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  • Road to the City

    road to the city

    With great weather outside, I managed to go for a bit of a ride on the motorbike for an hour after work before heading to the mall to begin Christmas shopping. Up in the Albany area of the North Shore, I dismounted and went for a bit of a walk around some land that is currently green pasture, but just as likely to be shops or industrial in the next decade.

    At the edge of the field ran a waist height barbed wire fence – stopping whoever/whatever from passing through and onto the motorway. There is no stock in the area, and even a short person could get over it, so its function is a little questionable. It did serve as part of todays image ‘road to the city’!

    Using Gimp I processed a cross-processing filter after applying a lomo effect. I then added ‘film grain’ and resized for the net.

    oh, and the Christmas shopping – the shops were already busy and full. Thankfully I got the majority of presents today as its only going to get worse next week!

  • The Corolla

    SONY DSC

    Running out of time and looking over old images from a few years ago – mostly of the collection of different cars I have owned, I pulled out an old imaged I used to sell my Corolla Ceres. Shot on my Sony A230 and Minolta 50mm lens, I recall using this image as a bit of a template for my ‘for sale’ images for the cars that followed.

    There was certainly nothing special about this car. It did take me on holiday around the North Island, never missed a beat and was good on fuel. Like many cars I have had, I owned it, drove it, grew tired with it and moved on.

    I still like the shot of it though.

    Something newer tomorrow!

  • EXIT 420

    Exit 420

    As part of a Christmas function I took some part in organising for work we had a local live band, EXIT 420. What they lack in years, they make up for in talent. Playing a broad spectrum of rock, and the odd Christmas number, they had a decent group of the audience up dancing and stepping to the beat. Perhaps I am starting to show my age, but these guys were young – I don’t recall talent to that degree when I was their age (I was playing orchestral type music…)

    Shot on the Sony Nex 5N at 3200 ASA and 1/60th of a second (no flash) I am still very pleased with the low light capability of the Sony. Looking at some of the more recent releases in digital cameras, we are simply seeing better and better low light capability- a great bonus for all, but especially hand-held no flash shooters!

    In Gimp I darkened the right of the shot, off and behind the stage and added a vignette. I then popped the contrast up a few points and resized.

    If you are ever in the Auckland area, check out their facebook page linked above and see if you catch them live somewhere!

  • The Beach (part II)

    Sunny Day

    As always, Mondays a busy day, so here is another shot from yesterdays outing. It really highlights the distance of the raft from the beach at high tide. I have memories visiting the beach as a young one and the journey it took to swim out to the raft, well above ones head height deep. That was with the old raft also, made of wood, which became very slippery after the first wet kid clambered on top of it.

    Out to the ocean we can see some of the smaller boats that were racing off Narrow Neck Beach around the corner.

    Post photo wise, I cropped and used a modified ‘national geographic’ plugin in Gimp. The image itself was overexposed a little (and this emphasised by the plugin), – its given the image a feeling that somewhat reflected my own eyesight as I squinted wishing I had brought along some sunglasses or a hat…

  • The Beach

    The Beach

    Another beautiful day weather wise in Auckland – bordering on hot. Todays shot is taken from North Head on the North Shore, looking north up Cheltnham beach towards Takapuna. A good number of people were out in the water, possibly experiencing the first swim of summer. We passed groups and couples relaxing on the hill in the sun and watched the various boat races out in the harbour.

    Today’s image was shot on the Sony with my Juipter-8 Lens. It had been a while since I had dug out the manual lens on the Sony, and today’s walk proved a good outing to do so on. Although a little softer as it gets to the corner, it gives a nice feeling to the images.

    Editing in Gimp, I did bump up the contrast a notch before resizing and adding rounded corners.

    That’s the end of Sunday, on rolls another week!