Hacking Photography - one Picture at a time
Anyone who has visited New Zealand’s Fiordlands will be familiar with the native parrot the Kea. It’s known for its intelligence and curiosity, and can now also add ‘avid drone pilot’ to its list of skills when it flew off with a GoPro.
The Verhuel family had just taken a break from a long hiking trip along the Keplar Track in New Zealand’s South Island when they were joined at the hut by a group of cheeky birds.
It took over 50,000 photographs to create the stunning 8K timelapse video above, according to its creator, landscape photographer Michael Shainblum. In it, we see the amazingly diverse and magical landscape that New Zealand has to offer in incredible detail.
Creating timelapse can be difficult enough, especially these days when there are so many out there that you really need to go the extra mile to impress, but Michael’s done exactly that with this one.
Do you feel that all travel photos on Instagram are the same? A person with arms spread wide standing at the edge of a cliff. Someone’s arm reaching out into a beautiful scenery. A girl with a fedora hat in a flower field… Yeah, 100% Pure New Zealand feels the same. So, they made this hilarious ad to make people stop traveling under the social influence and encourage them to shoot something new.
I’ve never heard of a tree more popular than “That Wanaka Tree.” Sadly, such huge popularity has attracted all sorts of people to the fragile willow, not all of them with good intentions. It was discovered yesterday that someone had vandalized the tree and cut several large branches with a saw or a chainsaw.
I don’t know about your country, but people in mine often wear a seatbelt only in order not to pay a ticket. However, being financially fined is definitely not the worst thing that can happen if you don’t buckle up. In fact, wearing a seatbelt can make a difference between life and death. Clemenger BBDO Wellington, a New Zealand-based creative marketing and advertising firm, decided to point it out in a series of moving, powerful portraits of crash survivors.
Teaming up with the New Zealand Transport Agency, Clemenger BBDO Wellington created a series of powerful portraits named Belted Survivors. It’s followed by stories from the people who wouldn’t be here if there weren’t for a seatbelt.
My photography peers thought I was mad. I thought I was mad, taking just a 50mm lens and one camera to the south island of New Zealand for a week. The rules were simple. Attempt to make compelling photographs with a 50mm lens using any creative methods I could conjure up. Panos, single frames, cropping in post, long exposures and filters were used, but only one lens. My itinerary included Queenstown and the surrounding grand mountain-scapes followed by Milford Sound with its utter incredible, king of the world, spectacular life changing scenery. Could a 50mm lens, with its boring and uninspiring focal length live up to the big time landscapes of New Zealand?
We’ve seen people damage artworks, nature, national parks, even hurt animals just to take photos for social media. Recently, it has been happening around Lake Wanaka in New Zealand. A photogenic tree in the lake is insanely popular on Instagram. There’s even a hashtag #thatwanakatree, with almost 20K posts at the moment. Tourists are visiting the popular location and climbing the tree to take photos. Because of this, the brittle willow could be destroyed.
You might not have heard the name Drew Geraci before, but you’ve almost certainly seen his work. At least, you’ll have seen it if you’ve ever watched the opening sequence of hit TV show, House of Cards. Because Drew shot it.
In this timelapse film for Sony Alpha Universe, Drew heads to New Zealand to show off the timelapse capabilities of the new Sony A7R III. and it’s a breathtaking film. Of course, it was shot in New Zealand, so it’s bound to be.
Finding good locations for photo shoots can be challenging, especially if it’s a nude shoot. You need to avoid the touristy spots, the families and dog walkers. You want to find somewhere new, and different. And what’s more different than a mountaintop overlooking the clouds?
For Playboy model Jaylene Cook that mountaintop was the perfect location to grab some quick nudes for her Instagram. The mountain in question is Mount Taranki in New Zealand. The BBC report that the local Maori aren’t too happy about it, either. They say that the photo is “culturally utterly insensitive”. The top of the volcano is sacred to the Maori.
There are few things on this earth more appealing to landscape photographers than New Zealand, the Milky Way, and Auroras. So, when I came across the work of Jake and Jo featuring all three, I had to find out more. Jake and Jo are South of Home Photography, based in Queenstown, New Zealand. Last winter, they travelled the country photographing the night sky in some of New Zealand’s most beautiful locations.
They captured meteors, the Aurora Australis (“Southern Lights”), zodiacal light, air glow, stars, and the milky way as backdrop to some of the most spectacular landscapes you’ve ever seen. We got in touch with them to get some insight into their work. What impressed me the most is how far they’ve come in photography in such a very short space of time.
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