Beach ball

A farewell shot of Hawaii — this, from the Kekaha Kai State Park, just north of the Kona airport on Hawaii’s big island:

beach_ball.jpg

Thought the view would be a good fit for my crystal ball; my 7 year old should be credited with the name for the post. Originally posted on 12/30/2009 over on the old blog; on Flickr over here.

City ablaze

One of the fun things about night shots is that you can get some interesting “free” effects from the different color temperatures used in street and building lighting. This is a shot of downtown Seattle, taken from the Space Needle late at night — shortly before they chased us all off the observation deck.

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Here, the white balance is set to make the building lights look right — resulting in orange streets. I particularly like how the monorail line is silhouetted from beneath.

Originally posted to the old blog on May 5, 2009; on Flickr over here.

What’s the buzz?

Another shot from the Butterfly Pavilion in Westminster, Colorado — this time of some honeybees in an indoor display case:

Whats the buzz.jpg

You’ve probably seen them, those honeybee cases in botanical gardens and such. The honeybees get to build their hive indoors, with a tube leading outside to an area with flowers. Meanwhile visitors get to see them hard at work.

I discovered something on this visit — regardless of the temperature indoors, the honeybees seem to be far less active when it’s cold outside. Even though I had my ring flash, I think the bees’ slow motions helped me get a nice, sharp image here. Unfortunately, you can also see a little bit of a smudge on the glass over on the left side of this shot.

Originally posted to the old blog on January 5, 2009; on Flickr over here.