Saturday, January 9, 2010

Central Plateau trip

I came back yesterday from a trip down to Tongariro National Park camping and taking photos. The region is very diverse from lush forests to arid semi-deserts. My personal favourite was the rugged alpine areas on the flanks of Mt Ruapehu.

The image above is a full 360 degree panorama of from the Turoa face of Ruapehu. It will be more familiar to most covered in snow.


This waterfall was at the base of Ruapehu on the Whakapapa side


The chairlifts were running on the Whakapapa face, but the mountain was covered in cloud which made for an interesting mood.




There was dragonflies everywhere, but they would rarely sit still for long enough to photograph.


One of our campsites we stayed at. I personally prefer the most basic ones - this had only a toilet; no water, showers, cabins, anything like that. The good thing with these sites is that they are often empty.


Every now and then I like to pull out the lensbaby for a bit of creative shooting.


This was taken off an extremely high swing-bridge looking over a gorge with a river running though it.


My main goal for the trip was to take a photo like this. The reason I picked Tongariro National Park is that is almost as far from cities you can get in the North Island, and the high altitude and proximity to the central desert means that there was likely to be some nights without cloud.

Tags: tongariro photography trip