This is basically the view from my window every day (minus a power pole or too). I took this a couple of hours ago at 7pm. The sun is setting behind the Southern Alps of New Zealand and shadows are creeping across the Port Hills.

As the sun goes down they begin to look more and more yellow and can be quite surreal at times. I actually reduced the yellow to make this photo look more realistic than reality!

I had to remove the powerlines from the hills and get rid of the light-post and telegraph lines before I could play around with this. The un-cropped, original colour image is below, followed by the absolute original photo.

Christchurch Hollywood Sign - Un-cropped and at full saturation

Christchurch Port Hills Original Photo

I’ve played with the image a little to show a bit of appreciation for a certain fine blogging platform.

World's Largest WordPress Glitterball

Since then, all my memories of Auckland have been based around the poor traffic system. For this reason, I wasn’t particularly excited about another business trip up to Auckland’s Search Engine Bootcamp last Friday.

I booked a last minute hotel via www.wotif.com. The Arena Hotel on Beach Street. And I can honestly say it’s the worst hotel I’ve been in. I actually had to demand to change rooms because my room only had 2 out of 5 working lights and the bathroom was flooded due to a constant leak. The room I was moved to was little better and had a half-used soap and hair in the shower. Nice. “Modern and comfortable accommodation” my arse.

Anyway, I woke up early in the morning and headed along the waterfront to catch the sunrise. I have to say, the waterfront is beautiful. The sunlight was reflecting on all the impressive office buildings and creating a really great early morning ambiance.

I had a great stroll around the CBD just as all the morning commuters were heading into work. Unlike them, I was really taking my time and absorbing the surroundings.

Arriving at the venue early, I carried on a bit further to the … what do you call the area where all the yachts are tied up?? Yacht-car-park. That’ll do.

Not surprisingly in the “city of sails”, there were some amazingly impressive yachts parked around the place. I was told that Michael Hill’s yacht was moored at the time I was there. I’m assuming it was this one:

Although personally I think he was out-done by the fine looking beast below. I don’t know a great deal about yachts but I know that length seems to come into it an awful lot, and this thing looked like it was the Ferrari of the yachting world:

So my morning’s experience, coupled with a really great expo, helped to boost my opinion of Auckland. Despite the terrible hotel I stayed at!

Still, Christchurch would still win in a head-to-head battle.

It’s great to see a New Zealander’s opinion of the world, and Heather does a fine job of portraying the sights and atmosphere of the places she visits through her photographs.

Specialising in portraits and travel, her style is bold and colourful and many of her images have an ambiance that draws you into the frame and you can almost feel like you’re there.

A great advantage of knowing Heather personally is that her partner and my wife have a common bond that can only exist between people who have to put up with photographers on a regular basis! A short walk along a beach turns into an hour long photography exercise. Heather’s partner and my wife can occupy themselves while Heather and I flash away with our cameras.

I hope my work will be as good as yours one day!

Heather’s work is available for viewing and purchase through her photography website.

1) Lord of the Rings,
2) We have the only rugby team that dances before a game (ner ner),
3) We are the world’s most peaceful nation.

That last one is quite a substantial claim, and a claim that I, for one, am very proud of. According to the Institute for Economics and Peace List, we have knocked Iceland off the top spot due to some violent demonstrations that have taken place there in the past year. Luckily the authorities didn’t count the time that some guy tried to trip me up on Manchester Street.

This all helps to re-confirm that New Zealand is the place to live right now. Although … don’t tell anyone that as we quite like the peace and quiet.

If you have been thinking about moving to (or around) New Zealand, you may have been wondering which city is the best; Christchurch or Wellington. Ok, you may have been wondering about other cities, towns and hamlets but this blog entry happens to focus on Christchurch and Wellington because a) I live in Christchurch, b) I went to Wellington last weekend and c) it’s my blog.

I have been living in Christchurch for 8 years now. I actually landed here on September 11th 2001 – easy to remember, hard to get through customs. My parents decided to move here from the UK because they wanted to be near the Southern Alps and in a city that was a city but small enough to be in a whole different category to the likes of Liverpool and Manchester.

And Christchurch is exactly that. It’s a small city with heaps of character.

However, I’ve always pondered one day moving to Wellington. Wellington is our nation’s capitol and the word on the street is it’s the home of a great cafe culture and bar scene, with a real arty/trendy feel to the whole place.

Last weekend was a long one, what with New Zealanders having a day off to celebrate Queen’s birthday (we love the Queen. We Will Rock You is my favourite). So I decided to book a weekend in Wellington for my wife and I so we could find out if Wellington really is Absolutely Positively Wellington (BTW that’s their slogan. No, I don’t know what it means. Oh and BTW means by the way, BTW).

Wellington, New Zealand

So we get to Wellington and I’m expecting an impressive cafe scene set amongst trendy/arty architecture in a bustling Wellington CBD. But … to be honest … I’m really not impressed.

Ok, Te Papa is an incredible museum and does well to represent what our national museum should be. And the whole setting of Wellington – right on the sea, nestled amongst steep, tree-covered hills – is very attractive (and I’m sure it would be even more impressive on a beautiful day), AND generally it has everything Christchurch has times 1.5. Wellington has a lot of stores and many of the larger stores reminded me of large department stores in the UK. Oh AND there’s obviously a lot of stuff that goes on in the way of big events and shows etc.

But … how can I put this? Well to start with, we headed to the great “Bee-hive” that is our national parliament building. Turning the final corner, we’re greeted by one of the ugliest buildings known to man.

New Zealand's Parliament Building. Fugly.

To be fair, the building next to it was quite attractive and had a lot more of a grand appeal about it, but still the whole collection of buildings seemed to consist of 101 ways to stack up slabs of concrete. And besides, the actual parliament building doesn’t look like a bee-hive. Look at it. It’s a shuttle-cock. The Cock would be a more appropriate nickname.

This, in some ways, set the scene for the rest of our stay. The centre of Wellington seems to be struggling to find its style. There were lots of strange, almost rural looking, houses and buildings that would be sandwiched between two ugly corporate buildings, which would be next to a half-derelict looking place which would have a horific paint scheme. In fact, the most modern, stylish looking building on one particular street was ”Mermaids” – a strip club famous for its large fish-tank that the … employees … swim around in (or so I’m told!).

It's like a giant clown has thrown up on the building.

Turnbull House in Wellington

Christhurch's Cathedral Square

My own office in Christchurch's CBD

Renting a flat is also far more expensive in Wellington. A friend of mine spends nearly $300 a week for a small flat with peeling paint and leaky ceilings, 10 minutes drive from the city centre and my wife and I spend far closer to $200 for a similar sized, almost brand new flat just 3 minutes from the centre of Christchurch.

Don’t get me wrong, Wellington is a great place to visit. I’ve been told that the best reason to go to Wellington is to see some major show, event or concert and make a big weekend of it. My own view of the city could have been tainted by the fact that we had quite a tight schedule and the weather was horrific – as it was in Christchurch on the same weekend.

But I was very happy to return to where I live in Christchurch. Our streets are wider and the city is easier to navigate, we are close enough to the sea to pay it a visit in an afternoon, we have our own hills with some great short walks and the added bonus of a great view of the snow-capped Southern Alps and we have the lowest crime-rate of New Zealand’s cities.

Flower Path, Christchurch

Home, sweet home.

Early one morning, I got up before sunrise, filled a mug full of coffee and headed down to the beach to wait for the sun to come up. Many people mistake this image for a sunset but it’s actually the sun coming up from the East coast of NZ. I sat here on a New Year’s morning a few years ago to be one of the first to see the new year’s sun.

Sunrise on Sumner Beach, Christchurch

It’s quite humbling to think that the next “thing” out that way and to the south is Antarctica.

Each morning we’re greeted with a whole new pattern of skid-marks outside the house. But this morning was quite unique! As you can see from the picture, this boy/girl racer has managed to create an almost perfect circle.

Has a boy racer perfected the art of the perfect circle?

This is actually at quite a large, busy intersection. Not far from where the petrol tankers go to fill up. Large tankers are constantly storming around this blind corner at crazy speeds.

So maybe this boy/girl racer is on to something! Yup. We could do with a round-about here! Thanks for drawing up the plans! Now we just need someone to dump a load of dirt in the middle and add a couple of trees and we’ll be set.

I took this photo of a Renault Clio while heading to the Godley House bar in Diamond Harbour, not too far from Christchurch. One of the main reasons I took it is it seemed to be so out of place amongst the other shabby cars that were around at the time. Plus, it had such a unique number plate.

Personalised number plates in New Zealand are very different to other places, such as the UK. Due to the much smaller population (just over 4 million), it is far easier and cheaper to get your own personalised plate. In the UK, people tend to use numbers that look like letters to keep the cost down, plus they’re actually limited to a lesser number of characters because the UK out-rules numbers or letters that could be mistaken for each other (i.e. I and 1, O and o). New Zealand is very liberal and so people can generally get any plate they desire for a low cost.

It’s common to see a car with a plate similar to II111I1I as the owners believe this will help them disguise their plate when they set off speed cameras.

So anyway, I took this photo, boosted the contrast and the saturation a little and this is the result. As the French would say; voila!