LakeWakatipu Archives - Just Enough Focus

June 13, 2017June 13, 2017

Slopes of Mount Bonpland

This is another image I took from the slopes of Mount Bonpland in New Zealand. This location is above the northern tip of Lake Wakatipu. It was one of the last stops before heading back to the airport. We started early with subzero temps high up on the peaks and as the morning progressed and we headed to lower elevations we were peeling off the layers.

Daily Image

We made so many stops I can hardly remember them all save for the photos. The excursion was based on engine time so on some stops we’d jump out while the pilot kept the engine running, this was one such stop as the pilot was still at the controls up on the right. At other stops he’d cut the engine so that we had a little more time to explore and compose shots.

How I know where I was seemed nothing short of a happy miracle. I have an app on my iPhone called “gps4cam” that tracks GPS coordinates and then syncs them up with the photos using the image timestamp. I say it was a happy miracle because I wasn’t sure if it worked out of cell tower range. It does indeed because it uses the GPS receiver in the phone. So I ended up with exact locations of all our landings. That’s invaluable especially when I’m in areas I’ve never been before and want to review it later.

new zealand gallery

About three hours after leaving we returned to the airport. I’d taken about fifteen hundred images and seen many things I never imagined. The next time I go back I’d like to do something similar; it’s hard to imaging a better opportunity for a landscape photographer. Now if I could just manage to get back to New Zealand sometime soon.

April 20, 2016April 20, 2016

Sense of Direction

This is from my trip to New Zealand a couple of years ago where I participated in a photography workshop. After all of the time that’s gone by I still have a lot of photos in my backlog to process. Here we were standing on a hill one afternoon overlooking Queenstown. That trip went by so fast I’m glad I have photos to re-live it in little increments later.

Whenever I go somewhere new it can be a little disorienting. By that I mean I’m never to sure which way is north south east or west. I remember having that feeling when I was here and struggling to sort it out in my mind. I love going back to Google Maps or Google Earth to look at places I’ve been and get a proper sense of direction and location. It’s helps me to integrate the experience after the fact.

For instance, with this shot I keep expecting to see the river, but it’s to my back as I was facing south. When we headed to Glenorchy, I thought we were driving south but it’s actually north. And if all that isn’t enough, on the last day I took a helicopter through the southern alps during which I had zero sense of whereabouts. Thankfully I was geotagging my photos, so now years later I can go back and begin to piece the locations together into some kind map of the journey.

Perhaps the sense of not knowing where we are in a new land adds to the sense wonder and excitement. I think perhaps, there might be something to that.

More images from the New Zealand gallery

January 31, 2016January 31, 2016

End of Lake Wakatipu

This is the end of Lake Wakatipu in Glenorchy. I was here a couple of years ago on a Trey Ratcliff photo adventure. I had just switched from Nikon to Sony and so was still struggling with the placement of the buttons and menus. Sometimes I go back and look at my settings and wonder what I was thinking, like this one, my aperture was f10; seems a bit high. Maybe I should just forget about that and just enjoy the scenery. Forget I even mentioned it.

I was going back to look at my New Zealand photos and found this sitting in the bit bucket. I started working on its just out of curiosity and then got carried away. All the while I was thinking I’d seen this before. Sure enough, I’d processed and posted this same picture. My techniques and eye are constantly changing and this time the result was different. So maybe I should have titled it Glenorchy Part 2, …or some such thing.

Boy, if I could go back in time and make different choices. Well, just a few. Like buying a certain company stock when it was really cheap. Oh well, until I invent a time machine I’ll just live in the present, learn from the past, place one foot in front of the other, you know the drill. Actually, I’m kind of glad I can’t go back, it seems the longer I live the less confused things are. So going back and buying that stock might just put me into a place I don’t want to be. Hmmmm, … tis a bit of a conundrum.