If you like photographing flowers, and happen to travel to the big island of Hawaii, you really owe it to yourself to make some time to walk through the Hawaii Tropical Botanical Garden. Just a few minutes’ drive north of Hilo, it’s home to all sorts of beautiful tropical plants.
Here, for example, is a Pink Quill (tillandsia cyanea) bromeliad. It’s native to Ecuador, but apparently also available as a houseplant (although I doubt it’d do well for us here in Colorado):
More to come…
A few weeks back, I managed to get a little “me time” for a photowalk in the neighborhood. Here’s one of my captures from that stroll:
If you ever get to Hawaii (in particular, if you ever get to the island of Oahu), chances are you’ll wind up stopping by the Polynesian Cultural Center. It’s the #1 paid attraction in the state, after all. An adjunct of the BYU-Hawaii campus, the PCC serves a cluster of purposes — entertainment, helping college-age kids from across the Pacific pay for college, and providing some cross-cultural education.
Granted, the displays of polynesian culture at the PCC are “cleaned up” a bit (as you might expect given the circumstances), but for most visitors it’s at least a quick way to get exposure to a slice of Polynesia they wouldn’t see otherwise. The after-dinner show is also a great way to get practice photographing flaming torches:
I was more than a little surprised that this shot didn’t require much noise cleanup — the torches do a great job of lighting the entertainer (just had a bit of noise in the darker background). BTW, this is a shot from the “Ha: Breath of Life” show. Great stuff for the kids…
I spotted this little guy on a bush while we were out looking at plantations in the Virginia countryside.
Given that we were primarily looking at the architecture, I’m glad I accidentally spotted him…
If you haven’t run across it yet, there’s a good online photo magazine out there called “Seven by Five.” Along with photographer profiles, and helpful how-to articles, they also have weekly and monthly photo contests based on contributions to their Flickr group.
This past week’s theme was “Money” — so I contributed one of my older shots (at the time, I’d had a DSLR for all of 7 months) called “Ka-ching!” In terms of technique, I could do a better job with this shot today — but I still like it a lot.
Anyway, lucky me — this shot was one of the 17 that they picked for their weekly shout out. Thanks, gang!
Another flower shot from our stroll through Colonial Williamsburg:
While we were wandering through Colonial Williamsburg some weeks back, we happened upon this little gem along the road:
I couldn’t tell you what it is, other than pretty.
I saw this weathered old boat at Seattle’s Center for Wooden Boats, and since the water was still at the time (early morning), I just had to get this reflection shot:
I’m still a bit puzzled at how the weathering on the paint (looks like vertical streaks on the boat’s hull) is so much more prominent in the reflection than in the direct view itself.
Living as we do in the metro Denver area, we’ve been keeping an eye on the ongoing build-out (called FasTracks) of our light rail system. This past weekend, RTD shut down 6th Avenue (an arterial highway through town) in one section so a light rail bridge could be rolled over it — apparently the first time in the U.S. that this has been done with a bridge of this size (286 feet long, 600 tons).
My daughter and I were at loose ends Saturday morning, so we went out to see the goings on:
OK, I wouldn’t call it a particularly dynamic event (the construction folks allocated 30 hours for the rollout, but were done in half the time), but it was fun to swing by and see a taste of what’s to come in about 2 more years. Here’s a better view from the east:
And one from the Union St. overpass looking along 6th Avenue toward downtown (i.e., to the east):
It’s so weird seeing this normally busy highway shutdown like this… RTD also put up a time lapse video of the process, it condenses all the activity into a minute of video:
Another image from Hawaii — this one from along the trail to Akaka Falls.
It’s a quick little walk on paved trails — should you ever find yourself in the neighborhood, I’d heartily recommend you check it out!