New Zealand in HDR

KZ1 is permanently on display outside the maritime museum in Auckland. I was there recently on the photowalk that Trey held around the viaduct basin in Auckland.

KZ1 - Americas Cup Yacht ( click for full size )

This boat took part in the strange Americas Cup challenge in 1988. New Zealand challenged the USA and built this boat according to the “deed of gift” that governs the cup. USA, defending the Cup again after winning it back from the Australians in 1987, were forced by the Courts to respond to a ‘rogue’ New Zealand challenge.

The challenge came about through Michael Fay, a merchant banker, who saw an opportunity in the Deed of Gift to initiate a direct challenge that would exclude other teams, and avoid the need for a challenger selection series. He built KZ-1 to take part in the challenge. It has the regulation 90ft waterline, but with bowsprit it runs to 130ft in length.

The Americans, lead by Dennis Connor built a catamaran, Stars and Stripes, which would all but guarantee their success (as it was much faster). The kiwis did not expect this.

The match turned out to be a very one-sided affair, with Stars and Stripes winning easily.

The launch ceremony for KZ-1 took place in Auckland in front of a crowd of more than 100,000. When you consider that Auckland has a population of around 1 million (and New Zealand at the time, 3.5 million) you can see that’s quite a crowd.

Shipped back to New Zealand after the America’s Cup, Sir Michael Fay offered the ‘Big Boat’ to the New Zealand National Maritime Museum in 1990. KZ-1 was placed on the quay and now dominates the Viaduct Basin, at the foot of downtown Auckland.

The picture was taken using an EF-S 10-22mm, set at 10mm.

I got to know the Awhitu peninsular when a friend bought a house there around ten years ago.  It’s a rocky peninsular bounded by the Tasman sea on one side, and Manakau harbour on the other. It’s windswept and in places, very beautiful. Because it runs north-south you can get sunrises one side and sunsets the other. Very handy! I captured this recently:

Te Toro - click for full size

This is near the boatramp at Te Toro. There are many public boatramps in New Zealand where you can lauch your boat to go out for some fun on the water. Just as I was leaving a group of four arrived with their fishing boat, launched at set off for what I imagine to be a great day’s fishing (it was a goregous day). The waters here are famous for snapper.

The Waikato River is the longest river in New Zealand. But being NZ it’s not that long really, only 475km. It starts on the slopes of Mt Ruapehu (an active volcano, located pretty much in the centre of the North Island), goes via Lake Taupo and finally drains into the Tasman Sea at Port Waikato. This picture is taken just a couple of miles from Port Waikato where the river is about 1km wide.

Waikato River - click to enlarge

This shot is looking up the river, away from it’s mouth. It uses the normal “3-exposure Photmatix” to create an HDR, then it’s been post-processed in Photoshop using Topaz and some more Luminosity and Saturation masking.

Here is another shot taken the same day, looking the other direction, towards the sea (which is just behind those hills in the background).

Waikato River near Port Waikato - click to enlarge

This uses more naturalistic processing. The idea is to make it look like a regular photo, not an HDR. This required quite a bit of playing around to get it to look right. Some examples : the clouds were too blue, so their saturation had to be reduced. The beach was too dark and needed to be lightened. And so on.

Wright’s Water Garden is a small water garden open to the public located in Mauku. It’s been set up in an old quarry, and the main features are it’s waterfall along with multiple ponds.

Waterfal at Wright's Water garden (click for full size)

An HDR shot works very well in this situation as it captures the bright highlights from the waterfall and the parts of the shot that are in full sunlight, while at the same time showing the shadows such as the undersides of the leaves. I like the way that the leaves in the foreground have an other-worldly look.

I’ll be posting some more shots later from Wright’s. It’s a very photogenic place with many different waterlilies, lotus plants and other water plants.