Maruia Falls

The Maruia Falls have always seemed quite impressive to me; well worth a stop on the way from Christchurch to Murchison. Fortunately, the falls cannot be seen from the highway otherwise the road would have a rather high accident rate. But a pull off into the carpark and a few lazy steps brings you to this magnificent sight.

What is even more remarkable is that these falls did not exist prior to 1929. In the Murchison earthquake of that year, a landslip diverted the course of the Maruia River so that it rejoined its self further down stream, falling over its own bank. At that time, the falls were about one metre high. However, in the succeeding years the falls eroded the base of the river until, today, they plunge a good ten metres to the river below.

We tend to think that such things happen over thousands of years but, in the case of the Maruia Falls it has all taken place in a rather short 86 year period. Great productivity, New Zealand!

Waimakariri Gorge Bridge

Perhaps because it is so close, this bridge has become a favourite spot for testing new photographic gear or new processing techniques. I like this bridge. So, on the first day of the new year I took a trip back to the bridge under a rather overcast sky. Much of the river-bed downstream was covered with the vehicles of boaties and fishermen so I stayed up high for this picture:

The bridge was built in 1876 and the two piers are 95ft and 115ft, made of cast iron and filled with concrete. For the first 60 years of its life it carried the rail line between Oxford and Shefield but, in the 1930s the line was closed and the bridge converted to a single-lane road bridge which it has remained to this day.

Glentui Bush

Took a walk in Glentui Bush on Monday with the intention of refining my processes for High Dynamic Range photography in general and panoramic HDR in particular. This was the second trip as I totally messed up the process on Sunday and came back with only half decent material. The second time was much better and the process seems pretty solid now (if a little time consuming).

This shot is the compilation of a 3 frame x 6 exposure sequence (18 images) taken at ISO 100, f8 and speeds between 1/500 and 1/15 second. Each exposure sequence was combined in Photomatix Pro and the three images stitched in AutopanoPro. Further processing was done in Photoshop using Topaz filters.

More pictures from this outing can be seen at: https://picasaweb.google.com/102496606900301125582/SpringGlentuiBush

Don't play on the tracks!

I wasn't; I was walking along the maintenance walkway at the side of the track. Halfway to the centre of the bridge and back again. I had just stepped off the walkway when the freight train came along allowing me to get this picture:

The scary thing was how much of the walkway the freight train took up - I had thought I would be safe against the hand rail but, no way. Another photographic near miss :-(

A Bridge too far ...

The suspension bridge that crosses the Eyre River at Wolff's Road is a majestic though dilapidated structure with its ends buried deep in bush. Built in 1945 to carry foot traffic, it's span is about 80m give or take a bit. One can be excused for wondering why it was built; the river floods on only a few days a year and there are other crossings readily available by car. But, in 1945 the alternative crossings were either Oxford or Mandeville and, as The Press observed, the flooded river "kept children from school, farmers from stock, cream from porridge, and urgent supplies from the farms." Today, only the foolhardy would attempt to cross the broken structure, but it seems a shame if its only destiny is to become rotted wood and rusted steel.

Rediscovering the opalotype

Photographic history is littered with now obsolete processing methods, like the cyanotype or the daguerreotype. One of the advantages of today's digital darkroom is being able to revisit some of these processes without needing to acquire specialist materials and chemicals and engage in strange rituals in darkened rooms. One such process that I am really enjoying is the opalotype.

Opalotypes were produced on milky white glass plates and the resulting monochrome image was then hand tinted to produce pictures that were (according to Wikipedia) "close to watercolour or even pastel in its softer coloring and tender mood." I suspect that it is probably this quality that draws me to the effect for certain subjects; like the Old Iron Bridge near Twizel in South Canterbury .

What do you think of the opalotype; nice and subtle or too last, last, century?

Mind bogglingly big

Last weekend we ventured far into the southern depths of Canterbury in search of some r&r. But we also wanted to see the hydro scheme and to visit Mt. Cook. This is MacKenzie country where, even in Spring, the grass is brown and the trees few. The 'brownness' of the MacKenzie is a bit disconcerting at first until you realise that the monotone simply draws attention to the broad sweep of the landscape.

This is HUGE country, where even a road seems little more than a temporary pencil mark on the land. The hills roll ever onward in their brownness eventually to be dwarfed by the towering peaks of the Southern Alps. It makes one feel small; not much bigger (nor significant) than the rabbits that seem to find it all to their liking.  But again, the bigness of the landscape points to another bigness: the bigness of what human beings have achieved in remoulding this landscape for the hydro scheme.

Of course there are the lakes, but they only require a dam to be built and filled with water. More amazing is the extent of the earthworks that have been necessary to reshape the land so that broad canals can gently carry water from one lake to the next. It's a big land which has been levelled and built up to suit man's needs, rather than natures whim. To stand there and ponder the amount of work necessary to sculpt a land in this way just makes the mind boggle.

Part of the canal running from Lake Ohau and, eventually, into Lake Benmore

Playing in the rain

The advantage of rainy days is that I can sit at my computer and play with new ideas and approaches to pictures, without feeling guilty (about the length of the grass, the weeds and the vegetable garden). Having upgraded Photoshop Elements to version 10 (from 8) and Topaz Black and White effects to version 1.1, I have had quite a lot to play with. This large format (100 cm width) picture was the result of a couple of days 'play':

Originally taken with a 10mm lens on a Nikon D80, it is now a 7,800 x 5,400 pixel image file on a canvas texture, as shown in this 100% crop from one edge:

I have been hugely impressed with the Topaz line of digital filters and, now that PS Elements has proper layer masks (from v9) the combination of PS Elements and Topaz filters makes for a great post processing suite at a reasonable cost.

From words to pictures

Good to be getting back to the visuals after spending the last few months shovelling words from one pile to another. Of course, it was raining today, so it was back into the archives to try out some new ideas and processing techniques in black and white. Well actually, these were a pair of quad tone pictures; sort of leaning towards towards sepia but not quite.

Both taken with a 15mm (efl) lens on a Nikon D80 earlier this year. The bridge is the Waimakariri Gorge Bridge, now a single lane road bridge, but originally built for rail.