Riding in a Bus

Street Corner, Edendale. Nov. 2009 Ajr Creamoata Factory, Milton. Nov. 2009 Ajr I rarely travel on buses - not because I have anything against them; it's just that I have my own car and I can get to places faster that way. But last weekend I not only took a bus ride, I took a very LONG bus ride - ten hours in fact, from Christchurch to the tiny southern coastal settlement of Colac Bay, which sits 45 minutes southwest of Invercargill at the bottom of the South Island.

Residential Street, Dunedin. Nov. 2009 Ajr

Dunedin Railway Station. Nov. 2009 Ajr When I'm travelling by car I always stop regularly to take photographs; when you're being driven by bus, you stop on the whim of the driver. But that wasn't going to stop me. I love taking photographs from moving vehicles. They're never perfect shots and that's what I like about them. There's a randomness, a degree of luck involved that sometimes spins out some real treats. And much to my delight, I discovered that sitting high up in a bus, you get an entirely different perspective on the landscapes and cityscapes you're passing through. So these are four shots of many that I snapped along the way. A tiny sampling of the architectural diversity and quirkiness that you see whenever you hit the roads into provincial New Zealand.

StreetscapeNZ - 30

Lower Stuart Street, Dunedin

Looking towards the magnificent Dunedin Railway Station

May 2009. Ajr.

Flemish Beauty

Dunedin Railway Station, Dunedin. Feb 2009. Ajr

The Dunedin Railway Station is a thing of beauty. Its splendid Femish Renaissance-style architecture, designed by George A Troup, sets it apart as one of this southern city's most impressive buildings.... one of the most impressive in the country in fact. But I have yet to stand in front of it and take a decent photograph. Every photograph I've taken of it to date has been shot - like this one - from a moving vehicle, as I dash through Dunedin on my way to somewhere else. If you click on Dunedin Railway Station in the label line below, you'll see one or two other images of it.

One Station, Two Days

Dunedin Railway Station. 2007, 2008. Ajr.

It was pouring with rain when I was in Dunedin earlier the week so my photograph of the very splendid Dunedin Railway Station – snapped from a car window – was dull and gray. I have therefore added a second photograph taken on a sunny day last year. This marvellous Flemish Renaissance-style building was designed by George A Troup and built between 1904 and 1906. More than 750,000 Royal Doulton porcelain squares were used to tile the mosaic floor in the massive foyer. I think it is one of New Zealand’s finest historic buildings.