St. Luke's Anglican Church

Fisheye lens view of St. Luke's Anglican Church in Manurewa.

I must admit to being more that a little intrigued with the history of my local town, Manurewa, here in New Zealand.  You may recall an earlier post about Orford Lodge?  Orford Lodge was the second home of the lawyer Mr. Edward Russell after whom Russell Road is named.  Mr. Russell's first home, "Sunlands", used to be accessed via a long driveway from Russell Road, but it now has a reduced section size and is just another house amongst many others in a South Auckland sub-division.  I was going to take some photographs of the building, but as it is now a private residence I wanted permission first.  It's certainly interesting to see the similarity in style between Orford Lodge and Sunlands.

Vertical fisheye view of St. Luke's Church

Besides having two houses built in a similar style there was also an Anglican church built that has a similar appearance.  I found it quite interesting to see the same style of exterior wall and window in the two houses and church.  This church still stands today and in this post I've added a few images for your amusement.  There is an early photograph of the church from the 1920's that may interest you.  The church seems very similar now to back in the 1920's.  The trees are considerably larger now and the building seems also to have grown in length!

I suspect there are a few more buildings of interest in Manurewa, but they're a little hard to find!  However, should I find anymore I'll be sure to post some images on here.

Conifer Grove for a stroll.

f16, 1/1600sec ISO 100

It was such a lovely evening that we decided a walk was a good idea, especially if there was a chance of a sunset over the water.  An acquaintance of mine had emailed me with some sunsets and was asking a few questions.  I thought I'd take the camera along with me and take note of what I did ... and didn't do when taking sunset shots. Bear in mind that this really was a evening walk with my wife, so I didn't take my tripod which os really something I like to use for landscapes and sunset photographs.

f16, 1/800sec ISO 100

Well, to be honest, I like to use the tripod wherever possible!  Anyway, back to the sunsets!  Often I find that what I thought I saw as the sun started to set, and what I captured with the camera are quite disimilar.  It's not a fault of the camera, and I suspect it's not a vivid imagination on my part, it's just the way the camera interprets the scene and exposes the frame for the available light.  Colours also tend to appear less vivid or intense as I remembered them, but much of this can be resolved when you get home.

f16, 1/400sec ISO 100

One of the reasons for taking the tripod is ensure that if multiple shots are taken there's a good chance I can line up the images if I was to blend any together.  I was told some time ago by an HDR guru that he takes seven shots at 1EV intervals when shooting into the sun, so that's that I did last night.  Down the left hand side of this post you'll see seven images at varying exposures and can see how the scene varies as exposure times are modified.  The one at 1/400 second is the one the camera thought was the "correct exposure".

f16, 1/200sec ISO 100

As you look at the images you'll notice how foreground detail is lost in the top shots, but preserved in the bottom shots.  However, sun, cloud and sky detail is lost in the bottom shots, but preserved to some extent in the upper shots.  The problem with this scene is the large variance in light levels that are difficult to capture in one image.  A "trick" sometimes used by photographers with digital cameras is to blend two or more images to preserve the details in the very light and very dark areas into a single image.

f16, 1/100sec ISO 100

This can be achieved by using layers in Photoshop and "painting-in" the lost detail in one frame with the detail from another, or, several frames may be combined "automatically" with HDR software.  In this post I used the latter technique and allowed Photomatix Pro to work it's magic on the seven RAW images you see on the left.  There was a little breeze last night causing a little movement in the leaves to camera left.  Fortunately, there is a reasonable de-ghosting feature in Photomatix to help out with this!

f16, 1/50sec ISO 100

Once in Photomatix you can play around with various sliders to get the effect you're looking for.  Very easy to get carried away with the effects.  I chose to keep the result quite natural in an attempt to recreate the scene as I remembered seeing it.  Well, apart from the lens flare in the trees to camera right!  Something I don't get with my eyes, but can sometimes add to the scene in certain photographs.  I then use the contrast, colour and sharpening options to fine tune the effect before loading the resultant image into Photoshop.

f16, 1/25sec ISO 100

Conifer Grove Sunset.  7 shot HDR image processed in Photomatix Pro.

The main reason for using Photoshop is to tidy up the edges - remember the shot was handheld, so the images won't align perfectly and you'll get some rough edges afte the images have been combined.  I'll also use a little lightening or darkening in certain areas before moving on to the next shot.  Sharpening will have a big effect on the final image, but can give a "grainy" effect if you're not careful.  Sometimes this is desirable, but not always.  The large shot below has just been cropped in Photoshop to sort out the rough edges, but otherwise it's as Photomatix would output the combined files.  I think, if you look at the colour saturation in the final image and the detail retained in the light and dark areas when compared to the seven shots above you'll agree it's an interesting technique to investigate and perhaps add to your arsenal of image processing methods for that tricky lighting situation.

Just in case the above image is a little too saturated for you, I've attached a monochrome HDR image taken on the same walk, just a little later in the day.  Any preferences?  Maybe message me and let me know.

7 shot HDR image processed in Photomatix Pro and converted to monochrome with Silver Efex.

Wenderholm ... again!

Wenderholm.

Looking out of the window at a gloriously blue and cloudless sky I decided to take wifey north of Auckland to see the sea at Wenderholm.  We've been before and you may recall this post from 2009 created after a previous visit?  So, the car was packed and off we set.  Travelling north the feeling that we were leaving the better weather behind was soon made quite apparent with a significant increase in cloud cover.  Never mind, just so long as the clouds don't leak all is fine I thought.  Thankfully we stayed dry throughout the visit to the regional park.

View from atop the cliffs looking down on Wenderholm beach

Light was quite good, but there were some very deep shadows and bright highlights that I decided to bracket all my shots.  I must admit that I didn't take very many as wifey was more interested in a walk than taking photos!  Anyway, on return home I decided the best way to treat the images was with a bit of HDR.  This allows me to get a bit more detail into the clouds and shadowy areas as well as pull back the bright highlights.

The first shot in this post is looking north over the Puhoi River as it heads out to sea camera right.  The car park, incidentally, is just visible at the right of the shot.

As it happens, the second shot in the post is of the Puhoi River as it meets the sea and is just to the right of the previous shot.

It's a lovely place to visit with some very pleasant walks thought the bush for the more active members of the family and very pleasant views from the carpark for the more sedentary among us!  The final shot in this post was taken from the car park just a few steps away from the drivers seat in my car.

Wenderholm car park view!

A bit of black and white ...

I've been looking through some old photographs ... well, not that old really, just a few months old.  The shot you see in this post brought back quite a few memories.  It was taken last year whilst visiting the UK.  I'd been walking around Westhoughton and spent a bit of time in the graveyard and this particular monument caught my eye.  The light was quite pleasant, but I was shooting into the sun.  As such I tried a bracketed set of shots and combined them into an HDR shot with Photomatix Pro.

The memorial is for the 344 men and boys who lost their lives in the Pretoria Pit as a result of an explosion.  This tragedy is Britain's third largest loss of life from a single mining event.  The explosion occurred at 7.50am on a Wednesday morning and took everyone by surprise.  There's a quote at the foot of the inscription on the memorial which says,

"Be ye therefore ready also, for the Son of Man cometh at an hour when ye think not"
 Luke 12. v40

Quite a fitting quotation I thought.

I must admit to being quite stunned by the magnitude of this event.  Westhoughton is much larger now than it was back in 1910 and 344 deaths would have a big impact on today's town ... it's hard to imagine what effect this event had back in 1910.

Interesting what you can find if you look in old graveyards, and how thought provoking some of those finds can be.