On the Hill

On the Hill

A lazy view relaxing in the long grass and sun from Mt Victoria on Aucklands North Shore. From here (if you look the right way) you can see the CBD, the Harbour Bridge and out towards West Auckland. A quick scamper over the crest and the rest of the North Shore, and local islands off it can be viewed into the distance.

Shot on the Ricoh GRD IV, using the bleach bipass mode. In Gimp I resized and added the rounded corners, otherwise as is from the camera.

Its been a wildly various week of weather for us here in Auckland – a beautiful hot sun today, heavy rain and tornadoes only two days ago. Here is hoping we are coming into some stable summer months.

Christmas is well and truly near. Shopping wise I adopt the ‘not time yet’ attitude, but heading into the shops today, I can see many are already stocking up.

The sun is still shining, so I will log off here and get back out into it!

NZ4115

Old Plane

One of my last Motat images I will post up for now I think – NZ4115. Outside the main hanger where a large number of restored planes sit, is the outside storage yard. Here sit a number of planes awaiting restoration, and until then, gradually weather away. Built in the 30’s, the Short S.25 Sunderland flying boat would have been used to patrol shorelines in wartime, and by the looks of this one, perhaps used as some form of transporter later in life. I believe plans are for it to be restored and stored undercover eventually.

Image wise I did a fair bit of playing around today. After straightening and cropping foreground I used the national geographic plug-in, added vignette and cross-processed with a brown tone. I then played with levels and colour balance.

Auckland (and wider New Zealand) got hit with some fairly fierce weather this afternoon, sadly with a few people loosing their lives to a tornado. Little known to myself at the time, but I must have been within a half km of the tornado as it struck. I didn’t really think much of it until a large number of emergency vehicles headed back in the direction I came from. Initial reports advised of about 150 homes damaged and widespread flooding. I’m sure a lot of thoughts go out to the families of all affected.

Wet Path Home

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!

Changeable Weather

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.

 

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