Païta, New Caledonia

I’m back everyone and I’d like to apologies for the lack of content for the last few weeks. I was very sick with high fever and a lung infection. I couldn’t sleep and when I could it wasn’t good, the constant headaches prevented concentration and couldn’t look at a screen long enough without getting nauseous. I rarely get sick but this was the worst I’ve ever been sick in my life. It really knocked me out. All good now though so hopefully I’ll be able to get back to posting regularly.

This photo was taken from a good friend of mine’s home in Naïa. At the time, the house wasn’t quite finished yet. This was late February. We were there to checkout the advancement on the house and to celebrate another friend’s birthday. This is pretty much the view he has from his lounge room. Absolutely stunning during the day too.

I was still trying out astrophotography with my new camera and though I had a few drinks in me, I had the urge to get the camera out and shoot the night skies. I took two shot for this image. The first was of the stars and the second of the foreground which I illuminated with a small torch. I then used Photoshop to blend the skies of the first photo to the foreground of the second and edited the blended image in Lightroom. It took me quite a long time to get the edit to the point where I was happy with it. The skies is where I had the most trouble getting right. I looked up a few astrophotographers on Youtube to get an idea on how they edit their images and used some of their techniques here. Not the most interesting photo, I admit, but I’m pretty happy with the results.

A big thank you to Roro & Mumu for that weekend. Cheers guys.

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28 mm, 10 seconds @ ƒ/2.8, ISO 3200

So this the last photo I will share from Naïa (Païta, New Caledonia). Taken from almost the opposite side of the panorama I took, here I tried to concentrate more on the reflection off the water. I went with black & white here because I tried something very different. I went for a long exposure using a piece of welder's glass as a filter. The image comes out with an extreme green colour cast which can be dealt with in post-processing but since I was converting it to black & white, I didn't need to do that. I'm quite happy with the photo. A little on the soft side but that's the kit lens' fault rather than the filter (welder's glass).

30 sec @ ƒ/11, 18 mm, ISO 100

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Another photo taken at Naïa (Païta, New Caledonia). We strolled down to the beach just before sunset. It was a little windy and sun was setting just behind the tree line at the end of the beach. I took a couple of photos and started to head back when I saw this beautiful, leafless tree. And those fiery orange clouds against the blueish almost purple sky were just as gorgeous. It was then I realised the clouds were acting as foliage to the tree. I setup as quick as possible but by the time I took the shot, the clouds had moved slightly and the alignment wasn’t as I had seen. Nonetheless, I am very happy to have captured this unique photo.

Camera settings; 1/30 sec @ ƒ/11, 18 mm, ISO 100

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I mentioned on my last post that I was in Naïa (Païta, New Caledonia) a couple of weeks back. This is another shot I took over there. What attracted me to these… bushy tailed stems was, well, exactly that, their bushy tails. The sun was still fairly high but was slightly backlighting the stems. Which made them glow against the dark background. I aimed for a shallow depth of field so as to blur out the background and whatever was closest to the lens. I wanted to isolate just one stem but it proved to be a lot more difficult than I had anticipated. The breeze wasn’t helping either. 

After finding a satisfactory point of view, I zoomed all the way out to 55 mm on my kit lens and stopped down as far as I could to f/5.6, ISO 800 and shutter speed of 1/4000 sec to make sure there’s no motion blur in the stem. 

I’m the first to admit it’s not a captivating photo but it doesn’t matter. It reminds me of a place and time and the people I was with.

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A couple of weeks ago, I was invited to Naïa (Païta, New Caledonia) to celebrate a friend's birthday. Naïa is a private waterfront residential suburb. It's about a half hour drive north of Noumea. A couple of friends bought land there but haven't started building yet. You can't really see it on this photo but there's a large pavilion on the right of the pond amongst the trees. That's where we settled for a little BBQ picnic. Just beyond the pond, you’ll find the beach with Angel Island in the distance. There are some gorgeous views as you arrive toward Naïa. I’ll have to plan a couple of sunrise/sunset shots.

For those interested, this panorama was made with 8 vertically shot photos. All taken at 18 mm, f/11, 1/320 sec, ISO 400. Stitched and processed in Lightroom.

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