Landscape in New Zealand

I went to New Zealand in the last summer with my dad to visit my cousin, Andy and his family. I was quite looking forward to be there to experience New Zealanders' living style or the difference between them and English in the UK. However, I was a bit disappointed to see lots of Chinese in the capital, Auckland where I lived in New Zealand. That made me completely out of motivation to take pictures.

However, in the trip to South Island of New Zealand, my motivation of taking pictures was back. I smiled the fresh air and it is totally different to the air on North Island. South Island seems a place where has not been polluted yet and I really love this place.

Dunedin Railway Station
A panoramic shot taken on Canon 5D Mark II and Composed on Photoshop

Goat Island, ND filer fail

When I received my ND filter, I thought it was a powerful equipment to block the sunlight to help me to get a flowing water effect in images. I used the filter in the trip to Goat Island, where is a lovely seaside. During I tried to capture the flowing water on the beach, I found out that the filter did not help me to stop down the shutter speed so much and also gave me a cross right in the middle of the image. After I got home, I searched for information about ND filters. I realised that the cross always appears when you try to use the filter on a ultra wide lens a

nd take the fade too far. And also, my ND filter can only take 8 stop operating range, so it does not help me to get a very slow shutter speed without over exposure under the sunlight.

Moeraki Boulder

The shot of Moeraki Boulder is my favourite photo from the whole trip and It was probably my first success using the ND filter. Since I found the interest of this traditional photographic technique of long exposure, I started to look for "water" in the trip.