Honolulu City Lights - 12/27/2012

For the HPS last outing of the year, we always choose to see the Christmas lights after Christmas to avoid the crowds. There were still some crowd, but at least it was manageable so that I could get shots w/o people. I got there before sunset shortly after 5 pm and it was still very bright outside. I thought this angle was cool because it was distinctively a Hawaiian Christmas with the coconut trees.

It was still early that they hadn't even turn on all the light yet.  I decided to change it up a bit and added PSE effects to the daytime shots.

I got to try different angles of the tree since there wasn't much crowd.  

For the night shot, I decided to use bulb mode so I can control and test different shutter speeds.  I even tried lighting the poinsettia plants w/ my flash using 'manual' remote flash method by holding it in one hand and setting it off using the test flash button on the flash. it was so cool there's not even a person caught in my shot.

Since i wasn't able to get a clear shot of Mr. and Mrs. Santa, I decided to apply effects again for some distraction.

Earlier when I first arrived, i went to check out the wreath display.. alas.. no crowd..

There were some funky wreaths. Somehow I think this year's theme was on recycling.

Here are these angels made w/ those foam wrappers they use on pears.

I believe this is the winner.  It is really detailed and quite exquisite..and made of shards of cd/dvd disks.

In a closeup you can see how many pieces of CDs were used.. it was quite amazing.