Photowalk : North Head Tunnels

Hello my fellow blogger's and blog readers. I can't believe its March already!! I work in finance, so March for us here in NZ means financial year end; which means ALOT of work! But I think its ok because I have been through it once before, second time round I should be much better equipped!

Summer is sadly coming to an end. I can feel the nights getting shorter. NOOO. But I still try to get out and about to make the most of the sunlight.

February was a great month. I got alot of feedback on the photos I took while touring round the Whakatane region. Doug also mentioned to me that my photos are starting to get quite good. Now I suppose he has to say that being my partner haha., but I thought, gosh, its probably time I get onto improving my work flow and get a watermark.

Youtube really is a great source for learning all things photoshop. I have learnt so much from watching Youtube tutorials. I found a tutorial that shows you how to add a simple watermark to a batch of photos. Exactly what I was looking for! Now at least if people decide to save my photos for "whatever" I can have my name on them at least. So from now on, the photos I will be posting on Facebook and on this blog, will have my name: Kirsten Andersen Photography. Awwww what. lol. Its simple text but I actually like it. It does the job.

I got together again with my little photography club a couple of weeks ago. HAHA - still cracks me up so cute :-). The three of us. We had a great time at North head. It was my turn to choose the location and fortunately for us the weather was perfect. Not a cloud in the sky. Steph was so kind again to let us use some of her gear. I got my frills because she let us use her speedlites. I will definitely be getting one of those in the near future. The speedlites with the heads that swivel (like Steph's) allow you to point the light in almost any direction you desire. This is fantastic! This means that you can bounce the light off walls, basically anything! I was like a little kid with a new toy! Using these in the tunnels on North Head was so much fun. I got to see what it actually looks like under there. The speedlites reach much further than the on-camera flash.

Anyway here are some of the shots I took. You may now notice my watermark in the bottom left corner. I like this font, very casual yet elegant - just like me I suppose. HAHA.

The following photo (and also the photos above except for the first one I think) is using Steph's wide angle lens. I must say, I LOVE THIS lens. When I become rich (haha) I probably would love to buy one of these! But they aren't cheap that's why I say.."when" I'm rich.

And these two photos below were taken using Steph's macro rings. You can buy a set of these for around $100-$200 I've been told, which is extremely affordable! Once I get myself a 50mm prime I can get some macro rings and get some more practise at macro photography. I think macro shots are so so pretty. You have a ginormous depth of field - which confused me at first because I was like, why isn't it getting in focus haha (noob). If you see the photo below it is actually incredibly sharp its just focussing on such a tiny object that the rest of it will be blurred out. These remind me of the default desktop wallpapers you get.

Ok, I just looooove green.

I have a few photo's of the plants below now. Not sure what they are but the pattern they have is so cool.

And then the sunset came. We had met up around 5pm at North Head and because its summer here in NZ, we still had quite a few hours to kill. Which isn't hard, just give Kirsten a speedlite and she'll be entertained for hours HAHA. Eventually the sunset did come and it was beautiful. The photo's I think speak pretty good volumes. Imagine the real thing!

Tip of the week: This week's tip is a bit of a general tip about composition. Now composition I believe is and can be very subjective. One person may like one way of framing a shot and another person may not! But a problem I see alot of people making, is that they don't frame their shots very well. They tend to leave alot of empty space in a picture. Now sometimes photographer's do this intentionally but generally I think that cropping your pictures to better frame your subject really makes your shot that much better. Especially with portraits, its better to frame the picture with peoples faces in the upper third of the photo, not smack bang in the middle with alot of space above their heads. Also generally having people stand to the side when taking pictures with backgrounds is better than framing the shot with people directly in the middle. You might think this is common sense but I notice alot of people do not pay attention to this stuff! Try it out and see if you like the results. And if you don't always get the perfect composition first time, you can of course crop it once you are back at your computer.

But as they always say, rules are made to be broken, continue to experiment!

Till next post guys - have a fantastic week!

Photography, Rain, Camping & Small Towns

Boy do I love a good roady! Doug & I took a couple of days off work to go camping down the east coast of NZ over the Valentines Weekend. If you haven't been down there, you really should go its beautiful! As is all of NZ like hello LOL. We just took it pretty slow and stopped often. If you know what its like to travel with me, you have to stop alot because whenever I see something cool I want to get out of the car and take photo's. ha ha ha.

I just can't let a beautiful scene pass me by. One photo is never enough.

Which brings me to another point. I might start adding weekly tips on this blog for beginners (like me!) Personally, I follow alot of other blogs and websites to learn new things, to help me improve. So if I find something worth while sharing I will try to add it here :-) It might be a new technique I have learned, or a fancy new accessory that I'm eying up.

But first, a few of my favourite shots and the little stories behind them :-)

Below is a multiple shot picture that I joined in photoshop elements. Thats all I have at the moment, but I am intending to buy a more complete version. This was kindly donated to me by a friend :-) Thanks Tim! This is pretty easy to do, you just have to create a canvas that is as wide as the number of photos you want to go on it. E.g, if your photo is 3168pixels across, you just times that by 5 to get the total width you need for your canvas. If you need more specific details, I tend to refer to the very pretigious youtube for step by step tutorials. Its great try it! But one tip is, you need to make sure the lighting on each photo is tweaked so that it looks like one seamless photo. You do this by adjusting the levels.

Below is another pic of Doug. I just like this one, because you can see the slight rim light on his hair which separates him from the background :-)


Dryke is growing up fast. If you have seen my earlier blog posts, he was so so small when we first got him! Check it out here . He's so cute even though he's gotten bigger. I love how he's so loyal. In the pic below, Doug and I took a picture of our footprints side by side, and Dryke decided to add his. HOW CUTE IS THAT?! I also like the fact that it was taken at the wide angle end of my lens. You can get a sense of perspective drawing your eye from Dryke out to the open ocean. It does distort the horizon slightly but I still like it. I don't know am I talking a whole lot of crap here? LOL. Just listen to me ok. HAHA.

I wish I was really smart and could tell you of the name of the plant below but I can't. Sorry LOL. I just thought the shape of it was really cool! I like how the sunlight is shining on the leaf in contrast with the shadows. And I like the other leaf in the corner how it gives some comparison.

Below is a shot of Hawai beach, on the east coast past Opotiki (click here for a map). The beaches around here have a very secluded feeling. You feel like you're on an episode of LOST or something haha. But its beautiful. And even though it was drizzly on this day I found it to be very pretty. The landscape is so majestic, and cloud cover always acts as an excellent diffuser of harsh sunlight. I like how you can see the mist coming up from the whitewash.

So it had been raining for a while and then it stopped. I told Doug : "Stop the car!" LOL. I had read in a few photography articles how its sometimes very beautiful to shoot plants just after it has rained. I think it worked :-). Raindrops are like nature's diamonds.

Valentines Evening was amazing. Sunset GORGEOUS : 14th February 2010. The clouds formed these unusual disk formations.

Oops sorry for the longest post haha. This is but a fraction of the shots I took. If you know me, you will know how I get a bit trigger happy on holiday. Can you say TOURIST!? LOL. Nah homie I'm a local LOL. This is probably my fav of the bunch. I love the beach and I love clean waves! I increased the saturation just slightly in iphoto and I just love how it turned out.

Tip for the week: If you're camera has an apeture priority setting (usually Av), you can use this setting to blur your background by using the smallest number setting possible. This means you are allowing more light into your camera which also creates a shallower depth of field. This means that the things closest will be in focus, and the background will be out of focus. If you only have a point & shoot you can also experiment getting a similar effect using your portrait mode. Most camera's will have these. Practise practise practise, have fun and get creative!

Assignment - Ghetto Touch Final 10 Feb 2010

"No matter how you feel, get up, dress up and show up". I remember this saying from one of those forward emails. I've always kept that in the back of my mind to remind me not to miss out on life's opportunities because you never know how its going to go. You will never know if you don't turn up! This little shoot was one of those opportunites. It was raining on this day and I was extremely nervous given the conditions, but I decided to go anyway. Can't let my friend down :-)! Luckily the weather dried up just in time for the games.

I was so priviledged to be asked to photograph my friends Touch team 'Ghetto' for their final mens and mixed games. I was like cool man, for sure I will do that for you. It was a great opportunity to put into practise all the things I've been learning and reading about; about thinking on your feet. And boy did I just have to hit the ground running - literally. For both of these teams to make it to the finals is awesome and it was no wonder. These guys are FAST. haha . And I had to do my best to keep up with the play which was quite a challenge! But I very much enjoyed the experience. Alot of people came to me from the other team going: can you take my picture.. lol. I was like aaaa (like an egg I didn't know what to say hahaha).

Another challenge was that they swapped sides after every try , so like a true hardcore photographer (lol) I had to run down to each end of the field after every try. So the team wasn't the only one getting some exercise. But it was definately a good experience. I learned to just get in there and do it even though I wasn't totally sure of my settings etc etc and my lack of a fast zoom lens. I took alot of shots in the effort to get the shot that I wanted. And I did get a few that are quite cool (I think). Some of the facials are really quite comical! There are a few cool actions shots too including some of the tries. Again I have to give it up to the guys / gals for being very interesting subjects! When these guys go out to play, they really go out to win. Awesome.

Here are some of my favourites:

Sideline

This guy means business

So all in all I think it was a success. Jacob (my friend) seems happy with the pix which is good. The organiser of the competition also saw some of the shots on Facebook and they want some of them for their club website. Woo hoo. Ok so I better get onto creating some kind of watermark. Next thing on my to do list!

My new photography peeps

So if you have been following my photo uploads you may know that I now belong to a new mini photography club. (LOL inside joke!). Actually I just got together with a few friends from North Harbour church (who also are photography enthusiasts). It was so much fun that we have decided to try and get together again and hopefully make it a regular thing! But it was so cool. Its really cool to be around people who actually know alot more than you do about photography, its a great chance for me to learn and get inspired :-) Steph, who actually does this for a living was so kind, that she even let us try her lenses, even her super zoom lens :-) which was totally awesome :-) Scary though being so expensive! Around 3k she said....:O {shock} But it was so fun.

I just read another article about inspiration from DPS, a great learning website for photographers. If you are interested I recommend it! click here :-)

I realise that I am a bit slack with my photography. Having a look at Steph and Joy's photos from the same day and location, I am so impressed. I did expect this from Steph being profesh :P But also really loved Joy's photo's. I think I am a bit blase when it comes to photography sometimes. Or maybe I was a bit shy this being my first outing with these guys that I didn't want to do my usual roll and tumble and crouch to get that shot lol. (Cause its even more FAIL when you go hardout then they say can I have a look at your shot, well SUX LOL). But yeah, I really want to try and be more purposeful with my shots next time. I think this time I was a bit laid back and as a result I didn't get alot of shots that I was totally proud of. Hense I did not upload them all. Too shame. LOL.

But its such a nice feeling when you see the "like" from your friends on FB. Its like oh really you like that one??? LOL. Its funny because sometimes you think that photo was "ok" but others actually like it. Perfect example is my shot of the sky tower below: I thought it was , yeah ok but I got like alot more comments than I was expecting! (taken with a compact btw)

By the way, FAIL is my new buzz word LOL. It really was appropriate for the sunset on our photowalk in the fact that there wasn't any! How come that the one day we go out to the west, the sunset doesn't show! And I know for a fact that most nights we have been having amazing sunsets...SIGH. I probably should have made the horizon straight on this one but I think I was too focussed on getting that wave crashing. So I will be looking out for that next time.

Anyway hopefully our next outing will be more successful. I have to choose the location. My favourites are, domain/winter garden, north head, cornwall. If you have any suggestions please leave a comment :-)

Ok sorry for the delay on this post. I have been super busy with month end at work. But its better late than never right :-) Below are some of my photos from our photowalk out at Karekare. I might post some of the others photo's at a later time if they give me the "ok". Steph took a few pix of me and Joy with our camera's and I like got my frills LOL. I was like wow you made us look cool LOL.

Beach grass

I love this fluffy grass so much. We still don't know what its called. So for now its known as fluffy grass :-)

wild lilys
Another wild flower

Karekare falls (first time being here !)

Its funny how most of my favourites are when I was using Steph's lens...hahaha. The bomb. Still doesn't compare to her photo's yet. They are cool!! You can view the rest of my photo's here.

My next assignment is a touch final game next wednesday. Was asked by Jacob to come and take some snaps. So cool! My first lil assignment haha. So watch this space next week: I will be updating it with my favs from the game.

Hot Summer Daze

Yay for warmer weather! Its finally warm enough for me to wear singlets. And yet when I get to work its on with the cardigan. Silly air con. Mind you , I wouldn't be able to concentrate without the air con. Its just funny when you go out side, you have to take your cardi off.

I thought I would just share a few photos I took with my favourite little models (Doug & Dryke) when we headed out to north head one Saturday afternoon. It was so extremely hot. But I was soaking it up. Its been summer for two months now and its only starting to feel hot to me! Poor Dryke was feeling it though with his black coat. He was so funny, he was really pulling on the lead when we were walking. I only realised why when we got to a row of trees, he fully stopped and lay flat on his side. HAHA> obviously too hot for Drykey. It was too cute. This guy lies anywhere its so funny/cute.

Anyway, here are a few of my favourites. Although the lighting was harsh being the early afternoon, I think I came away with a few good ones. If you read my blog (anyone) please leave a comment, preferably nice comments lol. I do check them!

Just me - sorry about the facials, I think Doug was getting smart as usual LOL.



Grassy

One of many yellow flowers I came across: really like the pattern of these.

Doug sporting his all natural fro haha. cute. x

I SO want to do this one day. So lucky to see someone parasailing on this particular day. Have not seen anyone do this at north head before and I've been here quite a few times. I've seen people do this at Maori Bay but not here.

And again, if you happen to be reading this, please leave a comment LOL I don't want to have to ask you again LOL.

Summer walkabouts

So January...what have I been doing in January. WELL glad you asked LOL. Actually I've been doing alot of walking! I love summertime and the longer days (I may have mentioned this before). And I love being able to walk around town where I live at 8:30 at night and still feel safe because its still light. I love walking around the viaduct and dreaming about living in those waterfront apartments haha. Walking around the neighbourhood feeling like I'm rich but NOT REALLY LOL.

Oh and I finally gave way to the twitter sensation. Gosh I thought it was boring before but now I'm hooked. Its amazing how addictive these things can become. I actually follow some peeps off youtube. Its so funny some of the random things that come through.

Anyhoo , since I have been doing alot of walking around town , I've been taking some snaps now and then as I go. ( I take my compact for convenience). Although the quality isn't there is just so much easier. I've picked a few of my favs and hope you enjoy ;-) It kind of reminds me of that movie "Yes Man" with Jim Carrey - funny movie. There is a girl in that movie that goes for early morning runs and takes photos while running lol (Blurry ones). So if you see me running along the street with my trusty compact just wave a friendly hello haha.

Halo effect

Hmmm should I take my umbrella? Naaa She'll be right. LOL

How appropriate for me to find a boat called the long white cloud ;-) We definately are a cloudy country. But I love clouds, and I love the dynamic elements they often add to a photo.

The thick cloud cover definately adds something special to this pic reflecting the sunset light.
I like how the light shines around the LV letters on this building. Hey like I always say, dreams are free. Unfotunately LV is not. Has anyone ever been inside that shop? I've been twice now, has the feeling of a museum haha. And I love how the doorman opens the door to customers. You can feel rich even though you aint. LOL.

The quality of light is very important when you go out shooting. I just love the intense sunset light on the tower in this shot.
Hope you enjoyed that short snipit of a recent walkabout I did. Try it yourself, not only are you getting some exercise into your day, you are also having fun. Well I was!

ciao for now.

HAPPY NEW YEAR

Happy New Year?

I'm late you say? Doubt it., I'm early. I'm wishing you a Happy Chinese New Year. HAHA> And its the year of the tiger. I say its my year this year :-) Things are feeling good, feeling positive for this year. Kudos for me yeah?

I love this time of year., the sun is out (most of the time), the weather is warmer. People are on holiday and it just seems like everyone is in a better mood. Its a great time to stop and re-evaluate your life and where you want to go. For me, I have a number of personal goals that I want to improve on this year, as well as resit my PCE1 which I failed a year & a half ago :'( feel free to shed a tear for me LOL. But look its time to get off my bum, no matter how I feel, dust it off and try again. You've just gotta get back up on that horse. Easier said than done, its taken me this long to get my confidence up again. The stink thing is that they don't actually send your exam paper back. So how on earth are you supposed to improve I ask? Its all pretty dumb really. But I have to do it if I want to get anywhere in my industry. Please pray for me haha.. no seriously please pray for me.

So I have consciously been getting out there and shooting lately. I had a ball at New Years. As you may or may not know, I live in a small apartment in town with my cool jap chick flatmate. We good friends now ay Aiko :-) She's a very good flatmate :-) Anyway she headed off to the Coromandels for the NY and so I had a few mates over to watch the fireworks. Ok so normally I would say that the fireworks on NY in Auckland aren't that great. (Well they really aren't compared to Sydney I admit). But being so close to them this year was totally friken awesome. I will share my photos below :-) It was pretty much click (wait 3 sec) click (wait 3 sec) click (wait 3 sec). Each pic seemed to be totally unique :-) gotta love it!

This shot was taken on the very moment :-) It was sooo cool counting down. I can't say I've actually ever done that for real. I think this year was a first. Thanks Channel 1 for advising the time. 2010 baby, first day of the new decade :-) I thought this was a little overexposed but still its cool :-) So the shots that follow will be a lil less BRIGHT! Hope you enjoy

I don't know why but this picture really reminds me of the 4th of July. Probably the colour ay? :P

And the cherry on the top was the full moon on New Years! Beautiful!
I love night photography. I really need to get me a new tripod. My current one was perfect for my old Fuji s1000, but for my canon 50D, hmmm. Lets just say its fine for normal landscapes but not very ideal for portraits. It actually starts to slide of kilter. Funny but annoying. Its a Kathmandu tripod that Doug bought me :-) Thankyou bub. Having a tripod is very very handy sometimes. Especially when you can't trust giving your camera to anyone to get the composition you want. And of course you simply can't go without it for night photography or any photography when you want that slow shutter speed. So I've been eyeing up a few tripods. I might just get one off trademe for around the $100 mark. I saw some very very nice ones at the photography store but I'm really not willing to pay $200+ for one just yet. I'll be saving those precious pennies for a speedlite :D

Anyway I think thats enough for one post. Speaking with Jacob who recently started up his own blog : http://jsauni.wordpress.com/, I felt motivated to post my own since I haven't done one since last year. I think I will really try and post at least once a week even when I don't have new material to share, I might share some old material and old favourites etc etc like I have done previously.

Hope you all had a fab New Year's celebration. Till next post!!

First pic of the New Year - Doug & I after the fireworks:-)