Kamehameha Day Parade - 06/13/2015

Life's schedule took it's toll and I finally got to work on my pics from The Kamehameha Day Parade. I enjoy these parades because of the pa'u riders and their beautiful leis and horses. It was super hot and I don't know how they manage with all the heavy dresses and leis. It was also a super sunny morning and my exposure was all over the place from blown out because of the bright sun to being underexposed in the shade from the occasional puffy cloud. I was lucky to find a good spot behind a guy sitting on a beach chair who wore a cool hat (darn, should've gotten a pic) made from cutting a hole in card board soda tray, the kind you'd get w/ your large take out orders. A lot of the parade participants looked his way so I was able to get a lot of photos when they turned his way. :-)

The Kamehameha parade always have the king and his court. I had to fix the harsh shadows on their faces in PSE.

People in the parade were waving to the man sitting in front of me with the soda tray hat and yelled out 'cool hat'..

It was super bright.. and the white colors get really blown out.

Each island was represented by it's color and flowers.

Lantern Floating Festival 2015 - 05/25/2015

The last time I went to the Lantern Floating Festival was in 2012.  That time, I didn't know how large the crowd was going to be so this time I was prepared to face the huge crowd.  Since it would be too difficult to change lens or do much of anything else in the crowd, I chose to take my favorite lens, the 70-200mm thinking I'd be pretty far away. I had recall seeing photos people shot from standing in the waters of Ala Moana Beach so we headed into the sand with the packed crowd. 

There were two large screens projecting the ceremony. and the crowd seemed even larger since I was in the middle of it standing in the sand. The sun hadn't set when we got there so it would be a wait before we'd see lanterns.  Since i only had a long lens, I chose to take wide shots w/ my iphone...like this one.  

My long lens was pretty useless since I was really too close to people this time so I caught some zoom closeups of lanterns.  I had to be careful that I don't whack anyone from behind w/ my lens.

Around 7:15p after the sun had set, they made the announcement to release the lanterns.  The crowd started heading closer to the water.  Being stuck in the crowd, I could hardly see anything, I decided to take a Panoramic w/ my iphone. 

Then I tried taking pics between people's heads, arms, cellphones w/ my zoom lens, it was quite challenging.  

I kept walking closer to the water to get better shots of the lanterns that my shoes had gotten wet twice from the surging water.

By around 8pm, the team on surfboard and paddle board had started to gather the lanterns to a corner section near the rocks on Magic Island side of the beach so we decided to walk towards Magic Island.

By the time we got there the crowd had subsided and there were only a few photogs in the water with their tripods.  I was finally able to get a lot of cool closeups of lanterns w/ my zoom lens.

Since there were many lanterns, the lighting was perfect and no flash required.

So finally, I got a lot of shots I was hoping for.

Even this iphone shot came out pretty good with just his flash light and the lantern light.

I got closeups of the team collecting the lanterns.

This was really awesome.. some waiting but what I thought wouldn't be a good shoot, turned out to be a great shoot.

May Day - 05/01/2015

It's the 88th annual May Day festival at Kapiolani Park and Aloha Friday all at once. I took off the day from work to go because I really really like seeing all the colors I find from the leis on display. There's always a long line when the exhibit first opens at 1pm but after the initial crowd goes thru it'a a breeze to get thru to see all the rainbow colors of flowers and also ribbon leis on display. After checking my photos, I didn't realize I took so many pics.

The grand prize winner gets a special display. 

This was one of my favorite photos from the pics I took.

There are so many colors in the leis.. red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet.. every color of the rainbow.

Even a white and silver one too..

The coronation of the May Day queen was held in a ceremony at the band stand just before noon.

They have lei make and take.

There's a category for haku leis.

I love going around the demo tables where they have flowers laying on the table.

Can't wait for next year's displays..

Work(ing) Garden Update 2 04/19/2015

I haven't posted this month due to 'Life' happening at a pace faster than I can catch up, so I figure it's a good time for an update to the Rooftop garden being it's been six months since the last update.  The Rooftop Garden completed with a phase 3 planting of Hawaiian plants.  This completed the three sections of the raised planter that was given for the effort.  There has been cleanups and removal of dead plants and they have grown at a slower pace than when it first started.  I suspect it is due to the rainy and windy winter season we've had.  We even had an attack of aphids which took a toll and killed some of the plants.
It was starting to rain the other evening and I caught a perfect rainbow over the garden.

There are some Hawaiian plant and herbal plants.  There is even taro plants and a couple of stalks of sugar cane.

The popolo berries were quite plentiful.

A Pineapple actually developed.. we think.. hopefully, It'll actually become a fruit since usually it's supposed to take a year and it hasn't been that long.

There's been cleanups and harvests.  The carrots didn't do as well in the garden as they had really strange shapes. A few were roundish and this one looked perfect for Holloween.

There was also a purple variety of Kale.

I've never seen flowers on green onions and chives, but it sure is pretty.

In December, my coworker who raises prayingmantis released some of them in the garden in hopes of controlling some pests.  There were around 30+ released altogether. They were really tiny and really fast.

We've been able to track the growth of several who had shed and grown larger.

We even found a few ladybug that found its way to to the garden and it's been a nice discovery. There's going to be a one-year anniversary in June and perhaps more plantings of more hearty vegetable plants. 

An update on my bottle bean plant.  I've had a couple of more harvests but those have never been as large as the original.  I also planted chinese pea and I was able to harvest one pea. ha ha..  Unfortunately, the pea plant turned yellow and died..  I'm starting a new bean plant.