This week’s Sunday Stills challenge theme is ‘Indoor/Outdoor Decor.’ See more responses here.
I don’t have a lot of ‘decor’ photos, but I think this sort of fits the bill. It’s one of several fun benches at Pana’ewa Rainforest Zoo in Hilo. Probably less fun to sit in, but you can’t have everything!
Also posted in response to Becky’s October Squares challenge theme of ‘Past Squares – Blue/Bright.’ See more responses here.
This week’s Sunday Stills challenge theme is ‘The Pink Side of Life.’ See more responses here.
The top photo shows a leaf cutter bee on what I think is a zinnia violacea flower. Next we have a ball of Egyptian starcluster (Pentas lanceolata) flowers and Pinkfringe (Arthrostemma ciliatum) flowers.
Next comes the lovely marking of a shell ginger flower and the puffy blooms of a sensitive plant.
Finally, there’s a pink banana hosting a visitor, a gold dust day gecko after a little something to drink.
Also posted in response to Becky’s October Squares challenge theme of ‘Past Squares – In the Pink/Flowers.’ See more responses here.
This week’s Sunday Stills challenge theme is ‘Monthly Color Challenge: Burnt orange or blood orange.’ See more responses here.
Vriesea splendens is a bromeliad with long green leaves strongly marked with dark brown bands. But the show stopper here is the sword-like red-orange inflorescence which can be 2 feet long.
Also posted in response to Becky’s October Squares challenge theme of ‘Past Squares – Flowers.’ See more responses here.
This week’s Sunday Stills challenge theme is ‘Sports and Hobbies.’ See more responses here.
Hawaii is the home of surfing, a sport that accommodates everyone from the casual weekender to fixtures on the professional circuit. On this day, Pine Trees surf break at Kohanaiki Beach Park was thronged with surfers in the water, but not many catching waves. Those that did tended to be far away from where I was. But I liked watching these two surfers casually glide back to shore on white-topped blue-green water, under a blue sky.
Also posted in response to Becky’s October Squares challenge theme of ‘Past Squares – Blue.’ See more responses here.
This week’s Sunday Stills challenge theme is ‘Signs of Autumn.’ See more responses here.
We’re a little short on autumnal changes here. I tend to mark seasonal changes in terms of wildlife, such as the return of humpback whales in winter. For autumn, the return of Pacific golden plovers from their summer breeding grounds in Alaska is probably the most notable.
Outside of wildlife, the shortening of the days does register here. It’s not as dramatic as when I lived in Washington State, with summer sunsets around 9 p.m. and winter darkness setting in a little after 4 p.m.. In Hawaii, the equivalent times are 7 p.m. and 6 p.m., not such a big difference.
But it does make a difference for my morning commute, and autumn signals the time when I usually leave home when it’s mostly dark and arrive at work when it’s mostly light. I also try and give myself a little extra commuting time so I can pull over and take photographs when the sunrise merits it, such as this streaky red sunrise over Kohala mountain.
This week’s Sunday Stills challenge theme is ‘Harvest Gold or Citrine.’ See more responses here.
Here are a couple of photos of small fish in the Golden Pools of Keawaiki. The gold color has nothing to do with harvests but is produced by the algae there.
This week’s Sunday Stills challenge theme is ‘Going Back….’ See more responses here.
I was thinking about posting photos going back to my first visit to Hawaii, but in looking at them, I realized that I’d never posted photos from my tour of the Subaru Telescope, which I took a few months after moving here. At the time, the Subaru Telescope was the only one on the summit of Mauna Kea that offered tours to the general public, though the tours have been shut down by the current Covid situation.
I particularly remember the fabulous views from the walkway around the exterior of the telescope. The interior of the telescope was also interesting, though in the abstract way of a giant piece of equipment. This is not a telescope where one gets to put an eye to the lens to see what’s going on, though I was charmed to learn that when Princess Sayako of Japan dedicated the telescope in 1999, she was able to do just that because a special eyepiece had been constructed for that purpose!
The Subaru Telescope is a Ritchey-Chretien reflecting telescope. It has a large field of view which makes it ideal for wide-field sky surveys. For more information about the Subaru Telescope, visit https://subarutelescope.org/en/. The telescope’s live camera stream captured a cool video of last month’s Perseid Meteor Shower which can be seen here.
This week’s Sunday Stills challenge theme is ‘Colorful Murals.’ See more responses here.
I was going to take a photo of a now completed mural-in-progess I used in a previous challenge (here), but it was rather obscured by a food wagon and some other items being stored in the corner of an open square. Instead, I took this photo, of one of the several other murals surrounding that square, which is the site of a former restaurant that burned down a few years ago.
