Chinese New Year Festival - 1/29/2011

Chinese New Year is on Feb. 3rd so the weekend prior is the big festival in Chinatown on Maunakea Street and the Chinese Cultural Plaza. The new year is the year of the Rabbit. This year I didn't bring my 50D since I had to do some food shopping so I only brought along the Lumix ZS6.
Stores were stocked with red and gold items for the new year.
Lots of things were decorated for the year of the rabbit.
There were lots of lion dances,
and lots of narcissus flowers.
There was this unusual Narcissus blossom that had a fuzzy center. It was the first time that the carver ever saw this unusual blossom in his 30 years of doing this.
There were many carved narcissus...what I aspire to do.. I'll try again next year.
Of course there were lots of food booths like this one selling jai.
This is the first time I saw this 'Dragon Whisker' candy made in Chinatown. It is fine sugar kneaded and pulled into very fine threads, then the bunches of threads are used to wrap a peanut, coconut and sugar filling. I wanted to buy some, but you had to wait for more than an hour to get your order so I ended up just taking a picture of it :-P
Not bad a price for hand made candy.
And of course, you can't have chinese new year without the jin dui....
I was trying to get a closeup shot of the jin dui w/o getting my camera fried and I tried to show them bobbing around and bubbling in the hot oil...yum!!!

Samsung Solstice II Pics - 1/25/2011

I recently upgraded my phone to the touch-screen Samsung Solstice II and it has a camera feature that has a higher resolution than the LG Shine that I previously owned. While shopping at Chinatown this weekend, the Chinese Cultural Plaza New Year Festival was going and and I was lucky to catch the Lion Dance and took some pics w/ my new phone. Pretty good..can't tell that these were taken w/ a phone. eh?
Here's an update shot of my narcissus progress. The leaves have curled, although it looks a bit unmanaged. :-( Here's an article from the Star Bulletin archives and photo of what it should look like. At least, I see flower buds appearing. :-)
One of the bud has broken open and I think it should bloom within a day or so.
My father saw a guy selling narcissus in Chinatown and decided to buy one instead. These are the upright form and costed $8 without the pot. Hopefully, I'll be seeing the flowers on mine real soon.

Flash Photography at KCC - 1/17/2011

So Erick got this cool new flash setup complete w/ remote and flash umbrella thingy. Celia and I went along to experiment w/ some portrait photography. Thanks to Celia who became our model, I was also able to learn how to use my new flash.
Here's the remote mounted on the camera.
We set up our gear under the shade of a large tree where there were spots of light shining between the leaves. The flash setup was able to blend out all the uneven lighting to give great skin tones. I had never though to use a flash in daylight..so I guess this is what's called 'fill flash'.
Since I was using my 100mm macro lens, I also decided to try some macro photography w/ these ants.
Since Celia brought Blueberry the gorilla, she wanted to do some multiple shots. check out her blog for the final composite that came out really cool. Going home was a bit of a challenge and not to mention the looks people gave us while taking Blueberry to the shoot.
With my little lumix, I decided to take a few shots to create a panoramic of the cactus garden.

Egg Fruit - 1/22/2011

I saw this strange fruit in Chinatown and the sign read Egg Fruit. I decided to buy it since it looked so cute and thought maybe it was in the same family as the mango and I just LOVE mango. It was soft so I cut it open and to my disappointment, it looked more like a avocado. It was kinda sweet but the texture was more like eating an egg yolk..kinda dry. I don't think I'll be trying this again any time soon.

Martin Luther King Parade - 1/17/2011

It was a hot and sunny morning so I went to check out the MLK parade and to get some practice. I was surprised all these people had lined the streets in the hot sun. There were many groups of walkers from union groups and a couple of bands.
This is the cleanest garbage truck I've ever seen..it looked brand new. At the end of the parade was a temple like float from the Hari Krishna group.
Here are update shots of my narcissus progress. The leaves have started to curl and has turned a dark green color as well. It also as lots of roots. I see some buds and I also notice some have been cut..hope they will not die.. :-(

Narcissus Buds - 1/13/2011

Chinese new year is on Feb 3rd this year and it's time for my annual narcissus carving. This is a style of manipulating the blossoms of narcissus. Each year, I attempt to not kill the flower bud in hopes the bud will develop into beautiful and fragrant flowers. It is auspicious to have narcissus and other flowers to bloom on new years day. It takes about 28 days for the flowers to bloom, so I'm pretty sure I won't make it for Chinese new year, but I hope to at least see some flowers. First, I start with a narcissus bulb. These photos were taken with the Lumix ZS6 and I think the white balance turned out quite well. In fact, I think it did better than my canon 50d! I use an exacto knife to basically carve out about half of the bulb to expose the white flower bud deep at the base of each green shoot. This way, as I understand, will force the green shoots to stand up instead of growing straight. After it is carve, I clean off the dirt and soak overnight to start the rooting.
Then the bulb is placed into a dish of water and the root areas are covered w/ a wet towel. The wet towel will absorb the water to feed the roots of the narcissus. Each day, the water is changed. I will hopefully continue to post the progress.
So far, I have four blubs (only three are shown). Hopefully, I'll be seeing flowers in 28 days or so.

Christmas at Honolulu Hale - 12/29/2010

I finally made it to see the lights at the Honolulu Hale. I feel like I had to learn how to shoot in the dark again since all my shots came out so dark so thank goodness for RAW and Photoshop! Since it was after Christmas, it wasn't as crowded and I was able to set up my tripod and take photos w/o a sea of people.
I tried using my 100mm to get this zoom shot.
There were a lot of cute decorations inside the Honolulu Hale...I wish I had more time to explore.
They even had a Chinese Christmas tree. Every year, there is a spinnng tree.It was so dark, I decided to try HDR on some shots using the 3 exposure settings.
I figured the dark trees with the bright lights would be perfect candidate for HDR and I've always wanted a good shot of the light.. not bad..still some yellowing and grain..I'll try again next year for this elusive shot..
This is the most difficult shot since the sign is so bright and everything else is so dark. HDR really helped bring all the exposures together.
Somehow I'm never able to get all the colors in the lights to show, even with HDR...I think I need to lower the exposure more..
My final HDR shot to get the lights and the Mele Kalikimaka blocks.
I've always seen these light, but never took a photo of it.. and I finally got it...