new tricks for old dogs!

Well I’ve been pretty quiet with the blog recently, and will be even quieter over the next couple of weeks as I will be back in England for some meetings. So, I’ll just post this picture which I took the last time I was in England. I was out walking with my father in the fields behind his house, taking pictures and showing him how to take HDR images – a new adventure for him (bought him Photomatix for his birthday – hope he’s making use of it!). We found this old abandoned caravan and trailer which were just begging to be photographed – so we did! 

The image above is my HDR interpretation of the scene and I think it gets into the shadows (especially as you look inside the old caravan) and holds on to the highlights well (we’ll ignore the halo around the tree in the top left of the image, shall we?). Just for a bit of fun, I double processed the image through Photomatix to get this surreal look – make your own mind up which you prefer!

a walk through melbourn village

Really, this could be a stroll through any small English village. There will be a pub! Well, actually there will probably be several pubs. And then, appropriately, there will be a cemetery  just a few, careful steps away:

akaka streams

Most people, when they go visit Akaka Falls in Honomu, do so to see the 442 foot waterfall – and rightly so. It really is a great waterfall to admire and it seems that nobody can go there without taking a few pictures. I’m no different. We went there this weekend, but this time I made a point of looking more closely at the stream that flows through the middle of the park.

(I don’t know if this stream is one that branches off the Kolekole river which feeds Akaka falls, but I’d appreciate knowing if somebody out there does)

The images above and below are two HDR renditions of the same streams taken at different positions in the park. Quite picturesque in their own right, I think.

another steps onto the fields of elysium

 

the yellow fields of england

I’ve just returned from England (well, it was last week!). As I was being driven from the airport to the village my family live in, I realised one of the things that I do miss of England – springtime. And one thing about springtime in particular, the yellow fields that seem to carpet the landscape at this time of year. They seem to be quite predominant in the south-east of England, in particular. The plant in question is the rapeseed and farmers cultivate it for its oil, and it’s also used to manufacture biodiesel.

I’ve always thought this to be a beautiful flower, purely because of the vibrant colour and the wonderful way they paint the landscape when they are in full bloom. Then I found out that they are a part of the cabbage family, which ruined any romantic notions I had.

These fields are just two minutes walk from where my parents live.