Antipodean Summer 1

I’m writing this sitting outside the hut on Antipodes Island, 870km southeast of New Zealand. The fact that I can write and post blogs from here is a bit startling, and it shows how much the world has changed since my last forays into the subantarctic. I am here for three months, December to March, to assist with Antipodean Albatross research. Working in the subantarctic has been a dream for me…

View On WordPress

Two penguins and a PhD

The blog's been quiet for a while, but here's an update from me! More about my penguins, if the short caption isn't enough for you.

Kia ora! It’s been a while. Here’s an update from me: I handed in my doctorate at the end of May, defended in August, and now I am done. PhD, sorted. Graduation is only next autumn, but I have plenty of things to keep me busy until then! I’ll write a longer update on the PhD itself at some stage, for those of you who are interested in the science side of my birdy life. I have a finalist image…

View On WordPress

Slick

Some black and white bird photography, for a change.

I’ve been looking for monochrome images while out shooting recently – paying more attention to light, shade, and contrast rather than colour. This photo – shot on an Albatross Encounter trip out from Kaikōura – was a perfect opportunity with a monochrome bird! Karetai hurukoko – Cape petrels are ubiquitous, southern ocean companions to any ship in the seas here and southwards toward Antarctica.…

View On WordPress

In the spray

Using a slow shutter speed to capture wave movement.

On a windy, choppy afternoon at the Rotorua lakefront, Dad and I photographed this male pāpango – New Zealand scaup – hunker down in a pretty wet and horrible perch for a nap. There were constant splashes and spray from wavelets crashing into the shore around the fallen trunk that he had chosen, along with his mate. They seemed remarkably content, water pouring over them and sluicing off their…

View On WordPress

Wings overhead

Toroa - Northern Royal albatross at Taiaroa Head.

I posted this photo to Instagram a while back, but it’s a bad platform for landscape-orientation images. They don’t lend themselves to the scroll well. Here it is in all its wide-winged glory, with stormy clouds behind. I love a bit of rim-lighting in patchy cloud conditions, where it gives you the opportunity to pop your subject forward from a dark background. A little contrast adjusting in…

View On WordPress

Summer bloom

Spot the bird!

I promise this is a wildlife photo! See if you can spot someone making the most of an abundance of pōhutukawa nectar in this image. I shot this from a moving boat in early summer as we returned to Marsden Cove Marina after a field-gear retrieval trip, so I couldn’t get any closer. Grey skies blow out to white when you expose to keep the detail in dark foliage – and a certain small dark bird. The…

View On WordPress

2022 in review

A few thoughts and photographs from 2022.

Happy New Year! As always, I spend the quiet period over the holiday break doing a bit of reflection on the year past, and preparation for the year coming. 2022 has been a bit chaotic for me, with ever-extending deadlines for my doctorate due to ongoing COVID-19 complications, and other hiccups. A PhD is never a smooth ride, though. I’ve become a lot more adaptable as a result. Mokohīnau…

View On WordPress

Greenlife

Getting back into old habits for the new year.

Recently I’ve been remembering how much fun it is just to take photos of…everything. It’s definitely an aspect of my life that has suffered from the business of PhDing, and I’m sad that I’ve missed lots of opportunities to capture the everyday due to stress. I don’t make New Year’s Resolutions, but I do want to have the goal of taking more everyday photographs in 2023. I have a camera on me at…

View On WordPress

Recently

As much as my PhD is keeping me busy, I have had a few photographic escapes recently.

I’m busy writing up my Doctoral thesis, which doesn’t leave time for much else in life, apart from work. But here’s a few images from recent adventures, to let you know I’m still alive! Tākapu Australasian Gannet at Muriwai Weweia New Zealand Dabchick chick chasing midges Fieldwork on Pokohinu/Burgess island, undertaking a health assessment of the kuaka Common Diving petrel population Hihi…

View On WordPress

Otago Wildlife Masterclass November 2022

A few photos from our recent Masterclass in Ōtepoti!

We had another stunning weekend in Ōtepoti for the Wildlife Photography Masterclass a few weeks ago! I’ve not run a workshop in spring before, so it was interesting to see what the wildlife was up to compared to our trip back in May. Big highlights were seeing mama pakake (New Zealand sea lion) Mia and her yearling pup Sienna dozing on Alan’s beach, the tara (White-fronted tern) colony on…

View On WordPress

Freeze-frame

Can you name all the seabirds in this photo?

This image is actually a still taken from a video, shot handheld on a rolling boat! There are four species of seabird cruising through the frame, and while the video itself would make you seasick, this frame is the perfect illustration of the trip we had with Monarch Wildlife Tours back in May. It’s hands down my favourite thing to do in Ōtepoti (Dunedin), and this is why. So – can you name all…

View On WordPress

Blue morning

A brief moment from Tāwharanui, a few weeks back.

A wee while ago I went up to Tāwharanui for a morning wander with Yusuf (see his photos here!), looking for birds, looking for light, looking for nice images. The sky was pearly – one of those thinly overcast mornings with occasional glimpses of the sun. Gentle waves hushed up the beach, the water calm and silver. Sometimes swathes of seaweed pile up on the beach, but today it was washed clean.…

View On WordPress

Small bird, Big lunch

What does a pīpipi have for lunch?

We don’t think of small forest passerine birds as particularly ferocious. Except maybe pīwakawaka…but that’s because their eyebrows are quite intense: Tiny body filled with rage We know that many of them are insectivorous, gulping down all kinds of small crawling things to fuel themselves for flight. I was pretty impressed, though, to see a pīpipi (Brown creeper, Mohoua novaeseelandiae)…

View On WordPress

Antarctic fulmar

A fleeting encounter with a beautiful bird.

Dad and I went out with Albatross Encounter Kaikoura recently, and joked about maybe seeing an Antarctic fulmar. It wasn’t that long of a shot – they’re seen most often during winter in the coastal waters of Aotearoa, making their way up from a dark, frozen Antarctic winter. I have seen at least one before, crossing the Drake Passage to Antarctica from Ushuaia in 2015. A bit of a motley specimen,…

View On WordPress

Wildlife in portrait

Reframing to shoot wildlife in portrait compositions is something I've been playing with a lot recently! Here are some of my favourites.

Kotoreke / Marsh Crake | Nikon Z9 + 800mm f/6.3 I’ve been shooting a lot in portrait mode recently, flipping the camera on its side and trying a different perspective. Why? Why not? Kākā | Nikon Z9 + 800mm f/6.3 I find it interesting how our ubiquitous use of phones as cameras and content-browsing devices has shifted the way we film and crop our images. Platforms like Instagram work better…

View On WordPress

The Gear Blog - 2022

In response to a slew of questions recently - here's the gear I use for bird and wildlife photography.

The most common question I field through my various social media profiles is what camera gear I use. More often than not, I do put this info in the image captions on Instagram – especially when I’ve been lucky enough to test out new gear like the Z9 and Z800mm f/6.3! But normally my gear is a lot lighter (and cheaper) than a hefty full frame mirrorless and prime lens. I realised that the last…

View On WordPress

Up close with the albatrosses - Nikon Z9

Hanging out with the albatrosses recently and trialling some new and old camera equipment.

For our weekend Wildlife Photography Masterclass in Otago, I borrowed a Nikon Z9 to see how it would play with my usual workhorse lens – the Nikkor 80-400mm f/4.5-5.6. Shooting with the new Z 800mm f/6.3 was great fun – but not the way I’d normally work (especially on a rolling boat out at sea!). So with a FTZ II and my old favourite, we headed out to sea on the Monarch. Scroll to the bottom for…

View On WordPress