Introduction : Kohekohe Church

Kohekohe Church (Click for full size)

This blog is intended to showcase High Dynamic Range (HDR) images taken in New Zealand. It will also give the story of my journey into HDR photography along with tips and tricks I’ve learned along the way.

Most of the images will be ones that I have taken and processed. But I plan to include other good NZ HDR shots as well.

The first shot is one of my earliest HDR images, taken more than a year ago on 11-August-2008. I’d just got a new lens, an EF-S 17-55 and went out looking for shots to take. If I were doing this today it would look significantly different; the grass is too yellow; the church is too yellow in some parts and too blue in others. And I might use a wider lens. But at the time I was pretty pleased with this shot so it’s a good introduction to the sport, and shows the kind of result you can get with virtually no experience of both photography and HDR processing.

The church is located on the Awhitu peninsular in Franklin. You can’t see it in this shot, but there is a spectacular view from this location.  When The Corrs were touring New Zealand a few years ago they were taken for a drive up the peninsular and when they came across this church and view they were so impressed that they decided on the spot to fly in a film crew so they could make a video in this location. You can see the result here.

The shot was taken with my Canon 450D, ISO 100, EF-S 17-55 and processed with Photomatix.