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Swell of gold part I - New Zealand part I

Thursday, 25 July 2019

As most of you probably already know, we spent some time in New Zealand this year. For two of us it was our second stay in Aotearoa. This time we've been there in February, March and April and it was quite sure the best journey we did so far, because we travelled with our son Tim, who was five months when we started, for the first time. And, of course, New Zealand is an incredible place in any case. We spent the entire time outdoors and it seems extremely important to us, to connect Tim with real nature and it is so rewarding to see his great excitement about all the natural wonders when we're out. Even at this very young age. Maybe more on that in some of my upcoming blog entries ...

Although there are still lots of older images of the past year left to share here, I would like to start to display some sets of my New Zealand pictures in between. This first series shows the first part of photographs of one of the world's rarest and smallest dolphin species, the Hector's Dolphin. They are declared as endangered on the IUCN Red List and can only be found in the waters around New Zealand. I was observing and photographing these absolutely amazing animals about six to ten hours every day for six nights on this particular beach and I was rewarded with some of my most memorable wildlife moments so far. All the images have been taken from the beach or the shallow waters, but I have to admit I got pretty wet most of the time ;)

This is what I was looking for most of the time. A short glimpse of one of these small dorsal fins when it suddenly popped up somewhere on the water surface.

The swell in this bay was actually picture-perfect. So I also spent lots of time just watching the waves break. On our second day there, I noticed a dolphin riding one of these waves. I didn't expect that at all, but after that, I knew what I will have to look out for.

Although I could spot their backs and dorsal fins pretty often, I could only see them leap out of the water about two to five times a day. And since they mostly did that completely unexpected somewhere on the sea, it was a bit of a challenge to get just a handful of proper breaching shots.

What a fantastic place to show your offspring a few of mother nature's treasures.

Basically I prefer to show wildlife in a rather small scale in its habitat and the Hector's Dolphins are no exception. So I mostly tried to include the beautiful rough coast line in my images, especially when the conditions were appealing. But since I spent this whole particular week on the same beach, you'll find the same coast line in the background on most of the images. Beside the composition matter the smaller scale and the shorter focal length also increased my chances of getting the animals in the frame.

Another wave the guys were surfing during my stay at this beach. This time at early dawn.

It was a quite difficult undertaking to capture them in one of the waves, especially on overcast days or when the sun was low like during the golden hours. Due to the reflection of the sky on the water surface, I couldn't see the animals before the wave was big and steep enough to create its own shadow. But that also meant, that the wave was going to break just the blink of an eye later and the dolphins will disappear beneath the surf again. So the time frame between spotting the mammals, creating a composition, setting the focus and taking the picture was just about a very few seconds.

I'm pretty sure the main reason for the dolphins to ride the waves is just joy and playfulness. But beside that, they probably also use them to save energy and gather pace without any effort. In this image you can gain an impression, how fast they get. Fast enough, that cavitation (a phenomenon in which rapid changes of pressure, due to a fast moving object, in a liquid lead to the formation of small vapor-filled cavities) occurs.

Sometimes it took me a few hours tho get the first glimpse. And sometimes they disappeared after that again for another few hours.
But although without the dolphins, this area is just fantastic and offers lovely calm bays with perfect surf, amazing rough, rocky and kelp covered coast lines and lots of other rare and beautiful wildlife like Yellow-Eyed Penguins, which are also among the wolrd's rarest penguin species and also declared as endangered on the IUCN Red List with only about 4,800 sexually matured individuals. In one of the coming sets I will also share a few shots of some of the other treasures we could find there.

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Pannonian residents part III

Monday, 22 July 2019

When it comes to birds, the Neusiedler See - Seewinkel National Park is just a fantastic place. You can easily spot about ten different species of rare and special birds, you won't see anywhere else in Austria, in only one day. From bigger ones like Great Egrets, Spoonbills or White-tailed Eagles to very small ones like Wrens or Crests. But, of course, the Seewinkel is also a significant habitat for other animals, like mammals, insects, amphibians and reptiles. The best season is spring and early summer when all the birds are nesting and raising their chicks and lots of new life pops up everywhere. But I also like to go there at any other time of the year, since there is always something to discover and it actually pays off every time. Below you will find the last images of this national park from the past year I will show here, so I kindly invite you to browse through this series.

This one goes out to all the parents out there ;)

In late summer huge swarms of Starlings are quite common in the area.

Even the prey of these beautiful birds is beautiful.

The wide belts of reed around Lake Neusiedl are also an important hunting ground for birds of prey.

A very lovely candy sunrise warms my soul on a pretty cold winter day.

What a beautiful fabulous creature and what a pleasant scenery.

Always such a pleasure to spot one of these extraordinary guys.

A few Gray Geese crossing the shallow waters at sunset while a Great Egret is on the hunt for fish.

A Mallard touching the water surface in great afternoon light.
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Shapes of grace part III

Saturday, 13 July 2019

Time to serve you the last set of Chess Flower pictures from the past year. Hopefully I can manage to visit these fragile an extraordinary flowers again next spring. And hopefully they will still be protected in the future since they're already extremely rare and they depend on the protection and the will of the land owners to not mow the few meadows before the flowers can spread their seed. The protection actually bases on a few schoolboys who once picked up some Chess Flowers for their teacher to apologize for their misbehavior. Luckily this teacher had a good knowledge about flowers and instantly knew that his pupils had found a real treasure. So he immediately started to fight for the protection which finally saved the flowers from total extinction until today.

Just love this super soft light at the edge of night and day.

The characteristic shape of a Chess Flower infront of the very last glow of the fading day.

Since the clouds hid the sun, I decided to include them in my composition.

Pleasant times at sunset.

Dew covered meadows will probably never bore me.

Although there were no clouds in the sky that morning, it nevertheless turned orange, red and yellow due to lots of Sahara dust which was in the air this particular day. Lucky me.

If you look closely, you'll notice that this is actually a perfectly two headed flower.

Just a stunningly beautiful creature.

I couldn't get rid of my misted up lens that morning, so I just dealed with it.
If you want to receive a short e-mail notification every time I post any news in my blog on this website, just drop me a line to photo@rupertkogler.com and I will put you on my mailing list. And of course I will remove you from the list anytime you want me to.

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