Academy of Art - 9/19/2010

The third Sunday of each month is Family Sunday at the Academy of Art. This month's theme is South East Asian Art and they had performer from the area. It's been years since I've been to the Academy of Art so I decided to check it out. It was a HOT and sunny day and the performances were set up in the center courtyard.
The first performance I saw when I got there was this demonstration of filipino fighting. It is really difficult to shoot since they were under a white tent and they wore black so the background got blown out. Then the Balinese dancers I came to see. Their costumes were really colorful.
Did I mention it was really dark under the tent?
Finally, this performer came right in front of me on the grass.
I watched the last singer from the Philipines. I was surprised that I was actually able to do an HDR of him.
Afterwards, I checked out the court yard area and tried more HDR since the building was so ornate.
It's been so long that I didn't remember the lily pond in the Asian courtyard.
When I went back to the parking lot, I saw this sculpture and though it'd make a good HDR.

Aloha Festivals Hoolaulea - 09/18/2010

It's the Waikiki block Party for the annual Aloha Festivals and I decided to check it out. I knew it would be dark so I decided to bring the 50mm F1.4 lens and left the flash at home. I ended up battling the Orange-Yellow color and was also limited on how much I can capture in the frame. Again, like the sunset on the beach, I was caught in a sea of people who showed up.
I tried all kinds of settings and wanted to avoid too much digital noise so I settled on Shutter Priority at 1/100 and ISO 640. Since it was so dark, the aperture was automatically at the largest setting. I then had to use Photoshop Elements to brighten the photo.
All the food booths had very long lines.
This booth with beautiful and colorful stars caught my eye. Soooo cool!!
They also sold these colorful wooden frogs that croaked when you run the wood sticks across it's back.
It's cool when you can walk down Kalakaua Ave. w/o any cars.
There were also large crowds at the entertainment stages. I had to take these blind by raising my camera over the crowd. It's really challenging and thank goodness for PSE to fix all the problems. There was a huge flood light that brighten the Duke Kahanamoku statue so I took this before I left.

Crowds at Hawaii 5-0 Premiere - 9/13/2010

I decided to check out the first sunset on the beach premiere of Hawaii 5-0 and practice 'papparazzi' shooting. I got there around 6pm and there was already a super huge crowd. I had a long zoom lens so I had to do a Panoramic to capture the crowd.
I didn't feel like venturing into the crowd so I ended up taking pics of kids body surfing while I waited.
Since it was so crowded, I went towards the street area to see if I could catch anything. I finally saw some police escorts.
some sporty cars...
And a bunch of black SUVs. To my disappointment, they drove onto the beach area so I wasn't able to see anyone at all.
After the sunset, the crowd got even larger, I decided on another panorama. It was getting darker and I wasn't able to see any stars (except maybe the ones that started to appear in the sky) so I decided to leave. I heard on the news there were some 5000-10,000 people who showed up. When I left, people were still arriving. I'm glad I left when I did.

Kualoa and La'ie - 9/6/2010

On labor day, I joined Erick and Celia on a landscape shoot. Thanks to Erick who drove us townies to these two scenic spots way on the other side of the island. I don't have a polarizer so my first few shots had washed out the sky so I decided to try HDR. I didn't think of bringing a tripod so I just steadied my camera on the fence to take these shots for the HDR.
HDR helped bring out the blue in the sky as well as the vibrant greens.
Too bad there was this 'no trespassing' sign, otherwise, I could've gotten closer to the ruins.

Chinaman's head was just around the corner from the ruins.
Then we drove to La'ie to this lookout spot I've never been where you can see these cool islands that reminded me of photos I've seen of the Galapagos Islands...
I did a close up HDR version of the island because the rock formation looked so cool.
Next to the long island was this tiny island. I wondered what is the significance of this stack of rocks and who had put them there.
On the rocky cliff area that I took the previous shots, there was this hole you can see thru to the ocean that also intrigued me because I thought it was shaped like a heart. It was hard to shoot because it was bright on both sides and dark on the inside. This was the best out of nearly 10 shots I took. I lucked out and found the heart shaped 'cookie cutter' in PSE so I cropped it just to demonstrate my point. :-)
On the other side of the cliff, some people had set up tent. I'm amazed they didn't get a flat from driving on the rough terrain.
I took a panorama of the shore line on the other side of the cliff area.. sorry I have NO idea where this is..
On our way back to town, I practiced 'drive by shooting'. I was lucky my camera was even able to focus so fast w/ Erick's driving! I got this shot of Kuoloa Ranch.
I also got this valley...again..not sure where this was either. All in all, it was great to venture outside of the city and not see any of the concrete jungle.

Foster Garden Take Two - 9/5/2010

I had a second chance at the getting more practice w/ a macro lens. I tried more water droplets. I waited for the sprinkers to go off then looked for the largest and brightest water droplet.
I also spotted a butterfly nearby. Too bad she was injured on her right wing so she didn't fly around as fast...but she was just as beautiful as ever.
I tried some closeups.
He just stood still as if he was waiting for me to take his picture... too bad he's not the madagascar 'Geico' type.
We went to look for the canon ball tree.
I just don't see how these beautiful flowers become those ugly brown canon balls...or is it the other way around?
Celia spotted these leaves that looked like someone had painted on them... so cool!
I decided to use these ginger plants for it's pattern.