Light flare or Sun Strike??

This week we were challenged (or inspired by Belinda's great examples) to experiment with Lens Flare.  This is a technique where you put your subject in front of the sun with the aim of getting a nice glow around them.  It looks really great and sounds quite simple but it is actually really tricky, and made even more tricky by the efforts of my children...

I positioned my eldest in front of the sun and got ready to take the photo when she moved.  This resulted in me getting a fright when the sun hit my eyes, followed by a minute of stumbling around temporarily blinded which of course my girls thought was hilarious!  After two more attempts with similar results (this time on purpose) I decided that my experiments with Lens Flare would have to be limited to the one photo!

The other thing I was reminded of this week is how the camera can sometimes capture things that we fail to see and it is like an extra surprise when you get home and go through your photo's for the day.   They are usually few and far between but I was lucky enough to have two examples of this in the past week...

The first was on Saturday when we went out to Kaukapakapa to take photo's of the waterfall out there.  On the way back we stopped to look at the amazing sculptures on Alan Gibbs farm.  The farm is not open to the public so you have to admire these awe inspiring sculptures from a distance (which luckily isn't hard for some of them as they are huge!)  We decided to pull over to take a photo and got the surprise of my life when I got home and pulled the photo up on my screen and saw that not only did I have a picture of the sculpture on top of the hill but bang in the middle and at the bottom was a giraffe! 

The second was on Sunday when I decided to have my first ever play with time lapse photography by taking still shots of the sunset every ten seconds or so (I say or so because I don't have a timer so this was a manual process!)  My favourite sunset place is out at Bayview so I went out there and I was so caught up in the sunset and the watching the birds fishing that I didn't notice that the tide had completely come in and around the tripod until I watched it back at home that night.

27 April - the reason why I didn't get a good photo that day (12 hours painting this room!)

26 April - Stormy Night

25 April - Family Time

24 April - Lens Flare

23 April - Letters

22 April - Sunset at Bayview

21 April - Surprise View

Chasing Waterfalls...

Today we had a photo shoot with the Photogs and went out to capture Omeru Falls in Kaukapakapa.  It was awesome fun clambering around to get different shots (note to self - water at the top of the waterfall is actually kind of deep - not the best for walking across in sneakers!) and trying out my new neutral density filter and tripod!

Here are my favourite pictures of the day...

And as an added bonus I got this shot of the Kaukapakapa Slaughter House on the way home...

Week 16 taking shape

This weeks theme was shape but due to being away (followed by the catch up at work) and the joys of renovation I didn't even check what the theme was until today so I am not going to even pretend to have followed the theme this week.

Being away in Wellington for the first part of the week bought with it a whole new raft of photographic opportunities - great for getting you motivated again!

I seemed to have a bit of a theme going this week with reflections (transference of shapes??) with some amazing calm pieces of water to capture some amazing reflections.

Here is this weeks effort....

20 April - Sunset over the boats in Auckland Harbour

19 April - reflections in the duck pond at Onepoto....

18 April - a hard day to get a photo when you are home at 6.30 and it is already dark so I got the girls playing Connect before dinner...

17 April - the most amazing reflections at the Pauatahanui Inlet in Wellington - the water was just like a mirror.  My mother in law pulled over the car so we could get this shot....

16 April - me and the girls reflection on top of Mount Victoria...

15 April - one of the many sculpture pieces popping up around Wellington...

14 April - the buckets in Cuba Mall...



Home is where the heart is....

The theme for this week was "home". I was hampered in my efforts to capture moments at home by the combined efforts of a house overrun with builders, drainlayers and plumbers, school holidays and spending the end of the week in Wellington!

Here are my efforts for the week...

13 April - Busking on the Wellington waterfront while Oriental Parade is bathed in light...   

12 April - Rainbow over our neighbourhood...

11 April - Miss 3's "favourite chicken"

10 April - play time in school holidays

9 April - fixing up the house...

8 April - Hello Easter Bunny (many arguments following this siting as to whether Easter Bunny was in fact a girl and if she could/should talk)

7 April - having a sneaky bite while leaving out carrots for Easter Bunny...

A-maze-ing light

We went out to Karaka today to the corn maze (at Spookers) and aside from being awesome fun it also had the most amazing light, which combined with an amazingly sunny, blue April day made for some great photo opportunities!

Here are some of my favourites from the day...

An awesome tree tunnel on the way to the maze that lets in all these slithers of light...  Ever since I was little I have loved tree tunnels (my favourite used to be the one you drove through on the way to Rotorua) and this one definitely rates as one of the coolest I have seen...

Miss B running through the tree tunnel (she was actually a bit freaked out after seeing the outside of Spookers so a tree tunnel was just a bit much...)

 The amazing maize

Squeezing through...

Looking very chic in the maze...

Checking the clues...

A bonus discovery on the way home - Clarks Beach...

Colour my world

This weeks theme was colour so not surprisingly it features the girls pretty heavily as they bring colour to our lives every day.

We were also lucky enough this week to have the most amazing sunsets and lots of opportunities to play that saw even more colour than usual.  It made it really hard to choose favourites, especially over the past 2 days so I am cheating and having 10 photo's this week....

My 5 year old is getting more and more into photography and constantly amazes me how she can set up a great shot.  She spends ages looking around for what she wants to photograph and then takes her time setting up a perfect shot.  She spots things I would never think of and they look great.  She is still working on the technique for taking photo's (hey, at 5 it's hard to even hold a heavy camera still!) but once she gets that she is going to be amazing!  She loves hearing what the theme is each week and this one was one of her particular favourites so we had a lot of collaboration this week.  She actually wants her own blog for her photos to be like Mummy so watch this space, and in the mean time it is awesome to have a little helper out and about with me.

Here is our colourful week....

6 April - Hanging out at the Easter show - so much colour and so hard to decide so I actually have 3 photo's for this day (which is a good cull from the 600 I took!!!)

The first is my favourite of the week - I love the joy on their faces as they had just tumbled down the big slide together - one of the 25 rides they went on yesterday!!

Miss B holding the moon in her hands on top of One Tree Hill after the sun went down on the Easter Show...

Beautiful colour with the setting sun coming through the trees...

 5 April - my best discovery of the week, an awesome quiet place (which is close to home) to take photo's of the sunset...  I love how the pink clouds reflect in the water...  I love it so much I have to cheat and have 2 photo's for that too....

4 April, my little pink bunny on her easter egg hunt at daycare...

3 April - Colour, colour, colour.  This was a dual effort between me and Miss B, with me behind the camera and her art directing...

2 April - A colourful flower...

1 April - my beautiful girl...

31 March - fluffy bottom goose...