Animation #3 - The Tail Wag

Another animated gif of Sky the Dog on the shore of Lake Hawea back in December.

These are so much fun to do :)

Dog Animation #2

Having more fun doing animations, this time with 13 images on the shore of Lake Hawea and a dog that loved a rather big stick. Hope you enjoy this as much as I do!

A Stick and a Half

I had loads of fun putting this together - first finding out how to make animated images, and then putting it together.  Not bad for a first attempt?

This dog we found on the shore of Lake Hawea and he really LOVED his sticks - big sticks. I found it hilarious! Enjjoy!

St John's Creek - Wanaka

After photographing frogs and landscapes all day, we headed to St John's Creek for some evening, sunset shots.  I knew this was our second time to St John's Creek and it seems that I missed out blogging about the previous time we were there the night before this one.  So I'll have to go back another time and show you St John's Creek in another totally fun light!

Unfortunately the evening was fairly windy, which meant choppy water and no reflections.  Still - the light was beautiful giving lots of shadows and colours on the mountains.

Unfortunately, to get the right shutterspeed, meant the Lupins in the foreground were a bit out of focus due to the wind blowing..

 The shadows were long - this is Liz and I with our tripods...

And just as we were leaving the sunset finally hit the top of the mountains.  I had wanted so much more but that is all nature was going to give us tonight.  But I'll take what I can get!

Day 6 - Wanaka and Frogs

Day six of our Trip to Lake Wanaka dawned bright and sunny.  It had snowed overnight, so the morning was crisp and cool, but everything sparkly fresh and green.  This was at the beginning of September and I can guarantee with drought conditions, that the area will not be green like this at the moment!  We headed down to the man-made lake which is just by the lakeshore of Lake Wanaka, to take photos of reflections, blue sky, mountains, and more Lupins.  In this image, you can see wild Briar Roses, Purple and yellow Lupins, native trees and the snowcapped mountains beyond the lake..

Here's Liz photographing on the other side of the lake from me.  The Blues were amazing, but they were brought out further with the CPL filter on my lens.

And when the breeze calmed down a bit, we got the reflections I had wanted...

Huge dragonflies buzzed around, but they were very hard to photograph, hardly ever stopping...

More snowcapped mountain prettiness...

And even more reflections - I was in my element....

This was a pristine site for photography but something was really bugging me. The continual sound of a chainsaw in an otherwise beautiful calm morning. It was really getting my back up and I was just about to moan to Emily and Liz about it when something caught my eye....

And this is when I realised that there were no chainsaws in the area at all, but what I was hearing through my cochlear implant was a sound I hadn't really heard before in great detail.  Hundreds of frogs croaking....

I loved how they just floated on the top of the water, with the reflections making them look like they had four eyes, not two...

To get these photographs, one had to stand in the same place and be extremely still. The slightest movement then they stopped croaking and disappeared from the top of the water. As soon as you were stock still again, you would eventually hear their call, and then see them floating on top of the water again..

I loved seeing the Bullfrogs in action - how they puffed up their throats, which in turn sent out circular ripples...

I was actually surprised how large their throats expanded without exploding!!

At first when I processed these images I thought the black spots were dust on my camera lens - but later I realised they were insects floating on the water.  The frogs would suddenly leap and get these insects. I was never fast enough to get the image though!

And just a reminder to what it was like around this man-made frog lake, lupins and mountains all around. Jealous?

Here's another Bullfrog.

I love the way they floated on the water too - they seemed to use their webbed feet as a floatation device... 

Note the insect getting closer to this frog. Once again I missed the action of the tongue snatch and grab - they were so fast!

It was such a gorgeous morning, even the damselflies were enjoying the day making out in public areas not caring that we were watching.  I almost felt like I was intruding...

A hop step and a jump away from the man-made lake, was Lake Wanaka - (which isn't man-made!)).  The beach was full of bright yellow lupins and I'm sure this tree will not be in the lake now, as I believe the water levels are now very low after our summer...

Kayakers were enjoying the morning and scenery..

The little beach I was on...

Emily with her big lens taking photos of the Kayakers as they were passing.  I was sitting on a rock with my feet in the water as my foot was so sore - at this stage I hadn't realised I had broken it.  The cold of the lake was bliss on the ankle.

This is such a stunning place for photography. Can't wait to get back there again. Seeing the frogs was magic as you rarely see them anywhere.. They are starting to become endangered.

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!