On the middle day of the hike, the fog rolled in for the entire day so it was extra moody. I didn’t mind at all because it just makes for a different kind of photo. I felt like I was in the Scottish Highlands, even though I’ve never actually been to the Scottish Highlands! That’ll be fixed soon though!
The Routeburn track is a great hike… if walking is your thing and you visit NZ definitely put it near the top of your to-do list! Here’s another of the epic views along the way.
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.
This is one of the most famous great walks in New Zealand. It’s about a 2 or 3 night hike and it goes around some of the most beautiful mountains in the southern alps. I think one of the best shots was right here in the beginning.
I think we passed this on the very first day of the Routeburn track along the South Island of New Zealand. I had a feeling we’d pass a few waterfalls, but I didn’t expect anything quite this majestic. It was one of those cool waterfalls where basically everyone gets soaking wet while passing underneath… which was a really nice break after a rather sweaty ascent.
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.
