This article shares a selection of images captured handheld at Hamilton Gardens with the M.Zuiko 12-100 PRO IS zoom lens. The city of Hamilton (New Zealand) is situated 122 kilometres south of Auckland on the North Island.
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My wife and I have visited Hamilton Gardens three times during our various adventures in New Zealand.
The gardens are divided into a number of themed areas that integrate various styles of architecture with gardens.
These include the Ancient Egyptian Garden, Te Parapara Garden, Surrealist Garden, Chinese Scholars’ Garden, Indian Charbagh Garden, Tudor Garden, Italian Renaissance Garden, and the Japanese Garden of Contemplation.
This combination of architecture with plants provides more photographic potential than is typically found in a botanical garden where the focus is solely on flowers.
There are some water features in the themed areas which adds another dimension to the experience. Folks whose main interest is in capturing images of blossoms will not be disappointed as there is a plethora of opportunities… as seen in the next six images.
The weather was quite unpredictable and ever changing… from bright sunshine… to overcast… to fairly heavy rain… and back again.
We didn’t let the weather hold us back and kept shooting throughout. I even had the occasional opportunity to play around with my exposures and create an “emerging from darkness” composition, as you can see above.
The changing weather brought breezy conditions along with it… so I kept my shutter speed a little faster to help reduce the risk of image blur from blossom/plant movement.
As we strolled throughout the grounds there were opportunities to use various composition techniques such as the double reveal in the image above. This helps to create feelings of intimacy and depth with an image… especially when shot with a wider angle focal length.
Leading lines constantly jumped out at me visually, as you can see in the image above and the next five images.
My interests have long been skewed towards architecture from the Far East. I always enjoy spending more of my time in the Chinese and Japanese Gardens.
Dedicating more time to a specific garden or two also allows a photographer to ‘work the scene’ as you can see in the following seven images.
There were opportunities to incorporate corner anchors as illustrated in the image below.
Repeating patterns…
Some high contrast…
And of course, some interesting details…
The M.Zuiko 12-100 mm f/4 PRO IS is simply a superb lens. The focal length range it provides makes it very flexible in almost any environment. It is sharp throughout its focal length range, even when shot wide open, and it renders beautiful images. I really appreciate the fact that I have to spend very little time in post with RAW files when using this lens.
The M.Zuiko 12-100 mm f/4 PRO IS zoom lens is ideal to use in an environment like Hamilton Gardens… or as a general purpose or travel lens.
If you are planning a trip to New Zealand with some time on the North Island, it may be worthwhile for you to consider a visit to Hamilton Gardens.
Technical Note
Photographs were captured handheld using camera equipment noted in the EXIF data. All images were created from RAW files using my standard process in post. This is the 1,460 article published on this website since its original inception in 2015.
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