With the weather news in India and Texas, it's been easy to overlook that a few days ago, the largest storm on earth was hitting NZ. Well, the outer 20% of it anyway.  I've been struggling to get much photography done the last few weeks. One spawn has a concussion. And workloads at work suddenly spiked. In that 'I need to spend every waking moment' on this, kind of spike.

Anyway, by Wednesday I was in need of a break. So I left early, took a short diversion, and visited the Oremu Reserve on the way to work. It's not exactly en route but wasn't going to eat too much into the morning.  I was also hopeful that all the recent bad weather would have increased the waterflow in the streams and waterfalls there.

Another goal was to try out a new piece of kit. I've added a Lee Circular Polariser to the landscape kit.  Polarisers have useful effects on water or forest scenes, that aren't easily duplicated on the computer.  

I had about 30 minutes in the reserve and ended up with four pics I liked. Each are taken with an a900 and Minolta 20mm lens. Enjoy :)

StepsThe Oremu Reserve is located north of Auckland. It contains two waterfalls in native forest. This is the larger of the two falls. I chose to visit after a period of heavy rain, hoping this would boost the flow of water over the falls. This shot is composed to show the water flowing over the steps, down to the pool at the base of the falls. SONY DSC SONY DSC