Crankworx - World's Largest Mountain Bike Festival

July 05, 2015 in Sport, Event

The world's biggest mountain bike festival Crankworx came to Rotorua, New Zealand this year, for the first time in the southern hemisphere and one of only two locations outside of its home in Whistler Colorado. My shooting buddy Sven is a big MTB fan and was keen to get along and take some photos, so we made a two-day trip down to Rotorua on the Thursday and Friday event days, time to run back to Auckland to photograph a wedding on Saturday! I don't know much out MTB so it was interesting figuring out all the lingo and different events etc. The main parts we caught were the 'Speed & Style' and Downhill competitions, and practice sessions for the Slopestyle, Pump Track and Downhill events. As well as enjoying figuring out all the events, I also had an opportunity to try out some new gear from Fuji, being the new 50-140mm f/2.8 telephoto zoom lens, on the X-T1 body. The tele shots in this post are all with this combination, but anything normal-wide is on my Nikon D600 (18-35/50mm lenses). Not knowing much about the events, or looking for any particular riders meant that I concentrated just on finding interesting angles and graphic shapes in my shots - maybe not as useful for say advertising or MTB magazine use, but it kept me interested!

Fuji 50-140mm f/2.8 Lens Discussion and Review

The rest of the post is a basic 'review' of my experiences with this lens for shooting sports, which you will probably want to skip if you're not a camera person :) There are plenty of photos to come too, so don't miss that part!

I was very keen to try this camera/lens with the hope it might be a nice lightweight option for the equestrian sports I had been photographing, as the Nikon gear gets really heavy and painful over an 8hr day! Unfortunately I found the autofocus speed quite lacking, and in particular the focus tracking wasn't up to scratch, meaning that most shots really needed to be pre-focussed (i.e. choose a fixed point to focus on and wait for the target to come through the frame). The key metric here is probably my 'hit rate' afterwards - shooting sports with my D700 I get probably a 90% hit rate of properly focussed shots, but on this combo it might have been like 20% or worse. Taking a series of say 5-8 photos of each rider coming past might result in 1-2 sharp shots, even after 2 days of practice.

Reduced focus speed and responsiveness is still to-be-expected on a mirrorless body compared to an SLR, but an issue which I hadn't seen mentioned much before, but actually turned out be the deal-breaker, was the long viewfinder black-out time - if you're trying to track a moving object, shooting at up to 8 frames per second, the viewfinder stays black just about the whole time, and with significant lag, so you actually can't follow your subject! Even after you've pre-focussed and composed, you're still shooting blind once the rider enters the frame and you hold down the button. I did also try this lens out on slower-moving horses the next weekend, and it was still equally difficult then. BUT the news is not all bad, which I'll cover in the next paragraph :)

For moving subjects and sports, I absolutely would not recommend this combination as I tested it - BUT of course the new v4.0 firmware just came out last week, which promises significant upgrades in focus speed and tracking. No idea if it improved the blackout time, but I can only recommend trying it out with new firmware before making any decisions on this combination. The other good point is that image quality is great, nothing to complain about at any focal length or focus distance that I tried, and was sharp all over the frame. The weight is also much less and much more pleasant to use for an extended period than the old school 1kg+ full frame f/2.8 zooms, as well as physically taking less space in my bag and having decent IS for handholding at lower shutter speeds - but do remember that IS isn't useful for sports where you need high shutter speed to stop subject motion anyway. So, overall a mixed bag for this combination. The lens was all good, but the system itself couldn't keep up with fast-paced subjects in more ways than one - not sure how much comes down to the body vs. the lens, but I expect this will be greatly improved in the next generation of Fuji bodies. For my money, it's just not quite ready for prime time, so I'm stuck using the heavy lens for sport for a while longer yet - but I suspect a mirrorless future for me is not too far off!

Dusseldorf Palace and Architecture

June 28, 2015 in Travel

Dusseldorf is the major city closest to Essen where I work, and also the airline hub we land at. Despite being very close, I've never made it there on a Saturday but have used it as a rainy Sunday fall-back location several times, when unfortunately there is much less to do and see with many things closed. Dusseldorf however is very famous for its art museums, and I've enjoyed the permanent collection and travelling exhibitions at the Museum Kunstpalast (Art Palace!) several times, as well as sometimes poking into the modern art museums. The Dusseldorf Palace was new to me, and quite interesting with its pink colour and large grounds, and quite similar to the Rococo palaces in Berlin at Charlottenburg and Schloss Sansoucci.

The Dusseldorf palace Schloss Benrath, was built from 1755-1770 for Charles Theodore, Prince-Elector, Count Palatine and Duke of Bavaria. The old German hierarchy is quite confusing, but obviously these are pretty important titles to have a palace built for you. Seems like he was ruler of the 'Palatinate' area around the Rhine and one of the most important secular princes in the Holy Roman Empire - which is actually the country of Germany until defeated by Napoleon in 1906 and formation of the German Confederation in 1915. Nothing to do with Romans at all, really! The day I visited the palace coincided with a classic Bentley and Rolls-Royce car club meeting for some extra colour. And unfortunately no photos allowed inside the palace itself. Usually these palaces like to charge you another 1-5 euros for a 'photo pass' wristband, which I'm happy to pay, but nothing doing here!

Following my visit to the palace and walk around the landscaped grounds to the Orangerie etc, I went back into Dusseldorf town to check out the permanent collection at the Kunstpalace art musuem, which I hadn't seen before. I particularly liked the architecture in the main foyer, with it's modern stained-glass panelled wall and quite severe style. After finishing at the museum I made my way into the centre of town to the Königsallee (the "King's Avenue") and discovered a brand new commercial precinct that had sprung up since last year - named the "Kö-Bogen" (the "King's Bow"), designed by none other than my favourite architect Daniel Liebeskind, who made the Jüdisches Museum in Berlin among many other impressive buildings.

The Vrijthof - Main square in Maastricht

Maastricht Bookstore-Cathedral and Dead Giraffes

June 15, 2015 in Travel

Maastricht is the furthest-south City in the Netherlands, way down on a little peninsula of borders stretching between Germany and Belgium on either side. It is also a very old and historic city - possibly the oldest in the Netherlands (as well as Nijmegen) - settled since 500BC, conquered by the Romans in the Gallic Wars, and more recently was birthplace of the European Union and Euro currency. Forgetting the history lesson, it is also famous for being one of the only parts of the Netherlands to have hills! It was also a great city to walk around for a day last year, exploring the tourist sights and city streets.

Boekhandel Dominicanen - Book store in a renovated dominican church

I make a point of seeing cathedrals in most towns i visit in Europe, and in this case the first one I walked into surprised me by being actually a bookstore instead! I remembered after the fact about seeing this on lists such as 'most interesting bookstores' etc etc online, but I arrived purely by chance this day. It may seem a shame to repurpose an impressive old cathedral, but actually Maastricht and Europe in general has more cathedrals than they know what to do with! This keeps a stream of tourists coming through and spending money which can be used to help maintain the building. I didn't buy a book, but of course I contributed to the takings of the Cafe...

Brasseries opposite the Vrijthof — Brasseries opposite the Vrijthof

I checked out actually three other churches/cathedrals in Maastricht, each of which were quite interesting in different ways. The Basilica of Saint Servatius on the main Vrijthof square is biggest and most impressive, and I was particularly interested in the carvings and design in the South Portal (the entrance for rich people). The Basilica of Our Lady was also cool for the very dark atmosphere and interesting light. I spent a long day in Maastricht, and managed to also fit in a trip to the modern art museum over the river, the Bonnefanten Museum, which was housed in quite an interestingly designed building - as with many modern art museums I can be more interested in the building than the art!

Maastricht was a walled city, and much of the walls on the southern edge are still up, and make for a nice walk around the ramparts and through the city park (Stadspark) and the older areas of town. There was also plenty of art and sculpture scattered around the city, my favourite of which was the old Bear Pit (berenkuil) in the city park, part of which used to be a zoo i.e. an actual bear pit! I've only shown the dead giraffe and girl on top, but the pit was filled with all sorts of wildlife sculptures around the walls and bottom. No trip to the Netherlands is complete without stocking up at the supermarket before heading back to Germany, so of course I grabbed plenty of my favourite Dutch junk food again this time...

The empty bear pit (Berenkuil) in Maastricht City Park

Exploring Mainline Steam

May 10, 2015 in City

A break from weddings and portraits and back to my roots of rust and steel, dark colours and textures.

Okay, we discovered the location while scouting for a wedding, but it was so promising we came back with our tripods one afternoon to shoot the trains and engineering works inside the big dark building. This is the Mainline Steam depot out the back of Parnell, Auckland. It has four train lines entering a large building containing at the time I think 8 locomotives in various stages of repair. Mostly steam trains, with one electric, and a few pieces of rolling stock. The location unfortunately had its lease terminated by Kiwirail and has already begun the long process of moving out, so we got in just in time. A lot of the workshop and trains seen here are already gone! The trains and equipment here are being split between the Glenbrook Vintage Railway and a depot near Papakura, but will hopefully have a permanent home again soon. Either way, it was great to find Mainline steam in time to get in and take photos before the opportunity was lost.

Mainline Steam are also seeking donations towards this move and the cost of a new permanent home, and all the relevant details are on their page here.

Behind the Scenes

Oscar and Sally's Wedding

May 04, 2015 in Wedding, Portrait

A busy month of photographic events and adventures was capped off by shooting Oscar and Sally's wedding, again with Sven (Bokeh-Monster). I had a lot of fun shooting this wedding, although it was full of challenges and learning experiences, as much of the ceremony and reception was spoken in Korean :) I've been to South Korea previously, but can't remember much beyond the words for 'hello' and 'thank you' unfortunately! Luckily we could tell well enough what was going on, got all the important shots, and also got to enjoy something different, which keeps things interesting for me! The ceremony was held outside in the bright sunshine, which provides further photographic challenges, rather than linguistic, but I think we dealt with that reasonably well. Going for a softer colour palette I think helps with harsh sunlight.

The ceremony was held on impressive grounds, with all the decorations and food provided by volunteers. I was very happy to receive my own lunch box full of interesting Korean snacks, and a can of coffee to keep me going. Of course I drank Sven's can also ;) Oscar and Sally were good sports, after the reception lunch we explored around the grounds a little before heading off to a local beach for the setting sun. Time was limited before their family dinner engagement, but I think we got some interesting shots, and I'm particularly happy with the lead image and few at the end of this post!

Jonathan and Anita's Wedding

April 15, 2015 in Wedding, Portrait

This year I've started shooting weddings with friend and now business partner Sven from www.bokeh-monster.com. We are planning on a joint photography brand and website soon, once we have built a bit more portfolio, but for now here are my pics from Jon and Anita's wedding. Jon and Anita are good friends of Sven's, and also becoming my friends as well thanks to gatherings at Sven's house, and discovering Jon's passion and knowledge of coffee surpasses my own ;)

The wedding was held in Fraser Park, in Parnell, Auckland, with a cake and (excellent) coffee gathering in the adjacent La Marzocco coffee warehouse next door. The wet-weather options were limited, but luckily the rain on the day was mostly light, and even added extra interest to some photos. Following the coffee and cake we took the bridal party down the road to the Mainline Steam rail depot for an 'urban' setting around the tracks and disused equipment. We then hurried to make a quick trip out to Long Bay for the classic beach shots, before heading back for the evening dinner reception, speeches and dancing. This is just a small selection of photos throughout the day, and you also check out Sven's shots here.

We both had good fun shooting this wedding, and hopefully there will be a lot more of these coming! And congratulations of course to Jono and Anita!