I thought I was just going to see hoists and cars being repaired, but then I heard the familiar noise of an angle grinder out at the back of the ‘shop so had to go see. I must admit to being more than slightly concerned that sparks may head my way, but all was good. Even though the sparks didn’t seem to be heading my way, I wasn’t going to change lenses with all these sparks flying about, so I stuck with the Nikkor 24-70mm lens. Both images you see in this post were processed in Nik’s Color Efex Pro. A product that continues to impress and frustrate! I’m impressed with the potential the software offers yet frustrated by my lack of ability to get the best of the shots with the various filters and recipes. I suspect a lot more practice is required!
Time to go back to enhancing my abilities with Color Efex Pro!
Great fun today shooting in a recording studio. Lots of fancy gizmos with heaps of buttons, sliders, dials … and … of course … lights. Apparently, the devices I’d always associated with a recording studio, the multi-channel mixer, is less common than you may think. These days computers are replacing the sound desks and mixers. From a photographic point of view, I think the old sound desk is much more impressive than a computer screen and keyboard! Mind you, it’s not the looks we’re interested in but the sound quality and I’ve been led to believe the new process provides a better sound. I suppose the two photos in this post can be thought of as nostalgic! The first is an old Technics Turntable … oh I so wanted one of these when I was much younger … and the second a view across a multi-channel mixer. As I said at the start, great fun today.
Back to landscape images. I’ve been out and about most of today, starting quite early with my usual Thursday morning BNI meeting in Manukau, and there seems to have been little time to capture any new scenes. Keen to get more images of South Auckland into my Landscapes galleries on here I’ve started a new section called Ihumatao Stonefields. Maori lived and worked the land at the Stonefields for centuries besides collecting shellfish and fish from the nearby Manukau Harbour. Ihumatao Stonefields is a very special and sacred place and offers some lovely walks and views. European settlers also worked the land here for over 100 years. Believe it or not, the reserve is also home to a rare and highly endangered plant called mawhai or the native cucumber, which has not been recorded growing elsewhere on the New Zealand mainland since 1866.
The shot in this post was taken with my D300 and the Nikkor 24-70mm lens. Often, under conditions where there’s such a range of light levels, I’d take several shots at different exposures and blend them together using either Photomatix Pro or HDR Efex Pro. However, this image is a single shot processed in Nik’s Color Efex Pro. I’m becoming increasingly impressed with Color Efex Pro. If you work with digital images consider downloading the free trial of the various Nik products as you may find they’re ideal tools for your workflow.
A quick trip to the Botanic Gardens earlier today as I really wanted some photographs of the Visitor Centre to add to my Manurewa Photo Gallery. After passing through the visitor centre there’s a wonderful show of Californian Poppies (you can see just one of them – with a bee – in the image above). I really need to go back again and take some photographs as the sun is going down … until then though, perhaps check out the Manurewa Photo Gallery for the shots I took today and let me know what you think. Now I’d better get back to adding more images to my Musician and Landscape Galleries! It seems to be taking me forever!
It seems to be taking be AGES to upload images into galleries! I decided I should organise the shots into different areas as it’d then be easier for me to add images to galleries in the future, but right now it seems to be taking me forever! I had a similar idea about the bands and musicians. I thought I could create separate albums for each artist as this might make the viewers life a little easier. Perhaps, if you get a chance, take a look and let me know what you think. I must admit to being a bit of a novice at this type of thing, so any hints, tips or helpful advice would be very gratefully received.
Right, back to Bridge and sorting through more photos for the on-line Landscape galleries!
WordPress seems to provide a few interesting possibilities beyond what I experienced with Blogspot. Today I’ve been trying to add a few landscape images into eCommerce galleries, but as all this is happening retrospectively it seems to be taking for ever! Anyway, I have the placeholders sorted now so should be able to add and remove images with relative ease over the next few weeks. I also managed to set up a few galleries of the musicians I’ve been photographing. I need to tidy up the gallery selection process, but I think there’s some possibilities here. Maybe take a look at my galleries and let me know what you think. Easy to navigate your way around … or too confusing?
Charlie Pomee entertaining the crowd at the Moon and Back EP launch
Quite a late night for me last night, but what a treat to see Three Houses Down again at the launch of their new EP, Moon and Back. The boys were great … as usual.
I’ve never been to Studio The Venue before, but it was much bigger than I expected. I just wish that the gig was a little earlier … I must be getting old!! Leaving home to get to the gig when most folks are thinking of bed certainly made me feel my age. All the same it was worth it to see the boys on stage again and the crowd seemed to really enjoy the performance. The stage was a little narrow for my liking which made it difficult to see the brass section in anything other than shadows. When you think about it a nine piece band needs a fair bit of real estate!
I’ll post more photos here from the night a little later … but for now I’ll leave you with a shot of Charlie Pomee singing for the audience.
Auckland City at night taken from the northern side of Auckland’s Harbour Bridge.
Last night I headed into Auckland with a fellow South Auckland photography enthusiast. The idea was to take some night time shots and then head over to Grand Central in Ponsonby to see the Alan Brown Project. Sadly I got the days muddled … Alan Brown isn’t performing until next week … typical!!
The first stop was just over the harbour bridge. I usually take the Stafford Road exit and work my way back to get close to the water to get a shot looking back towards the city. It’s quiet here and so we had a chance to experiment with different camera settings to see the changes to the image as ISO, shutter speed or aperture are changed. The thing that made the biggest impression on me was the effect the tripod had on the image as the exposure time was increased. My friend had a slightly shorter tripod than me and had extended the centre column to get more height. Multi-second images taken with the centre column extend were blurry compared to those with the centre column fully lowered. I was really quite surprised by the level of camera movement as it was quite a still night.
Before heading into the city we tried a few more shots in an attempt to get car head and tail light trails. The long exposures help smooth out the water as well as give a pleasing effect with the lights from the cars on the motorway. The aperture in this shot was quite small and has given the street lights a pleasing star burst effect. I can recall many years ago I bought a special starburst filter for my old Pentax. I don’t recall using it much … and I can’t even find it now!
After shooting the passing cars we tried the Grand Central only to discover we had the wrong day for Alan Brown. Thankfully Hopetoun Road is close by, so a few more shots looking towards Skytower before heading home. Quite a pleasant evening and something we should try again … perhaps when the Alan Brown Project is performing!
I’ve uploaded each of these images to my Auckland City Gallery. Please take a look. There may be other images there that you’ll find interesting or even some you may like to purchase 😉
Things are changing here at Christopher John Photography. At last I’ve decided to update my website and add my blog to the site too. I’ve been wanting to do this for over a year and for various reasons it just hasn’t happened … until now. One big issue for me has been a way to showcase some of my photos and provide a mechanism for visitors to purchase images they like. After shooting the events I can now allow people to visit my site, view the images and then hopefully buy lots of shots! I can provide a number of options for customers ranging from a digital image from which you may print as many copies of the shot as you like to large A1 canvas prints delivered to your home ready for you to hang on your wall. Not all print options are displayed on each image, so if there’s something you’d like just contact me and I can give you details.
