Week 20

This weeks theme was Autumn and I actually managed to get lots of themed photo's this week (and even a throw back to lens flare!).  An extra great accomplishment given we were exiled from our house for the week and holed up in a hotel while our rotten kitchen floor got replaced!

The thing I am loving the most about this challenge is all the weird and wonderful places I end up on the quest for a picture.  On Mothers Day I decided after lunch that what I would really like to do was get a great Autumn photo so kids in tow we set off for Devonport.  On the way a cemetery caught my eye with the most amazing Autumn colours so we all stopped.  I stepped in and there was a sudden gust of wind and all the leaves lifted off the ground - it was surreal.  It was the most rich place - full of colour and energy which was so at odds with the broken head stones.  And while I couldn't say the kids were quite as moved by it as me they did get over being scared when no zombies appeared like they do on Scooby Doo!

Anyway, here's this weeks efforts....

18 May - The Duck Pond

17 May - Autumn in the Suburbs

16 May - Wet Autumn Days in the Park

15 May - Guess who got the big bed??

 14 May - Driving Home on the Harbour Bridge

13 May - Mt Victoria (Devonport) Cemetry

12 May - Nobody Puts Baby in a Corner!

Week 19

Winter and all the photographic challenges it brings (along with never ending building, tummy bugs and visitors in our house) has been making the photo challenge difficult.  Belinda in an effort to give us all a pep talk gave us a list of reasons not to give up - the thing that really resonated out of this was that at the end we will have a record of what we did for every day of a year - that is pretty special and not often you can actually do that!  So onwards and upwards...

I spent most of my week in search of photo's of the super moon and as you will see by my lack of photo's of said moon I was not very successful!  It turns out the moon is very hard to photograph and made 10 times harder by clouds that seem to apear every time I get the camera out!  I had almost given up on Thursday when I saw the moon glowing so brightly that I decided to head out to take a photo of it over the city (back to the over bridge Photogs).  Turns out the overbridge is a very scary place by yourself at 10.30pm and despite the moon shining brightly the whole drive there as soon as I arrived it went behind a cloud and stayed stubbornly until I decided it was just a bit too scary and ran up the road.  Not surprisingly as soon as I got back to the safety of the car the moon came back out from the clouds.

11 May - Game Time



10 May - The Elusive Moon

9 May - New Bath!

8 May - Learning to Write (love the concentration)

7 May - Tooth Fairy Time

6 May - Under The Bridge

5 May - Getting Fancy

Week 18

A busy week for us with 2 birthday parties, 1 school disco, family to stay, renovations and of course a super moon!  I managed to get a photo each day (just!) and managed to get one with this weeks challenge of Bokeh - here is this weeks effort....

4 May - Practise Run for the Super Moon...

3 May - my beautiful girl

2 May - Sunrise through the trees

1 May - my attempt at Bokeh

30 April - Birthday girl taking her presents to bed...

29 April - At the Bar after a hard day of birthday parties....

28 April - Sunshine

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...