The Taieri Gorge in photos

Or the start of the great photo review catchup. I've been working on that, finding a few that I'd always meant to come back to, finding some that I wonder why I didn't edit then, a few marked to edit that have a similar one edited and what should have unmarked for edit, and a few where I've fixed the edit.

These are different. They're from the train trip up the Taieri Gorge to Middlemarch and back. My thinking was to shoot the wide lens on the way out and the long lens on the way back. I still think that's a good plan, but there was a problem that I'm embarrassed to mention.

The night before I'd used the wide lens for star shots. That means manual focus to infinity. I left it that way for the first bunch of railway shots. It was only when I took a break and was paging back through the photos and wondering why they were so soft that I figured it out. I was pretty pissed at myself.

At least I figured it out before the scenery got really good. On the way out the observation car was at the back of the train, and I had it to myself for the entire trip. That's nice, and I didn't realize how nice till the next trip.

On the way back the observation car was right behind the locomotive, so it was a lot louder, and a lot more exhaust fume-y. More importantly, it was a lot more difficult to shoot, even with the long lens. There were a couple other photographers, but sharing the space wasn't a problem. Several pairs of eyes looking for a photo is better than one.

Shooting from a train is difficult; trying to keep the camera steady as the train moves. In hindsight I should have bumped the ISO and shutter speed a bit. There is no time to compose. No re-dos. When in doubt, click. By the end of the day I was so tired I didn't want to face editing, and we were off to Larnach Castle which was a wow and generated a ton of photos. Then the next thing, and I never got back to it.

The trip was fun, and the scenery was pretty. If you like train rides, and have a day, I'd say do it. You can't see this by driving. Would I do it again? Probably not. Maybe if I was with a bunch of people and the light was really good. I'd take a lot fewer photos.

So scroll on down and enjoy. There are some comments along the way, and a surprise near the end.

This is one of the iconic shots I wanted, the curving train beside a river.

So many bridges!

Linda savaging her pie. It was really hot.

Do you see Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli running along?

I'm sure there's a story here, but no idea what it is.

Bridges are obvious. This is the brick wall of a tunnel. I was thinking sort of an abstract.

Your surprise, Linda showing off her (then) new hair style.

New Zealand by the numbers

Here we go. The New Zealand numbers for my buddy Julie who loves numbers!

58 days, counting arrival and departure days.

Photography
11698 photos taken in NZ, with
1078 photos edited and,
692 photos published in,
82 blogs during trip. I think. Something pretty close to those numbers anyway.
4 x 64 GB chips full.
5 x 32 GP chips full. (2 left not used.)
All photos have been imported onto the home desktop computer, and some are WOW when seen on the big screen. I will be reviewing for a long time.

Transportation
5 internal NZ plane flights. (Plus 2 international flights, but that's obvious, and the flights to and from Vancouver.)
4 different cars rented. No idea how many K put on them. Many.
1 meltdown incident getting lost and swearing at Siri.
428 Km walked. (Yes, really, a little over 7K a day on average.)
671088 steps walked. (Km walked and steps are what my phone thinks. I didn't carry it all the time. There is at least another 10 K. Linda did more.)
Many public transit bus and train trips in Auckland. (The AT Hop card is awesome!)
2 out and back train trips.
1 cable car ride. (Wellington)
1 gondola ride. (Christchurch
1 tram ride. (Auckland)
3 round trip ferry rides.
2 Sound tours, Doubtful and Milford. (Involved 3 different boat rides plus 3 different bus rides.)
1 bike ride.
0 swims or runs. (Sorry Katie.)

Activities
24 beaches, some twice. Wading, no swimming.
1 castle visited.
12 (at least) gardens visited.
5 waterfalls, not counting the zillion we saw during Doubtful and Milford sounds.
1 active volcanic site.
18 look outs or observation sites. (Plus many stopping on a road for a scenic view hoping not to get run over.)
6 night sky photography outings.
5 museums. (2 of them were big, national level of quality museums, including the Terra Cotta Warriors exhibit.)
1 aquarium.
5 art galleries. (I bought a photo book. Helmut Herlig.)
1 Maori cultural experience.
1 church pipe organ concert.
8 farmer's markets.
1 art deco festival. (Which is almost like saying one Calgary Stampede.)
2 wildlife sanctuary. (Confusing category, some of the gardens were plant sanctuaries.)
1 airport visit for vintage planes.
2 art walks specifically for murals.
1 official yoga session. (Linda) (Several informal ones.)

Miscellaneous
9 rental accommodations.
28 towns or cities visited. (Feet on the ground, not just driving through, not counting suburbs or similar.)
3 Countdown supermarkets. (Once because we didn't know any better, and 2 because it was closest and it's the same bottle of wine for essentially the same price. Yes, the supermarkets sell wine and beer.)
12 different New World supermarkets. (This is the good supermarket chain.)
7 (at least) occasions we ate fish and chip meals and they were all so good they knocked Nova Scotia out of the top 5, (Sorry Janice and Janet), and don't get me started on Calgary fish and chip. I may never order it again in Calgary unless they promise the cook is a Kiwi. I'll give Nova Scotia a chance to bring themselves back into top five on my next trip there.
3 tubes of sunscreen used. The surprise was that I got only two small sunburn patches on the top of my feet during a beach walk when I forgot sunscreen. Linda got a bit a burn on shoulders and neck, which was a surprise. UV is fierce there!
2 gold mine shafts looked into, though access was locked
1 tree claimed to be old AF (no idea how old some of the other trees we saw are)

Many bottles of New Zealand wine drunk. Many. All good.

Airports

You all know what they look like. No need for photos. No need for explanation.

"Yesterday" is sort of a fluid concept. We started with a bus ride to a museum in Auckland called MOTAT. Really cool. It involved a tram ride. Later a taxi ride to the airport. Rush hour. Security check was fast, with most of the people involved smiling. The departure lounge is nice.

Business class on Air New Zealand is really nice! It was a bit of a bumpy ride so I didn't sleep as well as I'd have liked, but being able to lie flat on a soft surface is pretty good.

Customs in Vancouver was a breeze. Fast, though the photos they take as they check your passport are dreadful.

Then it went kind of pear shaped. Waiting for luggage. That happened last time in Vancouver as well. Then a gong show of a herd of people following the signs to the slowest security checkpoint ever in the history of mankind. Holy doodle. One guy was shouting there was a shorter line downstairs, just go there and ignore the signs that say don't. Several people in line were having a melt down because they were afraid, with good reason, they were going to miss their flight, mainly because they were doing final call. One lady apparently had never done this before, and security was barking at her. At first I was all WTF lets get with the program, then I felt sorry for her. Eventually we got through.

Then the most crushing disappointment. Air Canada. How we hate thee. Their "swanky lounge" was horrible. We were expecting the really nice lounge, but that's in the international terminal. This was domestic, where they knew they had you. When a tired broccoli salad is the only food I'd eat, you know it's bad.

We waited. Endured. At least the flight attendant on the plane was cheerful. He was the most cheerful Air Canada person I've seen in my entire life, and I've flown them a lot, mainly long ago. He was the one exception to the Air Canada motto, "we're not happy till you're not happy."

Anyways, we're back. The cats gave us the cold shoulder, but are coming around. There are more photos coming. Stay tuned.

The tree and the gelato and the couch

No, not a casting couch.  Sheesh. What's that phrase about minds and gutters?

We are in Auckland getting ready for the big flight home tomorrow. We strolled downtown a bit and discovered a gelato shop. Not just any gelato shop, but possibly THE most artisanal gelato shop in the world.

They ask you to wait to be served. They take a batch of people that have never been there before and give you tastes of the gelato. They show you the serving options, and they are amazing. Then you order. This is the best gelato I've had in my life. Also the most expensive. Giapo's.

Along the way I discovered this tree, and liked the light. I think the tree is lonely.

This is the couch I'm sitting on as I write today. As soon as I saw it I thought it looked like the couch one of my characters owns. As soon as I sat in it, I knew. Everyone that sits in it comments about how comfy it is. Her's is a three seater, but the leather looks exactly like this, soft, broken in, warm, cozy. Dwen's couch is covered in a hodgepodge of cushions, a small quilt, books, magazines, clothes, snacks, and who knows what else.

Sometimes the novel intrudes into real life in surprising ways. I was driving home from a dawn photoshoot and had to stop to appreciate one of the homes. It was exactly what I had pictured for a different character. I was having lunch with a buddy one day, and one of my characters walked by. Since she and several other characters sometimes meet up in this coffee shop, I nearly said hello to a stranger and she would probably think I was hitting on her if I told the story. The plant in my stories is a real place, and some of the stories I tell that seem too strange to be true, in fact are nearly exactly true. I'm one of the authors that has muttered, "you can't make this shit up" as I work on a scene.

Anyways, tomorrow about this time we head for the airport to leave NZ. I miss it already.

Linda waves goodbye to Napier

We fly out first thing tomorrow.

We spent the day doing sweets. The local chocolate shop Silky Oaks. (Don't ask me why that name, I don't know.) The cafe was one of the best. The crowds were the worst. There were two cruise ships in port, and I think a record number of people wanted off. All of them were shambling around the main street in front of our place life bucolic half slaughtered sheep. Then, somehow, most of them got to the chocolate shop just before us. They have to post a staff person outside one part of the shop to keep from exceeding fire regulations.

Then the honey place. We did a bit of research and it's ok to bring honey back to Canada. So the website says. The cruise ship people beat us there, and were gone when we got there.

Then a walk on the beach, looking for more interesting driftwood, and found lots. Stay tuned for the well dressed log. I'm thinking about what's the best way to deal with all the driftwood photos.

Driving to the moon

Or some of the craters thereof. Like this one.

Or this one. I have video of this one so you can hear the sound of the steam escaping. It sounded a bit like a distant but well behaved jet engine.

Here Linda is deciding that in fact, this is NOT the clothing optional beach, or even the path to it. Hot enough to be though.

On the way there I got a couple lovely misty landscape shots that I want to sleep on and maybe tweak the Lightroom settings again when my eyes are working better. There are a bunch of shots I'll want to work on again on a desktop. I wish I'd thought to flag those somehow so I wouldn't have to look for them.

We are coming to the end of our trip. I note that it is still cold AF in Calgary. This is fine for now, but will be completely unacceptable in less than a week. We have one more day here, then fly back to Auckland, have essentially two days there and fly out that evening. The weather has till then to get control of itself. So the blogging may get a bit erratic here. Don't panic.

I never thought I'd say this, but I'm looking forward to the 14 hour flight home. The nice people help you get settled, then they bring champagne and orange juice. There is a little package of toiletries including a blindfold I'll be making big use of. They keep bringing really good food. It's quiet and dim and I'm not driving. I might watch a movie, but maybe not. Sleeping sounds like a good idea.

Coming to the end of our trip!!! :-((((( We were looking forward to it for so long, and it's gone by so quickly.

February Image of the Month

Here we are again. Another month has zoomed by, this one with more zoom than usual. I feel for my friends at home, this month has probably seemed to last forever and a day. Or more. I can't believe it's over already.

I took nearly 5,000 photos last month, with about 10% of them edited so far, and yes, I'm still behind. The first train trip was about 500 photos, I think. Parade day was over 1000. Neither touched so far. I had a hasty scroll through, and I don't think I'm missing a potential image of the month in either. Maybe once I finish editing I'll have to do a honourary New Zealand image of the trip, or something.

I admit to struggling with all the images. Without doing anything else, I could put up a photo a day for the rest of the year, and still have some left over. I could do sets of things, or by location, or kind of shot, or, or, or. The driftwood, for example. I'm quite taken by it, but my small and loyal readership don't seem to be much interested in it. Maybe that needs a different audience. I see lots of shots that by my standards are pretty good, and would normally be a shoo in for the blog, but haven't been included for whatever reason, usually because there are even better ones.

Today I was looking at these amazing landscapes in a gallery. Amazing is an understatement. It makes me re-evaluate all of my own work, but it also gave me ideas. Hint, Google Helmut Hirler. He's really nice. We chatted about photography, and he autographed his book I bought.

To be honest I don't even know where to start deciding. I went back and tweaked the star ratings (what was I thinking for some of them??!!) and am reasonably happy with the results. But as always, I'm having a problem getting it down to one.

I'm glad I kept notes along the way. Some things are beginning to run together on me. I can easily see that when I'm going over these on the desktop, I'll need to have my notebook open beside me so I know which beach, or city, or garden I'm looking at.

Second runner up
This panorama was shot from the balcony of our rental place in Cass Bay (near Christchurch) overlooking Lyttelton harbour. The rest of the sunset was nice, and I was there with camera in hand when this came and went.

First runner up
Shot near Wellington airport with the 14 mm lens. For those that missed that blog, this appears to be a sound I could run tours down, but really it's only a few inches across.

The winner!
This was during our stay just outside Napier, when I drove out north of Sherendon, hoping to find dark skies. There I was, driving along the ridge I had scouted earlier in the day, and was horrified to see the lights of Napier way down below. Going a little further got me in the lee of a hill, and once the moon set things were pretty dark.