I think maybe photographers have a particularly fun life because perhaps we notice things more than other people. I mean, I see non-photographers notice interesting things too, but I am usually thinking, “Yeah, I saw that ages ago.” Haha… not in a dismissive way, but I think once you start taking photos you just notice a little bit more of everything.
Choppy made a stop at the airport in Milford Sound to re-fuel the helicopter so we could keep the flight going longer. It was a super-long day of flying with nearly five hours in the air. I’m not sure how much fuel a helicopter can hold, but we were flying pretty hard so probably about three hours worth… By hard flying, we actually had two helicopters up as we were flying from location to location.
How epic is the color of that lake? We approached it with Choppy during our tour of the Southern Alps south of Queenstown. She said we could even go there and stay overnight one evening. We haven’t quite done it yet… it’s supposed to be really cold, but I think it would be another epic overnight with Choppy!
Check out this new podcast from here in New Zealand!
Yesterday’s photo shows where we landed the first time up in the Southern Alps, and today’s photo shows our final landing on the west coast. I was with my friend Ben and his family… they were loving the trip for sure. I got this photo of Ben as he was walking along the beach… it was a windy and wild day and the waves were super intense. In fact, when we got back in the helicopter, a huge wave came and washed up under the chopper!
We had an epic day flying around with Choppy from Over The Top Helicopters here in Queenstown. We probably made about five landings and this was one of the first. It’s so crazy to land up here after a fresh snow and be the only humans within a 5 mountain radius! Walking on this clean pure snow is always a treat too.
This is one of the most underrated parts of New Zealand along the west coast of the South Island. Almost nobody uses this route because it’s the least efficient way to get between cities… but, for photographers, the least efficient route may be the most efficient route for taking more photos!
While in Chengdu, China, we visited this really old tea house. I thought it was pretty incredible watching these guys make tea in the old way like they have for thousands of years. These places are become and rarer… the only people inside that seemed to be enjoying the tea were people that seemed to be at least 100 years old, so I don’t see their target market hanging around a lot longer…
What a cool place, eh? I love how the Thai people paint all their boats are super bright colors. I think if someone floated by with a boat all painted in soft pastels they would tease them, Thai-fisherman style. I don’t know that for a fact… I really am not sure where Thai fishermen stand on these important social issues…
Today for Passport Members you’ll get part 1 of 3 that show some cool processing tricks. If you’re not a member now, today is a good time to join up! You’ll get over 200 video tutorials plus a ton of other things.
Today is the first step on the way to showing how I get this sort of look that I got on my recent road trip to the north island.
And now on with the show…
On some of my photos, I use a variety of drastically different techniques. First, I’m going to push it hard in the HDR realm (as shown below), and then in next week’s video, you’ll see how I add a special custom filter that will reduce the contrast and give it a rather unique look!
While on a random wander through the modern area of Dusseldorf, I came across this amazing building… I took shots from a few different angles, but this was my favorite. You can unlock the part below if you want to see the processing video!
I’ve never actually been up inside this thing, but maybe I should go sometime. Well, I don’t have any plans to go to China soon… at least in the next five years or so. I kind of had my “fill” of China after being there about 10 times. Maybe that sounds a bit snobby or something… I don’t really mean it to sound like that. But the pollution and the not-living-in-balance-with-Earth stuff kind of grates on me after a while, you know? But they do have some cool cities, on the other hand!
