Photowalk #7 - Meola Reef & Western Springs

Meloa reef., Meola reef. Where the heck is that you ask? lol. Well here's the google map :P
(Sorry for my crap as scribble on it lol) . If you can't read the small font, the X is where the Auckland Zoo is.



And here's a little bit of info from good ol Wikipedia :-)

The Meola Reef, or Te Tokaroa Reef in Māori is a lava flow forming a reef peninsula across part of Auckland's Waitemata Harbour, New Zealand. It was formed 20,000 years ago from the final portion of a 10 kilometer long lava flow that originated from the distant Three Kings volcano.
The reef extends for over 2 kilometers across the Waitemata Harbour, to within 500 meters of Kauri Point, on the northern shore.

The reef is easily seen in the west from the Auckland Harbour Bridge at low tide, when much of it lies exposed. The best viewpoint is at Kauri Point, the headland to the east of Kendall Bay. The portion of the reef close to shore is covered by mangroves, and further out, the rocks are covered by rock oysters, then bare. Strong footwear is needed to walk on the lava.

I had absolutely no idea this was here. It was nice to do something different on our photowalk -a slightly more challenging walk than we normally do. It was very rocky and you need to watch where you step otherwise you would get stuck in the mud... literally lol. So glad I bought my gum boots along with me. But I actually really enjoyed it. Here are some of my favourite shots from the localation -

An interesting red plant. Sorry I'm no good with plant names!

Wideangle shot of the reef. You can see the rocks are covered with Oysters!

This part was much easier to walk..

We spotted some others out on the other side. Thought they were part of our group but actually they weren't lol. Lucky we didn't start yelling out to them ay? lol.

A lost feather

I just love love love circular bokeh and the pretty green colour of this lichen.

And next stop was - Western Springs! Everyone knows western springs right? The water is kinda dirty., but no worry.. we can make that look pretty with reflections!

Ok., the following photo was a total fluke.. haha but I love it. I'm totally amazed the sparrow is in focus because I didn't even adjust my settings (had no time to). And the birdie is even looking the right way. *total WIN*


Bird taking flight.

Colourful reflections :-)

Epic clouds. You know I love clouds.. I love the deep blue of the sky. I admit this was slightly enhanced but the colour is true (just deepened slightly)

Ok so the water looks gorgeous right? If you're an Aucklander you know Western Springs is dirty as haha. But you wouldn't know it ay? They make for gorgous reflections - true story!

And I'm really proud of the photo below, I just love the way the ripple looks so smooth. The added feather with its own reflection was just a gorgeous little bonus.

Nothing to say about this one., I just like it so in it goes lol.

And close up shot of the fern

I included this one because of the bend in the tree. Thought it gave an interesting element to the generic tree silhouette picture.

And to end this very long post (hopefully not too long!) some geese! The reflections are almost like a mirror no?

I'll be heading down to the snow this weekend and I can't wait! First time this season so its very exciting. Some friends are coming over from Australia so we want to show them around! Hopefully the weather is kind. You can never be 100% sure of what its going to do on the day.

Have a great rest of the week people! Hope ya keeping dry in this drissly weather :/

UPDATE 23rd July 2010

Argh! This week has been CRAZY busy at work. Seriously. So sorry I haven't had a chance to update here. I have craved to update but just haven't had the time.

I've had alot of "photography jobs" to do this month which is AWESOME. Extremely challenging and scary but I LOVE it. Had my friends baby's baptism, my other friends art exhibition and and .. ok I don't have a third thing but its been very busy LOL! Its not just the shoot but also post processing. Still trying to get the hang of post processing but I think I am progressing. I really want to branch out with an updated photoshop elements but there are just so many things I want to buy - I need to just wait a while lol. Money doesn't grow on trees as they say!

But I have been loving JULY. It was my birthday month and we had that week a while back where the entire week was just gorgeous in terms of the weather!! God was definitely smiling down on Auckland that week. Its was very uncharacteristic of Auckland weather in July. But hey., don't question it just soak up the sunshine yo lol! I certainly did! If you are a friend of mine on FB you will see how many photo's I have been taking this month just because of the fabulous weather!.. much more than usual!!

I had my friend's little baby Dylan's Baptism shoot. He looked so cute in his lil outfit!! see below. His cheeks are so adorable right?!!?! poor Dylan has been scratching his cheeks alot and were very red and sore so I used the healing brush in Photoshop to try and reduce the roughness a bit. I have been using colour correction alot too to make sure the colours are pretty much true to how I saw them on the day.

The most adorable cheeks EVER!!! This shot was taken near the end of the presenation to the Mass. He was such a good boy., didn't cry at all.

And in terms of the weather.. we have been having some pretty amazing sunsets as you can see!!!

Can you see the moon!!! How awesome.. I loves it

More beautiful weather here at Okahu .. This was taken with my P&S. So very handy!

And this is why we are known as the CITY OF SAILS HAHA. Another compact shot.

An early morning shot around 7:30am. You can see a tiny bit of sunlight on the side of the skytower as the sun rises. I just love the crescent moon!

And just to finish off a shot of me at One Tree Hill. BLUE SKY WOOO! I dyed my hair back to dark brown... you like?

The weekend is here!! Have an awesome one guys!

Dylan's Baby pix

So my friend and workmate Rachele asked me if I could take some photo's of her 2nd born: Dylan, and I was like... yeah of course!! haha. but then I thought, oh damn., what if I can't actually do a good enough job :/ I've never really taken pictures of babies before and I was like., shivers what if he is to wriggly and doesn't want to sit still, or what if he just starts crying... :/ :/ :/ . Panic set in haha. But I thought., no I can do this!! LOL..

Well., it turned out to be ok. I was a lil nervous as I didn't want to let Rachele down but I just did my best and I think the results turned out ok!! It has pushed me to think about getting a faster lens though. Next one will probably be a 50mm, but might have to wait another month or so as I've been spending way too much money lately !! But anyway that's another story.

Anyway here are my favourites. She wanted these pictures to use as an invite for Dylan's christening. I think they are pretty good for my first real go! Hope you enjoy. To get the black background on some of them., I just asked Rachele's husband to hold a black sheet behind.. hahaha.. cool ay. lol.

have a great week!

*drum roll* Photowalk #6 - Cornwall Park / One Tree Hill

Hi all! I'm not going to head this post "No tree hill" because this place has heaps of trees!! LOL LOL *dry* LOL I love cornwall park. Its sooo beautiful even though its winter I still love this place. The trees are just amazing :-) Just the sense of history you get from looking at them.

This was our sixth walk as a little photoclub and still we managed to lose some people haha. :/ OH WELL.... We waited as long as we could and finally we had to venture on.

Just for a little bit of background on Cornwall Park, here is some info from the Auckland City Council Website :

"Maungakiekie is the largest and most complex volcanic cone fortress in the southern hemisphere. It has hundreds of living terraces, food store pits, defensive ditches and banks that for centuries supported a population of 5,000 people. From the tihi, signallers would communicate with the network of volcanic Pā across Tāmaki.

Sir John Logan Campbell, who is buried on the summit, gave the name One Tree Hill to Maungakiekie. He was inspired by the sacred Totara he saw on his first visit here in 1840. Te Totara i Ahua was cut down as part of the colonisation of Auckland during the 1850s and 60s. Campbell attempted to replace the Totara however only a single Monterey Pine survived. The tree was damaged after successive attacks by Maori protestors, and was eventually felled for safety reasons in 2001."

So sad, that tree was such a neat icon for Auckland City but unfortunately there is no longer a tree on "One Tree Hill". booo.

Anyway I still love this place. Here are some of my favourite shots from the walk:

I loved the way these shadows fell on the crater slope

Fellow groupies

Like I said, beautiful beautiful trees!

Friends walking & talking - part of the club btw

Some sunlight on the steps..

Detail shot from Acacia cottage

Dryke had a blast on the walk! He loves his walks let me tell you. haha. He will drag me along. He's a big boy now.. still relatively small but strong!

Doug's neice trying to take a rock home lol. Umm no! lol

Well that's it friends.. sorry its not many this time., we had to leave early to take the kiddies home :P..

Oh I've made some exciting purchases this week. I know I'm such a shopaholic!! I bought an ipod touch off the 1-day website, really cheap only $250, I couldn't resist! Its so so awesome. First thing I did was upload some photos on to it!! Now I can share my photos with everyone I meet HAHAHA. . omg. lol. And yes., I did put music on it too *rolls eyes*.

Have an awesome weekend everyone!

What camera do you have?

Sorry guys! I've been a bit slack with the blog lately! The weather hasn't been too kind here on this side of the world lately (besides the last couple of days, they have been beautiful!). We're really into the swing of winter now having 4 degrees the other morning.. brrrrr!

Anyway I don't have any photos to share right now (boo). I will do in another week after our next photowalk on Sunday. For now though I wanted to share this email subscription I get every week. Its from Elizabeth Halford - a photographer who is based in England. You can find out more about her here. I really enjoy her style of writing and photography - its fresh and fun! I discovered her when reading one of her articles on the dps website.

If you are a keen photographer like I am., and/or enjoy learning more about photography, I really encourage you to do what I do and get online. There are thousands of very inspirational and informative blogs and websites that can help you improve in your passion. I find that email subscriptions are also very handy & convenient. Websites can often email you updates as they appear on their websites. If you think its not relevant for you, you can just delete it. But often I like to quickly browse these subscription emails and get my daily fix of photography info. (I sound like an addict huh LOL) Its just great!

Below is one subscription email that I felt I needed to share. I hope that you also find it inspirational, challenging and eyeopening!


Q. “Last year I bought a Nikon D80 as a “more professional grade” camera for myself. Lately, I have been kicking myself because it just seems that Canon shoots better portraits, and my husband says I am already too invested to switch. So, I know that you are a Canon user…did I make a mistake, or can I achieve the same gorgeous shots with my Nikon that I feel others get with Canons?”

A. Hi Kelsey! Oh, I’m so RELIEVED that you asked me that. I really should have thought to cover that myself since I know it’s probably the #1 reason baby photographers quit in the embryonic stage of their discovery. The answer is NO! A Canon isn’t better than a Nikon. And a point and shoot isn’t worse than a DSLR either (yeah yeah I know, people…boo…hiss…get over it!) Photographs have EVERYTHING to do with the photographer, not the camera!

Now you wonder: under what authority do I make such bold statements? Many years of experience, that’s what! Here are prime examples:

• The best photos I’d ever taken until recently were when I first discovered that I loved taking photos and had a little Casio ultra compact ‘credit card’ camera. I wasn’t concerned about settings or sexy lens flare. I just learned composition and emotion and those photos are on my wall to this day.
  
• My best wedding to date was done on a Canon 450d. Moving up doesn’t mean your pictures will be better, it just means that you will think you have to work less for them and they’ll be worse. Don’t fall for it – you still have to work HARD.

Now Kelsey, you said “…that I feel others get…”. This means that you’re comparing yourself to other photographers. Which is great. It drives us to be better. Not so great if you’re looking at photos on the Flickr front page like a 14 year old looks at Britney Spears on the front cover of Seventeen Magazine. Those photos have some serious post-processing ‘editing’ work done on them to make them look like that.

When I’m down in the dumps about my photography, I like to go on Flickr and look at the before/after galleries. Or check out Before & After Monday here on my site. It’s so SO good to see what professionals’ photos actually look like before they have been edited. They’ll probably be a lot like yours!

Another thing…camera envy never ends. I now have a 7D and still sulk about my photos not being “as good as their photos”. But it really has so so little to do with the camera.

One thing I've learnt from upgrading from my previous camera, is that just because you don't have the BEST camera on the market, doesn't mean you can't take intriguing and interesting photographes that people will enjoy. The person who is behind that camera makes all the difference. People always ask me., wow your camera takes awesome pictures., hey what about me!!! LOL You still need to know HOW to use it!

I think its so important to realise this and never look down on yourself just because you don't have the latest gears. Of course better gear does give you a few more options, just because you have a super mean camera doesn't mean you are automatically going to be a pro. It still takes alot of practise, experience and hardwork as Elizabeth has outlined in her answer above. Hope you enjoyed that Q&A as much as I did. Enjoy your weekend!

Ok., I just have to have a picture to go with my blog post! A favourite using my old camera Fuji s1000 & a simple tripod, a much cheaper and less sophisticated camera than my 50D and yet I still love this picture...I know I'm bias (pic of my bf) haha but you get my point. »

Photowalk #5a - Bethells Beach!

HAHA., so last sunday was our 5th photowalk for our club. And we actually had 15 people come along this time! The only thing was, I got lost haha. There is no mobile phone reception out at Bethells beach and silly me, I thought i would be able to find everyone. But no... lol. I was there on time but I eventually gave up on finding everyone as I didn't know what everyone's car looked like and started driving back home. I got to Swanson and realised I had 2 txts from Joy. I pulled over and called her and she told me she was waiting near falls road. So off I sped, back west.

SO YAY., at least I found Joy, Kenneth & Fatma. But alas , we headed off in the wrong direction and did a different bush walk that was actually planned. BIG FAT FAIL lol. ha ha ha. But hey., we still got to see some very awesome landscape. So because this wasn't the "official" photowalk I named it #5a. LOL.

Joy doing her thang

I merged two photos in photoshop to get the photo below. Otherwise , due to the harsh light, you wouldn't be able to see the lovely green of the forest below us. It would just be black like the one above.

I was lazy and just did an automatic enhance on this photo in photoshop. I don't usually like using this as it can sometimes give some obvious fake results, but I liked how it looked and so kept it :-)

Ok this is probably my favourite pic of the bunch. I just love the mist against the strong rock face in the distance. The relatively small people in the photo also just remind you of how rugged and awesome this landscape is!

And like I told Jane, this photo below was actually an exposure accident!! haha. It was totally overexposed. But I kind of liked it when I removed the colour. It becomes mostly white except for the surfer (my subject).

Oh how I just adore reflections!! This photo basically speaks for itself. However, I would have preferred to have the surfer on the right hand third instead of the left, but I was too slow., what can you do lol.

And we found a sea cave turned sea arch! Awesome. I was a bit scared about walking through here., there was a bit of dripping going on., but I made it out the other side untouched lol.

Enjoying someone artwork someone left behind.

Last fav of the day. I like the light in this picture.

And., Tip of the week: Make sure you check your settings regularly! Alot of my photos have visable noise on them. Darn me for forgetting to bring my ISO back to normal from a previous shoot. Its something you can easily forget.

Have an awesome rest of the week peeps! Only 2 more days till the long weekend!! I hope the weather is good and that we can all get a chance to get out there and get shooting. :-)