Oparara River Reflections

The Seddon Shield Photographic weekend is promising to be a wonderful experience. We have photographers from all the camera clubs in the top of the South Island attending and the Buller Camera Club, our host club, has organised a very full program.
Today RM and I did quite a bit of tripping around to various beauty spots in the Karamea district before we headed up into the Oparara Basin which is hidden away in steep bush-clad mountains. We joined up with quite a number of other photographers at the main car-parking area. There we enjoyed our picnic lunch and then perused the very attractive and informative interpretation panels about this fascinating geological area of New Zealand. I would recommend that folk look up the Oparara Valley Trust on the internet. It is most interesting.
We and several others took the walk to the famous Oparara Arch, an enormous limestone arch spanning the Oparara River. It is a very difficult task to adequately show this arch in all its magnificence with photographs. It is a most challenging environment for photographers with lots of deep shadows under the arch and high contrast beyond it.
The river itself is very beautiful with peat coloured waters, rocks, rapids and lovely slow sections. It is the home of our “Whio”, Blue Duck, a highly endangered species. Those amongst us with very long lenses were lucky enough to capture some wonderful images of one breeding pair. I was not so lucky. I saw the pair but they went past me too quickly to change lenses.
So I have contented myself by blipping the lovely reflections in the area just before the Blue Ducks paddled past.