When we do my photo workshops in Queenstown, this is an area where we usually begin. We start along the lake and walk for about a mile down to Queenstown Gardens. We always time it to arrive just before sunrise. It’s usually pretty cold, but when the sun pops out, everything is great again!
We woke up at the crack of dawn to go out to our launching point for the balloon ride here in Queenstown. It was freezing cold, but we were excited as it was the first hot air balloon for the two of us. Just after we launched, the sun came up and caught her across the face with this cool blade of light.
I recorded some fun 360 behind-the-scenes videos while on a helicopter adventure with my friend Sofia Jin. We went up with Choppy and Over The Top Helicopters to make some new videos and get a ton of photos. We actually took up two helicopters because one of them had the first 8K setup – specifically, the Shotover P1 MK ll dedicated 8K gimbal with a Red Monstro camera and Angenieux 36/435 zoom lens. We used it for helicopter-to-helicopter shooting. Anyway, this Part 1 video is free… and today is “Passport Sunday,” which is the day where I always release a new video to Passport Members on the blog. So yeah, if you’ve joined up, then you can see Part 2 today also. I’ll put the link in the comments.
Click here to join Passport and get access to the 2nd part and 200 other behind the scenes and tip videos as well as all of my tutorials and more!
And here is Part 2 of the video where you can see more about all the specifics of the setup! 🙂 We’re still working on the final 8k video shot from the Shotover P1 MK ll dedicated 8K gimbal with a Red Monstro camera and Angenieux 36/435 zoom lens, and will share it first to Passport Members as soon as we have it!
If your connection can handle it, bump the resolution up to 4K using the cog icon and remember you can drag the video around to look in different directions. 🙂
Here’s a new photo from the lake that I live near – Lake Wakatipu. This is a 9-photo panorama, stitched together in Lightroom. It was shot with a drone, and the final image is even higher rez than my best Sony camera. This exact spot is about halfway between Glenorchy and Queenstown. Pretty soon, we’re gonna get some snow… so I’ll head back out here with all the mountains are icy white.
Right before the lockdown, I was lucky enough to take one of these hot air balloon rides. We took off near Lake Hayes and then headed about halfway down Gibbston Valley. I asked the pilot how he knew where he was going to land, and he said he had no idea! It’s always different… I was a little worried but he seemed sublimely confident!
As I do every Sunday, if you’re one of the awesome Passport Members, you get a little “bonus” section in the blog post that allows you to see extra stuff. In today’s one, you’ll see the edit of this photo!
This week I really get hands-on with the vignette…
Queenstown Gardens has a lifetime’s worth of photos every Autumn. I should actually go there more often, and not just in the Autumn. It’s not actually that far from me, but I tend to not drive into Queenstown very often…The parking is terrible down there and it’s barely worth the drive. However, since the tourism bust, it’s quite a bit easier to find a place!
Here’s a fun video that Stu edited together for me (thanks Stu!) of some of my recent quadcopter footage from around here. Enjoy!
What a cool spot, eh? This is one of the many places we take our photo tours when they come to New Zealand. Naturally, we cancelled the previous one because of the outbreak, which was kind of a bummer. We haven’t put a new one up yet because I have NO IDEA what the travel landscape looks like for the next year!
If you’re a Passport member then you get to see today’s making-of!
Here, you’ll see the way I use various tools to create today’s photo.
Today’s photo exemplifies the idea of sunrays through the Autumn scene… Just another in a set of using Aurora and Luminar to create something amazing!
Every Autumn I try to go on at least 20-30 walks to areas where I have never visited here in Dalefield. This is the hilly area between Arrowtown and Queenstown and there are countless hidden gems. I’m still finding new places tucked in behind little hills here and there. Sure, sometimes I do a little bit of light trespassing, but people are really chill about that here.
Here’s a nice video from here in New Zealand.
My friend Brandin blew into town for a few days with his lovely wife. He was able to get a hall pass to come spend the day with me taking photos all around the Queenstown area. This is one must-stop location. The clouds were not super-amazing, but they were still good enough for us to take a few panoramas. I think this one was made out of about six vertical shots.
