Project Mini

A photo, and project from the archives today. Although I have not done much of recent, in the past I almost always had a project car on the go. Todays image was of my old 1975 Mini Clubman 1000. The second Mini project I have completed, it started life (well started for me) as a somewhat run down blue Clubman (I might feature a before/after or project post one day). After driving it around for a day (initially it was just going to be a runabout), I stripped it down to a bare shell and started the restoration.

Image wise, I am not sure what camera I used at the time. Possibly a fuji superzoom, but my image on file is a tiny 600×800, so smaller than my usual down sized posts. Editing, I desaturated all but the red of the Mini.

March 4, 2013 0

Burma the Elephant

Looking back to my first post on MikeHawkey.com, I thought I would post up one of the images used in the post, and my cover art for the site. Hunting through my folders of images, I found it, Burma the Elephant.

Burma is Auckland Zoo’s only current elephant, sadly after its other, Kashin, died at a youthful 40 years old in 2009. An ‘Asian elephant’, Burma was born in 1982, and thanks to a dedicated team of helpers, although currently alone, Burma is in good health and doing well. Described as being much like a cheeky teen, she is energetic and mischievous. Sweet fruits, painting (which can be brought) and visiting other animals on daily walks around the zoo are amongst Burma’s fun-to-do things. I have read the Zoo is working hard to try and get some more elephant friends for Burma. No doubt its a slow process, but fingers crossed it comes together!

Image wise, this was shot last year on my Sony Nex 5N. I dont have any lens data, so I suspect it was on my Jupiter-11 lens. Editing wise, I cropped the foot of the rider off and lifted the saturation a little.

March 3, 2013 4

Hong Kong Market

Momentarily when I arrived home, I was happy to see the internet had been fixed…then I sat down and it stopped again. Perhaps its some radio wave I emit when I enter the house!? Its working right now at least, so I will get on with todays post.

Shot back something like a decade now in Hong Kong on my Minolta Dynax, I captured this image from one of the local market streets. It had been raining, and I vaguely recall walking up behing the old lady with the brolly to frame her in the shot looking up the street.

Originally shot in colour film, after it being scanned in, I converted to B&W in gimp, and slightly cropped the aspect of the image.

I’d love to get the opportunity to stop over at Hong Kong again. Its a world apart from here in New Zealand, and perhaps its that difference that makes it so appealing. I love the contrast of buildings and people around. Following various bloggers and youtube channels, I like to see what is changing and what is the same. One day I’ll head back.

February 28, 2013 0

Sails on the Harbour

An old archive shot for today. Not quite sure where the day has gone, but gone it has.

Shot on one of my old cameras, the Canon G12, from North Head, looking into the city. I dont recall if it was any specific regatta day, but I liked how the low sun desaturates all but the sails of the boats.

Resized in Gimp, but otherwise as is from camera.

Sort and sweet again today – we are STILL having internet issues. Its a shame – I have been completely happy with our provider until 3 weeks ago… not so much now based on very slow and non communicative service.

February 24, 2013 0

Car Park by Night

Heading off to the annual Lantin festival in Aucklands CBD this evening, I captured this image of the mid-town car park. I like how at night you can see right into it, whilst all around is black. Its almost like a giant dolls house where one removes the side wall to see what is happening.

Shot on the Nex 5N with 16-50mm lens. Very light editing in Gimp.

February 23, 2013 4

Beach Migration

New Zealand, being fairly isolated on a country scale, has a vast history of migrating. The indigenous group of New Zealand, The Maori have legends of the great Waka that brought them to New Zealand from Hawaiki. Some time later the European discoverers came to the South Seas of the Pacific – Abel Tasman,and most notably Captain Cook. Soon enough people from England (and other areas of Europe) came to the brave new land and settled. Skip forward a few hundred years (we are a fairly young country) and we still see people coming to New Zealand for its beautiful lifestyle.

As a side, this got me thinking about passports and the process involved in moving from place to place. If anyone has any interesting articles/books on when exactly the world was divided up to the level one needed ID and permission to move from one land to another please add a comment. We take it as the norm now, but it cannot have always been such.

Todays image, ‘Beach Migration’, influenced by my thoughts, is of a group of paddle boarders of Aucklands Takapuna Beach. Cutting out the beach in the foreground, I wanted to create some form of impression that they are heading to Rangitoto Island.

Shot on the Ricoh GRD IV and edited in the OSX version of Gimp 2.8

February 22, 2013 0

Black and White Garbage

As posted yesterday, Wednesday night I attended the Garbage concert at the Auckland Civic. Being concerts can be iffy about cameras, especially ones with Lenses that look big, I took along a Ricoh CX6. A great little camera with 10.7x zoom, as with all small point and shoots, it struggled a little with focus at times, and certainly had some noise at the higher ISO’s. Turns out other people (non officials) had walked in with their DSLR’s, so I could have taken something more substantial, but never mind – a great little camera with a big zoom that fits in the pocket, and has many of the custom aspects my usual GRD IV has.

Capturing Shirley, Duke, Steve and Butch, I cropped in a little on todays image. To deal with noise, I decided B&W was the way to go, and also pushed the contrast and slightly adjusted sharpness. All done in CS5.

Today marks a bit of a changeover in post image shooting for me. We purchased a new Mac, and my Linux machine, although still in use, is slowly getting things transferred over from. I like to use all OS’s, so will continue to do so, but mostly for now on OSX. Likely I will continue on with Gimp, but I also have more opportunity to keep in practice with Photoshop and the like also – something I have mentioned before, I am well out of practice with. As we are still battling with ISP issues, I have not yet managed to get Gimp on the Mac, but will attempt again over the next few days.

February 21, 2013 0

Looking to the West

For the last few days I have been shooting with my Ricoh GRD IV set to a custom setting ‘positive film’. I have written before about the great menu system on this little fixed focal length compact, with full manual controls.Positive film is a setting I have not, until this last week, used. I must say I like the colour settings it provides. Of course, one can just shoot straight raw/jpeg and adjust in post processing, but sometimes its fun just to customise it in the camera (as the Ricoh does very well) and shoot. Hence aside from resizing and signature, today’s image is from camera.

With an overall busy weekend, I got up early and took the opportunity to take a walk around the Bayswater area on the North Shore. Stopping at a cliff top, looking out west, we can see the Bayswater Marina, and then further in the distance, to the right, the Auckland Harbour Bridge.

As the sun slowly sinks towards the horizon, we see the end of another weekend. Im not quite sure where the weekend has gone!

February 17, 2013 3

Friday! – time to explore the weekend

One from the archives today as I have a dinner to attend straight after work.

Friday. For many of us (and equally not for many) it marks the end of the working week. Time to kick off the shoes, relax, or perhaps explore new pleases and meet new people. Today’s shot gives me a sense of both. I don’t recall exactly where it was shot , but was shot again on the Nex with the 30mm Sigma lens. In post, I added a cross processed filter with aqua hue, some faint ‘digital grain’ and the old instant snap type boarder.

Not quite sure where the weekend is taking us this week, but I will just assume this image is a precursor and enjoy the end of the working week!

February 15, 2013 0

Shades of Blue

Feb 14th – Valentines Day! (some interesting facts there)

Today’s image, shot alongside yesterdays during the rain passing through. I loved how the environment had a mix of contrasts with the sun shining in areas, and the dark clouds in others. Not a lot more to say about it really. Shot on the Nex with 16-50mm lens. Small adjustments, but essentially out of camera.

February 14, 2013 6