During the recent summer holidays we paid a visit to the Catlins, a beautiful unspoilt coastal area to the south of Dunedin. The day we visited it wasn’t very summery, but looking on the bright side, the overcast showery conditions did lead to wonderfully moody photos, the kind that are so good for texturing. After a walk to Jacks Blowhole (stunning coastal views but a fairly chilly walk since I was dressed for summer); we stopped for lunch at a bay at the mouth of the Catlins River
Now the photo, I have inherited much of the family photograph collection including the one peeking out of the book. Sam was my Grandmothers very handsome little brother and like many young New Zealand men of the time went off to what they thought was the “big adventure” of World War One. Ten percent of New Zealand’s then population of 1 million fought in WW1 and of those 18 000 died and 40 000 were wounded. Unfortunately Sam wasn’t among those who survived , he got injured in battle, wrote home to his mother saying he was fine, it was only a slight injury, but shortly after writing he succumbed to gangrene and is buried in France.
At Taiaroa Head at the entrance to Otago Harbour is a breeding colony of Northern Royal Albatross, the only such colony on inhabited mainland. These huge birds which have a wing-span of up to 3 metres, nest on the hills overlooking the harbour and if you’re lucky you can see them in flight, windy and stormy days are the best for this as they launch themselves off the cliff and rely on updraughts to get themselves airborne
We are so fortunate having such lovely beaches here in southern New Zealand and the fact that so many of them are so accessible and while I love deserted beaches, for my photos I like to have a human element. I tend to lag behind in my beach walks so I can get my long suffering “model” into the photo, in this case though, I swapped him for a more attractive silhouette
As we've often said, its the softer images that are the easiest to texture, that's not to say that bright ones don't work with textures, but overcast days with soft light are so much easier to work with. This photo was taken on the very last day of 2012,...
Yesterday afternoon we went for a quick drive out to Otago Peninsula and got some much needed exercise walking up the hill to the Highcliff War memorial, it was a short but steep climb but the views from the top are wonderful and it was worth the walk. This is...
First of all for those of you that missed the announcement, at last we have page numbers at the bottom of our Blog so you can visit our older posts more easily. We've also added a brand new Tag cloud page (accessed from the drop down menu under Blog. It is...
We are enjoying a lovely hot summer here in southern New Zealand, it makes a change from last year when it was often overcast and cool. It was an especially hot day yesterday and the beach was the place to be, like many New Zealand beaches especially on a week...
Sometimes it's the unintentional photos that work the best! Yesterday afternoon I noticed some storm clouds brewing to the south so we rushed out to the beach to see if I could get some photos with dramatic skies over the sea but the heavens opened before I got...
I have just returned from a lovely weeks holiday on the West Coast of New Zealand's South Island. It's one of my favourite areas in this country with it's mountains, temperate rain forests and wonderfully wild and unspoiled beaches. It does get a lot of...