More droplets...

I have been working on refining my droplet taking technique. I got a few droplets that turned out ok. Water takes on shapes of its own. There is a pretty cool website that showcases droplet shots. Tell me which ones you like the best. I appreciate the feedback that I have been getting on my photos. Keep up the good work. I think that the 5th droplet shot looks like a person. Kinda creepy. Enjoy ~Erik

Smoke and Water

I tried a few different thing with the camera this weekend. Some of them turned out better than others. I followed a tutorial on dpchallenge to get the smoke shots. I was very pleased with how they came out. The first shot shows my set up. The black shots are basically unedited shots. I inverted the colors and messed around the hue/saturation to get the colors. It was fairly easy except Angela wasn't to excited about the smell of incense in the house.


This next set of shots I was messing around with getting droplets of water in stop motion. Not real easy to get the timing. Also I needed alot more light. They are all right but it would have been nicer to have better lighting. Tell me what you think of the shots. ~Erik

Will these Hawaii Posts ever end?

Well we made it home yesterday. When we left Hawaii it was 80 degrees and when we got to Alaska it was -20 F. Yes, that's right, a 100 degree difference; needless to say the family is freezing. I will probably only post about Hawaii one more time with some edited pictures. The last couple days the sun finally came out. We went to Turtle Bay beach. We aren't rich enough to stay at the hotel but we did pay the five bucks to park in the parking lot and walk to the public beach. You can see by the pictures that the water was very clear and the sun was shining. It was also nice that there weren't any thugs at this beach just a lot of rich yuppies. I find that rich yuppies are less likely to steal your camera bag.


I had talked about going on a glider ride because I had seen it on the internet. All I can say is sweeeet! They weren't busy when we went and I got into a plane right away. My pilot took me up in the aerobatic plane even though I only paid for a scenic ride. They strap you in with a parachute and 5 point harness. A small prop plane towed us up to 2000 ft and released us from the tow rope. We flew around for a bit then the pilot got a bit bored and we started doing some aerobatics. The last photo in this series was taken when we were upside down. I didn't last too long doing stunts before I started to get sick. Fortunately the pilot was accommodating and landed shortly afterwards. I would highly recommend taking a glider ride if you are in Hawaii.


Lost again? While we were flying the pilot pointed out some "Lost" spots. You can see the first shot is the same "Others Camp" that Angela was posed in front of. The second shot is the beach where they had the original wreck. I guess they had plane parts all over the beach while they were doing the shooting. The last shot is a lake that they were doing some shooting the last couple months. They build a houseboat and it should be seen in this season. Stay posted and maybe you will see it.

Final thoughts: Kaitlyn's favorite tourist spot was Matsumoto's Shaved Ice in Hale'iwa. She asked to go there everyday. Kali's favorite things were playing at the beach and watching the chickens and baby chicks at the yurts. Owen just liked crawling as fast as possible into the water and dipping his face in it. He also liked eating sand, probably the salty flavor. Angela enjoyed the yurts, for the fact that there was no TV and the kids had to entertain themselves all the time. It was fun to hear the stories and games they made up. She also liked just playing in the water with the family. I liked surfing, glider rides, PCC, our rental house, taking pictures and spending time with the family. All in all we are very pleased with our trip to Hawaii.

More Hawaii...

Here are a few shots that I took that I edited. You can see that I darkened the sky to give a bit more dramatic effect. Also I tweaked the saturation a bit. Tell me what you think of the photo's. Which ones you like and the ones you don't like. ~Erik