So yesterday it was 24th July, and I had volunteered to lead a Photowalk for Scott Kelby’s World Wide Photowalk. Registered numbers were low, but I had been out reminding local clubs the week before, and hoped for a bit more turnout. I think we had about 10 people, including a couple in town on holiday.
The weather all week had been awful, rain and drizzle, but the forecast was to clear in the afternoon. And clear it did! By the time we got started the sky was a brilliant blue which I am sure lifted everyone’s spirits 🙂
Nearly everyone found the start venue, it was a fish and chip shop and I was sitting outside, eating some for lunch with my tripod and camera bag in clear view. Given the low numbers I suggested we all just wander as we pleased and meet back at a cafe at 3pm, and so we did.
My first stop with the camera was right across the street, someone had sat down to eat chips and kindly started feeding some to the seagulls, who madly flocked to be the first to score a chip.
Can you spot the chip in mid air?
Seagull Rank and File
Akaroa shopping district is tiny, and along the waterfront, and despite the numbers I kept meeting up with fellow shooters, and the time seemed to go quite quickly.
The cafe we organised to meet at had a surprise. Apparently Akaroa has a Town Crier who dresses up in uniform. Akaroa has a Maori name but a French history. Its a very pretty harbour town about an hours drive away from the city and very popular with tourists.
Lots of Red White and Blue buildings
Many of the buildings date back to the late 1800s and have been restored and looked after, and many more built in keeping with the style, so the whole place has quite a quaint look.
Court House 1878
Flower Baskets
Back to our Town Crier, he was very happy to dress up in his uniform (that he just happened to have handy for such an occasion as a flock of photographers to walk into the bar he was drinking at!) and quite happy to be posed and moved about to catch the best light.
Town Crier in full uniform
All in all it was good outing, I certainly learnt useful stuff:
1: If you are planning a photowalk, if it happens to be somewhere you haven’t been in several years, then DO A RECONNISSANCE TRIP!!! Lots of things had changed – mostly availability of parking so not a major but yes big heads up there.
2: My backpack is awkward to wear while shooting, it comes up higher at the back than I realised and gets in the way of my neck.
3: Polarising filter looks cool but I couldn’t see any obvious results in my pictures. Must be doing it wrong 😦
4: Be prepared to shoot at all times – driving home I saw a large flock of geese at a small bay waddling out to sea, got some shots, but if I had had the camera on the front seat, ready to go, would have got better ones.
5: My little car handles hills quite nicely, thankyou very much!
6: There are some really nice people who happen to be photographers, and it was really nice to meet more of them 🙂
Will I do it again next year? Certainly. Though I would pick a route in town with the hope of getting a better turnout. I have one in mind already…….
I have included some pix in this post, all the rest are up on Flickr
Learning to See Light 
Gotta watch the polariser. Like the ND filter it takes away around 2 stops. Add this to a 1.4x and you are really stretching it with a loss of 4 stops unless you manually compensate.
If you are wanting some not-so-pro-myself suggestions.. Id at a hazard say a couple of them might have popped a little more if used with a +1-2/3 over exposure compo if using some of the semi-manual modes?
As for the seaguls.. Similar to the last 2 weekend outtings I’ve had to sumner. Will put them on my flickr later. Only facebook’d them for now 🙂
Thanks Craig, I was being a bit cautious with the exposure because the light was quite bright, and didnt want to over expose the highlights. In fact I put the polariser on to help counteract that, but no didnt increase exposure. I usually shoot -1/3 under exposed to counter our nuclear sunlight here.
Will have to experiment and see where my sweet spot it. I was certainly seeing the polariser have an effect looking down the viewfinder but didnt see it in the final pix, even tho I took 2 or 3 to compare, which was odd
I’m a fan of what my CP does to the grass/sun myself. But found the last couple of times I used it at car racing the in-camera got all confused and made quite a few of them appear more blue, or dark depending on the metering adjustments for the colour of subject.. as some of the above are appearing on my display (house, baskets, gulls)
Tend to keep it for ultra brights as you say, or when I want to forcefully lower my DoF to a sweetspot in a normal day.. But then have to keep an eye on the onboard histogram and blowout indication as you point out.
I suspect some of the darkness you are seeing is the fact I am editing on my lovely Dell monitor, and its a lot brighter than your bog standard ones. I notice it myself when viewing my Flickr stuff at work, have two quite crappy monitors. Not quite sure how to get around that.
Oh contraire.. I got a 2407WPFP long before you blogged about picing one up 😉
Even calibrated with a spyder.
Hmmm well the seagull shots were *not* shot with the polarising filter on. So now I am confused!