The image of a beautiful town

Photographer Derek Golding with some of his photographs on display at Omru Blue. Photo by Sally Rae.
Photographer Derek Golding with some of his photographs on display at Omru Blue. Photo by Sally Rae.
Self-taught photographer Derek Golding has come a long way since he first picked up a camera in 2004.

Mr Golding, who has moved to Oamaru with partner Tamin Wilson and their young daughter, is involved with the Vista project - creating the world's largest digital panoramic photograph - as a fundraiser for Youthline.

Thousands of photographs taken of Christchurch and the Southern Alps, with a powerful telephoto lens, will be digitally "stitched" together to create the enormous image, measuring about 100m long by 25m high.

Mr Golding hoped the project, which should come to fruition this year, would raise $500,000 for Youthline.

He has now embarked on another project, which he has called Oamaru: Heart of Stone, taking photographs around the town.

He expected it would take between six months and a year and he hoped to hold an exhibition of the photographs at the end to "really promote Oamaru". He thought it was a beautiful town and wanted to encourage people to stop. The photographs would basically be an archive of Oamaru in 2009, he said.

Already, a week of his work, including photographs of the Oamaru Whitestone Civic Trust building, Customs House, Oamaru harbour and Waitaki District Council headquarters, is on display in the gallery at Omru Blue.

By stitching together photographs of buildings, the result was pictures with "amazing" detail, he said.

Originally from York in England, Mr Golding first came to New Zealand in 1998 to hitchhike around the country. He loved it so much he moved here in 2000.

After working as a psychiatric nurse in Christchurch for seven years, he and Ms Wilson moved to Oamaru to be closer to her family.

 

 

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