photos and other things…
Off out for dinner tonight, so slotting a quick post in. Although perhaps not for all, but a refreshing view from my work window today – clouds! – ones that suggest the possibility of rain!
As I have mentioned prior, a lot of New Zealand is in a drought. Great for the wine makers and beach goers, bad for the farmers and tank water homes. Sunday is forecast for rain, so we will see how it goes.
Image wise, shot on the Galaxy S2 and edited in Afterfocus.
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.
What started out as a clear sunny day, turned into a heavily wet day by works end today. I had planned to have a stroll around some of the light industry areas, but was not prepared for the thick downpours the sky offered.
Driving home I wanted to capture the weather a little. Using my Ricoh and its wide angle lens, the rain out of the open window didn’t appear so obvious. Rather, I switched to macro and focused on the raindrops on the windscreen, blurring out the background, but leaving enough detail to make a road visible.
In post processing using Gimp I cropped out some of the sky, sharpened, added a light vignette and pushed the colour saturation up a tad.
Maybe there will be more sun tomorrow!
We really had a day of changeable weather today in Auckland. One moment I was in warm sun, the next heavy rain.
Looking out of my office window, out into the mix of suburbia and small industry, I shot today’s image on my Ricoh GRD IV.
In post processing I resized, selected the clouds, pushed the contrast and reduced the brightness. I then converted the whole image to B&W, and touched the contrast a little further. Finally I cropped the aspect a little, removing a larger roof section in the foreground.
A rainy old Sunday here in Auckland today. Still, I wanted to get out and about for a walk and brought my Nex 5n along as it frequently gets left at home for the pocket friendly GRD. In addition to this I brought along my Ricoh 35mm camera, for which I have a few B&W frames left on the film to finish still. I went for a stroll around North Head and its old wartime fortress remains. Shortly into the walk it started bucketing down and the sony stayed put in my bag. My cellphone, for which I have less value for proved trustworthy in the rain and I managed to get some pictures. Todays image is of some of the old guns on the hill. Backed up by a massive disappearing cannon, these guns from WW2 were never used in anger, and only used for ceremonial activities. Long since decommissioned, they remain as part of the reminder of New Zealand’s wartime activities.
As above, todays image was taken on my mobile phone, Samsung Galaxy i5800 (3mp), using the vignette app, and post edited in photoshop with a slight bump up of contrast. There was nothing to see but a cloud of rain in the distance, not particularly great light for photos, but I like the result.
MikeHawkey.com 