Category Archives: New Zealand

New Zealand Travel Kit

This article discusses the camera equipment that we included in our travel kit for our recent photography tour to New Zealand, as well as our decision rationale.

My wife and I ended up taking a total of five lenses, two camera bodies, six batteries, and two battery chargers. All of the gear had to fit in my Tenba laptop backpack. Along with a portable hard drive, a 13″ laptop with charger, and about a dozen 64 GB UHS-II SD memory cards. We were able to stay within a 7 Kg weight limit… but just barely.

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New Zealand 20 Years Later

This article, New Zealand 20 Years Later, looks back over the past two decades, and our various trips to this wonderful country. My wife and I just returned from an extended photography tour of New Zealand, spending 4 weeks on the ground. We have been very fortunate to have been able to travel to New Zealand six times over the past twenty years.

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Incorporating a Foreground Element

Incorporating a foreground element in our compositions is an important way to add a feeling of depth to our landscape images. This approach, combined with our choice of focal length and aperture can help create deep depth-of-field.

Since more people are resuming travel that was interrupted by a couple of years of COVID-19 lockdowns, we thought a quick review of some landscape photography fundamentals may be helpful.

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Benefits of Catch-as-Catch-Can Travel Photography

As photographers we may have different views on how to approach travel photography. Some folks like to allow multiple days to photograph key locations. This increases their chances of having ideal conditions. No doubt this can contribute to some truly spectacular photographs. It’s likely that this level of photographic quality wouldn’t have been possible if lighting and weather had been left to chance. A completely different approach is to purposely allow oneself to be at the mercy of Mother Nature’s whims. This article discusses the benefits of ‘catch-as-catch-can’ travel photography.

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Lindis Valley Landscape Composition Options

Many of us enjoy self-drive sightseeing and photographic holidays. No doubt we have all come upon some dramatic scenery that caused us to pull over to create some images. This short article shares some Lindis Valley landscape composition options, and discusses the rationale behind them.

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Construction En Route to Kaikoura

This short article shares some images of construction en route to Kaikoura New Zealand. Sometimes conditions dictate unusual shooting conditions – like photographing one handed while driving. While our photographs may not be stellar in these situations, the life memories they help preserve for us can be priceless. Continue reading Construction En Route to Kaikoura

Travel Photography with a Kit Zoom Lens

Sometimes when we buy a camera, a standard kit zoom lens is included in the package. The quality of these lenses can vary quite a bit and some folks rarely, if ever, use them. This article features a selection of images captured by my wife during our last trip to New Zealand. All of her images were taken hand-held with a Nikon 1 V3 equipped with a 1 Nikkor 10-30 mm f/3.5-5.6 PD kit zoom lens. Continue reading Travel Photography with a Kit Zoom Lens