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  • Abandoned Ute

    Out on the road writing from a motel today. Today we went up for brunch at the Leigh Sawmill Cafe – a great place to stop for a meal & band, or on the way to Goat Island, about an hour north of Auckland. Whilst walking up a viewpoint track I spotted a ute abandoned on someones farm. I always find it curious farmers seem to run their vehicles until they stop and just leave them there – theres probably a photographic book on that topic alone!

    Taken on the Ricoh and post cropped to remove some of the foreground which had dark shadows. I started taking some images on the Rollei 35 today also, so am looking forward to seeing how they turn out when I finish the film. Staying at an area called Gulf Harbour tonight. Looks to be some good snap opportunities for Sunday ahead!

  • Blue Windows in the Sky

    Image

    I stopped in at Takapuna on the way home from work today for a stroll, Ricoh in hand. It was a beautiful clear blue evening, with the moon already up. The Sentinel, a 30 story apartment building in central Takapuna uses blue tint windows, and I liked the overall blue hue I got in this image. Being the biggest building in the Area, you can also capture it in the sky unhindered by other buildings.

    Coming home and reducing the image size for the web I was happy to see Gimp has finally released the 2.8 version of their great program. Its taken about 3 years to come about following 2.6 and now offers a single window interface. For people who want something that can in may ways (no not all I know) do all you need in Photoshop, but free-ware, I cant recommend Gimp enough. Overall my work flow shifted from CS4 to Gimp about 3 years ago. Its a bit of a learning curve transferring, but if you have never used either I don’t think it is any harder to pick up from scratch, will do all you ever want & has a massive community of developers adding to it + there is a version for every computer operating system (yet to get to smart phones)

    Off for a short 3 day holiday tomorrow, so hopefully I will have some images from a different general location.

  • Portrait of a BMW

    Todays image is one I took a little while ago on my Sony A230 DSLR with a 50mm Minolta lens. I really wanted to see if I could create a car image that may have been used by BMW when releasing the 5 Series . Although this is the smaller web optimized version of that image I’m pretty happy with the end result, and think its a much more appealing image in B&W.

    I finally finished off the B&W film in my Ricoh today and sent it off to the developers, si I’m keenly waiting to see what I get back and what I can share here. I’ll load and start shooting a self develop film in my Rollei 35 T over the next few days also – it will be interesting to see how I go stepping back to a full manual setup – including the necessity to guess the focus distance as the 35’s have no focus assistance like most cameras.

    Queens Birthday celebrated here in NZ on Monday, so one more day till the long weekend!

  • One-way Rush Hour

    I’m starting to think whenever I take my Sony out, it brings the rain along with it… if it wasn’t for winter I’d be convinced! Todays image, ‘One-way Rush Hour’ taken in high contrast B&W on the Nex 5n shows the traffic leaving town just after knock off time. Often the traffic is heavy both ways, so I must have caught it either just to early, or late.

    Taken from the overpass at Pt Erin, I like how the lines of the motorway take to you the cityscape in the background. Just on sundown again, the B&W image had more impact the color ones shot at the same time.

  • Takapuna Landing

    Takapuna beach is just down the road from Lake Pupuke, which featured in my photo on May 24th. A popular beach for runners and dog walkers after work, it also features regular iron man competitions in Summer. In addition to these, a kayak tour leaves here to explore our youngest volcanic island Rangitoto.

    Todays photo, taken on the Nex 5n, I think in HDR ‘painting’ mode was snapped about 10min after sunset. Truth be told, I was just experimenting with some of its built in options and liked this cropped image most out of the ‘mode experimenting lot’. I dont use it nearly enough, but I must say the Sony really is quite impressive hand held after dark. Obviously the higher into the ISO range you go, the more noise, but it really does capture an awful lot before you need a tripod.