I've wanted a drone for awhile now but have held off until the software was smarter. Mostly because previous experiences with flying things remotely has never really gone well for me, and flying $4,000+ over a cliff does not appeal to my inner Scrooge.  The DJI Spark was released which not only has intelligent flight modes, but an excellent return-to-home feature which appealed as a place to start.  Day 1 I almost lost a finger. A month or so later I pulled a muscle, or nerve or something, jumping a fence to retrieve the drone from the gorse dense bush behind my house.  And finally To View More >>

A Ghostly Procession After departing the national park, soaking wet and hallucinating moving mountains, we set off to the next accomodation. The one downside to travelling Iceland in the winter is how dark it gets so quickly. We chose winter for a chance of seeing the Northern Lights but this did mean that the days were short. Because of this we had planned to view the Glacier Lagoon the next morning but as we passed by it to get to the Guesthouse the sight of colossal chunks of glacial ice floating in a lagoon as the sun was starting to set was too much to pass up.  Jökulsárlón To View More >>

TBT: Christchurch 2008 Back in 2008 I finally got to visit Christchurch. My cousin and I went down to celebrate my birthday and while the cold temperature was a bit of a shock to my JAFA disposition, it was rather beautiful.  Being that it was 2008, it was before the earthquake took Christ Church Cathedral away from the city. My cousin and I walked the stairs to the top of the cathedral and with hindsight as wonderful as it is, I'm glad we did it. Though, this is the second time I have made the decision to climb an architectural landmark at the last minute, only to have it come To View More >>

New Backyard, New Visitors Last year I posted about a pretty cool visitor to my backyard (check it out here) and when I had to move from Whenuapai I was a little bit disappointed that living closer to the city I might not get as many opportunities to see New Zealand bird life quite as close up.  My first day in the new house brought with it some beautiful Kingfishers flying about outside the kitchen window. I was busy unpacking however, so just took it as a good sign of things to come.  So the bad news first. Having an (incredibly small) portion of bush area behind your house isn't To View More >>

Throwback Thursday! Royal New Zealand Navy September 1980 Intake Reunion (2010) Back in 2010, I had the pleasure of heading along to the RSA in Browns Bay and shooting the reunion of the September 1980 intake of the Royal New Zealand Navy. It was an interesting evening, with some interesting stories and some even more interesting characters tellng them. It takes a special kind of person to be able to cope with being away at sea on a boat for any length of time. And these are the people that volunteer to do so. Respect to each and every one of them!  For the full album of photos from that night To View More >>

The arena being flooded this week after all the rain made for some cool reflection shots of Sparky and his owner Tammy this weekend.  To View More >>

I went along to both Huntly & Western Springs Speedway tracks and photographed a different type of motorsport. These ones go round and round, not just in straight lines! So weird, these speedway racer types.  So a very different experience to drag racing. There's certainly a lot more dirt flying around and a lot more opportunities to take photos for each race. Seven seconds isn't exactly a lot of time to get the shot right. There's also a lot less fuel fumes to blind you on the start line, but despite all that I'm still on the drag racing side of the fence so they'll be no allegiance To View More >>

Happy Anniversary Day Auckland!  Here's a shot of some of the wildlife that comes and hangs out in my back yard in Whenuapai. What do you get in yours? To View More >>

Living in Auckland often earns you the derision of the rest of the country, but it's home and I love it. I don't doubt the beauty of the rest of the country, NZ is beautiful, but Auckland has it's little gems too. One of those places for me has always been Bomb Point. Up until recently Bomb Point has been open to the public. Thanks to urban sprawl and the current construction going on over there, it's been closed off, so I was pretty lucky one of my previous flatmates showed it to me before that happened. It's 11 hectares of land, at what used to be a munitions dump for the Royal New Zealand To View More >>

It's not often I'm out of a coverage zone for any length of time and never usually in a place that I would describe as breath taking. Pawarenga, in the very far north of the North Island of New Zealand, definitely fit that description.  My cousin and I made the journey, getting up very early in the morning to this beautiful sunrise. A stunning start to a long drive.  Many hours, and a very long and windy drive, later we made it to the bay and marae at Pawarenga where my cousin's family are from. The area is simply amazing. The historic St Gabriel's Church (featured in the David To View More >>