Wé, Lifou

27th and last day of confinement.

Almost three years ago now, I had the honour to photograph my cousin’s wedding in Lifou. We spent five days in total to, not only, photograph the administrative, religious and traditional wedding but also photograph and visit this beautiful Loyalty Island, that is Lifou. We stayed, here, at the Drehu Village hotel in Wé, the capital of Lifou. I’ve got a few more photos over on my profiles Facebook, Instagram and Flickr if you’d like to see more of Lifou.

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The Drehu Village hotel offers a couple of suites and 28 bungalows. They’re clean, comfortable, spacious and quiet. The bar area, just off to the right of this photo, doubles as the breakfast area. The restaurant, to the left with the green and purple lights, serves delicious and beautifully presented meals made from fresh, local ingredients. And of course, a pool. The staff are kind and their services efficient. Different activities are also available along the gorgeous beach of Chateaubriand Bay, where the hotel is located. Nothing bad to say about this hotel, really. You can even get good deals all year round.

This is a HDR (High Dynamic Range) image comprising of five exposures of two to thirty seconds. They were taken with a great little point & shoot camera, the Panasonic Lumix LX100. I’d bought it, after I had all my gear stolen, just to have a small camera to shoot with while saving for a DSLR. And yes, I photographed the wedding with it. Back to the image, composition-wise, I should’ve framed to the right a touch to included more of the bar area. And also towards the end of blue hour for a more pleasing image with the complimenting colour in the sky. Apart from those things I’m quite happy with it and quite surprised at the quality of the end image. The five long exposures were blended and edited in Lightroom with a number of local adjustments. Clarity and highlights on the wood panels in the foreground and the swimming pool. Colour correction at the bar and the restaurant. And a bit of Defringe in the sky and the roofs. I’m pretty happy with this image.

The Panasonic Lumix LX100 has it’s limits but within them, it produces amazingly good images which means you can take great photos with it. It’s got full manual controls, a Leica lens and can shoot 4K video. This camera is great for someone who’s looking for a fairly compact, point & shoot system and would like to get off Auto and into Manual shooting. Or even someone who shoots Manual but wants a compact point & shoot camera. Looks pretty stylish too, in my opinion.

So, I hope everyone’s is dealing well with confinement and using this time to improve your skills in whatever you’re interested in or learning new skills. There’s no better time for it. Starting tomorrow, here in New Caledonia, we’re slowly coming out of auto-confinement. Great for morales and the economy. But, that doesn’t mean everything is back to normal. On the contrary, it is more important than ever to follow the strict measures or protection. The distance between each other, washing our hands regularly for at least 20 seconds, coughing or sneezing into our elbows and, if possible, wear a mask. Any mask. And please, protect yourself, those you love and others by staying safe at home.

PANASONIC LUMIX LX100

12.8 MP point and shoot camera with 4K video

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VANGUARD TRIPOD

Vanguard VEO 235AB tripod with TBH-50 ball head

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SANDISK MEMORY CARD

SanDisk Extreme Pro 128 GB class 10 SDXC memory card

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THINK TANK MEMORY CARD CASE

Think Tank Photo Pixel Pocket Rocket SD memory card case

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GIOTTO LENS CLEANING KIT

Giotto rocket air blower, fine dust brush, rounded & pointed tips cotton buds, microfibre cloth and cleaning solution

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WANDRD PRVKE

WANDRD PRVKE 31 lt. travel and camera backpack

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6ème Kilomètre, Noumea

Day 20 of auto-confinement announces an extra week of… confinement.

My failure to capture the Super-moon this week pushed me to try my hand at capturing the South Celestial Pole. Though the conditions weren’t the best (the full moon), the opportunity was, with clear skies and the terrace facing south/west. I don’t think it’s too bad for my first attempt, what do you think?

The South Celestial Pole is difficult to explain. It’s an imaginary point in the sky that shows the rotational axis of the Earth. It’s a point in the sky where stars seem to rotate in a circle but in fact it’s the Earth rotating. The South Celestial Pole is only visible from the Southern Hemisphere and the North Celestial Pole only from the Northern Hemisphere.

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The idea was to capture the South Celestial Pole through multiple long exposures. Then stack them using StarStax (or any other software that can do the same job) to produce a single image. I would need a few hundred photos for the effect wanted so, apart from a camera and lens, I would need a tripod and an intervalometer. Even though I have a wired remote shutter release, I used the Sony a7 III’s in-body intervalometer for this project. I ended up shooting for about five and half hours but that’s because I miscalculated the total duration time of the project. I based my calculations just on the intervalometer which gave me an hour and half total duration time (1800 exposures x 3 second intervals or pauses between exposures). My mistake was not realising that the intervalometer wasn’t taking into consideration the exposure time of 30 seconds for each of the 1800 exposures, which gives me fifteen hours of just exposure time. Yep, off by that much. I used the PhotoPills app to find the South Celestial Pole but unfortunately, the calibration was slightly off and thus the pole isn’t centred above the flame, as I’d intended. No matter, now I know and will give it a go another time.

I started shooting around 11:30 pm and stopped round 5 am, which gave me about 600 photos. I didn’t use all of them as a few in the beginning and end had too many clouds and a handful in the middle had moved when I stepped out onto the terrace at 1 am thinking it was all finished. It’s also when I thought about why my calculation was off. I ended up using 535 photos for this image. I edited the first one in Lightroom then synched the edit to all the images. I exported them to a folder on my desktop then imported them into the StarStax application. Oh, I forgot to mention that I took a dark frame at the end of the shoot. That is, the exact same exposure as the other 600 but with the lens cap on, to capture a dark image. I also imported this frame into StarStax. It helps with noise and other stuff. Astro-photographers say you should also take bias frames but I didn’t bother. I mean, I almost forgot about the dark frame let alone the bias ones. Anyway, once the 535 photos and dark frame imported, I just clicked on process and left the application do it’s thing. The stacked image shown wasn’t great, to tell you the truth. So I reprocessed the 535 photos multiple times with different settings/configurations but the stacked image was never… it never seemed quite finished. It wasn’t the results I was hoping for. Until I decided to go ahead and export one of the stacked images and saw it was just fine, great even. The application must do a final rendering as it exports the final stacked image because the difference is day and night. Happy with the image, I brought it back into Lightroom for a final edit then into Photoshop for a bit of cleaning and added the flame on the torch. I couldn’t let the torch burn all night so decided to photoshop it in instead. Not the best work but it does the trick, no?

I hope I’ve explained myself clearly enough for you to understand how I came away with this image. If not, let me give you a simpler explanation. I took lots of photos of the exact same scene/picture. Now the foreground (terrace, buildings and trees) don’t move but the stars do, they rotate in the sky. So once I stacked all the photos on top of each other, because the foreground (terrace, buildings and trees) hasn’t moved, it stays exactly the same in the final image. The stars though have moved/rotated during the night, so once stacked, it shows the path they’ve travelled during the night, hence the circles in the final image.

I hope that has helped a little and I hope you’ve enjoyed this post. Talk to you soon and don’t forget, if your area is in auto-confinement, please stay home and if not or you’re working, please protect yourself and others by implementing the protective measures. Stay safe.

SONY a7 III

24 MP full-frame, mirrorless camera (body only)

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TAMRON LENS

E-mount 28-75 mm ƒ/2.8 Di III RXD standard zoom lens

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VANGUARD TRIPOD

Vanguard VEO 235AB tripod with TBH-50 ball head

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SANDISK MEMORY CARD

SanDisk Extreme Pro 128 GB SDXC memory card

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WIRED SHUTTER RELEASE

JJC wired remote timer/shutter release for Sony Alpha series cameras

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L-PLATE/BRACKET

quick release arca-swiss L-plate/bracket for Sony Alpha series cameras

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Noumea, South Province

Day 7 of auto-confinement and we’re doing just fine. I came across this photo in my Lightroom catalogue yesterday. I was torn between two photo of the Société Le Nickel (SLN), this one and another zoomed in toward the chimneys. I chose the former because it showed the majority of the refinery and my friend said it reminded her of movie scenes where someone’s spying on or looking for a way in to a compound. And I agree.

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This refinery was founded in 1912 by Société Des Hauts Fourneaux De Nouméa, owned by L. Ballande et Fils. It merged in 1931 with Société Le Nickel which was founded in 1880. Until 2009, it was the only metallurgical producer in New Caledonia. It is now one of three including Vale Inco (opened in 2009) in Yate in the South Province and Koniambo Nickel (opened in 2013) in Voh in the North Province. Wikipedia has interesting reading on SLN, Vale Inco and Koniambo Nickel. I ‘m sorry but I couldn’t find Wikipedia articles in English for the first two.

This photo dates back to 2013 before they fenced the outer periphery of the refinery. I drove up to their water reserve then followed a small track alongside it to this location. It was a very cloudy day but it hadn’t and didn’t rain. I had caught the photography bug about a year ago and the SLN was a fascinating construction for me. Still using my first hybrid camera, the Fujifilm FinePix S9500, and a very cheap tripod, I managed to capture this image.

Though the resolution isn’t the best, the image is technically sound. I decided to edit in black & white because of the old fashion look of the construction. To enhance this look, I put one of my split-tone presets over it then added grain. The grain, not only, added to the vintage look but helped to hide the lacklustre resolution. I like this photo, I really do.

Now, please everyone, protect yourself and others by staying home. Wash your hands, keep your distance, sneeze and cough in your elbow… you know what to do. If we all do our part, we’ll beat this Covid-19 a lot faster. Stay safe everyone.

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My attempt at capturing the Super Moon, yesterday. I'm not satisfied with these images but I at least got a few. I didn't think I'd get anything. In New Caledonia, the Super Moon hit it's peak at 00H52 (12:52 a.m.) on Tuesday 15th (November 2016). When I got up at midnight it was overcast and raining. I decided to head out anyway, just in case. Glad I did. It stopped raining and I could get some shot through the occassional clear patch in the clouds. Heading back out in a couple of hours for the moon rise. Unfortunately it's overcast again. Fingers crossed.

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