Shown in NY

It's an odd world - when the email arrived saying that my work was to be included in a New York exhibition at the “Soho Arthouse,” I thought “Yea, right” (seen too many Tui ads) – “I’ll believe that when I see it”. It seemed little different from those emails stating that I had won a gazillion dollars in a lottery that I had never entered.

Then, later I saw this blog post on the two-day exhibition - announcing the launch of a new art website called “Crated” - and there it was, “Akoroa by night” in this picture (far left).

So, my inner sceptic, having been silenced, I guess I can add "exhibited in New York" to my CV. Yes, it's definitely an odd world.

Confessions

“Dog Kennel Corner”, the sign said. Another said “Lake Benmore Haldon Arm”; always a sucker for a lake, I took the turn. I didn’t know the area and I didn’t have a map, but the road was good and stretched invitingly into the Mackenzie District’s distance (Google Street View: https://www.google.co.nz/maps/@-44.099683,170.563848,3a,75y,221.31h,84.61t/data=!3m4!1e1!3m2!1sMmcNMazOtvnApVAQQHriew!2e0?hl=en)

I drove, for what seemed like a long distance through the rugged Mackenzie. Actually it was about 20km, twisting and turning over one-lane bridges, spanning a variety of creeks, and getting deeper into the tussock covered wilderness. I wasn’t worried, but saw no other vehicles and it did cross my mind that this would be an unfortunate place for my little Suzuki (affectionately known as “Camera Bag”) to break down. Then the tar seal stopped and the gravel began. Perhaps ‘gravel’ is too kind; it was more hard-packed earth with an occasional sprinkling of stone. But hey, I had already come a long way and somewhere down here was a lake. I drove on.

Gradually, kilometre after kilometre, the road got narrower and rougher. I passed the occasional sheep station and stock yards and once saw a farmer in a ute. Somewhere, around the 40 kilometre mark, I really did begin to wonder if I was doing the smart thing, but consoled myself with the thought that Camera Bag’s other nickname was “Mountain Goat”, and pressed on.

50 kilometres and the road was a two wheel-track through the tussock. I was conflicted; by the thought that this might be an incredibly stupid thing to be doing (at my age) and a stubborn determination not to be beaten; either by the landscape or my own fear of the unknown. Determination won.

Finally the track took a sharp turn and a dive down into a large cluster of trees. I had arrived at a beautiful, secluded camp site on the edge of Lake Benmore. The summer campers had long gone and in late autumn the place’s only inhabitants were the golden trees and the multitude of birds that had reclaimed their home.

After the mild anxiety of the drive, the place was heavy with a tangible peacefulness and I stayed a while to soak it in. Strangely, I didn’t take pictures there that day, except as a matter of record – this is where the road ends:

Another of life's little metaphors, perhaps.

One simple trick

Last weekend I was taking some photographs at the observatory on top of Mt. John. I don’t normally watch other photographers but it was hard not to in such a popular scenic spot. Over the course of a couple of hours I became aware of one repeated behaviour: get out of car, walk to the edge of the car park, hold camera in front of face, take picture.

I saw no exceptions to this behaviour. It didn’t matter whether the camera was a cell phone, a compact or a big DSLR; one photographer even set up his tripod at the edge of the car park, adjusted it to face height and took his picture. I wish I had the foresight to take such a picture, so that you could see what it would include, but that only occurred to me later after I had left. Magnificent vista that it was, their pictures would have included a mountainous background with a valley lake in the middleground and NO FOREGROUND.

As humans, we experience all such views from the foreground - even if our focus is on the distance. The foreground is where we stand, it fills our peripheral vision and provides context for the rest of the scene. When you see a picture without a foreground, it doesn’t capture the experience of actually being there, and we end up feeling disappointed that the picture doesn’t reflect the moment. Unfortunately cameras don’t have peripheral vision – what’s in the viewfinder is all you get so you, the photographer, need to introduce some foreground into the scene.

Ten paces away from the car park edge there is an interesting rock. Down on one knee, rock in the frame and the picture has what it needs – foreground context, strong middle ground, and magnificent background. It’s that easy.

So that’s my one tip for your vacation landscapes; don’t just do what everyone else does by standing there and clicking into the distance – just change your position, bend a little if you have to, and include some foreground interest in the scene. That’s not a rule by the way – not every picture has to have foreground - but most landscapes will benefit from its inclusion.

Getting what you want

Mt Oxford, Canon A590 IR, 1/220 sec, f5.6, ISO 80 (8 frames)

Usually, when I set out to capture a particular picture, I come back with something quite different; either because circumstances prevented the intended picture or because I get distracted by something better. Today I came back with what I wanted - a picture of Mt Oxford taken from the township - in infrared.

This picture just wouldn't work in a normal photo; the tones would all be too similar and would merge into a mass of green-brown sameness. In IR it's a totally different story, with the trees fluorescing brilliantly against the hills and sky.  

More on the infrared front

Today the sun shone. Not a big deal, except for the fact that we hadn't seen the orb for about three weeks (how very British of us) and that last Tuesday, my camera came back from the States having had an infrared (IR) conversion and I was itching to try it out in sunny conditions.

IR photography captures the world as we can’t normally see it. Clear skies, water, roads and many other things reflect very little IR while clouds and foliage, including grass, reflect a lot and glow with ghostly IR brightness. IR cameras capture the IR wavelengths in the same way that a normal camera captures visible light so we can process the camera data in exactly the same way; making the invisible, visible.

A trip to the gorge bridge and a quick walk around town produced the following results (presented here in soft pink and deep blue hues):

The Waimakariri Gorge bridge

Back road

The new town clock

Pearson Park playground

I was shooting at f8 with ISO 80 and getting exposure times of between 1/40 and 1/60 second. About one stop less than for visible light. All the metering and auto focusing worked fine and it was just like shooting with a normal camera.

The camera was an old Canon A590 IS which had sat in a draw unused for a few years. The conversion was done by a company called Kolari Vision (www.kolarivision.com) and, while the postal services took their usual time, Kolari Vision turned it around within 4 days (including a weekend) and did a top-notch job.

Oh, Feedly, Feedly ...

... so much promise, so much disappointment.

When Google shuttered “Reader”, it was Feedly that came riding to our aid. We cheered as our liberator rode into town – the news feed famine was averted. Alas, our former saviour has become a right pain in the proverbial. It has, I fear, lost its way.

Who’s idea was it to split the feed into bite sized chunks? Now I never know when I am really done reading. “Done” Feedly says, and then refreshes to show more items. “Done” again; but no, there are more items and then another “Done”. Some mornings I have to go through ten occurrences of “Done” before I am really “All read” done. It’s impossible to know whether I have enough time to read the remaining articles or not because “Done” doesn’t mean “Done” any more. Dumb.

If that wasn’t frustrating enough, for the last week Feedly has been delivering the same four articles at the end of every “Done”. I have read them; honest I have. But no, up they pop again. They aren’t on Feedly cloud, but they are on my Android device and they won’t go away.

So, Feedly, it’s time you left. Yes, I know; I am old and cranky but I’m not going to let you make me crankier than I need be. Did I mention FeedEx? She’s cute.

Tears and laughter

It’s been an unexpectedly emotional three days. Two events caused, in turn, a shed tear or two and secondly very large grin. Both were initiated by National Radio.

On Tuesday Geoff Robinson retired. Geoff has been a passenger in my car every work-day for the last 20 years. He presented National Radio’s “Morning Report” programme and was the voice of sanity in a frequently insane world. It was Geoff that told me about the 9/11 attack on New York; I remember; we were half way along the Tram Road at the time. http://www.radionz.co.nz/audio/player/2589838

I hadn’t realised how attached I had become but, knowing it was his last day, brought tears of sadness to my eyes. I will miss an old friend who never knew me.

National Radio was playing again today as I drove back from the hospital. Jim Mora decided to play Monty Python’s, “Always look on the bright side of life”. Did that make me smile, or what! There’s one verse that I must try to remember:

“If life seems jolly rotten
There's something you've forgotten
And that's to laugh and smile and dance and sing
When you're feeling in the dumps
Don't be silly chumps
Just purse your lips and whistle
- that's the thing.”

Rain and sun; tears and laughter... "There ya go, see!" 

Infra-red (IR) revisited

The last time I tried Infra-red (IR) photography I was using a Nikon D80 and the results were not very good. Exposure times were around 30 seconds and the lenses in my kit at that time didn't play nice with IR and made all sorts of 'hot spots' in the picture. The post processing tools I had available were also not very flexible.

Fast forward a couple of years and I realised that I hadn't tried IR with the D600, current lenses and processing tools. I didn't have high expectations, but was delighted with what I found:

Nikon D600, Nikkor 18-35mm D* lens, Cokin 720nm IR filter, 3sec, f8, ISO800. Processed in Lightroom and Photoshop CC.

Notice the white dot (center top)? That's a daytime moon, mid-day with lots of sun - only with IR. So, all in all and for an unconverted, non-IR camera, the D600 does a pretty good job and the 18-35 D makes a reasonable IR lens (it even has the focus adjustment marks for IR).

Note: I have no idea how the latest 18-35mm *G* lens performs - it is totally different from the *D* being used here and has no IR markings.

Gary Fong Lightsphere

When asked to photograph the opening of our latest exhibition, particularly the procession and karakia, I was worried about how to light it. The room was large (though helpfully white) and the lighting in the room would be subdued (only small spots lighting the work). So, how was I going to get a reasonably even light across the room?

I thought about installing multiple speedlights around the room, but wanted to be mobile as the action could be anywhere. In the end I opted for an on-camera flash fitted with a Gary Fong Lightsphere. I used the sphere without its dome and angled slightly forward (about 30 degrees from vertical) with the (SB700) flash unit set to as broad a beam as possible (see below).

The camera was set to manual at about -2ev from ambient and the flash on TTL. A couple of test shots gave me a little more confidence that this arrangement would deliver the goods, and so it proved:

This was one of the first shots and there was sufficient output from the Lightsphere that I even had to burn down the glare on the white plinth in the mid-ground. What nice even lighting it produced and it even managed to overpower the warm spots (still visible in the far room where the lightsphere couldn't reach. All in all, I am very pleased with the Lightsphere for this type of event photography. Recommended.

Strange requests, bad weather and forgotten keys

Requests to take portraits, photograph homes, golf courses or even bees, are pretty ordinary but today’s request was less run-of-the-mill; can you photograph my lichen? Not knowing exactly what to expect, I packed everything I could think I might need and set out. The day was a bit dodgy, hail showers and stormy winds, so I even packed a brolly – to keep my gear dry.

When I arrived it was indeed plain, ordinary, lichen growing on a log of wood and having a party in the last few days of autumnal wetness. Now I could have offered the lady some previous pictures of lichen which were somewhere on my hard drive at home, but this was her lichen, growing outside her window and therefore somewhat special. And so I spent several minutes on my hands and knees getting a bit damp while pointing the Tokina 100mm Macro at various patches of exuberant lichen.

During the process I realised that there was one item I had not brought with me; an Allen key. For today, my quick release plate decided to part company with my ball head. Macro shots with a wobbly camera – not a great idea. Nevertheless, with a little bit of perseverance and some wonderful new tripod contortions we got the shots and headed home.

Personally, lichen is not my favourite macro subject – even when it is partying it is a little boring. But having spent some time with the files this afternoon, I am beginning to see a giant lichen forest with little people running through it; with Photoshop anything is possible. Maybe I’ll get some more suitable lichen shots, when the weather gets better.