71st Na Hula Festival - 8/7/2011

The HPS photographers met for our August outing at the Hula Festival. This is the first time I've been to this festival, but it's the 71st annual event. The dancers were dressed in colorful dresses and the weather was perfect for this event.  We found great seats on the benches in front of the band stand and was able to take a panorama shot. 

There were many talented keiki hula dancers.

I tried again to focus using the middle focus point then shifting to recompose my shot.

On my way home, I saw these ducks swimming in the pond and decided to stop to take a few pics.

As I was straightening my glasses, I realized the lens popped out! Having been working on keeping my subjects sharp and in focus, I ended up having to walk home seeing nothing but a blur...

10,001st Canon 50D shot - 8/21/2011

I figured this was a momentous post as my Canon 50D just reached the 10,000th shot mark as this is photo IMG_0001 as it starts counting from 1 again. This means I've clicked my shutter 10,000 times in just about a little over 2 years. Unfortunately, my 50D has started to error as I've been seeing this Err 30 message that reads "Shooting is not possible. Turn the power switch to OFF and ON again or re-install the battery." Bummers! I think I'll have to take my camera in for repairs real soon. :-(

Pacific Beach Hotel Natsu Matsuri Takes 2 & 3 - 8/21/2011

I've been to the festival three times and each time, I learn something new, and each time I discover new challenges. I learned a little more on using my flash, using white balance setting to kelvin, and also using higher ISO (+1000). But, most of all, I learned how to fix my photos in PSE to remove the yellow and red casting from the bad lighting. I only wish that I could learn to take the shot w/o having to fix them as much. This was a fun way to enjoy the great entertainment and also a great learning experience.

This shot was taken from my first outing. It was at F2.8 1/125 w/ ISO 1000.  The shot came out really dark.  I was able to fix the exposure and remove the reddish tone in the photo. 
We started out early evening before the sunset so it was really bright and sharp.

As it got darker, I used flash but tried to use it at not such a high intensity that it causes a dark shadow in the background.

Whenever possible, I tried w/o flash, and sometimes it created a bit of noise.. 

From the three different nights at the festival, I saw different entertainments.

I set this shot using white balance of 2500K Kelvin. It gave a more natural color w/o the reddish-yellow casting.

Lots of people were decked out in their grand kimono attire.

There were some different foods offered each time I went.  This night, they had grilled salmon.

This has been a great event.  I hope they'll continue this again next year. 

Pacific Beach Hotel Natsu Matsuri - 8/13/2011

I've been to the Natsu Matsuri and Bon Dance twice so far.  The festival runs every Friday - Sunday from July 29-August 29. The first time I had a hard time w/ the darkness and the 2nd time, I brought along a flash so I was finally able to get some decent shots. The first night, I used a 16-35mm w/o flash.  Then the 2nd time I decided I wanted closer shots so I took along a 100mm with flash.  I tried to use available light whenever possible but it just got too dark and my pictures were very grainy w/ noise when I checked them later.  I decided to post the food shots first.

You need scrips to purchase food. It seems the best deal is if you spend more..Most of the food items are 3-5 tickets.  They even sold beer.

There were all kinds of grilled foods.  First thing that caught my eye was the grilled squid.

There's Yakitori Chicken.

Then there were grilled meat kabobs.

Grilled corn!!  This year, it's cooked on a real fire grill and not an electric one.

Then there were these potatoes..maybe sweet potatoes?

The food display..

There were Yaki Mochi..

They even had prime rib.  That heating lamp is a killer for photography.. the meat totally lost color..

They have those Takoyaki again.  Sooo cool to watch it change into a round ball. 

They use an egg for each okonomiyaki.

For dessert, they have shaved ice, cotton candy, frozen bananas on a stick and these andagi.

My colors got really messed up in the dark lighting on my first try that I decided to turn them black and white. 

When it's black and white, I don't have to worry about skin tones.. I definitely need more practice...

Flying Photography - 7/24/2011

How cool it is to try and make someone fly in the air? I saw this photo in Yahoo and was intrigued by capturing flight. This is our first experiment in flying photography. Thanks to Cindy who was a real sport for flying for us and also got much exercising as well. The skill is that Cindy has to fly and I setup a multiple shooting mode at high speed (I tried 1/250).  Then check which image shows the best flight.  It was super sunny and it worked in one respect that I could get a shadow to show the flight.. but it was really tough as you get really blown out shots. We first tried just plain walking in the air.

Then we tried flying.

I saw this shot w/ the umbrella on the website so we decided to try it. The umbrella helped with providing shade and less overexposure.  Next time, we should try balloons.

We tried all kinds of flying shots..

Then Erick had a great idea of the multiple shots ... here's my flight with landing. Pretty cool if it weren't for the blown out parts.. All it all, It was great fun with lots of laughs. Something definitely to try again.