SCENIC BEAUTIES.

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXVI, Issue 20441, 20 October 1934, Page 11

SCENIC BEAUTIES.

Art Studies of Natural Gems. . “STAR” CHRISTMAS NUMBER. There are two ways of’knowing one’s own country. One is to travel through it, in its out-of-the-way places. The other is to sit in an easy chair and have those places brought near to hand by the medium of photographs. For comparatively few is the former possible : but the latter everyone may enjoy. For tjiat reason, among others, the public look for the “ Star ” Christmas Number, which is now on sale at all stationers and booksellers and at the “ Star ” office.

For this annual the beauty spots of the Dominion have been sought out, so that not only New Zealanders, but also their friends living in other lands, may know what the country has to offer. This is an added value, for thus is the Dominion advertised, and tourists persuaded to come. Seeing the many and varied photographs, one senses the urge to go and see for oneself the places depicted. Each Picture a Work of Art.

Each picture is a work of art; it is not merely a photograph. Behind each lies hours of waiting for a certain time of day, when the light shall be right, when shadows shall fall in a certain way. when the sun shall have emphasised a certain object. The man in the street does not realise the artistry behind a “Star” Christmas Number photograph. For example, one picture shows a ridged field in Central Otago It looks, at first glance, like a vast field prepared for potato planting, the long raised rows, the trenches between. But the photographer has waited until the light fell athwart the rows, not along them, and the effect is remarkable. Ordinary mother earth, brown and bare, is transfigured and glorified. This is the trend of modern photography—to see a neWj beauty in the commonplace.

There are many pages completely taken by one picture. These are view's, all manner of views, from one end of our long country to the other. Here is a scene on the western viaduct in the quiet of the early morning, before commerce bustles along, when the scream of the gull is loud and the sound of rope through pulley or oar in rowlock is heard. The next is a brook that “ babbles, babbles as it goes,” through the low-sweeping ferns and great trees of the Waipoua forest. The first picture in the annual shows the hills that billow away on the famous Skippers Road, in Central Otago.

There is a double-page of the combined manoeuvres of. the Royal Australian Navy and the New Zealand Division of the Royal Navy. There is a glorious view taken near Maungaturoto: the scene shifts to the gorge river-bed of the Rangitikei at Mangaweka, in Wellington Province. There are photographs produced on tinted paper, and there is a view of the Waikato River at Atiamuri, done in three colours.

The centre page, a double page, is given to a cartoon of the Governors who have been in New Zealand. They are drawn in a delightfully haphazard manner, that is to say, they follow no chronological ortler. On one side of Captain Hobson, for example, Earl Jellicoe smiles; on the otfier our present Governor, Lord Bledisloe. They t are all there, an illustrious company p each with his facial idiosyncrasies faithfully depicted. Those wishing to send the annual to friends abroad are informed that the postage w'ithin New Zealand and to Great Britain (by direct steamer only) is one penny. Penny postage is also available for Australia, Canada and all British possessions.