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.