Christmas Holiday in Whanganui: post 2

After the visit to the Durie Hill Tower, another "must" is Virginia Lake. Virginia Lake used to be the main water supply for Whanganui [many years ago], but nowadays is a renowned small lake with ducks, geese, pukekos and various other wildlife present, as well as an aviary, gardens and more. The ducks and geese all look healthy - I'm not sure that my comments of "that would be nice for dinner tonight" were appreciated though... :-)

The following pictures are from around the lake, and then some of the birds in residence. Most of the birds were really friendly, and happy to pose for a photo or two!

Christmas Holiday in Whanganui

This year I went up to Whanganui to visit my folks for a few days. It was nice relaxing time, with a bit of "geek" stuff to do [setting up a secure wifi router], and a good chance to catch up with a number of other rellies.

Amazingly, the weather was very good all bit one day - that "one day" was windy and wet... much like Wellington is on a regular basis!! :-)

We did get out the see some of the sights. In this first post, there are pictures of, and from, the Durie Hill Tower. it's around 30 meters [100 feet] above the ground level. You'll see from the pictures that it is also a great vantage point to see over Whanganui.

Photos are of the Durie Hill Tower and of Whanganui, starting from the river mouth. Enjoy!

Sunset photo

I have recently been playing with stitching photos using the free Canon software. Here's one of the images. Obviously I have a lot to learn about getting the photos right in the first place - while I was using mostly manual settings, it looks like I left the auto-focus on... doh! Oh well, more practice over the next week or so might produce a better image!

Remember to click on the image to get a much larger version!

Scenery at Masterton

During this last weekend I have been at Masterton for the Flying New Zealand regional flying competitions. While most of the photos were of aircraft and the people, I did get some evening scenic pictures.

A side effect of taking these photos was to get a better understanding of how my Canon EOS 450D works... basically, as soon as I turn on one of the picture modes [such as Landscape], I lose the ability to capture the RAW images... hmmm, oh well, one lesson learnt!

Any, I hope you like the photos! Remember to click on the images for a larger view.

Fireworks

It's the day after Guy Fawkes and the fireworks are still going off. Here are a few pictures from this evening. Unfortunately they were a bit of a rush job, and I didn't have a tripod, but I think they still came out OK.

Auckland visit

I spent last weekend in Auckland visiting friends, airports and a couple of other places.

Here are a couple of scenic type photos. The first three are Pukekos... scavenging around Auckland International Airport and desperately trying to avoid Maria, her gun and her desire to rid the world of these lovely birds :-)

Following this are three pictures from Mt Wellington - the crater [look closely, there are at least 10 fat and happy looking bunnies in there if you're hungry!!!], a tree, then an "iconic" picture of Auckland looking across to Rangitoto Island.

Enjoy!

Interislander Ferry

I was sitting in the back of a plane earlier today and got this picture of an Interislander ferry coming in to Wellington.

RNZN visits Wellington

As part of the scenic tour, the Navy had an open day on two of the inshore patrol vessels [HMNZS Pukaki and HMNZS Taupo] and a roll on, roll off transport [HMNZS Canterbury].

Finding out that we knew one of the HMNZS Taupo crew, we headed off and had a look around [thanks Nick!]. We didn't gte on to the HMNZS Canterbury.

Here are the photos, top to bottom:

HMNZS Canterbury [2 pictures]

HMNZS Pukaki [nearest] and HMNZS Taupo [2 photos]

Aussie visitor and Wellington sightseeing

Yesterday I got to pick up up an aussie visitor off a flight, and today we went sightseeing. This included Eastbourne; a place I had not visited despite being in Wellington for over 4.5 years now. As you can see, the weather improved a lot during the day!

Pictures are:

Emma the visitor...

The beach at Eastbourne

Marina at the international sea port

Looking across the harbour to the Hutt Valley

Te Papa

Enjoy!

Robin Mark - "Here is Love"

Peace... now this would be nice

Another picture of the moon

More playing around with the camera this evening, with another picture of the moon. Again, a fast shutter speed and hand held [although with image stabilisation on] has resulted in a decent image.

As always, click on the image for a larger version.

Monkey Business!

This is a test of your powers of perception, based on an old video trick. Enjoy!

Scenery in Waikanae

I have just arrived back in Wellington after a few days up in Waikanae on the Kapiti Coast, at a youth camp held at El Rancho. While there I managed to snap a few photos of some of the local scenery

These were all taken within the El Rancho complex itself. It really is a nice place [and having been there a few years ago in September, it's not always quite so cold! :-)].

I particularly like the final picture where the trees are partially silhouetted against the sky one evening as the sun retreated below the horizon.

Enjoy!

For all you "bleeding edge" types...

A better moon photo

Following on from my previous post, here is a larger, clearer photo of the moon that I took last night.

Remember to click on the image for a much larger/ better version.

Enjoy!

The Moon

I've been playing with camera settings over the past few days, and thought that I would put it all to the test this evening. What follows is one of the moon photos that I took. No tripod, manual focus and with image stabilisation "on", on my Canon EOS 450 with a 55-250mm lens [yeah, at the 250 end] and a 1/1000 of a second shutter speed [pretty much everything else is automatic].

I've cropped top and bottom, and you will need to click on the image to get it full size!

Enjoy!

Wellington Scenary from Mount Victoria

Here are a few pictures of Wellington City. I took these from the summit of Mount Victoria last weekend.

For those of you who do not know Wellington, this means I have scaled a mountain. It took a lot of planning and effort! [for those who do know Wellington, yeah, I drove to the top :-)]. Anyway, the pictures are, top to bottom:

- general view of the Wellington CBD
- WestpacTrust Stadium [aka The Caketin]
- Te Papa Tongarewa
- The Museum of New Zealand building
- the Basin Reserve cricket groud
- closeup of a flax bush on the mountain