Photography – Page 7 – MikeHawkey.com

Today was a public holiday in New Zealand – Queens Birthday. A bit of a cold and cloudy day – marking Winter for us, we took a stroll into town where the wharf had some celebrations on. Walking there I pass the old Kestrel (one of the oldest ferry’s still floating in Auckland – that used to serve the seaside community of Devonport up to about 15 years ago). We then walked along the waterfront, past some of the bigger sailboats in the area. Not much happening,but the water was nice and calm.

Reaching the wharf, we were first welcomed by various car displays, and then some interesting old British bikes.

Check out the ‘fire bike’

Inside, some morris dancers.

Happy NZ Queens Birthday!

Yesterdays shot wasn’t gained in a single press of the shutter (or screen, since it was take on the iPod). It took a number of attempts to get the seagull close enough, in focus and framed for me to then edit it. Looking at the above image, its almost more like the gull was photobombing me I think!

Tempted with bread, a few of the seagulls were game enough to fly up and grab the bread from the other half’s hands. I just had to take the shot in focus enough, whilst missing the bread (Im sure I could have edited it out) and after a few shots, I decided it also needed to remove the background – too easy to get a wonky horizon, or get an uninteresting background.

I do like the closer up one (its the only that close I got) Almost used it, but didn’t, and settled on the final shot below to further edit by content aware stretching the background to make a landscape rather than portrait shot.