Friday has been a day for field trips. People headed out in all directions, including Kapiti Island, the Wairarapa and Matiu-Somes Island. I’m sure they all had a good time, in spite of a rainy start. I can certainly report that the people I was with had a very rewarding day.
It always pays to register early for Convention to make sure you get on the field trips you want. I was lucky enough to be on the “Behind the Scenes” morning trip. Wow, was this a fantastic opportunity to get to see things that would otherwise be out of bounds.
My group started off spending time with Norm Heke, who enthusiastically and energetically explained how he goes about, very practically, photographing objects for Te Papa.
We moved on to Image Lab, where Don Sharpe showed us around the inner workings of the Lab’s production of images on all kinds of substrate material. He reminded us that the photographer’s imagination can now extend from capturing and producing the image to many new ways of presenting it. (Those at Convention can see other examples on display at the back of the Town Hall Auditorium.)
The final stop for the morning was on the 5th Floor at Te Papa, where we truly went behind the scenes. We were privileged to have Te Papa’s Curator of Photography, Athol McCredie, show us just a small sample of Te Papa’s Photography Collection of 250,000 images, including daguerrotypes, old postcards, photo albums, and images from photographers such as George Chance (we saw “The Storm – Wanaka“.)
Te Papa does provide a facility to search for and view many of these images – check it out. The image Athol is showing here is Herbert Ponting’s “The Terra Nova in a gale in the ’fifties“. It’s hard to imagine how difficult it must have been to capture such an image with the equipment available in 1910.
With improving weather in the afternoon, I was with another group on a City Photo Walk along the Wellington Waterfront, encountering lots of photo opportunities with groups of young people on some sort of local “Amazing Race”, who were only too happy to pose for us.
Finally for now, do check out the Convention Website here for many more images of Convention activities captured by the official photographer Rey Alabastro.