Lockdown level 4 seems to come to an end, so I might get a bit further out of my home again. Especially down to the south coast, which is at some 5 km distance regional, rather than local. That's where this subject comes from, dried sea weed.
So here some of my last macros for now.
By the way, the blue-ish tint is not edited. It comes from a white balance setting before shooting, called <tungsten>. This has a similar effect as using a tungsten balanced film in the days of photo-film.

Recent project - please do NOT attempt to do this if you don't know exactly what and where you can do it. Do not do this if you don't have appropriate fire extinguishing gear like a non flammable fire blanket (not the synthetic stuff you bought in warehouse) or fire extinguisher. A bucket of water isn't a good idea, in fact with certain flammable liquids water actually amplifies the flames.
This is not a steady fire, just a fast burst of a split-second, which makes it less dangerous and harder to take a shot.
​Of course my images are available as prints, please contact me if you're interested
​photos@wernerkaffl.com
However, prints will have to wait till things are back to normal.

Very far back in my archives, the second day after I got my first half-way decent DSLR camera, I went out to Owhiro Bay to try what I bought this camera for - Long exposure of the sea, to get this milky water texture I have seen so often before. The day was 18/01/2014.
The camera was a Canon EOS 60D, second hand, already pretty outdated when I got it, and not a full frame camera. The lens was a EF-S 15-85 mm kit lens. The tripod I used was some cheap 50 $ one, from some store I can't remember. I had no remote to trigger the camera without shaking, so I had to use its timer instead.
I did learn a lot since then, and I gained a lot of skill in the following years. I also invested a lot of my earnings to get better gear - But I do like to look back to my beginnings and see what I achieved back then!
​Of course my images are available as prints, please contact me if you're interested
​photos@wernerkaffl.com
However, prints will have to wait till things are back to normal.

Some of my favorite images...
​Of course my images are available as prints, please contact me if you're interested
​photos@wernerkaffl.com
However, prints will have to wait till things are back to normal.

​I revisited my archives a lot these days. And I found some of my images look also pretty good in monochrome. So I gave some of them a makeover, this is one of those.
​Of course my images are available as prints, please contact me if you're interested
​photos@wernerkaffl.com
However, prints will have to wait till things are back to normal.

Another thing I started to up-skill during the lockdown, Composite images. Basically impossible fantasy worlds. Here the first result after finding some tutorials.
People familiar with Island Bay, might recognize the cave mouth...
In fact, I needed 4 of my older photographs to create this. That's enough tech for now, I don't want to give it all away...
​Of course my images are available as prints, please contact me if you're interested
​photos@wernerkaffl.com
However, prints will have to wait till things are back to normal.

Due to missing those great waves on April 15th, I searched my archives and found 4 images, taken on April 4th 2018. This is a series of the same wave, all  images taken within 4 seconds. In those 4 seconds I managed some 12-13 shots of this one, but here my favorites from building up to crashing the rocks
Of course my images are available as prints, please contact me if you're interested
​photos@wernerkaffl.com
However, prints will have to wait till things are back to normal.

Yes, macros again. I found this shell in the boot of my car, then still covered in white and brown layers of calcium. Do I decided to get my Dremel and dust mask out and polish the thing, revealing the underlying mother-of-pearl. Some 3 hours later it was nice and shiny, and varnished.
The next day, actually yesterday, I looked for some nice lighting to highlight these colors. Colorful stuff stored in the sunlit back yard proved to perfect.
​Now my 50mm lens and extension tubes, and shoot away - here the results!
​Of course my images are available as prints, please contact me if you're interested
​photos@wernerkaffl.com
However, prints will have to wait till things are back to normal.

Here some more macro images, from my <creatures> series...
This time single frames, not focus stacked. I'm not sure which I actually like more. Whereas focus stacked images produce incredible detail, I do like the softness of a shallower depth of field in single shot images.
​Of course my images are available as prints, please contact me if you're interested
​photos@wernerkaffl.com
However, prints will have to wait till things are back to normal.

Here one of my last wild weather opportunities before we went into lockdown. I resigned to learn more about macro photography, started some courses on general photography subjects that interest me and to work through my archive of older and recent images that were'n finalized and published before - like those 3, taken around Island Bay, Wellington.

A friend of mine searches the beaches with a metal detector, and left a bucket ,containing some findings at my door. There's some interesting stuff in there, and I'm having fun putting them into the right <light>...

Here some new technique I'm currently teaching myself, called focus stack.
Being very close to an object flattens the depth of field. This means, only a very small portion of the object is actually in focus. There is a way to compensate for this (in classic as well as in digital photography). First a number of individual photos need be taken, focusing on different parts of the object. Then those are combined, to get an image, everything in focus.
The first two images are full stacks, the last one is a partial stack, to leave some parts out of focus. This gives some spatial effect.

Moving from back yard to my mini-studio (aka lounge), I started some more decent macro photography, using stuff that's just lying around in the area, like a shard of Paua with some weed attached...

One of my last Summer photos, down on Wellington South Coast.
Confined to quarters at the moment, there's no real new images. But I'm shifting to something new, stay tuned - and stay safe!

A while ago, up Kapiti Coast... I believe some 2 years or so.
This is from my archives of yet unfinished work. Now I need to keep myself busy, and to work through some of those images helps a lot.
​Both are actually the same image, I just wanted to try different moods, so here we go, Moon-shine and Sun-light...