Jamie Drew's Very Good PrintsWe took a trip to Moana on the Tranzalpine, the only train in New Zealand, because we never take a trip for ourselves, you know? Every time we go somewhere it's to see friends, family, whoever, but this one time my grandma — who sensed the end of her life approaching any day now for the ten or fifteen years until it happened — bought us a trip on the Tranzalpine train because she was certain she would never get to see it herself, on the proviso that I send her some pictures. So here's one of those pictures, taken during the darkest night I've ever been awake to experience. That countryside darkness that turns every brush of the wind into a monster with a thousand sharp teeth waiting to take a bite out of you, or a crazed axe murderer waiting just behind those bushes, or a third, even worse option, something straight out of Stephen King's worst nightmares, unfathomable to the tiny human mind. Somehow I managed to steel my nerves long enough to take this long exposure, about thirty seconds if memory serves. That's thirty seconds of me not pissing my pants in fear. That's a hard thing to put a price on, but by god I've done it.
