Kisses for the cuties

Turning back the years again with this one.  This is Elijah's first day home.

Kisses for the boys...

A gray day at Karaki beach

I love the beach just down the road from our house. although when the sea fog rolls in, everything becomes somewhat mono-chromatic.

Something still stands in Cathedral Square!

The Cathedral may be gone (or going).  Maybe they should re-name it Chalice Square?

Its a plane Jim, but not as we know it.

Something a bit different today.

We live about 30km from Christchurch airport, under the flight path.

This is a time exposure of a plane going over our house at night.  The lines you see are its running lights, and the dots the flashing one's.

Its interesting to note they have the traditional green on the starboard, red on the port.  I never noticed that about planes before.

Jakob's first tramp

I'm delving back in time a bit here.

This is Jakob's first tramp, a classic for kids into Lake Daniells in the Lewis Pass.

Jakob was still only three when we did this, and looking back at the photos now, tiny.  He was a real trooper, but naturally enough took his time (6 or so hours to get in).  Here he with his first view of the hut at the end of the first day.

There were heaps of older kids at the hut, and going out the next day Jakob did his dardenest to keep up with them all, hence we were out in three hours! (and Jakob was fast asleep about 10 minutes after that!)

Well, I may have cheated a little on this one....

Either I was really fast to get back for the timed shutter, or I got someone else to take this one of me in front of Mt Cook, close to dusk.  

Keas re-visited

Kea's framed against the massive, glaciated eastern face of Mt Sefton, as the light fades and the clouds roll in.

View from Mt Olliver into Mt Cook National Park

Having hinted about Mt Olliver yesterday, I'd better show you what it looks like up there.

This is taken from very near the summit of Mt Olliver.  

Top left of the photo is where the summit of Mt Cook would be, if it didn't have a weather front coming over it.  In the valley on the left can be seen the Hooker Glacier, and glacier lake, with the shoulder of Mt Sefton dropping down towards it.  

Directly across is Mt Wakefield, with Mt Elie De Beaumont peaking up behind it.

In the middle of the shot is Mt Cook Village Hermitage; the head of Lake Pukaki is on the hard right of the photo.

This panorama is taken from a series of ten shots taken in portrait rather than landscape, to get a higher resolution final image.  I often use my Smartphone (which has a nifty 8MP sensor) to do panoramas now (I'm lazy), but using my main camera with some stitching in Photoshop (or Autopano pro) still gives the best results.  In this case I had my phone drowned the next day by the storm you can see here coming over the Alps, so I had just the shots I'd taken with my main camera.

Kea fly-by

Ever since I was a kid I've been trying to capture the elusive underside of a Kea's wing.

Late last summer I went up above the Mt Cook Hermitage, past the Sealy tarns to the Mueller Hut for the night - fantastic trip, if you like the outdoors, are reasonably fit, and don't have dodgy knees I can heartily recommend it.

In any case it turns out about 20 kea have made their home around, on, and even under the Mueller hut, ergo I had a whole afternoon to photograph them!  I still found getting the under-wing elusive, but when it came together some of the results were spectacular - my favourite is this kea fly-past, scooting just over the roof of the Muellar Hut.  The summit of Mt Olliver (the first peak Ed Hillary ever climbed) is on the right hand side.

Kaikoura weekend away

Karen and I got away from the kids for a weekend.  Gotta love golden hour during a walk out around the peninsula.