Month: October 2012

The Landing

Its funny how animals have learnt that what they do, and aspects of human behaviour equates to reward. Frequently when visiting the beach or lakes, enjoying some lunch or dinner, the ducks, swans, pukeko and seagulls also know its lunch or dinner time. If they didn’t come flying and running, its unlikely we would end up throwing them 10% of our fish and chips.

They have yet to learn that someone who comes walking and sitting in aforementioned places with a camera does not necessarily come with reward. I took a stroll around part of Lake Pupuke, Sony Nex in hand (not food). At each point ducks, geese and swans would hurriedly come quacking on foot, through the water and air, only to be disappointed with a rewarding click of the camera. Not that their expressions change much, but some made me feel lousy that I didn’t bring them food!

Today’s image, just before sunset was of one such upset duck who flew from the other side of the park hoping to get some supper before bedtime. In Gimp I added a lomo filter which framed the incoming flyer well.

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Back to Nature

I took a big walk in the CBD area today, searching out places I have no memory of going, or had not been for a good many years. One such place was the Symonds Street Cemetery. Now a historic parks area, I found it quite fascinating, with mixed emotions.

Established in 1842, by Western New Zealand terms, this is a very old graveyard, home to many early Auckland settlers, and several people of notable title. From the road, the cemetery is selectively maintained, but as you walk in and dwell a little deeper, nature really has taken over.

On one hand it is sad to see this history being cracked up, overturn and overgrown, but from another perspective, its almost the ultimate return to nature. I cant say I have placed much thought on where I want to end up at end of days, but I don’t think I would be that upset if after a century passes I have been engulfed by a tall tree that was once a shrub by my headstone.

Walking through the Cemetery I saw a number of homeless, or evidence of them staying there. A tent hidden in the overgrown wild bush being one of the more ‘high class’ establishments. Parts of the lower cemetery, where the highway has cut across, had been used for a dumping ground of tyres. Everywhere I went there was evidence of gravestones that had fallen into disrepair, or literally been absorbed into bush and tree as the forest took over. One other thing I found interesting is how the city also has ‘overgrown’ over the graveyard. Grafton Bridge, a tall two lane vehicle bridge cuts over the graveyard- leaving but inches over a number of headstones, and likely meant relocating a number more.

For those in the CBD looking for a walk, I highly recommend it. There are a number of tracks one can explore, and although I made mention of vagrants, I have never had an issue with such folk as long as you are respectful (there was only a handful anyway). Its a beautiful inner city bush. As the cemetery is divided into two with Symonds street breaking it down the middle, I will likely visit the other half another day when I head that way.

Photo wise, taken on the Ricoh GRD IV with bleach bypass, all I did with post in Gimp was crop the aspect a little and resize for web.

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The Door

The weekend has felt a long time coming this week. Luckily, its a long weekend in New Zealand with Labour Day. I had time for a quick walk before dinner after work today, and had a look around the back streets of Takapuna. Armed with my Nex and the kit lens, I took this simple image of a door and stairwell coming out of the back of a building.

In post processing I converted to Black and White, pushed the contrast and added some vignette. What’s behind that door?
Perhaps its the weekend!

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The Old Homestead

As mentioned yesterday, I had not had much time to take photos after work recently. Today I had time, but limited thoughts around what I felt like capturing.

I took a wander around a local park and came across an old run down building. Once home and looking at the shots, there still was not a lot of inspiration…just an off day I guess.

What I did do was experiment a little with colouring the image (it was shot in B&W). I remember doing this years ago with film black and white images, so had a go at the digital equivalent. I cropped this image quite significantly from the original, and also added some blur layers, simply because I felt it worked better for what I think I was looking for in my final result.

So there we are, a slightly blurred, lightly coloured image for a ‘slightly blurred mind’ kind of day…

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Sheep 2

Even though the days are slowly getting longer, of late it seem like I have less and less time free to go out and shoot some photos…I’ll have to do something about that, but for now, here is an image I took several weeks back on the Sony Nex 5N at Cornwall Park.

Post processing wise, I played with the levels a little and added a slight colour tone to the image.

Sheep are funny animals. The have the ability to be a bit intimidating the way they stare at you breathing heavily. In reality I expect most the time they would think the opposite, breathing heavily, panicking what that human is going to do next. For anyone looking for a ‘sheep movie’ try the New Zealand filmed Black Sheep.

Fingers crossed I can get some images tomorrow!

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The Colour Lavender

Dropping in to see some family after work today, I caught a quick snap of the lavender in full bloom.

Using Gimp in post processing, I desaturated several colours, slightly adjusted levels and added a little sharpness.

Sort and sweet for today!

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Mondays End

Mondays are usually a busy day for me. Its back to work, and then training with the fire service in the evening. Today was particularly busy with me setting up for some employer awards. End result of all of this being no time for taking some images (although I did get a few shot at the awards)

‘Mondays End’ was shot the other weekend on the Olympus four thirds DSLR I borrowed. A nice simple and relaxing image shot laying in the long grass with the telephoto lens.

Only resizing done in post processing, with the colour etc. straight from the camera.

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The Question

Possibly a little more dark than my usual images, no little plastic people were actually harmed in the making of ‘The Question’.

Playing around with some ideas for the EOS Photo 5 competition whilst the weather outside was again poor I come up with this little arrangement.

Using the Ricoh GRD IV, the macro function is really quite good. Smaller sensors generally allow you to get closer to the image, in this case about 1.5cm away from the main subject. Macro functions are also generally the only time you get a real small depth of field on smaller sensor cameras.

Shot in bleach bypass mode, all I did in post processing is add the words and resize.

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The Dinner

Some terrible weather had here today. I had intended to head out with the GR1 and get some film shots in town, but heavy rain and wind prevented a successful outing.

The day otherwise filled up with catching up with friends, I played around a little more with Paper Camera on my Samsung Galaxy s2 and chose today’s image ‘The Dinner’ for my shot to publish.

Just resizing done in Gimp, otherwise as shot on the App. One could almost make a comic book using it and shooting real people!?

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The Bicycle

Another fine day in Auckland and another day where my schedule allowed me to bicycle to work. After reading an interesting article on The f8 Blog, by Olivier Duong, I decided to have a play around with the snap focus on my Ricoh. Its a feature that many GR owners love, especially for street shooting. A standard feature on all Ricoh GR cameras, I will have to give it a try some time on my GR1 also. The benefit? – I would suggest just reading Oliviers article, but essentially it allows you to pre-set focus, which along with a manually set aperature and shutter equals a very fast street snapping machine.

For today’s photo, I was on the street, but not quite street snapping. Hitting the road with the GRD IV set to B&W, I wanted to get a strong silhouette of shadow as the main section of the image. Did I need snap focus for this? no, not really, but it didn’t harm.

In post processing I cropped to square format. I could have done this in camera, but as I was riding my bike at the time, and its a fixed gear cycle, I decided post gave me a little more flexibility and slightly more safety. I pushed the contrast a little more and also adjusted sharpness.

Weekend time!

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