The End of My New Zealand Journey A Landscape Vlog

A big thanks to MPB for sponsoring today's video. I'm on the last leg of my trip around New Zealand. It's been fun, challenging and rewarding. I've felt sick in a helicopter, been the 10 millionth person to photograph this tree, and have experienced far too much rain. But this trip is almost coming to an end. I do not want to leave. I do not want to go home. The post-trip depression is gonna be real. It's gonna be pretty big on this one. I couldn't help but come into this trip with a few expectations. Things I'd see, photos I would take, things I would experience. And it's not all been completely accurate. I expected it to be quieter. Technically it is off-peak season so I expected fewer tours and less crowds. And I can't really complain because I am a tourist going to tourist places with other tourists there. But I just underestimated how busy it could get here. I don't blame anyone. This country is stunning and we're all here for the same reasons. But as an introverted photographer who mostly shoots local and spends a lot of time alone with my camera, this has been more challenging than anticipated. It's not necessarily negative, it's just something that I didn't expect to navigate. And it's really forced me to think of my approach to my photography and the way that I work. I'm so used to isolating myself in locations where I have plenty of time and space and I don't have to work around other photographers. In fact I think I actually intentionally choose locations where there won't be other people and other photographers around. I find that if there are too many people I get very overstimulated sort of visually and sensory-wise with sort of noises and that sort of thing. And it takes me out of my photography. And my photography tends to be quite a meditative thing. I like to sit for a while and really just be in the moment. This discomfort during the trip pushed me to become more flexible and find ways to work with unfamiliar surroundings. It has been a long time since I stepped outside of my usual approach to photography and while my more meditative way of working often serves me well, it really doesn't suit every situation. It's made me wonder how many times I've walked away from a shoot because I couldn't adapt to unexpected circumstances. I just presumed I was going to get really epic dramatic lighting and crazy landscape vistas and ultra wide shots with things in the foreground. Just lots of drama. And the scenery has absolutely delivered. This country is absolutely beautiful. It is stunning. But the images that I've taken have been very very different. Instead I've gone for more intimate landscapes. I have isolated mountain peaks. I have gone for long horizontal images, pano shots instead. This lens in particular is the lens that I thought I was going to utilize the most on this trip and it's actually the lens that I have used the least. Although I do have it on my camera right now for a bit of a sunset shot here where beach meets snowy mountains in the background. It's such a unique kind of landscape. So this is the lens that I ended up using the most so far on this trip or pretty much this entire trip and it doesn't surprise me because this is a wonderful versatile lens especially for travel. I also brought a 100 to 400 lens with me. I have been using here and there but I also brought a tiny 60mm macro lens as well. This has only been used once so far but I have been taking this out. It's so tiny it's just really easy to fit into my camera bag. I have been taking this out as I've been searching for a very specific type of fungus while I'm here. A blue pink gill fungus. It's native to New Zealand and so far I have had zero luck in finding one. Not from a lack of trying though. We are in the mossy trees and I found a website that tells you where people have sighted them and this apparently is a bit of a hot spot over the recent weeks. Can I find one? No. Not a single one. I never did find one. Anyway for the curious and while we're on the topic of gear, this is the kit that I have been filming with on this trip and this leads nicely to today's They are the leading platform for buying, selling and trading in used video and photo kits. Every so often I have a bit of a clean out with my camera kit between photography and making videos. Sometimes I accumulate kits that is very project specific that perhaps I can let go of later on. Rather than letting it sit on a shelf I can easily sell it or trade it in with MPB. Getting a quote is really straightforward. Just search for your item, select its condition and MPB will provide an instant quote. If you're planning to trade in you can also add the gear you'd like to buy at the same time with the value of your unused kit going towards the cost. Once you're happy just pack everything up securely and send it off. After MPB receives and checks your gear then you'll either Whether I'm upgrading, downsizing, trying to make some room in my camera kit, no matter what it is they really take the hassle out of changing your camera equipment so give them a go yourselves. I'll leave the link down in the description box and thank you MPB for sponsoring today's video. My main goal for this trip to New Zealand was to cease overthinking my photography and I think I did that. I certainly shot in conditions I would normally complain about and avoid back home anyway. However I thought there would be some huge creative revelation from this trip, something bigger and there wasn't. At least that's what I thought while I was travelling. It's been a few weeks since I've been back from my trip and after some distance from it my thoughts here have changed and I can see how it's led to a few creative shifts. In the first two videos I mentioned about stepping outside of my comfort zone and trying to create sets of images rather than seeing everything as individual stories and that allowed me to look at my work very differently. I realised how comfortable, how perhaps almost rigid I had become in my photography and it's not to say that my approach is wrong but I don't have to stay within the one approach or the one small niche that I have created for myself all the time. For a long time I have viewed my creativity kind of like a one-way path. I choose a direction and like I'm set on it, that's where I'm going and that's only where I am going. But I've realised that I can go down many paths, I can explore many styles, many different approaches to photography and I can still come back to and circle back around to the more slower thoughtful process to me that feels like home. It's the approach that I enjoy and resonate with the most. The difference is that when I return I'm coming back with new experiences, new skills and a broader perspective. I'm not saying that you have to travel halfway across the world to find inspiration or step outside your comfort zone. I'm just going to say though that New Zealand definitely helps, you don't though. Some photographers also are just very happy to stay in their lane, they have a niche, they photograph, they're very happy to stay within one genre of photography or one approach to photography and there's nothing wrong with that. I think I've just realised within my own photography that actually I don't want to stay in one lane all of the time. I benefit from exploring different paths, it creates, it keeps my creativity flowing, it helps me feel more fulfilled and it helps create momentum. This is a shift I think I've been working on for quite a long time, I've just sort of not known how to get there and apparently it took going halfway across the world to do so. But the reason I'm sharing this with you is because this channel really is just a documentation of my creative journey. I don't have all the answers, sometimes I don't know how I'm progressing forwards and I'm just experimenting essentially and maybe some of you can relate to that, perhaps some of you have your own advice to other creators and other photographers and you can share experiences that you've gone through as well. But you know what, that's enough of me, I really don't like sitting at my desk talking for this long, so let's head back to New Zealand for one last time where I'll leave you with my final expectation. Having sat at the very top of my travel bucket list for years, I expected New Zealand to be a place I would fall in love with, and I was right. In fact, I've never felt so welcomed or completely at home before. New Zealand will undoubtedly remain at the top of my travel list, not only because of what I have experienced but because I know I've only scratched the surface of this incredible country. Or in a perfect life I could just find a way to live in New Zealand. I came here looking for perfect photos, instead these experiences reminded me that creativity isn't about perfection, it's about curiosity. The more I allow myself to try new things and let go of rigid expectations, the more inspired I become. Thanks for watching this video and I'll see you back in the UK.