On the west coast of New Zealand’s south island are a high range of mountains. One of which is so lofty that it holds in its peaks, a glacier. We were on our way there.

Vast fascinating lakes:

We saw such beautiful panoramic view of lakes on the way to Fox Glacier. I thought they would be really lovely to paint, perhaps some time in the future!

Great scenes around every corner!

Going around the mountainsides, bordering the lakes, the car weaved in and out gullies and round the curves of hillsides.  

Going in and out like this made it difficult to get good shots of scenes through the gaps between the trees, bushes and signposts, etc on the side of the road.  

You see, one has to allow for the camera’s shutter speed timing, and look out for the gaps, at the same time as sizing up the possibilities of good scenery, well ahead. It takes a lot of concentration and frustration. 

Possible close ups?

At one lake the sun was trying to peep through the clouds and was spotlighting the opposite bank. The patchwork on the sunlight against the darker shadow areas caught my eye.  

As the car was moving, I looked across a lake and tried to capture the strange effect of the mountain dipping it’s feet in the lake.  So I zoomed in with my camera and this is what I saw: 

I feel it could possibly be turned into an abstract someday, don’t you think? Of cause one would have to use their imagination quite a bit and pronounce some colours and contrast some tones! 

The cold plays silly tricks on me!

And of course the weather was very cold with snow-capped mountains. And with me concentrating so close to the window and breathing hard with frustration, naturally my window started misting up!  

You get so involved with what you’re doing, calculating your shots, it’s so easy to miss the fact the window is actually misting up more and more.

 

 

Suddenly I realized why I was having trouble focusing!  

So I quickly swiped the windowpane and completely forgot I had just clicked the camera shutter! It naturally captured an iced up blur! You can see the weird result in the last photo in this collage:

  

In spite of that!

It didn’t stop me from assessing some of those blurred photos, and this is what I came up with. 

An oil painting of the misty mountains:

As usual my camera doesn’t do justice to close ups!  Strange patchy shapes appeared and the painting looks blurred. 

Our New Zealand family was here in South Africa recently. And when our son saw the original of oil painting here, he immediately recognized the place and said, “The mist roaming the mountain tops was just like that!” 

A PS passing word: 

If you have wondered what has happened to my New Zealand oil paintings. I gave my family the paintings to take back to New Zealand. But the future ones, I still have to paint on New Zealand, will be here in South Africa.