Sunset Surfing in Turtle Bay, Oahu

Tuesday, July 26, 2011

So I went backpacking this weekend. And I took a few pictures. I’m hoping to get at least one of those up here at some point this week. Also, I’ve got more pictures from Point Reyes. Maybe you’ll see one of those too. But in the meantime, here’s another shot of some dude surfing at sunset. This was in Turtle Bay, at the northern tip of Oahu, in Hawaii.

Have a great rest of the day, and try to stay cool out there, unless you’re in the southern hemisphere or Seattle, in which case, grab a coat.

Notes: Canon EOS Rebel T1i, Canon 55-250mm IS lens. 1/250s, f/8.0, ISO 400. Focal length: 235mm.

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Hawaiian Fire Dancer

Wednesday, July 6, 2011

Hey look, it’s the same picture that everyone who has ever been to Hawaii has already taken! That’s right folks, I was a tourist just like everyone else while I was there, and I went to a luau at some hotel, and I took long-exposure pictures of the guys doing the fire dancing. I wish I was original, but I so totally am not.

In other news, I decided today to stop posting links to Rate Dave’s Photos. Because it’s dumb, and ugly, and I wouldn’t want anybody to go there anyway. I don’t even have a good reason for why I was putting those links there this whole time. So, I stopped. You probably don’t even know what I’m talking about, which is good, because it’s dumb. Right, good, let’s get on with the rest of our day.

Notes: Canon EOS Rebel T1i, Canon 55-250mm IS lens. 1/10s, f/5.6, ISO 400. Focal length: 200mm.

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Snorkeling at the Rockhouse

Wednesday, June 8, 2011

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Unlike the last few tropically-themed pictures I’ve posted, this one is actually *not* from my recent Hawaii trip. Instead, this one is from Jamaica. Specifically, Negril. Even more specifically, this was taken from the restaurant at the Rockhouse hotel just outside of Negril. That, my friends (and non-friend readers), is an amazing place. There is a famous 7-mile long white sand beach in the town of Negril itself, but the Rockhouse (and a few other hotels) are a little ways outside of town, on what is known as “the cliffs”. So, there’s no beach per-se there, instead it’s a rocky shoreline, where all of the rooms are about 10-ish feet above the water, and there’s all sorts of little ladders and stuff that you can use to get in to the water. But, there’s some pretty great snorkeling and such literally feet from the door of your room. Like I said, not a bad spot.

Notes: Canon EOS Rebel T1i, Tamron 17-50mm f/2.8 lens. 1/250s, f/7.1, ISO 200. Focal length: 50mm.

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Surfing the North Shore at Sunset

Friday, May 13, 2011

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In honor of it being the end of the work week, I’m going to take you all back to Hawaii. I’m not a surfer, but this picture (and a couple others that I got that I may post soon) makes me seriously consider taking it up. I mean, holy crap, what a moment. This was taken on the north shore of Oahu, just like the last couple Hawaii shots I’ve posted, so nothing groundbreaking there. Not a bad place though, not a bad place…

Notes: Canon EOS Rebel T1i, Canon 55-250mm IS lens. 1/200s, f/8.0, ISO 100. Focal length: 250mm.

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North Shore, Oahu

Wednesday, May 4, 2011

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Another one from Hawaii today, again from the North Shore of Oahu. I’m not sure what the name of this beach is (or if it even has a name), but it was along the road a little ways northeast of Sunset Beach. I stopped there to snap a couple pictures when I was on the way to pick up some breakfast. The clouds were rolling through all morning, so this particular shot doesn’t have quite the sunlight I was hoping for (and I had already spent more time than I had intended to here – so I didn’t want to wait another 5-10 minutes for the current cloud to pass me by). Also, it was a bit too early in the morning for the sun to be in quite the right spot.

Wait, back up a second, I should explain myself there. Most of the time, see, you get the best light for pictures either in the early morning or late afternoon. (Heard the phrase “golden hour”?) That’s because around noon and in the early afternoon, the sun just washes everything out, and you get flat colors and uninteresting shadows. Plus you can get a lot of haze and such which further drown out all the color. But, in my experience, that rule doesn’t apply when you’re taking pictures of tropical beaches. In fact, the opposite is often true. See, one of the things that’s so awesome about these places is the beautiful sand and the turquoise water. And, the best way (that I’ve found) to get that turquoise to really glow in your pictures is to have the sun shining right down on it, so that the light bounces off the sandy bottom and diffuses throughout. That, plus a polarizer filter, is how you get this kind of glow. So, the glow was kind of starting to come out here, but it was a bit too early yet for it to really shine (and, as I mentioned, the cloud that was halfway blocking the sun also didn’t help.)

Notes: Canon EOS Rebel T1i, Tokina 11-16mm f/2.8 lens. 1/250s, f/8.0, ISO 200. Focal length: 16mm.

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Sunset, North Shore, Oahu, Hawaii

Thursday, April 28, 2011

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Hey everyone. This was supposed to be posted yesterday, but by the time I got around to it, the day was over. So it got pushed back today. This is another picture from my recent trip to Hawaii. I took this from the Turtle Bay Resort, where we were staying. Turtle Bay is on the north shore of Oahu. I hadn’t realized it before we headed out there, but that’s the famous “North Shore” that gets all the huge waves that are legendary among surfers. We saw some decent-size waves, but the REALLY big ones never made an appearance while we were there. What waves we did see though tended to roll in right around sunset, so we had the opportunity to watch some folks surf while sitting at the hotel bar each night. Good times. The landscape around the hotel worked out pretty well, because it sits on a spit of land, so you’d get to watch these waves roll right on by as they were breaking (as opposed to sitting on the beach and watching them break way out to sea.) Thus, I was able to get this picture. It was (obviously) getting dark, so I had to crank up the ISO and underexpose the shot in order to get a reasonable shutter speed, so the colors aren’t as vivid as they would be otherwise. But whatever.

Anyway, enjoy the rest of your day, and I’ll try to get another one posted tomorrow, I promise.

Notes: Canon EOS Rebel T1i, Canon 55-25-mm IS lens. 1/400s, f/8.0, ISO 400. Focal length: 400.

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Kaneohe Bay, Hawaii

Tuesday, April 12, 2011

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Hello everyone! Here’s another shot from Hawaii. I took this one when we were out on a snorkel tour in Kaneohe Bay. Which, as you can probably guess, is the bay that’s right off of the city of.. umm.. Kaneohe. There’s a neat sandbar out there where the boat took us, where they cooked up some burgers and stuff. The snorkeling wasn’t any good there though, but after lunch they actually took us to a reef where there were actually, you know, things to see. Unfortunately, the weather didn’t quite work out (something about the wet season, rain forest, and blah blah blah), so I wasn’t able to get any crazy turquoise water shots that a sandbar would normally be good for. Oh well, maybe next time. It was pretty odd though, standing on a thin strip of sand that was an inch or two above the water level, taking a picture of the boat that had taken us way out into the bay. Weird.

Those mountains in the background are ridiculously beautiful. Seriously. You have to see them for yourself. I was trying to get a good picture of them the entire time I was in Hawaii (we spent the entire time on Oahu). But, the weather just never worked out, at least not when I was in the area. Again, the whole “wet season” thing. This was on the windward (eastern) coast of Oahu, which is the cloudy/rainy side. (Since the weather rolls in that way, and the moist air turns into clouds and rain as it gets pushed over those mountains.) But, hey, I didn’t pick the dates of our trip, so you can blame my buddy Mark and his new wife Michaela for that.

Notes: Canon EOS Rebel T1i, Tamron 17-50mm f/2.8 lens. 1/200s, f/5.6, ISO 100. Focal length: 23mm.

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Hawaiian Fire Dancer

Wednesday, April 6, 2011

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Hey everyone! As promised (and requested by one reader in particular), here’s another shot from Hawaii (although probably not quite what any of you had in mind.) This is of course a member of the standard set of pictures that just about any tourist in Hawaii will come home with – a slow-shutter shot of one of the fire dancers at the luau. One of the cool (and, to me, really surprising) parts of this shot is that the dancer is only TEN YEARS OLD! According to the announcer, that kid had recently won the world championship in the children’s division for fire dancing, and I’ve got to admit, he was pretty dang good at it. Quite a show. I’m trying to think of something else I can say about it, but nothing’s coming to mind. So, I guess I’ll call that good then!

Notes: Canon EOS Rebel T1i, Canon 55-250mm IS lens. 1/10s, f/5.0, ISO 400. Focal length: 146mm.

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Makapu'u Beach, Hawaii

Friday, April 1, 2011

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Hey look, I’m back! And this is where I went! That’s right, I was in Hawaii, and it was awesome. Specifically, I was on the island of O’ahu for a week. I spent a few nights in Waikiki, then a few nights on the north shore. This picture though is from neither of those. You’re looking at Makapu’u Beach and the Kalanianaole Highway, at the southeastern tip of the island. Most of the beaches around there are just absurdly beautiful, which in some ways I found pretty surprising after spending the first couple days in Honolulu. I mean, don’t get me wrong, Honolulu’s not bad, it’s a fine place to spend some beach time, but it doesn’t have this gorgeous white sand and turquoise water that a lot of other spots on the island do. (Not to mention the cliffs and mountains and all that.) Great stuff.

So anyway, I’m back now, and it’s April, a brand new month. So hopefully I’ll start posting again with at least some sort of regularity. Time will tell if that actually happens though.

In other news, if you were hoping to get your hands on a print or two, this is your chance! I’ll sell you a print of any picture you see on the blog, and 100% of the proceeds will go to a good cause: to help offset the medical expenses incurred by the sister of a friend of mine who was recently diagnosed with stage IV stomach cancer. I haven’t thought too much about what price to charge, but let’s say somewhere around $20 for a 12 x 18 inch print, or $35 for 20 x 30 inches. (That’s approximately 30 x 46 cm, and 51 x 76 cm, for you metric types.) I’ll even ship it for free! (Well, I’ll ship to the US for free. If you’re international, I’ll have to check what it’ll cost me before I commit to that. ) If you’re interested, leave a comment here or shoot me an email! ( dave (at) davefry.net ) (Alternatively, I could send your proceeds to the Red Cross for Earthquake relief – your choice.)

Notes: Canon EOS Rebel T1i, Tokina 11-16mm f/2.8 lens. 1/320s, f/7.1, ISO 200. Focal length: 11mm.

UPDATE: In response to the first comment below, here is the original, unedited image straight off the camera (well, shrunk down to web-size, but you know what I mean):

As you can see, I did some tweaking to the brightness/contrast, and I added a bit of sharpening too. I used the editing functionality from Picasa to make those changes (which is what I use for 99% of my photo editing – the other 1% is when I use Picnik to straighten something, because Picasa’s straighten feature results in a lower-quality image.) If you wanted to know more specifics about what I did (or how), please ask!

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St. Martin, seen from Pinel Island

Monday, February 14, 2011

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So I guess I should start off by saying “Happy Valentine’s Day”! So, umm, Happy Valentine’s Day!

Right, so, that’s done. Here’s a picture from the Caribbean. No, this wasn’t recent, I didn’t just get back from another secret trip to some exotic location or anything. This one was actually taken on my honeymoon oh-so-long-ago. The land across the water is St. Martin / St. Maarten (it’s half French and half Dutch, you know), and I was standing on Yellow Beach (on Pinel Island) when I took the picture. We were there on a cruise, and we took an island tour that included a snorkeling expedition to Pinel Island. That’s… really the most interesting part of the story.

I usually avoid having people in my pictures. Because people tend to be ugly. And even if they’re not ugly, I think it’s really cheeseball when you see some amazingly awesome landscape photo with some person wearing horribly outdated clothes right there in the mix. It totally distracts from the scene you’re trying to portray, if you ask me. I suppose to get around that you could just have all of the people be naked, but then you have a different kind of picture entirely. So, I apologize for the folks who may or may not be ugly in today’s picture (hey man, I’m not here to judge – that’s your job.) But it was sort of unavoidable given the circumstances. Have a great day!

Notes: Canon EOS Rebel XT, 18-55mm kit lens. 1/400s, f/8.0, ISO 100. Focal length: 28mm.

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