Autumn And A Few Random Images

Well not everyone is enjoying glorious Spring weather, some of us are the exact opposite. The first official day of Autumn arrived several weeks ago, but the summer weather seemed to be lingering around, much to everyone's delight I'd imagine.

It's been a while since I've been able to enjoy the Fall colours in Toronto and I hear the place to go in New Zealand to see nice Fall colours is down to the South Island, Christchurch, Otago, probably Queenstown too. Not sure if they have more Deciduous trees than the North Island? Anyways, I was out wandering around last weekend scouting for locations for some upcoming portfolio shoots, and I went back to the Botanical Gardens to see if there'd be any green left. All the flower beds themselves are pretty much just soil now, but the lawns are still green, and there were surprisingly a few trees changing colours! AAHHHhhhh....almost like being home :P So I snapped a couple pics of the colours...sad in comparison to an entire forest full of coloured trees, but hey, beggars can't be choosers.

This was one of the locations I thought might be good, it was a small patch of grass with a huge tree in the background turning orange, yellow and brown. This photo however was just me being nerdy trying to get an interesting photo out of the location with no real subject to shoot...I kinda like it though. Would've been better if there was a small mushroom or something in the grass to be a focal point....whatever...

Random park bench under a tree...kind of makes me wonder what Central Park in NYC is like in Autumn?

On my same scouting mission, I went back to visit a location I had stumbled upon months ago. On the way up to the Wind Turbine in Newtown, there is an area high in the hills with remnants of war time concrete bunkers. There are in fact many of these scattered around the hilltops in Wellington. Evidence of a time past. This is overlooking Wellington City and Wellington Harbour, looking North.

Just a group of friends hanging out enjoying the views.

While loading these recent images into Lightroom, I came across a few random photos from around town that I had previously taken, but not bothered to look at. This was one of them from mid summer this year. It was the weekend I was playing with Kristie's Mamiya. I was taking random portraits of strangers (pre 100 Strangers project), but since I didn't have a proper light meter, I was using my Canon to take test shots to get exposure readings, then shooting one final on film. This was one of my test shots of two friends enjoying the sun along the harbourfront path, sitting behind Te Papa Museum.

...and a couple of random shots from the office...

Julian, he's one of the other guys I share an office with, he's Kiwi. This is just us playing around with a big piece of glass...85mm f/1.2 lens.

Ron, fellow Canuck from Calgary. He actually worked at CORE in toronto, but I didn't know him back then...but he says he remembers me for how much butter I used to put on my bagels in the morning...hahaha...ugh. I needed to get an idea of the depth of field on this lens at f/1.2, and at what distances it is 'manageable'. Up close and personal in the image above, the DOF is so shallow it's almost impossible to use..you really need to be steady or your focus will be completely off...I was trying to focus on his eyes in this shot, but you'll notice it's the tip of his nose that is in focus and less than a centimetre back from that everything else is already soft. Super fun lens to use, you just need to be diligent.

Even at around 20 feet away, your DOF is only about 8 inches...but I can still manage to screw that up...I think I actually got his reflection in the mirror in focus...oops :)