44th Annual Ukulele Festival - 07/20/2014

There were thunder and lightning on Saturday night and I wasn't sure if I'd go to the Ukulele Festival on Sunday but it was nice and sunny so I trekked down to Kapiolani Park to check out this year's festival.  I was there in the afternoon and it was muggy but very windy.  I'm glad to see that the festival  is getting larger and larger each year but harder to find closer photo spots if you get there later.  This year had some of ukulele's big name performers.

The littlest ukulele performers were the cutest.

Aiden James have been performing all the previous times I've been to the festival.  He's only 12 yrs old but he'll be touring to the Pacific Northwest performing later in the year.

Raiatea Helm can sure hold a note.

Nick Acosta has performed for Roy for many years and this year he won a scholarship to continue his college education.

Every year they feature performers from around the world.  Here's a performer from Australia - Ryo Montgomery.

The hit of the afternoon, Willie K.  He sang everything from Hawaiian to Jazz to Opera.

We checked out the tents with Ukulele display, sales and lessons.

I heard them announce Jake Shimabukuru and rushed back to the stage area.

The crowd had gotten larger by that time.

It was awesome to see so much support for Roy's Ukulele Festival.

Work(ing) Garden - 07/18/2014

Our office started a new initiative called Blue Zones to help us to live longer and better. In doing so, we've started a community garden. A group of employees donated seedlings along with some purchased and then one morning planted them in one of the large planters in our roof top atrium.  They plotted out the area in squares and when the seedlings were first planted, they looked in total shock and dying. After a week or so, they started to come alive and it is now thriving. It has been a little over a month and here is what it has become. There are different herbs and hearty vegetable plants. Since I've volunteered to do the watering on Thursday afternoons, I took the opportunity to get some shots w/ my trusty point and shoot. The lighting at 6pm isn't ideal as the sun is still low and bright. Hopefully, they'll have this garden going for a while and maybe as the days start to get shorter again, there'll be better lighting for my update shoot. :-)

The tomato plants seem to be doing the best of all.  These green ones have already turned a nice orange, ready for harvesting.

I've always lived in the city and this is the first time I've seen tomatoes on a vine, not just the ones they sell in the supermarket!

There are different herbs.  The squash plant grows just behind it.  I haven't seen any squash but it sure has grown in the month's time.

I can't believe how large the manoa lettuce has grown.  

Recently my co-worker spotted a couple of egg plants.  I'm not sure what kind it is but it sure is skinny looking.

They even planted a few Kale.  It took up a lot of space and it is getting crowded.

I think this was the Thai Basil I contributed.  When it was first planted it look like a dying sick weed and so was the plant behind it.

Today, I can't believe it is ready to harvest.

I've never seen this variety before and not sure how one would use it for cooking.

These Green onions are also doing very well with daily morning and late afternoon watering by volunteers.

I'm told these grow underground.. I wonder how can you tell it's ready to eat?

Although not part of the community garden, there are strawberry guavas trees that already existed in our roof top atrium.  They grow to be around the size you'd get if you form an 'O' with your index finger and thumb. This year is an extremely good harvest.  I've seen about a hundred of these so far.

MacFarlane Regatta - 07/04/2014

I didn't have anything to do on July 4th holiday so I decided to check out the MacFarlane Regatta at Waikiki Beach. It runs from 8:30am but I got there just after 1pm and it was sunny and hot! I didn't know what to expect but the race was very well run and there wasn't much delays between each race.  
I was finding some shelter from the sun in the shadow of this canoe and then these men came and took it out for their run.

The start of the race is marked by the wave of a green flag.  In the background is the great July 4th Floatilla.  There were massive amounts of people on the beach and in the water.  

The paddlers take quite a beating from the incoming waves.

They paddle out from the beach to a marked flag then return.  My 70-200mm wasn't long enough so after they hit some waves, I can't see much of the canoes. I had to crop these shots.

Coming back, catching a wave can give them a good lead.

sometimes, taking in too much water can cause problems.  A lot of them had to bail as well as paddle back.

Pow Wow Graffiti Art 2014 - 05/26/2014

It's been raining for nearly the entire Memorial Day weekend, but finally the sun came out on Monday when we photogs decided to check out the Pow Wow 2014 art work. I've seen photos of previous Pow Wow arts but never seen it in person so this is a great chance to see them in person. We walked around just discovering art in every turn of a corner and it was like a scavenger hunt. It was a hot, humid, and muggy day but it was great going on this hunt w/ great fellow photog friends. It was after the trek that I found out there's a map and listing of all the art work and there were a lot more we missed.  Next time, we'll be more prepared so we don't miss out. 
This one on the side of the former Comp USA building is one of my favorite.  It looked like someone had mistakenly taken the plans and accidentally painted it upside down..and it totally works!

It was a bright day and some of the art works were dark so it was hard to meter.  I have to admit that I ended up shooting it using the camera's Program mode.  Then, I reworked them in PSE and upped the saturation to bring all the colors back.

I'm not really sure which ones were done this year and which were from previous year.

When I checked the Pow Wow site, I realized this building had last year's design completely repainted over with this new design!

We started on Cooke street and turned onto Pohukaina street and came across this colorful work.

I'm not sure how this one is done but it looks like it was carved out of the building.

Since it was a holiday, the streets were not busy but just after I took a test shot of this large wall, two cars pulled into the lot.. :0(

This is probably not part of the Pow Wow, but I thought it was so cute for a taximeter shop.

This is another cool work.  I have no idea how the artist managed to make it look like a pencil drawing.  I hope this doesn't get painted over next year.

It took me a while to work on my post because Erick told me about how I can fix the leaning buildings in my shot using PSE.  I ended up reworking a lot of my shots to fix the leaning shots using the distortion correction tool...soo cool!

We then headed back to the park in the back of Fisher Hawaii on Cooke Street. 

There were a lot of different art work on all sides of the building..

We managed to find the sign on the back wall of the building.  Mission accomplished!

These are truly great pieces of art work.  It was like walking thru an art exhibit.

I don't remember what street this was on, but it was in a locked parking lot and I managed to shoot between the chain fence.  This was my last shot before calling it a day and we went for Shaved Iced at Waiola Shave Ice.  No shots of my Cherry and Vanilla shaved ice but it was a great ending to another great shoot.