I’m off today to play in the New Zealand Hockey Masters National Tournament held in Hamilton, representing Northland. In order to qualify you either have to be 40 years old (men’s grade) or 35 (woman’s grade), each grade being 5 years difference. I’m in the 40+ age group, fielding the first full side from Northland for a number of years. First game is against Wellington on Sunday.

I have qualified to play in the past, but the business came first. However, I thought I’d shut the doors for a week and play this time round. As they say, if you don’t do it now you’ll never do it. Training has been hard but a fitness test at my local gym shows I’m at an excellent level for a 31-35 year old male. For a 42 I think I’m doing ok!

I’m taking the camera gear down to snap some games, but don’t think I’ll have a chance to put any photos up while I’m away. However, I’ll still be reading emails coming in, so don’t hesitate to contact me for any enquiries. I’ll be resuming normal business activities on Monday March 9th.

This restored photo is from another batch Bethely bought in this week for the 150 year Maungakaramea celebrations mentioned in previous articles. This is the family of Walter Harding Wright and his wife Tammy (nee Carmichael). The photo was starting to fade and deteriorate with age. The photo was carefully restored and bought back to life.

Mark contacted me about having a photo canvas print montage made of his sons. He wanted to give his wife a unique present for her up-coming birthday. Mark emailed me the 3 photos in secret and later called in to see me to discuss how the images would be displayed.

We eventually came up with the three images divided in a black grid on the front and black border surround. The inner edge on the front would be 5mm - this proved very tricky to line up when mounting the canvas. In the end the canvas mounted print came out looking great, measuring 1000mm x 300mm.

Brent called in to see me about having a photo enhanced. His mate Wayne had caught his first Marlin back on the 15th of February off the Tutukaka coast. Brent wanted a few basic tweaks done to the photo to make it look better. I got rid of the red-eye in Wayne’s eyes, lightened up his skin tones and brightened up the image. Brent got a 6 x 8 print done to have framed. For the record it weighed 118.2 Kg, caught off the launch “GPS”.

Brent called in a few days with some smoked marlin as a thank you for the work done. Mate, that fish tasted bewdy!

Gavin brought in this photo needing some image enhancement and printing. It’s a newspaper article on flooding in the Whakapara district, Northland, January 7th, 1989. The picture is Gavin riding his horse on his family’s farm. The writing at the bottom says:”Gavin Donelly, 17, crosses his family’s flooded Whakapara farm by horseback at 11a.m. today. The land was not under water at 5a.m.”

Gavin wanted the article preserved on long lasting photo paper, so I scanned the image in, enhanceed it and printed it on my Epson Premium Luster photo paper.

Bethely brought me these slides to have scanned and printed. Bethely is a regular customer and has been working on a project for the 150 year centenial celebrations of the settling of the Maungakaramea area.

The slides are images taken 50 years ago of the 100 years celebration. Bethely had 20 Kodachrome slides to scan and have photo print copies made.

As alway, the Nikon 9000 produced nice sharp images of each slide.

Ken came to see me about getting some photos from some old glass negatives he had. Ken had obtained 7 glass negatives from an old landfill back in the 60s when he was a child. He said there was a heap of old glass plates just thrown away so he thought it’d be good to have some. It turned out they were images of the Te Aroha spa taken in 1909.

The above images show the spa complex, now the Te Aroha Museum present day. These are just the raw images, Ken wanted them in their original form. Measuring over 15 x 11 cm in size they were too large form my Nikon 9000, but my trusty Microtek scanner was able to handle the job.

Ken had copies printed off, and he’ll be travelling to Te Aroha to present the museum with the glass slides. This is the second time I’ve had aomeone rescue old glass negatives from being thrown out. Obviously they were of no use to the photographer - probably taking up too much room and no real likelihood of being used again. But decades later these slides are very precious and definitely worth hanging onto.

Marie contacted me from Auckland after having seen my website photo repair service. She had a photo that was suffering from colour degradation and wanted it fixed. As Marie was passing through Whangarei on a trip further north she was able to call in and discuss her requirements.

The 11 x 14 photo shows the cargo ship Kapitaine Wallace in Sydney Harbour approximately 1983. Her husband was serving on the ship as a morse code operator. The ship delivered cargo between Sydney, Auckland and Fiji. The photo was suffering from the dye couplers used in developing the original photo degrading after their protective coating started to perish, hence the reddish colour. The red taint was removed and any marks and scratches fixed. Another 11 x 14 photo was printed before Marie had it framed.