Every day during the lockdown in New Zealand, which I think only lasted about four weeks, I would go on an afternoon hike. I found myself drawn to this area again and again… these tiny little perfect pools of water… I actually took these with my mobile phone, although I don’t think most people would guess that in 100 years.
The walk to my studio is always provides a little bit of inspiration. Sometimes (like today) it’s the cherry blossoms. Other days it’s the changing color of the leaves moving through the seasons…
Looking forward to the new Google Pixel 6 arriving in the coming days… It’ll be interesting to see how the camera is on this generation. The past models have often been class leading. In fact, they have been so good that as well as sharing a bunch of images on here from each phone, an image from one of them has even made it into my Fine Art collection! Anyway, here is a pic from a misty hike along the Routeburn track last year, taken with the Pixel 4.
Man, I was just looking at the metadata for this one to see where I took it exactly, and I realized it was with the Google Pixel 4 phone. Quite impressive, I must say. I could tell it was a little different because when I opened up the little “i” on SmugMug (you can do this too), I saw a little map of where I took the photo.
For those of you interested in the fun world of NFTs, the latest drop closes in a few hours on Makersplace. Check it out here.
There’s a huge area here between Queenstown and Arrowtown with rolling hills, lakes, little streams, and tons of different trees that change color in the Autumn. (Autumn is happening now in the southern hemisphere, btw – I know that’s always confusing to all you “others” in the northern hemisphere!) – The mornings are crisp and cool but the sun comes out in the middle of the day to warm everything up and help the colors to really glow.
Another day in Autumn means another day for a walk to a new place. I feel really lucky that all these places are just a short walk from home. One of my favorite things about New Zealand are all the various sorts of trees… and they all go through their Autumn shadings at slightly different times.
When I was in Oamaru, New Zealand, I stopped at this rather eclectic Steampunk Museum. It was a quirky place, for sure, as one might expect. There were a bunch of asian tourists there dressing up in Victorian steampunk outfits, and I found the whole scene to be rather unusual, so I took some photos! What is Steampunk? It is an imagined future where electricity was never invented but steam technology kept improving.
New Zealand was NOT a bad place to be during lockdown because I was able to go out on walks in nature every day. How special! Luckily, I live out in the country, so I was able to wander off in different directions. I would take photos almost every day. Here’s one of the many paths I walked along the way. Also, believe it or not, I took this one with my pixel phone. No, this is not a paid add for Google! 🙂
Here’s something quite cool! This is the second 360 version we have released. You can interact with it on YouTube by grabbing the screen and pulling it this way and that. It’s also super immersive (especially with Sam’s cool tunes) when you have it full screen and the volume up high.
What’s a bit more about this creation? I decided to explore the math of V3 of the Menger, which has all these beautiful spherical structures that are created by the minutest of filaments. It calmly explores the evolution of a void and allows you to relax in the unraveling, fundamental nature of its creation. As with the last one, Sam Mehrtens (Sam Wave) did custom music. He explains “with all these worlds there seems to be a pulsing balance of life and release. When I was making the soundtrack I was instantly drawn into the void and felt a passive tribal tone urging to come out… as the void unravels so does the sound, and the beat becomes a distant memory. Accompanied by sprays of tonal delay and psychedelic guitar, ‘Avoiding the Void’ is our most explorative creation yet.”
Be sure to see it in your VR goggs (Oculus or Playstation VR) inside the TRIPP app.
To learn more about Machine Elf, visit our always-evolving website at https://the-machine-elf.com/
During the three-day walk, we saw a ton of different scenes like this. It was incredibly peaceful and the walk was quite easy. There are two ways to do the walk, and this was the more “posh” way where we would stay in nice places and have hot meals every night.
It was a rainy and moody day when we started the Routeburn track, which is one of the most famous walks in New Zealand. I was kind of hoping for perfect weather, but I actually really like the way it turned out… it reminded me a lot of Scotland, even though I’ve never been to Scotland!
