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  • Serenity in the Mud of Eskdale

    As I often do, I searched for a short bush walk to explore after work today. One great thing about the North Shore (or many areas of New Zealand really) is that you are never far from some form of nature walk. Heading towards the Birkenhead area I stopped at a place called Eskdale Bush. 10min into the walk and it became obvious that my flat soled leather work boots were not very well equipped for the completely sodden wet terrain. Dodging the muddy patches, I still managed to get ankle deep, remarkably without ending up on my backside.

    Mud aside, Eskdale Bush is a wonderful walk with numerous tracks one can turn into. Surrounded by the suburbs, there is no real risk of being badly lost. Just as I hit one of the lower and deeper parts of the bush I came across a small, possibly newly formed, stream. With the Ricoh set to 800iso I positioned as low and stable as the slippery surrounding would allow and followed the stream into the forest.

    In post production using Gimp, I felt a little lazy today and applied the ‘national geographic’ filter – one I often like the out of the box result with.

    After the loss of my Olympus Mju over the weekend, I took delivery of a cheap as chips Samsung Fino 140 pocked film camera today. Although nothing special it looks to be a very nice late model film shooter with a 38-140mm lens. I’m not expecting much, but am looking forward to seeing how it performs with some B&W film…that’s after I finish the film already inside it!

  • 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)

     

  • 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…

  • 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.

  • 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!