Easter Weekend :)

It's holiday time! Easter weekend had been great, because we are closed on Friday and Sunday. And for the first time in 10 months, i'm given a saturday day-off. It was simply the best thing ever happen because i can finally meet up with Leia and her friends and go for a short holiday.

Destination? The tip of South Island, collectively called Golden Bay. This is the 2nd time i'm visiting Golden Bay, and it's great! Lovely and peaceful place. Since my car is gone long time ago, i went back to uncle Bruce of Arrow Backpackers to rent his Toyota Estima for 3 days. Pick up the car early on friday morning and drove to Motueka for a night. Stop by quite a number of places, taking some photos with my old trusty D200 (still waiting for my new baby to come... :( )

Anyway, the trip here is to take friends around for a tour, and i do hope my 'tour guide' is worthy. hahaa.. Some hiccups along the way, like 'lost' in our supposingly short walk to Wharariki Beach ends up in Green Hill Beach. Sorry guys! :P And hopefully my driving doesn't causes too much nausea and dizzyness..  the hills of Takaka is hard to tame :)

So here's the photos from our trip at end of March. Day 1, Blenheim-Motueka Town, stop by Mapua for fish and chips again @ Smokehouse, hehe.. and mini potluck at night with Leia, Kim, Shiny, Pauline and Karl at Abel Tasman Motel.





Day 2, we start early, roughly around 7.30am and head straight to Takaka town. We visited Waikoropupu Springs around 9.30am, took some photos, short walks, and heads back to Takaka (well, it was only 10 min drive) for lunch. We walk around the town, had some crepes, while waiting for Dangerous Kitchen to open. It's pizza for $10, which is pretty cheap and tasty. After lunch, we head straight to Collingwood town, which is nearby, 30 minutes drive to check-in at Somerset Backpackers! Weeeee.. i miss Somerset's Chris and Hiromi, and Joy, the Labrador mix, and their wonderful home made breads and bush honey. Yum Yum!

Dancing Sand


From left, Karl, Shiny, Leia, Pauline, Kim, Me


There's heaps of midges flying on the water surface, and so does spiders setting webs and wait for easy meals.


Interesting plant hanging from the trees


We made some changes to our plan since low tide is imminent when we are there, and we could visit Wharariki Beach on that day itself. Low tide was around 5-7pm, which is perfect! We plan to take the 'short' walk around some small lakes before entering Wharariki Beach on the other side, but somehow, all of us miss the signs and end up walking further until we reach Green Hill Beach. Alamak! It was unexpected, but not too bad... at least another beach added to travel list.

First, we stop at Cape Farewell for a look out. Stunning view..






Next, we went to our 'short' trek... which ends up here; Green Hill Beach


Wharariki Beach on low tide.. reveals the mussels, seagrass bed, which is quite vibrant!


Leia and the famous arch of Wharariki Beach


Nice beach...


Sunset is beautiful on the beach


3rd Day, we decided to climb on top of Pillar Point to have a nice view of fossil point and Golden Bay
The view is stunning just like last time, but sadly, my camera was not wide enough. But it's a nice hike! Our next destination is fossil point but sadly, after just a short walk, it started to rain :( Have to cancel our plan and heads back to Motueka. Since the day is still young, we went to visit Abel Tasman National Park, and visited the Apple Split. Had quite a bit of fun there too..



We end the day with a dinner prepared by the girls. Another nice home cooked meals :) I had a great time for the past few days.. it's great, spending time with Leia and friends around Golden Bay.

Another day in the Sounds!

First of all, thousand apologies for such a long delay in posting.. Being busy, might be just an excuses, kinda neglect the blog for a little while. Laziness to be blamed :S

Euan's house, with a little patriotic touch of Malaysian flag! Thanks Euan!


After the flight with Sounds Aero, i visited another customer of mine, Euan Macdonald and his wife in Picton. They are such a wonderful and friendly couple. Our plan of the day was to have lunch at their place and then head to the Marlborough Sounds with his boat/yacht called Taranui.



So here they are, from left, Euan & Gillian MacDonald, and their neighbour.




As we leaving Waikawa Bay, we pass by a huge yacht belongs to a Russian guy who tour around the world. Rumours said, he was a Russian mafia. Hahaha..


We visited several bays around the Sounds, and this particular bay is famous for the fishes here. The fishes here are accustomed to be fed by humans, and they know when boats arrived.


After feeding the fishes, we head to Lochmara Lodge. One of the best place to hang out and have coffee or tea.


You can canoe here, swimming, all sorts of water activities here. Great for family outing!


As you walk in, there's a big green gecko greets you :P


The cafe and bar of Lochmara Lodge


The deco here is pretty creative, and i kinda like the way they recycle computer parts and turn into this!


Besides the 'gecko', there's also Indian Ringneck Parakeet who meet and greet everyone there. Cheeky little bird.





and kinda naughty too!


Besides having coffee, there's a short walks around the lodge. It cost about $8 per entry, worth it as the money goes into conservation, especially for these highly endangered Nautilus geckos.


It was a really great day out with them.. had fun, relax on the wonderful cruise around the Sounds. This is how i want to spend my day off! :)




Thank you for reading, will update soon, with photos from Havelock Mussel Festival 2013!

Sounds Aero Maintenance

I was given the chance to fly with Sounds Aero last week, flying high above Marlborough Sounds and outbacks. Thanks to Craig Anderson, the managing director of Sounds Aero Maintanance, a company which managed a large fleet of planes and helicopters in the Marlborough region.

It was my day off and i managed to arrange a time to fly with Craig to get some aerial photography shots of Marlborough. Dont know much about plane but this was a 2 seater, small size plane capable of landing on almost anywhere. According to Craig, we can lift off in 25 meters, which is really amazing! We land on fields and riverbed, flying across narrow gaps, it was simply breathtaking. Im even allowed to shoot with the door open while we are flying. Cant believe i dare to do that, and not to mention, risked the camera and equipments of falling down.

Anyway, I'm still in process of editing the photos and videos shot from both Nikon D700 and Olympus OM-D E-M5 (loaned by James Luhrs of Olympus New Zealand). So here's some preview..



CRop Circle of NZ? :P






Flying and taking photos while the door is open? Exciting!


The men behind Sounds Aero Maintenance


What a beautiful morning!


It was really cool to be here, especially when u only took 4 min from main road on the plane, compared to 4 hours tramping. Nice peaceful environment, crystal clear water, wildlife around, it was just perfect for a weekend getaway!


We need a little landing and taking off from the river.. and here's one of the shot






Never thought i could experience this, but i did, all thanks to Craig! It was simply AMAZING!

Kiwi Kids

For those who don't know, I'm also one of the photographer in Light Feather Studios. We are based in Penang, Malaysia and specialise in wedding videography and photography. For more info about our works and portfolio, do feel free to visit www.lightfeatherstudios.com. Most of our clients are based in Malaysia, but occasionally, we do get to shoot in Australia, & New Zealand.

Besides wedding, we also covers events such as portraiture and products in commercial photography. One of our recent job were to shoot some New Zealander kids or more commonly known as Kiwi kids. The shoot was held in one of the private school in Picton, New Zealand and here are some of the cute little kids of New Zealand, or i prefer to call them Kiwi kids :)



Most of them are pretty talented and photogenic i should say.. as kids are sometimes tricky to photograph. Some took a few try to get the smiles and expression, but some are just great and instant! Here's few more photos..





Besides the websites, you can visit and like our Facebook page @ http://www.facebook.com/LightFeatherStudios for more of our works in Portraiture and Behind the scenes (BTS), Slideshows, and Same Day Edit (SDE) videos uploaded regularly as we go through each clients photo-shoot session.

Motueka - Golden Bay, Day 4 and 5

Cant remember much now since it's been a delay in my blog post.. thousand apologies! I'll fill this blog post with photos to tell the whole story :)

We went to Waikoropupu Spring, or Pupu Spring in short and Hydro Walkway the next day. It's located about 10 minutes from Takaka township. Pupu Spring is famous because it has the world's clearest water! Imagine that!



Too bad the wind are quite strong and hinder our opportunity to capture some 'see through' shots :( Anyway, we headed to Hydro Walkway to enjoy some nature walks.







Such a lovely ferns isnt it?








There's all sorts of ferns and moss all around the walkway.. due to the high moisture content and humidity around the area, particular along the canals.




Beautiful place, but a little boring.. the only thing i found attracting is the finding of sundews!


Anyway, after few hours of jungle walks.. we are practically starving! And we gt just the right solution, Anatoki Salmon Farm is just around the corner. We drove about 20min to get there and greeted by a cute donkey on the way in.


The entrance of the salmon farm is pretty interesting, at least to me, cause I'm in the aquaculture industry all this while.








This kind of farms makes me drools, motivate and inspired me at the same time! Looking at those fishes in the water is just satisfying!


and the smells of hot smoked salmon makes me even hungrier! hahaha.. so, quickly, we grab a rod from the office and head to the fishing pond! It is so easy to fish here.. within seconds, we caught 2 huge salmon. One at 2kg and another one at 1.15kg. Lovely...


Smaller one for sashimi and bigger one, hot smoked tandoori! The price of the fresh salmon was $19 per kg, sashimi $5 labor cost, hot smoked $10 cooking cost. Cheap!








Yum yum yum! That meal makes my day! I can have these fishes every day if i live in Takaka!!
After the meal, we drove to Motueka town and check for a suitable date for sky dive. We were glad to book the very next day for our jump, as the weather forecast seems pretty good. We check in at Laughing Kiwi Backpackers for a night, $27 a night if i'm not mistaken, and free 500mb of data for internet. I thought that was sufficient until i finished it in a mere few hours. Damn! Anyway, here's some shot of the backpacker. One of the nicest i think.




and so we prepare ourself mentally for the dive that night. To think of it is pretty scary, but, exciting as well! Never really thought of doing this due to the cost, but we got a great deal and why not? Once in a lifetime...erm.. maybe more in the future XD (i gt addicted after the dive....) I'll post the sky dive photos tomorrow, once i've uploaded everything into my Flickr album.