Honolulu Hale-Third try 12/27/08

One last attempt to get some shots from the Honolulu City Lights. I tried to get things I missed the last two times.
I finally got the spinning tree.Well, after having a couple of these, all the trees would look like they were spinning anyways.

Tiger Cubs and the Zoo 12/27/08

We went to the zoo to visit the newborn cubs that were finally out in public. I must've spent a better part of an hour trying to get a good shot thru the fence and the closest I got was this. It was almost impossible to shoot thru the fence.
Most of my better shots came from the bird cage. This bird was very colorful. The underside of his wing was actually red.
This is a cute bird. He is always picking up twigs to build his large nest.More fowl shots.And finally, this Serval who lives in the bird cage for reasons unknown. I've only seen him sleeping but today, he was unusually lively allowing me to take these two shots thru his fence.

Island Wide Power Outage 12/26/08

I started out trying to take photos of the lightening storm, but only got the lights of the apartments.Then suddenly the power went out in my area and all that was left were parking garage lights powered by generator.
Then my street went dark.
Then I noticed St. Louis Heights and Kaimuki went dark.
Finally after struggling to find batteries and a radio, I heard it was a Island Wide Blackout.

Christmas Street 12/20/08

Our group started out visiting a "Christmas street" in Pearl City to take photos of homes w/ brightly decorated lights. I am amazed at the efforts some families put towards christmas decorations.I became fascinated with large inflatable christmas characters.There were also a lot of different christmas lights that were hung.Then finally, our tour ended w/ taking lights of different sort over a freeway overpass.

Storm Troopers Visit the Honolulu Hale 12/17/08

I went with Eyes of Hawaii to take more photos of the Christmas lights at Honolulu Hale. It was even more crowded being it is closer to Christmas and because the Star Wars storm troopers were there for the Toys for Tots event. Here are the only two shots, both of which I had to fix a lot in photoshop elements.

NH Christmas Concert

I was fortunate to be at the Gift of Hope Concert presented by New Hope with the Moanalua High School Orchestra. These students played flawlessly and sounded very professional. It was an impressive performance although a very tough shoot with the low light..

Keeaumoku Traffic

I took some night shots of Keeaumoku traffic using my Canon S45 camera and tested out the auto white balance and Tungsten. Personally, I kinda like the Tungsten since it's not so yellow.

Honolulu Hale 12/09/08

It was my day off so I thought I'd take more photos of the tree displays inside the Honolulu Hale. I didn't think there'd be people going to see the tree display during the day. Again, was I wrong. There were 7 school buses parked on Punchbowl street. There were kids everywhere! I gave up and ended up taking this shot from across the street.

Honolulu City Lights 12/08/08

I thought who'd go to see the Honolulu City Lights on a Monday night? Well, I was wrong..there were lots of people taking in the scene and taking photos. It was hard to get a shot w/o people in it. There's so much to see..you can't take it all in one night. Darkness always present a problem for me since I don't know where to focus so here are my best tries...
I started off w/ a tripod, shooting up towards the tree top. Changing white balance to Tungsten made the photo not so yellow.Then the tripod just got in the way, so I ended up just hand holding the camera to get this shot of the moon. However, this got some green light reflection from the flare, I think.I found these large bells with very nice lighting that were under a tree w/ Star shaped lights near the entrance.I saw an example of this in a blog and decided to try it. It's done by using a long exposure and then turning your zoom while the shutter is open.Once inside, it is was hard to use a tripod, so I just got a few non-shakey shots.
This is the only nice tree photo I got. Yes, It is supposed to be pink because of the pink lights on the tree.It's been my goal each year to take a good shot of these lights on the tree on the walkway..this time, it's to dark, but at least I got the colored lights...Oh well, I'll have to try again.