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Paul Dudley | profile | all galleries >> 22 Overseas Trips >> North Island of NZ 2009 >> Album 14: Orchids and Butterflies (20 pictures) tree view | thumbnails | slideshow | map

Album 1: First Impressions of NZ (23 pictures) | Album 2: Rangitoto Island (27 pictures) | Album 3: A Walk around Auckland's Devonport (22 pictures) | Album 4: Puhoi and a canoe ride (28 pictures) | Album 5: Kawau Island Mansion Tour (54 pictures) | Album 6: Wine, Leigh, a cemetery and a storm (25 pictures) | Album 7: Matakohe and the Kauri Museum (44 pictures) | Album 8: Matakohe to Hongiaka (47 pictures) | Album 9: Kerikeri: History & kaleidoscopes (24 pictures) | Album 10: Bay of Islands (45 pictures) | Album 11: The Hundertwasser Toilets in Kawakawa | Album 12: Antarctica in Auckland (16 pictures) | Album 13: "On the coast of Coromandel ......" (35 pictures) | Album 14: Orchids and Butterflies (20 pictures) | Album 15: Driving Creek Railway (23 pictures) | Album 16: Along the 309 Road (37 pictures) | Album 17: Waihi, Whakatane, not White Island (14 pictures) | Album 18: Rotorua (43 pictures) | Album 19: Plan B — Taupo (27 pictures) | Albums 20: Hamilton Gardens, then home (75 pictures) | Album 21: Paradise Garden Seats (12 pictures)

Album 14: Orchids and Butterflies (20 pictures)

We found the sign on the main road pointing to the Butterfly and Orchid Garden, but then missed the entrance to the garden. It is only a couple of hundred metres off the main road, but we drove way past it up a narrow gravel road until a couple of seriously walking American tourists put us right. The first two pictures here were taken on that road.
It is hot and humid in the orchid and butterfly building. There is a warning just inside the door about this and a hot air blower to demist your camera or spectacles, but you don't see this until you are leaving. I was one of several frustrated photographers unable to use a camera for the first twenty minutes here. And even after that, I found the best way to photograph the butterflies was to creep up on them with my little Optio camera on automatic settings and flash enabled. No photographs of the big blue ones, they don't settle and I challenge anybody to photograph them flying.
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