Coast to Coast

Monday - Tuesday, June 20 - 21

Hokitika - Hanmer, New Zealand

Hokitika is a small mining village on the western coast. From our lodge, we walked to the roaring beach and were impressed with the stormy waves. This was just a preview to the next day when we drove to Pancake Rocks and saw and heard the powerful sea. This day was a photographers dream as we had great lighting and a different scene around every corner.

In the evening we grabbed our tripods and hiked to the glow worm dell. The stars were out and it was a beautiful clear night. The glow worms and stars looked very similar. It was interesting setting up the glow worm shots because we all had to use the self timer and long exposures and every one had to turn off their "torch" at the same time and keep it off so as to not disturb the others pictures. You can imagine what that was like with 14 kids in total darkness. The shoot was successful and we had lots of fun.

Ulla Lohmann, our National Geographic photographer, joined us in Hokitika. She is a fireball of energy and the kids really enjoy working with her. She is an exploration/expedition adventure photographer and has a most impressive bio. She is extremely down to earth and very fascinating to talk with.

Today was a very long bus ride from the west coast to the east coast….five hours….but we stretched it to an all day event because we stopped at several beautiful places. The most powerfully scenic was a place called Castle Hill. It is an area full of boulders. Scenes from the Narnia movie were filmed here. In fact, the landscape of NZ has been in many movies and now I know why.