July 1 and 2, 2018, Near Waipara, New Zealand. We were staying in a remote location near the Greystone Winery. Our trip was nearing the end and I was losing hope of getting a good shot of my favorite New Zealand bird: the New Zealand fantail — the Maori names being Pīwakawaka, Tīwakawaka, or Piwaiwaka. The trouble was, being insectivores, they were in constant darting motion playing “you can’t catch me,” which made them very […]
June 28, 2018, Otago Peninsula, New Zealand. This is a bonus post. A few minutes before yesterday’s shots were made, this bigshot chased us off the beach. Tony told us this guy had been troublesome at times and had chased several people away. He told us to run if he started chasing. Run fast. New Zealand sea lions can sprint 26 kmh. (16 mph.) My wife got the lead shot before he decided to mess […]
June 28, 2018, Otago Peninsula, New Zealand. A one-day tour of Otago is like going to a gourmet restaurant, having the amuse bouche, and leaving — but there we were, and we were going to get everything out of our day that we could. Tony said it was very important that we get to the beach by 3:45. “Why?” “Because that’s when the penguins come home from work.” “Oh. Really? 3:45? Exactly?” “Within a very […]
June 20, 2018, Doubtful Sound and June 28, 2018, Otago Peninsula, New Zealand. New Zealand fur seals were hunted to near-extinction in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and were injured and killed by the thousands by commercial fisheries well into the twentieth century. In New Zealand, they have been protected by law since 1978. The show-off above was guarding the mouth of Doubtful Sound in Fiordland National Park. This mother and child were on the […]
June 28, 2018, Northwest of Dunedin, New Zealand. After the photography workshop, we rented a car and headed southeast from Queenstown to Dunedin and then took a week to drive all the way up the east coast of the South Island. We fell in love with Dunedin, which reminded us a little of San Francisco — although it beats San Francisco by having the steepest street in the world. While there we took a tour […]
June 25, 2018, Peter’s Lookout, Mount Cook Road, New Zealand. Lake Pukaki is fed by the runoff of two glaciers. The fine silt in the runoff, known as glacial flour, makes the water turquoise. Take a look at satellite photos of the Southern Island and it will stick out like a turquois thumb. We stopped for a lunch break on the way to Lake Tasman and fed our stomachs and our cameras. These two photos […]
June 22, 2018, Haast Pass-Makarora Road, New Zealand. A quick stop on the way to Fox Glacier. I posted photos of Fox Glacier back in February. The road we were on leads through a temperate rainforest pass in New Zealand’s Southern Alps out to the Tasman Sea. There are many waterfalls along the way. This is a small somewhat abstracted crop of one of the most impressive. (Nikon D850; Tamron SP 24–70mm f/2.8 Di VC USD […]
June 21, 2018, Wanaka and Lake Wanaka, New Zealand. You can’t go to the South Island of New Zealand without going to Wanaka and getting your own shot the famed lone willow. Here’s mine. Water: Mirror flat. Late-afternoon sky: Entertaining. Tree: Noble. Gary and Don showed us shots they made just a week earlier when the water was all the way up to the base of the trunk. Conditions change fast. Just before dinner we […]
June 21, 2018, Te Anau-Milford Highway, New Zealand. Our planned sunrise shot was a wash: thick fog meant no sunrise to speak of. Actually, no visible sunrise at all, although the sky sort of got lighter. A bit dejected, we got into the van and motored off. But as we headed north toward Mirror Lakes, another opportunity presented itself. A soft frosty hillside lay before shadowed mountains with the sun just behind them about to […]
June 18, 2018, Closeburn Beach Lookout, Lake Wakatipu, New Zealand. A year ago this week, on our first evening of a photo workshop led by Gary Hart and Don Smith. A few kilometers west of Queenstown. Although Mother Nature was very kind to us regarding lighting and sky, we were not yet used to freezing fingers from her June winter. (Nikon D850; Tamron SP 24–70mm f/2.8 Di VC USD G2. RAW processing in DxO Pro; Editing […]
I had been saving this image — taken from the end of the pier in Akaroa, New Zealand just after sunrise on an unbelievable July morning — to mark the anniversary of the trip to NZ that my wife and I took last year. I moved it up a few weeks because it is a fitting complement to a short message of thanks to New Zealand’s Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern. Lots of people talk about […]
I started this blog only a short while ago — November 2018 — in answer to requests from friends to put my “other” photography on the Web. “Other” photography would be defined as images that go beyond the self-imposed limits of what I put on my formal website. I also intended this blog to be a way of making all my photography more widely known. That was my original purpose and that remains my purpose. […]
Yesterday, forty-nine fellow inhabitants of our world were murdered while they were worshiping in Mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand. The madness of this act is unfathomable. The fact that it happened in New Zealand is deeply saddening. New Zealand ranks number two in the Global Peace Index. At times like this our hearts can get very dark and the darkness can be infectious. While we mourn the loss, we must not succumb to a hopeless […]
June 20, 2018; Doubtful Sound, South Island, New Zealand. It was a beautiful day. First day of winter in the Southern Hemisphere. Bright sun. Not a cloud in the sky. Gorgeous. The air was crisp. Clean. Cold. Except this was our one and only day to photograph one of the most dramatic fjords in New Zealand. We wanted clouds. Mist. Fog. Dark dusky drama. Rain squalls. Rainbows. We got none of it. Mother Nature served […]
(Nikon D500, Nikon 200-500mm f/5.6 ED VR zoom. RAW processing in DxO PhotoLab, final editing in Adobe Photoshop.) More fine-art photography: www.amagaphoto.com
