I was playing around with long exposures a few weeks ago and this is one of my resulting photos. I turned off all the lights in the room and “painted” my guitar with an LED light during the exposure.

My Guitar (F/5.6, ISO100, 30s)

Earlier this year we travelled to Vietnam as part of our holiday. We spent just under a week there and were based in Hanoi for the most part – we also spent a few days in Ha Long Bay. We had a great time and I just stumbled over the photos again and thought they would make for a nice post.

The first image of military wreckage has been photoshopped a bit to generate an almost toy model like feel to it – It is not a photo of a model The photo was taken from the flag tower within the museum complex.

Military Wreckage at the Army Museum (not a model!)

The Huc Bridge on Hoan Kiem Lake

Just another intersection

A few weeks ago, Roko and I headed down to Mt. Ruapehu for a bit of skiing/snowboarding action. Weather turned out to be really good but the snow condition could have been better. We had typical spring slushiness from midday on (not quite so bad on the upper mountain but still). I wasn’t brave enough to take my DSLR with me so the images below were taken with my old Sony DSC-W5.

Me posing in front of Mt Ngauruhoe

Reflection of Mt Ngauruhoe

A frosty morning

Nathan and I headed out this evening for a photo excursion around the Westhaven Marina. I took quite a few photos so the next few posts are likely to contain further pictures from today’s trip. We’ll start off with some interesting (entertaining at least) light painting photos. Nathan had my little red Google LED keyring and I used my ‘purpose build light pen(cil)’ (basically an LED light connected to a battery and attached to a pencil). I should really upload a photo…

Auckland Skyline (F/5.6, ISO400, 4s)

Glowing Nathan (F/5.6, ISO400, 30s)

Glowing Daniel (F/5.6, ISO400, 30s)

Light Graffiti (F/5.6, ISO400, 30s)

Last week I ordered an adapter ring (T-Ring) for my camera that allows me to connect it to my telescope which I bought as a young teenager back in Germany. It’s a reflector telescope with a 114mm diameter (focal length of 910mm). I bought an old second hand Praktika film SLR at the time in the hope of getting some astro photos but the camera was in a poor condition and getting a focused image was virtually impossible. Enter LiveView on my current Canon EOS DSLR! I still had problems getting a focused image but this time the telescope was to blame. I was unable to move the focuser far enough into the telescope! Thanks to google, I discovered others had experienced similar issues and suggested the use of a Barlow lens which increases the effective focal ratio, i.e. it moved the focal point within my range! I was now able to get a more or less focused image. Focusing was still a major pain because I managed to break the focusing wheel on my telescope so I had to apply some manual pulling and pushing… nevermind.

Anyway, below you can see some photos I have taken of the moon (one day after full moon). I’ll have to go back and take some more photos when the moon isn’t as full as there will be more shadows and hopefully more interesting details.

The Moon

The Moon

The Moon

Jupiter is currently visible in the evening sky so I managed to get a few photos of Jupiter too. As you can see there is a lot of noise due to the faint light (and I can’t increase the shutter speed because of the earth’s rotation – and I don’t have a compensating motor for my telescope)

Jupiter

Jupiter

Here are a couple of photos from this evening’s lightning storm. Unfortunately my window was in the way so they’re not the best. I am really keen to head out to a good location next time there’s a lightning storm. Hopefully they will be some warning (ie. reliable weather forecast).

I’m glad I shot the images in RAW as I managed to retrieve a great amount of detail by developing them myself.

Lightning (f/7, 30s, ISO100)

Lightning (f/7, 30s, ISO100)

Today’s photos were taken at Motat (Auckland’s Museum of Transport and Technology). I was surprised to find that it hadn’t really changed at all from when I was there the last time (maybe 10 years ago?) Most of the displays are very dated and are in serious need of a refresh.

Tractor HDR (f/4.5, 1/60s, ISO100)

Many Daniels (f/4.5, 1/15s, ISO1600)

The above photo was taken with the ISO set on automatic which I forgot to disable again. The camera decided ISO1600 would be a good choice but unfortunately this resulted in a lot of noise. I had to apply some fairly aggressive noise reduction to make it acceptable, barely.

A few weeks ago we headed out to Whatipu on Auckland’s West Coast and right at the entrance of the Manukau Harbour. It’s not nearly as popular as Piha or Muriwai and thus also not as developed. The road to Whatipu included a 7km stretch of gravel road. It is definately worth it though as the scenery is truly spectacular (coastal dunes, wetlands, beach and more).

Stream HDR (f/10, 1/60s, ISO100)

Bone (f/10, 1/80s, ISO100)

Whatipu Beach (f/11, 1/125s, ISO100)

Lambs (f/5.6, 1/400s, ISO250)

I stopped by at the Bayswater Marina today and took the following photos. I was getting a bit frustrated by the lack of interesting subjects. I was hoping to capture some sea gulls in flight but all i got was pigeons! See the photo in the middle for some pigeon-in-flight action. The first image is an HDR composition of Shoal Bay. The third photo is a panorama shot of the Auckland Harbour Bridge with the Bayswater marina in front.

Shoal Bay HDR (F/5, 1/800s, 27mm, ISO200)

Pigeons (F/5, 1/800s, 100mm, ISO200)

Auckland Harbour Bridge (F/5, 1/640s, 100mm, ISO200)

It’s been about a week or so since my last post! Pretty slack of me I know… Anyway, today I’ve got a couple of photos that I took at the Auckland Wintergardens. The first being an HDR image that proved to be a bit more challenging than previous ones I’ve created. It was rather windy that day so the trees moved a fair bit between the 3 individual shots. I did a bit of crude tidy up with the cloning tool and the end result isn’t too bad. The second photo is a close up of an orchid which only had a minor contrast adjustment applied to it.

Auckland Wintergardens HDR (F/13, 1/2s, 18mm, ISO200)

Flower (F/4.5, 1/50s, 25mm, ISO400)