The only weekend I had free to do my homework from the Photo-impressionism workshop that I wrote about last week, coincided with a trip to Auckland. We normally stay close to the Auckland Domain and the Wintergardens with their wonderful collection of colourful plants are a regular stop and an ideal subject for photo-impressionism. The Auckland Domain Wintergardens were opened in 1913 and progressively expanded. The main structures are two large glasshouses, one temperate and one tropical. Between the two is a sunken pond and adjacent is a fernery in what was a quarry. It is a venue with no end of photographic possibilities and well worth a visit.

Impressionism conjures up images full of colour but is equally valid in Black and White. The collection of Neoclassical marble statues provide good subjects to explore this.

All these photos were taken with my little Fuji X100s which is ideal for this type of work having a built in ND filter to give a good slow shutter speed. This camera normally lives in aperture priority mode with auto ISO but an easy adjustment through the Quick menu has it at base ISO of 200 which lets the aperture control + the ND filter give a nice slow shutter speed. I leave the camera set to JPG+RAW so that I have the full data for subsequent processing. Photo-impressionism leaves room for adjustments more extreme that I would usually use so it is good to have all the data for the RAW processing engine in Lightroom before heading to Photoshop. In Photoshop I have used the Macphun Luminar plugin and found a mild type 1 Orton Effect useful for some images. The Black and White images were processed through Macphun Tonality.

Next week I will share some bird photo-impressionism images.