New Rose

 

Spring is coming - new roses start flowering in our garden. 

Halloween theme

Oystercatcher

This amusing bird uses its beak to break shells.

Nature Morte

New Blog - Chch to Akl

Last week our family had a trip from Christchurch to Auckland. I have decided to separate the story about this journey to another blog, then I will continue posting here.



Welcome to Christchurch to Auckland Relocation Deal.

Panorama - Hamilton Italian Garden

I have been trying to create panoramic pictures from two or more images for long. The results were rather bad in my opinion. Today I have made one more attempt using Hugin. The original photos were taken last autumn in the Hamilton Gardens with the intention to make a panoramic view, although I had not had a tripod. I have also found that auto-exposure mode can ruin your panorama if your frames have different white balance or brightness.

Lucy and her kittens

Today our kittens had their first walk around the room. They were keen to explore as much as possible. Now they have an exit in the cardboard box where they have been living since their birthday and can wander freely around the house.

Gannet Colony

Picasa Web Albums - Muriwai Beach Gannet Colony

On our way back (see the previous post) we visited Muriwai Beach - the only place in New Zealand where a gannet colony is easily accesible. The birds occupy a small island located about 0.5 km from the shore, one rock and two inland sites. You can see them on this panoramic picture I created about two months earlier, when here were a few birds.

People can watch birds on their eggs, and later feeding their chicks from two viewing platforms right above the breeding sites. Gannets are protected here so the colony is steadily increasing as birds occupy new places on the nearby cliff.

Here is also the photo of a boy on the beach.

Horse Riding

Last Saturday my daughter with her school-mate went to horse-riding. My wife and me had brought both girls to a lovely countryside farm where they enjoyed feeding horses and playing with friendly dogs.



Then they had an hour long ride while we just walked along the road watching baby calves and lambs and enjoying sunny day. Some more photos of this event you can find
in this Picasa Web Album.


This sheep was very curious. It ran to our direction as soon as it had seen us. Other photos are in this album - Farm Animals. Also here is a video taken that day -


Dig Up a Worm Workshop.

High Dynamic Range Image

 
The picture above is made using High Dynamic Range technology. I put the camera on a tripod, set the auto-bracketing mode with the max available range of +/-1 ev, set auto-timer for 2 secs to prevent shaking and got three frames which I loaded into Photomatix Basic (www.hdrsoft.com). This produced a HDR image and transfered it back to LDR one, which was later adjusted (Shadows/Highlights and Sharpening). Here is the result.

The main issues were blue sky and deep shadows near the fence on right and under the roof on left. The result is not bad, as the sky is really blue, and most of the details are visible in the darkest areas. Despite all my preventive measures I have got some ghost branches on the tree - I could not stop wind blowing :) 

View of Auckland 3

 
Here is one more view of Auckland. 

Insecto-mania

Picasa Web Albums - Victor - Insecto-mania

The same day as I took the photo shown in the previous blog, I also captured several photos of insects in the garden. Some most successful of them are now in my Picasa Web Album

Shining One