It’s directly about writing, but it also applies to pretty much any other creative endeavour — cooking, playing a musical instrument, painting, knitting, drawing, furniture making, and yes, photography.

To quote Ira Glass (from the video above): “All of us who do creative work, like, you know, we get into it because we have good taste, but it’s like there’s a gap — that for the first couple of years that you’re making stuff, what you’re making isn’t so good, ok? It’s not that great. It’s trying to be good, it has ambition to be good, but it’s not quite that good.

But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, your taste is still killer, and your taste is good enough that you can tell that what you’re making is kind of a disappointment to you . . . a lot of people never get past that phase, and a lot of people at that point, they quit.”

Walking in Cornwall Park — June, 2013

And it’s also at this crucial point where creative influences — the work of people whose skills we admire — can become as much a burden as an inspiration. At this juncture, I find myself paging through books of photography masters and despairing.

They’re all so good. Their work seems so effortlessly beautiful and emotive and impactful, and yet here I find myself literally *struggling* to produce material that might conceivably, and only under the right circumstances, be viewed as better than average.

But somehow, and I don’t know why, I still love what I’m doing.

“Ka kata te po” at the Auckland Art Gallery — June, 2013

I fail continuously, deleting hundreds (to thousands) of photographs that don’t match up to my expectations for what my photography should be, while keeping the few that I feel show at least some small promise, that exhibit baby steps toward the end goal.

And as I continue to follow the mentoring of photographers better than I am, I find that I’m slowing down, taking a step back, evaluating more carefully and consciously just what it is I’m photographing and why. Which means I photograph less, but invest more in each rapid shutter burst.

It doesn’t automatically make me any better, of course, because “it’s not that great. It’s trying to be good, it has ambition to be good, but it’s not quite that good.”

The Kiss and The Cloud, Auckland — June, 2013

Getting *good* at photography will take years of practice and work . . . goddamnit. It’s unavoidable. There are days I wish for a shortcut, but there isn’t one.

As e.e. cummings once wrote: “If, at the end of your first ten or fifteen years of fighting and working and feeling, you find you’ve written one line of one poem, you’ll be very lucky indeed.”

Replace “written one line of one poem” with pretty much anything creative — taken one emotionally striking photo, written one infectiously boppy tune, sewn one terrific pair of jeans, concocted one gorgeous perfume, designed one beautifully simple rucksack, crafted one amazing bottle of wine, and so on — and the “fifteen years of fighting and working and feeling” still applies.

The post NZ Diary: Creating and Learning appeared first on Nathan Branch.

Couple in the shade under the Big Four Bridge in Louisville, KY / Michael Sebastian

The Watermill, Little Salkeld, Cumbria / Richard Thwaites

Car Wash / Ansgar Trimborn

Tokyo Imperial Palace Gardens / Fabio Lugaro

Yellow Cab New York / Ming Thein

The post Five Photos I’m Liking Right Now: June 4th, 2013 appeared first on Nathan Branch.

Which is not my particular strong suit, and precisely why he instructed me to search out only the kind of light that provides shadow, contrast and texture. I have a tendency to go for the shot even when the light isn’t right, and I wind up with unremarkable images as a result. Which is a waste of time and effort.

But we’ve been having a run of overcast, rainy winter days lately, and I’m finding it more difficult to do my usual city-wandering and photo-snapping when the natural light is so flat and weak. But I did manage to grab this shot of an Auckland University building perched at the edge of Albert Park:

And I snagged this shot of a stairwell with railing shadows on the beaches of Waiheke Island when we were visiting there last week:

But other than that, I’ve been coming up dry.

In better news, my colour camera has been returned from the Leica headquarters in Germany with its faulty eyelets replaced — though its faulty software is still a problem and I’m eagerly awaiting their next software/firmware upgrade so that I can use the camera in the battery-preserving auto-sleep mode without the thing continuously freezing and crashing on me.

My Leica M-Monochrom is a total workhorse and performs with nary a hiccup, but the new M-240 — while offering up terrific colour — is fussy and finicky because of its brand new features and software. Leica will eventually resolve the programming errors, but first they have to figure out what they are . . . and god only knows how long that will take.

One happy side effect of possessing a buggy colour M-240 is that I’m getting a lot more comfortable with shooting in black and white. While I do find black and white difficult because it relies solely on light variance and tonality, once I can get my brain permanently wrapped around the idea of photography as the capture of interesting light (instead of the capture of pops of interesting colour), I’ll be better off all around.

So, run to the light!

Is this what you’d call “interesting light” . . . ?”

I guess this means I’ll need to start scouting for public interior locations around Auckland that provide #1) shelter from the unpredictable weather, and #2) good lighting. Kind of like what I found in the Britomart Transport Centre a few weeks ago.

*IN OTHER NEWS:

I hit the Agents & Merchants restaurant for lunch yesterday:

The food was good, but the restaurant atmosphere and kitchen pacing were a little off/slow due to it being the beginning of a long holiday weekend (it’s the official celebration of the Queen’s birthday on Monday); otherwise, I think the place would have shown a little more business-lunch spark and speed to go with its flavour-packed menu.

The Duck Confit and Porcini Mushroom Risotto (both pictured above) were standouts, but we also tried the Thai Prawn & Chicken Noodle Salad, Grilled Togarashi Tuna and the Bento Antipasto Box (which included marinated capsicum, slices of serrano ham, buffalo mozzarella, sun-dried tomato pesto, artichoke hearts and a mix of spicy green and black olives, served up with a side of warm bread).

*NOTE: Don’t worry — we didn’t eat it all! It was a grazing, tasting lunch for the purpose of finding out what the kitchen is capable of.

The accompanying glasses of wine were from the boutique Waiheke Island Te Motu winery, a winery I wanted to visit when we were staying on Waiheke — but we ran out of time; although, Waiheke Island is close enough to go back anytime for a rematch.

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It was the first time I’d spent a day at the island, even though I’d been in New Zealand for over two years and live just a thirty minute ferry ride from Waiheke. The casual, beachy environment was seductive and the winemakers & restauranteurs were charming to a fault, so my partner and I blocked out a couple of days on our schedule to return and take in the sights after the tourist season had subsided — so that maybe we could get a sense of Waiheke at a quieter, more relaxed volume.

A sunny stretch of Onetangi Beach on a crisp autumn day

We stayed at The Boatshed, a small boutique hotel with an airy, spacious vibe and a friendly, conversational staff. The rooms were clean and comfortable, the included breakfast was delicious and locally sourced, with fresh produce and herbs grown in the hotel’s own extensive garden, and there was the always pleasing sound of crashing waves from the pristine public beach just a short walk (and an even shorter drive) from the hotel’s front steps.

We revisited a couple of places I’d hit when on the job with Marcia — The Oyster Inn and Cable Bay Vineyards — and both were just as terrific the second time around.

Which was a genuine concern I’d had — what if the great food and hospitality I’d experienced with Marcia were due solely to her position as a paid food & travel writer? Yet the food and service at The Oyster Inn and Cable Bay were top notch, even on a slow, off-season day.

We were particularly impressed with Cable Bay as we were the only late-lunch diners in the place, yet the service was impeccable and the kitchen performed with as much attention to craft and detail as when I’d sat at a table with the owners six weeks back.

*NOTE: Which was gratifying, since we’d just been turned away from Casita Miro twenty minutes earlier as they’d shut their doors to customers due to it being “a slow day” — which I hate (even if I can understand it). When a restaurant’s website says they’re open for lunch “from 11:30″, then I certainly don’t expect to arrive at 2pm only to have the staff shoo me back out into the rain with a shrug.

Left to Right: The Boatshed hotel breakfast table; spiked lemonade on the deck at The Oyster Inn; and just one course from our many splendored lunch at the Cable Bay vineyards restaurant

So yeah, Cable Bay won my undying admiration and respect that day. They could just as easily have used the same excuses as Casita Miro — it was a slow day, we hadn’t made a reservation, the chefs have shut down the ovens, maybe we could come back some other time, etc. — but even though we were likely the only people who showed up at the Cable Bay restaurant for lunch on that entire rainy, off-season afternoon, we were ushered to the best table, the wine flowed and the kitchen cranked out four courses of a crackin’ good meal without a bit of fuss or complaint.

In other words, they made us feel welcome and entirely at home.

Another place where we felt very much at home was our visit to the Destiny Bay winery — a tiny artisan vineyard on Waiheke Island that prides itself on crafting some of the best wines in the world.

The grapes are handpicked, every bit of non-grape matter (twigs, leaves, etc.) is sorted out and removed before the fruit is crushed and fermented (a surprisingly rare production step in the wine world, but one that results in a distinctive, fruit-only taste), and while the production runs are low (about 2,000 cases of wine a year, total), the high levels of skill, creativity and passion involved are evident in every bottle.

*NOTE 2: You can find Destiny Bay owner Michael Spratt’s polemic against the corporatization and commodification of the wine business in his book, “Grape-A-Hol: How Big Business is Subverting Artisan Winemaking and the Future of Fine Wine“. It’s as eye-opening as Dana Thomas’ “Deluxe: How Luxury Lost Its Luster“, and after reading it, you’ll view the mass market “fine wine” industry with a radically overhauled perspective.

A comfy corner of our room at The Boatshed Hotel

It was only a couple of days that we spent winding our way through Waiheke’s narrow roads (I think we may have scraped off about half our wheel rims in the process), sitting on benches by the sand watching the waves roll in, eating and drinking incredible local wines and food — but the vibe of the island was so relaxed and soothing that it felt like we’d been there for much longer, and I seriously didn’t want to leave.

Thankfully, Waiheke is so close to Auckland that we can easily slip back anytime we want (the dishes of light, crispy calamari at The Oyster Inn are already calling my name). And we have our bottles of stunning Destiny Bay wines to keep us warm in the meantime.

The post NZ Diary: Taking a spin around Waiheke Island appeared first on Nathan Branch.

Unfortunately, it’s not as easy as just walking up to a professional photographer’s door and asking to tag along on his/her next couple of assignments — but the global internet does make it a lot simpler to track down talented photographers whose work I admire, and sometimes they offer seminars, or DVD training sessions, or sell books, or all of the above.

One of the photographers whose work, opinions and philosophy I’ve come to greatly respect is Ming Thein, a working pro who somehow manages to walk that fine line between commercial/product photography and visual art — and he tests new cameras, posts reviews of equipment, and writes about technical and creative issues in clear and concise terms that most anyone can understand.

Britomart Transport Centre, 28mm — from Lesson #1 with Ming Thein

Plus he’s a damn fine photographer.

So I explored his site and discovered that he offers training seminars in various cities throughout the US, Europe and Asia. Well, that’s fine and good, but it’s still a long haul to any of those destinations from New Zealand and I’d be piling the cost of air travel and a hotel onto the back of the cost of the four day seminar itself, which made me balk a bit when I began tallying up the bottom line for attending his upcoming workshop in Prague (but on the other hand — it’s in gorgeous PRAGUE!).

And then I noticed that he also offers an “Email School of Photography” — where for a much lower price than jetting off to Prague, I can still interact with a photography master and get a guided tour through the ins and outs of producing quality images.

Upside: no air travel and hotel expenses. Downside: It’s not four days in gorgeous Prague.

But seriously, how often will I get the opportunity to take lessons — even via email — from a professional whose work I personally respect and admire, in a format that’s tailored specifically to my level of skill (low), that operates at my own speed (slow), and where I don’t have to elbow all the other paying seminar members out of the way in order to get the instructor’s attention?

Statue at the Auckland Wintergarden, 28mm — from Lesson #1 with Ming Thein

So I signed right up.

The first thing Mr. Thein had me do was submit what I considered my ten best photographs for him to analyse and critique for my ability (or inability, as the case may be) to photograph with any amount of creative or technical proficiency. He offered a bracingly honest assessment of what was right and wrong with the pics, and then I was sent off on my first assignment: To be aware of everything at the edges of my frame, and to shoot with the awareness of using the entire frame.

In other words, I’m not allowed to digitally crop the picture to cut out mistakes at the edges (errant tree limbs, an ugly car, a pedestrian that strays into the shot, too much dead space around my subject, etc.). I can crop for aspect differences — such as changing the format ratio to a square (1×1), or a cinematic horizontal style (16×9), but other than that, what I snapped is supposed to stay in the picture.

#1) This is a lot harder than it sounds, and #2) shooting with the intention of using everything in the frame has made me very conscious of just how the lens I’m using affects the output.

When I was randomly shooting and cropping, I wasn’t gaining any working familiarity with the specific nature of the focal length I’d chosen for that day; instead, I was aiming, shooting and then cropping out all the bits that “didn’t work” instead of familiarising myself with how the lens I was using specifically interpreted the world around me, and then playing to those particular strengths.

Tree in the Auckland Domain, 35mm — from Lesson #1 with Ming Thein

So after several days of wandering Auckland (mostly in the rain, I might add, which isn’t all that great for producing interesting natural-light conditions) with my 28mm lens, I finally began to understand the difference between wide-angle (35mm and below, generally) and telephoto (50mm and above, generally) photography — how a wide-angle emphasises the foreground subject while employing the background as context, and how a telephoto compresses distance in order to de-emphasise background context and isolate the subject that way.

Or, at least, that’s the understanding I’ve reached so far. I’ll likely gain more insight the longer I work at utilising the full capacity of the respective lens types. But for me, this realisation is like the heavens opening and a beam of light shining down on me from above. Now, instead of battling my lenses to give me what I want, I choose the subject according to the lens I’m carrying at the time.

I know, that should have been obvious to me all along, but this is why I signed up for a tutorial with Ming Thein. I certainly needed this kind of hands-on education, and following specific lesson plans gives me the necessary prompting to think more carefully about what I’m shooting and how.

Windows and walls, 28mm — from Lesson #1 with Ming Thein

I’m still working on Lesson One, and have a lot of practicing to do before it becomes second nature to aim with awareness. But just this small “Aha!” moment has radically altered the way I go about approaching my camera, which is as good a recommendation as I can give for finding yourself a creative mentor and rubbing shoulders — in my case, I’m rubbing email shoulders, but it seems to work just as well.

Even though it’s not four days in gorgeous Prague.

*NOTE: That old saying about “If you want to improve at something, surround yourself with people better than you and learn from them” is true!

*NOTE 2: Thein encouraged me to start shooting vertically, which (weirdly enough) I never do. Probably because it feels awkward and clumsy, so I don’t. But there are subjects that demand a vertical shoot, and I wasn’t doing myself (or the subject) any favours by insisting on shooting everything horizontally. My first vertical shot is the Auckland Wintergarden statue included above.

*NOTE 3: For an illustration as to how a telephoto lens compresses distance to isolate the subject, click the following link for a picture of the Wintergarden statue at 75mm instead of the wide-angle 28mm shown above: Auckland Wintergarden Statuary at 75mm

The post NZ Diary: Finding a photographic mentor appeared first on Nathan Branch.

The perils of an island weather system.

But on one of our recent sunny days, I hoofed it down to the Victoria Park area where I snapped this contrasty pic of a small building perched at the edge of the park.

*NOTE: The scene, with its bright contrast and deep shadows, reminded me of the still, shadow-laden work of Z.Z. Wei, one of my favourite contemporary painters (and certainly an influence on why I photograph what I do).

But later days brought us a lot of rain, so I visited some of the new exhibits on offer at the Auckland Art Gallery located in central Auckland (and about a fifteen minute walk from where I live). The first pic was taken in a “lab” exhibit for the 5th Auckland Triennial which invited about 30 artists to participate in an interactive series of exhibits exploring our unique human sense of place.

Below, a young museum visitor examines the backside of a double-sided 3D photographic exhibit. I wish I had a camera that could capture 3D, because these photographs were astonishing in their sense of depth once I slipped on a pair of the supplied 3D glasses — and the further I stepped back from them, the deeper they got.

*NOTE: Yes, her t-shirt really does say, “frenzy, drug addled or promiscuous copulation” — that’s what made taking the picture so irresistible.

I also snagged a picture of the freshly mounted “Ka kata te po” installation, a collaborative effort between three artists that addresses contentious issues of state authority vs. tribal autonomy here in New Zealand. The installation is a response to the Urewera Raids of 2007 which pitted Maori tribal separatists against the long arm of national law enforcement.

The Urewera Raids are a deeply complex issue that can’t be adequately addressed by any single art installation, but I still found this piece psychologically and emotionally powerful as I sat on the marble steps to the front of it and drank it in for about twenty buzzingly quiet minutes — the thing hangs from the ceiling and takes up nearly the entire upper space of the room, with museum visitors walking in and out as they pass by on the stairs leading to other exhibits.

Without knowing the history of the piece, however, I would never have guessed that it had anything to do with New Zealand or Maori politics. It’s simply a wild and woolly work that provokes a hushed sense of introspection and reflection from everyone who passes by.

I have no precise definition for the kind of personal reflection that resulted from basking in its company, but I do know I want to go back and sit at its feet again. And with all the rain we’ve been getting, I have a feeling I’ll have plenty of opportunity to do just that.

The post NZ Diary: Wild and Woolly appeared first on Nathan Branch.

Not to mention their own various shapes, sizes and personal style iterations.

A street artist gets his due on Queen Street

Though I have to admit, the preponderance of athletic wear, ugly shorts and baggy tees on today’s sidewalks is not a personal style iteration that begs to be photographed. This is where I sometimes envy the photographers of the 1920s through the 1960s — those were some fantastic silhouettes that look consistently terrific in photographs, especially black and white.

But I certainly wouldn’t trade our high-tech living in the 21st century just for a more photogenic change of street style (even though there are days when I’m sorely tempted).

Changing subjects: I bid a grieved farewell to my Leica M-240 colour camera earlier this week as it had to be sent off to Germany due to a recall on some faultily installed eyelets that hold the camera straps, so I’m shooting solely with my black and white Monochrom for the next month (or more).

*ASIDE: Thank god for two cameras. I’d read a lot of advice from experienced photographers to *always* have a backup camera, and now I know why.

And I’m finding that relying on shape, texture and shadow to lead the eye as opposed to pops of colour is a whole new ballgame. I’ve taken a lot of pics that only end up deleted because there’s simply no *there* there — what I thought might be interesting at the time I’m pointing, focusing and shooting just didn’t translate, mainly due to misjudging how differing colours play out in black and white.

But I occasionally get some nice surprises, too, like this old tree by the Auckland court house.

Who knew that an old black and white tree could show such personality (and is it a good thing that that sentence rhymes)?

When I mozied on over to the other side of the courthouse, I found this stone sculpture/memorial, dappled in shadow, with the decorative and gleaming front face of the courthouse in the background (plus another beautiful old tree, of course). I’m not sure exactly what the sculpture/memorial is or who it’s by, and I’m still researching — weirdly, there was no explanatory marking or plaque by the actual piece itself.

*UPDATE MAY 7TH, 2013: With the help of Lisa Rudolphe, the head of sponsorship and fundraising for the Auckland War Memorial Museum, I finally discovered that the installation is a 1991 piece by acclaimed contemporary Maori artist Fred Graham. The installation is untitled, but its three pillars are said to represent the high court and the jurors of the New Zealand legal system.

But these are the few photos that resulted from hours (and hours) of trudging through various Auckland neighbourhoods, developing blisters on my feet and landing many a moment of finding myself utterly lost, relying on the cold logic of Google maps to point my way back to familiar ground.

The bonus point of getting frequently lost, however, is that I’m now discovering much more about the city I live in. There’s nothing like a frantic Google-maps session for gaining a better grasp on which direction leads home.

*NOTE: The pictures above were shot with a 28mm lens. I never used to go below a 50mm when shooting with my Canon, so I’m enjoying the new perspective of a wide angle, which opens things up dramatically, allowing for more context.

But (and there’s always a but), this does make it difficult to isolate a subject (which is how I used to shoot with telephoto lenses), so I have to change what I’m looking for out of a photo op — instead of an isolated, zoomed-in moment, I have to step back and be conscious of the broader view. Something I’m not used to doing quite yet, which is likely the main reason why I have only a small handful of pictures to show for the many hours/days spent wandering.

*RELEVANT ASIDE: Photographer and photoblogger Ming Thein published a brief rant about the misconception that wide-angle photography is about cramming more into the picture — Pet peeve: Proper perspective practice — which brings some helpful illumination to the subject of how differently telephoto lenses and wide angle lenses capture a scene.

*NOTE 2: I found the following New York Institute of Photography article especially helpful in wrapping my brain around what makes black and white photography such a different medium from focusing on (and shooting in) colour: Back to Black and White — Choosing Subjects for Black and White Photographs

I especially appreciated this bit as the author relates an epiphany moment: “This was one of the first photographs in which I realised how strong lines and shapes can add significantly to an image. In fact, as I excitedly made this photograph, I realised I was no longer shooting “the church”, I was shooting lines, shapes and their relationships . . . if you can begin to look at your compositions as visual elements rather than merely literal subjects, you will go a long way towards taking photographs to be proud of.”

And that’s where my brain is right now — in transition, learning to see the world around me as a conglomeration of visual elements rather than isolated literal subjects. It’s not a group of people gathered around an artist on the sidewalk at lunchtime, it’s a happy congruence of line, shape and shadow, all framed in a way to pull the viewer in.

The post New Zealand Diary: Visual elements vs. Literal subjects appeared first on Nathan Branch.

So it looks like I’ll have to hand it over to Leica’s official New Zealand distributor, who will then likely send it back to Germany to be fixed. Which will probably take weeks. At the least.

Until then, it’ll be just me and my black and white camera for company. Not that I’m complaining. I’ve recently started to take both cameras out with me when I’m walking the city — the M-240 colour and the Monochrom — and I’ve been noticing that I come back with more pictures on my Monochrom than on my colour camera.

Fiery mural on a set of theatre doors in central Auckland (28mm lens)

Seeing and framing a picture according to light and shadow rather than catchy bright colours is a captivating challenge for me, since I’ve previously (and near exclusively) been all about the bright tones and colours when shooting with my Canon.

And what with the recent spate of “any monkey with a DSLR can take a good colour picture” articles coming out (in much the same way that professional musicians decried the advent of home music recording), I thought I may as well take this forced colour-free time to further acquaint myself with the world of light and shadow.

Because a picture that can be beautiful in colour, can also exhibit great charm in black and white:

A table at The Oyster Inn on Waiheke Island (35mm lens)

Here’s a link to those same tables in colour: The Deck of The Oyster Inn on Waiheke Island — beautiful, right? But what a difference in mood and attitude when shot in black and white. It’s like seeing the world through alien eyes.

I recently read about the Swedish photographer Stefan Bladh, who deliberately seeks out the untouristy aspects of cities to photograph and concentrates on the absence of humanity rather than zeroing in on an urban mass of people.

Because, honestly (and let’s face it), we as human beings seem utterly and completely fascinated with ourselves. We love pictures of people because we can’t seem to get enough of all the different representations of who we are.

Yet with the advent of Facebook and Twitter and Tumblr and Instagram, I feel like we’re rapidly headed towards a brick-wall collision with “We Ourselves” overload, and I’d like to get out from underneath that and document my lesser traveled surroundings, instead.

Arched entry to St. Matthew in the City, Auckland (35mm lens)

But then, I’ve never seemed to need a reason to photograph odd buildings and public sculptures. I’m endlessly fascinated especially with decaying or worn-out structures that remind me of the rather poor Midwestern farm town I grew up in. Like the one below:

Simpson LTD in central Auckland (35mm lens)

You can see a larger group of the Leica M-Monochrom photos I’ve taken so far here: Leica M-Monochrom set

I’m hoping to get a lot better at black and white photography as I get more experience with it. I still see a lot of shots in colour, so when I take them with the Monochrom, they’re awful: flat, lifeless. What I was seeing simply didn’t translate.

It’s amazing how differently I have to view my surroundings in order to get a black and white photograph to “pop” with even a slight amount of vibrance and energy. Or maybe mystery.

The post NZ Diary: Black and white (and wandering all over) appeared first on Nathan Branch.

*NOTE: I traded in all of my Canon cameras and lenses for two much smaller, much more portable, and yet unfortunately much more expensive Leica camera systems — the black and white Monochrom, and the new colour Leica M-240.

And living in New Zealand can bring its own challenges — for instance, trying to find neutral density filters to counteract the bright summer sun. Because I’m using a much smaller, more specialised size of lens, the ability to just walk into a camera shop and buy a filter is less a done deal than it was when I was shooting with a Canon.

So as I wait for my filters to arrive from the US (yes, I finally had to break down and order from the US — as much as I’d love to support local Kiwi businesses, when they tell me it might be six weeks before a filter comes in, I start to look elsewhere), I’ve been shooting at high shutter speeds and at the lowest ISO levels I can.

“Pulling” the ISO to its lowest levels to achieve a highly shadowed piece in midday sun

Which doesn’t always work, because I don’t like closing up the camera lens by stopping down the aperture. Stopping down the aperture tends to produce less interesting pictures (IMO, and especially with the faster lenses I’ve purchased), so I avoid it when I can.

“I have to admit that most of the time I like to work with the lenses wide open –- stopped down a couple of clicks if I’m using a longer lens and in a hurry, but with Leica lenses, fully open is often so beautiful that it’s a temptation to work that way most of the time.” — Christopher Tribble

So I give in to the temptation and blow a lot of pics — too bright, too overexposed, too much light. Which is where the neutral density filters would come in handy, but gosh darn it, I live on an island, and specialised items aren’t always readily available on an island country with a relatively small population.

I only *just* managed to grab this bright, sunlight heavy photo of a public art sculpture, despite how intensely the sun was shining.

Deconstructed caterpillar or work of genius? Your guess is as good as mine

Fortunately, the camera could handle the intense differences in contrast, but I lost a lot of other potentially interesting photos when it couldn’t. Or maybe I just have a lot more to learn about how to wrangle my Leica camera’s abilities in the proper way, rather than expecting it to act like the Canon it isn’t.

Gee, you think?

*My fault, not the camera’s fault*

This is a mantra I have to keep repeating to myself, over and over.

Because when I figure out how to use the camera/lens combination correctly, it gives me great results like this:

The crosswalk at the bottom of the world

*NOTE: As always, you can click the pictures to go to my Flickr page and see larger sizes. At the upper right corner of each photo on Flickr, you’ll see “Newer / Older” buttons with a magnifying glass in-between. Clicking on the magnifying glass will open up a larger viewing window and give you the option of seeing the pictures in a variety of sizes.

The post New Zealand Diary: Testing the city appeared first on Nathan Branch.

New Zealand is a big competitor in the America’s Cup, and a number of New Zealand wineries, chefs and food producers will be visiting San Francisco this summer to participate in pop-up shops, culinary demonstrations, international wine tastings and food expos. Gagliardi’s job, as far as I could understand it, was to come here and survey the food and wine scene, then return to San Fran and write about it for her 20,000+ subscribers, giving them advance notice on what to look for (and hopefully sample) when the New Zealand contingent arrives in the US this summer.

Marcia sits down for a degustation experience at Auckland’s Sidart restaurant

*NOTE: It also doesn’t hurt that San Francisco boasts one of the few direct flights from the US to New Zealand, so it was definitely a savvy marketing move to invite a San Fran food & travel writer to chat up the country’s food and wine to an audience that can potentially wing it on over.

Marcia was introduced to me via email by her good friend Basil Racuk, whom I interviewed for a two-part artisan series back in 2010 (Part 1 and Part 2). He thought she might enjoy palling around with a non-industry / non-PR person for a moment or two during her whirlwind weeklong trek through New Zealand, and that I might enjoy seeing my home city of Auckland through fresh food-lovin’ eyes.

He was correct on both counts.

Marcia gets the scoop on Waiheke Island novelist and winemaker Chris Canning of The Hay Paddock

First, I have to say that while being a food & travel writer sounds like it may potentially be a breeze of an occupation, Gagliardi is hard at work from the crack of the early breakfast hours to the dimly lit clock of late-night drinking and appetisers. There isn’t a moment when she’s not pulling out her camera, jotting down notes, asking waiters to repeat the information so she can get it right, audio recording her impressions, interviewing chefs and managers, Instagramming, Facebooking, Tweeting, calling, texting, event coordinating, schedule managing, ay yi yi.

She whipped out her crammed-to-the-minute New Zealand itinerary for me to see, and it was a thick sheaf of papers outlining a non-stop barnstorm across the country to meet with wine growers and makers, salmon processors, sheep and deer farmers, resort and hotel managers, chef/restaurant owners and the Emirates Team New Zealand.

All I can say is, thank god she gets to sit down and have a drink with some of these people, because I needed a hot foot-soak and a long nap after just reading her schedule.

Marcia doing her thing at Waiheke Island’s Oyster Inn

*NOTE 2: Moments like this also help — yes, that’s really us chugging a bottle of Chris Canning’s visionary Hay Paddock syrah on the warm, breezy ferry ride back to Auckland from Waiheke Island. Life has its lovely moments, and that was certainly one of them.

While Marcia was in Auckland for a few brief days before heading out into the rest of New Zealand, she tried to take in as much of the local food culture as possible. I didn’t go with her everywhere, but I did accompany her to a tantalisingly inventive dinner at Sidart on Saturday, a bang-up contemporary foodfest at Clooney on Sunday evening, and then a Monday jaunt to Waiheke Island which is only a beautiful thirty minute ferry ride from central Auckland (so why don’t I go more often?!!).

Our Monday tour was the big start to her official itinerary, and we wheeled our way through a wine tasting with Hay Paddock winegrower and maker Chris Canning, a very quick (and unscheduled) chat with Casita Miro owner Cat Vosper, glasses of New Zealand sparkling wine and a plate of pre-lunch oysters on the charmingly sun-drenched deck of casual eatery The Oyster Inn, a dream of a wine-tasting and lunch at Cable Bay Vineyards (that place was gorgeous, not to mention that our hosts Loukas Petrou and Neill Culley were amiable and chatty, and we departed Cable Bay deeply impressed with their food, wine and creative passion), topped off with a wine-tasting at the more mainstream Mudbrick Vineyards.

Fine food and even finer wines at Cable Bay Vineyards

We then grabbed the ferry back to Auckland and hit two new central Auckland hotspots, Ortolana and Depot Eatery. By then, I was feeling pretty toasty and tipsy, but let me tell you, there wasn’t a single moment where Marcia wasn’t still at the top of her game — jotting notes about ingredients, comparing and contrasting the local beer and wine, taking pictures for Instagram, handing out business cards, collecting contact information, and hitting up the waitstaff for their suggestions of other Auckland hotspots she can tell her readers about.

Whoever made the brilliant decision to invite Marcia to New Zealand, he/she deserves a raise.

You can find a more extensive collection of pictures from my time with Marcia at Flickr here: Marcia Gagliardi tablehops in Auckland & Waiheke

*NOTE 3: The one restaurant we hit together that I didn’t get any pictures of/from is Clooney (their sugar-cured ostrich entree was a revelation). Clooney is notorious for its dimly lit interior space (e.g. halfway through the meal, I had to pass the wine list to Marcia because I couldn’t read it — yes, I’m older than their young-money target demographic, but still) and it started to rain outside right before I left the house, so I made the snap decision to keep the camera at home. I regret that decision now, but at the moment, I thought I was being smart.

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