Category Archives: Photo Challenges

Waterfalls

A view of Onomea Waterfalls at Hawaii Tropical Botanical Gardens near HIlo, Hawaii
Onomea Falls at Hawaii Tropical Botanical Gardens.

This week’s Sunday Stills challenge theme is ‘Fountains and falls.’ See more responses here.

A view of a waterfall on the North Kohala coast, Hawaii
Looking up at a Kohala Mountain waterfall.
A view of a waterfall on the North Kohala coast, Hawaii
A waterfall on the remote North Kohala coast.
A view of Wai'ale Falls at HIlo, Hawaii
Wai’ale Falls in the distance from a bridge over the Wailuku River.
A view of the Wailuku River bed at HIlo, Hawaii
The Wailuku River bed with Pe’epe’e Falls in the distance.
A view of Rainbow Falls at HIlo, Hawaii
Rainbow Falls in Hilo. No rainbow and not much water falling because it’s been so dry here.

The Numbers Game #90

Aphelandra sinclairiana.

The idea of The Numbers Game is to enter a number into the search bar of your computer and then post a selection of the photos that turn up. This week’s number is 212, which turned up a selection dominated by plants, so I’ve gone for an all-plant line up. Captions are on the photos. You can see more responses here.

A native Amaumau Fern.
Anthurium ‘Miss Mini Purple.’
Guzmania ‘Limones’.
Ananas bracteatus.
Medinilla Alata ‘Lalique’ flowers.
A Dendrobium spectabile orchid.

Shades of orange and yellow

The morning sun illuminates clouds over Kohala in Hawaii
Early morning clouds over Kohala.

This week’s Sunday Stills color challenge is ‘Ocher, saffron (yellow hues), plus burnt orange.’ See more responses here.

A dirt road at Kaiholena, Hawaii
A dirt road at Kaiholena.
One of the Keawaiki golden pools in Hawaii
The golden ponds at Keawaiki.
Canoe names in Hawaii
Canoe names.
Colorful pahoehoe lava at Hawaii Volcanoes National Park in Hawaii
Colorful pahoehoe lava.
Golden Bamboo in Hawaii
Golden Bamboo.
A vehicle logo in Hawaii
An automobile logo.

The Numbers Game #89

An A’ama Crab molt.
Grasshopper on a windscreen.

The idea of The Numbers Game is to enter a number into the search bar of your computer and then post a selection of the photos that turn up. This week’s number is 211. Captions are on the photos. You can see more responses here.

The Kohala Welcome Center under a full moon.
Zebra Doves grooming.
A Flowery Flounder swimming.
Whitemouth Moray Eel.
Horses by the sea.

Frothy Monk Seal

A monk seal swimming off the North Kohala coast in Hawaii

This is BOO, a female Hawaiian Monk Seal, who I haven’t seen is quite some time. She had been resting in a pool at Upolu, but the tide was coming in. Eventually, she lumped her way out into the water, pausing in the frothy water by the rocks, before heading out to deeper water for a night of hunting no doubt.

The Numbers Game #88

A green turtle swims in the waters of the Big Island of Hawaii.
A Green Turtle swimming by, taken from shore while waiting for a tour boat.

The idea of The Numbers Game is to enter a number into the search bar of your computer and then post a selection of the photos that turn up. This week’s number is 210. Captions are on the photos. You can see more responses here.

Citrus Swallowtail Butterfly.
A Java Sparrow giving me the look.
A warning sign even though there are no wild donkeys here anymore.
Surf breaks at Mahukona in North Kohala.
High surf at Mahukona.
A crescent moon and palms in black and white
Crescent moon and palms.
Unloading a barge at Kawaihae harbor.

I’m not that popular

A sudden spike in my blog views

This weekend, when I logged into my WordPress account, I was startled to see that my blog views had skyrocketed overnight. My usual numbers are anywhere from 50 to 150. On Saturday I logged 27, 768.

This wasn’t due to the fantastic post that day because, despite all those views, the number of likes and comments was distinctly average. The number of visitors was only marginally higher. Since this post is number 3,538, that meant a few people had looked at every single post on this site at least six times, on the same day!

There is a simple answer of course. My blog has not been visited by people, suddenly interested in life on the Big Island. It’s been scoured by AI scrapers, which harvest information, copyrighted or not, for training the various AI models. This is nothing new. Tech companies have been gathering data from everyone on the web for years. AI training is just a boost in the scale of this behavior. But rest assured, it’s all for our benefit. It’s so that those AI models will be able to help us out even better than they do now. And because it’s for our benefit, we shouldn’t even think about asking the tech companies to pay for our work harvested in this way.

Now, like most of us, I haven’t read the multi-page terms of use of these companies. However, I strongly suspect that if I was to use any tech company’s copyrighted material for my use, without paying for it, I would soon be visited by their legal department, and treated the way a lame chicken is treated by a pack of hungry wolves.

Food for thought.

Posted for Bushboy’s Last on the Card. See more here.