Lindis Pass Landscapes

The dramatic Lindis Pass links the Mackenzie Basin with Central Otago. The actual pass crosses a saddle between the valleys of the Lindis and Ahuriri Rivers at an altitude of 971 metres above sea level. For many months of the year, you can expect to see snow in this mountainous area - often down to the roadside.  On our way down to Lake Hawea there was no snow, but the night before we were photographing the Lupins, it got cold and it snows...

Which made for some lovely photographs.  We stopped along various parts of the road to take photos. No one else did though - they just rushed past the amazing scenery in a hurry to get wherever they were going...

There weren't too many cars though, so I managed to get an image taken right in the middle of the highway!  No way I could do this anywhere else!

Another bus load of tourists rushing past and missing out on some of the best scenery that the South Island has to offer!

The potographers in action - we parked the car and walked over the tussock to get the best views...

And we stopped on the way back too because just photographing the area just once, wasn't enough!

There's something special about mountains, tussock grass, and snow that one cannot ignore if you have a camera in hand!

In Camera Fun - Lindis Pass

Still on Day 5 of our Tekapo trip 3 months ago now.  Where has the time gone?  It's 2013, only 9 months until Christmas (in case anyone needed to know that!)  Have you started your Christmas shopping yet?

I love doing different types of photography as you know - I go all over the place, from macro, to landscapes, to artistic textures which drive the purists mad, and occasionally abstracts or impressionism.  I love doing this in camera, rather than in photoshop, although they can be done both ways.

While I was in the Lindis Pass photographing those gorgeous Lupins, I had taken my fill of images and I was waiting for Liz and Emily to finish up.  So started experimenting with different in-camera action shots.  

Firstly, I stuck my camera on AV, but upped the aperture to make sure that the image was going to take a bit longer to expose.  Then I started taking the images, but moving the camera in different directions.

The first from left to right.  I imagine this is what the river sees as it rushes past the Lupins...

Then I used the moved the zoom on my lens at the same time as pushing the shutter.  This takes a couple of tries to get right.

Then up and down.  I quite like this as it's caught the willow tree on the river bank surrounded by the Lupins...

A little diagonal...

And  love this one as you can actually see the Lupins quite clearly.  It almost reminds me of a Monet painting...

Alongside the river bank again...

 More diagonal...

This is another one of my favourites.  It almost looks like the Lupins have been twisted into candy bars...

This is another good one - as it has a clear focus point, yet is still impressionist.  I might use this in a competition a bit later on.

I had so much fun doing this.  It's really worth playing around with so give it a go.  Link me to some of yours as well - I would love to see them.  Bear in mind - that you throw away a lot of images in the process, but that's the beauty of digital photography!

The Bees of the Wild Lupins - Part 3

One of the things I love about my macro lens is that it shows me things that I would not usually see. I knew bees landed on flowers, and collected pollen, and I never thought twice how it would do that on a Lupin Flower until I saw it through my Macro Lens. Let me show you want I learnt!

Firstly, The Lupin flower head is made up of lots of pods.  These pods are actually closed - imagine a petal in a shape of an oblong bubble. The stamen is inside each pod. The bee flies to the pod..

And then proceeds to start opening the pod

This could take a bit of time depending if its been opened or not before..

 He opens the pod quite wide...

I thought he'd get into the pod, but no, he then...

pulls the stamen out and collects the honey.  Note that this particularly bee is so laden down with pollen, that when he tries to fly he simply drops in a crash...

And leaves pollen dripping off the pod! 

I did catch him again doing another pod - never gave up and those pollen sacs must be heavy.

Here's another one that isn't laden down with pollen... He alights on the pod which is closed...

Opens it up to expose the stamen.

Exposes everything so he can access it... 

then pulls himself up to collect the pollen...

Pretty amazing isn't it? It's also nice to know that honey bees are still out in force in the wild. We don't want anything happening to our bees as they do one of natures most important jobs, pollinating plants to ensure we can eat.

The Wild Lupins of Lindis Pass - Part 2

In the previous blog, I lamented how I could not find any information about the Historic Red Bridge.  Fortunately a friend of mine, Dave Gibb, has far superior googling skills than I, and managed to find a snippet of information about the bridge...

The Luggate 'Grandview Bridge' is a local icon listed highly in the Queenstown Lakes District Council's Historic Register. It was opened on October 28, 1915, and has been described as "one of the most attractively proportioned steel truss road bridges in the country." It is 103.7 metres long, and features a 61 metre Baltimore through truss, another 30.5m truss and a 12.2m rolled steel joist end span.

I bow to Dave's Superior Googling!  It might be that he's a South Islander and knew more than to just google 'Red Bridge near Hawea'.  I believe he actually put in the word Luggate, which I would never have known. I guess I'm  not a true mainlander yet, but I do believe I'm getting there!

Anyway, our next stop was the Lupin field at Bridge 2360 on the Lindis Pass.  We had seen it on our way down, and we memorised the bridge, with the intention to spend an hour photographing in this field.  We arrived about ten, knowing that this was about the right time or else everything would have been in shade.  This is view that you can see from the road - you can see in the distance the amount of Lupins growing there...  Like a river of them..

We would have loved to contact the farmer, but there was no farmhouse anywhere to be seen and it's very remote, so without further ado, we climbed the gate.  No easy task with a broken ankle, believe me!  But the Lupins beckoned and how could I resist?  That corally lump of stone on the other side of the gate is a lump of salt for the cattle. I made up that word 'corally' but it seems to fit well! They should let me write the next dictionary!  I'm always making words up!

But I digress. A short walk down that lane, past the gate, and this is what greeted us.  Looking south...

And looking north...

Just a mass of colour everywhere in various shades of blues, purples, pinks and whites. It was heaen. Lupins must be pretty hardy as they had even taken hold in the middle of the river. The river was elevated though because of the rain.

Love those Willow trees, even if they are a noxious weed here in New Zealand, they still are very attractive. The Lupins quite tall as well, which made it fun to photograph.

The sun came out briefly with a touch of mottled blue sky, which was nice after all the rain.

Of course we had to do the posing shots as well. Here's Emily smelling the Lupins. Not sure if there's a scent or not, I wasn't overwhelmed by scent while we were there, so perhaps not. I was too busy using the camera anyway.

 Liz amongst the flowers with her Tripod.

And Liz found a hill to get some elevated shots. I wasn't able to get up there because of.... you guess it - the damn foot!

 Emily and I hiding in the flowers..

After taking photos for a couple of hours, it was getting hot, so I headed to the last willow tree and found this. I managed to climb up onto that stump, no mean feat with one ankle broken! Tripods come in very handy - walking sticks, climbing sticks, poking sticks!

I took nearly 1000 images in this area. A lot in a period of the two hours we were there, but most of them were macro shots on continual burst mode, of all the bees collecting pollen from the Lupins. These shots are incredible and I'm amazed at what I saw through the macro lens. But I'll save that to Part 3.

I recently downloaded Topaz Labs and am enjoying playing with the images in that program. This is one shot I love, which I then overlaid it with the original to get the slight difference.  Which one do you like best?  I prefer the top, but that's just me!

This is a tiny tiny aphid on one of the Lupins, I was actually photographing a small droplet of water, bigger than this insect, and saw this pale yellow thing, put my glasses on and then I could just see him. I took a couple of photos not expecting them to turn out, so was pleasantly surprised to get such detail on such a small insect.

Keep a lookout for the Lupin Bees blogpost, coming soon!