Kuto, Isle of Pines

It’s been a little hectic since I’ve come back from my trip to Isle of Pines. So I apologies for the lack of content but I was finally able to edit this photo. Though we had Uesi Cyclone approaching from the north, it didn’t really affect us apart from some light showers in the middle of the night and on our last day. As you can see, beautiful sunny days during our stay. Very hot too but we were lucky to have constant, cool wind at Atchu Camping, where we were staying.

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Isle of Pines is right down the southern tip of New Caledonia and part of the Province Sud (Southern Province). You can get there by plane (through Air Caledonie) or by boat (through Betico 2), we chose the latter. It's cheaper and though you leave early in the morning, there's a snack bar for breakfast or other things. The trip takes two and half hours along the south-west coast of the mainland and is absolutely beautiful. The boat moors in Kuto Bay at the end of the beach with the same name, located south south-west of the Isle of Pines. Kuto Beach and this one, Kanumera Beach, are world renowned for their white and very fine, powder-like sand. Feels likes your walking on flour, no joke, that's how fine this sand is.

Our trip here was purely for relaxation. And relax we did. We spent most of our time on this beach and Kuto's as well. We did hire a car at Kou-Bugny Hotel for a day, just to visit the Grotte de la Reine Hortense (Queen Hortense’s Cave). That took most of the morning then we drove to Gadji for a look. We had lunch at the Meridien Hotel (expensive but nice) before heading to Vao for a swim at St. Joseph Bay. Then we slowly made our through Vao village before heading back to Kuto. A nice and easy day round the island.

As with most of the beaches in Isle of Pines, Kanumera beach is paradise. It’s split in two by a huge rock formation where snorkelling, all around it, is magnificent. If snorkelling isn’t your thing, you can enjoy the fine, white sand and turquoise water with a cocktail in your hand from the Banian bar & restaurant, of the Ouré Lodge, situated at the far end of the beach in this photo.

And talking about the photo, the one difficulty I had, was getting the exposure right in camera. The sand is so white and bright, as with snow, the camera under-exposes to balance the overall exposure. So I had to over-expose the shot by about a 1 stop to get the correct exposure for this scene. Not sure of myself, I did take two other exposures just in case. Better too many than regretting. Also had a little trouble with the White Balance. At first I based it on the boat but it gave me a too warm of an image so in the end I used the eyedropper on the sand and warmed it ever so slightly. Oh and if your colours don’t look right sometimes, play around with Calibration (in Lightroom), you’ll be surprised how effective it can be.

OK, well, I’ll get myself into gear and try to post more photos from the Isle of Pines for the next couple of weeks. Hope to see you back here soon. Cheers.

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SONY a7 III

full-frame mirrorless camera (body only)

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TAMRON E 28-75 MM ƒ/2.8 Di III RXD

E-mount standard zoom lens for Sony cameras

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LEE FILTER HOLDER

LEE 100 mm filter holter

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LEE ADAPTER RING

LEE 67 mm thread adapter ring for 100 mm filter holder

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LEE POLARISER FILTER

LEE polariser filter for LEE 100 mm filter holder

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SANDISK MEMORY CARD

SANDISK Extreme Pro 128GB SDXC memory card

Kuto, Isle Of Pines

I’m heading over to Isle Of Pines in a couple of days and it reminded me that I had photos dating back from 2014 of this place. So I went through my catalogue and found this one to share with you. Technically not the best image but it portrays an essence of this island. Tranquil waters, blue skies, traditional pirogues and the feeling of being isolated.

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Isle Of Pines is situated at the southern most point of New Caledonia and is renown for it’s fine, white sand beaches. You get there by either boat or plane and both offer exquisite, though very different, views of the mainland and the surrounding islands. You also get to see the reef line, more islands and the different colours of the water by plane. By boat, you’re in the middle of it all with the smell of the sea and the wind in your hair, if you so choose to. Enjoy a drink and/or a snack as you make your way along the south/west coast. Personally, both are a must.

In 2014, I was there with my brother and friends. It was our first stop from of the P&O cruise ship holiday we were on. I had just received the Nikon D7100 with the Nikkor 18-105 mm kit lens a few days earlier so the cruise was my learning ground. For this image my intention was to have the pirogue in focus and the background a blurred. So I chose to go with an aperture of ƒ/5.6 thinking it would be enough to have the whole pirogue in focus and throw the background out of focus. Not the case. Now the background is blurred but not enough for my liking and the pirogue is not totally in focus. If I remember correctly, my focus point was the closest perpendicular bar on the pirogue side, thinking the depth of field would extend to the back and front of the pirogue. Once again, not the case. And though I had a shutter speed of 1/3200th, the focus point isn’t as sharp as I had hope it would be. At first I blamed the fact it was a hand-held shot but with a shutter speed that high my guess is the auto-focus didn’t quite lock-on as I took the shot. I should’ve taken more care and time though when checking the image on the back of the camera. I tried to correct the blurred pirogue in Lightroom but you can only do so much before ruin everything. In my opinion, a beautiful image nonetheless but technically not good.

As I said, I’m heading back to Isle Of Pines in a couple of days so I’m looking forward to capturing a sunrise, sunset and a starry night shot, if I’m lucky. I might even make a small video of my time there but not promising anything. See you when I get back.

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NIKON D7100

24MP crop sensor DSLR camera (body only)

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Nikkor AF-S DX 18-105mm ƒ/3.5-5.6G ED VR

NIKON Crop sensor STANDARD ZOOM lens

Noumea, New Caledonia

I was doing a bit of cleaning up in my Lightroom catalogue and came across this photo. It dates back to March 2018. I was using a Canon EOS 1300D with a kit lens that I had won in a photo competition. I remember I was out at La Baie Des Citrons (Lemons Bay) trying to capture a sunset. Nothing spectacular happened but I stayed through blue hour trying long exposures.

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Blue hour, on the other hand, was beautiful. With everything blue, I remember imagining this photo in black & white before I even took the shot. I wanted a long exposure so I went with the maximum the camera would allow without a remote, which is 30 seconds. To get the cleanest image possible, a very low ISO is necessary, in this case 100. An aperture of ƒ/6.3 gave me the exposure I needed to capture the photo I wanted. The thin clouds are totally smoothed out, the water as well though it was already pretty still. Plain and simple.

Post-processing was a matter of simplifying the image further. Getting rid of all distractions like buoys, sail boats, birds, stars trails and dirt spots from my lens. All that’s left is the ruins of a wharf and the marker, perfect. That’s exactly what I wanted, a minimalist image. I might get this one printed.

All my research about this dilapidated wharf were in vain. The remnants show it used to start from the Four à Chaux (Lime Kiln) of La Baie des Citrons. I’m guessing it may have something to do with that. I would love to get some information on it so if anyone knows something, please drop me a message over on Twitter (@Hervouet) and I’ll update this post with the info. Thank you.

THE FALLS AND THE HOLE

Here are the photos from the last video. I think I added a couple more in there too. 

So to recap the third day of our New Zealand trip of the North Island, we woke up in Kaikohe, a town west of Kerikeri and made our way to Haruru Falls in Waitangi. From there we headed to Paihia where we had booked a ferry to visit the famous Hole In The Rock on Motukokako Island. On the way there and back, we stopped over at Otehei Bay on Urupukapuka Island. The Hole In The Rock is just after Cape Brett, where you will notice a hut and lighthouse on the hill. Back in Paihia I took a photo of the beautiful stone building, the St. Paul’s Anglican church.

We hit the road back towards Auckland that afternoon and stopped for the night at the Sheep World Caravan & Camping Park. A wonderful place and so is the owner.

Again, I’d like to thank Alain, my friend, for letting me use a couple of his photos.

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Cockington Miniature Village was the last of my photos from Australia. And even though I’m heading to New Zealand this weekend, I won’t be sharing photos from there but from home, New Caledonia. The reason being I don’t have a laptop to edit my photos on the go. I promise you’ll get to see them as soon as I get back in a couple of weeks though.

Néocallitropsis Refuge Falls is located in the Yate municipality in New Caledonia. A small waterfall ending in a nice waterhole, especially appreciated after a long walk. A few of us decided to hike the first stage of the GR NC1. Which is a fourteen kilometre hike that starts from the Prony refuge in Baie de la Somme (Mont Dore) and ends at the Néocallitropsis refuge (Yate). The refuge (hut) is located just off to the left of this photos. The hike doesn’t loop so either you retrace you steps back or drop a second car near the Néocallitropsis refuge to head back to the start once finished. I stayed the night in hopes of capturing a couple of sunset and sunrise photos. Unfortunately I missed out on sunset. I drove a couple of ladies and their dog, who thought the track looped, back to Prony refuge. By the time I got back, all the beautiful light had vanished and rain clouds were rolling in. It poured down pretty much all night so a shot of the stars didn’t happen either. I woke up to an overcast and drizzling morning. I want to pack up and head home but I didn’t know when I was going to be back here. I told myself “You’re here now, make the most of it. Go home with at least one photo.”. It stopped raining long enough for the ten minute walk back to the refuge (I didn’t anticipate the bad road to the refuge so I camped next to my car) and take a couple of photos before it started raining again. I got back to the car drenched but happy with myself for not giving up earlier.

Getting the long exposure time that I wanted for this photo wasn’t difficult with the lack of light from the overcast skies. The small aperture to get everything in focus helped as well. My aim was to get a silky smooth waterfall and it’s exactly what I got.

Never give up. You never know what lies in store.

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1.3 sec @ ƒ/11, 55 mm, ISO 100

I got up early on my first morning in Melbourne (Australia). I was eager to get some sunrise photos of Docklands. There are two areas where you find these pillars. They’re divided by the Central Pier. Unfortunately, on the left side of the pier, the water is quite dirty with rubbish. Such a shame. I was surprised to see this side was so clean. Might have something to do with the currents. My composition was pretty obvious or so I thought. I wanted these poles in the shot as well as the bridge.

My original shot was a 3:2 which included some of the Central Pier on the left side of the image. It didn’t look right to me though so I decided to get rid of it and ended up with a square crop. I like it better but it still looks unbalanced with the buildings on the right. But I like the buildings… Long exposure to smooth out the Yarra River, as there was a little breeze, and to capture a better reflection of the posts and the lights from the bridge. No drama in the sky but I think I like it that way as it reflects the calmness of the water.

Talking about a little breeze. It was freezing! I didn’t have any gloves and anyway, I thought my jacket pockets would be enough to warm them up. Nooo! Not at all. It got so cold that it was painful to manipulate the camera buttons. I’ve never experienced anything like it. And I don’t think I ever will again. I bought gloves that morning. Not before the sun came out though. I got blue hour, I had get golden hour.

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6 sec @ ƒ/8, 25 mm, ISO 100

I find it so hard to get up in the morning. But I did it. Headed down to Coogee Beach (Sydney, Australia) to shoot sunrise. I didn’t have any composition in mind but there’s plenty to shoot down there. I just needed a beautiful sunrise. I had shot here before a few years back so I wanted to find a composition elsewhere first but when I saw the waves smashing into the pool’s walls on the south end of the beach and over flowing it, I was just drawn back to it.

At first I used a fast shutter to capture the waves splashing into the air but there’s something about long exposures that give certain images a surreal look. So that’s what I tried here. I closed my aperture down further than I usually do to get a longer exposure. The chaos and drama the wind was causing in the water just disappeared to a calm and simplified scene. I wish there were more clouds in the sky, catching that morning light, I think it would have made for a moodier image. Sometimes less is best. Talking about the sky, because of the long exposure it was now blown out. I was bracketing my exposures so I knew I was able to recover it. Only needed two exposures, one for the sky and one for, well, the rest. I used Photoshop to blend and match the exposures then I jumped back into Lightroom to finish the edit. It was fairly quick and simple. Pity the photo is slightly out of focus though.

Ten minutes after I started shooting, people were arriving to take photos of the sunrise too. Some came with their smartphones, others with point and shoots and a couple with DSLRs but only one with a tripod. Lucky I arrived early. And no one impeded on my composition (Yoohoo!). The tripod dude and I left about twenty minutes after sunrise.

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6 sec @ ƒ/16, 18 mm, ISO 100