On my last trip to Auckland to visit family –see the post on Port Albert – we visited the giant sand dunes at Bethells Beach. Lake Wainamu is a dune lake that formed during the last 6,500 years when the Wainamu Stream Valley was dammed by dunes of sand blown

Several times a year I travel from my home in Kaikohe to Auckland to visit family. On the way, I pass the road to Port Albert. For years I have intended to detour there to have a look at the settlement and take some photos but have always been too

Over recent years many of the walls in Kaikohe have been decorated with paintings.
The featured image of the painting on the wall of the old Kaikohe Hotel was the first major artwork done in Kaikohe back in 2013 but has since been lost as the hotel was demolished a year later.

I had a trip planned for Wednesday 16th May to visit Omapere when the sun would be setting more or less in line with the wharf. I worked this out using the Photographers Ephemeris. As it happened I decided to do this trip on Tuesday instead, which turned out perfectly as the sunset on Tuesday was great. If I had left it until Wednesday I would have missed out as the weather was overcast with no sunset at all.

Now that it is nearly the end of autumn here I felt it was time to make an effort to capture a good sunset, so with that end in mind I took a drive out to Rawene where there is a good view across the Hokianga Harbour instead of into a hill that is my westerly view from home. Going somewhere to photograph a sunset is always a bit of a chance as you never know what you are going to get. In this case, it worked out well.

On Saturday, 19th September, I spent some time in Kawakawa with a few members of the Bay of Islands/Kaikohe Photography Club. From 10 until noon we roamed around the centre of town and the railway station photographing everything that took our attention. The weather which has not been the best lately held up with no …