Ulua Beach, Wailea 1978

Ulua Beach, Wailea Maui Hawaii 1978

 The PND family was very lucky to move to Maui in 1977.  This was the view from our apartment where we lived in the hotel PND Senior managed.  The beach on the left is Ulua and it is one of a series of crescent beaches that stretch all the way up the coast.  This is roughly a view looking north.  The tower building on the water is about 1.5 miles away and the there and back was a great beach run.  The following year, the on-going condo development at Wailea spread right through the middle of this image but that's progress and without the development we wouldn't have been there in the first place.

Originally posted July 20, 2012

Spear Fishing in Tahiti

Spear Fishing in Tahiti, 1974

I've only a vague idea where this is but the series is interesting. This fisherman is first seen standing on the shore, then we see him launch this spike into the surf and pull out this purple, blue and grey fish. Looking at his spear it seems like he couldn't miss however there's probably more to it than that.

I've dim recollection of my father traveling to New Caledonia, Fiji and Tahiti for business development in the mid-1970s and in the set of three rolls of film there are a lot of pictures of beaches and shots from aircraft but no identifiable landmarks. This one could be anywhere but I'm guessing Tahiti.

Originally posted July 15, 2011

(Subsequently, my father told me he followed this guy around for ages to see if he would catch something - which he did).

Photo: Gone fishing - Not Bay of Bengal, Arabian Sea

Taken from my hotel room window while on a quick two and a half day visit to Mumbai in 1996. Looks like three guys are out to do some fishing. This was my first and only visit to India and it was a real eye-opener but most strange to me is that I seem to have taken only three photos!

No alternative; I'll just have to go back.

Orginally posted September 2, 2011

Queen's Spiral

Queen's Spiral

Not too far back this week. I visited Greenwich for the first time in twenty years when I was in London in July and this image is from the Queen's house. Visit if you get the chance. While the 'complex' was busy with many tourists - especially the Royal Observatory and the surrounding park - Queen's house was very quiet. There's almost too many pictures of boats for me but I really enjoyed some of the pictures from Cook's Pacific excursions.

 

There's no magic to this photo either: I sat on the ground and turned the camera upwards, but it came out quite well. I wanted to take one from the top but it was closed off.

 

I may be incorrect but I think the scene at the Circumlocution Office in Little Dorrit was filmed here (from last years PBS television production).
 

Originally posted August 19, 2011

High Up Parking Lot

Haleakala Crater Parking Lot 1991

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This is a parking lot. Seen in the background is the sweeping vista of central Maui which spreads out over 10,000 feet below where this picture is taken. As the sun rises, you can just about see the shadow cast by the mountain in the middle left of the frame.

It is pretty barren at the top of Haleakala crater but on most mornings there's a lot of life and activity. On the outer edge of the parking lot you can see the tourist bikers who have come up to the crater in a van to watch the sunrise and then ride their rented bikes down the approximately 35miles of road back to town. If you look carefully you can see they have color coded each group based on the colors of their rain slickers.

They have gravity working with them.

From this vantage point we did an about face and hiked down into the magnificence of the crater. No sissy bike riding for us. It's a parking lot but I like it just the same.

 

Originally posted September 22, 2011

Frankfurt Mondrian

Sun rises on Deutschmark city

Less of an archive photo since I took this from my hotel bedroom this morning (2011).  Still, quite pretty.

Originally posted October 14, 2011

Novice Monks on a Boat, Bangkok

Novice Monks on a Boat - Chao Phaya, Bangkok 2001

It's all hustle and bustle on this river that flows through Bangkok and there are all manner of ferries and passenger boats chis-crossing the river in all directions. It's certainly not uncommon to be on one of these ferries standing next to one or a group of these young men wrapped in their golden robes while you both admire the intense activity all around you.

Most boys receive religious education in Thailand and when they turn 20 they are eligible for ordination. Temporary ordination is the norm among Thai Buddhists, and most young men traditionally ordain for the term of a single rainy season and then return to lay life and go on to marry and raise a family.

Originally posted December 9, 2011

Close Shaved Iranian Boy

Boy, Tehran September 1972

 

 

 

 

From September 1972, an Iranian boy wonders where his hair has gone.  I was traveling back home to New Zealand with my father and grandfather after having spent almost three months in the UK with my grandfather.  While this was a great vacation for me and I got to miss some school, I think it was a cunning plan by my parents that relieved my mother of having to deal with three boys all by herself while my father went to summer school at Cornell.     

 
Originally posted February 3, 2012

Milan Cathedral 1961

Milan Cathedral August 1961

The PND seniors went to Milan and Florence for their honeymoon and this is one of the images from that trip.  Unfortunately, when I visited Milan in 2004 I didn't know this image existed in our archive otherwise I would have my own more recent image.  However, if memory serves from that trip the building is now far cleaner and the area in front of the cathedral is less like a bus depot and more like a pedestrian precinct.

Originally posted December 16, 2011

Fish Story

One day in January 1974, my father went out ocean fishing for the first time and came back with this fish.  It was the first of the Marlin season and he got himself a nice silver plate.  Earlier in the day, I am not sure he even knew such an award was in the offing.  Almost right after this picture was taken, the whole fish fell off the back of the boat and started to float out to sea.  One of the fishermen (that is, someone somewhat more expert than my father - said fish excluded,of course) had to jump into the harbor, chase it down and lung it back to the boat.

Several years later a cleaner took Ajax powder to the awarded plate and it had to be re-plated.  So there you are our family fish story.

Originally published May 18, 2012

The Flamingo Las Vegas 1971

The Flamingo Las Vegas 1971

I was in Las Vegas last month and purposely went over several images from my fathers trip their around 1971.  There's another I've posted here which I named Caesar and the Pinto and was taken across the street from Caesars Palace.  My thought was that I could revisit these spots and take an updated new image.  Well, as anyone who has been to Vegas recently there's been a lot of building and the old locations were barely recognizable.  This neon sign is no-where to be found (unless it's in the Neon museum) probably subsumed under one of several new tower blocks that is the new Flamingo.

I wonder what that show would have been like; Sergio Franchi and Lonnie Shorr.  This image was from a batch that had no date stamp so initially I was guessing at the date but thanks to the interwebs I searched the show team and found some ads from 1971.

Originally posted July 27, 2012

Best & Co, Fifth Avenue 1968

Fifth Avenue and 51st - August 1968

Close watchers (and there are several) will know there have been several images from this roll taken while my parents were visiting in 1968.  My father took in some summer classes at Cornell - where he also met the guy that hired him for his next job - and then met my mother in NYC.  I am pretty sure this is a late morning/mid day shot and if you have visited NYC at anytime in the past 15 years you probably know this area is always swarming with tourists.  Here the sidewalks look quite manageable.

Originally posted August 3, 2012

Kabul Girl and a Dark Spectre 1973

Kabul girl and her mother 1973

This is a spooky image taken out of our car window as we drove by.  (That's the door edge on the right).  The girl is smiling for my father and perhaps catches a glimpse of one of the three boys in the car but it is the mother standing behind this girl that you wonder about.  Her face dark she looks like an evil apparition.  Is that her hand coming around the child's back to ward her away?  With all that happened in this country since then you can only wonder what happened to this young girl.

Originally posted September 21, 2012

Photo: Beirut The Corniche 1972

Beirut: The Corniche 1972

Yesterday I met someone who had grown up in Beirut but moved to the US just as the civil war started in the late 1970s.  The PND family only visited (for real) once in 1968 and I recalled to him how we had stayed at The Phoenician which is the larger oblong shaped building facing the water.  My friend told me that this hotel became sniper central and that there was intense fighting for control over the hotel because you could see in every direction.  A lot different from our visit in 1968 when we sat on the pool deck and I was fascinated by our host the hotel manager who was eating a green banana.   Rumor had it he was assassinated during the war.  Strange the things you remember.

Originally posted November 30, 2012

Tin Roof: Auckland City and Harbor 1972

Auckland New Zealand 1972

This is taken from across the bay from Auckland city which is on the other side of the water towards the right.  There's no question this view is probably almost recognizable today but I wouldn't know since I haven't been back since 1976.  The large tower building in the center is the city hospital and just to the left of that is the One Tree Hill and Eden Park.  Sharp eyes will also recognize the museum just to the left of the green patch.

On the right edge of the photo there is another tower building which is the Intercontinental Auckland where we were housed for almost five years.

(And yes, there is a big thumb print on this image; part of the charm and no charge).

Originally posted October 5th, 2012

Waikiki, Kapiolani Park and Diamond Head 1975

Several years before we moved to Hawaii a photo from some arduous business trip taken by PND senior. In the early eighties, I ran around Diamond Head occasionally both for fun and in the Honolulu Marathon. The outbound leg goes off to the left and the return comes back on the sea side to the right. The finish is in the park about center frame. I ran the marathon again in 2005 and beat my previous 1980 time by 10mins. Not that I was satisfied with that of course.

Originally posted on November 16, 2012

Hong Kong Harbor September 1968

Car ferries cross from Kowloon to Hong Kong which was the way we first made the journal in 1968.  Since then several tunnel have been built to carry much more traffic.  If you look closely on the left side of the photo you can see a passenger jet lining up to landing at Kai Tak.  On approach it will skim over the rooftops and land on a runway to points right out into the ocean.  That airport is long closed now.

Originally posted April 4th, 2012

Kyoto June 1972

Generations: Kyoto 1972

A weekly image from my archive.

When I saw this image from a early 1970s trip to Japan, I was immediately taken with the juxtaposition of the old and the new. Japanese business culture only allowed 'career girls' to enter the workforce fairly recently and this young woman must have been a fairly unusual sight on the streets of Kyoto in 1972. The old woman, small in stature and wearing traditional clothing seems to be confused by the obvious, casual disdain of the younger woman. Here is the brash future of Japan contrasting with the traditional, centuries old past.

Originally posted July 1, 2010

Pisa 1961

I should ask my parents why they chose Milan and Pisa for their honeymoon.  I've never visited but I should before the tower falls down.  This is the Duomo, the medieval cathedral of the Archdiocese of Pisa in 1961.

Australian Open 1976 & John Newcombe

Newk has just finished a quarter final match against Ross Case which he won 6-4, 6-4, 6-1.  Somehow, I was sitting in a box seat at court side and a family friend lent me his 35mm camera which was the first time I had used one.  From then on I was hooked.  In those years, the Australian Open was held at Kooyong Tennis Club on grass and it was a little like the old US open set up at Forrest Hills.  Just like Forrest Hills the club is still there.  In the years I lived in Melbourne I went to Kooyong many times to watch the Open since the tournament also coincided with the long summer school break. 

Newcombe made it to the final where he was beaten by fellow Aussie Mark Edmondson which must have been a disappointment because it was Edmondson's only major win.