I found Steve Burling’s photographs of New Zealand on one of the photographic sites on the internet, and they caught my attention right away.  His compositions and understanding of light are wonderful. And what is also very important is that Steve absolutely loves nature and photography – I can see it from his work. And Steve himself says:  “I love to travel and have been doing so for some time and am constantly blown away by how beautiful the world is.”  This is what I also feel and it may be the reason why I love his photographs so much.

This first photograph of Waitete Bay was taken on the way north from Coromandel town. It shows how important understanding of light is in photography.  The exposure should be just right not to burn the photograph and also to show the darker details in the front. I also like the overall mood of this photograph, which shows calm and beautiful evening.

click on the image to view larger photo

This is the famous Cathedral Cove which lies on the Coromandel east coast near Whitianga, which is the main settlement of Mercury Bay on the North Island of New Zealand. This is one of my favorite photos. It takes me to the land of my dreams, where the sky is blue with white happy clouds and children playing in the water. Technically this photo is also flawlessly executed – the bright back can be seen in all the details while the darker front has also retained its detail.

click on the image to view larger photo

Steve calls this photograph of Waiaro Coast a “lucky shot”, but I don’t agree.  To make this shot first of all he had to have his camera with him, and when this situation happened, he had to notice it, and find good composition for the photograph. For examle if he didn’t include the trees on the left, the picture would be empty. By the way photographing rainbow with polarizing filter it is possible to emphasize it even more.

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This photo was taken on Whangapoua Beach (also located at Coromandel Peninsula, North Island) on early morning. So if you ask yourself what do you have to do to take such a beautiful photo, I can tell you that you have to get up very, Very early in the moring, take tripod with you and come to the beach. Then, provided that sun in your country rises from the sea, and you have something interesting to place in the photo besides water, you have a slight chance of catching this quality of light. Of course it doesn’t happen every morning and lasts only for a very short time.

click on the image to view larger photo

For the last photo of my review I chose a slightly different photograph. This photographs proves once again that Steve is just natural photographer. Even if it is not nature he photographs, he manages to find an interesting aspect or view of the photographed subject. This time he obviously wanted to photgraph the famous Auckland’s Sky Tower, but he chose to do it in a very creative way by capturing its interesting reflection in one of the near buildings.

click on the image to view larger photo

In conclusion I can say that viewing Steve’s photographs inspired me to go out there and take photographs, it gave me ideas of what can be done with camera, and hinted about the endless possibilities of photography.

If you liked these photographs, you can find more on Steve’s website: steveburling.zenfolio.com

Steve is also kindly contributed the photo of Whangapoua Beach in high resolution for free download as a wallpaper.

Thank you Steve for sharing your beautiful work with me and my readers!

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Spencer is American guy who lives in Asia. I first met him in Thailand, where I was rock climbing. I came there only for one month, but Spencer was living there for quite a long period. He extensively traveled throughout Asia, and has  magnificent photographs from his travels.

The photos that you can see here are just a small portion of Spencer’s work. Many more you can find on his web site:

http://www.weedmoments.com

He is a very talented and interesting person. I enjoyed meeting him and hope you will get to know him through his photographs.

Keep in touch Spencer !

Let’s begin with this beautiful photo:

I really liked the mysterious and quiet mood of this photograph, as if it is the silence before the storm, and the deep green of the grass making a good contrast with gray clouds. The loneliness of the lighthouse also contributes to the mood.

Next goes photo of Piha beach:

Piha is a small coastal settlement, which is located 28 kilometers west of Auckland, on the Tasman Sea coast. By the way Piha was the birthplace of New Zealand board riding and has been the location for surfing championship competitions. In this photograph it looks mystical and peaceful to me, as if it was drifting slowly on the surf waves. I also liked the soft sunset colors.

The Waipu Bay in this photograph

reminds me so much of the place that I stayed once while visiting New Zealand, and I can almost feel the cool breeze coming from the sea.

This photograph of Thames Bay gives the feeling of solitude and meditation. The sky looks great, and the small wooden structure makes me want to sit there during the rain and listen to the rain and the surf…

I saved this photo of the Coromandel coast for last:

Though Corey spells it wrong, this beach in the CorOmandel area looks great, and the sky is just magnificent. Look at the sunset reflections in the water…

If you liked Corey’s photos you can visit his website at http://www.beachwallpaper.net/

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I would like to start with this great photo of the “Lone Sailboat” – this is how I named it.

I liked the contrast of the colors and the general mood of the photograph. The sail looks like a beautiful flower, and the whole photograph is so peaceful. The water color is also appeals to me. To summarize it in one sentence – a great shot.

Next photo is a very intimate shot of a Kiwi at Auckland Zoo.

The kiwi looks here very fragile and in my opinion this shot emphasizes the need to look after these wonderful creatures.

Talking about birds, here is another great shot by Toshio of a parrot taken at Auckland Zoo (or at least I think that this is a parrot).

The focus of this photo is near perfect and the colors are just great. I also liked how this bird fits into the background.

The next photo was taken at the Whakarewarewa – a geothermal village at Rotorua on the North Island of New Zealand.

In this shot I just liked the power of geysers and the crazy colors of the minerals from the geothermal activity. This shot keeps reminding me what an interesting and mysterious world we live in.

I will finish this review with a very interesting series of shots of the Sky Tower in Auckland. Toshio found some great angles and places to take a shot of the Sky Tower.

Click on the thumbnails to view the larger photos.

If you liked Toshio’s photos and want to see more of his work, you can find it on Toshio’s flicker page here or on Toshio’s web site here

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Mark Pilbeam, aged 70 lives with his wife of 47 years, near Stratford-on-Avon in England and plays at photography when he has time. This is at least what he says about himself. I think he is too humble, since I saw his photographs and liked many of them. He agreed to share a short story of his trips to New Zealand. You can see a few of Mark’s photos at the end of this article.
Greg.

My wife and I, both in our late 60s, toured the South Island in December 2006 and January 2007. Our son, who lived in Christchurch at the time, drove us and, although we didn’t get as far south as the Fiords, we did a fairly extensive tour, plus we spent quite a bit of time in Christchurch.

We went more or less where the spirit moved us but I was always conscious that my wife and son, neither of them interested in photography, would have become bored and frustrated if I had stopped for every shot I saw; I quickly formed the idea that I needed to be on a motorcycle and alone to do such an expedition justice.

All that said, New Zealand is so spectacularly beautiful that it’s difficult to make bad photographs.

Quite a few of my photographs are untitled since they weren’t intended for anything more than my own selfish amusement. i.e. I was on holiday, not working.

We stayed in the North Island during February and March of 2008, based in Napier, and I took a few more photographs there, although I was ill for much of the time so we didn’t tour as extensively as we would have wished.

All-in-all then, NZ is a photographer’s and naturalists paradise and I would recommend anyone to visit.

Click on the thumbnails to view larger photographs.

If you liked Mark’s photos, you can see more of them at his Flickr page

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I have decided to start with this magnificent photo of Lake Wakatipu. This lake is located in the southwest corner of Otago Region, near the beginning of Southland. Being surrounded by mountains makes it a very popular destination for nature photographers, while each one of them choses different angle, time of the day, and weather to take their shot. This shot was made by Ian Lumb.

Sadly I don’t really know who the photographer is, so I can’t give him the credit, but I defilitely like this photo. It is taken in the Fiordland. It is a photo of one of the sounds there, but again, I am not sure which one. It is fairly difficult to take a good shot in Fiordland since most of the time it rains there or there are too much clouds. Trying for many times to do it myself I now appreciate a good shot taken there.

The shot above and the shot below were both taken at Cape Kidnappers, which is located at southeastern extremity of Hawke Bay on the east coast of New Zealand’s North Island.

These two magnificent photos captured my attention from the very first glance. The grace of these birds is so marvelous that it makes me want to get out there and start looking for such shots myself. These shots were taken by a person who calls himself Traveling Pooh. Thank you Pooh for sharing them with us!

This shot was taken in the Redwood forest near Rotorua (New Zealand’s North Island). I have been there and seen these trees, and took many photographs, but this shot is very different from all my photographs. The angle and the colours are a little bit unusual, which gives the whole photograph a slightly mystical mood.

And the last but not least this artistic photo of the Wilkies Pool from the Mount Egmont (Mt. Taranaki) National Park. I can’t say what exactly drawed my attention in this photo, but I just like it for its mood and the way it makes me feel.

I hope you liked these photographs as much as I did, and I will happily hear all the comments you have about them.

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