I have been using the Flickr photo website for quite a few years (http://www.flickr.com/photos/philternz/) though I have been pretty slack with photography in general and uploading to Flickr for the past couple of years, letting my membership lapse for a chunk of that time. I have recently re-signed up my membership and am planning on using it for photo uploads on my trip.
For most of that time I have been a member of the NZ Flickr Meetups group (NZFM) (http://www.flickr.com/groups/nzflickr/ ) and have been a group admin for a long time as well. In its first few years the group was very active, with a number of photographic (and beer related) meet ups and I have met a number of awesome people (some are even great photogs) through the group. As it got larger and the percentage of members who attended events fell off it kinda lost its fun, especially for us admins, and the group has languished (IMHO) for a while. It has, however, had a wee kick along through Facebook.
Back in the day we had numerous sunset shoots at Karekare Beach and I wanted to have one last session before I left. Karekare is one of my most special places and I was keen to take a few more images, both in the computer and in my head, when I went travelling.
Sadly the weather didn’t play fair and the evening was very overcast with a strong and gusty north easterly blowing. Five hardy souls turned up for the meet, and I believe it is fair to say we all had a good time ! Though there was no stunning, colour filled sunset, there was some great light, some awesome clouds and a bunch of surfers revelling in the strong easterly on the west coast beach.
Karekare surf club – one of my main reasons for living Karekare over some of the other beaches, like Piha, is there is no shops and no direct beach access, it is a 15 minute walk to the beach and the surf club is really only accessible by 4-wheel drive or quad bike.
The walk to the beach – awesome clouds and some distant NZFM members (Chris, Brett and Donelle) and as much sunset as we got.
The beach “feature”
The clouds were just stunning, a high solid bank with some fast moving low clouds underneath, made for some interesting light and with the use of some ND filters some great long exposures. I was really pleased with how these came out given the strength of the wind gusts and the only protection I had for the tripod was my body.
The sun had long been set and two surfers were still out making the most of some of the best conditions in a long time, their anxious dogs were eagerly and patiently waiting for them to get out of the water. They were still surfing after we left and it was pitch by then !
We finally left the beach for the 15 minute walk back to the car park and stopped for one last image on the way.
It was a great wee shoot, on a great beach !
Thanks Brett, Chris, Dan and Donelle for coming along and making it a fun time, and SUUUUUUCKERS to those who whimped out cos the weather wasn’t great 🙂
This post was created while listening to Christchurch band Coate, who really remind me of The Get Up Kids, which is a good thing. As WordPress is so shit to edit on and my skills on this netbook keyboard are so bad, I listened to the entire album, and iis really good. Download it free from Bandcamp.
Where is Phil now? 
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