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!

Lake Tekapo

Shortly after we left Burke's Pass we came across the famous Wild Lupins that dot the roadside from about here all the way through the MacKenzie Country. I can't describe it. It simply looks amazing and the photos just don't do it justice. As soon as we saw our first wild Lupins, we stopped to photograph them in case a). we didn't find another patch that looked as good, and b). bad weather was coming in from the west as you can see in that first image.

Not only was the roadside pretty but the landscape all around us was amazing.

So there was more than just Lupins to keep us occupied.

Other cars just rushed by, totally oblivious to the beauty of the landscape. They either aren't photographers, or are used to sights like these..

Here's the van we are travelling in. That's Emily getting something out, and her bike attached at the back. It was very comfortable travelling!

After I climbed back into the van I looked out the window and saw the other side of the road was interesting too. I simply gave my camera to Emily who was in the drivers seat to take one for me. This is the result.  She's a great photographer!

A short driver further on and we came to Lake Tekapo..  A wonderful sight greeted us.  Blue Sky, fluffy clouds, and lots and lots of Lupins by the lakeside. We were in heaven.

Lake Tekapo is also the home of the Church of the Good Shepherd.  It was the first church built in the MacKenzie Basin, in 1935, and is one of the most photographed churches in New Zealand. It features an altar window that frames stunning views of the lake and mountains.

Unfortunately it was closed while we were there due to some school function in there.  I were most disappointed as I wanted to get some shots from inside the church.

Across the lake to the left was another mountain, paddocks, a forest of pine trees, and willows along the lakeshore. In the corner were more blue Lupins.

But this was what we were here for.  The colours of the flowers, the colour of the lake. The lake really is that turquoise colour. It is one of the most amazing colours I've seen. It is created by 'rock flour'. The glaciers in the headwaters grind the rock into fine dust, and these suspended particles in combination of sunlight create the unique water colour.  On a cloudy day, the colour of the lake is very drab.

Emily and Liz spent some time complaining about the rude tourists who trampled the flowers and didn't care about anyone else but themselves, then discussed the best place for photos amongst the flowers..

Emily wore the right colours to blend into the landscape...

Liz getting up close and personal to the flowers...

I would have loved to walk out to the lake edge and feel the water, but unfortunately the stones were too uneven for my sore ankle, so I had to stay put.

Instead I just took photo after photo of the colours of the flowers. It made it very very difficult choosing which ones to put in this blog. For every one listed here, I have another 20 on my HDD and they are all as good as each other.

I wandered over to the back of the carpark and looked down at the part of the lake where the hydro dam was.  All down the bank were Lupins.

We decided to to head up to St Johns Observatory for the views before the weather packed up as it was slowly rolling in unfortunately...

Lake Tekapo from way up high...

And to the left is Lake Alexandria... Not such a pretty turquoise...

And looking down to the Lake Tekapo township and the Church area where most of these photos were taken...

Lake Tekapo is simply stunning and if you're visiting New Zealand, you should make this one of the places you must visit.  This was my 3rd time there.  Once in my early 20s (30 years ago), then again in early January  this year, and again last week.  Early January there were some Lupins still about but they were past their best.  Early summer (December) is the best time to go if you want to see the Lupins.