Welcome to Hollywood

Well earlier this evening Stephanie and I arrived in Los Angeles, California. It is my first time here since I was three so I am super excited. Stephanie has been before but is equally if not more excited. We have a busy 3 weeks getting all over the South West Coast, including a cruise to Mexico this Sunday for 7 nights. As soon as we got to the accommodation this evening Stephanie hit the pillow while I power walked up the Hollywood Hills to the Griffiths Observatory. This is the best vantage point to see the LA City Skyline. This is a location often used in films, one in particular was YES MAN, with Jim Carry. Please enjoy the pictures below, and see you next time.

Click the photos to enlarge them.

Here is a timelapse of the City I took.

We Built this City

This evening I decided to try out something I have been meaning to do for YEARS. I literally mean years.  I first learnt to do HDR (high dynamic range) photography 6 years ago, but I never put it into practice. It is a very simple technique but the mastery is in the post production. I haven't got it perfect to say the least but here are some of my first attempts. What you do is take a series of photos at different exposures and you use software to merge the photos together to produce photos with detail in the shadows and the highlights producing a photo with a high dynamic range, hence the name HDR.

Note the last 3 photos are not HDR, they are just regular photos. The last two however are interesting. I used two iPhone torches to light up the tree. I use the app iTorch. There truly is an app for everything. Now I should tell you I am actually using this as practice for when my Wife and I head off to the USA and Mexico later this week. Keep an eye out here for some photos from our trip.

Click on the photos to view them bigger.

Here are the normal photos.

In these two I used two iPhone torches to light the tree.

Castle on a Cloud

It has been a very busy summer for GAP, so much so that I haven't even thought about any blog posts. But now the season wraps to a close so I thought I would post some photos from my last wedding, that of my very good friends Phil and Fei Hsia.

Their wedding in Dunedin commenced in Port Chalmers with a wonderful musical catholic service followed by a busy photo session traveling to 4 different locations and concluded with a special reception at LARNACH CASTLE. This historic building really is a wonderful place to celebrate such a wonderful young couples promises to each other. As we drove up to the Castle, which sits atop a hill midway along the Otago Peninsula, we were engulfed by low cloud which could only be described as mystical and majestic. It really added to the atmosphere and created some really pleasing photos.













My parents are also very close with Phil and Fei Hsia so they travelled down from Wellington for the wedding. My wife Stephanie is next to me.