Honolulu Festival - 3/3 - 3/4/2012

This year, the Honolulu Festival was one week early and it worked out better for me so I was able to attend some of the events. There's always the entertainment from different ethnic groups at the convention center.  I also got a chance to practice shooting for sharpness.

This year they had a group from Alaska.

This group of women were able to demonstrate dressing themselves in kimono without help in record speed.

I always enjoy the Descendance group from Australia.  This dancer was depicting a kangaroo.

There are always lots of hula dance groups from Japan.

This troupe Sugaren showed a brief memorial video of their leader and singer who's also this speaker's mother.  She spoke of last year, when her mother was given only several months to live.  She had come to get some rest time last March, but decided to return early back to Japan to help w/ the Tsunami efforts.  I can feel that they performed w/ a heavy heart last year as well as this year.

Nonetheless, they expressed their dance to the fullest.

I also caught a floral/musical/fashion show.   I had taken a lot of shots but decided to post this one..

On Sunday afternoon, there was the parade that started from 4- 7pm.  The weather was iffy and it drizzled several times but it didn't dampen the spirits of the marchers as well as those watching.

I finally got my 16-35mm lens back from repairs and decided to use it for the parade.  It was good mostly for capturing large groups.

There's the usual lion dance.

Since it was overcast and lighting was pretty constant from everywhere, I decided to move around to get different views of the parade.

I have no idea what he instrument he was playing but it looks pretty cool.

These kids were awesome when I saw them at the Convention Center, but it was too dark to capture the action.  I'm glad they were performing on the street so I got a second chance.

This balloon started pretty high and then it started to droop and then was more like a snake that slithered from side to side.. quite a funny sight to watch.

It got darker so I started to use the flash.. I had a hard time w/ the settings so it looked super dark and worked best w/ something that was lighted like this float.

Finally, another chance for me to take the fire breathing dragon.  I followed it down the street to get these shots.  The fireworks gave that weird red glow that looked almost like a cloth, esp. in the 2nd shot.

After the parade there was a large firework on the beach of Waikiki that lasted around 15mins.  It started to rain when I left my place so I decided to leave my newly repaired camera at home and take video w/ my point and shoot.  I haven't figured out how to edit and post it .. maybe some day I'll get it to my blog.

Finally, this is not a good shot, but i thought this was so cool. Instead of handing out parade schedule, there are people walking around w/ the QR code on a sign that you can use your phone app to scan and get to the website w/ the schedule. Too bad I don't have an iphone, else I'd try it out..