It's been a dry and hot summer here on New Zealand's North Island. This is the first year that I've been here where we have had a total water ban in our town and a total fire ban for the most of the North Island. In any case, despite the adverse effects on people and agriculture, the visual effects as a result of the dry conditions is, in my opinion, visually compelling. The contrast of the golden-yellow of the paddocks set against the blue of the summer sky always catches my eye as I'm travelling around our part of rural New Zealand. I recently took a drive out of town (Masterton), to explore the countryside of the Wairarapa which is around 1.5 hours north of Wellington at the bottom of the North Island.
For these photos I was using my old Canon 7D, with most of the photos taken with a Canon 70-200 f/4 with the exception of the photo of the watering hole being taken with a Sigma 30mm f/1.4. A Hoya Pro1 Digital circular polariser was also used, with processing of the raws being done in Lightroom Classic.
The lack of rain & clouds has made for challenging landscape photography this year. These images look more like Southern California than New Zealand.
They look quite a bit like Northern California, even. Not right now. We are getting into the deep green part of our year. But by the end of May we will look just like this. When I first saw these I thought they were taken around the SF Bay Area. New Zealand did absolutely not leap to mind!
Lovely shots.
Beautiful landscapes. I'm sending one photo from my village.