R. Doug Wicker's Blog, page 78

Circumnavigating New Zealand — Six Sisters and Downtown Napier

Side of building at 159 Marine Parade

In addition to the walk along the beach, make sure you also take in the sights on the parallel Marine Parade. If not, you’ll be missing some pretty interesting sights. One of those sights is an impressive group of Victorian-style homes called the Six Sisters:

Six Sisters — 1891

These houses were built in 1891 by architect Robert Lamb for his six daughters. Today these beauties are occupied by businesses rather than home owners:

Six Sisters — 1891...

Circumnavigating New Zealand — Six Sisters and Downtown

Side of building at 159 Marine Parade

In addition to the walk along the beach, make sure you also take in the sights on the parallel Marine Parade. If not, you’ll be missing some pretty interesting sights. One of those sights is an impressive group of Victorian-style homes called the Six Sisters:

Six Sisters — 1891

These houses were built in 1891 by architect Robert Lamb for his six daughters. Today these beauties are occupied by businesses rather than home owners:

Six Sisters — 1891...

Circumnavigating New Zealand — Arriving into Napier

Napier, North Island, New Zealand

Wellington, on New Zealand’s South Island, is where our two cruises diverged. Our 2020 cruise departed South Island and headed back to Sydney, Australia. But our 2019 voyage aboard Majestic Princess headed to North Island, with our first stop being Napier.

Pretty Birdie

So, for the rest of this series on New Zealand, I’ll be concentrating solely upon our 2019 voyage aboard Majestic Princess. And as for today’s article, most of the photos you see today w...

Merry Christmas and Season’s Greetings to One and All

More Christmas Lights of Eastridge

In Monday’s article, I gave tips on how to photograph Christmas lights. Since then we’ve been seeing how to put those tips to use. Every year, the Eastwood neighborhood in El Paso decorates like no other. The following photos of Eastridge Christmas lighting decorations were taken in 2012. I hope you enjoy the show:

Christmas on the Pecos Favorites

Christmas on the Pecos

Every December in the city of Carlsbad, New Mexico river cruises are available for a very special Christmas lighting special.  Before you get to the photo gallery, however, here are some particular favorites of mine.  The next photograph is a rather abstract reflected light image from our Pecos River voyage:

Christmas on the Pecos

I particularly enjoy the symmetry of this next reflection shot:

Christmas on the Pecos

And this next shot would make a great Christmas card, I w...

The Christmas Lights of Eastridge

Colors of Christmas past from our locally famous Eastridge neighborhood here in El Paso. Here are some more photos from 2012:

Photographing Outdoor (and Indoor) Christmas Lights

It’s the Christmas season.  That means it’s camera time, because you won’t see this much nighttime splashing of color again until July 4.

Taking pictures of Christmas lights requires special care and preparation.  Regular readers of my blog know that I don’t usually advocate taking the camera out of JPEG and shooting in your camera’s Raw format (especially for beginners or those who haven’t the time to fool with post-processing the conversion), but this may be an exception.  The biggest reason f...

Fun Photo Friday — Circumnavigating New Zealand; Te Papa Tongarewa Favorites

Portrait Panorama

Today’s Fun Photo Friday selection is of the more artsy aspects inside Te Papa. Next week I’ll be rerunning some of my Christmas photography blogs, and we’ll return to circumnavigating New Zealand the week after that. Until then, have a wonderful Holiday Season and an absolutely great New Year.

Circumnavigating New Zealand — Te Papa Tongarewa Museum; Browsing

Ursula outside the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa

Today it’s going to be mostly photographs of the Te Papa, and the area around it, such as this different view of Circa Theatre next door to the museum:

Circa Theatre, 1 Taranaki Street

During our visit inside the Gallipoli exhibit, the museum fire alarm sounded, which prompted a rather lengthy wait outside before we could resume our tour:

Waiting outside after the fire alarm sounds

A word of caution about visiting Te Papa ...