ADVENTURING IN SNOW WITH THE CAMERA-MAN.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 19134, 29 July 1930, Page 8

ADVENTURING IN SNOW WITH THE CAMERA-MAN.

Pen Pictures

Specially written for the "Star"

By

Bernice Shackleton.

To look at the city through the eyes of the mart with the camera is a fascinating experience; it is also a breathless, exhilarating, adventurous experience when it is a quest for beauty in the snow and when the whole mad world seems half a joke, to be picked up and hurled at you. Time is impatient. Everyone is suddenly young again and the man with the camera an unrepentant prodigal. You become his “ human interest” or his “ middle distance,” even his “ still life ” perhaps. But to go with him on an impetuous career that is at the same time a journey of artistic discovery and to follow the direction of a “nose for pictures ” is also to find that there is a proper complement in this journalistic world to the “nose for news.”

nPHOUGH he started* out by “shooting” Godley yesterday, it was not out of animosity for that gentleman, though he is nothing wonderful aesthetically. True, he is not yet where he ought to be. He did once issue orders to keep the citizens from excavating gravel in Cathedral Square, and I dare say, too, he was one of the first to see the dream of the Cathedral cloisters fade. But he had something to do with making Christchurch half English. His aloofness yesterday in black and white motley seemed a fresh affront. “It’s not of our doing, sir, not of our doing, that halfpie job.” Intoxication. There is something slightly intoxicating in the white and black spectacle of a snowy morning. It finds expression in an enthusiasm for climbing that belongs to the inebriated and the inspired. The dome of the Regent Theatre for roofs, the Square and panoramic views; but the top of a railway tank for the real miracle. Strange, fantastic unfamiliar city. Every bit of architecture was arrayed in new beauty; a white softness covered harsh outlines; but this station yard of spotless purity, this clean carpet of snow that blotted out the rails and cinders and etched every wire and pole with thin contrasting lines that formed a delicate geometric design and stretched away to the distant sheds; the smoke, even, that curled whitely in a grey sk}', all too uncannily unreal. It was quiet, too. The change was breathtaking. It seemed like a sudden, silent blotting out. . . . One might have become religious if one did not see in it Nature snubbing our infernal ugliness. Picture Post Card Scenes. A photographer has ever a will-o’-the-wisp mind. There is, to him, always something better round the next corner. Therefore, to the Hills. There in some places was a memory of Switzerland. Black pines and clustered chalets, ski-ing enthusiasts on the slope of the road, a little grey church at the corner, but one almost heard the cow-bells ringing. Great drifts of snow banked up the rocky projections. The wind lifted snow up off the tussocks in powdery puffs and carried it away with increasing strength to the belted trees at Victoria Park. It roared there like the “rushing of great rivers through their palisades of pine trees.” And far down below great grey banks of cloud rolled and unrolled over the white world. The lines of hedges made pencil-like designs on the plains, and the city lost its identity. Still the little black camera clicked. “Th^

next corner and then a few more minute: to the Kiwi.”

The gale swept the road and piled the snow in waves like desert sand. The going was perilous but steady. At length the car plunged into a drift too deep to nego-

tiate. The camera-man was beaten. But no! Blizzard and all, car in the snow, occupants whipped, stung and tormented, laughing, half-lost and excited, that was only another “picture.” He “shot” it triumphantly.