Day 359 & Retrospective: land and sky

I've been incredibly busy today, and I did today's photo shoot in the middle of cooking the evening meal, which is not the smartest idea, and is probably one of the reasons why the finished shot is not very good. The others are poor lighting and not having a macro lens. It's a shot I'll definitely try again if I ever upgrade my kit.

Today's retrospective is land and sky. Here are my favourite landscape and skyscape shots that haven't already featured in a retrospective.

Day 321

I had to drive into town today to collect my washing machine (it's a long story!) and on the way back I got a sudden urge to take a photo of the train tracks at the level crossing. I have no idea where this 'inspiration' came from.

Unfortunately, I didn't have the Canon with me, but I did have my trusty iPhone, so I spent a few minutes squatting down in the middle of the railway line, clicking away, and looking behind me every few seconds to make sure there wasn't a train coming.

There was a bloke in a highway maintenance van parked up by the side of the road. I'm sure he must have wondered what on earth I was doing!

I've got two shots that are good enough to share, but I'm not sure which one I prefer, so I'm sharing both. I prefer the overall composition in the first shot, but the second shot has more foreground interest.

I cross these tracks every time I drive into town, so I really must go back one day before the end of the project with the Canon.

Day 236

Yet another old subject revisited. I took a Hipstamatic shot of this scene months ago. I took this one with the 50 mm lens, and got a lovely, crisp, clean, noise-free shot. So, naturally, I decided to gunk it all up with a grain effect.

Pookie accompanied me on my photo break, as usual. Here she is taking a dust bath on the mound of earth left over when our water tanks were buried. She's the only cat I've ever owned who has enjoyed rolling around in things and getting dirty. Yet more evidence to support my theory that she was a dog in a previous life. ;-)

Day 216

The weather forecast is promising us around 70 mm (2 and 3/4 inches) of rain over the next five days. We're really pleased that our tanks will be filling up, but we're a bit concerned about the state of our track. Last time we had heavy rain, it got covered in mudslides!

I took these shots this morning, just before the rain started. I've processed the two shots slightly differently, silhouetting the landscape in one and bringing out the details in the other - I'm not sure which look I prefer.

Day 212

We had a short break in the rain today, so I took the opportunity to go for a walk, and take some snaps with the iPhone.

This first shot of our neighbours' woolshed uses the HDR feature in the iPhone's inbuilt camera app. The result wasn't very HDR-y, so I faked it up in Photoshop, using a high pass filter. The shots of the stones were processed in Lightroom.

It's raining again now, which is great -- it's filling up our water tanks! :-)

Day 203

I've been playing with my new toys today.

I used my new lens and reflector for this shot:

I took these three with the Hipstamatic app on the iPhone:

And here's an old photo I played around with in Lightroom and Photoshop.

Days 199 to 202

We had a lovely relaxing weekend away, and even though it was Iain's birthday I was the one who came back with goodies: a collapsible diffuser/reflector, a 50 mm f/1.8 lens, and an iPhone 4!


Day 199

I baked a cake for Iain's birthday. I'm far too cack-handed to decorate a cake, so it looks a bit of a mess, but by golly it tastes good! :-)

Day 200

Two photos showing the dawn view from our hotel room in Wellington.

Day 201

We visited a wildlife sanctuary only ten minutes' drive from the centre of the city.

A kereru (New Zealand wood pigeon)

The Karori gold mine, which is located inside the wildlife sanctuary. Taken with my lovely new lens. I think the blurred figure is the ghost of a miner. ;-)

Another native bird, a takahe. In size they're midway between a chicken and a turkey.

Day 202


Trying out the forward facing camera on my new iPhone...

Self portrait

Opening the mailbox

Day 196

I'm not sure which version of this shot works better.

I think the sky works best in the colour version, as the clouds have more depth, but I think the land works best in black and white, as it brings out the lines in the silhouette.

Which version do you prefer?

Day 194

By the time I was ready to take a photo break today, the clouds had rolled in, and the rain was lashing down. With only a couple of hours to go until sunset, I knew that even though lighting conditions were far from ideal, they weren't going to get any better, so I may as well take some photos anyway, and try to capture the mood of the weather.

I don't use the split tone presets in Lightroom very often, but they worked quite well with this shot. I chose one of the presets and then played around with exposure and curves, until I got the contrast I wanted between the various parts of the image. On most photos I find cranking up the clarity slider improves the final result, but with this one I found it looked best when I dialled down the clarity to a negative value.

Days 191 to 193

Great news -- the satellite installer had a cancellation, so we're now back online, much earlier than expected!  I'm really chuffed. You don't realise how much you've come to rely on the Internet until you have to do without it for a week.

Iain has come up with an interesting theory about why our 3G connection stopped working. He reckons it's the fault of the ash cloud from the volcano in Chile, which has grounded the majority of New Zealand flights for the past week. Whatever the reason, I'm glad the outage happened, because it's forced us to get satellite, and although it's more expensive, it's also faster and we have way more bandwidth -- 50 GB per month instead of 8 GB. Knowing us, I'm sure we'll use it all! ;-)


Day 191

I never tire of the view from our veranda. If I took a photo of it every day, I'm sure I'd get a different result every time. On this shot I tried out a trick for dramatic skies that I learned from Photoshop User TV -- a simple technique using the high pass filter in Photoshop.

Day 192

I always take the camera with me when I take my daily walk to the mailbox. These ladybirds were going for a hike around the gate post.

Day 193

I keep buying flowers. It's very decadent, I know. But I do enjoy shooting them.

Day 182

No words today.  Just pictures. :-)

Day 181

In contrast to all the effort and frustration yesterday, today's photo shoot was so easy.

When I opened the curtains this morning the light was amazing, so I went out onto the veranda and took some shots.

Day 179

This is a gulley on our neighbour's land, taken from the roadside.

Two of the cows on our land came up to investigate the house, so Pookie and I went out to say hello. Cows are daft. This cow was constantly getting whacked in the face by her friend's tail, but she didn't have the sense to move out of the way.

Day 169

I had to go into town today, so I took the opportunity to go for a short photo walk along the riverside.

New Zealand's only remaining paddle steamer, and a sculpture by David McKracken called 'Bearing'. I think the fissure in the ball might be a map of the local river.

How to saw a woman in half:

 Gull about to take flight:

This one makes me laugh!

Day 155

This morning I had another go at taking a panorama from out front. The light is better than in the first panorama I took of this view, but the lens flare is distracting and there are large sections of the sky that are blown out. Maybe it's time to start learning HDR.

I've had an idea in my mind for a while to take a photo of the cabbage tree out the back, with me doing tree pose in front of it. I'll come back to this idea at a later date, as the idea still appeals, but I'm not satisfied with today's results.