Hi folk
Apologies - this Photo Walk was not the best-organised event we've run. A few stalwarts and three new people showed up. We didn't have a very clear plan, and I lost track of most of the group later on. Sorry, we'll do much better next time. I really hope you new people who showed up will forgive this and come along to the group's next Meetup event.

That aside, we met in Parliament Grounds, by the statue of Richard John Seddon - "King Dick". It was strange to see two Police officers guarding the front of Parliament, armed with rifles. We're really unused to seeing this in NZ, but last Friday's horrific event in Christchurch justifies it.

The Wellington Photography Meetup Group is free to join and hosts events that are mostly free to attend (there are some events that have an attendance fee). There are also photo competitions that are free to enter, like the Cuba Dupa Photo Challenge on March 30th.

Anyway, here are a few of my pics from this evening. (Got a little obsessed by the half-mast NZ flag on  the Beehive.)
Cheers
James

While on the photo walk on Wednesday evening, I couldn't resist a few shots of some of you while you were photographing. Apologies to all. Cheers!

Well, it's been a while, but it was good to see some familiar and some new faces on this walk. We met at Wellington Photographic Supplies' Vivian St store and headed up the centre of Kent & Cambridge Terraces, through the Basin Reserve and up to the Carillon then down to Pukeahu - the National War Memorial Park before repairing to the Southern Cross for chips and a pint.
Weather conditions were OK but not ideal, with clouds and sunlight doing a wind-driven dance and making life difficult for us manual exposure fanatics. (My shutter speed dial got a good workout.) We'll meet up and do this again soon, while the weather holds and before Daylight Saving passes us by. Cheers for coming.
Relevant links:
Wellington Photography Meetup Group
www.photographyworkshops.co.nz
www.photocourse.nz

Hmm - last summer: weather mostly rubbish, all photo walks in brilliant sunshine.
This summer: weather generally brilliant, 2 out 3 photo walks - rain.
Anyway, it was a nice evening out, and good to see people again and chat with a few new people. Hopefully we'll get a couple more of these happening soon, with better light.
Thanks again Wellington Photo Supplies - Featherston St - for use of the shop as a meeting place, and Richard Young of NZ Photography Workshops for hosting and organising things.
Richard's got a number of workshops coming up, from beginner to advanced level, and around Wellington and farther afield. I'm running a basics workshop with NZPW on Saturday 17th February at Makara. Last Saturday's workshop was full and went well, so I'm looking forward to the next one. Looks like it will fill up, too.

Also, at PhotocourseNZ we have several courses beginning in Feb. through to April.
Photocourse 1 - beginner to intermediate
Photocourse 2 - advanced beginner to intermediate
Photocourse 3 - intermediate level, a longer course including a group exhibition project.
Numbers limited to 8, 8, and 6 respectively.

My 'reasonable shots' selection is looking a little sparse this time, so adding a few pics taken a short time before we met, the demolition in Aitken St. Hope to see you at the next Wellington Photography Meetup Group event.
Cheers,
James Gilberd

We didn't pick the weather quite as well on this occasion, but there was a reasonable turnout for this evening's Wellington Photography Meetup Group photo walk. We met up at Wellington Photographic Supplies, Vivian St - thanks again guys for use of the store as a meeting place - and headed down Tory St, across to Cambridge Tce (I guess, as at this point a few others and I missed the cross street and lost the main group) and towards Waitangi Park and then the marina on Oriental Parade.

In the pub afterwards, I saw a few people's nice shots around the marina, where the overcast conditions proved photogenic. I came across the skate park about when the first rain began (it hasn't rained in Wellington for a month!) and most of the skaters buggered off. This left me and a few others in the group the opportunity to photograph the skate park sans skaters, so I took it. Then it really began to chuck it down! I got soaked, gave up shooting and headed for the pub. Arrived looking like a drowned rat. Settled in for a Christmas drink with the remaining photographers, none of whom looked as wet as I was.

Richard Young put together a Christmas gift package of vouchers and info for Photowalk participants, and Ana Lyubich from Excio talked about the new Excio app that displays photos on the home screen of your cellphone - an excellent way for photographers and to get their photos out there to be enjoyed by many. Check out Excio.

Richard, Alistair McAra and I are running some workshops in January and February. Richard's is on long exposure coastal landscape photography, Alistair will be running 'getting started' and more advanced Adobe Lightroom workshops, and I'll be doing a couple of Saturday beginners' creative photography workshops, with a couple of hours follow up on the next Monday evening. These are already booking up fast so have a look on the New Zealand Photography Workshops site for details. They also make great gifts for other photographers.

We will run some more photo walks and host other activities after Christmas/New Year, and here's still stuff going on this year at Wellington Photography Meetup. Have a great one, everybody.

Here's a selection of photos that I think give a nice 'Sense of Place' feel, concentrating on the Waitangi Park skating area. 

Well we struck the weather - and the light - right again. Also, there were quite a few new people on this Meetup, which is great. If you're interested in joining, it's free - just sign in to Meetup and come join us.

Thanks again to Wellington Photographic Supplies, and co-hosts for this evening's meetup, Alastair McAra, and Richard Young of NZ Photography Workshops

Although this seemed like a less-scenic walk than the War Memorial, or the Wellington Waterfront (which we'll be doing next time, on Wednesday 13th December), the hard, clear and direct sunlight made the mundane photogenic.

For me, this area is an old stomping ground, as when I was studying photography at Wellington Polytechnic in 1987, we were based in a building in Rugby St for the year. The building is no longer there, and the area has changed considerably. It looks as if it's in a constant state of renewal, for that matter, which to my eyes makes for some interesting photography. Here are some of my pics.

All of the photos in this blog are copyright James Gilberd Photography Ltd.
Please don't knick 'em without my permission.
For more info -
Photocourse NZ - photography courses and workshops for all levels
Photospace Gallery - New Zealand's longest-established contemporary photography gallery, 37 Courtenay Place, Wellington
Courtenay Studios - photographic studio and darkroom hire in central Wellington.

Well, it was nice to see both familiar faces and new faces on this well-attended event, the first photo walk of the summer. We'll be posting the next one in the
Wellington Photography Meetup Group, which will be in just a couple of weeks.
Thank you Wellington Photographic Supplies, Vivian St, for providing us with a meeting point, and Richard Young and Alistair McAra for co-hosting.

Hope to see plenty of images posted in the event page for this meetup. Or maybe do a blog and link to it. (Log in to view. People can join this Meetup Group for free.)

Apologies for getting sidetracked and lagging behind, in front, or off to one side of the main group. But as a photographer out enjoying myself, I tend to get absorbed in what I'm trying to photograph. So if it seemed like I ignored anyone, that was the reason. These photo walks are a great excuse to get out with a camera, but if you want to learn more about photography, both Richard Young - New Zealand Photography Workshops - and myself - Photocourse NZ - run various courses and workshops. And if you want to learn about the software end of things - Lightroom, Photoshop, etc - Alistair McAra is really the person to go to. (You can find him via Wellington Photographic Supplies, or message him in Meetup.)

OK, enough sales pitch already. I had fun photographing this evening. Here are a few pics. (I was using an old Nikon D40x, and an old version of Adobe Lightroom (LR2) on my home computer. It certainly lacks a lot of the nice stuff the current version has. It's interesting to work in a more limited way, though, although some shots I can't post because the pincushion distortion was just too horrible, LR2 doesn't correct it, and if I open up Photoshop I'll be working all damn night.)

We hope to see you at the next Photo Walk, and keep your eye on other events.
Cheers
James Gilberd

There's a heap of photos, so I put them into two groups of about 20 each.

Below - Vivian St, Tory St, Martin Square. (Richard, I got you a few road cones!)
All these photos are copyright James Gilberd Photography Ltd / Photospace. Please don't steal them without my permission. Ta.

Below - National War Memorial and surrounds. All photos are copyright James Gilberd Photography Ltd / Photospace. Please don't steal them without permission.

Here are a few more photos from the workshop on Matiu/Somes Island, Wellington Harbour, this time from the Nikon D600.

This is the first time I (James Gilberd) have co-tutored a photo workshop with Richard Young (of New Zealand Photography Workshops), and the first time either of us has run a workshop on this historic island in the middle of Wellington Harbour.

We advertised the workshop in the Wellington Photography Meetup Group which provided a good bunch of keen photographers who were also both tough and philosophical enough to put up with the late autumn weather on the island. Actually, it wasn't that bad (although, personally, I could've done without the "dawn" shoot on Sunday). From what we could see, Wellington City was copping worse weather than we were, despite our exposed location. The ferry trip over was smooth and the Saturday afternoon conditions pleasant, while Sunday was less ideal but still good for photography. Perhaps the most memorable scene was something we couldn't photograph (without IR/night vision equipment) - the procession of little blue penguins coming ashore in the dark after their day's fishing in the harbour.

It's fair to say that Richard is more of a landscape photographer than I am, and so I learned quite a bit about how he does things and approaches his photography a little differently to the way I do. But we were basically on the same page and everyone enjoyed the workshop.

This is a good place to thank my wife, artist Denise Durkin, who prepared the meals we all enjoyed on the island and generally helped look after stuff.

We expect to run this workshop again in future, but it's difficult to book a DOC house on the island in the warmer months as the demand is high. Still, if you can put up with cooler conditions, the photographic opportunities make it worthwhile.

I took two cameras along, the old Nikon D40 as a spare in case anyone else's camera died, but that didn't happen so I used it myself. I also took my 'work' camera, a D600, which I use for much of my commercial photography at Photospace and Courtenay Studios. Next time I might leave it behind and take a film camera, 35mm or a medium format.

I haven't edited the D600 photos yet but here's a selection from the old D40.

Well, the weather wasn't so pleasant as we've had for the 4 previous walks, and the light not as good, so it made for more of a photographic challenge. My poor old Nikon D40 struggled a bit with the low light, but it did OK (see below). Even on a slightly blustery night, there are photos to be had.

If you want to join this Meetup group, it's free, and it has many free-to-attend events. It's a good excuse to get out and do some photography and meet others who're keen on doing same.

Those who showed up - thanks for coming along this evening. Thank you also to Wellington Photographic Supplies Featherston St (City) store for providing a place to meet up.

Some of you might be interested in the current exhibitions by Thomas Slade at Photospace Gallery, 37 Courtenay Place. One set of photos (the environmental portraits and landscapes from the towns of Waverley and Shannon) was shot on 8"x10" film, scanned and printed up to 100 x 80cm. The other set was shot digitally, on a Canon 5D-MkIV at 50 MP. These photos, taken last year around Wellington might be familiar to some of you who are in them, as Thomas advertised in this Meetup group for extras to be in his directed photos. Remember the bus, parked in Tory St?
Cheers
James Gilberd