All-Collectors Show - 7/23/2011

In the past year at the show, the Star Wars crew would walk around and I was w/o a camera so I had to use my phone camera. This year, I decided to test out the Panasonic Lumix to see how it'd handle taking indoor shots. I used the program setting and just let the camera do it's job. I tried out a lot of closeups. The white balance was really great and I didn't even need to fix it at all.  There was also a surf board exhibit I was able to check out.

The glass ceiling in the sunlight was so cool, I had to take a shot.

Each aisle had a name...I was at the Old Pali Road.

There were many colorful items to take shots of.. 

We tried all kinds of ways to get this skeleton surfer dude.  It's wierd that w/ the blue back drop, he turned yellow.. but with some Photoshop Element magic, the yellow is gone..

And then I saw them!! SUCCESS! SOOO COOL!! I even got to take a photo with them...and the storm trooper even let me use his gun...since I'm better behind the camera, I won't be posting that shot..

Fish Auction -- 7/9/2011

The Hawaii Photographic Society had a photo outing at the United Fishing Agency to see the Fish auction. I woke up at 4am and I kept thinking it was crazy to be out in this darkness. We met at 5:30am on a Saturday morning..yawn..zzz.. Thanks to Celia as she kept me awake. I took this sign at 8am since it was DARK when we got there.
When we got inside, there were many pallets filled w/ fish on ice. This was the most fish I've ever seen and I was told it wasn't their busiest day. I was just getting more awake and starting to take some photos and people were already checking out the fishes. Although it looked well lit, my first few shots were dark so I ended up using manual setting and ISO 800. Luckily I didn't have much noise.
Each fish was tagged and coded. This is an Ono..
Some Mahimahi...
I think these are Opah. I learned that you need some people in the shot in order to show the size of these fishes.
Each fish is displayed w/ a sectional cut to show its meat's texture.
Looks like it'd make some good sashimi..
Some fishing tails...
The buyers examine the fishes.
The bidding process happened so fast, I didn't even see any movement then it was sold. Most of the fishes were sold by the time we left around 7:30 am.
Once sold, they're carted off.
My overhead shots didn't come out but this shot is what I call a "Fisheye's point of view" as this is what you'd see if you were a fish..
The fishes are labeled w/ the buyer info. It was a cool shoot to be in a real working environment. In retrospect, I'd get up early to do this again...hope we get to come back again.

Ala Moana July 4th Fireworks - 7/11/2011

This year I was lucky to be able to catch the Ala Moana fireworks from a prime spot from the 24th floor. We even got to use the parking and not have to deal w/ the massive traffic leaving from Ala Moana center. I had no idea how big the fireworks would get so I couldn't figure out whether to use a long zoom lens or a wide lens. While waiting, I took a shot of the Ala Wai Harbor.So the fireworks finally started at 8:30pm.. alnost immediately, I realized my lens of choice was wrong since the firework was larger than I expected. I finally switched to the wide 16-35mm lens and tried to see if I could capture multiple bursts by covering the lens w/ my jacket between bursts. The results came out cool, but the background came out kinda underexposed..This one went off really low...The white bursts are really hard to capture w/o blowing out. I tried boosting the saturation in PSE.
After looking thru all my shots, I found this one that looked like a daisy. I don't even remember seeing this while watching the show.The bursts were larger and closer together as it got closer to the finale.After the Ala Moana Show was done, we could even see far off in the distance, another fireworks show in the Pearl Harbor area as well.

4th of July Celebration Parade - 7/4/2011

This is the first year for a July 4th parade in Waikiki. There were no fancy floats, just local participants who wanted to show their patriotism and most of them walked the parade route. I was surprised to see so many people had lined the streets to see the early evening parade. It was great fun. I hope they'll have it again next year.
This group was riding on top of the double decker tour bus.
There was Bethany the surfer whose movie was to be shown at Sunset on the Beach.
Then there were some just in awe of being in the parade.
Of course there were pageant queens, who also walked the entire parade.
There were also ethnic groups.
The Military...
And the Law Enforcement.
Then there were these clowns. I was busy taking photos of them I totally missed the Confederates who were walking right behind them. argh!!Then the biker group...
And then these dudes who were taking pics w/ the crowd... aren't they the ghost busters? Hard to tell w/o the music...
Finally, I KNEW they had to show up to join the party...