Golden Light to Stars

You haven't found this by accident. Day into Night is AuthenticAs at its fullest. A single unbroken experience that begins in the landscape drenched in the light from our closest star, ending with light from billions of distant stars. You’ll be guided throughout by Simon, photographed throughout by Simon, your adventure shaped around you from the first stop to the last frame of the night in real time. From the moment of pickup, there is no group to keep up with, no commentary delivered to the back of a bus, no rush to the next stop before the last one has properly landed. Just you, JAS .. one of the last six Land Rover Defenders imported into Aotearoa, unbranded and immaculate .. and a landscape that has been quietly shaping the people who slow down enough to let it in. During the day, Simon reads the tohu and talks you through what he’s seeing. The signs. The quality of the light, the behaviour of the weather, the way the land is responding to the season. This is Kā Taka o te Marama (the Māori lunar calendar) in practice .. a 24 hour way of seeing in which what the land reveals during the day informs what the sky will offer at night and vice versa. What is observed on the whenua (the land) is reflected in kā whetū (the stars). Simon has spent decades immersed in this landscape. He’s more recently been guided by tohuka (prominent scholars) and taught a new way of observation, they laid down the wero (challenge) to him to take these ways of observing and create his own kete o Wānaka (basket of knowledge). Professional photography runs through all of your adventure. Candid moments and gently posed opportunities, captured by Simon, an LPSNZ accredited photographer who is also your guide, your reader of this landscape, and the person who has spent two decades learning where the light falls best in this landscape. You won't need to think about capturing anything. That is taken care of. What you get to do is be present. Then the light changes. As evening arrives the landscape shifts. The colours deepen, the valleys quiet, and kā whetū begin to appear. At the Tāhuna Dark Sky Sanctuary the darkness is remarkable .. one of the least light polluted locations in Aotearoa, where the Milky Way has structure and depth and weight that most people have never seen with their own eyes. Simon guides you through it, weaving together astrophysics and Māori perspective, explaining the particular sky above you on that particular night. To begin with, you’ll observe with your eyes to get a feel of where we sit in our Universe, witness how kā whetū present themselves to us, begin to understand stellar navigation. Then we zoom in. First with binoculars, your own eyes going a little deeper. Then technology takes over ... our smartscope reaches into deep space, revealing colours and structures your eyes simply won't see, beautiful images developing in real time above you. And when the moment is right, the camera places you inside it. Astro portraits under the Southern night sky. Considered, crafted, and without a doubt - authenticAs. Your images from the day and the night will be edited by hand and delivered as a single album .. a story that moves from golden light to stars. These photographs on this listing are not marketing images. No models, no staging. They are from actual AuthenticAs tours. This is what you will leave with. Pickup from your accommodation in the Whakatipu Basin. A gradual unwinding as Queenstown falls away. Stops chosen for the light, the landscape, and your pace... short walks through ancient beech forest, along lake edges, into valleys most visitors never reach. Emma's picnic somewhere worth stopping for. Then the slow shift into evening, the darkening of the sky, and two hours under kā whetū with someone who knows exactly what he is looking at and why it matters. The drive home gives the night time to settle.

Pickup from your accommodation in the Whakatipu Basin. A gradual unwinding as Queenstown falls away. Stops chosen for the light, the landscape, and your pace... short walks through ancient beech forest, along lake edges, into valleys most visitors never reach. Emma's picnic somewhere worth stopping for. Then the slow shift into evening, the darkening of the sky, and two hours under kā whetū with someone who knows exactly what he is looking at and why it matters. The drive home gives the night time to settle.