Preview: D-Photo Issue No. 75

MAKE A WISH LIST FROM OUR HUGE D-PHOTO 2016 CHRISTMAS GIFT 75 74 GUIDE ISSUE

WHERE TO ROOST: NZ’S TOP-10 ORNITHOLOGICAL OUTPOSTS

SHOOTING 360: CAPTURE YOUR SUMMER HOLIDAY IN CYCLORAMA

New Zealand New Zealand D E C.–J A N.

2016 $11.99

D I G I TA L P H O T O G R A P H Y M A D E E A S Y

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REPLICATE BRETT STANLEY’S UNDERWATER PHOTOGRAPHY TECHNIQUES

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HOMEMADE DIFFUSION: EXPERIMENTS WITH DIY FLASH FILTERS

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BELOW THE SURFACE: REPLICATE BRETT STANLEY’S UNDERWATER PHOTOGRAPHY TECHNIQUES

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ISSUE

HOW NOISY IS YOUR CAMERA? THE BEST NOISE-REDUCTION PROGRAMS TESTED

THE PAINTED PEACOCK PROJECT: ART ADVENTURE FOR SOCIAL BENEFIT

MEET THE 2016 SIGMA D-PHOTO AMATEUR PHOTOGRAPHER OF THE YEAR

CONTENTS ISSUE 75

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34 IN THE KNOW 8 COMMUNITY PERSPECTIVE

See what D-Photo readers have been working on and where they’ve been

10 FOCUS

Recognizing photographic achievement and bringing you all the latest news from the photography world

16 WHAT’S ONLINE

Find out what our top stories are over at dphoto.co.nz

BE INSPIRED 18 A HAPPY AMATEUR

2016 Sigma D-Photo Amateur Photographer of the Year winner Mark Waddington discusses his satisfaction with his photography hobby

26 A UNIVERSAL CONNECTION THROUGH ART

Adrian Hatwell talks to Sacha Stejko, one of four Kiwi women who created The Painted Peacock Project, which travels the world and helps communities through art expression

34 WORTH 1000 WORDS

Discover the stories behind three stunning photographs

38 SUBSCRIBE AND WIN

Subscribe to D-Photo now to get yourself a Sandisk Cruzer Ultra USB 3.0 16GB flash drive worth $20, and be in to win a Nikon D3400 18–55mm kit, worth $800.

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68 40 UNDERWATER PHOTOGRAPHY — LEARN HOW TO SWIM With the help of photographer

Brett Stanley, we bring you what you need to know about underwater photography and how to give it a go yourself

48 GRADUATION DAY Yuto Matsuda, the winner of the 2016

Sigma D-Photo Amateur Photographer of the Year Junior category, talks about his end-of-year school portfolio

52 CHRISTMAS GIFT GUIDE Find all the perfect stocking stuffers for

74 TIME STANDING STILL Rebecca Frogley puts the Profoto D2 1000

Air TTL kit through its paces while shooting fast-moving subjects

80 SHOOTING 360 360-degree photography and film is

encroaching on our everyday lives — learn all about the trend and how to get started

82 FILTER IT UP Adam Croy explores various filters for

your camera flash and what results can be achieved — give it a go!

your photography-obsessed loved ones

60 A HOBBY, TO A DEGREE Sampford Cathie talks to us about his

photographic journey, and how the University of Auckland’s photo club Photosoc helped him form his pathway

64 INSIDE THE MIND OF RAINMAN SAE film-making student Joseph Shirriffs

discusses his time at the educational institute, and takes us behind the scenes of his music video RainTron (Feat. Jessica Wulf)

68 ART WITHOUT COMPROMISE Mareea Vegas talks to James K Lowe about

creating beautiful commercial photographs that leave everyone happy and motivated by the creative process

LEARN THE ROPES 72 TEN GREAT SPOTS FOR BIRD PHOTOGRAPHY Briar Wyatt hunts out the top spots to

capture stunning bird photos this summer

86 HOW NOISY IS YOUR CAMERA? PART THREE — THIRD-PARTY PROGRAMS Hans Weichselbaum explores various third party programs to analyse how well they process noisy images to a brilliant quality

90 EXPLAINED: OCUSYNC We find out what OcuSync is and what it

means for drone users

92 D-PHOTO KIDS PHOTO COMP We present the top three images from this

round of the D-Photo Kids Photo Comp

WHAT’S COMING UP 94 CALENDAR Make sure you have all these important

dates in your diary

96 PARTING SHOT Find out what we’ve got planned for the

next issue of D-Photo

FEEDBACK

COMMUNITY PERSPECTIVE We want to show off your work, so each issue we showcase what you’re all working on and publish the communication we have had with you.

Make sure you keep us informed by emailing editor@dphoto.co.nz

DIY light tent in action We love seeing the results you capture when you put our columns into practice. We recently heard from Diane Beguely, who had a go at creating her own light tent as a result of reading our Pro at Home column in D-Photo Issue No. 74. “[I] am enjoying the latest D-Photo and have had some fun trying out the lightbox which is featured,” she said. “[The] lightbox was set up on top of my stereo, and [the] lighting used was a reading lamp. I held the lamp down from the front of the lightbox with light pointing upwards — this gave me the images with the shadow behind the car. [For the] image with no shadow, light was from the side. I prefer the images with the shadows.” Have a look at some of her attempts below, which she shot with a Canon 1000D, an 18–55mm lens, using a tripod, and in AE mode.

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who has won the Street Photography Tripod Prize Pack from Peak Design and Manfrotto, offered as the subscription prize in D-Photo Issue No. 73. We hope Christie enjoys his new kit!

Make sure you share your photos with us on Instagram — just include the #nzdphoto hashtag in your captions or tag us: @dphoto_magazine. Below are a few photos we’ve re’grammed since last issue.

Instagram inspiration

@heddfan_photography

Congratulations to Christie Booth,

@triebelsphotography

@maytwot

@atriptoyesterday

PROFILE MARK WADDINGTON

Nikon D5, 24mm, f/2.8, 1/125s, ISO 32,000

THE HAPPY AMATEUR

2016 Sigma D-Photo Amateur Photographer of the Year winning image

In this day and age of trying to find a way to always profit from your talents, it’s refreshing to hear from photographers who just want to shoot because they love it. Lara Wyatt speaks with 2016 Sigma D-Photo Amateur Photographer of the Year winner Mark Waddington about his photography hobby Entering the 2016 Sigma D-Photo Amateur Photographer of the Year competition was a time of reflection for Christchurch photographer Mark Waddington. While deciding which images to enter, he spent time looking through his vast catalogue to make his entry selections. With everything from aerial, cityscape, and street to wildlife and landscape photography in his collection, Waddington really had his work cut out for him narrowing down the images he would submit. However, he made one very important pick during this time — the aerial photograph that went on to not only take out the Aerial category but the overall competition as well.

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“One Saturday, early in the morning, I was flying my drone near Hagley Park to take some pictures of the new hospital development.

As I usually do, I did a quick 360 look-around while the drone was up, and [I] saw the rose garden in the distance. Having walked through it many times before, I’d never have guessed it looked like it did from the air. It was very ornate and beautiful. Next morning, with batteries recharged, I went and did the bird’s-eye view,” Waddington explains of his winning image.

“It was a real thrill to win the Aerial section, and a huge surprise and honour to win the competition overall.”

Nikon D5, 500mm, f/7.1, 1/1000s, ISO 640 Nikon D810, 45mm, f/8, 1/2500s, ISO 1000

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FOLIO THE PAINTED PEACOCK PROJECT

Canon EOS 5D Mark III, 35mm, f/7.1, 1/1200s, ISO 1000

A UNIVERSAL CONNECTION THROUGH ART The Painted Peacock Project is the creation of four Kiwi women who dreamed of travelling the world, combining their wanderlust with their creative skills to help communities through art expression. Adrian Hatwell speaks with one member of the travelling team, photographer Sacha Stejko

Artists have long looked to travel for creative inspiration and to broaden experience, shift perspective, and challenge ideas. When four creative Kiwi women discovered they were all beginning to feel that yearning to roam, they decided to team up and tackle a travel project with a difference. Rather than pursue their solitary crafts in isolation, they would travel to India and collaboratively put their skills to use, in aid of creative expression and social benefit.

From this idea, the Painted Peacock Project was born. Four artists from different disciplines came together to plan an excursion to the bustling city of Udaipur, in the state of Rajasthan, where they would hold workshops for impoverished primary-school students, as well as create a vibrant mural as a gift to the city. The collective includes illustrator

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Ema Frost, jewellery designer Cathy Pope, stencil artist Hayley King (also known as ‘Flox’), and photographer Sacha Stejko.

For Stejko, the youngest of the group, the experience was a first — she had seen her share of the globe but never on an adventure with such purpose. The self-funded project took over eight months of planning, with the primary goals of finding a school willing to participate in the workshops, as well as a suitable wall for the mural. Before she had even left New Zealand, the photographer had to come to grips with the unique challenges presented by cultural difference.

“India is not the easiest place to get things done,” she says with a wry smile. “The first school we asked said yes to the workshops,

Canon EOS 5D Mark III, 35mm, f/1.4, 1/6400s, ISO 500 Canon EOS 5D Mark III, 35mm, f/1.4, 1/8000s, ISO 4000

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Jessica Dru, Canon EOS 5D Mark II, 24mm, f/8, 1/200s, ISO 400

STYLE UNDERWATER PHOTOGRAPHY

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Maree Prebensen and Giada Caluzzi, Canon EOS 5D Mark II, 24mm, f/7.1, 1/200s, ISO 400

UNDERWATER PHOTOGRAPHY — LEARN HOW TO SWIM Photographer Brett Stanley lives and works in America, and he’s had plenty of opportunities to explore deep below the surface to perfect his underwater photography skills. He runs us through the basics of how to get started and what the style is all about

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ONE TO WATCH YUTO MATSUDA

GRADUATION DAY Since taking out the Junior category of the 2016 Sigma D-Photo Amateur Photographer of the Year competition, Yuto Matsuda has had his head buried in his books and recently completed his school-graduation photography portfolio — which we present here for you to explore

Being able to combine your interest in photography with a South Island travel experience is a dream for so many photographers, and 18-year-old Yuto Matsuda managed to secure this exact experience to create images for his endof-year school project. He trekked some of the great walks of New Zealand, capturing memories along the way. Looking at his images, you’d assume that he’d studied and practised photography for a long time, but, in fact, he’s only really pursued his interest for about a year ­— ever since he received his first camera, which he still uses now: his trusty Pentax K50.

“My dad and my brother are interested

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in photography, so, when I got my first camera last year, I thought, this is cool. At first, I was shooting anything I could, then I started going outside and taking landscapes and realized that I really liked doing that,” Matsuda says. “It would be cool if I could make photography my career, but, for now, it’s great as a hobby.”

Matsuda’s year-long school project involved curating a series of images and presenting a speech to explain the processes he went through while shooting. Here, he spends time with us explaining the scenarios and shooting conditions behind each of his photographs, giving us a behind-the-scenes insight into how he captured his striking images.

Pentax K50, 24mm, f/1.4, 13s, ISO 1600

The stories behind the photos “On the morning I took this image, I woke up at 2am to start hiking up an 1800-metre mountain in Queenstown. I hiked the rough terrain of Ben Lomond track in the pitch dark, only with a single torch. This was like climbing up an 1800-metre ladder with uneven steps in pitch dark, not knowing how

high I was. Because I was tramping by myself, I had to set a 12-second timer on the camera before running about 90m into the picture, where I am holding the torch at the night sky. I did this about six times to get the right exposure and composition. It is the most work I have put into a single image.�

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TOP 10 SPOTS FOR BIRD PHOTOGRAPHY

Fiona Maddox

TEN GREAT SPOTS FOR BIRD PHOTOGRAPHY With beautiful weather starting to appear and summer holidays to give us a little more time to stretch our legs and explore, Briar Wyatt found 10 spots to visit to capture beautiful photographs of New Zealand’s birds 1. Muriwai Beach: Muriwai Gannet Colony From August to March each year, head out to the rugged West Coast’s Muriwai Beach to witness (and catch a few snaps of) the majestic Muriwai Gannet Colony. This colony is one of only three mainland gannet colonies in the country, with around 1200 pairs of gannets nesting here in the August to March season. Muriwai Beach is roughly an hour out of Auckland, with viewing platforms giving the best possible vantage point for the birds. If you’re lucky, you might even get the chance to see a fur seal or a korora (little penguin) from their nests nearby at Maori Bay! 72

2. Zealandia: urban eco-sanctuary As the world’s first fully fenced urban eco-sanctuary, Wellington’s Zealandia provides a fairly unique opportunity to get up close and personal with a huge number of native New Zealand species — including six species that had been absent from the New Zealand mainland for 100 years before their reintroduction into this bush.

Whether it’s a friendly interaction with a gentle takahe or a raucous display by a flock of kākā, you’re sure to walk away from Zealandia with a collection of awesome shots.

3. Sanctuary Mountain Maungatautari: mainland ecological island Waikato’s Sanctuary Mountain boasts the longest pest-proof fence in the entire world, and it excludes all the pesky mammalian pests that can put our vulnerable native species at risk. This means that the species inside the sanctuary are thriving and ready to be photographed in all their abundant glory.

Not only is Sanctuary Mountain home to a vast array of native bird species — including the very rare hihi (stitchbird) and regal kākā — it also provides a home to a number of tuatara and, for those plant photographers out there, interesting native-plant species!