http://www.isaachenry.com Recent articles on isaachenry.com en-us Fri, 10 Sep 2010 07:29:03 GMT posts/photos-of-liam-and-finn.php On Monday I took these photos of Liam and Finn which was one month after Finn's birth.



Liam Holding Finn's Hand



Finn



Finn



Liam


This was the first real shoot with my shiny new Nikon D700, and as insurance hadn't replaced my lenses yet I was stuck with my 300mm f/4 lens. Wed, 07 Apr 2010 03:36:00 GMT posts/photos-of-liam-and-finn.php posts/tongariro-crossing.php A couple of weeks ago I completed the Tongariro crossing.

Here is a few of the images I took, these are all HDR shots which I am having a play with lately:













This trip has inspired me to save up for a carbon fibre tripod, as my Manfrotto studio tripod (~11 kgs) is not suitable for walking any more than 1km max. These shots were all done handheld, which is ok, but means a loss of sharpness. Mon, 15 Feb 2010 10:21:00 GMT posts/tongariro-crossing.php posts/lightpainting.php



I saw this a while ago on flickr, thought I would give it a whirl.

For a twist on the traditional using an actual light/led thingy, I hung my phone which was playing a movie so there would be variation in the colours as it swept around. Tue, 12 Jan 2010 00:02:00 GMT posts/lightpainting.php posts/central-plateau-trip.php

I came back yesterday from a trip down to Tongariro National Park camping and taking photos. The region is very diverse from lush forests to arid semi-deserts. My personal favourite was the rugged alpine areas on the flanks of Mt Ruapehu.

The image above is a full 360 degree panorama of from the Turoa face of Ruapehu. It will be more familiar to most covered in snow.


This waterfall was at the base of Ruapehu on the Whakapapa side


The chairlifts were running on the Whakapapa face, but the mountain was covered in cloud which made for an interesting mood.




There was dragonflies everywhere, but they would rarely sit still for long enough to photograph.


One of our campsites we stayed at. I personally prefer the most basic ones - this had only a toilet; no water, showers, cabins, anything like that. The good thing with these sites is that they are often empty.


Every now and then I like to pull out the lensbaby for a bit of creative shooting.


This was taken off an extremely high swing-bridge looking over a gorge with a river running though it.


My main goal for the trip was to take a photo like this. The reason I picked Tongariro National Park is that is almost as far from cities you can get in the North Island, and the high altitude and proximity to the central desert means that there was likely to be some nights without cloud. Sat, 09 Jan 2010 05:32:00 GMT posts/central-plateau-trip.php posts/kaimanawa-sky.php

This is one of the photos I took on my trip down to the central plateau. It is a long (30 minute) exposure of the night sky. I personally like how small it makes me feel to think about the earth rotating about in space. Fri, 08 Jan 2010 22:31:00 GMT posts/kaimanawa-sky.php posts/night,-maraetai.php
Went out last night to Maraetai to take some long exposures. Unfortunately the clouds were out so I didn't get the starry shots I was hoping for. Also it was so dark I couldn't work out the focus, so this is a bit out. Going camping in the central plateau this or next week, so hopefully the sky will be light pollution free. Mon, 04 Jan 2010 00:00:00 GMT posts/night,-maraetai.php posts/photoshoot-with-ludwig.php

Today I had a photoshoot with Ludwig primarily for the header photo on his soon to be released second revision of the website for WebCreative, his company for freelance web development work. It was also for him to have some nice (hopefully) photos of himself.

I liked how the shoot went, he liked the results. Pretty good day really. Tue, 29 Dec 2009 00:00:00 GMT posts/photoshoot-with-ludwig.php posts/hdr-photography.php



After reading Trey Ratcliff's blog I was very keen to do some HDR photos. For those that don't know HDR stands for high dynamic range, meaning that (ideally) every element of the photo is exposed correctly. For an ordinary photograph the camera meters the scene and recommends the best settings for the exposure (automatic and priority modes). The problem is that for almost every photo there will be significant portions of the photo that are either in shadow or blown out. HDR minimizes this effect by taking many photos of the same scene and only including the parts of each photo that was exposed correctly.

Anyway, I had a go at making some HDR photos of my own today. I waited until it was near sunset to go out, simply for the reason it was too hot to go out any earlier. I headed out to Maraetai to take some shots. My two best shots turned out to be ones that I took both going to and returning from the beach. The first is in Whitford looking over country fields towards Rangitoto.

The second was when I was returning from the beach. I saw a hint of colour over the hills then caught a glimpse of amazing rays of light pouring out. I was desperate to find a place where I could see it clearly, and park safely, as it was a very windy country road. After 2 agonizing minutes driving, forever fearful the sun would sink too low, I found a great spot by the side of the road and was able to whip out the exposures before it was all over.

Sun, 27 Dec 2009 00:00:00 GMT posts/hdr-photography.php posts/high-speed-photography.php This morning I learned about high speed fp (focal plane sync). I had been frustrated at the limits of the shutter meaning that the highest sync speed I could reliably pull off was 1/200 (even though the camera is specified at 1/250 I almost always see that telltale shutter curtain).

Turns out you can make the flash extend its duration so it syncs at high speed (ie up to the maximum)



This got me interested in high speed photography again, by my previous endeavours have simply involved popping the flash manually, hoping to get the shot.
This is of course time consuming, and very random, so I decided today to have a go at doing it right.

This meant that I had to find a way of getting an audio trigger. Initially I thought about seeing about buying one, but it turns out there is very little information on the web, so I had to do it myself.

I went to Jaycar and bought an audio amplification kit (like a substitute hearing aid), and quickly found out I was almost out of my depth. It turned out the kit was just a pcb with a million resistors, capacitors and integrated circuits which I had to all solder together. Now I have significant experience in soldering, but this was far harder than the 90 minutes specified on the packet.

Anyway 5 hours later (no really), I was able to get the microphone amplifying the ambient sounds. Switching out the headphones for a silicon controlled rectifier and a bit of jiggery pokery with a pc sync chord, I was able to consistently trigger my sb900 with a sharp sound.

I have no pretty photos to show yet, but will be doing some of these possibly this week, definitely after christmas Sun, 20 Dec 2009 00:00:00 GMT posts/high-speed-photography.php posts/smash!.php I was able to have a tinker with my audio trigger which I constructed yesterday. Here is one of the results:

Sun, 20 Dec 2009 00:00:00 GMT posts/smash!.php