Micro Blog: 2nd July 2011 (Travel)
Been sometime since I updated the MB and my apologies for that. It has been a hectic 2 over months and was having some great fun alongside small doses of stress.
From mid April to mid of May this year, I was travelling around the South Island of New Zealand. Led by Kah Kit Yoong and Winnie Ho of Magic Hour, it was to be an immersive 18 day photographic expedition. They are superb landscape photographers and upon hearing that they had 2 vacancies left on a photo tour to LOTR land, I exchanged a few emails with Kah Kit and confirmed my slot. That was the start of my first ever photo tour/workshop. Photo tour/workshop? In my opinion, it was a combination of both. Photo tours are trips to places where the host photographers will bring the participants to locations that have already been scouted beforehand and at a timing that is best for the pre-determined form of photography. A photography workshop is more instructional whereby the participants are led by hand (ok, not holding hands) and they are taught the basics of photography, etc. There is definitely less freedom in the latter and on the former, you are paying for a high-end tour (but no regrets here). Photo tours allow you to concentrate fully on gaining as many keepers as possible and not to have to worry about whether you are getting the autumn colours at the right time or getting lost along the roads. Accommodation and food are also usually sorted out with options available.
It was time to then clear all the backlog and arranging the backup to take over all the shoots for the whole month. Packing was planned much in advance as we will be on the outskirts of the towns/cities and arranging backups of almost every item was essential. The backup strategy for photos will remain much the same as what I have done for normal overseas shoots: at least 2 external drives with ample connecting cables, a couple of card readers and the Macbook Pro. In the end, 3 hard drives (2.5 inch) of 750gb were brought along with 2 OTG drives by Nexto (500gb each) to be on hand as an emergency in case I was going too shutter crazy. 4 FW800 cables and 3 card readers (1 FW800 Sandisk, 1 FW800 Lexar and 1 Sandisk USB) were packed into a the small HPRC casing as well. In the main camera backpack which was a Lowepro Computrekker Plus AW were 2 5D Mark II bodies, Canon 16-35, Canon 17 TSE, Canon 24 TSE, Carl Zeiss 28-85, Canon 100-400 as well as three remotes (backup backup backup). Stuffed in the bag were also 4 x 6 filters (ND grads and ND), Lee's Big Stopper, circular polarizers and 2 Lee filter holders. Batteries and chargers (2 units) were also carry on. How heavy was it? Let's just say every plane boarding has me worrying about whether I will be forced to check-in my carryon. Touchwood but I have not had that problem since I always declare them to be photographic equipment and in general, airport staff know that it is our livelihood and let me through without much hassle.
The photo tour will start at Queenstown and end at Christchurch which means we will cover quite a bit of the South Island of NZ. That also meant that I had to fly to Christchurch with a return ticket and book an internal flight to Queenstown. That was perfect though as I would love to be spending a couple of days at Christchurch. The famed countryside and mountains was something I was very much looking forward to.
On 20th April, I had my first breath of the extremely fresh air in NZ. At Queenstown, Kah Kit and Winnie met my arrival at the airport and gave a brief introduction of Queenstown. What a contrast to the concrete jungle of Singapore! Flanked by mountains (The Remarkables) and the huge lake, Wakatipu, it was definitely a nature photographer's paradise. Autumn colour had arrived a little earlier than expected but the town was still full of shades of yellow and I concluded then that my 2 camera bodies will be working overtime and extra hard.
The tour started on the 3rd day after my arrival and we were treated to a fabulous sunrise with light bursting on a lake with trees full of autumn colour. Sunrises do have their challenges though; you arrive before first light and with the ambient light slowly lifting the light levels, you search for a composition and the window for shooting is much smaller than that of sunsets. For sunsets, you can be roaming around in the early or mid afternoon and be looking for potential compositions. Sidelighting is also very much a possibility and is one of my favourite lighting directions. That said, despite reaching most locations well before the sunset arrived, I was still struggling to get some keepers in the bag. Perhaps I am just a slow shooter or is it because I input too much thought and was just not being spontaneous enough? Either way, in an ideal world, I would be able to scout the location beforehand, plan any compositions in advance, look at the direction of the light and plan the shooting process according to it. That will be fantastic but when you are in a workshop, it is highly unlikely there is going to be any chance of doing so. To the credit of the workshop leaders, we actually did manage to scout a few locations before the actual shoot and that was definitely beneficial.
Over the course of 18 days, we were exposed to the cold winds at Hooker Lake of Mount Cook, the blue waters of Lake Tekapo and the rushing waves of Curio Bay. It really was a landscape shooters paradise where we shot everything from rainforests, waterfalls, mountains to seacapes. Now which are my favourites? It is seriously a tough choice and each location had its challenges and the keepers. The Reef Stars at Graymouth stood out as a highlight of my risky walk out into the waters. But so has the long hike towards Hooker Lake and Hooker Valley as well as the huge rock-displacing waves at Gillespies Beach. It is too different to even compare and each location has had a fair share of keepers.
While I am of most part a solo shooter, workshops demand a different mindset and thinking of other participants and looking out for one another is very much a necessity. I do however confess for being late in getting back to the cars during the first few shoots. Subsequently however, I would have to be proud and say I was not that much of a pain and was actually the first back on a couple of shoots. :) The participants comprised of a wide age group and either slowing down or helping each other with carrying gear while climbing up for a view seemed to be second nature after a while. It was a very warming experience to be alongside photographers from various parts of the world and yet have the same aim of achieving the highest standard of landscape photography as our ability allows.
The last week of my month in NZ saw me checking into a Bed and Breakfast at Christchurch. Slippers Bed & Breakfast are owned and operated by Ron and Georgie, both excellent photographers and they were extremely accomodating in bringing us around the backcountry where we saw rolling hills and farmland peppered with a small fraction of the 70 million sheep in NZ. The light was gorgeous much of the time and I had an amazing week capturing the best of the countryside. Their local knowledge is excellent and they know where the good spots are and shared them selflessly.
All in all, it was a superb month of landscape photography at what can be said to be the best country for landscape shooters. The variety is just astounding and the people of NZ just makes every day a really pleasant one. Not once have I encountered any negative emotion and that left me waking up everyday knowing that the day will be great even if the weather falls on us.
The next blog posting will be about the gear I brought along and give my thoughts on what worked and what did not.
Here are some links: