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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.

  • 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.

  • 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!

  • 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.

  • 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.