The Catlins …

Thought it was about time to update this blog as I haven’t in forever. Between recovering from spinal surgery, uni, DJing and my car it’s been hard to find time. But to do some scouting for a friend of mine we made a day mission down to the Catlins. What an awesome place. Picturesque coastal terrain, waterfalls, caves … the lot!  Anyways, here are a couple of snaps I took:

By the way, click on any of them for a larger view

Apparently this is the site is where a ship wrecked in 1874, here is what Wikipedia says:

“Another noted shipwreck, that of the Surat, occurred on New Year’s Day in 1874. This ship, holed on rocks near Chasland’s Mistake eight kilometres southeast of Tautuku Peninsula, limped as far as the mouth of the Catlins River before its 271 immigrants abandoned ship. A beach at the mouth of the Catlins River is named Surat Bay in commemoration of this wreck.^[27]“

We were at Surat Bay late in the afternoon and it had been a picture-perfect day all day until a gale decided to rip through and proceeded to throw all the loose sand at us at a blazing speed. Photos didn’t do the sight justice but this was my best attempt to capture the sand flying down the beach.

This is the Purakaunui Falls which are very popular with the tourists, you can see why!

Haunted house

Haunted house

Originally uploaded by SMN-Photography

This shot was a while in the planning. I was taking a walk around uni one day and looked across and thought how sinister this house could look under a full moon. Now I had no idea when a full moon would be and even then getting the right angle of light would be hard and the hardest of all would be getting a cloud free night in Dunedin! So I took my camera to uni one day and waited till the sun was a the right angle to create the shadows I wanted. Then took the snap I wanted and croped it, converted it to B&W and made the blues extra dark to darken the sky and this is the result. I’m pretty happy with how it turned out considering it was taken on a beautiful blue sunny day!

New Flash

New Flash

Originally uploaded by SMN-Photography

This is what my camera looks like at the moment. 450d with the 17-40mm f/4 L lens and a Speedlite 430 EX II on top. Awesome flash, I really like it, have no idea how to use it to it’s full potential but as I cover more events I hope I’ll be able to do some cool tricks with it.

After-Ball

This Friday night I am covering the St Hilda after ball party. It’s the first time I have shot anything like this so will be interesting! Will be the first time the 430 EX II has really been used to it’s full potential. I got brought in to do this by a good friend of mine Ali who is the DJ for the after party so these photos will be used by him for promo purposes as well. This will also be the first event that will be covered under the promotion label Ali and I are starting called ‘OneTrackMinds’ (onetrackminds.co.nz will be up and running very soon, keep an eye out ;-] ).

I am really keen to get more into event photography so if anyone has something they need covered coming up let me know and we can work something out!

Will post up some of the resulting pics this weekend and see how they look!

Another Sunset

Another Sunset

Originally uploaded by SMN-Photography

Yep… You guessed it, another Dunedin sunset. I was just sitting in my room and that amazing 20 minutes or so when the light is just awesome came about and all I could see was red out the windows. So I frantically went about trying to set up my tripod and clean my lens. Anyways I missed the best bet and this was what resulted.

Textured clouds

Textured clouds

Originally uploaded by SMN-Photography

LOVE this shot. I think the clouds look awesome-town. Little bit of PP to darken the foreground and little bit of sat increase and a crop but other than that pretty much as I saw it!

Dunedin sunset

Dunedin sunset

Originally uploaded by SMN-Photography

Now that the damn tree is gone from our back yard I can capture the sunset soooooo much better! Love the clouds in these shots. Awesome.

Fire in the sky

Fire in the sky

Originally uploaded by SMN-Photography

Took this when I probably shouldn’t have, was after a crate day at my flat in Dunedin, was in no state to be handling my wide angle lens, but hey photo turned out OK, love the colours and the detail in the clouds, no PP so it’s a little blown out in the middle, helps show the intensity i reckon.

Ghost silvia

Ghost silvia

Originally uploaded by SMN-Photography

An old snap of my silvia up the top of Signal Hill Lookout in Dunedin. Was complete mission to get over the speed bumps they have up there now and where the car is now is about as far into the carpark I can get. Anyways took this the day I got my 17-40mm F/4 L lens and I kinda forgot about it so played around with a few layers in PS and thought this looked kinda crazy.

Rust bucket

Rust bucket

Originally uploaded by SMN-Photography

This car has been sitting here for ages. Just aside of my usual running track up the reservoir. This whole area is pretty crazy, just mounds of rocks and this burnt out rusty heap … Quite a cool paint job really if it were meant to be like that! Also my first time really playing with the dodge and burn tool on PS.