Full Moon Madness

Who: Annette and Shirley taking turns in Bluey and as jetty photographer.
Where: Maraetai
When: Evening of Tuesday 29 September

So the day after all the blood moon photos flooded Facebook, the weather was calm and clear. Only problem - work! So we went night-yakking instead.

You probably couldn't really call what we did kayaking - only one in the boat, staying within 50m of the jetty, taping glowsticks and LED flashing lights all over the place and taking photos with long exposure from the jetty.

But any time in the kayak is valued. The moon rose brilliantly, a deep orange, then illuminated the water far more effectively than our $2 Shop glowsticks did.

Most of these photos were taken with shutter speeds of between 10-20 seconds. Still learning the new waterproof Nikon 1 AW1 toy and this is a great opportunity for it. (I found that the iPhone did very well with the point and shoots as well.)

Enjoy the photos.

Tips - bearing in mind that we are learners at this too, and this was not a full SLR camera - just a bit too risky to bring that out so close to the wet stuff:

- The glowsticks didn't achieve much, perhaps because they were cheap and nasty ones or maybe because it was such a light evening with the mostly full moon. The LED lights that we've used before work very well.
- A tripod is essential.
- A thermos of hot chocolate is a great way to finish off the adventure.

Good Friday Night Yak Photography

After my point and click waterproof camera died a sad death on Abel Tasman in January, I decided to upgrade to a Nikon 1 AW1 - waterproof, shockproof, freezeproof, dropproof and hopefully idiotproof too.

We'd recently seen some photos that inspired us to get some waterproof, flashing LED lights, tape them to Bluey's paddle and head out with the new camera to Maraetai under the full moon.

With a range of shutter speeds from about 10 to 30 seconds, we took turns paddling and photographing. Enjoy the results. I think the new Nikon camera is a keeper!