Sentinels of The Nevis
Apr, 2016Views
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Contest Finalist in Country Roads Photo Contest
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Behind The Lens
Location
This is one of my favourite places in the world. Just twenty minutes from home, but a whole world away, this is the head of the Nevis Valley, a high alpine plain, just south of Queenstown, in New Zealand's South Island. It wild country, Valleys folding into each other, covered in alpine tussock grasses, alien looking Spaniard plants, with their sword like leaves and dotted with craggy rock tors resembling ancient battlements. Here, you feel like the only person in the world.Time
This shot was taken late in the day. The warm light given by the setting sun, accentuates the golden colour of these tussock clothed hills.Lighting
Late afternoon light.Equipment
I love making panoramas. For me the 35mm format just can't capture the breadth of the landscapes I love. Panoramas allow me to create images that capture the expanse. This was taken on my old Nikon D5100, with a Tamron 18-200mm f/3.5-6.3 at 28mm, f10, 1/100th second, ISO100. Eight images were stitched together in Adobe Lightroom.Inspiration
What I love about this picture is the way it captures the expanse, with the road winding over succeeding hills and around the rock tors that cover them, all lit by the golden light of the dying day.Editing
Eight images were stitched together in Adobe Lightroom.In my camera bag
When I shot this image, I was using a Nikon D5100 most matched with a Tamron 18-200mm lens. The lens was a great solution for a variety of situations, covering the spectrum from wide to telephoto. It's limitations are sharpness and speed. Shooting panoramas stitched from a series of images, allows me, apart from being able to capture a very wide format, also to zoom in and capture more detail. Ultimately, the limitations of this set up became to great and I swapped my D5100, for a Nikon D7200, which gives me more control, greater dynamic range, low light performance and more pixels. I have improved my glass with a Sigma 10-20mm, to get the drama of the super wide; a nice fast Sigma 18-50mm f/2.8 covers the mid range and allows low light and night shooting; telephoto is covered by a Nikkor 55-300mm f/4.5-5.6 which with my APSC sensor gives me an effective 400mm focal length.Feedback
The South Island of New Zealand is, beautiful, wild and spectacular. Wherever you look, there are mountains, deep glacial lakes, dark mossy green beech forests, fjords, rivers and historic villages. But, it's off the beaten track, the high country you don't see on the postcards that I really love. These places are harder to get to, but so much more rewarding. And it's the weather that really makes these scenes. The landscape is the stage and the weather creates the drama. As on this day, we left Queenstown with grey skies above, but we pressed on and as we did the clouds became more dramatic and light broke through to magical effect.
