Smokefree Pacific Beats

Well what a surprise!!  I was taking an evening stroll last night and happened to bump into my friend Malcolm Lakatani along with Petrina George standing outside the Telstra Clear Pacific Centre.  Talented young musicians were there competing in the Smokefree Pacifica Beats competition.  Not being able to resist shooting musicians shooting live I raced back home, got my 70-200mm and got back as quick as I could.  I had to leave at 9pm to collect my daughter from work, but what I saw and heard from these young musicians was impressive.  There  is a heap of musical talent here in New Zealand that's for sure!!

Anyway, to give you a little taste of the atmosphere here's a few shots for your amusement.  There's also a few more shots on Facebook.  If you think I may have a shot of you on stage that you'd like, just email me at chris@nzcjs.com :-)

Night time HDR

Each time I've come home down Great South Road I've been taken with the sight of the Telstra Clear Pacific Centre and the way it's illuminated.  Tonight I decided to take a tripod and a few shots to see if you think it's as impressive a sight as I think it is.  5 shots, in the order of 20 seconds each, combined in Photomatix to give the effect you see here.  The dots in the sky are stars.

I took a few other shots, not all of them HDR.  The next shot is also a 5 shot HDR image, tajen from a slightly different angle and without any cropping.

The third is just a long exposure of the new junction at Manukau.  I've always liked the streaks from the car headlights in photographs.  Problem tonight was there was hardly anyone about!  I had to watch for the cars to come and set the exposure to 30 seconds to be sure I'd get a few vehicles in the shot.  I suppose that's the problem with living in New Zealand ... there's hardly anybody here ;-)

The last shot was just a bit of fun with the multiple exposure setting on the camera.  I wasn't sure what would happen, but it's not too bad for a first attempt.  Perhaps let me know what you think of the shots in this post?