The Church of the Good Shepherd: New Zealand at the End of the Earth

I didn’t plan this one. Which, if you ask me, is usually when the good ones happen.

We’d been photographing our way toward Christchurch — the lone Wanaka Tree standing out in the lake like it knows it’s being watched, the impossible glacial blue of Lake Pukaki, a last-minute detour up to the Mt John observatory because someone (me) couldn’t help himself. We stopped for lunch by Lake Tekapo. And there, right on the shore, was this little stone church.

The Church of the Good Shepherd has stood on that spot since 1935 — which is to say, longer than anyone I thought to ask. It’s small. It’s plain. And on the day we were there it was flatly, gloriously overcast: the kind of grey light photographers pretend to be annoyed by and secretly adore, because it turns the entire sky into one enormous softbox.

I set the lake in front of it, the mountains behind it, and the little church in the middle of all that openness — and I knew before I’d taken the frame that it was the one. It’s the whole New Zealand experience in a single picture: just enough man-made to feel like home, sitting right on the doorstep of the wild.

What New Zealand actually feels like

Raw, untouched beauty is the closest I can get. It feels like the end of the earth — hostile enough to keep you honest, cold enough to remind you you’re a guest, and beautiful in a way that, somehow, no one has managed to wreck yet.

(I also came home with an indefensible number of photos of highland cows. New Zealand has the best-dressed livestock on the planet, and I will not be taking questions.)

The postcard

The church became part of the Postcards Collection — with a print for the wall, if a small church at the end of the earth earns a bigger spot in your house than a postcard rack. Start with the postcard. That’s how every collection starts.

— Preston