The Monday Blues...

Here's another image from our recent trip to the South Island, this time one from Lake Matheson which is located just outside Fox on the west coast.

Lake Matheson is famous for its early morning lake reflections. Within about 30mins of me shooting this (and many more images), ripples started to form on the surface and totally destroyed the reflection. A magical place, but you do get a lot of tourists there with the same idea in mind!

The snow covered mountains you can see on the right of the frame form part of the Southern Alps - Horokoau/Mt Tasman (left) and Aoraki/Mt Cook (right). Mt Tasman is NZ's second highest mountain at 3497m, and Mt Cook is in first place at 3724m.

Lake Matheson

Norsewear - Product Imagery

Over the last couple of months we've been beavering away shooting new marketing images for Norsewear.

Tank Marketing & Design in Napier were tasked with undertaking this project and to date we've shot and clear-cut a wide range of products, including socks, hats, gloves and other apparel.  

We've also been busy shooting in the great outdoors - on farms, the top (and bottom) of Te Mata Peak, by the Tuki Tuki River and in Havelock North to capture the products in their 'natural' environments.

Many thanks to Nat, Steve and Nicky at Tank Marketing & Design, our great client Bruce Keatley at Norsewear and of course to my assistant Loren.

Projects like this require a team of people who operate on the same wavelength, and have the same goal in mind, I think we very much achieved that on this project!

Pacific Powder Coating - New Website Images

Stefan at Empire Design referred us to Joe at Pacific Powder Coating in Onekawa, Napier.  They were having a new website developed by James and his team at Webfox, also in Napier, so were wanting some great photography for the new site.

As soon as I started to scope the project with Joe at PPC my eyes lit up at the thought of doing some cool back-lit images of the powder being sprayed onto products.  A great opportunity to shoot some vibrant, eye catching imagery!  

Around 30 images were supplied to PPC to provide them with images for the new site and also as collateral for future use.

Hastings District Court House

I've been intending on photographing the Hastings District Court House ever since we moved to Hawkes Bay 5 years ago. Just one of those places I never quite made it to despite living not too far away.

For me, it's one of the most visually striking buildings in Hawkes Bay. When shot at the right time of day (like most things) it just comes alive. The best time to shoot this building is shortly after the sun has set and the sky is gradually turning to what photographers call 'blue hour'.

It may be called 'blue hour', but this time normally lasts alot longer than an hour. Modern cameras are capable of shooting well after the sun goes down and still capture a great deal of colour and detail, even in the darkest parts of an image.

It's important to retain as much detail as possible in the dark/shadow areas of an image. In this case, for me it was important to retain some detail under the parts of the building which 'jut' out. If these areas were underexposed, then they would have just turned to black and detracted from the image.

Hastings District Court House

New Election Billboards

Over the last couple of weeks I've been working with Attn! Marketing & PR in Havelock North to shoot billboard profile images for Hastings District Council Mayor, Lawrence Yule who is standing for re-election, Damon Harvey who is a HDC Council candidate and Sally Butler from Central Hawkes Bay who is a Central Hawkes Bay Mayoral candidate.

Great job by Attn!, the boards look great!

Here's Lawrence's board which I spotted today whilst driving through Hastings, sure I'll be spotting Damon's and Sally's soon.  Will edit this post when I've got some more pics...

Hawkes Bay's Winter Blast

Last weekend saw a major southerly winter blast hit NZ.  The central north island seemed to take the brunt of the storm with a good dumping of snow bringing down powerlines and leaving large parts of the region without power.  Unison did a fantastic job of quickly repairing the damage, so a big shout-out to the guys who got to experience the full force of the storm.  

On Monday, I took a drive over to Puketitiri with another photography mate of mine and took a few snaps.  Hawkes Bay certainly looks different when it's covered in snow!

The last image in the slideshow below shows the SCP Toyota Hilux shortly after being dug out of the snow.... Got a little stuck while trying to turn around on a snowy/icy farm track.  Wrong tyres for the conditions and no snow chains made it fun once the going got tough.  Thanks to the friendly farmers who helped me dig it out of the snow!