RETURN TO MIDDLE EARTH

Recently Vanessa evaluated her portfolio and suggested that she needed more autumn colours as well as adding to her sparse handful of New Zealand images so she could put up a gallery on her website. Why not do both and visit NZ in autumn I said? I had work commitments till early May but predicted that there should still be nice foliage hanging around to photograph. A trip to NZ in mid May turned out to be a good call. While some of the popular spots to shoot like Arrowtown were past their peak, there were certainly plenty of locations around the Otago and Canterbury regions in fine colour. 

Catching the transition from autumn to winter is usually a great time to plan landscape photography trips. We certainly experienced it in the 10 days we spent doing a small loop around the country. Watching bare mountains turn white within minutes as a cloud moves through is a special kind of magic. 

Although this trip wasn’t solely focused on photography, in little over a week, we each managed to create a gallery of images encompassing mountains, lakes, seascapes, aerials, forests and autumn colours. In addition to this variety of subjects, I used the entire range of focal lengths I had covered by my lenses from 10mm to 400mm. Although I have been using the Canon R5 for some years, this would be my first time adding an RF lens to my arsenal. I chose the RF 10-20mm to replace the comparatively cumbersome EF 11-24mm. It seems quite incredible to me that Canon were able to produce an even wider lens also at f4 but with a reduction in weight of over half. 

When people ask me what’s the best time to go to NZ for their first time, I’ve always suggested early May and this last trip absolutely reinforced my thinking on this. Autumn colours, the chance of snow and more affordable flights, car hire and accommodation and fewer crowds; what’s not to like?