Since my last entry I've been away to New Zealand. The trip to NZ was a great success - 3 weeks touring the North Island revisiting locations from when I used to live in NZ over ten year ago - Auckland, Northland, Volcanic Plateau, Wanganui, Taranaki, East Cape and Coromandel. It was also an opportunity to apply the HDR and stitching techniques I'd developed in 2008.
As it turned out it was the last photograph from a location I'd never visited before that was the most satisfying from a personal point of view. It was the execution of a visualization based on images I'd seen of Cathedral Cove in postcards, books and the movie Prince Caspian. What particularly intrigued me about this location was the way other photographers had dealt with the exposure challenge of shooting Te Hoho Rock from either inside, or outside the cave.
Using conventional exposure techniques it is not possible to expose for both the inside of the cave and the rock - you either have to relegate the cave to a silhouette and expose for the rock, or step outside the cave and shoot the rock only. Using the HDR techniques I'd developed in 2008 I was able create an image that allowed both the rock and cave to be exposed as they appeared in reality.
In some ways the trip felt like a reconnaissance for a more extended trip. I'd like to return to the East Cape and spend more time photographing the churches and landscapes of this remote and dramatic region. The church at Raukokore provide an ideal subject for creating a large scale architectural photograph using stitching.
