Lost & Found #23: Methven, New Zealand 2003

Methven, New Zealand 2003

This week's Lost & Found image is from early 2003 - I got an email from a magazine in New York, wondering if I was available to pop down to the South Island for a couple of days, to find some images to accompany a story about skiing in New Zealand. Well, who am I to say no to such a thing?

Unfortunately, it wasn't ski season - but I couldn't let details like that get in the way of a good story. So off I went to Methven, via Christchurch, for a very quick scout around to see what I could come back with. I couldn't have been luckier, really - the first day was brilliant and bright, sun glinting off the glacial rivers and snow-capped mountains, and the second day was grey and overcast with a bit of early rain, so I got a real variety of images in a very short period of time.  

Of course, as is often the case, most of them weren't used - the magazine only needed six or eight to go with the story - so some of my favourites have been pretty much hidden away ever since.

This story was actually the last thing I captured on film for a client, too - my first digital camera was about three months old (a Canon D60 - three focus points, six megapixels, and it cost about double what a 5D Mark III does now!), and I was itching to use it, but the client wanted slides; so I did test shots on the digital, and then switched to the film camera on my other shoulder for the 'real' photo. (That was an EOS 3, a marvellous camera if ever there was one. I still miss the Eye Control Focus, which tracked where you were looking and put the focus point of the camera there. Fast! Accurate! Brilliant! And never seen since.)

In this case, I don't think I did a test - I wanted to get this lamb before he took off down the driveway, which he did shortly after!