Xmas Dinner at Sheraton's Kai Market - 12/12/2009

My friends and I had our annual Christmas dinner a couple of weeks ago at Kai Market. Unfortunately I have no food photos to post since I was too busy eating. The food selection was not large, but the food was really fresh and the dessert was really good. Since they seated us on the outside balcony area, we were right in front of the entertainment that was staged around the pool area. Actually, I don't even think you had to eat there to watch the performance. It was pretty dark and I had to use the flash. I was surprised this came out since I did have to crop and it looked really dark on my LCD. I shot this w/ shutter priority so I can get the fire action. I'm surprised there was no noise at 1/200 F2.8 at ISO 640.
My friend's son was super excited w/ all the goodies we brought him...or maybe it was because he had a lot of sugery desserts ...
The box seemed a little large for him but that didn't really matter...
In the lobby walkway area, there was even a sand sculpture of a Hawaiian Santa.

Honolulu Hale Christmas Lights - 12/21/2009

The Eyes of Hawaii group met for the annual Christmas light photo shoot. The night shoot presented a great exposure and lighting challenge. I tried manual settings to try and overcome the under/over exposure of dark and light areas but still wasn't too successful. Here are the results. We met at the municipal parking lot then headed on Beretania to the State Capitol.
Continuing on Beretania, a lone lighted Christmas tree at Washington place.
We turned onto Bishop and headed for Bishop Square...but first, I took a quick snapshot ...
The lights at Bishop square changes color and I decided to create an HDR...first, the white colored lights..
Then the lights turned red...
When I combined the two shots in HDR...
We then ended back at Honolulu Hale...it was REALLY crowded and I managed to only get a couple of good shots...Hopefully, I'll get a chance to try again when it is less crowded.

Kids Christmas Photo - 12/12/2009

I had the opportunity to take more Christmas photos for my friend. Kids are difficult subjects since they get bored or tired easily because they're bored. After a bunch of shots I was able to get just a couple of good ones. Even though it was during the day, this area was really dark and my shutter speed was really slow on aperture priority and I had to use my flash.
I decided to get creative after seeing Jalna's and Erick's blogs of their photo session and told one of the kids to jump off the short ledge. After a few tries, I was able to get one that was not blurry. He was tired from all that jumping, but still had lots of fun. So I've come to the conclusion that as long as they're having fun, that's all that really matters.

Special Olympics Holiday Classics Bowling - 12/5-6/09

I posted previously about Basketball Classics, now for bowling. First, outside of the bowling venue, I met someone who had brought her service dog who allowed me to take photos of him. The Panda from Panda Express also happened to be there and I was able to take a snapshot of both of them.
Celia and I were fortunate enough to be allowed to shoot from the service lanes that are on the two sides of the alley lanes. We positioned ourselves on opposite sides so that we'd get different pics. I started on the side w/ the ramp bowlers.
The athletes were all very happy and so proud of their winning medals.
On Day 2, I was on the opposite side and I started to take photos to capture their expressions after the ball is released and I'd wait until the ball reaches almost the edge of the frame of my focus.
Some were very calm..
Some tossed the bowling ball and then had a ritual to make the ball go the direction that'll hopefully result in a strike..or spare.
Before I leave, I wanted to make sure I get some snapshots of the volunteer...this was the best I could do... their T-shirt..

Special Olympics Holiday Classics Basketball - 12/5-6/09

Celia and I spent two days as volunteer photographers at the Special Olympics Holiday Classics at Kaneohe Bay Marine Corp. It was great opportunity for me to practice shooting sport and we even got an official photographer badge! There were only two sports: Basketball and Bowling. To keep it short, I'm doing bowling shots in a separate post.
I had originally thought it would be an easier basketball shoot because there would be little kids who would not run around as fast but I quickly found out otherwise. The teams were pretty good and I spent a lot of wasted blurry shots trying to follow the action on the first day of the shoot. I did, however, get a few action shots using my 70-200mm lens.
It was surprisingly bright so I was able to shoot at Shutter priority at 1/200 and ISO 800.
The 70mm is too close to shoot w/o cropping out something but I was lucky to get what I did under the basket.
The second day, I started to get better accustomed to the environment. I decided to be patient and WAIT for the action to happen before I clicked and I got much better shots.
I even got the tip off..
Also, I got better at timing when to press the shutter so that the ball is at the players hand as they are dribbling and not when the ball hits the floor, which happens when I press too slow.
I get sharper focused shots when the players are more stationary.

Family Portrait @ East West Center - 11/22/09

Today's lesson was Family Portraiture. It was late afternoon so the East West Center Garden was nice and shady. It seemed like perfect lighting for taking portraits but I found that my photos lost color and skin tone had a bluish tinge and was pretty hard to correct. I'm not sure if it was because of the pixel size I use, but I think my next year's resolution will be to start shooting in RAW mode!
I tried doing a HDR of the bamboo.
Photographing kids are always a challenge but it's also soooo funny seeing them squirm thru the session.
You have to have great patience until you get that perfect expression.

HDR Sunset 11/21/2009

I haven't been to the beach to check out the sunset for a while since the sun has been setting closer to the west. But now that the sun is setting closer to the east, it makes for better photo opportunities. However, the clouds have blocked what little sunset there is. As I waited w/ the crowd that has also gathered to watch this even, I decided to try HDR w/ multiple shots. I didn't bring a tripod but since I was shooting at a fast enough speed, it was fine...except people in the shots get blurry if they are moving. I tried HDR w/ 2 exposures and 3 exposures to see if there'd be any difference. The shot below was done w/ only 2 exposures and the bottom was 3. Can't really tell the difference much.
I've seen this man playing his violin that was plugged into the speakers before and this time I decided to take a photo of him. The sun had set so it was really dark where he sat so the high ISO and small aperture I used caused a lot of noise, plus it was hard to focus in the dark, but I really didn't want to use the flash on him just in case he'd get mad at me for taking his pic.

Foster Botanical Garden Take 2 - 11/11/2009

On Veteran's day off, I went back to Foster Botanical Garden and met up w/ Erick, Susie, Jalna, and Sze. I wanted to work on more HDR now that I kinda got used to the tripod.
I'm still trying to work on my flowers to get the right color saturation.
Although I don't have a macro lens, I tried to do some closeup and then cropped it to look more macro...
Purple is a really tough color to get...most of mine came out kinda pinkish..
Greens seem to come out better in HDR...
I wanted to get some patterns on the leaves.
We walked around and I wanted to get a shot how enormous the tree was by shooting up the tree..
When I tried to copy Jalna's setting for contrast, saturation and tone, I actually set the dial the other direction to -2 instead...DUH!! ARGH!! So, the cannonball flower came out kinda washed out..even after doing HDR processing.
After the walk around the garden, we ended back at the green house....even though the weather report sounded ominous and it poured the night before, it turned out to be a nice day after all.