Capturing an award-winning photo of a spectacular aurora in the skies above Dunedin, or watching a bruising battle between the Highlanders and the Crusaders \u2014 it was a night that left Chris Watson wanting to tear himself in two.<\/p>\n
On Mother\u2019s Day last year, the 45-year-old Te Anau semi-professional photographer was in Dunedin to watch the rugby at Forsyth Barr Stadium, but as he headed out the door, he could see the sky above him lighting up, and there was a long moment when he considered ditching the rugby to photograph the rare and spectacular phenomenon.<\/p>\n
In the end, he caved to peer pressure and went with his family to the rugby.<\/p>\n
“It was a great night. The Highlanders beat Canterbury, which was good.<\/p>\n
“But I was actually a wee bit disappointed to be at the game, because the aurora earlier on was very, very good, and I thought I\u2019d missed it.<\/p>\n
“We could see the aurora through the lights around the stadium.”<\/p>\n
After the game, he was delighted to look up and see the sky still “pulsing and going crazy”.<\/p>\n
“I just said to my wife: \u2018You\u2019re going to pick Mum up and I\u2019m going to go and take some photos\u2019.”<\/p>\n
One of those photos claimed runner-up in the landscape category of the Nature Conservancy New Zealand 2025 Oceania Photo Contest.<\/p>\n
He said the vertical panorama shot was “truly a bucket-list photo in such a built-up area”.<\/p>\n
He was also delighted to have won an award in an Oceania photographic competition.<\/p>\n
Asked what the highlight of the night was in hindsight \u2014 the Highlanders winning, or the aurora \u2014 Mr Watson said it was “a tough one”.<\/p>\n
“Seeing the Highlanders beat the Crusaders \u2014 you don\u2019t see that every day, so that was a good highlight.<\/p>\n
“But the aurora, that was a pretty once-in-a-lifetime opportunity \u2014 well, both of them are pretty rare occasions, if we\u2019re being really honest.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Capturing an award-winning photo of a spectacular aurora in the skies above Dunedin, or watching a bruising battle…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":145103,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[442,498,499,500,501,156,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-145102","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-artsdesign","tag-design","tag-entertainment","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145102","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=145102"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145102\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/145103"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=145102"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=145102"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=145102"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}