Wind no 1: rocket flower

How do you photograph wind?

I can't see it but I feel, see and sometimes hear it. I've set myself a project for the week to photograph wind.

NZ cops a lot of wind. It's a long, skinny country running across the prevailing weather pattern from the west (Tasman Sea). We're surrounded by sea and the South Island where I live has the Southern Alps running like a spine the length of the island. All these and more mean we often experience wind. Our weather follows a cyclical pattern of nor' east, nor' west, southerly/sou'westerly and back to the nor' east again.

Today started with a 'fresh' and gusty nor' esterly which gave me a mix of head and tail wind biking to work. It was a lazy dragging dying headwind biking home. By the time I was home and sorted the wind had died to a light breeze. A difficult first blip for a series on wind ;-)

Rocket flowers are incredibly delicate. Even a light breeze bends their stalks and teases the petals. That's what I tried to capture here with a macro lensbaby. You can see the top petal 'shimmering' in the warm nor' west breeze.

Inland at Cabbagetree Cottage it's probably blowing a gale.

Overnight a sou'west front is likely to sweep through and I'll have a head wind into work. During the day it will swing around to the nor' east and I'll have a head wind biking home. Such is life ;-)