The Molesworth station

Neither karen nor I had been through the molesworth, so last waitangi weekend we got around to doing it.
Verdict?
Brilliant, much more than I expected.  It was very gorgy ~ more akin to central otago than anything in the northern part of the south island.  Lots of big deep (fairly) warm swimming holes (which we took advantage of).  Once you get to the northern end of the molesworth turn around and go back. The 100 km through to blenheim its pretty dreary.

This panorama (of about 180°) is taken close to the hanmer end.  A real photographer would shudder, but my samsung galaxy s2 is fantastic at doing clever things like panoramas and hdr shots ~ stuff that used to take me ages in photoshop is now automatic.

Brooding hen

We started at my aunty Colleen's for the weekend.
We buy our hens ready to go on the lay, but colleen, having a rooster can breed her own.
This hen is currently brooding 9 chicks...

Lunar eclipse

A couple of years ago I was observing a lunar eclipse, and decided to take some photos throughout the event as well.

Unfortunately I'm not setup to be able to photograph through my telescope, so this series was taken on a long zoom, long exposure, mounted on a tripod.

There's something about Robin

I don't know what it is about our nephew Robin, but we've got some fantastic shots of him over the years...

At Deb's & Duncan's beach wedding - the groom (Robin's dad) has just arrived!

Waihi Gorge bush

Over New Years, we went adventuring through the wonderful bush (dad would say rainforest) at Waihi Gorge, up in the hills behind Geraldine.

Sunset on the Waimakariri

I was out for a run along the lower Waimakariri River last night, and it just happened to be golden hour, on a beautiful, almost perfectly still evening.  Sunset across the water - it doesn't get much better than that.  When you have scenery like this it certainly adds to the run, whiles t somewhat interrupting it as you stop and gape (and photograph).  Not a bad interruption though, especially in my current state of fitness!

As per normal with the golden hour, the shots get better the closer you get to sunset, so some of the best are down the bottom.

I think this one is probably my favourite of the lot

Lots of fishermen were out enjoying the conditions.  As I was shooting a salmon was hauled in on the other side of the Kaiapoi river.

The wide panoramas are all standard exposures, whereas most of the others are HDR shots.