I do however intend to catch up and share some photos from all the weddings we photographed during the last quarter of 2011 so get ready for some updates coming at you thick and fast over the next week or so, I have just counted up and I have almost 30 posts to make!

Before I get started on sharing wedding photos I wanted to share some great personal news from Jon and Danielle who welcomed baby James Henry White into the world on January the 3rd at 10:15pm. Weighing in at 7lb 14oz baby James and his proud parents are all doing great and we cant wait to see them very soon. Here’s a few photos Jon sent me, making good use of his iPhone’s camera and I am sure there will be lots more photos to come.

After some nice food and a few pints we wandered over the back and took a quick photo in the field, congrats on your first year of married life Mr and Mrs White

Weather was great on Saturday and we had a lovely afternoon at Beanie and Adrian’s chasing Toby and Brandy round the garden whilst Harriet spent most of the time sleep and Adrian was Barbecuing.

After the BBQ we took Toby and Brandy to the nearby fields to expend some more energy which also gave me an opportunity to test some new radio triggers we recently bought for our Speedlite flashes. Without getting too technical, we’ve had radio triggers for our flashes for quite some time now but they only operated in manual mode which is fine for studio work but for wedding photography where light conditions change constantly the new triggers are able to cope much better with the conditions and also allow us to work faster, always an advantage on a wedding day.

Another big advantage of the new triggers is that they also allow us to use flash at much higher shutter speeds than the older versions which creatively gives us a lot more options in bright conditions or when shooting at wide apertures. For any photographers reading this we have upgraded from PocketWizard Plus II’s to Mini TT1 & Flex TT5.

Anyway, this was the very first shoot with them and they worked well but lots more practice shoots on the way before we use them at a wedding, the voice-activated semi-autonomous mobile lighting stands also performed very well on the day

Danielle Hang Gliding in New Zealand 2010 from Nick on Vimeo.

So when I last wrote we were camped in Fox Glacier!  As we continued down south through the west coast towards Lake Wanaka we went through some amazing scenery!  We stopped off on route to either trek through rain forests or on the coast to enjoy the amazing bays.

I took a few shots from some of our treks and gorges that we crossed on route!

Lake Wanaka was amazing; I can see why Mr. Selby double ticked when he showed me his itinerary! A fantastic lake surrounded by mountains…We spent a couple of nights in Lake Wanaka and enjoyed a few lake side walks and the local Puzzle world attraction with it’s mind bending puzzles and rooms!

The weather has been changing very rapidly and on one of our lakeside walks you can see a shot of the rain that chased us round the lake!  Unfortunately the shot does not do it justice!

From Lake Wanaka we continued further south to Te Anau where we spent the night and visited the glow worm caves!  I managed to take a couple of shots as we walked into the limestone caves and the waterfall inside… unfortunately you are not allowed to take photos of the thousands of glow worms that light the cave as you take a boat deeper underground into the caves! WoW!

After Te Anau we then headed round the end of one mountain range and drove north to Milford Sounds.  There we went on a fantastic fiord Cruise. … On route to the sounds we had some breath taking and heart stopping (if your driving) gorges and valleys with some amazing rain forests!

Milford Sounds lived up to it’s name as being one of the wettest locations in the world! Again some amazing scenery but very difficult to take any photos without getting the camera wet! On one of the shots I dropped the camera in the water but luckily managed to get a great shot of a fish

That afternoon and night we got 25cm of rain!  We enjoyed an amazing thunderstorm that night as we stopped in Te Anau on our way back north!  Not only a thunderstorm, we are pretty sure we felt 3 of the 100 mini earth tremors that this region gets a day.  In our large camper van it was really easy to feel when the ground moves.

We are now camped up in Queenstown for the next 4 days to chill out and take in some of the local attractions! This evening we will be enjoying the steam ship with evening meal TSS Earnslaw and an evening meal on Walter Peak Country farm (thanks Dad!) followed tomorrow by Jet Boat and Funyak Safari up the Dart River!

Will keep you all posted! – Keep Warm!

Love and hugs to all family and friends!

Jon & Danielle xxx

They started off by shooting their friends Christiana and Oscars Great Wedding in Mexico and then moved on to NZ for the rest of it but despite them being on the other side of the planet we have managed to stay in touch with text messages, phone calls and a couple of video chats including a fun one on New Years Eve as we celebrated with friends down in Hitchin.

Before they left for their fantastic honeymoon I made Jon promise to send me some pics for the blog whilst he was away and true to his word I received a batch of photos from him earlier this week with some text as an added bonus and apparently there’s some more coming in the next few days so I better get these posted pronto! Jon’s text cut and pasted below.

I promised Nick that I would take plenty of photos on a daily basis and send back regular updates when I can… so with this in mind and in the spirit if new years resolutions here is the first blog post of 2010 from our honeymoon!

We arrived in The South Island of New Zealand in the main city called Christchurch on New Years Eve and joined the locals in the central square to celebrate the new year!

The first couple of days in New Zealand were spent in Christchurch chilling out and enjoying the fabulous weather  We took a few shots from our walk in the park in Christchurch… amazing park and gardens!

The next day we picked up our camper van and travelled up the East coast to Kaikoura and went whale watching… Jon Meadows style… on a plane… why spend hours on a boat when you can see them perfectly well from a plane!

Whilst continuing up the coast we noticed a few friendly seals!

From there we went further up the coast to Blenheim, where we took part in some wine tasting… you may notice that photos are a little out of focus!  We have now stocked up on a couple of crates for the rest of the journey!

We then headed across to the West Coast through heading through some amazing scenery and on the way took part in one of our first high octane activity… the longest rope bridge in New Zealand in Buller Gorge

Then continuing down the west coast stopped off at Punakaiki to see the blowholes and pancake gorge and then onto the glaciers for our next high octane activity …. taking a plane round the glaciers and Mount Cook before attempting to land the plane on the Frank Josef glacier….  I would have taken plenty of pictures if I wasn’t for the fact that I was holding on for dear life… I can hear Nick now saying you big wus!

We are now parked under the mountains near the Fox Glacia and we have the next couple of days booked at Lake Wanaka!

Love and hugs to all family and friends… speak to you soon!

Jon & Danielle xxx

Snowblading down the street in Royal Leamington Spa from Nick on Vimeo.

Few pics from the walk up and at the tower itself.

Old tree we passed on the walk up

Bendy fisheye shot

Great view from the top of Broadway Tower

On top of the tower

At the end of the telescope is the village of Broadway where we had walked up from

The view in the opposite direction to Broadway

The rooms you pass through as you go up the tower explain the history of it

Getting really close with the fisheye lens

Mucho fun was had by everyone, disc golf we lost quite a few discs and spent a fair amount of time in the tree’s trying to find some of the lost discs so at least when we got down to the holes near the river we didn’t have to waste any time looking because we could see them fly into the water and knew they were lost.

The Karting was just about as competitive as it could be and how sore my arms have been for the last two days is testament to how hard we were all trying to win, great fun though and a really nice circuit.

The evening activities started quite early with a few drinks in the Leamington Bar and Grill before we headed to the Five Rivers Indian Restaurant for some great food and more than a few beers.

My memory after leaving the restaurant is a little fuzzy but I vaguely remember a visit to Voodoo and at least a couple of clubs and getting home just as the sun was coming up. I paid for it with how I felt on Sunday of course and hopefully paid for some of the calories consumed today with a nice walk in the Cotswold’s (few pics of that tomorrow) but definitely all worthwhile because it was a great day with the guys.

Here’s a few pics from the earlier part of Saturday.