Sheep

On the drive into Hanmer a soggy farmer was moving his bedraggled sheep to a new paddock. It made for a nice distraction, watching the farm dogs working to move their charges. With mum visiting from Australia it was a typical NZ scene for her to savour.

Hanmer River Holiday Park

We stayed at the Hanmer River Holiday Park which is just before the bridge on the way into Hanmer. It was a lovely place and if the rain ever stopped we were going to explore the surrounding forest and river (however it didn't stop). This is the view from our cosy cabin.

Moeraki Boulders

We had a weekend away in Christchurch and Hanmer Springs so of course we stopped at Moeraki Boulders on our drive there. Z decided they were the perfect aide for a somersault.

Breakfast with the girls

I have a good friend who keeps me sane with a semi weekly breakfast where we discuss research, life, the universe and everything. I'm also fortunate when working for a national company that I have a colleague (and a friend!) in the same city. Our breakfasts are a refresher.

Renwick School

We visited Renwick School in Blenheim in May and I have just finalised the digital stories from there over the last couple of days. They will be up on NZC Online in the next week or so.

A hard act to follow

Z was in a play at the Fortune Theatre tonight. A series of skits centered around an airport.

Busking

Busking on the streets of Dunedin today. It was a bit cold and miserable so not a great financial result, but the music was good as always.

Gran's visit

We picked up Gran from the airport today for a three week visit.

Night scape

Playing with long exposure on the camera. Like the star shapes the lights made.

Ross Creek

Beautiful still sunny day for a run with my boy around Ross Creek.

Golden rays

Morning creeps over the hill to wake up Dunedin

Taieri Plain

Driving home from dropping B at the airport in the afternoon, the sun cast long shadows and made the trees shine gold. Dusk hours really are the golden hours for photography, wish I had time to stop and take the shots though.

Rainy day at the park

A rather sodden playground as the awful weather eventually arrived.

War memorial

Even though we were threatened with snow and awful weather, the sun was out, and casting interesting shadows across the war memorial.

Iconic Dunedin scarfie flat

Scarfie flats in Dunedin have the reputation of being in a ghetto, however there are some very creative gems to be found.

Owheo

This is the Owheo Building at the University of Otago where I have been taking some classes. I went in to pick up my assignment today, I got an A :)

Breakfast

This place in Wellington does really nice cheese scones for breakfast.

Wellington

Today I flew over these

On the way to here

Well, around the corner from here actually.

Rainbow

I just looked up from the computer and saw there was a rainbow promising the end to the rain (hopefully) so I ran outside to grab this image. I read a tip in a blog recently about always taking the same shot from both portrait and landscape perspective to give you more options. This one worked out better in portrait I think.

An interesting observation, in the morning the rainbow curved one way and in the afternoon it curved in the opposite direction.

Waiting

Another water logged day inside today for the long weekend. I used yesterday's tomatoes for dinner, so today's photo is from our day in town on Saturday.

Tomatoes

It's another rainy day here in Dunedin, so it was housebound photography today. After reading some photography blogs I thought I would play around with aperture priority. This I learned, controls the depth of field, or how much of your image is in focus. I started off taking photos of my tomatoes.

I then watched a video on how to make the background dark by using a very small aperture and lighting your subjects. This was hard to do in aperture priority because the camera wanted to set a long shutter speed to make up for the lack of light. So I had to move to manual and choose a shorter shutter speed until I got the effect I was looking for. This is only playing around with a lamp to the side and I bounced the light off a piece of white card. But it was fun :)

City life

We went for a walk into town today to have lunch. This is the street view of the main street in Dunedin on a Saturday lunch time.

Morning

The light was beautiful this morning. The colours were glorious and the shadows were long.

I thought a way I can get around my lack of time to take photos during the day is to take my camera in the car with me in the morning on the school run.

Welcome to our school

These are the gates at a local school - High Street.

Otago harbour

You may notice a pattern here. Yes I took this photo the other day. I'm working to a deadline and I haven't managed to get out with the camera today. But I did particularly like the long shadows being cast at the end of the day in this photo.

Jetty on the harbour

I went for a drive down the peninsula to see the damage from the recent flooding. The water in the harbour was quite dirty and churned up, the day seemed bleak, so I thought black and white might work.