This is the Hawaiian flag that has been around since the 1800s. It has plenty of history that is very interesting if you are ever so inclined to look it up. This is the view of the top of the Royal Hawaiian hotel that was one of the first hotels on Waikiki Beach. We have never stayed at this hotel but my Grandma on my Dad’s side always stayed there whenever she came to Hawaii. One of these days we will treat ourselves!! Perhaps I’ll go totally tourist and post a shot of it tomorrow for my shot of the day.

Aloha for now.

This one is for my bro-in-law, he loves everything to do with fast cars. I am pretty sure he would die if he saw this store, it has nothing in it but Ferrari’s and Ferrari paraphernalia. The store is located on the main street along the beach in Waikiki. The street is packed every night with tourists, like us, shopping and sight seeing. This is the view from the street, talk about some eye catching window shopping.

Aloha

Today was the first full day in paradise. We spend half the day doing tourist stuff and the afternoon down at one of the most famous beaches in the world. The weather is fantastic and the surfers were out in full force. There are row ans rows of surfboards in storage across the beach, kind of memorizing. At the end of the day they all lock them up, it reminded me of skis at a chalet or golf clubs at the clubhouse. I guess even though every sport is different they have their similarities.

Aloha till tomorrow!

Well, we are here and loving every minute of it. We were in the air for 7 hours today but the flight was nice and without incident so I guess that’s always a good thing. Today was almost the irst day that I missed a shot of the day. We were under the impression that our hotel room had wireless internet but much to our surprise, it didn’t. I went on a quest to find a hot spot at 11 PM and was unsuccessful. Luckily the hotel did have wireless but only in select sections and at a cost of $14 dollars a day – WHAT A RIP OFF. I am so used to the hotels in Canada having free high speed internet so $14 for a turtle slow wired connection in the lobby doesn’t seem like good customer service. I will have to do some more searching a free hotspot tomorrow during the day, I don’t want to have to pay another $14 under principal alone. This is where we went for supper today, one of our favorite spots when in Hawaii. The burgers are amazing and I love the fact that we were sitting close to an open window and you couldn’t see our breath – Northern Climate dwellers will know what I am taking about. Tomorrow is a beach day so I am hoping to get some candids of folks just hanging in the sun. I intentionally wanted to capture some movement in the people walking by to try to reflect how busy this street is – packed wall to wall on both sides all day long.

I can’t wait, we leave in 8 hours for our much awaited Hawaiian vacation. 10 days of just me and the Mrs – YA HOO!!! The other nice thing is that finally I will have some images with the color green in them, not like the last 3 months of nothing but white.

My wife and I are heading off to Hawaii for our 6th honeymoon on Sunday and we can hardly wait. We have been counting down the days for the last month and now we are down to hours. We have been blessed to be able to go on a vacation every year to Hawaii by ourselves for a little get away. We really have to thank our parents and the rest of our family for staying at our house, watching the kids and allowing us to have some couple time. If you are married, I definitely suggest trying to take some time like this every year especially once you have kids. It does wonders for our marriage and our friendship.

Aloha

Strobist: SB800 1/8 in EZYbox @ 8 o’clock
SB600 1/8 bare with full CTO gel @ 9 o’clock to the tree

Kids and hand sanitizer go together like bacon and eggs. This was outside of a huge play area at West Edmonton Mall. I can just imagine how many germs are in there, thank goodness all my kids are too old to hit it up any more.

My youngest son and his cousin have been going to play dodgeball every Wednesday night for the last couple of months and tonight was the last night. It brings me back to when I was a kid, however they use foam balls now, not like the old red rubber balls that we used. Man, if one of those red rubber balls ever connected with bare skin you would be sporting a nasty welt for the next couple of days – ah, the good old days. Thanks Auntie R for taking them every week, by the looks of things they loved every minute of it.

I was at my sister’s today and she pulled out some toys that we played with as kids. These things must be . . . well we don’t need to get into how old they are, suffice it to say I can’t believe she still has them. I would play with these for hours when I was a kid. Imagine, no TV, video games, computers, or any other electronic toy to occupy your time with. All we had was our imagination and some wood.

Strobist: SB800 1/32 through EZYbox @ 9 o’clock and above
SB600 1/32 through umbrella @ 3 o’clock
SB600 1/32 with violet gel underneath pointed at BG

Hopefully my daughter doesn’t get any ideas on how to sneak out of her room after taking this shot. Ahh, I don’t have anything to worry about – she’s a good girl and would never do anything like that to break her father’s heart.

Happy Bench Monday Everyone.

Strobist: SB800 1/32 in EZYbox @ 8 o’clock
SB600 1/32 through umbrella @ 4 o’clock

Today was the end of my son’s week long birthday celebration. We all went to the West Edmonton Mall Water Park with his brother, sisters, and 4 of his friends. This is his sister coming out the business end of a wild waterside called the Typhoon. They all had a blast and so did dad. I got plenty of shots from the perspective of head on when they were coming to the end of the slide but I though this would be a fun perspective from behind and underneath.

Strobist: SB800 1/128 with ominibounce and Kleenex @ 4 o’clock

I was walking across a bridge and as I looked down I really liked the contrast between the snow/ice and the creek bed. I am so happy that the snow is melting and tomorrow is the first day of spring. One thing I learned from taking this shot is that it is hard to put shots like this into a perspective that will reflect what you saw and experienced while there in person. You often hear people say, it looked better in person and it is the job of a photographer to capture the image in a way that would rival it live.

My son could hardly wait to take out his new electric scooter that he got for his birthday a couple of days ago. It’s pretty cool and he had a blast the first day out.

Storbist: SB800 and SB600 double stacked 1/1 through umbrella @ 5 o’clock

Just a fun shot of my nephew that screamed Polaroid to me. I miss my old SX70 film but then again it’s not the easiest camera to fit in my pocket.

Happy Birthday A – the big 11 It is my son’s birthday, too bad we’re not Irish – can you imagine? Of all the special days one’s birthday could be on I think this would be the coolest, especially once he hits 18.

Happy St Patrick’s Day Everyone and HBW

I’m a big scifi fan and one of my favorite series was Battlestar Galactica (BSG). When I saw this I immediately thought of the launch tubes that the vipers would take off from when leaving the battlestar. If you like good scifi TV, I would suggest picking it up and watching the series. Don’t judge the show by the pilot alone, it keeps getting better with every episode. I am talking about the takeoff/re-make of the original, which I loved as a kid as well.

This is the shot my daughter wanted me to take last week for Bench Monday – Woo Hoo, it worked this time. She though it was very clever that it was bench Monday, she was sitting on a bench, and her jacket said Bench on the collar – see what she did right there!

HBM Everyone

This is for all the teachers out there who I know could not survive without their daily dose of coffee. My sister asked if I could make an image look like it was from the 60’s so this is for you sis. I threw in a little bokeh a the end of the keyboard just for kicks – that’s just how I roll.

Storbist: SB800 1/128 through DIY grid @ 8 o’clock aimed at cup
SB600 1/64 though DIY snoot @ 6 0′clock aimed at keyboard
SB600 1/64 through DIY snoot @ 11 o’clock aimed at back of piano

The overexposed light on the cup is intentional to simulate – wait for it – on camera flash, typical lighting of the era

all triggered through CLS

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