Blog | Christopher John Photography

July 4, 2015July 4, 2015

What a relief!!

St Pauls Anglican Church, 141 Chapel Road, Flat Bush

I think it started on the 22nd June … hard to say, but I think that was the day. For some bizarre reason, every time I tried to use my Nik Plugins for Photoshop to edit my photos, Photoshop would crash. Talk about stressful! I’ve spent quite some time creating a range of filters and techniques that have now become a significant part of my image processing workflow. Then, on the 22nd June, it all started going wrong. I could open Photoshop, edit and save a file, but any subsequent image I tried to edit would cause Photoshop to crash. I had to open and close Photoshop for each image I wanted to edit and, as you can imagine, this was taking forever. I was at a loss as to what could be wrong. I checked online and found little to help. I suppose, as a last resort, not expecting much in the way of a response, I contacted Google and told them of my problems. They were wonderful! I received a quick response and then had regular communication with them as they endeavoured to identify and then resolve the problem. As you can guess by the title of the post, they managed to fix the issue and I’m now able to return to my usual workflow. So, a big thanks to the Nik Software Suite support team!!

Interestingly, I downloaded a trial version of the latest version of Photoshop hoping this would resolve the issue. No such luck. A crash report was generated and I was asked if I wanted to send this to Adobe. They wanted an email address so they could get back to me. I was very hopeful thinking they’d be keen to impress me with their support with which they’d encourage me to subscribe to the latest version. I’m sorry to say I’m still waiting for a reply. Google responded within 24 hours 🙂

June 20, 2015June 20, 2015

Rather special …

It was a glorious morning and I was there to not only see it, but able to take photographs of it too. It’s not that many years ago that I’d see a glorious sunrise through my car windscreen on my way to work. No time to stop and enjoy, had to get into the office and start work. Thankfully those days are long gone! Now I have the opportunity to not only enjoy watching the sun rise, but photograph it too.

There’s an app I have for my Android Phone called Sun Surveyor. This is very helpful to decide times and locations for sunrises (and sunsets for that matter). Using this app I could see where the sun would rise in relation to the trees at this particular Beachlands location. There’s a number of trees, with a gap through which you can see the water, and … according to Sun Surveyor, the sun would rise through this gap. The next shot taken with a wide angle lens, gives a better idea of the trees that frame the view.

Somewhat tricky to determine exposure with scenes like this as some areas are very dark whereas other are extremely bright. In situations like this I always use LiveView and the histogram. Sometimes I’ll take several images at different shutter speeds and then blend the images together to ensure I don’t lose detail, but for this shot I was happy to have the darks as dark as they are.

Oh, want to see more of the house that has these gorgeous views? Take a look here.

June 16, 2015

Up in the air!

Rather a lovely day today here in Godzone and a chance to get out with the drone. It is becoming increasingly apparent that a common language and a predefined plan are essential to get reasonable footage when shooting video. Filling out the storyboards and planning the shots beforehand are not really optional.

I popped out to Barry Curtis Park first thing with my daughter just to play with the controls and get familiar with the responsiveness of the craft. It was a bit windy which didn’t help, but we had a heap of fun all the same. Later in the day a few shots up at Nathan Homestead with my son … but again pretty windy so we didn’t really get much time in the air. Just long enough to get a shot of the homestead. Looking at some footage of a tree we realised just how windy it was that little bit higher off the ground. Nevertheless the gimbal provided pretty good stable images which was impressive. Hopefully tomorrow will be a better day.

June 15, 2015

Pacific Music Awards 2015 … soundcheck.

It was great. A really great show with a wonderful atmosphere. A thoroughly enjoyable evening with some very talented musicians being recognised for their achievements.

Earlier in the day I popped down to see how the stage was set and bumped into Malcolm Lakatani. Always a pleasure to meet Malcolm. He was to back Maryanne Ito later that evening, but as we waited for everyone to arrive and take their places for the soundcheck Malcolm relaxed a little and treated us to a little improvisation. The lighting was just right for the music he was playing. Thankfully I’d brought a couple of cameras! I knew I’d be using a telephoto on the night, but wasn’t sure just how wide I’d need to go so I brought a 14-24mm and 24-70mm on a couple of D800s just to check out the angles. The 24-70mm was perfect for shots close to the stage as well as distance shots.

The light was so lovely and moody. Quite contrasty with just a couple of high spots to the rear and some gentle frontal lighting, but the effect on Malcolm was wonderful. I quite like the contrasty deep shadowy type of image and this was a perfect opportunity to try and capture some shots.

Malcolm was relaxed, having fun just jamming away, sitting on a stool in his stocking feet. The light was good and I was having a wonderful time too. ISO was up pretty high at 2500 and the lens was wide open at f2.8 as I wanted to obscure and blur as much of the background as I could. All shots below were taken with the Nikkor 24-70mm. I hope you enjoy looking as much I did listening to Malcolm and taking the shots!

Oh, and just in case you were wondering about Maryanne, here’s a couple of shots of the lovely lady during her performance at last night’s Pacific Music Awards.

June 7, 2015

Having fun :-)

Up early again today trying to finish off a few jobs and also get better acquainted with the drone and the time-lapse and night-lapse features of the GoPro. It’s easy to set the GoPro to do the job, but what intervals get the best results AND how long does the battery last! Oh well, all good fun. One ideas was to capture a sunrise over a rather lovely valley. Problem was the weather … or the temperature … or maybe it’s just the wrong time of year! All I got was rolling mist and clouds! Sure it’s reasonably pretty, but not what I was looking for! Thankfully I’d made some tea to keep me warm and some spare shoes in case I got wet. I got soaked and really should have brought extras pants as well as socks and shoes.

Early morning with the moon the dominant feature in the sky.

On the way home I tried out the drone again. This is a wonderful device and great fun to operate. I’m only just starting, so need a lot more time in the air practising manoeuvres and also operating the camera. Thankfully there’s a very useful return to home feature that brings the drone back to you if you get a little confused or concerned. Mind you, this only works if you set it correctly before starting your flight. There’s quite a few stories of “fly aways”, crashes and issues with batteries that I must admit to being hyper cautious when out flying. The next image is one from the drone taken on my may home this morning. The river is the Waikato River. Click on the image and you should get an enlarged view.

A drone shot over the Waikato River close to Tuakau.

May 29, 2015

Yashili … early morning

Yashili New Zealand Dairy just before dawn.

Another early start this morning and down in Pokeno I was quite intrigued by the lights around the new Yashili New Zealand Dairy. I was supposed to be looking the other way for a sunrise, but couldn’t resist taking a couple of snaps of the lights in Pokeno village and, of course, the new Yashili factory. There was a significant amount of low cloud this morning and the lights from the factory and adjacent areas just lit up the mist and clouds. Quite pretty from a distance!

Yashili New Zealand Dairy with Pokeno village in the foreground

Sad to say I didn’t get the shots I wanted with the sunrise … way too much mist and low cloud and it was bitterly cold. My fingers and toes were frozen and then my car decided to play silly games and wouldn’t let me open the boot to store away all my gear! Not the best start to the day, but the view towards Yashili was pretty.

May 28, 2015

A bit of a difference!

I had the opportunity to shoot yet another GORGEOUS home out at Beachlands last night and thought I’d see how the camera on my drone compared with my usual dSLR when the light levels decreased. My usual dSLR is the Nikon D800 with which I must admit to being delighted. The D800 has a similar layout to the D300 I used previously, but the dynamic range is so much higher. The images with the D800 are significantly better than those I used to get with the D300 especially when the light levels decrease.

The Inspire 1 has a 12MP camera, the same number of pixels as my D300. However, the Inspire 1 has a much smaller sensor than the D300, but it’s more modern. I’d certainly not use my D300 instead of my D800 at dusk, but how does this Inspire 1 camera compare with the D800? Below are a couple of shots. One taken with a D800 on a tall tripod, the other from the air with the Inspire 1.

For small images the Inspire shot seems fine, but as soon as you start to enlarge the image you notice how grainy and noisy the image really is. Fixing noise just softens the entire image and it then loses the crispness that the D800 provides. Nevertheless, the images from the Inspire seem fine during the day. I’ll be intrigued to see how video looks … but you’ll have to wait a few days until I post one of those.

Oh, the house? Believe me it’s stunning. If you’re looking to buy this gorgeous home, or one like it, then give Brianne at Ray White Lighthouse in Beachlands a call on 09 536 7011 and she can arrange a private inspection for you.

May 23, 2015

It had to happen!

I suppose it was inevitable really. When taking property photos there’s times when my current pole just isn’t long enough. Mind you, as I extend my pole with camera atop it can get a little scary when it’s breezy. I always wonder whether my insurance premiums are up to date! So far I’ve had no issues, but I always wonder when my fortunes might change.

So, with more height necessary the question was whether to get a longer physical pole or a virtual pole (as in a drone)? I opted for the virtual pole. This week I tried out my drone for the first time and the emotions were a mixture of fright and delight! Delight that I can get significantly higher than I ever could previously, fright when a flock of seagulls came to explore the drone whilst 30 metres in the air. There must have been about 20 seagulls circling the drone and squawking in a demented fashion at my new device. Needless to say, I landed as quickly as possible!

It seems quite straightforward to fly and provides a very different view of the world from just a few meters up. The shot in this post was taken from about 35 metres high. As you can see there’s heaps of space in the backyard … something awkward to portray from lower down. Oh, and the house is for sale! If you’re keen just contact Samsith Kim at Ray White on 021 126 9563.

May 14, 2015

60 seconds?

There’s two common questions I get asked. “What type of photography do you do?” and “What is your favourite type of photography?”

To answer the first is probably easier to achieve by way of an example than with words. What is it that people say? A picture paints a thousand words? So, maybe I should use pictures to give an idea of the things I do … but briefly! Someone wanted me to watch a video the other day and it was over 30 minutes long. Needless to say I’d lost quite a bit of interest well before I got to the end! So, whatever I do needs to be brief, but needs to give you a bit of an idea as to what type of photography I do. I could then make specific short clips to demonstrate in more detail each of the types of photography I do.

With this in mind, please take a look at the short clip below and, if you have time, let me know what you think. Hopefully 60 seconds is not too long and you might discover a little more about the types of photos I take as well as how to get in contact.

Oh … the second question? I’ll leave the answer to that for a subsequent post 😉

May 13, 2015

Horizontal lines …

Many years ago, when I was about 8 years old, and I started to use a camera, I was given many hints and tips by my uncle. Uncle Herbert was an enthusiastic and very capable photographer and was keen to pass on tips and tricks he’d learnt over the years. It’s strange, but even now, many years after he spoke to me about composition, I can still hear his voice and often imagine him standing next to me, helping me adjust the camera to get the “perfect” shot. One thing that he stressed was to avoid those stripy pictures. You’ve probably seem them, the land, sea, sky shots where each band is horizontal? Well, Uncle Herbert was no fan of those images I can tell you. So, early this morning, looking out towards Panmure from Mount Hobson Uncle Herbert was there again. Even though he passed away some time ago, we still had a bit of a chat about the shot you see in this post. Think he’d approve? I’d like to think he would.