Hasta la próxima vez

Back to the beach

Light painting

One of the last photos before the light was gone on the sky.

World Buskers Festival - Christchurch

The last night I went to Hagley park, where the Busker festival had its opening night. Very very good. As an anecdote, after watching some of the shows I thought it would be good to do some light painting and got the photo above after a couple of trials. Shortly afterwards somebody from the festival´s staff showed up to say photos were not allowed (although everyone was taping the show, and not only taking photos!). Obviously if you have a tripod and a DSLR you must be a pro...


I had my photo and did not feel like having a useless discussion with this guy while the precious sunset light was fading away so I moved on (which I wanted to do anyway) and started to take the next shot. Funnily enough after a while another guy from the staff showed up and said the photos were bombastic, and would I be so kind to send them by e-mail to the organisers? I even got his card! So, not very consistent treatment to photographers but a lot of fun.


And finally, as the light disappeared I thought of attending one more show in a dome, but all the tickets were sold out! I spent five minutes asking if anybody was willing to sell me their tickets until this guy shows up and says, there you are, you can have mine, for free! Somebody I met a long time ago in Cranfield would call this karma...

Extreme Danger - Keep Out

As mentioned many times, the city centre still is off limits. This building shows some real plasters which probably keep it together or at least avoid cracks to grow further.


An interesting detail is that plants are starting to grow in the unused areas of the pavement.

La leche de mamá

Dedicada a todas las madres que dan el pecho

The joy of reading (ii)

I just cannot make up my mind which shot I like best. What do you think?

Exhibition centre

Two different post-processings of the same photo. The top one is closer to reality. The second one is maybe more appealing.

No junk mail please!

Take my money!

The exhibit with the estatues was certainly a pleasure to visit. I left some money outside, same as other bypassers had already done, even if the cash box was not working.

The joy of reading

Dropping your heart...

Cuéntame un cuento...

Dos semanas sin poderles contar un cuento de buenas noches a mis hijos...

Arts Centre

Botanic Garden (iv)

Christchurch Botanic Garden (iii)

I saw this shot on my mind pretty quickly as a I was passing by, but thought a bit more light was required for the tree. So this was my thinking process:
Get flash out of the ruck sack, place it behind the bench, facing the tree trunk, set it to not too much power, zoom as wide as possible, get back to position and shoot. Easy, no?


As it happened, upon pressing the shutter button I noticed that the battery of my wireless trigger was gone (I bought it in Xi'an, so I cannot really complain). Big disappointment. 


I thought about a similar occassion and wondered when I will learn to do proper checklists before such trips. But then I thought, what the heck, flash or no flash, I want this photo. So here you are, the photo  with a dark tree plus a short rant...

Christchurch Botanic Garden (ii)

As the crow flies...

Christchurch Botanic Garden (i)

After a long day at work, it was great to walk around the Botanic Garden, which happened to be almost deserted by then, just before closing but with some light left for a few nice shots.

Shaky photo

This is an easy joke. As I told a friend, any shaky photos can be attributed to an aftershock or, in worse case, a proper earthquake. 


But this was not a joke, there were several noticeable shakes while I was in Christchurch, including a magnitude 5 one. It was enough to wake me up and make me wonder if it was time to look for a door frame. And then it was gone...