A small photo report of the critters shot with the new Tokina AT-X Pro 100\2.8 macro lens.

At first I entertained myself with spiders and cockroaches, only sometimes I found something more exotic, but closer to winter mantises came.... Oooh they are just incredibly photogenic 🙂 When you crawl around him with a camera he turns his head in your direction and pulls his paws, like take me in your arms, meow 🙂 I haven't been able to catch a big cricket on a big camera yet, and the phone at night is rubbish.

For several years now, every year on Chinese Lunar New Year, Oakland has hosted a Chinese Lantern Festival. Although I would call these glowing sculptures 🙂 for they are very large for flashlights. Several hundred glowing figurines were collected in Oakland's Domein Park (more than 800 according to official records). Some were funny, some were more or less gaunt 🙂 Besides the lanterns, the trees lit up with different colors looked cool.

I don't know how to translate water garden, something like a garden with a pond... A place with the Maori name Ngatea has a very famous garden. It is known not only for the fact that there is a lot of vegetation, but also for the unbridled sense of humor of its owners, which spills out in unexpected installations and compositions. It rained very luckily while fording and produced lots of colors with droplets.

On New Year's Eve I unexpectedly got a real macro lens - Tokina Macro 100mm\2.8 and decided to go to the botanical garden to take pictures, because I had been there several times, but without a camera. In practice, macro turned out to be not so easy and about 70% of the footage flew into the trash because of shakiness. The shutter speed of 1\320 was sometimes not enough because the photographer wobbles, the flower wobbles, the bumblebee moves... aaaaaaah. In general, as experienced people say, a stabelizer on macro lenses is useless because the world around you is constantly moving. Below are 40 shots of what didn't move much.

The vegetable garden around the house is planted with flowers and various ornamental bushes instead of tomatoes and radishes. All this farm, despite the last days of winter is blooming and smelling. Well and I walked out in these joys stale already on the shelf 80-200\2.8 well and that the photos were as always 16 pieces on previews, finished with flowers from the cell phone.

A few years ago there was a news about opening a koto-cafe in Japan, then they opened a lot of places and suddenly I found one in Auckland. As it turned out, you had to book cat socializing in advance, but I got lucky and had a free spot from 3 to 4. To keep the cats from freaking out, they don't let more than 16 people in an hour. For $15, you'll be treated to delicious coffee and cats. It's better to keep your coffee to yourself, because there are junkies there who will finish everything you left unattended.

It was decided to celebrate Christmas with a cycling trip through the remote areas of Auckland, specifically Waiheke Island, which is quite popular among tourists. Most visitors are interested in the vineyards and wine restaurants, but we planned to ride along the beaches, hit an MTB trail, and eventually stop at a vineyard for some food and drinks. Since I live 10 kilometers from the ferry departure point, I set off as early as 7 AM… The roads were completely empty 🙂. Instead of the 50 minutes Google estimated, I made it in 35 without even breaking a sweat. Then came an "unexpected" issue with the ferry—we didn’t get a spot on the one heading to Waiheke. The next ferry was in two hours, but the port authorities quickly redirected everyone to Auckland’s main port on a different ferry, completely free of charge. From Auckland, ferries to Waiheke run every 30 minutes. They didn’t ask for any extra payment, and they even let us board before the Auckland passengers! 🙂

We have here on the eve of 2016 weather forecast decided to break all records and on January 1, 2016 promised 3 MONTHLY norms of precipitation. Happily rainy «happiness» moved from midnight to 6 a.m. and although I didn't go into town for the fireworks, I shot some of it from the veranda of the house I live in on North Shore. From the photos, you can estimate the roughness at 200mm from a distance of 10km at a shutter speed of 1 second.

Collected a lot of photos from various treks around the city. The weather is great, despite the climactic winter, you have to slather on the sunscreen so you don't get an overdose of UV. There were no particularly heavy rains, as a rule the rain ends in 20-30 minutes... but then it starts again for 20-30 minutes 🙂 Anyway, it's fun here.

We're in the middle of a biological event! The Corpse Flower has bloomed in Auckland 🙂 Not that it does this rarely, but the last time it bloomed was in 2013. On the outside, this «flower» over three meters tall. I didn't get to the fragrant blooming period, so I can't tell you anything about the smell, but people who went to smell it say it doesn't stink much. Also in the post threw flower photos made in June-July this year (we have such a winter in the southern hemisphere). Since I don't know what all of them are called, the captions will just be numbers.