A selection of New Zealand awesomeness, in predominantly green hues!






















Well mostly green.
Stuff I catch with my camera.
A selection of New Zealand awesomeness, in predominantly green hues!
Well mostly green.
By back home, I mean I traded the Olympus Mirrorless camera back in for a Canon. I missed having what I feel is a proper camera. A big Digital Single Reflex Camera. I like Canons so I bought the Canon 6D MkII. Actually it’s not quite as simple as that. The 6D MkII is the camera almost made for me. It’s more clever as one of Canons best ever camera’s, the 5D mkIII. I’ve also had one of those, a second hand one which I traded in for the Olympus Camera as I thought I would enjoy the drop in camera weight. It wasn’t worth the change sadly, still, you live and learn.
I wanted my own new Canon DSLR camera though and the 6D MkII came along at the perfect time. It’s got great image quality, plenty of pixels, it does a bunch of stuff I don’t care about or understand and it has built in wifi which is awesome in so many ways. It does what it says on the tin and has delivered a number of quite fetching images already. My only issue with it is that the shutter isn’t as quiet as I’d like. I know right? That’s literally the only issue. I love this camera and I’m looking forward to getting to know it better. Herewith some imagery from my 6D MkII. It’s not all about the camera though. For those who are interested, I mostly, currently only, have a Canon 24-105 L series walking round lens on the front of my camera.
Eclectic mix. See you soon.
This is where we live now. A small beach community in Manawatu, New Zealand. Himi as I call it has a wonderful eclectic variety of proper beach baches and more conventional homes, and the largest sand dune in the Southern Hemisphere apparently.
The phrase, ‘a picture paints a thousand words’ is best applied here. Here is a collage of Himatangi Beach images. I love it here.
Cool ay? See you at Himi.
I decided to go light, I decided I was carrying around too much heavy expensive gear for someone who isn’t a professional Photographer. I wanted to try Digital Mirrorless Technology. I’m currently enjoying the light weight, little bit hipster, retro’ish Olympus OM-D E-M5 MkII which is a hell of a mouthful for a camera name. I only have one multi purpose lens on the front which is an Olympus 14-150mm. I have to admit I’m not totally in love with this camera. I’m not as happy with the image quality as I had hoped I would be and I find it a bit small in my hands. It’s pretty much lacking in every department for what I want to achieve photographically. But it is light. I’ll be going back to a bigger DSLR set up when I can afford it. That said, here is a selection of images I’ve taken in the last couple of months with the little Olympus.
I don’t think it’s just a case of a poor workman blaming his tools, maybe it is though. I still want to go back to a full size DSLR, or mirrorless. This nice little camera is just too little for me.
I’m not even going to pad this out with words, well not many words. If you come here a bit you’ll know I spend a lot of time on the road. I’m lucky that I live in New Zealand which is the worlds greatest road trip. People travel from all over the world to see this stuff  and I just have to leave the house. These images are some that I have captured since my previous Dolphins post, which was just over a month ago. As far as a travel experience goes, it’s truly epic out there in New Zealand. I almost couldn’t believe I’d covered this much territory in under a month. I should get out more…
So, where too next?
Cuba Street in Wellington is pretty Iconic. Cuba Street is where the cool people go, the bearded hipsters, the fashionable in mind and spirit. The wannabe’s and the once were. The right on, right now and the faded jadeds. The tattooed ladies and the skater boys. Cuba Street is a place of street food, expensive food and retro shopping. Vinyl records and vinyl furniture, probably. Quirky things on the street and in the shops. Cuba Street is colourful. I decided to spend a morning taking photos in Cuba Street. This is the work of one hour, one morning. This Sunday Morning in March.
There are many photos and (almost) no captions. Sometimes images speak for themselves.
I recently had to return to England over Christmas, I say had to, I was happy to go of course. It’s been over 3 years since I returned home to New Zealand from my 20 plus years living in England. I was interested to see how it would look as a visitor, rather than a resident. I took my camera. What England mostly looked like, was foggy, although we did have a sunny day, so that was nice. Images in no particular order.
So not the usual touristy shots perhaps. It’s actually quite hard to take a photo a bit different to what is obviously on offer and on a million postcards. My lingering impression of my revisit to England though was that I’m very pleased I live in New Zealand. It’s good to be home.
Once upon a time. I spent a lot of time out and about before and during the sunrise. I should do that more often.
Get up early. Sunrise is often way cooler than sunset.
We had a big earthquake recently. Bigger in the South than it was in the North, but big none the less. There are many buildings in Wellington still closed, cordoned off and some to be demolished. Big buildings. We also had a Tsunami warning. So I thought I’d go and take some photos of the capital city before it gets destroyed in the next big earthquake and washed away in the following Tsunami. You know, for the archives. I took an eclectic mix of photos, not the stuff people usually photograph in Wellington. It is quite a diverse, colourful and interesting place. See? Due to the number of photos, I’ve gone for the ’tiled mosaic look. Welcome to Wellington.