I had the amazing privilege of going to the Avalon Air Show earlier this year, which was not only for the first time but also a huge treat. I had a ball! The sounds of the flying aircraft and the crowd’s vibe was awesome. I’ll let the pictures do the talking. Just do some whooshing noises as you look at them.
This is part two of my trip to Holland and Belgium. I hope you enjoy and feel free to share.
This past April I had the chance to visit the homeland of my parents, Holland; Great food, tulips, cobblestone streets and gorgeous architecture, making this my favourite holiday destination so far. I got to revisit the towns my family grew up in, experience hospitality at its best and eat as well as drink to excess! Because I have so many images, I’m splitting this post in two, so I can reserve some for your viewing later. Thanks to the very welcoming Dutchies that met me over there, you made my trip truly special and I can’t wait to return.
For my wedding photography work, be sure to keep scrolling and like my Facebook Page for updates. And for the gear heads, all the shots were taken with a Canon 5D Mk II, Tokina 20-35mm f2.8, Sigma 50mm f1.4, Canon 85mm f1.8 and Canon 135mm f2L. Stay tuned for part two.
Even though I still some wedding work to complete, I had to upload a pic from my recent trip to Holland. The photo you see here was discovered by my brother in-law Seb and decided it was in my best interest to get out of bed (who gets up early on a holiday anyway?). To my delight the warm morning glow was gorgeous on a crisp 3degree morning and I could take the picture directly from the deck of our houseboat, looking south east down the Amstel River, Amsterdam. Image specs incase you want to know: Canon 5D Mk II, Sigma 50mm f1.4 lens, 1/125oth of a second at f2.5, ISO100. Once I get some other work out the way and my images edited I’ll post the rest of the images.
Also to all the family over there that welcomed us, thank you we all had a ball!
I recently had the pleasure of visiting Malaysia and here are the some of the images I captured along the way. First was Kuala Lumpur for two days (which was mostly spent shopping) and then nine days on Penang Island off the west coast of Malaysia. I would definitely recommend Malaysia as a holiday destination; with warm temperatures all year round, friendly people with amazing hospitality, many things for site seeing and shopping like you wouldn’t believe.
Just click on the thumbnail to enlarge each image and press the back button to return to the main page. Enjoy, and if you are interested in purchasing any of images for your wall at home, let me know via email.
Nicole and Billy were the lucky couple to be test subjects for my first Engagement Session in one of favourite spots to shoot, St Kilda. The weather was near perfect, not too cold, not blaring sun, just overcast with a strong sea breeze. Here is a small selection of images taken on the day, just click on the thumbnails to view larger.
A big thanks goes out to Nicole and Billy and my ring in assistant for the day Travis. Fun was had by all! Stay tuned for some Flash how too and some image critiques as well.
'Spotlight' A shaft of sunlight breaks the forest canopy
Just a quick post before I head to bed, this is shot I took at the Pancake Rocks, New Zealand of a shaft of light breaking the forest canopy to light this tree stump. I kept telling myself when I walked around New Zealand taking photos, that I should sometimes look beyond the major attraction and sometimes look down or go off the normal path taken by tourists. This tree stump caught my eye walking back to car as there just only this spot of light coming through the trees while the rest of area was fairly dark from the surrounding forest. While Belinda patiently waited on the path I went all terrain to get closer to the subject. I love the fact you can see the few strands of spider web caught by the sun.
How I got this shot is totally different to what the camera’s exposure meter would have set if I was on any of the auto modes. I set the camera to spot metering mode to get a reading off the sunlit side of the stump. This totally rendered the background and shadows completely black, so it frames the fine details that caught my eye to start with. It began with a vision in my head what the image would look like before I even took it. The aperture I selected was f3.2 on my Tamron 17-50mm f2.8 lens to get a shallow depth of field, but not totally wide open as most lenses are not at it’s sharpest then. The resulting shutter speed was 1/200th of second which is more than adequate to hand hold.
Lake Crucible defrosting in the Siberia Valley, New Zealand.
One of the highlights of our trip to New Zealand’s South Island is the Siberia Experience that flies out of Makarora not far from the beautiful Lake Wanaka. After checking in at the one of only a few buildings in town, you are sent over to a shed across the road to wait for your ride, either a 6seater Cessna aircraft or a 5seater helicopter. We thankfully had the helicopter as you can see out the bottom easier and it was more exciting than a plane I thought.
The ride was a descent 25 to 30 minutes through the Siberia & Wilkin Valleys and over snow covered mountain tops of the Mount Aspiring National Park. In the helicopter you get to see nearly untouched wilderness, hidden valleys, ancient glaciers and frozen lakes. On the way we got to do a flyover Top Gun style over the top of a Jet Boat taking a spin up the Wilkin River. Our guide was very informative and relaxed while he took us for our flight as well as offering to take a picture of my wife and I in front of the helicopter after it dropped us off in depths of the Siberia Valley in preparation for our 3hour hike.
In the photo you see the Crucible Lake which is a glacial lake that freezes over every winter. You can also see the river of melt water that comes off it heading down the mountain side with chunks of ice floating down it. You can also make out in the lower part of the picture the massive and brittle ice shelf floating in the water. There are walking tours available to this spot, but a high degree of fitness and cold weather endurance is required if you hike there in the snow season.
The images specs are 1/1600th of a second at f5.6, ISO250. I had to keep the shutter speeds nice and fast to avoid any vibration caused by the helicopter engine as well to avoid blur to compensate for the speed of we were moving at. I used aperture priority with about 1/3rd to 2/3rds of plus exposure compensation to keep the snow bright and white instead of grey. I selected f5.6 for the aperture as this is the shapest setting of the Tamron 17-50mm f2.8 lens.
The first glow of sunrise touches the side of Mt Cook/Aoraki
One thing I loved about New Zealand was that I didn’t have to get up at 4:30AM and drive/walk for miles to catch a sunrise, this one was about 6:40 from the window of our hotel room. I setup the camera with the Canon 70-200mm f4L IS lens on a tripod at the window before retiring for the night. All I had to do was set the alarm, roll out of bed and crack the curtain a bit to capture the first light on this amazing view of the mountain and the Hooker Valley. I even snuck back to bed for another hour before getting up to do a hike through the Hooker Valley and then later followed by boat ride in the Mueller Glacier Lake.
The image specs for the enthusiasts is 1/15th of second, f7.1 at ISO100 with some the basic natural adjustments in Adobe Lightroom.
This is one of my favorite images from the first leg of our trip around New Zealand. After scouting the area for a spot for some sunset photos I settled on this amazing rocky outcrop on the Kaikoura Peninsula that looks up to some snow covered mountains right by the coast. The light wasn’t that spectacular on the mountains so I turned to the rocks by my feet. The area had some intriguing shapes and textures defined by the warm evening light.
To get the smooth and silky look of the water I set up my camera on my tripod with its legs splayed over the jagered rocks and set up my composition. In order to get the slowest shutter speed possible, I used a neutral density filter to absorb some light and combined with an aperture of f10 to get some good depth of field and it resulted in a shutter speed of 6seconds. To make sure I got the maximum sharpness on the rocks in the photo I used a cable release and the mirror lock up function in the camera to make sure the camera didn’t vibrate one bit. I was happy with the results on the LCD screen so I shot little else and headed back to the car to put the heater on full blast!
Post processing back home was pretty simple; just the usual natural enhancements and sharpening just in Adobe Lightroom (no Photoshop).
I encourage some feedback in the comments, and if I get enough interest I’ll be releasing it as a very limited edition print.
Here are my images from the 2010 Scott Kelby World Wide Photo Walk held in St Kilda last week. I joined over 30,000 photographers in over 1100 cities across the world taking photos of my local city to take part in this mammoth day. This was my third and also my favourite photo walk to date as I pushed myself creatively and came home with a great range of images representing life in St Kilda. My all time favourite image will soon be released as an extremely limited edition print (details coming soon). Just click on the thumbnails to enlarge the photo.
This particular photo is very precious to my fiance and myself because it is the exact spot where I proposed to her just two minutes later. Only a few minutes before that, we had a crowd of people behind as we sat behind my camera on the tripod waiting for the sun to go down, but luckily not knowing the best light comes when the sun actually goes beyond the horizon, most of them left us alone for me to pop the question.
Enough of that, how was the picture taken!? This is a series of 5 images taken on a panoramic head on my carbon fibre travel tripod stitched together in Photoshop CS4. 3 images where used in the final image as overlaps where too great, so I didn’t need them all. I first attempted this pano stitch over a year ago on my old PC with Photoshop CS3 and after numerous crashes, the blend was terribly obvious and I chose to abandon the project. After all the post processing I enlarged the file so I could print it at a massive 60×30 inches, not a normal size but I split the file into three TIFs to have printed on Metallic Kodak Endura Paper and mounted on 3 pieces of black edged craftwood. Even with my new iMac with 4GB ram it struggled to handle the 2GB PSD file. The three saved TIFs totalled about 450MB and then they were uploaded to my lab.
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