Sonnets of the Sea
This photo was fueled by a lot of things, and caused much amusement and merriment during taking it. :-)
Some time ago, three of the guys from the Kiwi quarter of this photographic world I know decided they'd get together and do a small road trip away from Auckland where most of them lived, and head out round The Coromandel peninsula. Now, from what I can gather, the combined amount of decent photographs from the trip amounted to >< that much, due largely to crappy weather. So said bunch of guys got their thinking hats on and decided to do it again, and threw the invite out to a wider audience. (This is where I came in).
Cue worried looks amongst those going traveling during the week before the trip as they watched day after day of dire weather reports. Add to this me sat there looking like a sad bugger as I'd done my own research on the designated area we were due to visit, and realised it looked like something from a postcard. I don't 'do' postcard landscapes, they make my teeth itch.
The original idea was to fly up late Fri night to Auckland, meet the rest of the gang (one of whom had flown over from Australia), head up to the peninsula, camp down in a bach (holiday home) overnight and get up for dawn to shoot sunrise at this place called Cathedral Cove. (Yes Cathedral Cove is the place I'd seen sickly picture postcard shots of).
So anyway, I arrive in Auckland, we drive, we arrive at the bach, we get the TV working, watch the Olympics and get mildly drunk. I get about an hours sleep, hear my mate's alarm go off at 4am, notice it raining and go back to sleep. 10am arrives and we all get up to see sun, and then the trip was on.
40mins walk from the car park to the cove passes ( I won't mention the asthmatic heap I was in walking back up the hill) and we arrive at this beach, and true to form the sun is out and it just looks frankly, ****ing jaw-dropping. It was the most idylic place to sit down in the sand and watch the world go by I've ever visited. Awesome. Also truly shyte for photos unless you wanted to take picture postcards. And so we get to this...
Alex Boyd admins (and apparently so do I) a group called 'Scotland is not a postcard' and he found my stream after seeing my rather grim interpretation of Rannoch Moor. Alex Boyd is a truly talented chap and his recent collection of work Sonnets from Scotland is something I find truly awe inspiring. If you combine this with the realisation I wasn't gonna take a single photo of the landscape there that wasn't sickly sweet, with the realisation I'd not done a self portrait in a while, and thoughts of Alex's images we get this.
It's the middle of winter here, and that water isn't so warm. I took a few shots with the help of Tim, the visiting Australian and wasn't happy, so I decided to add a burst of flash into the scene. It's at this point I realised that my long off-camera flash cord was in the van at the top of the hill, and that one of the other guys who carries Elinchrom Skyport flash triggers had also left them in the carpark, all in the name of saving weight. Damn. The best we could manage was an ST-E2 infrared thing, and with the combined knowledge of five camera nerds who'd never actually used infrared flash triggering like this, we stood there on the beach for 20mins looking like idiots (me especially with my wet legs and rolled up jeans) whilst the other assembled tourists looked on. We, basically, looked like cocks.
And then we get the two old guys who had bedded down in the sand watching us take all our photos, partly to try and ask as many dumb questions as possible, partly to try and seem 'cool' to the guys with the big cameras and partly just because they were like stalking vultures. These two old guys really didn't take kindly to my colourful use of of the English language at times, and proceeded to give me a lecture. Great!
Thank god the photo came out in the end. ;-)
(Thank you hugely, Chris, Tim, Mark and Andrew, I never realised this would end up being such a saga, but thanks for the patience!)
Strobist info: one 580EX II fired via infrared from an ST-E2 on camera at about 4 o'clock to me from about 2.5 mtrs away)
Sonnets of the Sea
This photo was fueled by a lot of things, and caused much amusement and merriment during taking it. :-)
Some time ago, three of the guys from the Kiwi quarter of this photographic world I know decided they'd get together and do a small road trip away from Auckland where most of them lived, and head out round The Coromandel peninsula. Now, from what I can gather, the combined amount of decent photographs from the trip amounted to >< that much, due largely to crappy weather. So said bunch of guys got their thinking hats on and decided to do it again, and threw the invite out to a wider audience. (This is where I came in).
Cue worried looks amongst those going traveling during the week before the trip as they watched day after day of dire weather reports. Add to this me sat there looking like a sad bugger as I'd done my own research on the designated area we were due to visit, and realised it looked like something from a postcard. I don't 'do' postcard landscapes, they make my teeth itch.
The original idea was to fly up late Fri night to Auckland, meet the rest of the gang (one of whom had flown over from Australia), head up to the peninsula, camp down in a bach (holiday home) overnight and get up for dawn to shoot sunrise at this place called Cathedral Cove. (Yes Cathedral Cove is the place I'd seen sickly picture postcard shots of).
So anyway, I arrive in Auckland, we drive, we arrive at the bach, we get the TV working, watch the Olympics and get mildly drunk. I get about an hours sleep, hear my mate's alarm go off at 4am, notice it raining and go back to sleep. 10am arrives and we all get up to see sun, and then the trip was on.
40mins walk from the car park to the cove passes ( I won't mention the asthmatic heap I was in walking back up the hill) and we arrive at this beach, and true to form the sun is out and it just looks frankly, ****ing jaw-dropping. It was the most idylic place to sit down in the sand and watch the world go by I've ever visited. Awesome. Also truly shyte for photos unless you wanted to take picture postcards. And so we get to this...
Alex Boyd admins (and apparently so do I) a group called 'Scotland is not a postcard' and he found my stream after seeing my rather grim interpretation of Rannoch Moor. Alex Boyd is a truly talented chap and his recent collection of work Sonnets from Scotland is something I find truly awe inspiring. If you combine this with the realisation I wasn't gonna take a single photo of the landscape there that wasn't sickly sweet, with the realisation I'd not done a self portrait in a while, and thoughts of Alex's images we get this.
It's the middle of winter here, and that water isn't so warm. I took a few shots with the help of Tim, the visiting Australian and wasn't happy, so I decided to add a burst of flash into the scene. It's at this point I realised that my long off-camera flash cord was in the van at the top of the hill, and that one of the other guys who carries Elinchrom Skyport flash triggers had also left them in the carpark, all in the name of saving weight. Damn. The best we could manage was an ST-E2 infrared thing, and with the combined knowledge of five camera nerds who'd never actually used infrared flash triggering like this, we stood there on the beach for 20mins looking like idiots (me especially with my wet legs and rolled up jeans) whilst the other assembled tourists looked on. We, basically, looked like cocks.
And then we get the two old guys who had bedded down in the sand watching us take all our photos, partly to try and ask as many dumb questions as possible, partly to try and seem 'cool' to the guys with the big cameras and partly just because they were like stalking vultures. These two old guys really didn't take kindly to my colourful use of of the English language at times, and proceeded to give me a lecture. Great!
Thank god the photo came out in the end. ;-)
(Thank you hugely, Chris, Tim, Mark and Andrew, I never realised this would end up being such a saga, but thanks for the patience!)
Strobist info: one 580EX II fired via infrared from an ST-E2 on camera at about 4 o'clock to me from about 2.5 mtrs away)