Aoraki/Mt. Cook at sunrise, New Zealand. This is the highest mountain in New Zealand. It’s covered in snow and ice year-round, but an antarctic cold front gave even the lower mountains a fresh coat of snow. I took this photo a good 40 minutes before sunrise as the predawn glow turned the mountains and clouds a vivid shade of pink.
I’m in the deep south. So far south that I’m down under – on New Zealand’s South Island.
Things can be disorienting here. I’m sure everything seems perfectly normal to New Zealanders, or to anyone who lives in the Southern Hemisphere, but to Northern Hemisphere residents like me everything is a bit upside down.
The sun rises in the east and sets in the west, so that’s normal as far as it goes. But once the sun rises it moves from right to left, and at noon it’s off to the north. What?
We had a cold front come through last week. An Antarctic cold front, moving in from the south, bringing brisk, chilly, southerly winds. That’s just backwards!
The southern slopes of the mountains are shadier and cooler, with denser vegetation. And of course it’s spring here in October. There’s lots of new, green grass, and adorable newborn lambs romping around the fields. (Yes, there are a lot of sheep here.)
To top it off, they drive on the left side of the road in New Zealand. I half expect gravity to work in reverse, but luckily I haven’t started floating off into space (at least not yet).
But even though it seems to be coming from the wrong direction at times, the quality of the light is beautiful. We’ve been lucky to see some gorgeous light and color during our journey so far.
And the landscapes here are incredible. I’m co-leading this trip with Phillip Bartlett for Visionary Wild. Phillip is a fantastic photographer, and super-nice person, and we’re all having fun traveling together. Phillip also knows the photographic territory here inside out, and has led us to lots of fantastic locations. Some of those are well-known, while others are decidedly off the beaten track, but all have been amazingly beautiful.
Plus we’ve had most of these spots to ourselves. New Zealand has a small population, and tourism has been slow to bounce back after the pandemic, so we haven’t encountered many people in general, and hardly any other photographers. To top it off, the food has been great. So yeah, we’re having a great time.
Here are a few photos showing some of that beautiful southern light we’ve encountered. I hope to post more soon.
— Michael Frye
Beach at sunrise on the east coast of New Zealand. We caught a spectacular sunrise one morning on the east coast.
Boulders at sunrise, New Zealand. This is from the same morning as the previous image, with amazing rounded bounders in the foreground.
Layered hills and mountains, New Zealand. With pastureland in the foreground, and wild mountains in the background, we nicknamed this spot “The New Zealand Palouse.”
Rainbow over a Southland lake, New Zealand. We were hoping just to get some light on the mountains and clouds, but then a rainbow appeared – faint at first, then becoming quite vivid.
Related Post: New Zealand
Michael Frye is a professional photographer specializing in landscapes and nature. He is the author or principal photographer of The Photographer’s Guide to Yosemite, Yosemite Meditations, Yosemite Meditations for Women, Yosemite Meditations for Adventurers, and Digital Landscape Photography: In the Footsteps of Ansel Adams and the Great Masters. He has also written three eBooks: Light & Land: Landscapes in the Digital Darkroom, Exposure for Outdoor Photography, and Landscapes in Lightroom: The Essential Step-by-Step Guide. Michael has written numerous magazine articles on the art and technique of photography, and his images have been published in over thirty countries around the world. Michael has lived either in or near Yosemite National Park since 1983, currently residing just outside the park in Mariposa, California.
Wow, how exciting, Michael—wonderful images! NZ is a stunningly beautiful country. I visited there with a friend who’s a NZealander, though now lives in Melbourne. The sunsets and the land in general is just gorgeous. Enjoy your trip, I’m looking forward to more beautiful images.
Thanks Bob! It is indeed beautiful country, and it sounds like you had a great visit with your friend.
Hi Michael, oddly I’ve never thought about those issues when in NZ. Maybe because I started going there before I really became interested in photography? Beautiful shot at Moeraki. Alas, when we went, we had to share the beach with a lot of people! Have fun! I’m looking forward to seeing NZ through your eyes.
Yeah, non-photographers probably don’t think about which way the sun moves, other than having a vague understanding of it rising in the east and setting in the west. And yes, we’ve been fortunate to have even well-known photo spots virtually to ourselves. Not sure how long that state of affairs will last!
Michael have a great time. Very nice landscape’s pictures.
Thanks you Martin!
Gotta love NZ! Welcome to the southern hemisphere, Michael. The thing that always gets me is when I go to NSW or Queensland the sun rises out of the sea! That’s just wrong – where I live the sun always SETS in the sea!
Looking forward to seeing more fantastic shots from your Aotearoa trip. Maybe Australia next… 🙂
Thanks Geoff! I guess I’ve seen the sun both rising and setting over the ocean, so that doesn’t faze me. But having the sun moving through the northern sky during the day is definitely disorienting. And sure, I’d love to go to Australia. The Kiwis have nothing but good things to say about their neighbors. 🙂
STUNNING images Micheal!!! I’ve been to NZ and taken pics of Mt. Cook. didn’t see it at sunrise with that beautiful light…but still, it was amazing and impressive. The color of the water is unreal!! Are those rounded boulders part of the Moeraki Boulders? I saw those to…so incredible! But don’t remember any in the water like yours….so you. must have been in a different place. Such beautiful images…thank you for sharing!!
Thanks Claire! You must have been to Moeraki at low tide.
Lovely photographs (of course!), especially that first sunrise photograph at a beach.
I think I got a mild headache reading about all of the backwards/upside-down stuff though!
Dan
Thanks Dan! Take two Advil and call me when you get down under.
Hi Michael, Nice to see what you make of our side of the world. With regards to ‘the right way round’, I think it’s not NZ that’s confused. After all, there are only 3 countries in the world sticking to imperial measurements: Liberia, Myanmar and the USA.
Well imperial vs. metric measurements is another issue entirely. And while being in the Southern Hemisphere was a bit disorienting to me at first, since I’d previously spent my entire life in the Northern Hemisphere, I’d never say that the Northern Hemisphere perspective is the “right” way to view things. Most current maps are oriented with north at the top, and south at the bottom, but that’s entirely arbitrary – a tradition started by European mapmakers who happened to live in the Northern Hemisphere. If a culture from the Southern Hemisphere had ended up making the maps that most of the world uses today they’d probably be oriented with South at the top of the map. And maybe we’d say that the United States and Europe are “down under.”
Thanks, Michael. I have enjoyed your images and writing over many years. I understand you also have to buy the correct brand of lens for each hemisphere because: just as the water goes down the plughole clockwise/anticlockwise depending on the hemisphere, so a photographer requires a lens which focuses clockwise or anticlockwise depending on the hemisphere in which they are working.
So that’s why Nikon does everything backwards! I didn’t realize they were catering to the Southern-Hemisphere market. Now it makes sense. 🙂
Beautiful images Michael! You must have digitally removed the Hobbits. 😉 I visited Australia a while back. The trip began with several days of spring rain and plenty of fog. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. When we traveled inland, towards the desert and found ourselves under clear dark skies, I felt discombobulated. It took me a few minutes to make sense of what I was looking at. The constellations I recognized were in the wrong place and looked upside down. That was pretty cool, actually.