Sand Island & Moanalua Garden - 5/15/2011

Erick wanted to check out Sand Island and I got a chance to tag along to try out my polarizing filter. Unfortunately, it only fit my 70-200mm so I could only get close shots. Fortunately, we were there just in time to see a large sailing vessel leave the Honolulu Harbor so it was a great lens to capture some of that. It was a sunny, but overcast day and the clouds were not as puffy as I'd like, but I think still a great day for using a filter. Afterwards, we checked out Moanalua Garden to find other cool portrait locales.
From Erick's blog from last 4th of July fireworks, he got great firework shots. I now know you can see the entire Aloha Tower from there.
You can see the dinner or lunch cruise come in as well.. The polarizing filter turned my photos really blue. I actually have to de-saturate the blue color in PSE. I think it did make the clouds 'pop'.
I caught a speeding harbor master's boat.. I didn't realized I had panned.
Then we saw this cool vessel w/ huge mast, the Kaiwo Maru of Tokyo Japan, leave the harbor w/ tug boats guiding it's way out.
The ship was soo cool!
Die hard photog..
Could not resist taking a photo of Diamond Head from Sand Island.
We ended up at Moanalua Gardens. This plantation house was cool..but I didn't have my wide lens to get the entire house. Even with the polarizing filter, the afternoon glare was still too harsh.
I tried taking shots of the water.. I don't know if I was turning the filter ring correctly... was the water supposed to not have reflection? I donno..but still this shot came out nice.
There were LOTS of cardinals.. they were flying in and out super fast.. I was only able to get one that stopped just as I clicked.
I tried taking soft water shot w/ the polarizing filter. I learned I need to use aperture priority using a small aperture.. after like 10 tries, I finally got one that was soft enough.. my last shot was my best..
Hey, could not resist taking the tourist shot of the famous Hitachi tree.. I had to use my Lumix to get the entire tree.

EOH State Library Exhibit - 5/5/2011

This is, I think, my third year participating w/ the State Library Exhibit. It's always fun to see all the photos by the other photographers from the club. This year there were 44 photos on display in the lobby area in the front and in the back reading room. This year, I brought my Lumix instead of using my cell phone to get some shots of the set up. The photos in the lobby area is usually displayed on the racks.The photos in the reading room are hung.I met Erick and Celia. I think this was when she told Erick..'you better delete that!'..
Here's the finished display.I wanted to take a slow motion photo of people walking around the display and after playing around w/ the Manual settings a bit, I was able to get this. Trying to stablize my camera on the ledge, I almost dropped my camera from the 2nd floor if not for the cord on the camera! OMG! phew!I include this shot of the ceiling light because I'm surprised how sharp it came out for the P&S. I didn't sharpen this but just cropped the original shot and adjusted the level to try and get rid of the yellow and to lighten the dark areas a bit.

Thunderous Rain Storm - 5/2/2011

In complete contrast to my previous post, tonight, I was in the midst of a lightning and thunder storm. Of all days, I had taken my car to the shop so I had to catch the bus. I could see continuous lightning on my bus ride home and the street was completely flooded and as I stepped off the bus stop, it was pouring dogs, cats, and actually more like elephants and I was deep in water puddle everywhere. I ran for the bus stop covering along w/ a bunch of people waiting for the passing rain. I saw this guy walk by taking a cell phone video and gave me an idea.
I took this w/ one hand holding my umbrella and the other hand holding my phone.
Oh yeah and when I finally got to my apartment, the electricity was out and I ended up huffing and puffing flights of stairs in the near darkness lit only w/ my tiny light painting flash light.