For whatever reason, I don’t see a lot of windsurfers in the waters around the Big Island. This is a bit surprising as there’s lots of water and the wind blows with a good deal of enthusiasm. Perhaps it’s just that most people favor surfing or paddle boarding.
Whatever the reason, I thought I should get photos of this windsurfer working his way along the coast near Kawaihae, since it might be a while before I see the like again.
Posted in response to this week’s Friendly Friday challenge on the theme of ‘Moving.’ See more responses here.
This week’s Sunday Stills challenge theme is ‘Birthdays.’ See more offerings here. I don’t really have anything birthday-related so I’ve plumped for a photo taken on my birthday this year.
This is an adult black-crowned night heron at Kaloko-Honokohau National Historical Park, just north of Kailua Kona. I watched it for a while, as it moved around the edges of the Aimakapa Fishpond. In the top photo, the heron is coming in to land, and in the bottom photo, it’s taking off again.
The photo to the right shows the bird perched on a float. This was a good shot for my birthday since, with its large beak and somewhat puzzled expression, the heron looks a lot like me!
This week’s Friendly Friday challenge theme is ‘Secrets.’ See more responses here.
Here are a couple of secretive glimpses of a sailboat heading north along the Kona coast. I used to sail for a good many years until I sold my last boat, a twelve-foot San Fransisco Bay Pelican. In that boat, I used to putter around the bay for the fun of it, but I also took it on longer journeys. Before that, I used to have a bigger sailboat and also crewed on the boats of others.
While I like bay sailing, what I really enjoyed was sailing somewhere, not just the activity, but the passage making – navigation, nights spent in the open ocean under the stars.
The boat in these photos could do that, though I’m not sure I could anymore – too used to my creature comforts these days.
This week’s Friendly Friday challenge theme is ‘Photo Edits.’ See more responses here. The main photo edits I do are cropping and adjusting color and lighting, and these photos show the path to the final version (above).
My aim was to get a photo of a baby mourning gecko that was hanging onto a Christmas light, mostly for the warmth I suspect. The light was indifferent and I didn’t want to spook the gecko.
The original (bottom photo) is fairly blah with washed-out color and too much distraction around the gecko. In my first fix (below) I cropped the photo to get the focus on the gecko and light. I also did some adjustments to light and color. I like it better, but it still wasn’t working for me, so I set the photo aside.
When this challenge came up, I thought of this photo and had another go. I cropped the photo tighter still to fill the frame. Then I worked on the color and lighting. The result is an image with more ‘pop,’ much closer to what I was looking for. That’s a Christmas light and a thumbtack holding the wire in place, so these are little things, including the baby gecko, but they jump out of the photo. Also, the various lighting effects surrounding the Christmas light come to the fore, which I like.
Ironically, the first photo I thought of for this challenge was a fish, which I thought I must have cropped quite a bit to get the final image, but when I checked the original image I found I’d done virtually nothing to it. I’m posting that photo tomorrow in response to the next Sunday Stills challenge.
Also posted in response to this week’s Lens-Artists Photo Challenge #66: Filling the Frame.
This week’s Sunday Stills challenge theme is ‘Lines and Squares.’ See more offerings here.
This is one of the roads in Isaac Hale Beach Park at Pohoiki. This park is where last year’s lava activity came to a halt leaving a wall of lava making a border to the public area of the park. Walking beyond the ‘No Trespassing’ sign won’t result in your immediate arrest, but the powers that be don’t want people walking on the flow itself.
But this is a road after all and the sign makes it seem likely that someone driving here might continue on and run into the flow. Actually, this is entirely possible, given how some people drive around here.
Regardless of the intent, I like how the lines on the road disappear into the lava and the red squares are warning signs.
This week’s Friendly Friday challenge theme is ‘Alternative Version.’ See more responses here.
Surfing originated in Hawaii and is a quintessential Hawaiian activity. When the surf’s up, so is absenteeism at the workplace. For last week’s challenge, I posted a photo of surfers waiting for a wave.
This week, I’m posting photos of one of those surfers catching a wave. In the photos, the surfer cuts a curve down the face of a wave, zips along its base, and then climbs up the face again. At the top, he jumps off, no doubt to wait for the next wave he can catch.
And the alternative version? Wipeout! In the bottom photo an unoccupied surfboard heads to shore, still tethered to the ankle of the out-of-sight surfer who wiped out moments before.
This week’s Sunday Stills challenge theme is ‘A Bug’s Life.’ (See more offerings here.) My last Sunday Stills post could have worked for this one, but instead I’m going with this fine-looking monkeypod borer beetle (Xystrocera globosa), also known as the raintree borer beetle among several alternative names. This longhorn beetle comes from southeast Asia where it is widely distributed.
As is often the case, it’s the larvae of this beetle that cause problems. They don’t tend to harm healthy trees but will bore into the sapwood of monkeypod trees that are distressed by drought or other reasons. While the damage caused is seldom enough to kill an entire tree, it can result in the loss of limbs.
This one hung out on a wall at work for a couple of days before it disappeared, possibly to a nearby monkeypod tree.
Graham's Island 