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  • Long Bay Regional Park

    One thing about New Zealand is you are never very far from the sea. Even inland areas are within a few hours driving. We actually have the 10th longest coastline in the world! Today’s image was taken on my Sony yesterday during my visit to Long Bay Regional Park. For anyone visiting the area, Long Bay is enormously popular in Summer as it has a long beach line and grassed area where families can set up for the day, groups can play sports, and all can cool off in the calm waters. It also has several bush and cliff top walks for those who don’t want to just laze in the sun.  To top it off, the park has a decent number of BBQ’s for cooking up some sausages, steaks or what have you at lunch time. If you do come in the summer, aim to come early as car parks, although a lot of them, become scarce by late morning.

     

  • The Tree with Red Flowers

    After a fairly packed weekend, I managed to take some time out later this afternoon and take the bike up to Long Bay Regional Park. The weather was nice, and a large number of people were spread throughout the beach and grass sections of the park. I went for a stroll around the nature walk area, which was void of any people!

    On the way there I came across this tree, blossoming for the spring weather. Against all the other evergreens, it stood out.

    In post processing I selectively desaturated several colour, adjusted the contrast and sharpness and resized.

  • Lazy Day

    Him or Me?

    The day before heading off on holiday I posted about almost running into a seal dozing on the rocks. Here it is!

    Applying the ‘national geographic’ filter in Gimp has actually highlighted it a little more. Take a few steps back and the seal really blends into the surrounding rock and sandstone.

    On the side of lazyness for me, really just lazy on the camera shooting front.  I spent a decent amount of today sorting through parts of my camera collection – choosing what to keep and what to sell. I have amassed quite a bit of old film gear over this last year and a bit (after pledging not to get any digital cameras for 2012). I’m keeping cameras that are either a bit harder to come by, or have some sentimental value to me. I hate things just sitting on the shelf, never being used – better it goes to a new home to be used, like its creator intended!

    Anyway, that’s all for today. Its daylight savings for us here in NZ tonight, so an extra hour of sun tomorrow! (well, not really, but that’s what they say…)

  • Leaving on a Jet Plane

    A week on, reflecting on my trip to Fiji, I had a great time. The people were nice, the weather was great, and the food equally fantastic. I’m not sure when, but I’d like to go back again one day. I have a pile more shots, some which I will post at some stage, but for now, I’ll leave the series with today’s ‘Leaving on a Jet Plane’ – my last ‘on foot’ view of the country.

    Using Gimp, I cropped, converted to B&W , sharpened and added a vignette. The image worked fairly well in colour also, but I like the changes so went with the monochrome final.

  • ‘Follow the Yellow Brick Road’

    So…its not a brick road, or a yellow one at that, but ‘follow the orange flower trail’  didn’t have quite the ring to it that came to mind when I took, or view today’s image.

    When out in the bush, in general, we get an amazing mix of forest colours – browns and greens essentially. These orange flowers that had fallen from the trees really stood out when we went through a trail in Fiji. When I captured the image, I was drawn to the trail of orange disappearing into the path ahead.

    Originally captured in portrait, I went for a square format in my post processing – keeping all the subject matter in the image and not loosing anything of any relevance. Some people shoot a lot in square format – whether it be the traditional medium format 6×6 film, cropped digital or various smart phone apps. I do quite like the format, so may look at doing some more, probably B&W in it at some stage.

    Cropping aside, I also pushed the saturation a bit to make the flowers pop, and slightly sharpened the image also.

    Shot on the Ricoh GRD IV.