Waikiki HDR Experiment - 8/30/09

I watched the news last night and saw they had placed leis on the Duke Kahanamoku statue in Waikiki for the 8th Annual Duke's Ocean Fest so I decided to go check it out. As usual, the statue draws lots of tourists taking photos. There's also a live web cam installed on the lamp post that tourists like to wave to as they speak w/ their friend/family on their cell phones. It's actually quite a funny sight.
I took these shots for HDR w/o a tripod, and since I haven't gone on shoots lately, I really need to practice steadying the camera.
Hey, they already put up flags as a reminder for the Okinawan Festival next weekend at Kapiolani Park.

HDR Experiment Revisted - 8/30/09

I went to a Photographer's talk given by George Lepp at UH thanks to CD who signed us up. In his talk, he mentioned that you shouldn't think that "I'll fix it in photoshop" but rather to pre-visualize your image and use tools to enhance them. He showed some of his HDR work using Photomatix and it inspired me to work on mine that I've neglected because I've been too lazy. His suggestion is to use a good tripod...which is what i really need to get (he uses a Gitzo..$$$). Well, I wasn't able to bring mine to take these and luckily, the shifts in the pics are too small to notice. In this shot, I used HDR to bring out the red tiles under this bridge.
This was a really dark shot because the sculpture was under the tree and I was able to bring out the details.
Using HDR helped to blend in the dark foreground with the bright background.
There were lots of people passing which caused a lot of blurry figures in this shot. After looking at this for a while, a weird thing about this shot is the woman seated on the ground who seem to be practicing some new age religion. Somehow, it looks like she's staring at this green glow on the ceiling above. Hmmm...
Yep.. people in HDR is bad.. but the sky color and the statue came out great. George lepp also mentioned that we can change the shutter speed to get the water more blurred in HDR water shots. I think I'll try that the next chance I get.
Clouds came out really pronounced in this shot taken in the afternoon around 4pm.
The outside of the Lincoln Memorial looks like the Parthenon in Greece.
HDR helped bring out the interior of the Air and Space Museum and kept the sunroof from being blown out.
Those circular windows in the Library of Congress got really blown out in my first view shots.. so I decided to try doing HDR for this shot.

Lego Store - 8/22/03

The Lego Store finally opened at Ala Moana Shopping Center. It's amazing all the things one can build w/ Lego. There's even a turkey made of Lego...hmm..
You can build your own Lego "MiniFigure".
When you're done you put them in a container like this.
Here's my creation...the Lego Computer Geek...

Pot Luck - 8/21/09

We had a pot luck and there were all different kinds of food from different countries: Chinese, Korean, Filipino, Indian, American, etc.. It was a great sampling from everyone's cooking. We also had lots of great desserts.
Someone bought this Tiramisu from Panya.
We had lots of desserts including this homemade blueberry cheesecake.

Bon Dance at Soto Mission of Hawaii - 8/15/09

August is Obon Season and it gave me opportunity to try night photography. I found it to be very challenging because it's dark and people move fast. It was a fun and great learning experience. People were having a great time decked out their in Japanese wear.
As it got dark, it was really hard to set the right speed. I got motion shots where one feels like the world is revolving around them quickly.
I finally had to use my flash and after much adjustments, was able to get focused shots of the performers on the platform.
Everyone was having a great time concentrating on their dance steps.I was able to get the lanterns w/ my zoom lens.
Most of the time, I caught a lot of people's back side but I did get some sharp shots of different Japanese wear.This one is my favorite..the lanterns in the darkness looks like it was a black and white shot w/ just the lanterns in color.

Planes, Trains, and Automobiles 8/8/09

I was able to take different types of transportation on this trip and collected shots along the way. Here's the tollway to cross the George Washington Bridge to get to NYC. I couldn't believe it's $8 per car!! Fortunately, it's a one-way fee, and you don't have to pay coming back. And people complain about increasing parking meters fees here.
My friend has a gadget mounted in her car that tracks the toll fees so she can go thru the EZPass lanes. The day started out rainy and it was pouring for half the day.
About halfway on the GW bridge is NJ and half is NY..here we cross to the NY state border.
Here's the NJ sign as we get back from NYC. This is the 3rd day we crossed and I finally got a decent shot from the moving car.
The other option we took was the NY waterways. This takes us directly to Midtown Manhattan where we can board a bus that'll take us to Times Square.
I also got a chance to experience the Amtrak to Washington DC. It took us around 3 hrs from Newark Airport to Washington DC's Union Station.
The interior of the Amtrak is like an airplane, except you can take more carry-on luggage. There's even an electrical outlet so you can plug in your laptop to do some work. We stopped at Trenton, Wilmington, Philadelphia before arriving in DC.
When we were returning, it was pouring like dogs and cats. It's actually very difficult to focus thru the rainy window..I kept focusing on the window but was able to get a couple shots.
In DC, we took the subway. The escalator to the underground was massive and was a long way down.
Some routes took the underground above ground, like this station for the Catholic Univ. of America.
NY subway reminded me of an ant farm..lots of people going up and down these narrow walkways. I didn't see any escalators..just stairways.
To avoid bringing attention to myself in the NY subway and also make my friend nervous, I used my cellphone camera and was lucky to get this one of the train speeding by.
Here's my United Airlines flight back home. I was bored while waiting in Denver and took these two shots with my cell which I merged together.

NYC Full Circle - 8/4/09

It seems appropriate to post the pic from my final day as I made my way back to the same spot I took the first shot and also to take a panoramic shot of NYC skyline. I took a similar shot when I was here in 2004 and hoped I'd get a chance to do it again using my 50D. This was taken around 7pm as the sun started to set which gave the buildings beautiful colors which I hope I was able to capture. So, this panorama completes the full circle, or rather, the "panorama" of my trip.