Recently I’ve been remembering how much fun it is just to take photos of…everything. It’s definitely an aspect of my life that has suffered from the business of PhDing, and I’m sad that I’ve missed lots of opportunities to capture the everyday due to stress.

I don’t make New Year’s Resolutions, but I do want to have the goal of taking more everyday photographs in 2023. I have a camera on me at all times (aren’t phones these days amazing?), but I will also carry around my old Fuji X100s to remind myself that I need to keep that creative mindset exercised, even when I’m at my desk or in the lab all day.

Christmas day for us this year was a morning walk in the cool green forest along the Ōkere falls track. It’s beautiful, and the light of the tawa forest enchanted me. I love light. I love seeing contrast and patterns in shadow. I love the way it glows through foliage and filmy ferns. I wore out two camera batteries just playing with light, walking slowly, listening to birdsong.

I love seeing plants I know, like this sundew (Drosera auriculata). I love knowing plants, so that whenever I go for bush walks, there are friends that I recognise around me. I still have so much to learn about the green world, and that’s exciting.

A fun fact to end this post is that if you have a small camera (with a small lens, like a phone camera) you can use your polarised sunglasses as a makeshift polarising filter to cut through reflections and get smooth slower shutter speeds in the glare of daytime sun. It really makes those forest greens glow, and does a great job of rushing river water as well!