'Action' landscape photography at Punakaiki

We are slowly coming out of Lockdown here in New Zealand. Auckland is still at complete level 4 Lockdown, but the rest of the country has moved to 'Delta' level 2. At level 2, you can start to travel a little further afield, and businesses can re-open (while still maintain strict social distancing and mask-wearing). I'm still working from home, and probably will be for at least another two weeks. The weather has also been rotten this week - wind, rain, thunder and lightning - the works. My wife and I have got a touch of cabin fever.

So when we discovered that Saturday looked promising weather-wise, we decided to pack a lunch and head out for the day. Yay! But where to go?

The Chimney Pot. OM-D E-M1 with Panansonic 12-35mm f/2.8.  f/5.6 @ 1/1000th, ISO 200

A quick check of the tides, and I knew exactly where I wanted to go. High tide was scheduled for 1.00pm, and it was likely going to be very dramatic. The country had been issued with a high-waves warning earlier on in the week, and from our home we can hear, and see, the waves as they crash into Cobden tiphead. With tides, and waves that dramatic, there's really only one place to head to if you're a photographer - Punakaiki and the Pancake Rock Blowholes.

Yours truly ready to capture the action. Photo: Joanna Lorimer. Nikon D70 with Nikkor 18-55mm

The Pancake Rock Blowholes at Punakaiki, are a very famous tourist destination. The 'pancake' rocks are formations that began 30 million years ago, when lime-rich fragments of dead marine creatures were deposited on the sea bed. These were then covered by layers of soft mud. Thousands of years of rain, wind and sea spray have etched the softer siltstone into horizontal grooves, which look like giant layers of pancakes.

Earthquakes have raised them from the seabed to the level we can see today, as well as creating a maze of underground passages and open caverns facing the sea. When there's a big swell and a high tide, the ocean surges into these caverns and water is forced through the passages. Huge geysers of spray can then burst spectacularly skyward - under the right conditions. The sorts of conditions we were likely to have on this very day...

Pancake Rocks Blowholes, Punakaiki. E-M1 with Lumix 12-35mm. f/6.3 @ 1/1250th, ISO 200

We were not disappointed. I've lived on the West Coast for most of my life, and have visited - and photographed - the Pancake Rocks Blowholes dozens of times. I've never seen them this good. They were, as the young kids say, 'Epic'! In fact, they were so good, and so powerful, that the spray from the really big geysers was reaching the viewing platform and drenching everyone. Very exciting - but not great for camera gear and lenses.

For the hour or so that we were there photographing the blowholes, I adopted a 'burst and hide' style of shooting. I would wait for the really big blows (you could hear them coming), shoot a rapid-fire high speed burst of about a dozen images, then quickly point my camera down and into my chest as I turned my back to the spray! It helped to keep most of the salt spray off of the camera, but I would still need to wipe the front of the lens every 10 minutes or so. Note to self - use a UV filter over the lens next time.

Surge Pool. E-M1 with Lumix 12-35mm. f/6.3 @ 1/640th, ISO 200

Fortunately, both the Olympus OM-D E-M1 and the Lumix 12-35mm f/2.8 are weather-sealed and can take some pretty serious punishment from the elements. But salt water is salt water, and probably not great for lens coatings or metal, weather-sealing or not. I was, as mentioned, trying to be careful and not get my gear drenched.

Having said that, it was pretty difficult to keep anything dry with all the spray from the sea floating around. As someone who wears glasses 100% of the time, it didn't take long between wipes until the lenses of your glasses (and camera) were needing a wipe-down again. Annoyingly, the really big geysers seemed to happen every time I stopped to wipe clear my glasses and lens. I must have missed at least half a dozen really big blows while wiping glass clear of water spots. But as maddening as that was, I knew if I was patient, it would only be a matter of time before another big gush came around.

Thar she blows! Olympus OM-D E-M1 with Lumix 12-35mm. f/6.3 @ 1/1600th, ISO 200

This is the big one! The biggest geyser I have ever seen come from the Pancake Rock Blowholes. And as impressive as it looks in the photograph, it's ten times more impressive being there and seeing it happen. The sheer volume and power of the water is - in a word - awesome!

As I said earlier, I've photographed the blowholes dozens of times. And I've captured some pretty decent geysers in my time. Or at least I thought I had. Until today. 

I really don't think it could get any more impressive than this. The photograph above of the biggest geyser I've ever seen at the Pancake Rocks Blowholes, is a 'bucket list' photo for me. It's one of those "if I never take another shot of this in my life I'd be happy" kind of photo. It's the 'action' shot of the blowholes that I've always wanted. And now, I've finally got it.

Does getting the image fill me with a sense of accomplishment. Heck yeah! Of course it does. The above image is probably a 30+ year image in the making. I smile every time I look at it. Why wouldn't I?

The aftermath. Olympus OM-D E-M1 with Lumix 12-35mm. f/6.3 @ 1/1600th, ISO 200

Does that mean I will stop going to Punakaiki to photograph the blowholes? No, not at all. I will still head to the blowholes if the weather and photography gods line-up again. And who knows, maybe there's an even bigger geyser in store for me in the future? 

But I doubt it. And as I said, if I never get the same conditions ever again in my lifetime, I can die happy, knowing I got 'my' image of the blowholes on a good day.

I also couldn't think of better gear to capture it with either. The Panasonic Lumix 12-35mm f/2.8 is creating beautifully crisp, detailed, sharp and vibrant images - with very impressive edge-to-edge sharpness at the apertures I'm shooting with (around f/5.6 to f/8 mostly). And the Olympus E-M1 is blazing fast, wonderfully responsive, fantastic to shoot with, and the RAW files are a joy to process. I've only had this combination for a few weeks, and it has already netted me a 'bucket-list' shot. What more could I ask for? 

If at first you don't succeed, try again...

I wrote a couple of posts ago about going out with my son to photograph a sunset. Unfortunately the sunset never really eventuated that evening, but I managed to turn lemons into lemonade (metaphorically speaking) and came away with some ICM (intentional camera movement) images that I really liked (see here).

Josh is going back to Uni this week so we decided to give it another try, since the weather has been consistently good while he's been home (clear, crisp winter days). We gave ourselves a little more time for this trip, and headed out to our location a good hour before sunset. Due to the current position of the setting sun, we figured our best bet was to go to the Blaketown Tiphead.

FYI: Tiphead simply means the end of a long and narrow point - in this case the road that leads out to the end of Blaketown and into the Tasman Sea. This area is also sometimes referred to as the Southern Breakwater, with its companion the Northern Breakwater (or Cobden Tiphead) forming the mouth of the Grey River as it enters Greymouth from the Tasman Sea. It can be very rough and treacherous for fishing boats coming into Greymouth when conditions are rough - and can make for some spectacular photos. I've yet to photograph this, since as stated, the conditions are usually less than ideal. Not the kind of weather I think about taking my camera out in. Even though the E-M1 and my 12-50mm EZ lens are weatherproof. Still....! Maybe oneday?

Who you lookin at? Olympus OM-DE-M1 with Lumix 45-150. f/6.3 @ 1/125th, ISO 200

With plenty of time to look for the composition I wanted at sunset, when we arrived at our destination my attention was immediately caught by the seagulls that perch on the rocks surrounding the Tiphead. There was some lovely evening light as the sun was sinking behind a bank of clouds (more on those later). The seagulls, who were extremely chill and very used to having humans around, were posing politely (mostly) for us, as we snapped away from a very close distance. You can often get within a few feet of them, so very close-up and detailed images can be had.

Seagull silhouette. E-M1 with Lumix 45-150mm. f/5.6 @ 1/3200th, ISO 200 

Seagulls are scavengers, and can get quite aggressive with each other if food is around. If you happen to be eating anything near one, you will most likely suddenly find yourself surrounded by dozens and dozens of them. But if you don't have any food, they do tend to leave you alone (thankfully). Because of this scavenger reputation, they aren't one of the most popular birds to photograph. And yet they can be quite beautiful, with their bright white body feathers, grey wings and red beaks. And, of course, if you manage to capture them in silhouette like I have in the above image, then it's hard to tell what kind of bird it is (unless you're an avid bird watcher of course). 

Taking the Shot. OM-D E-M1 with Zuiko 12-50mm EZ. f/6.3 @ 1/160th, ISO 200

As the sun began to set, it became obvious that we were once again going to be thwarted by a large bank of cloud on the horizon. As you can see, there was still a strip of golden light, and this was giving us some colour in the sky, but not really what we had hoped for. Still, undaunted, we began to set up our tripods - me on one side of the road and Josh on the other.

It was at this point that I discovered a problem. I'd left my tripod mounting plate at home on my office desk! I had taken it off the tripod head to attach it to the camera prior to going out - to save time in the field. But I had obviously been distracted at that crucial moment (I'm getting old), and had forgotten to attach it! Doh!

Surprisingly though, shooting into the light and letting the foreground go to a silhouette, I was getting very hand-holdable exposure times. I had switched from my Panasonic 45-150mm telephoto to my Olympus 12-50mm EZ lens, and at the wide end of the range I was easily able to take pin-sharp images hand-held at exposures of around 1/160th to 1/200th of a second. The ibis (in body image stabilisation) on the E-M1 is fantastic, but even so, the shutter speeds I was getting were fast enough for it not to be a concern.

Cobden Tiphead at last light. E-M1 with 12-50mm EZ. f/5.6 @ 1/2sec, ISO 400 

But eventually, the light did drop significantly enough that I had to start relying on image stabilisation to get sharp images. The above image was taken at half a second - obviously with image stabilisation turned on - and is tack sharp! Just amazing.

I know that the very latest ibis in the Olympus E-M1x and E-M1 Mk3 is even better, with people hand-holding for over 2 seconds and still getting sharp results. But for an old fella like me, who comes from the film days when tripods were a necessity if you shot below 1/60th, hand-holding and getting a sharp image at even half a second is mind-blowing.

I don't try to push my luck with image stabilisation - preferring to work from a tripod or follow the focal length rule for hand-holding as much as possible (shutter speed = or greater than the focal length of lens). But in this instance, I had no option, since I had left the tripod mounting plate at home. 

Breakwater blur. E-M1 with Zuiko 12-50mm EZ. f/20 @ 2.5secs, ISO 200 

Although I was successfully getting half-second exposures, I know when I've reached my limit. For the last few images of the evening, I switched back into ICM (intentional camera movement) mode, and captured some abstract photos of the waves coming in.

Once again, these happen to be my favorite images of the evening. They just resonate with me emotionally and creatively. I'm sure there are some who might look at them and think they're just blurry, out of focus photos. While others may even question whether it's a photograph at all?

But I simply adore them. And I think I'm going to be doing a lot more of them in the future. I already have the urge to get a collection of them together and have an exhibition somewhere. It's been a long time since I put together an exhibition of my work, but I've been mulling it over a lot lately. I guess I wasn't really sure what the exhibition might be about - but now I think I do. So yeah - hopefully an exhibition is on the cards. Don't know where, don't know when (apologies to Vera Lynn) - but I will definitely post about it on the blog when I do.