Lazy summer afternoon

View of inner Hardy Bay and some of the boats tied at "Fishermans Dock". The warm sunny weather here on the North Tip of Vancouver Island continues much to the delight of everyone from here!

Dive! dive! dive!

It's not a submarine but he does have a hard shell, doesn't that count? I caught this turtle just a couple of feet below the surface so the sun was hitting him as he went under.

Coho

A little hard to see, but these are Coho Salmon milling around Hardy Bay waiting for rain. No rain, no getting up the river. Each of the fish in this picture is around 8 to 10 lbs.

Got to love those skies!

As I was arriving home the other night I pulled into my drive way and this is what I saw. Before heading up the 1/4 mile long drive to the house I stopped and took a few photos. This was the best of the bunch. This looked like it was right over my house (in behind the tree line).

Massive Bronze Propeller

Found this beautiful (straight) propeller in front of the Maratime Museum in Hololulu. Just as I went to walk away my water bottle slipped out of my pack and bent the thin edge of one of the propeller blades... Oops! What is it with me and propellers?

St. Louis Art Museum

I came across this art museum while I was in St. Louis. I don't know which one it was but the shot looked interesting when I took it.

Kaalawai Beach and Black Point

Just thought I would throw in a Hawaii picture to keep you on your toes! To this day I'm reminded just how beautiful the colours of the ocean are everytime I come across a picture like this.

All I want for Christmas................

Well, the lists of what I want and what I need for Christmas are two completely different things. I don't need much but I want a lot! I will say that niether of the lists have a hippo on them! It's that song, I just can't get it out of my head when I see a hippo!

For being as big as they are they sure can swim good! Even though they don't look to threatening they are a little intimidating up close.

Motor Bikes

1911 Indian Motorcycle

Now here is an interesting twist, almost as though the motor bike of the early 1900's is reinvented!

I understand that there are kits from China for sale on e-bay to convert your average bicycle into a road legal motor bicycle.

What you don't find!

The St. Louis Arch, The Gateway to the Midwest

The Saint Louis, MO arch is a pretty impressive piece of architecture, especially if you go up inside the arch. Photographing the arch during the day can be a little challenging to make it look as impressive as it is and to give it the "ambiance" it needs.

Taking photos at night is a completely different story. There is a lot that adds to the arch when you are shooting at night.

St. Louis, Mo, A city in need of help

In my opinion anyway. I occasionally have to travel to St. Louis for work and I absolutely hate it. The traffic is terrible no matter what time of day it is and they are ALWAYS working on the roads. This shot was taken as I was driving into town. I had to get up at 0 dark-thirty and drive the four and a half hours to get there and the sun was just cresting the horizon and trying to burn off the fog when I arrived. I should have known it was going to be a bad day when I hit the fog near the city limits!

St. Louis has let a lot of the old buildings just fall apart and/or fall down. There are blocks and blocks of delapidated buildings and many, many areas of just clear land where they have demolished these buildings and left the land sitting empty. Some of the neighborhoods remind me of a bombed out portion of Beirut.

Here is an old church that has been standing since the very early 1900's that has just gone to waste. It sits empty, and has for years, and the vandals have broken out the windows and a lot of the wood has rotted away.

I just hate to see buildings, especially something like this church that has some nice architecture

to it, go to waste.

OK Then!

Dog the bounty hunter should do an episode or two in New Hampshire!

Our stupid lisense plates only say "Beautiful British Columbia" maybe they should say "B.C. Bud is #1" or how about "British Columbia Got a problem with that?" LOL

I'm leaving, on a jet plane..............

Man, I wish!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I was at a light near the airport the other day and this American Airlines jet took off while I was sitting there so I grabbed the camera off the seat real quick and snapped a few photos.

My wife and I fly American when we go to Hawaii and that was the first thing I thought of when I saw this jet taking off, sitting in a nice comfortable chair (they have those in first class) and drinking a mimosa while headed for the islands.

Getting a little sun

This isn't a Hawaiian Honu (turtle), just a regular old Kansas turtle. I caught him out getting a little sun one day so I zoomed in and took a few photos. As before, I cropped this photo to bring the turtle even closer in the image.

Swimming with the fishies

If you are from New Jersey you may not want to hear the term "swim with the fish" but if you are in Hawaii, you have to try it at least once. This is a school of goat fish in the waters off Maui.

Hairpin switchback

Found this interesting switchback corner on our way up to Puu O Mahuka Heiau an ancient temple above Waiamea Bay on Oahu's North Shore. Though a head-on collision appears about to happen, everyone made it around the corner just fine...

Can you see me now?

This is a photo of an x-ray I saw. I thought it was interesting and I had my camera handy so this is what I ended up with. I can honestly say this is the best way to look at a snake, no chance of getting bit!

North Island Fungus

Anther few weeks and the forest floor will come to life with mushrooms of all shapes, colours and sizes. There are several types that are sought out by mushroom pickers and purchased by buyers at temporary buying stations. Though I have never tried it I understand that a respectable sum of money can be made by an experienced picker in the 6 to 8 week mushroom growing season.

Trail, what trail?

Let it be known that me the guy with the camera carried my bike down this part. I might be dumb, but I'm not stupid! The fellow in this video is my step son who is getting pretty good at staying on his bike, way better than me anyway.

Getting my ducks in a row

They aren't in a row really but they are together. I found these two swimming along in a pond in eastern Kansas. I had to crop the photo to bring them in close because they weren't letting me get too close to them. Where's that 500mm lens?

"The real thing" and flowers

A couple more pictures from the beach this last weekend. I had the camera on vivid +2, sure got some nice bright colours!

Early Morning Spider Web

I went for a walk the other day as the sun was coming up and came across this web hanging in a tree. It looked like the spider must have gone for a walk too because it wasn't anywhere to be seen.

Skull cave and Pirates passage...

Ok I made up those names, but the first picture looks like a half burried skull! Be a great place to film a burried treasure, pirate type movie!

These interesting rock formations are at SanJosef Beach on the West Coast of Vancouver Island about a 90 minute drive and 30 minute hike from where I live. Great place to go on a sunny weekend.

Just Horsing Around

I came across these two in a Kansas field last week. It seems the "baby" still didn't want to stray to far from the mother.

A different kind of monument

I was traveling through Kansas this week and I came across a monument that caught my eye in a cemetery. This headstone monument was for a man who died in 1893. This in itself wouldn't have been that odd because people like to do different things on occasion but as I continued to travel I came across another tree stump headstone. This one was from 1886. The first one was more elaborate than the second one. I guess back then the tree headstone was a popular thing?

Gandhi Statue

Waikiki is full of statues, likely many of the touristy areas in the rest of the State of Hawaii are also. Found this nicely detailed bronze statue of Gandhi gracing the park near the entrance to the Honolulu Zoo.

Reflections

Paul is making it very difficult for me not to start putting up some more photos from Hawaii. I don't know how long I can hold out but until then...........

I came across this pond in central Kansas yesterday and wanted to see if I could catch the reflections in the water. There were only two tiny clouds in the sky at the time so I didn't get as much subject matter in the water as I would have liked. The trees seemed to reflect nicely though.

I took this photo using a split neutral density filter to take some of the brightness out of the empty sky.

Just by chance

we found this beautiful Budist temple while exporing in the lower Nuuanu Valey. It turned out to be a wonderful photo opportunity.

As with most Budist temples anyone is free to come in and look around. So quietly and with shoes removed we did just that. I took 40 or 50 pictures. Both of the pictures I posted today were taken with the Sigma 10-20mm.

The nice thing about an ultra wide lens is that you have an almost infinate depth of field, that is to say everything from about 2 or 3 feet onwards is in focus. How easy is that!

Speaking of Happy Hour............

I realize this isn't much of a photo but ....................

This is from a t-shirt I used to wear on occasion. I guess it's the old bartender humor in me. Blame it on Paul, he's the one that brought up happy hour!

I actually wore this t-shirt backstage at an Alan Jackson concert several years ago and Alan liked it so much he bought six of them and had some of his band members wear them in a music video they made. That was my big brush with fame! LOL

Island time

Found this... bill er... surf board planted in the sidewalk in front of a little bar near where we normally stay. Note the duration of the "Happy Hour"! I've heard time flies when you are on holiday and before you know it, time to head home again. Well here's proof that time flies in the Honolulu Tavern anyway...

Hurricanes in Kansas???

Yesterday we got pounded again by a storm during what the "professional" weather people said was only a 20% chance of rain. This 20% brought 100 mile an hour winds and sheets of rain!! We received 2 1/2 inches of rain in just over thirty minutes. I took a little video and a few photos as it was blowing through. I had to dodge the plants on my front porch as they got blown over and sent sliding down the porch.

This photo was taken just as the storm was coming in. The only enhancement to the photo was resizing so it would go on the blog. You can see that it was so dark that I was using the flash just so you could see the ground. This photo was taken at two o'clock in the AFTERNOON!!

I opened the aperture up on the video camera so I could get more light and be able to see the rain. This made the video brighter than the photo. The storm only lasted about 45 minutes and I was pulling tree branches from the yard after that. Now I have to buy a new flag because the storm literally shredded the one I had.

"Stalking" the corn

I have been stalking the veggie feilds of Kansas the last couple of days looking for some shots.
I thought I might run into a deer or two but all I came up with was veggies.

HNL

Here are a couple of pictures of planes coming and going from Honolulu International Airport. Both pictures are crops of larger pictures, but both came out not bad.

A sea of green and skies of blue

I was driving around the countryside yesterday and came across this soy bean field. The sky made a great contrast to it so I stopped and took a couple of photos.

Moanalua Gardens

Very large Monkey Pod Tree.

By Standing just under the canopy of this tree and by using an ultra wide angle lens (10mm) I was able to capture the true enormity of this magnificent tree.

Tea house and koi pond.

To be sure the Moanalua Gardens is a place I intend to visit again!

Playing with Photoshop

I've been playing around with layers and a few of the other tools in Photoshop that I don't normally use just to see if I am smart enough to make them work correctly. I decided to use some of these tools to try and make the crooked horizon in my palm tree photo less noticeable. Do you even see the horizon now? LOL

I stole this distraction from one of Paul's photos, I thought it went well with the original subject matter. Thank you Paul! :-)

It's all in the details

I thought my eye was 100% but apparently I'm still a little fuzzy. I took this photo as a test and then cropped the image and enlarged it so I could see if I was seeing the focusing correctly. It looks like this was off just a little due to depth of field. I could blame that on setting the camera wrong but I think I will stick with the bad eye excuse for now. LOL

This is the center of a hibiscus flower growing on my back deck.

Painted Horse?

Found this interesting fellow at the Honolulu Zoo. In my younger days I owned several VW Beatles and Buses. I always wanted to paint one up in this colour scheme, but never got around to it... In hindsight it's probably just as well I didn't.