but right now I'm more interested in large format film, and thinking I should go one direction at a time. I've recently purchased a Tachihara 4x5, and am so far feeling a bit daunted by it.

I could do with a mentor or photographic companion to help me get started in that direction if anyone in the Hobart area is at all interested?

I'm here to learn. Please free to criticise the faults of my images, or to discuss how you might have approached it differently.