Denis' Place

The other week Mid-North Camera Club members visited the Begonia House at the Pioneer Village in Kaikohe for a photo session before our regular monthly meeting. The day was overcast and a bit dull – a perfect opportunity for me to try out my Nikon 18-200VR lens in low light conditions, and from the photos of the begonias you can see it worked wonderfully. The softer lighting from the overcast conditions was perfect for the soft colours of the begonias.

See the flowers here –

As a follow up to my post about my new Nikon 18-220VR lens purchase.

This was last Saturday and this morning, 1 week later, I found some water on the laundry floor. The hot water cylinder had started leaking and will have to be replaced. If this had happened the week before I would not have bought the new lens, so one way it was good that it hadn’t happened then, on the other hand I’ve now got an even bigger dent in my budget.

I guess things just happen this way.

On Saturday – 3rd March 2007 – I went to the 23rd Northland Agricultural Field Days at the Dargaville Racecourse.

I expected to see the usual trade stands and agriculture related exhibitions that are the very reason for these shows but after wandering around for a while – it was a big show, lots of walking in the hot sun – I found some things going on that made interesting photographs. The tractor pulling races, the chainsaw race, the cutting horses, and the Clydesdale team.

One attraction that I hadn’t counted on was helicopter rides out over Dargaville. I had just enough cash on me to pay for a ride so I took the opportunity and had my first helicopter ride.

Photos from the Field Days are in the Kaipara District album.

Last Saturday I went for a drive to Whangarei, the nearest large shopping centre to me, and bought a new lens for my Nikon D50 camera – an 18-200VR. I’ve been wanting one of these ever since I got my camera last year but, well, you know, these things have to be fitted into my budget.

Anyway, although I read about how hard these lens are to find, Harvey Norman’s store in Whangarei had 2 of them so I didn’t have to order one and wait. (I did phone and check first before going there.)

I have added a few new photos in the Whangarei section of my Photo Gallery taken while I was in Whangarei – some at the Town Basin of the boats, and some at Whangarei Falls.

It would have been nice to have had this lens a couple of weeks before at the Water Gardens. I have mostly used the 18-55mm kit lens that came with the camera and not only the extra reach of 200mm would have been nice, but this lens is of a higher quality than the kit lens and gives sharper cleaner looking pictures although you would not notice that on the smaller web sized photos.

On Saturday 10th February, 2007 I went on a trip to Wrights Watergardens with members of the Mid-North, Whangarei and Dargaville Camera Clubs.

We left early in the morning for a foggy bus trip down to Auckland but as the morning progressed the fog cleared and the sun came out.

I spent about 4 hours wandering around the 7 acres of gardens, mostly set in an old rock quarry at Pukekohe, south of Auckland.

During the course of the day I took 172 photographs but I’m not putting them all on-line. Today I have added 22 photos to the gallery under Wrights Watergardens and I’ll add more soon.

Oh, and these were all taken with my Nikon D50 camera. I have just realised that I have not made a post about getting a new camera last year – well I did, went and upgraded from my Panasonic DMC-FZ20 camera to an SLR camera.

It has been a while since I did much with my web site. I think about uploading new photos every so often but somehow just don’t get around to it.

It has been almost a year since my last blog entry – shame on me! – although I have uploaded photos more recently.

I have started making some changes to the web site itself – added random thumbnails from the Gallery on the home page and I’m making some small changes to the wording and so on here and there, just to freshen things up.

Then – I promise – I’ll put more photos in the Gallery.

I went to the Pioneer Village the other week with a few other members of the Mid-North Camera Club. We fitted in a photo shoot before our regular evening meeting.

I have linked to the earlier photos that I have in a separate section of the web site pertaining to the Pioneer Village so you can see all the photographs in the one place.

Apart from the restored buildings and equipment there is quite a collection of old machinery in the “back lot” that has been saved from here and there and vanishing forever.

I went up to Cape Reinga a few weeks ago and enjoyed a wonderful day driving up and back, and taking plenty of photographs.

I updated the Gallery software yesterday and today added 26 photos of my day out to Cape Reinga.

I hope you enjoy looking at them.

On Sunday 20th Nov, 2005 the Whangarei Camera Club organised a visit to the gannet colony at Muriwai. Four of us from the Mid-North Camera Club went down as well and we met up at the Gannet Colony car park at midday.

It was beautiful weather, clear and sunny all afternoon and we stayed on until sunset before heading home.

I have put up a selection of photographs of the gannets and other activities that we saw during the day – you can see them in the Muriwai Gannet Colony album.

Some excitement in town today and I nearly missed it all.

Our New World Supermarket caught fire this morning but I did not hear about it until later so by the time I got there only the aftermath remained to be photographed.

Fortunately this isn’t the only supermarket in town so we don’t have to go to the next town for groceries but it sure is going to make the other supermarket and grocery stores busy.

As you can see from the photos it is a complete mess and I expect will have to be completely cleared from the site. Whether a new supermarket will be built on that site remains to be seen as it was a bit small and didn’t allow for expansion.

UPDATE – Almost exactly to the day one year later a new supermarket twice the size opened on the same site. To make room for the expansion some vacant shops next to the original building, which were also fire damaged, were cleared to expand the site.

Photos here http://deniswilford.com/pg/thumbnails.php?album=8