I've seen this man playing his violin that was plugged into the speakers before and this time I decided to take a photo of him. The sun had set so it was really dark where he sat so the high ISO and small aperture I used caused a lot of noise, plus it was hard to focus in the dark, but I really didn't want to use the flash on him just in case he'd get mad at me for taking his pic. 
Although I don't have a macro lens, I tried to do some closeup and then cropped it to look more macro...
Purple is a really tough color to get...most of mine came out kinda pinkish..
Greens seem to come out better in HDR...
I wanted to get some patterns on the leaves.
We walked around and I wanted to get a shot how enormous the tree was by shooting up the tree..
When I tried to copy Jalna's setting for contrast, saturation and tone, I actually set the dial the other direction to -2 instead...DUH!! ARGH!! So, the cannonball flower came out kinda washed out..even after doing HDR processing.
After the walk around the garden, we ended back at the green house....even though the weather report sounded ominous and it poured the night before, it turned out to be a nice day after all.
It was unfortunate that there were not as many blossoms as there were the last time I visited.
My HDR of flowers didn't really work out and the only one that looked natural was this pitcher plant.. there was only one blossom that didn't turn brown. This hanging plant is usually swinging in the wind from the fans blowing so it is especially hard to get a good HDR shot.
There were mostly green plants in the green house...(duh?!!)
Just outside the green house is this statue of a girl with butterflies. Around this area I saw a lot of butterflies dancing around the flowers.
I waited patiently until I was able to capture these two shots of butterflies. These were cropped since I was using my wide angle lens and wasn't able to get too close without scaring away the butterfly. There's even a caterpillar in the flowers. 
I wanted to get a panorama of the cannon ball tree, but that photo also didn't turn out and I got this instead. I think this is the largest tree in the garden...It took 3 shots to build this panorama.
As part of the graduation, the students had to perform different types of hula chants and dances.
They also had to perform using different hula instruments.
One of the kumu hula was from Tokyo and spoke in Japanese.
The graduation was very emotional for the students.
The dancers from Japan also performed. There were a LOT of them from Japan.
After the sun set, the stage was lit up and the Tahitian dance performances began. It was dark even w/ the stage lights and my camera had a hard time keeping the focus so the image are a little soft and grainy from the high ISO.
There were even young performers who were really cute and talented.
There were so many on the stage, it took three shots to create this panoramic. I was actually surprised that PSE was able to merge them since people were actually moving in these shots. I had to manually link the photos but PSE was able to blend the image and you can hardly tell the overlaps. I am so amazed what PSE was able to do.
At around 1:33am, I took this second shot.. hmm... I don't see any difference... well, needless to say, it was a dud to photograph. All I got out of it was a sleepless night.
I had the idea this year of taking a shot of a moon cake against the full moon. The second attempt to get the full moon was a success. I mounted my camera on tripod, held the plate out in front of my lens, with the moon cake on a slight tilt so that you can see part of the top design yet making sure it does not slide off, then clicked w/ my other hand. After a few tries, here's my result:
Moon cake usually has a doughy crust and a sweet filling made of lotus seed paste. 
In the center, there's a salted duck egg yolk. Since it's pretty dense, you have to drink a lot of hot tea to wash it all down.
I'd assume in the ancient days, people would sit around and enjoy moon cake under a full moon, just like these figures my dad used for his bonsai plants.
Fast forward 6 years later. Our lone turtle has grown quite a bit...
He (or maybe she) has outgrown our original container. Here he is. It is so hard to take a good photo since once we put a ruler on the shell, his (I assume the gender) head would go back into his shell.
Having been to the the zoo numerous times and looking at the turtles in the pond where the Lemurs live, I'm sure that's the same family of turtles...and I often wonder what would happen if I'd sneak him in so he'd be with the rest of his kind...hmmm.. But for now, he just lives alone being washed and fed daily by my dad.
