This week’s Friendly Friday challenge theme is ‘Future.’ (See more responses here.) Since this is Snow’s last time hosting the Friendly Friday challenge I thought I’d offer a personal interpretation of the theme.
Here is one of the beaches at Kekaha Kai Park. What does this have to do with ‘future?’ Well I hope such blue-green water, white sand, palm trees and sun are somewhere in your none-too-distant future, Snow. Thanks for hosting the challenge.
This week’s Friendly Friday challenge theme is ‘Construction.’ See more responses here.
This is a photo of some construction work at the Kawaihae small boat harbor. They’re putting in a boat launch ramp and have been for some time. A crane has been there for weeks and is seen here hooked onto some kind of small receptacle while two guys in waders shovel dirt into it.
I don’t expect the ramp to be finished any time soon, but that’s not surprising. The small boat harbor took nigh on 30 years between initial planning and actual construction.
This week’s Friendly Friday challenge theme is ‘Dramatic.’ See more responses here.
I’ve opted for a dip into the archives for this challenge. Two years ago, lava from Kilauea Volcano’s Pu’u O’o vent reached the ocean, tumbling down a cliff into the water. One day, the cliff collapsed, leaving the lava shooting out of a hole high up in the new cliff. This was called the firehose of lava because that’s what it looked like.
I first learned about it when I saw a video of the lava firehose on one of the news channels. What impressed me was that it was really hard to to see that it was a video. The flow was so strong and so consistent that it looked like a photograph. It was only by looking closely at the edges of the firehose that I could make out spatters of moving lava.
I headed down to the volcano, to take at look at this phenomenon, the day after I saw the video and was duly impressed by the dramatic scene. It was well worth the trip and well worth my quick visit. The following day another cliff collapse moved the firehose back and out of sight from the observation areas.
These are two photos from that visit. More photos can be seen in previous posts here, here, here, and here.
There’s a good deal of small scale agriculture on the Big Island. Many of these enterprises grow fruits and vegetables, which are sold to local restaurants, grocery stores, and at farmers markets. Several of these small farms also sell direct to the public. One or two have setups much like regular stores, but most have small farm stands.
The farm stands operate on the honor system. Fruits and veggies are displayed, a price list is posted, often on a chalk board, and buyers leave their money in some kind of small cash box. I don’t know how often those cash boxes are emptied, but even if it’s only once a week, no one’s going to make a killing by stealing one. There’s rarely a lot on offer at these smaller stands, but what there is is fresh, organic, reasonably priced, and very local.
Posted in response to this week’s Friendly Friday challenge on the theme of ‘Fruit.’ See more responses here.
This week’s Friendly Friday challenge theme is ‘Whereabouts.’ See more responses here. ‘Whereabouts’ means ‘the place or general locality where a person or thing is.’
My whereabouts are the Big Island, Hawaii, which is also the place where Captain James Cook, of the British Royal Navy, lost his life on February 14, 1779. He was killed by native Hawaiians with whom he was involved in a dispute over the loss of a cutter from one of his ships. I won’t go into a detailed history here, but more information about Captain Cook can be found at www.captaincooksociety.com/.
Captain Cook’s whereabouts were often uncertain, in that he was an explorer who visited unknown or little known places around the world. Not only did he sail to far flung places, but he made excellent, detailed maps and charts of the places he visited, which made him highly thought of in the British Admiralty, and which made it easier for future travelers to know their whereabouts.
Between 1768 and 1779 Cook made three voyages around the world. The first two focused on the search for the theorized southern super-continent of Terra Australis. The third was intended to find the Northwest Passage across the northern part of North America.
It was on this third voyage that Cook became the first European to officially visit Hawaii (as opposed to other European commercial ships that were believed to have been there before). He sailed on to the north to attempt (unsuccessfully) to fulfill his commission before returning to Hawaii.
This time he anchored in Kealakekua Bay on the Big Island (official name, Hawaii Island). He was well received, in part because his arrival coincided with a Hawaiian festival for the god Lono. After a month, Cook left to resume his voyage, but when one of his ships lost a mast, he returned to Kealakekua Bay.
Unfortunately, by then the festival for Lono was over and his return was not greeted with the same enthusiasm. Soured relations led to several incidents culminating the theft of a ship’s cutter and the incident that led to Cook’s death. However, the killing of Cook did not diminish his standing in the eyes of the Hawaiians. In 1874, the Captain Cook monument was put in place and, in 1877, the land on which it stands was deeded to Britain by Princess Likelike as a sign of respect.
The top photo shows the monument, surrounded by a chain supported by twelve cannons from HMS Fantome. The second photo shows the inscription on the monument. I particularly like the bit about how he discovered these islands, islands which were occupied by a substantial population governed by an established royal line. The third photo is the plaque marking the spot where Captain Cook is believed to have been killed. Below is the location of that plaque in relation to Kealakekua Bay, which is the water beyond the rocks in this photo.
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 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.
Graham's Island 