Birds of the Waitangi Estuary Wetlands

There is recognition of the importance of conservation of wetlands in the Hawkes Bay area. The best vantage points probably along the Rotary Cycleway & Walkway, which we are slowly meandering along from Clifton Beach to Napier.
       

Havelock North By Night

PhotoProject :: Beneath your feet

The wonderful Chamber’s walk, though part of the Te Mata Park, was a great place to do a PhotoProject, looking down at the detail of what is around and beneath your feet.
       

RAW versus Autofix JPEGs

   
Apart from the obvious lens flare, which version appeals?
There is an original JPEG, and the same Image shot as a RAW. Then two “autofixed” post processed versions derived from the original JPEG. I was actually a little surprised with the results, because I am searching for the best representation of the tonal range of the actal panorama. You might like to compare this with the HDRI study from a few days ago of the rocky cliff on the left hand side of this image
Looking along the TeMata ridge towards Napier

Travelling with a Sleepy Computer

I’m travelling at the moment (you should have noticed by now) and on my last night in the Auckland I shut down my computer and it stayed asleep for way too many days. I didn’t discover this until I’d reach Lake Taupo and no amount of button pressing and rebooting attempts got any response. So what do you do? When you are surrounding by such natural beauty and want to take hundreds of photos each day. You personally might not want to take so many but I was still keen too. So here are my strategies to stay on top of my photostream (ok photo river in flood). I have mentioned most of this travel stuff before but lessons hard learned are good lessons.

1) Use all available SD cards (I have two 4GB cards on 2 GB and 3 single GB cards). This is a really simple solution as SD cards are getting cheaper and have larger capacity so they a lot like purchasing more film. However not all the places I visit have SD cards for sale  so I always carry a few spares.

2) Switch over to taking mainly JPEG files rather than RAW. On my camera this reduces a typical landscape shoot from 14MB to 6MB (under half the size). The trade off here is quality, or so many “internet” experts would have you believe (I’ll do seperate post on this). Both HDRI Bracketing and multi-image panoramas force me to take lots of images but my software of choice for both techniques just use JPEG file in any case.

3) Use cyber cafes, to download, review and backup/archive your photos. Cyber cafes are getting very common at all the tourist destination, but they probably aren’t as fast and reliable as you might prefer (Uploading to flickr or even just looking at your flickr stream will probably involve many tedious time outs and lost uploads.) Yet most computers will have a USB port so I can attach my cheap portable cards reader (which worked like a charm) to upload my photos to the computer (temporarily), If I have time I can also one or more of my stable of favorite post-processing software on my portable apps USB key

3.1) Autostitch is the multi-image stitcher of choice and is a big bonus that I can run it off my memory key. It only handles JPEG files and can be slow and memory intensive for big output files so I just use it to preview the stitching on the road.

3.2) Picturenaut has become my default HDRI tool the fact that I can run it off my USB is a big bonus. It only works with JPEG files

3.3) Noiseworks is a bit luxury but if I have to take photos in lowlight with Higher ASA I know I will need to do some noise cleanup.

3.4) If the cyber café computers don’t have Picasa or Microsoft Photo Gallery (many do) I find  XNView Portable, a fast and reliable photo viewer and manager that can handle RAW format images.

I always carry a little seagate free agent USB Backpack style hard dick(its getting on now but it does have a handy 120 GB of storage) and I use this routinely as my working backup/archive for my photos as I travel. Its only downfall is it need two USB cables, one just for power and some special drivers. Whilst most cyber café computers will let it load and connect a few don’t seem to set up the right drivers and was a bit flakey on some file copies (I never lost any files but….) However this mean I was able to confidently remove my photos from my SD cards every third of forth day.

The slow internet speeds here in New Zealand & bandwidth issues means I have avoided on-line storage like Sky drive, flickr or picasa web.

Don’t forget to empty the recycle bin on any public computer after you have deleted your images. This ensure that your precious photos are not “found” (aka Stolen) by other at the cyber cafe

So taking my own advice a little bit of preparation (extra SD cards, my PortableApps USB key with a few key programs, Card Reader and Backpack Drive) I was able to avoid undue stress and I could carry on taking photos just as I wanted too.

I eventually managed to “wake up” my computer with a cheap set of jeweler’s screw drivers and carefully removing both the rechargeable battery, backup battery & hard disks and equally as carefully replacing them.

Napier's Art Deco is not limited to its Architecture

Storm over Hawkes Bay

Sunny one moment and then a full on thunder storm with driving hail the next. The storm was so intense it even made the National news (complete with a photo of a water spout further up the coast).

haumoane herons

 

Tonal Restoration on washed out photos

It was a very overcast day and that makes large view distance photos very washed out. I saw the sheep on the next ridge and thought it would make a good photo, so I took a bracketed set (5 photo at 1 EV steps). And surprise, surprise they are washed out! Not to worry I took the set expecting to use the HDRI technique to restore some tonal depth and detail. Using my version of picturenaut on my portable apps memory stick, I used ass the basic defaults and exposure tone mapping with automatic contrast set in the histogram dialogue. This insures that picturenaut tries to use all useable pixels across all the photos to reproduce tones across the extended tonal range. So you will be able to appreciate how closed to the edge the sheep are grazing.

morning glimpse

sky & lake

These multi-image stitched panoramic views of Lake Taupo are more about the clouds and sky than the lake and landscape. I’m informed these unusual clouds are locally know as “Mare’s Tales” (thanks Wendy). Clouds alone are something that I have found can be a challenge to match up for Autostitch, especially for hand held sequences.  So I was careful to keep a little bit of the horizon in each image also I have taken the photos in the vertical “portrait” mode to maximize the vertical range and having two rows of images within each composite panoramic image.

Drama in the sky

   

...and the winner is.

Panning to follow the action will help keep the subject in focus but nicely blur the surroundings. Enhancing the feeling of movement

Some late summer budding

Water, water, everywhere

One thing about living on the side of a hill, you don’t except a flooding to come from above. Last night changed my mind. The intense storm saw the roadway turned into a creek (see video below, sorry about the quality it was taken on my phone). My own rain gauge read 155mm from when the rain started yesterday to 8:30am today. Considerable more than the 115mm registered at the Bureau Of Meterologty weather station at Scoresby.

 Having a look around this morning indicated that many of the concrete lids in the storm drains have been lifted, by the pressure of the shear about of run-off water, and several have suffered gouging of the soil around them. However very clearly the storm water and drainage around here largely worked! Well done city planners.

I was a little amazed at how much rubbish was included in the debris.



The Dandenong creek is in flood and at least around Jells Park the flooding effects have been mitigated. The new $1million foot bridge across dandenong creek near Ferntree gully road, fine you just can get onto it at the moment. The ferntree gully road bridge is fine and the road still open.

Still nature always seems to provide something nice to photograph. I’m guessing the spider isn’t so pleased!

When you are out it the rain try to keep your camera as dry as possible. I cover mine with a clean face washer and keep wiping away any moisture. A plastic bag may lead to serious condensation, so use one as a last resort. If you are really worried and have lots of money you could investigate raincoats for cameras.