Tag: photographs

Sydney 2018: An Instagram #Holiday 🇦🇺

When visiting a city for a few days at a relaxed pace, hanging out with locals, and staying in a residential neighbourhood rather than a touristy one, it is possible to imagine what it would be like to live there should the opportunity arise. With so many tasty brunches, day trips to the zoo and aquarium, a couple of evening visits to trendy restaurants, and many hours on the beach, our two weeks felt more like a continuous weekend that lasted a fortnight, which is perhaps the definition of a holiday!

I did take some “proper” photographs which will be published on this blog in due course but since this holiday was more about doing and experiencing than seeing, my Instagram feed perhaps gives the best flavour of the holiday—food, drinks, and local detail. Reviewing the raw photographs I did take with my camera, I realise that I inadvertently restricted my efforts to the classic and obvious Sydney photographic gems and disappointingly failed to capture any of the local character or street photography in the more off-the-beaten track neighbourhoods we visited.

With phone cameras such high quality these days, the Instagram moments I captured deserve better than an ephemeral life in the sidebar of this blog so here they are for posterity. 😎🇦🇺

Engelberg Ski Weekend

Engelberg is a small resort, but a short train ride from Zürich which makes it an ideal place for a weekend break. We even had great weather, and a lot of fun.

The Championships, Wimbledon

Fortune smiled on me in the tennis club ballot this year and despite life being quite busy around the beginning of July, I was able to spend a very enjoyable day at The All-England Club watching some tremendous tennis.

Sunset at Treyarnon Bay, Cornwall

Despite being an overcast day, the clouds cleared late afternoon and treated us to a spectacular Cornish sunset. The rest of the week featured plenty of different weathers, from glorious sunshine to driving rain.

Skiing in Cervinia and Zermatt

The first four days there were constant blue skies ensuring fantastic views of the beautiful Alpine scenery, including the iconic Matterhorn. This was my second ski holiday in the Italian Alps and once again the pistes were quiet, the lift queues non-existent, the food delicious and the coffee excellent. The connection to Zermatt also provided a huge ski area and diversity of slopes.

When the weather was slightly less good, we also enjoyed warm and friendly mountain hospitality.

Photographs from Wellington

It has been almost six months since our visit to Wellington. After travelling through the beautiful vistas of the South Island it was great to finish our holiday with some hip cocktail bars and late night espresso.

Top of the South Island

The Lonely Planet guided us to a fantastic morning coffee stop en route from Motueka to Nelson, the Jester House Café. Despite being a popular tourist spot, the car park was not large and I was very glad we were the only camper van attempting to use it! In addition to three varieties of dairy-free cake they had excellent coffee and some impressively large native eels in the stream outside.

Our stop in Picton was only long enough to enjoy its relaxed ambience and take a short hike around the awesomely beautiful harbour. Our early morning sail out of the harbour was also blessed with fine weather and the crossing to Wellington allowed for some more fine views.

Photographs from the Abel Tasman

We had a fantastic day in the Abel Tasman National Park. I took a lot of photos, so here is a selection of the most interesting.

Photographs of New Zealand’s Westland

The epic amounts of rain did not get photographed, but I did capture a lovely rainbow and the pancake rocks.

Wanaka to Lake Matheson

Wanaka is a fun town in a beautiful setting. It was also our entry point to New Zealand’s wild, and famously wet, West Coast.

Christchurch to Dunedin

I previously wrote about the sobering but hopeful state of Christchurch. The next day we headed down State Highway 1 to Dunedin via the Moeraki Boulders. It was a another day of huge crashy-bashy surf, the boulders are mildly diverting but the coast is beautiful in its own right too.

From Dunedin we explored the Otago Peninsular and its Royal Albatross Centre. The fine weather meant the adult Royal Albatrosses were all out at sea hunting so I could only take photographs of the fluffy land-based chicks.

Photographs from Sydney

Photographs from our short stopover in Sydney.

Off-camera flash photography

Since the Autumn I have been taking more photographs of people than places. Through a Facebook advert I had seen that 36exp run bite-size evening workshops and I signed up for one on off-camera flash since the dark evenings had also resulted in me using my flashgun quite extensively.

Leake St, SE1

The course was really fun and also my first experience of shooting with a professional model. This was quite intimidating at first, but Julie was very professional and it was a lot less stressful than when trying to get the perfect photo that family demand, but have little patience to achieve!

Leake St, SE1
Leake St, SE1

The first three photographs were all shot with a single light on to the camera’s right. I do not remember if the light was modified with a soft box or umbrella. One immediate thing I observed was that light stands need to be very high—we are used to seeing light shine down from a very high angle from both the sun and ceiling lights, so to achieve a natural look the light needs to be positioned above the model and angled down.

Leake St, SE1
Leake St, SE1

This shot introduced a second light onto the back of the model’s head to highlight her hair. I really like the effect of the hair light, but I am not sure it works well in this context.

Leake St, SE1
Julie

These last two used a single light on the model and a second light to illuminate the background. While editing this collection I realised that filters and effects make a lot more sense for photographs where the subject is the main focus. With my travel photography I am aiming to capture the atmosphere I experienced, whereas here the entire scene is constructed at the direction of the photographer, and so it is very logical to continue the creative process into the darkroom.