Storm Troopers Visit the Honolulu Hale 12/17/08

I went with Eyes of Hawaii to take more photos of the Christmas lights at Honolulu Hale. It was even more crowded being it is closer to Christmas and because the Star Wars storm troopers were there for the Toys for Tots event. Here are the only two shots, both of which I had to fix a lot in photoshop elements.

NH Christmas Concert

I was fortunate to be at the Gift of Hope Concert presented by New Hope with the Moanalua High School Orchestra. These students played flawlessly and sounded very professional. It was an impressive performance although a very tough shoot with the low light..

Keeaumoku Traffic

I took some night shots of Keeaumoku traffic using my Canon S45 camera and tested out the auto white balance and Tungsten. Personally, I kinda like the Tungsten since it's not so yellow.

Honolulu Hale 12/09/08

It was my day off so I thought I'd take more photos of the tree displays inside the Honolulu Hale. I didn't think there'd be people going to see the tree display during the day. Again, was I wrong. There were 7 school buses parked on Punchbowl street. There were kids everywhere! I gave up and ended up taking this shot from across the street.

Honolulu City Lights 12/08/08

I thought who'd go to see the Honolulu City Lights on a Monday night? Well, I was wrong..there were lots of people taking in the scene and taking photos. It was hard to get a shot w/o people in it. There's so much to see..you can't take it all in one night. Darkness always present a problem for me since I don't know where to focus so here are my best tries...
I started off w/ a tripod, shooting up towards the tree top. Changing white balance to Tungsten made the photo not so yellow.Then the tripod just got in the way, so I ended up just hand holding the camera to get this shot of the moon. However, this got some green light reflection from the flare, I think.I found these large bells with very nice lighting that were under a tree w/ Star shaped lights near the entrance.I saw an example of this in a blog and decided to try it. It's done by using a long exposure and then turning your zoom while the shutter is open.Once inside, it is was hard to use a tripod, so I just got a few non-shakey shots.
This is the only nice tree photo I got. Yes, It is supposed to be pink because of the pink lights on the tree.It's been my goal each year to take a good shot of these lights on the tree on the walkway..this time, it's to dark, but at least I got the colored lights...Oh well, I'll have to try again.

Magic Island Night Shoot 12/5/08

Fought the Christmas traffic and met up Erick, Celia and Jalna at Magic Island to try out my new 16-35mm lens. Here's one taken at the 35mm. For whatever reason, using the aperture priority forced my shutter speed to 30 sec so some of it looked a little overexposed. This was taken at the widest focal length 16mm. You can even see the stars in the sky.
I tried an F11 exposure shot to get the starburst lights on the harbor.
Another F11 shot to get the starburst lights of the sidewalk.
I had so much problem w/ my external flash and it finally worked to capture this picture of Jalna focused on her subjects. It was so dark I can't even tell what I was focusing at.
We started to try shooting other subjects..This came out kinda weird but I like the color and how it had focused on the tree trunk.Then, by pure accident, I was taking a photo of the park and before the shutter closed, I swung my camera to the harbor and got a double exposured shot. The streaks of lights came out so weird...I started to try different light shots by moving my camera on the tripod..This kind of cool shot is what you get...I wonder what Celia and Erick got?

Jupiter and Venus

Here's my attempt at taking a photo of the moon with Jupiter and Venus. It was shot @1600 ISO so it's a bit grainy.