Bishop Museum Hawaiian Hall - 09/07/09

The Hawaiian Hall reopened last month and we finally got a chance to take a look. I had not realized how dark it was in there due to the sensitive artifacts in the exhibit until I started to take my first shot and it came out really dark. Even w/ the max aperture at F2.8, the shutter speed was reeeally slow! It was a challenge of my skill (or lack of) with my equipment.
The last time I visited was when I was in Elementary school and somehow, I remembered it being larger than it is now except, the whale is still pretty large. Since it seemed hopeless w/ the lighting, I decided to experiment w/ HDR. This is the first and only one I took.
After trying out different ISO and keeping my camera really steady, I was able to take some wide shots of the hall.
The two things I remembered about the hall was the grass hut and the whale. Here are models of the hut.
I'm pretty sure they rebuilt the hut since I know it was larger than this before!
Here's the main reason I wanted to see the hall. I had heard about this feather band w/ real human teeth and I really wanted to take a close look. I tried taking shots using my wide angle lens, but they were all blurry. So I finally used my 50mm @F2.0. It was really hard to get a focused shot.
EV pointed out these masks and I thought it was both kinda spooky looking and yet very interesting.. I really like how the lights shining on it shows off the grooves of the faces.
I was finally done using my wide angle lens and decided to try my 50mm F1.4 lens to see if I can get better shots because of the larger aperture.
I was able to get a few better close ups of the artifacts...and then my battery ran out and I realized I left my backup in my other bag. ARGH!! What a challenging shoot!

Okinawan Festival 9/5-6/09

We spent two afternoons at the Okinawan Festival since it is a festival that has everything... food, entertainment, people, just lots of things to shoot. This was my 2nd year of taking pictures of the festival and I learned from last year to use a longer zoom lens. It is still a great challenge to get the right exposure because of the dark and light areas on the stage and I had to do some post processing to fix the color and exposure.
There were entertainers from Okinawa who performed w/ very colorful costumes.
She was emotional in this dance choreographed about her mother's favorite dress.
After the performance, the performers were given a certificate of appreciation and leis.
The shave ice were HUGE!! I had one each day I was there! Yum!!!
We met this 92-year old man who said 'take my picha!' so we did...
I can't leave until I had a picture of the Andagi...
There were also SCARY games/rides for kids..
Even big kids were scared...
This year, the Bon Dance was under a near full moon. What a wonderful way to end a great day at the festival.

Waikiki HDR Experiment - 8/30/09

I watched the news last night and saw they had placed leis on the Duke Kahanamoku statue in Waikiki for the 8th Annual Duke's Ocean Fest so I decided to go check it out. As usual, the statue draws lots of tourists taking photos. There's also a live web cam installed on the lamp post that tourists like to wave to as they speak w/ their friend/family on their cell phones. It's actually quite a funny sight.
I took these shots for HDR w/o a tripod, and since I haven't gone on shoots lately, I really need to practice steadying the camera.
Hey, they already put up flags as a reminder for the Okinawan Festival next weekend at Kapiolani Park.

HDR Experiment Revisted - 8/30/09

I went to a Photographer's talk given by George Lepp at UH thanks to CD who signed us up. In his talk, he mentioned that you shouldn't think that "I'll fix it in photoshop" but rather to pre-visualize your image and use tools to enhance them. He showed some of his HDR work using Photomatix and it inspired me to work on mine that I've neglected because I've been too lazy. His suggestion is to use a good tripod...which is what i really need to get (he uses a Gitzo..$$$). Well, I wasn't able to bring mine to take these and luckily, the shifts in the pics are too small to notice. In this shot, I used HDR to bring out the red tiles under this bridge.
This was a really dark shot because the sculpture was under the tree and I was able to bring out the details.
Using HDR helped to blend in the dark foreground with the bright background.
There were lots of people passing which caused a lot of blurry figures in this shot. After looking at this for a while, a weird thing about this shot is the woman seated on the ground who seem to be practicing some new age religion. Somehow, it looks like she's staring at this green glow on the ceiling above. Hmmm...
Yep.. people in HDR is bad.. but the sky color and the statue came out great. George lepp also mentioned that we can change the shutter speed to get the water more blurred in HDR water shots. I think I'll try that the next chance I get.
Clouds came out really pronounced in this shot taken in the afternoon around 4pm.
The outside of the Lincoln Memorial looks like the Parthenon in Greece.
HDR helped bring out the interior of the Air and Space Museum and kept the sunroof from being blown out.
Those circular windows in the Library of Congress got really blown out in my first view shots.. so I decided to try doing HDR for this shot.

Lego Store - 8/22/03

The Lego Store finally opened at Ala Moana Shopping Center. It's amazing all the things one can build w/ Lego. There's even a turkey made of Lego...hmm..
You can build your own Lego "MiniFigure".
When you're done you put them in a container like this.
Here's my creation...the Lego Computer Geek...

Pot Luck - 8/21/09

We had a pot luck and there were all different kinds of food from different countries: Chinese, Korean, Filipino, Indian, American, etc.. It was a great sampling from everyone's cooking. We also had lots of great desserts.
Someone bought this Tiramisu from Panya.
We had lots of desserts including this homemade blueberry cheesecake.

Bon Dance at Soto Mission of Hawaii - 8/15/09

August is Obon Season and it gave me opportunity to try night photography. I found it to be very challenging because it's dark and people move fast. It was a fun and great learning experience. People were having a great time decked out their in Japanese wear.
As it got dark, it was really hard to set the right speed. I got motion shots where one feels like the world is revolving around them quickly.
I finally had to use my flash and after much adjustments, was able to get focused shots of the performers on the platform.
Everyone was having a great time concentrating on their dance steps.I was able to get the lanterns w/ my zoom lens.
Most of the time, I caught a lot of people's back side but I did get some sharp shots of different Japanese wear.This one is my favorite..the lanterns in the darkness looks like it was a black and white shot w/ just the lanterns in color.