Month: August 2012

Marmite (the New Zealand edition)

Today’s image is a bit of a fun, sad and tragic reflection on a number of events – some being trivial and others quite the opposite. For readers who do not know of Marmite – it is a yeast spread, often loved or hated. Also made in England and South Africa, ‘Sanitarium Marmite‘ is a New Zealand only product that sadly halted production with the tragic Christchurch earthquakes  (the November quake being responsible for Marmites halt).

I took this image not long after the halt to document my supplies, which tragically (on a trivial level) have now run out – I’m in the ‘love it’ camp. On a more serious level, I was reminded of this when at a presentation in the conference I attended over the last few days.  Watching a video filmed a few weeks ago, almost two years on the city is slowly recovering, but is still in a state of disrepair. Some suburbs are still using portable toilets, roads are still broken up, the central city still half closed, and plans for repair moving, but not at the pace all would like. Residents still suffer regular aftershocks as they wait to find out if their homes can be repaired or are written off. Unfortunately, with no ‘new’ news it falls from our vision via the media. I was quite shocked to see the troubles some residents face two years on.

Image wise, I took it on my Samsung Galaxy 3 (not S3) using vignette and upped a contrast a little in Gimp.

Aroha Christchurch Aroha being the Maori word translating to much love)

 

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The Cold Evening

For the first few days of this week I am out near the Auckland Airport attending a work conference. I had a few hours to kill between the last talk to dinner time, so went for a bit of a stroll. Being stuck indoors all day I had no idea of the weather outside. The low flat geographic surroundings of the airport no  doubt assisted in the chilly temperature as the sun slowly sank past the horizon.

I found a nice little walking track that seemed to pass through some farm land. Surrounded by flax bush, I reached an opening and came across an attractive, close to silhouette of a tree and captured a few images on my Ricoh.

I’m not sure why, but often when I am taking nature shots, unless it is capturing a massive and wide scenic area , I almost always tend to capture nature in portrait format. This, in some peoples books, breaks one of the shooting rules. It comes without much thought – I think mostly because I am looking to ‘zone in’ on a particular area (the tree in today’s image), and also that I like the feeling of a vast, wide sky above.

Its been a long day, so perhaps I will sleep on it and give it some more thought later on…

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A Sunday Stroll

The weather looked like it would pack in my late afternoon today, so we got out the house for a beach stroll before it did (and it did just after we got home). I headed out with my GRD IV and R10 Ricoh’s – mostly with the intention to shoot film, but also to capture something for today’s posting.

It appeared many other had the same intention, and with the tide low we walked along some of the coastline, between beaches. Today’s image, from the GRD IV, was taken in its colour bleach mode. In Gimp I cropped in the black header/footer, re-boosted colour a little and resized .

When I got home I remembered I was going to try out my new Nex lens, but it will have to wait for another day now.

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Spring is Near

Last night we had a massive storm with thunder and lightening that seemed never ending. I woke this morning to a clear blue sky, and what turned out to be a reasonably warm day. One can definitely tell spring is on its way.

I had hoped to shoot a roll of film on my little Olympus Mju 1 today, and did get 5 shots off before it was dropped and run over by a dodgem. Alas it did not survive the incident and I’m left mourning this fantastic compact cameras passing. I have transferred the film into my Ricoh  R10, so hopefully those last 5 images can be saved at least.

Today’s image was snapped several days ago on my GRD IV in bleach mode. Resized in Gimp, otherwise untouched, it was the perfect mourning and spring is on its way image for the day!

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Caution

For Health and Safety reasons we had a caution sign put on our hot water urn at work recently. It got me thinking about how much aspects of the world have changed in the last decade or so. When I was young my dad would take me to the surf beach where I would tumble about in the waves. I know people who wont go there now as its too dangerous. There was a three story playground near my Grandmas house – I passed it a while ago and the top floor has been removed, the second floor fenced in…we used to climb on the roof and I never heard of a kid falling. Rope swings were on trees on hills – giving kids a terrifying rush when they held on with all their might…now the trees have been cut down due to danger risks.

Have we taken safety and caution so far that we are preventing people/kids from learning lessons any more? I cant help but think so.

Image wise, using my mobile phone and Vignette I was drawn to the urn for the simple and washed look. Black, white and red. The days sun coming from the left and casting the shadow of the urn and bareness otherwise leaves a simple, yet thoughtful image reflecting my above thoughts. In post processing with Gimp I cropped for the net and added an extra 1/4 to the left of the image to almost square the image and create the composition I was initially after.

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Island Bay Wharf

Some more mixed weather again today with warm bright sun, followed by heavy cold showers… Spring is on its way!

A visit for work to Beach Haven took me past Island Bay Wharf. Testing my balance again in flat soled dress shows I worked my way down the muddy sandstone flats to the base of the wharf to capture a few shots.

With a white sky, the image improved greatly when I converted to black and white in Gimp.

I also took delivery of a new lens for my Nex (actually one new and one old), both longer telephoto zooms, one Sony and the other an old Minolta mount. If the weather is right I might try to take them out in the weekend.

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Ask the Big G

Some more street art combined with ‘nature art’ today. Walking through town after work I narrowly missed a downpour of rain and went looking for some more interesting street art. Just as I came across this interesting ‘I don’t have all the answers’ artwork a rainbow appeared! I thought it made a pretty funny combination and play on themes with Mr J looking up at the sky and a rainbow leading the way up.

Taken on my Galaxy cellphone, in post production I wanted to over-do the photo a little. Pushing the saturation hard, I brought out the rainbow a little more and gave the buildings over the fence a golden glow. I lightened the blue wall a little and added a touch of sharpening and contrast.

If you like the artwork check out component’s art here. there is a lot of cool work, much that I have spotted when on my journeys in town.

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Punakaiki and the Rocks

Looking back over my last handful of images I decided today needed a bit more colour and brightness to it! As I had worked extra yesterday, I was hoping to get off early today, but unfortunately that was not to be…so I dived into my archives.

Punakaiki, otherwise know as the place with the Pancake Rocks, is part of the Paparoa National Park in the South Island of New Zealand. I visited them late last year (along with a huge group of other tourists to the area). The amazing pancake like ‘piles’ stretch out from the ocean and stand out as a bit of an oddity compared to everything else around them. As the tide comes up there is a number of blow-holes. I encourage anyone travelling the South Island to put it in one of your (many) must stop locations!

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Black & White Sky

I managed to develop the film from the Rollei 35 last night. As previously mentioned, it was a 100asa I had pushed to 800asa. To top it off, its of about the cheapest film brand – Lucky SHD100. Overall I think I could have either pushed out the developing time/temperature, or given a little more exposure on the camera. I have not actually tested the camera against a light meter or one of my digital cameras, so should do that. Anyway, the film was a bit under exposed as a result of one of the above.

That being said, I did get a number of images I liked the feel of, today’s image ‘Black and White Sky’ being one of them.  After scanning I used Gimp to slightly straighten, crop and then bumped the contrast a little and added the slight sepia tone. Taken without any filters, I do like the boat masts reaching up to a dramatic sky and the ball of sun at the top.

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Dark Forest River

Today’s image, ‘Dark Forest River’ came about from a second (with daylight and more time) walk through Smiths Bush today. Just before we entered there was a massive heavy downpour of rain, which resulted in some beautiful glistening, and flooded portions of the track. A small stream had widened quite a bit sine a few days ago and I took a few shots looking up it.

Armed with both digital and film, I managed to finish off a roll in my Rollei 35 today. I’ve been shooting the 100 as 800Asa, more for a push developing experiment as I have not tried that before. Fingers crossed I will have something to show you all for it some time later this week.

Using Gimp in post processing I first converted to B&W, then manipulated the image by squishing and stretching it a little and adding the black frame-lines to give us a bit of a ‘cinematographic feel’. I like the end result.

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