On Sunday 120 Paddleboarders and Stand up Paddlers made the crossing of Kaiwi Channel from Kaluakoi on Molokai to Maunalua Bay Beach Park in Hawaii Kai. Portlock Point on Kokohead is a good place to watch the paddlers as they enter Maunalua Bay before making the final dash to the finish line about two miles away. Just before they disappear around China Walls I got this picture of a fisherman amidst the swells crashing against the ledges. Fortunately, he wasn’t swept away but it isn’t the best spot to catch dinner.
Last year I got pictures of the Maunalua Bay fireworks from ground level. The only drawback for me is the land on either side of the bay is mostly dark with no landmarks to give the fireworks scale and dimension. This year I walked up on top of Koko Head so I could look down on the display. In this picture the flash reflecting off the water showing the boats anchored nearby along with the street lights snaking behind the display provides a sense of height, depth and width.
I’ve been doing more panorama’s recently with CS2. They came out pretty well. I just upgraded to CS4 and doing pano’s is even easier and faster than CS2. The obvious format is Landscape but turn your camera (literally) to Portrait orientation. Take a series of vertical images and then use your panorama stitching program to blend them together. This is a blend of four portrait oriented pictures looking out my back door. Terrible view isn’t it? While landscapes are typical subjects of this process, it should work equally well if you take a picture of a large group of people. Come to think of it I wonder if it would work with a Macro subject? Hmmmm.
This is right out of the oven without a final crop. I thought it was interesting in this unfinished form.
There is a slight distortion in the lower corners that would be less obvious if I did crop it.
While driving back from Makapuu, after helping my hang gliding friends, I could see a great sunset developing Friday. The clouds over this end of the Ko’olaus reflected the orange/yellow glow of the setting sun. A good sign the sun would set unobstructed by clouds all the way to the horizon. Keeping one eye on the road and one eye on the clouds I headed for the Hawaii Kai lookout. Unfortunately, the glow faded as I pulled into the parking area. This picture only hints to the color of the clouds a moment before.
Two great features of Lightroom are it’s ability to create virtual copies that exist only within LR and not on your hard drive. Then you can take the copy and apply a preset (a group of settings) in this case a combination of Develop settings to come up with different treatments for an image. You can let your fancy run free.
The LR preset for this image is called Neg Kodak VC 160 warm. It’s actually designed to convert your color negatives just copied with your digital camera for a Kodak VC 160 film. This is a Point Curve Preset by radical edits to the Tone Curve. In order to subvert Lightroom’s parametric Tone Curve, you must either edit the Tone Curve in Adobe Camera Raw or edit the Preset by hand.
You can easily create your own or some websites sell them or you can find free ones. This was downloaded from Inside Lightroom
The 37th Honolulu Marathon is coming up this Sunday Honolulu Marathon 2008 | Powered by EventsOnline.ca Since I live along the race course getting pics is just a matter of walking out my front door. Hopefully, the weather will cooperate. We expect some rain over the next few days. There’s nothing like watching 20,000 people go strolling past your door. The Japanese are great participators. They bring there own cheering sections and some dress up in strange costumes.
Full Moon rising above Mariners Ridge Hawaii Kai
In January I caught this image of the Moon as it rose above Mariners Ridge in Hawaii Kai.
