Happy New Year! Hard to believe, but 2014 is here already. I’d decided to get up early and head out towards Maraetai in the hope of capturing a pleasant first sunrise of the year. The alarm was set at a ridiculously early hour and a somewhat bleary eyed journey in the dark ensued as we headed to the beach. Part way there it suddenly dawned on me that we hadn’t checked the tide times and the tide could be well out! This wouldn’t be good and would spoil the shot across the sea look we were hoping for. Sunrise was scheduled for 6:05 am, but we thought we’d get there in plenty of time. Quite a few other folks arrived too and after a few Happy New Year pleasantries we all settled down to watch and capture the year’s first sunrise. Just in case you missed the sunrise I’ve attached a few images for you below.
All the very best for a safe and happy 2014.
5:46 am 1/1/20145:53 am 1/1/20146:01 am 1/1/20146:06 am 1/1/20146:08 am 1/1/20146:09 am 1/1/20146:10 am 1/1/2014
What a very pleasant evening! Lance Su’a on guitar, Miguel Fuentes on drums and vocals by Maggie Gould. Quite a lovely sound and a real treat to be able to hear these talented musicians together.
I’d met Lance previously at the Pacific Music Awards and then at a couple of gigs in Manukau and Ponsonby. I’d never seen him with this trio previously and wasn’t sure what to expect. I have to say it worked really well and was very enjoyable indeed. Miguel Fuentes is perhaps better known as a member of KANTUTA member and as Music Educator within Auckland schools teaching percussion and drumming. Maggie may be better known for her work as a photographer. The three of them together though were very good indeed. Well worth going to see if you get the chance.
The three kittens and mother cat remain in and around the compost heap. Looking at the kittens I can see that it won’t be long before we’re going to have to take them off to the SPCA to try and find them good homes. As you can see from the first image in this post, mum is still feeding them.
Dinner time!
She seems a lot happier to have me around the kittens which should make catching them a little easier. Problem is they’re growing up fast and are very quick to hide in small places!! One of the kittens – the one not represented in any of the photos – is VERY timid and will be a real challenge to capture. The one with a lot of white on its body is very curious and the first one to go to new places. Quite fascinating to see the difference in character of each kitten even at this early age.
Below are a few more images of the kittens. Maybe I’ll get some more photos to show before they head off to the SPCA.
Mum with one of her kittensNervous perhaps?Peeping from the high ground atop the bricks
Quite a pleasant day here in Godzone today and I couldn’t resist taking a few more shots of the aquilegia in the backyard. You may recall a snap taken with my tablet yesterday … well, today I thought I’d try a camera and see if there was any difference 😉
The light was similar to yesterday, but perhaps a little more intense. Exposure was taken for the blooms themselves and by carefully positioning the camera I could find a shadowey background which, as you may notice in the images below, gives the impression that the blooms were shot against a black backdrop.
No tweaks or twiddles in Photoshop. These images are straight off the camera. I used a tripod to keep things steady and a 200mm telephoto lens. For the first two images the aperture was set to f4, but the last shot was taken at f2.8 (and has a few Color Efex filters applied).
Quite amazing really that these plants survived the droughts last year and such a lovely surprise to see them flowering.
Not been on here for some time. It all started going pear shaped about four weeks ago when I started to feel ill. A brief spell in hospital, and then quite some time recovering from surgery and feeling somewhat worse for wear has kept me away from the blog. Mind you, one week after being on the operating theatre I did manage to shoot the 2013 Schools Trash to Fashion finals. This was a real mission for me, and I must admit to being totally wasted after the show. I’d promised to shoot the event, so I really wanted to be there. The contestants put so much time and effort into their garments and I wanted to make sure we got some worthwhile images.
Supreme garment “Tori No Su (Birds Nest)” by Kayla Rousselle of Lynfield College
The contestants are all school children and their ages range from school years 1 through to 13. Their imagination and creativity is quite amazing and you get the feeling that you’re looking at some of the country’s future fashion designers.
Some of the “Shorn!” Category Contestants
Want to see more? Well, click here to go to the main page for the ST2F 2013 photographs. Just want to see the winners? Click here.
A few weeks ago at the Matariki celebrations in Henderson one of my cameras, my Nikon D800, started to misbehave. The autofocus mechanism did the exact opposite of what it was supposed to do and was doing an autoUNfocus. There was nothing I could do with the camera to resolve the problem. I tried cycling the power (removing and reinserting the batteries), doing a factory settings reset, changed lenses, changed focus modes (AF-C, AF-S), single point focus, or use all 51 point. Absolutely nothing worked. It was well and truly stuffed. Then I decided to try LiveView. this worked! I switched back to viewfinder and unbelievably autofocus was back on track again!
Alan Brown playing with the Alan Brown Project.
The camera misbehaved a couple more times that evening, and each time the LiveView trick brought viewfinder focus back to life again. I got the camera checked and no errors were reported. Happy that all was apparently good I continued using the camera with no issues until the Native Noise event at the Town Hall with Che Fu organised by Evitan. Same problems as before. Two green arrows indicating the camera couldn’t focus!
This time a more thorough investigation was conducted and the camera was in the shop for a few days. Again, no faults identified and the camera passed all tests. I must admit to feeling both dismayed that nothing had been identified as well as pleased that the camera had passed all tests. Time to test it again, this time on the Whangaporoa Peninsular when I went to shoot Take Note.
All was going well, really well and I thought the fault had been fixed … until about an hour into the shoot. Same again. Two green arrows and no focus. I felt sick. Was it me? I certainly wasn’t imagining what was happening and I couldn’t identify any action I was taking to cause the problem and switching to LiveView and back again did fix the problem.
I was losing all confidence in the camera and started using my D300 in preference to the D800 now. The D300 had been faultless since day one and I could trust this workhorse. I’d missed shots with the D800 and was seriously disappointed with it so back it went to the workshop.
It came back on Wednesday and as soon as I attached a lens and started to use it I could sense there was something different. It sounds silly, but it just seemed to have been “tuned” or “tweaked”. I now had the D800 I’d fallen in love with last year. I was delighted … but how would it be with the bands? No worries!! I took it out last night to see Cherie Mathieson singing with the Alan Brown Project. I was determined to put the camera into the same type of conditions that had caused it to fail previously. Was I disappointed? Not at all. The camera was a dream to use and behaved perfectly for the two hours I was shooting. Happy? I’m stoked!!
Here’s a few shots of Cherie from last night. ISO 5000, f2.8, 1/125sec, 85mm f1.4G, Nikon D800
So, how did the fault get fixed? Well, the folks at Nikon (Macalister‘s here in NZ) did a superb job. They replaced the viewfinder autofocus mechanism, recalibrated, tested and ensured the camera passed all tests before giving it back. End result? A seriously stoked Nikon user with one wicked D800 😉
