Well It Ain't Hawaii

 

 

 

But I will take it!!! Some of my best eagle photos to date. Such amazing predators.



Just another ho hum sunset

At one of my favorite places on earth.

Canada Coast Guard's Sir Wilfrid Laurier

Anchored out in Hardy Bay it didn't look all that big, but the next day when I saw it tied at the Gov't Wharf it's actual size became quite apparent!

Out of curiosity I Googled  the specs. for this vessel and found this:

General characteristics
Class & type:	Type 1100 light icebreaker
Displacement:	3,812.08 tonnes (4,202.10 short tons)
Length:	83 m (272 ft 4 in)
Beam:	16.2 m (53 ft 2 in)
Draft:	6 m (19 ft 8 in)
Ice class:	Arctic Class 2
Propulsion:	Diesel AC - (3 × ) ALCO 251-16V
Speed:	15.5 knots (28.7 km/h; 17.8 mph)
Range:	20,200 nautical miles (37,400 km; 23,200 mi)
Endurance:	120 days
Boats & landing craft carried:	1 - Lifeboat/Workboat (Davits) 2 - RHI Zodiac (Davits) 3 - SP Barge (Davits)
Complement:	26
Aircraft carried:	1 × MBB Bo 105 helicopter
Aviation facilities:	Hangar

Haleakala Silverswords

Also known in Hawaiian as the 'ahinahina. They only grow at the top of the volcano at the 10,000 foot level.

Because of that they were on their way to extinction from tourists unintentionally destroying them by walking near them or trying to dig them up to take home. The plants have a very shallow root system so stepping on a rock next to them can crush the roots and kill the plant. They are now a protected plant and carry a hefty fine for messing with them.

The silversword can live up to 90 years and only blooms once in it's life. The stalk that carries the blooms grows out of the center of the plant and can get over six feet tall with more than 600 blooms on a single stalk. Once the silversword blooms it dies so the seeds from the blooms can dry and be spread by the wind to grow new plants.

Wolf nest 101. The fine art of digging a wolf nest.

First choose a suitable location

Remove overburden

Roll roots and sticks out of the way

Level the nest 

Check nest for proper length

Roll over test

Enjoy!

It's six o'clock somewhere

The sun always sets right around 6:00 p.m. every day on the islands. They don't have daylight savings time in Hawai'i so you don't have to worry about it changing on you.

Not a photo

I shot several videos this trip using a GoPro Hero 4 attached to the underwater housing for my camera. I was very impressed with the quality of the video that the GoPro takes. It does look a lot better in 1080p as I shot it instead of the lower resolution that shows up on youtube but I don't have any way of posting such a large file here.

I hope you enjoy this swim with a turtle. It's a little long, about 5 minutes, so pour yourself a beverage of your choice and enjoy.

Flower of the Islands

 

 

Hope you all like flowers because I have a lot to edit and show you!



Tourists....

.....always getting in my shots!

I'll let this one slide though. It's Aaron swimming as fast as he can trying to catch up to the turtle to get a shot of his own.

Artsy Fartsy

I took some inspiration from Aaron this trip. Actually, I just took some of his ideas but hey, that's what family is for right?

Aaron spent a lot of time photographing the different flowers of the island in different settings and one day he headed to the ocean with a hand full of flower leis we got at the luau the night before. Having an idea of my own at that point I borrowed one of the leis and floated it in a tidal pool next to the beach and shot up through the water trying to frame the palm trees in the center.

It makes for an interesting if not a little weird shot but I think I may be better off shooting sunsets.

"Ragamuffin"!

I took this picture of Sunny a couple of days ago as he was playing on the rocks above a nearby beach. Later that evening when I loaded the days pictures onto the computer the first thing that came to mind was when I saw this picture was "Ragamuffin"!

rag·a·muf·fin

ˈraɡəˌməfən/

noun

1. 1.

   a person, typically a child, in ragged, dirty clothes.

   synonyms:

   urchin, waif, guttersnipe, street kid

Lotus land

Today I found this little patch of Crocus flowers poking their heads up to see if it is time to bloom yet. Nice to see the very first flowers of 2015 and it's still only January!

Blending in...

Found this Grouse doing it's darnedest to not be seen by blending in and holding as still as possible. Perfect opportunity for a bumbling amateur picture taker like myself! Eventually after I had taken a number of pictures the bird realized his cover was blown and it slipped away into the thicker undergrowth.

Looking in to the Sun

Keeping with the looking up them. I took a photo of the sun from underneath the water while snorkeling in Maui. I took quite a few of these, I really like how the water distorts and diffracts the suns light breaking it apart. If you look closely you can see the rim of my lens in the bottom right corner. It must be a reflection from the inside of the lens port.

Seeing the moon through the forest

Technically it's just one tree but it has 13 trunks. I took this photo looking straight up through the banyan tree in Lahaina early one morning with the moon directly overhead.

16.8 million colors!

Today's digital cameras can capture up to 16.8 million different colors!

I took this nice color photograph a few days ago, though you'd never know it.

It's always fascinated me how fog and overcast skies can make scenes like this look like an old B&W photograph.

Bobbing for a Sunset

I had this idea of taking a split shot of a sunset with the coral underwater and the sunset above. (Is there any other way?) 

I thought I could swim out to the coral reef, hold up the camera and shoot away, easy peasy, right?

It turns out swimming the 150 yards out to the reef was the only easy part about this. Once I got to the reef I quickly figured out that trying to stay vertical in the water and hold the camera at just the right angle and depth all while waiting for a break between the waves and not getting pushed onto the coral was a difficult task to say the least.

I didn't consider that the camera would loose it's neutral buoyancy once it was on the surface and the weight of the housing would be pushing me down, requiring me to tread water with just my legs for about 20 minutes. 

There is definitely a learning curve to this underwater photography so these aren't the greatest shots in the world. If you look at them as "photos from a day in the life of a novice photographer" then they aren't half bad. Which of course means they are only half good. As they say up Paul's way; C'est la vie.

I will be back and I will try this again, probably several times!

Belted Kingfisher

Ok just for Ron, here are some pictures with a "Real Camera" instead of my cell phone... :)

Took these pictures using the Sigma 120-400mm lens at 400mm. I was able to steady the lens on a railing which helped to get these nice clear shots.

More Turtles

Some of the turtles were swimming pretty close to the reefs when we saw them. I understand now why they have that nice hard shell. Getting dragged onto the reef from the current hurts!