UH Cat 5/30/09

We spent this weekend taking photos for the Special Olympics Summer Games at UH. As a diversion from editing and going thru the several hundred shots I took, I decided to do a quick post of these two of a cat I met at the parking lot at UH. I saw him (I'm assuming gender here) staring at me by the stairs as if he wanted his picture taken. As I got closer, he ran down the stairs but then stopped to look back at me.
I followed him down the stairs and as he stared at me once more, I took this shot of him and his very sharp eyes. He scrambled into the bushes after I pressed the shutter 3 times.

Memorial Day 5/25/2009

On this day to honor our veterans, we decided to visit the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific at Punchbowl.
There were many flags placed on the graves and it was a very overwhelming view and I tried different perspectives to capture the scene.I tried to some HDR with photomerge to take this shot of the statue at the memorial. After the merge, it was difficult to crop since I'd lose part of the photo, so I left it in it's original form.
I also tried HDR done in three parts and photomerged to create this panorama, altogether it took 9 shots to create this.

Ala Wai Promenade 5/24/09

Every morning as I pass it on my way to work on the bus, I've wanted to take some pictures of he tree tunnel of the Ala Wai promenade. So, we "photo nuts", as CD calls us, took in a shoot there to attempted another HDR experiment.
In this tree tunnel shot, I think I need more exposures to balance out the dark and light since my shot is still kinda blown out in the light areas.
The day was perfect, with the sky at its bluest..but it was sure HOT!!I think this building just went up not long ago. I wonder if it's another time-share?
EV was kind enough to let me try out his NICE tripod so I decided to take a panorama shot of the Ala Wai.

Honolulu Symphony Fair 5/23/09

The Moanalua Elementary school was to perform at the Honolulu Symphony Fair held at the Waikiki Shell so I went to practice my shooting. What a HOOOOOT day!! Unfortunately, they did not perform in the Shell stage but under tents which made for a very difficult shoot. The performances were well worth it. I was, however, able to photomerge together two hand-held shots to make this panoramic.
I also tried near-to-far shot of the stage and seating area of the Shell.
Everyone was sitting out in the hot sun listening to various school orchestra group performances.
People brought their family to the Symphony fair and some even brought their pets.
Shooting under the tent was really tough. My shots came out dark and washed out that I had to fix them in photoshop elements using the level feature.
I really boosted the saturation to compensate for the washed out shots.
Other professional performers included Anita Hall who usually performs w/the Honolulu Symphony.
And also the Honolulu Horn Society.
There were really talented little kids with the Suzuki Talent Education Group. They sounded terrific. Although it wasn't a great shoot, the entertainment made it worthwhile to spend a hot day out.

Magic Island Night HDR 5/22/09

I once saw on some site an HDR shot of nighttime cityscape that looked like Metropolis in a Batman movie and have wanted to duplicate it. Unfortunately, it is pretty difficult and all my shots turn kinda yellow and not very Metropolis-looking.
I tried the Detail Enhancement process to make it look a little more like a drawing but still no Metropolis.

420Ex Flash, 50D and Misc. 5/19/09

I finally mounted the 420ex flash on the new 50d to see if it'll work. Good thing it still does.
These have nothing to do w/ the flash, but I was able to attempt shooting at the aquarium again and caught these couple of shots.

Foster Botanical Garden HDR 5/18/09

On my day off, my friend and I visited Foster Botanical Garden. It was a pretty good day with some overcast. I decided to take some shots for HDR this time since there were really beautiful colors in the plants I found in the new green house.
The Buddha was really back lit and dark. HDR helped balance the background and foreground.
I found the color of this plant was really unusual and I used HDR Detail Enhancer feature on this shot.
HDR helped to bring the outdoor colors into these shots instead of being blown out.
I tried other HDR process for outdoors shots to get the details of the branches/roots of the canon ball tree.
In this darkened tree covered pathway, I was able to get better exposure w/ my 3 shots.
Here's the BEFORE shot of the green house looking out into the gardens. This was shot at +0 EV.
Here's the 3 shots combined AFTER HDR process. The colors are far more vibrant because of the combined exposures.