Hello! I hope you all are great here in 2011!
As you can see, I haven’t posted in forever. I never completed Project 365, but I plan to do it in the future. So, I’ve decided to move on to another blog.
This is the link to my new photoblog. Please go and check it out. You can subscribe to it by clicking the subscription box in the right-hand corner.
Thanks to all of you who read, commented and shared this blog!
Austin
As most of you know, I haven’t been blogging. Part of that is because I haven’t been home! I’ve been to Pennsylvania, New York and Hawaii in the past month. Yep – it’s been an awesome end to my summer.
Now that my life is back to normal, I’m going to post at least once a day. Twice if possible. (Maybe one day I’ll get caught up.)
I would leave you with a picture, but I didn’t take any today. I guess that’s what happens when you take over 1,000 pictures on vacation.
Austin
We woke up this morning and decided to head off to the south part of the island to go to Volcanos National Park. That place was awesome. I loved it.
When we arrived, I expected to see lava flows. We later found out that you couldn’t see lava flows. The only way to see lava was to rent a helicopter and fly out and see it going into the ocean. Not an option for us.
Inside the large Kilauea caldera is a crater called Halema’uma’u (pronounced How-lay-mah-‘oo-mah-‘oo). Inside Halema’uma’u crater is a deep hole and in the deep hole is a pool of lava. Since Halema’uma’u gives off so much toxic smoke (also called “vog”), you couldn’t get near the crater (the vog actually caused part of the park to be closed when we were there). At night, you can see the light from the lava coming out of Halema’uma’u. The sight was impressive.
I only have three photos that I wanted to post for today. Normally it’s difficult choosing, but this time it seemed rather easy.
day two hundred seventeen : This is one of my favorite pictures from the entire trip. I just love the bold colors.
Halema'uma'u's Smoke : I also love this picture. Another plus about it is that it hasn't been edited. It didn't need it.
Halema'uma'u at night : f/3.6, 20s, ISO200 : It was so amazing to be on the observation deck and see the light coming off of lava. It really demonstrates the power of God.
We went to an ancient Hawaiian human sacrifice temple called Mo’okini Heiau. Delightful, isn’t?
[Pronounced: Moh-‘oh-kee-nee hey-ow]
[Don’t worry, I didn’t sacrifice my parents. The thought of it was tempting, but I decided against it.]
The luakini heiau [Hawaiian for human sacrifice temple] was empty. No one was there besides us. Our guidebook said that it gave them the creeps (they said this was the only place on the island that they avoided, besides the DMV) . I personally found that it gave me the creeps also, though not as bad as what the guidebook described.
The heiau itself was made of 15 feet thick stone walls that were probably 15-20 feet high (possibly higher at times). Inside the heiau, there were stones scattered everywhere. Around the heiau, there was a a low stone wall. Inside the wall and surrounding the heiau was grass. On the north side of the compound, there was a large, flat stone. This stone had an indentation in it. It looked like a body would fit perfectly in it. I was under the impression that this was where the sacrifices were done; but I did some reading and found out that this was were they did sacrifice prep and once the sacrifice was done, they would take the body here to skin it and make fish hooks out of the bones. (They also ate the meat. Human meat.) For a picture, wanted my parents to lay on the stone like they were getting sacrificed, but since the indentation was filled with water, they declined. I found out later that only people with a death wish should lay in it. (On second thought, maybe I should have had my parents lay in it… Just kidding. I really do love my parents.)
After we had been there for about 25 minutes, I looked up from my camera and noticed that I couldn’t find my parents. My first thought was, Oh, very funny. Next thing I’ll know, they’ll jump out from behind a wall and scare me. (They later told me they didn’t think about that. How boring is that?) My parents had left me all alone in an ancient human sacrifice temple. (Again, I would like to stress that this place was creepy. I mean creepy.) At this point, I must admit I was freaked out. I ran to the small wall and saw my parents at the bottom of the hill next to the car. I was creeped out and ran as fast as I could back to the car. It was a creepy experience.
[I’m actually quite lucky my parenst didn’t sacrifice me. I’m sure I can be quite annoying at times.]
Since I can’t post all my pictures of Mo’okini Heiau, you can go to this link and get more info on it along with a short video. [If you’re friends with me on Facebook, I will post more pictures sometime soon of it there.]
Some other things we did: we went to church in the morning; we went to Pololu valley and saw a great black sand beach there, got rained on, and I was stung by a Portuguese Man-of-War; we went to the sacrifice heiau; we saw King Kemehameha’s birthplace and then went to a resort and used their beach (all beaches in the state can be accessed by the public – even the fancy resort beaches).
Anyway, here are my pictures.
day two hundred sixteen : mo’okini heiau grounds
Heiau wall and ocean view
Sacrifice stone and heiau walls
Close up of the sacrifice stone
Field above pololu valley
Crab at Pololu beach
Thanks for reading!
Aloha!
Austin (:
*Catching up after my travels to Pennsylvania, New York and Hawaii. So bear with me*
When I think of Hawaii, I think of lush rainforests and the beach. Well, when you fly into Kailua-Kona, you realize that Hawaii has some ugly parts. And you just landed in an ugly part. The airport is in an old lava flow. Nothing but black lava and the occasional patch of dead grass. (Although, after being there for a couple of days, I realized that I loved the lava flow areas where nothing grew, and didn’t like the rainforest as much. This totally shows that I’m from Arizona.)
Anyway, we headed off to the beach and watched a great Hawaiian sunset.
Beach Sunset
I’ve also decided that I’m only going to post a maximum of five pictures a day. I normally take 100+ pictures a day when on vacation, so this will be hard to narrow it down.
Austin
If there were an award for “worst phlogger* ever,” I would probably get it. Seriously. I haven’t been updating a lot, nor have I been taking many pictures. (The last picture I took was Monday. Actually, that’s half lie, I did take a picture the other day, but it didn’t turn out.) Anyways, I’m now going back and posting all my old picutres for this month.
I have been having a hard time finding inspiration to take pictures. I do have some pretty fun things coming up in the next month or two that I’m very excited about, so I should be getting some neat pictures them. Anyways, I promise to take some good pictures. I promise.
[*By “phlogger,” I mean a photo blogger. . Not a flogger. I’m not that creepy.]
I will leave you with that.
This picture was horrid to begin with. It's the only one I took today. So, I tried to make it less horrid. Not sure if I succeed, but at least I actually posted something today.
Today I went to the homeschool convention! Yes, I even admit it! (Trust me, it wasn’t as nerdy / dorky as it sounds.) Since it was in downtown, I got some architecture pictures!
Enjoy!
Honorable mention - Crane.
Day 173 - I honestly can't decide if I like this picture or the picture above better. What do you think?
As of late, I’ve been thinking about my photography. I’m trying to create a “brand,” or style. I’ve been looking at a lot of pictures from other photographers, including my new favorite photographers: Nordica. Check them out. To me, they have some very inspirational pictures. I love their “brand.” (They had an interview with DPS, which is how I found them. Look at the interview here.)
Anyways, I know the style I’m going for. The only problem is that I’m having the hardest time actually achieving it. The only way for me to achieve that style (or try to get close to it) is for me to post-process it in the picutre. And even then, since I don’t own photoshop, I’m very limited as to what I can and cannot do. [I don’t like to do a lot of post-processing; I feel you should try to get the image to be the best it can possibly be right out of the camera without having to extensively post-process it. Some post-processing is fine, though.]
In a nut shell, I feel as if I’m at a transition point. I’m either going to keep at it and succeed, or stop and fail. The images that I’m taking are quite frankly, boring. I yawn while blogging. That’s one reason I didn’t blog for a long time. I was bored. (Now I’m sucking it up and blogging.)
The other day I was looking at this article [read the article; it’s a good one!] when it hit me, I don’t have the right equipment. Now, I always hear “having nice gear doesn’t make your pictures great, it’s the photographer that does that.” This is a very true statement. It’s the photographer that creates composition, etc. But, while I was reading that article, I realized that there’s a point where having a good camera and good lenses comes into play. I feel as if I need better gear to improve a lot. The thing is, I’m not exactly sure if that’s completely true. I know for a fact that I can still improve some with what I have; I’m just not sure if I’m using the “not having a nice camera and lenses” as an excuse for not improving, or if it’s a true need.
Does any of you have any suggestions? I would love to hear from you.
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Okay, enough with that chit-chat. Here’s my picture!
This is actually a picture from yesterday..
I actually really like this picture. It would have been yesterday’s picture, but that other picture fit the mood better.
On a side not, I hate the new blog theme. I will change it when I get a chance. Whenever that may be…
Tomorrow will be busy and tiring. I will be going into downtown Phoenix, hopefully I can get some good pictures then!
I think this is day 171, but I’m not exactly sure…
The weather was really strange today. Like 43% humidity. For an Arizonian, that’s killer. But anyways, it was semi-cloudy. When I went out, the sun was perfect. As soon as I was done shooting, the perfect weather was gone. Perfect timing on my part.
This picture captures my mood perfectly right now. I feel dark at times, but there’s hope. [#Emoblog] I added the grain. I love the grainy look. This picture looks much better in full size though. Like so much better.
ARIZONA THROUGH MY LENS 