Film Roll: 2025-04-01

Film: Ilford HP5+ shot at ISO 800

Post Processing: GIMP

Although this photography doesn’t come until the second half of the roll, how could I place anything else first in the post? Here’s a waterfall at Ross Creek. There really wasn’t enough light to trichrome this, but I tried it anyway. The flowing water gives a really nice effect here, especially where it dances between the various color layers.

As always, starting a roll always leaves the first frame up to the camera rather than the photographer. Perhaps I should throw these frames away, but I like seeing where chance will slice my composition.

The “correct” way to start any roll is to take the same shot several times until the camera indicates the film has been loaded fully. Hence, I present the same church composition three times.

This last one is probably my favorite. I like the framing leaves in the last shot, but it was a little much. Here, the church shines through.

Another church! I think I could have found a better spot for this shot, one that gave a wider view of the building. I also think the contrast here was a little lacking.

A beautiful macro flower. I would have liked to capture the stunning color here, but alas, there was a time constraint to get up to a lookout and back before the bus came.

And here is said lookout. This frame captures the mouth of the harbor, looking north-east and thus out towards the great Pacific Ocean. There’s a little too much haze to really appreciate that, though.

Now looking down to focus on the timberyards. The scale simply doesn’t come through, and these are small operations compared to some logging operations.

There was a cruise ship in on this day. It made for okay photography, but honestly the port and container ship were more interesting to me.

I like the contrast in themes here. The industrial port, the historical church, and the wild hill, all in one composition. There’s something pleasing about it.

In a previous roll we captured Mount Cargill from Dunedin. Now, we’ve walked right past the Mount and capture the same radio tower from Port Chalmers. It’s still as intimidating.

Leaving the lookout now, I think the view over the Port Chalmers community is just as nice as the view over the Port itself.

A full week passed since the last frame, but life gets busy, doesn’t it? This exposure was particularly exciting for me, and long time readers will know why. The clouds! Look at the contrast! The secret here was hiding under my nose for the longest time; a red (and to a lesser extent, an orange or yellow) filter will massively pull down the highlights in a blue sky, but only mildly pull down the highlights in white clouds. The result is much more contrasting skies! Hallelujah!

I was so excited I just had to take another cloud composition immediately.

Here’s a friend of mine that has shown up in frame before. We took a journey to Ross Creek on this particular occasion, which composes the remainder of this roll.

We followed a possuming track into Ross Creek rather than taking the usual entrance. There were some neat places along the way, including this spot that had its own little creek running along it. There could have been more light, but there was enough.

Here’s the waterfall from the trichrome above, in Ross Creek proper now. I had come back to photograph this specifically because I wanted to play around with shutter speeds and fast flowing water.

With a fast shutter (and wide aperture to compensate) I got to freeze the waterfall reasonably well. This was at 1/1000 of a second. Perhaps at 1/2000 of a second the result would be really pronounced, but the Ricoh cannot shoot that fast.

With a slow shutter (and a stopped down aperture, giving nicer depth of field), the effect is reversed. Now the water is smeared out over its entire trail. I think I prefer this frame over the previous! The effect is really gorgeous, and it’s not something the human eye can naturally see. These frames were all taken on a tripod, hence the lack of blur from camera shake.

Taken while crossing the creek. Trying desperately to not fall in and drench my equipment.

Looking out over the reservoir, I like the ripples in the water. The old building and bridge are a nice subject to photograph, too.

A subtly different shot. Now the duck is splashing water about, which you can see if you look hard enough, but really it’s hard to distinguish from grain or noise. I edited this frame a little differently to the previous one, making the water slightly darker and boosting the contrast in the more-prominent clouds.

A friend, a top a little ruin!

The same again, but at a new angle, and with evidence of my struggles to get details out of my subject’s face!

Alright, get out of the scene, friend. Let me capture the little ruin by itself and not have to worry about editing around both scene and human.

The last frame of the roll, in which I got a tasteful beam of sunlight and plenty of contrast on the stones.