\\original// Travel & Photography Blog #6- A trip into Middle Earth

I decided to differentiate my "serious" photos from the "snapshots" by double border - tell me if its helpful and I should continue doing it in further Blogs!

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• Rotorua, Lake Taupo, Tongariro national park

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We arrived in Rotorua, a city full of Maori heritage, geysers, and STEaM everywhere!
Steam coming out of the ground, off of mud pools, and straight from the drainage system and gutters... with strong smell of sulfur in the air.
We first visited a park in the middle of the city, with steaming pools of bubbling mud.

After that, we went on a hike in a beautiful californian redwood forest.
Right off the bat we came across this stunning and unusual looking stream, with vibrant colors which I assume were created from some kind of geothermal activity.
The water were full of dead branches which have gone white, and it had an Out-of-this-world feel into it.
Pretty straight forward image, it's so vibrant and beautiful - real no-brainer - Water was even polarized.

As we were hiking back to the car, we moved through this amazing red forest...

And later on, as we visited NZ's deepest spring, I captured this lovely image of 2 girls in the woods.
It was a bit challenging, because I saw immediately what great images I can make of those 2 girls, but I didn't want to come up as a stalker, or even worse, to they'r parents, and I didn't feel like it was a good idea to approach - anyway I did my best to keep low profile, and got a pretty good result with it.

As to "NZ's deepest spring" -All I can only tell You about it, since a camera can't capture it's subtle beauty - well it is deep.
Deep turquoise-blue hole, with shimmering coins thrown by people at the edges (it's so deep You can't see the bottom).
And there is a constant silent flow of water, coming to the surface from below.
This description doesn't do justice to this amazing place. I can conclude by saying we stood there mesmerized for 20 minuets staring at the water coming up.

Later that day we drove off towards lake Taupo, and late afternoon we stopped at hot springs (of which there are plenty in this area).
It was called Hot'N'Cold - the place where a hot stream met the cold river - and it was a blast!
The water's temperature was really nice, especially compared to the outside winter temperature.
It was quite surreal and beautiful, but so steamy that it was difficult to take images. Still I managed to take some surreal ones.

We "set camp" nearby a loud bubbling mud pool. which gave bizarre and slightly demonic touch to the usually quiet "going-out-to-toilet-in-the-middle-of-the-night".
As we woke up the next day, we decided to go on a walk. I really wanted to take a closer look (and image!) at those interesting pools, but they were so heavily fenced.
But as we walked further into the forest, we came across more and more secluded pools, completely untouched, and we dared to step real close (perhaps dangerously close).
Finaly we hit the jackpot, when we ventured through the bush into a small mud volcano, which gave a big explosion every once in a while.

Very next day, approaching Tongariro national park - Mordor & Mt Doom Set location.
The snowy volcano is visible many miles away, and set us in slight excitement towards whats coming.
But before we enter Whakapapa village, where we'l start our 2 day track, we visit a beautiful waterfall nearby.

After that I'm subjected to a lot of frustration - my 7 stop filter got stuck on the lens, and as I found some ski equipment shop that could help me mechanically remove it, I was dumb enough not to remove the camera from the lens before applying heavy pressure on it.
The end result is - my viewfinder is damaged. Really upsetting reminder that my state of mind is still not quite there.
Camera still working fine though, could have been worse, but I really need to treat my equipment with more care.

As for the track - we both not in amazing shape, so it was a small challenge, and also the camera battery went flat after the first day, but the end result was good - we enjoyed and took some nice photos of this marvelous area.

This is Mount Ngauruhoe, better known as Mount Doom - a typical looking and active volcano.

This is Mount Ruapehu, as seen at dusk from the hut we slept in.

It could have been my best image so far - but there are 2 problems - its a complicated image - a 5 image panorama consist of 3 HDR merged images each.
The problems :

1. the HDRs were a bit to the underexposed side (I'm still not technically so confident with the right exposure levels), so the dark parts came out very grainy after lightroom did it's thing.
2. for some reason, lightroom screwed up the right-most image, so it is cut, and the mount is not centered. the full image looks much more whole and right.

Overall I see continuous improvement in my photography, and most important - I'm quite aware of things that needs more work on and that I can improve right here and now without spending money on better gear or training.

There was so much going that I skipped quite a lot, and saved some for next blog as well.
Hope You've enjoyed, Please Follow & Resteem, and see U next time.