Category Archives: Series

Abstracts: Blur

I had a relapse a few days ago, lured into shooting photos of butterflies on the wing, or should I say, trying to shoot. As the butterflies jitterbugged around, I followed them with my camera, even though I know how futile that can be. The result, predictably, was zero photos of butterflies in flight but, by way of compensation, a few curious blurs – of leaves in motion, wood in motion, light in motion.

This is one of those photos. And what is it? Well, that’s up to you. It’s whatever you see there.

Posted in response to Becky’s July Squares challenge theme of ‘Perspective.’ See more responses here.

Signs: Nēnē crossing

This week’s Friendly Friday challenge theme is ‘Unusual.’ See more responses here.

Nēnē, the endemic Hawaiian geese, are long-distant relatives of Canada geese. They were listed as an endangered species, until the end of last year when their status was changed to ‘threatened.’

Because of the nēnē’s precarious numbers, it isn’t unusual to see “Slow, Nēnē Crossing” signs, particularly in areas where nēnē breed. Because their numbers are on the rebound on the Big Island, it’s also not unusual for me to see nēnē, on my daily walks or when I was working. But in my years on the island, I never saw a nēnē anywhere near one of the warning signs, until earlier this year, just before the lockdown. This sign and these two birds were in Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, where a fair number of the birds live and breed.

I had to stop and get a photo of this unusual event, fortunately without getting myself or the birds killed (it’s a busy, narrow road). The only disappointing thing about this encounter was that neither of the nēnē actually crossed the road. I guess I’ll have to wait another seven years to witness that.

Abstracts: Flowery flounder

Time for an eye test as in spot the flowery flounder. I don’t think this one is too hard. Not like the last flounder I saw which settled on a sandy bottom, churned up a bunch of sand, and disappeared beneath it leaving only a tiny, inconspicuous bit of tail identifying where it was.

Signs: Sign of the times

This sign went up on one of the stores in downtown Hawi recently. Many local stores rely on tourism to make ends meet, but there are virtually no tourists. Not that it matters, because non-essential businesses have been shut down for a couple of months anyway. Some businesses are now being allowed to open again, but a cautious approach is being taken – rightly in my opinion – and it’s likely a fair number of enterprises will never reopen.

Ironically, it was just over a year ago that I did another post about this shop (here). It was after that episode that Hawaii Cigar & Ukelele expanded in to the newly vacated space. But now they’re both vacant and not likely to be filled until something approaching normalcy returns to the area.

Abstracts: Dong Fang

There’s a skydiving business that operates out of Upolu Airport and they have a blue shipping container inside the airport fence where they store gear. One day when I went down there, I saw a second container had been installed next to the first, creating an L-shaped setup.

I liked the logo on the container and took a photo, which was just as well since the next day the container had been repainted to match the other one.