So we met up at Herd Street Brasserie, a newer restaurant/cafe right on the harbourfront. A pretty nice place to hang out when the weather is good as it's right on the boardwalk, you could throw something into the water from the patio, it's that close. It's on the ground floor of a new condo unit in the harbour, and Waitangi Park is on the opposite side of the building. In one direction is the boardwalk that takes you towards the city and Frank Kitts Park, and in the other direction is where the Oriental Parade boardwalk starts.
As you can see by the pics, the weather this weekend was awesome. Sunny and low 20s. We met up at 4pm for some of that good afternoon light. I wanted to experiment with some strobist stuff as well, balancing the sun rim light with strobes...unfortunately all these pics are natural light. I had taken a few from this location with a flash setup and I THOUGHT they looked good on the back of the camera, but when I saw them on my computer I wasn't so thrilled. Note to self, next time make sure to use the histogram to check exposure. 
Trying to see an LCD display in bright sunlight isn't the easiest thing to do, and I mistakenly didn't have my histogram displaying on reviews. I had checked it manually a few times, but when things got going I neglected to check it...just one more lesson learned. The shots that I THOUGHT were well exposed were in fact a little too dark. I think it might also have been me fooling around with negative EV to get the extra zing from the strobe against the darker background. At one point I was using an ND filter as well, and I think that really threw off my exposures...and no, I didn't compensate properly, hence the underexposed images. Other note to self...next time work out my exposure settings manually, set it and forget it, and do it all before you start posing and shooting.
The rest of these were taken at Frank Kitts Park. After busting out the umbrella and trying to be discreet in our section of the boardwalk, foot traffic started picking up. Most people passed by with an intrigued look or an inquisitive comment, but I always feel a bit goofy setting up gear in busy places...and I have my back to them, the model is the one who can see all the people checking us out :)
So these are all just natural light as well. The goodness of 'the magic hour'...every photographer's favourite early morning or late afternoon sunlight...not necessarily JUST an hour, it basically refers to the times of day when the sun is lower in the sky and also has a nice warmer tone. And if you're wondering where the deep blue sky background is coming from, I was using a polarized filter.
This pic may be one of my more favoured looks, processing wise. The blue was a bit too intense, bordering on looking too fake, so I tried pulling out a little of the saturation. It kind of gives the (sun)light a bit of a flash/strobe feel.
Sigh...evidence that there are some real creepy losers out there. Someone on my flickr account posted a comment on the above picture. I'm not sure if he was for real, but he thought she was attractive and left his email address for her (on MY page??) and asked her to contact him to 'be friends'. I clicked on his link to see who he was...he only had one picture in his account and it was of some middle aged dude in Thailand. I'm not sure if that was him or a picture of someone he had taken. Either way, I deleted his comment and blocked him from leaving any more comments...what an ass.
...like I was saying...
Number 28, that's my parent's house number. What does that mean? Absolutely nothing at all.
A "2-4" is what we Canucks call a case of beer. What does that have to do with anything? Absolutely nothing at all.
Number 25...
Racing in numerical order?
Some fierce action in the corners with lots of passing...not always clean though :)
Weeeeeeeee...I'm by myself!
Hunting down number 30.
Look at me! I'm SPECIAL!
WARP speed.
Ludicrous Speed Colonel Sanders!
I sent her an email with a link to my flickr site and I guess she liked my pics enough to let me take her pics...or maybe it was just the fact that I told her I wouldn't charge her...hmmm...ya, probably the freebie.
Anyways, we met up downtown and shot a bunch of pics inside the lounge at the Embassy Theatre. There's nobody in the theatre on a Saturday afternoon. Not sure if the movies don't start til later in the afternoon, or if everyone just has better things to do, especially when the weather is as good as it was today. But it was all good, we had the entire lounge to ourselves, several tables and chairs, couches, a baby grand piano, lots of windows (except most of them had annoying metal design work on them creating crappy shadows), and the crazy burgundy wall. Oh, and they were playing some decent tunes over the speakers too. So we tried a bunch of different shots over the course of 2-3 hours? Only had a couple people wander by and peek in, then just went to sit elsewhere. Staff didn't care at all either, which is a good thing since I was moving most of the furniture around :)
Overall I'm pretty happy with how they turned out. Some decent shots and some NOT so decent ones..yikes!! While reviewing the pics, I also noticed some things I didn't do which would've made a lot of shots better, so I'll try to pay more attention to those next time.
Here's the crazy burgundy wall. Actually it turned out to be a decent looking backdrop! I guess the old moral still holds true...Never judge a book by it's cover.
ps. you might be wondering why the hell she's wearing a corset. it's not by choice. she wanted a "clean" headshot from the collarbones upwards so for her final images, i'd have to crop the images much tighter to show just to the tops of her shoulders.
Tirohana Estate Vineyard
A couple of the girls working the entrance tent. You hand in your ticket and in return receive a small wine glass to hang around your neck, and a small booklet with vineyard information and map locations. That glass is your entry ticket onto the shuttle buses and into each vineyard...also what you drink out of. You could walk vineyard to vineyard if you wanted to do so. Some were located across the street from each other, others a 5-10 minute walk away. A few were located at the farther ends of town though and the shuttle was the better choice.
Big head. I wasn't too sure who they were, but there were two of them, and they were pushing manual lawn cutters around.
"The Beat Girls", or at least one of them. They were one of the musical acts at Palliser. Singing 60s and 70s music with Supremes style choreography and costumes. They were pretty good. 
Julia from Ruth Pretty Catering. I liked her shirt (old school egg beaters) so I took a picture of her.
You may know him as Vincent Yan, but this here is Honky Tonk Vince.
Lonnie trying out his new "stereoscopic" camera setup.
Mr. Movember a.k.a. James Ogle. Halfway through Movember, only a few more itchy weeks to go!
Bethen. Her mom's an ex-Weta peep. No wine for her, but I think she was eating grapes :)
Mr. Christie and his lady friend. Fellow Cre-tard.
The lawn at Craggy Range. This was our first vineyard. My first glass of the day was a nice Riesling.
One of the nice things about the larger vineyards like Ata Rangi, is that you never had to walk very far to get to one of the many wine bars. And if you wanted to be even lazier, there were little wine angels like Jess here, wandering the lawn with "holsters" of wine on each hip. Fill'er up ma'am.
A couple of the ladies working one of the wine bars at Ata Rangi. Did I mention the Crimson was good?
One of the lawn areas at Ata Rangi, and another below.
Martinborough Vineyard was also pretty nice. Chameleon, the hotel restaurant from The Intercontinental, provided the good eats here. No I didn't eat again, but I did have their Glazed Lemon Tart dessert...wow!!! With summer berry coulis and creme fraiche. Not very tart, in fact it was almost like a cheesecake. Oh yeah, I did try some of their Braised Lamb Shank with big cassoulet beans though...mmmmmm :)
Te Kairanga was probably the busiest vineyard this year. Yes their wines are good, but they also had the biggest musical guest for this year, local born soul-diva Hollie Smith. Late morning they had closed the gates because they couldn't fit any more people onto the grounds. So we went by later in the afternoon and caught these guys just getting onto the stage, Uncle Monkey, a rock cover band. They got the crowd going pretty good, and I had fun sneaking around on stage snapping some shots :) 
The Uncle Monkey crowd.
I wasn't completely sure about this group. A lot of UK accents from what I could tell. I think couples were suposed to dress accordingly, a female version of the Spice Girls, and a male version? Your first reaction is, "damn that woman looks like a man...oh, it IS a man..." :P Fun crew though, I sat next to "Geri" on the bus...the one in the middle with the fur coat.
The obligatory nature pic...shot while waiting for a shuttle to come by.
