Wellington After an Earthquake

The Majestic centre, tallest building in Wellington. I was standing right here at 2:30pm

People walking home along Stout St

I was in Wellington last weekend visiting family - I took Friday off work, and was walking around the city just in time for the magnitude 6.5 earthquake at 2:30pm. I haven't been in many earthquakes recently, so it took me quite a while to realise what was going on - at first I thought my knees had just gone a bit wobbly! Then I noticed the tram cables clattering loudly together overhead, and then finally clicked when the lady beside me grabbed on to a tree for support. By this time the worst was over and things slowly stopped shaking.

This lady was prepared, carrying a 'Grab & Go' emergency kit backpack

Congregating on the lawn in front of the Houses of Parliament

At street level I didn't think the earthquake was very bad, and wrote it off as a regular Wellington occurrence, but while buying coffee from Mojo, I overheard people mentioning numbers like '6.5' and '6.9' and tried to look up the NZ Herald on my phone, but 3G reception was dead. I also noticed lots of people on the street - most ground level shops seemed to be operating as usual (except a lot of staff chatting in groups), but the tower blocks were emptying and some had security guards stopping people entering.

Sitting on the grass in front of the Beehive

Still looks straight, but now completely emptied of people

I made my way down towards the Beehive area, and finally noticed real unusual activity - the grassy areas were covered in people meeting in groups, the streets were clogged with traffic, and the railway station was closed. One nice aspect was all the cars stopping in the street, offering the crowd of people rides home due to the rail closure. 

Lots of people queuing for the busses

Or sitting outside and chilling out

Walking back along the waterfront, I noticed many people with glasses of wine and beer sitting in the parks, and all of the city pubs had filled up. With the traffic and transport chaos, I guess many people decided to hang out and relax, and wait for it to subside! If I didn't know there had been an earthquake, I would have thought it was a very nice evening in the city, with lots of people socialising and enjoying the mild winter day.

Traffic chaos in both directions

This guy was very keen to show off his new moves - after putting down his beer.

When I first noticed everyone leaving work and heading home around 3pm, I thought it was somewhat of an overreaction to a mild shake - but I was at street level, and I can imagine it was a lot rougher for people working 30 floors up! I'm sure I would have left work for a beer also. Glad nobody was hurt, and the city damage was relatively minor. 

This seal sleeping on the rocks of the sea wall wasn't too bothered about it all

White Studios pt.3 - Samantha

 
 

Here's my last set of photos of Samantha, from our photoshoot at White Studios. It's been hard to choose only a small number of photos from the 500-odd I kept - but at the same time it's also been hard to decide on any which I think are 'good enough' to show! The more I look at my photos, the more I think that they're uninteresting or not good enough or the models will hate them!! Nevertheless, here are some photos I took.

I've been taking time in the retouching on each of these - portraits are a bit harder than my typical travel shots, as they require individual care and attention to small details, rather than the basic colour, tone, cropping etc type corrections i make to most travel photos. So it's important to carefully self-edit and select which photos have promise before you spend the time post-processing.

I'm still rather slow in Photoshop, as I've previously worked almost entirely in Adobe Lightroom, but i'm learning a lot. I'm not making any major changes of course - just touch ups - but i'm still testing lots of different techniques. Luckily there is no shortage of free instruction on the internet (of highly variable quality). One method I've learnt recently which is working well is Frequency Separation, if anyone is interested in trying some retouching!

I hope to create a consistent style as i take more portraits - but for now I'm just shooting and showing what I like at the time. I do like some things in particular though - using graphic and angular shapes - things that look not 'uncomfortable', but at least 'interesting'... and I like soft, diffuse light so I'm quickly building up a list of (expensive) softboxes and octabanks that I 'need' to use... anyone got a spare 190cm octa?

Thanks very much to everyone that helped shoot or be shot: Sven, Anupam, Celeste, Priya and Samantha! I learnt a lot from this exercise, and hope to do it again soon. We're currently looking for interesting locations, rather than a photo studio for next time.

So get in touch if you know of or have access to any sort of cool room / warehouse / dingy basement / abandoned building / lounge bar / anywhere fun :)

 

K'Rd Evening Photowalk

On Sunday I was out shooting again with Sven and the community photo group he organises - we went into the city late afternoon to Karangahape Rd in search of interesting street scenes and people. K Rd is usually one of the main hot spots in the city for this sort of action, but apparently not on Sunday afternoons... there were very few people around, and the light was fading fast, under a cloudy sky, with no chance of a nice sunset. Even so, we persevered and found what we could to shoot!

Behind St.Kevin's Arcade

St.Kevin's Arcade

We spent some time around St.Kevin's arcade and the alleys behind it, and found some nice grungy locations that could be great to keep in mind for a future photoshoot! Some of the others were practicing accosting strangers in the streets for portraits, something Sven is a master at, but I haven't been keen yet... his recap and stranger-danger portraits are posted on his blog here.

Girl with Giant Panda, Upper Queen St

Restaurant, Upper Queen St

After dark we headed down the hill towards Aotea Square hoping for some bright lights or activities. Some of the restaurants along Upper Queen St were interesting, as well as the fairground set up in the square and the big wooden archway including the Pigeon below. One guy dragged his tripod all over town, but I'm lazier than that - all mine are shot handheld with my little Fuji X-E1 and some pretty high ISO numbers, but the camera handled it quite well.

 

Pigeon, Aotea Square 

 

That's enough of our mildly-successful photowalk  - now back to processing the last batch of Portraits from White Studios..

White Studios pt.2 - Priya

Priya also spent the day with myself, Sven and Annupam last weekend at White Studios, and I've been slowly struggling with the post-processing of these all week. We had plenty of time with Priya during the day, and tried out quite a few variations of makeup, styling, and light setups. Some which worked nicely, and some experimental ones which didn't look too good on reflection! 

Click on any photo to see full screen! Unless I messed up the posting, that is..

My favourites shown here were all from simple setups with relatively soft lighting. Some of the more experimental ones I rejected involved bright cloth or harsh lighting, which can look good in many cases, but I didn't manage to pull it together this time. I really like Rembrandt lighting (see here) but I only tried it against a pale background, I wish I'd done that on the black instead. 

One other thing to consider next time is posing - I'm still relatively inexperienced when it comes to directing models, and it shows that my favourite shots are all quite similar in pose. I will have to concentrate more next time on creating a wider variety of interesting poses, and will shoot more half- or full-body shots rather than mostly headshots.

Of course some models require very little direction  - Samantha from the previous post was very active and I got a wide variety of shots. I was shooting so fast at times I thought my camera was jamming up - in fact it was just filling up the buffer and I had to give it a few seconds to clear!

So thanks for viewing and/or reading again! I'm still figuring out what I want to say in the Photoblave, but i'm trying to keep it direct and to the point (nobody got time for 5000 word posts) and to comment on things I discover/learn along the way. Just as much for my remembering than anything else!

 

All photos this post: 

Photographer: Nick Depree

MUA & Styling: Celeste Strewe

White Studios pt.1 - Samantha

Samantha. Click to enlarge.

Last Saturday I spent the day shooting at White Studios in Kingsland, with good friends Sven (the Bokeh Monster) and Annupam. 

This is Samantha, who was kind enough to pose for me.

Coming soon will be some photos of Priya, who was equally kind to model, both with a range of interesting makeup styles done by Celeste. 

Thanks to everyone involved for a fun but tiring day of shooting, evidenced by 2 out of 3 photographers having a nap during the movie that followed our celebratory pizza and beer...

 

On Editing

I managed to hit my shutter button over 900 times this day, which seemed like a good idea at the time - but then how to narrow it down to only a couple of favourites to publish? And how do I know which ones the models and make up artist will like? I want to give the other participants some results worth their time.

I spent several hours deleting rejects and playing with colours, but made no progress until I decided just to retouch and publish the ones I personally liked best. I don't know exactly what makes a 'good' fashion/beauty/glamour portrait - I know what I like, but maybe that isn't what the others were expecting.

So these are the style I like as a photographer, whether others do or not - of course I hope they do! And I have 500 more shots they can choose from later if they don't like these ones. Or maybe I just won't be invited again next time..

So these few images are my favourites of Samantha, all from a simple natural light setup against the white studio wall. I have photographs of her from several other lighting setups as well, which I shall publish in due course. Some of those show quite different looks, so hopefully we can find some images useful for both her portfolio as well as mine!

So ends my first post on my studio photography, part 1 of perhaps 3 from White Studios. Next up will be photos of Priya, followed by different looks for Samantha, all with equally riveting commentary..

 

Muriwai Beach

Ambling around Muriwai Beach and the edges of Woodhill Forrest in the late afternoon. There was lots to see and shoot, but also a race against fading light in the forrest, and tricky avoiding fumes while i was camped downwind from groups of bikers driving around in circles on the sand... but there is plenty more left to shoot next time!