Last summer the U.S. Navy held the RIMPAC Exercises around the Hawaiian Islands. This year we saw an Assault ship operating off of Bellows practicing beach landings the morning I was up on the ridge launching hang gliders. I liked this image because the clouds acted as giant reflectors. Illuminating portions of the bay. In particular, the Assault ship, whose gray body disappeared in the changing light. It seems so small in just this little area.
I didn’t realize it had been so long since my last post. The aging PC I use to process my shots had been giving me fits. It hadn’t kept me from image making but processing them became an adventure. After various efforts to keep it going, I finally decided to replace it by building my own. The new one is up and running smoothly. Here’s a shot from today. A friend of mine was giving a Tandem ride on his paraglider. His passenger is just appearing beneath the wing as they complete an aerial maneuver. In case you’re wondering, they are horizontal.
For the past month we’ve had light trades and hot days. Today it was just hot. Today the trades died and for awhile this morning it went Kona. That meant the clouds you see are moving left to right angled towards me. The normal trade wind flow would angle them away from me. The trades will be coming back next week. For this weekend it’s fans and air conditioners. Enjoy the last weekend of summer!
Here’s a panorama of 9 images stitched together in Photoshop. I kicked up the vibrance in Lightroom. The blue helps to bring out the island of Molokai in the center, the west end of Maui to the left and Lanai to the far right. The little dot is a cargo carrier headed for the port at Kahului.
The hazard of getting shots of white hang glider wings under bright sunlight is the ease of over exposing it. Especially as the wing is in flight and the background changes. In camera raw with Lightroom you can bring it back to some extent. It’s much nicer to nail it in camera! Got it with this one
The light on Kamehame Ridge Sunday was unusual. We had high thin clouds diffusing the sunlight. Yet it was bright enough to create a sparkling effect on the water. Usually the light is too strong and the light reflecting off the water surface is blown out. This image was the best representative of the effect.
This is a pic I got almost three years ago. As you can see it was a beautiful day. We’d recently gotten a lot of rain. You can see the effects of the runoff with the slightly discolored water along the beach in the lower left. The trade shower is about to drop its water on the Marine Corps Base. Last Tuesday the Base got pummeled with an intense Lightning storm that dropped hail on the base and on Kailua. A funnel cloud formed just about where this trade shower is in the pic. It came ashore at Lanikai and voila it becomes a 25 yard wide tornado and went inland a couple of miles before falling apart in Kailua.
If you look closely you’ll see a little dot in the upper right of the picture near the top edge. The hang glider is over 2000 feet high.
Pa’i ki’i Imagery
