Photos: Hawaii, Landscapes

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Pololu Valley Lookout

March 4, 2008 (4:05 PM, which was 2 hours before sunset)

North Kohala (northern part of the Big Island of Hawaii)

"At this end of the road scenic lookout, you can gaze at the vertical jade-green cliffs of the Hamakua coast and two islets offshore. The view may look familiar once you get here -- it often appears on travel posters. Most people race up, jump out, take a snapshot, and turn around and drive off, but it's a beautiful scene, so linger if you can." (Jeanette Foster. Frommer's Hawaii with Kids. Wiley Publishing: 2007. page 204.)

SiowFong, Lydia, and I enjoyed the views during the hour that we were here on this afternoon.

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Sunrise over the King's Golf Course as seen from the balcony of our fifth floor hotel room at the Palace Tower

Hilton Waikoloa Village
Waikoloa, Hawaii

March 5, 2008 (6:29 AM, which was 10 minutes before sunrise)

SiowFong gets all the credit for recommending that I take some sunrise pictures from this vantage point. Although I had awakened around 5:30 AM on two prior mornings to take sunrise photos on beaches facing Waiulua Bay (which is directly opposite this golf course), those outings were not nearly as successful as this one.



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Thurston Lava Tube

Hawaii Volcanoes National Park
Southeastern part of the Big Island of Hawaii

March 7, 2008 (5:33 PM)

"If you are looking for an easy way to see what the inside of natural lava plumbing looks like, Thurston Lava Tube is worth a stop. It is considered one of the 'must sees' at the volcano. . .The entrance is a few minutes walk from Crater Rim Drive. You exit about halfway through the tube. This part of the tube is lighted and is the most widely visited. Most of the lava stalactites have been removed over the decades. . .Undisturbed tubes often have floors littered with rocks that fall down from the ceiling (either from when the tube cooled or from rainwater seeping through the cracks over the years). Thurston has been cleaned up and lighted to make it easy to visit." (Andrew Doughty. Hawaii: The Big Island Revealed. Wizard Publications: 2007. page 96.)

During our visit, SiowFong pushed the umbrella stroller in which Lydia sat, and because of the lack of obstruction on the floor, the trip with the stroller was uneventful.

Photo note: Making this picture absolutely required a tripod because in order to get good detail from the front to the back of the picture, this exposure lasted 30 to 60 seconds because of the low incandescent light levels within the lava tube. Photographing the lava tube brought back some fond memories of the spectacular visit that SiowFong and I experienced at Upper Antelope Canyon and Lower Antelope Canyon near Page, Arizona two years ago.



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Sunrise at Kilauea Iki Crater as seen from the Pu'u Pua'i lookout

Hawaii Volcanoes National Park
Southeastern part of the Big Island of Hawaii

March 8, 2008 (6:24 AM, which was 10 minutes before sunrise)

"This crater. . .had been asleep for almost a century when it became active in 1959. Then it erupted into gargantuan fountains of lava, some reaching a staggering 1,900 feet. . .When it ended 36 days after it began, the crater floor was a dead zone with a lava bathtub ring above the floor to tell how high the lava had reached. The lava lake cooled and cracked as shets of lava buckled and warped, giving the crater the look of dried, crusted-over gravy. Today steam usually issues from cracks in the crater floor, and the rock is still molten a couple of hundred feet down." (Source: Andrew Doughty. Hawaii: The Big Island Revealed. Wizard Publications: 2007. pages 95-96.)



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The Lagoon

Hilton Waikoloa Village
Waikoloa, Hawaii

March 5, 2008 (12:29 PM)

Blue water and sunny blue skies were daily occurrences during our time in Hawaii.

Photos: Hawaii, Heading Home

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Mom is hugging Lydia while Lydia is hugging her Tigger the Tiger stuffed animal during the flight from the Big Island to Oahu.

Hawaiian Airlines Flight 383 from Hilo, Big Island to Honolulu, Oahu

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Monitor showing the information about Hawaiian Airlines flight 22 from Honolulu, Oahu to Seattle, Washington

Honolulu International Airport in Oahu

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Hawaiian Airlines' Boeing 767 (flight 22) sits on the tarmac while airplane food is being loaded prior to the flight from Honolulu to Seattle.

Honolulu International Airport in Oahu

Note: All these pictures were taken on March 8, 2008.

Photos: Hawaii, Hilo Airport

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Lydia is pushing the stroller with her beloved Tigger the Tiger is sitting in the stroller.

Lydia has grown in weight (7 pounds) and height (4 inches) over the last fifteen months because when she was standing behind the stroller in January 2007, one could not have seen her eyes then because she would have been shorter then.

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While her mom is checking email, Lydia is guiding the stroller through the corridor.

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Dad, Lydia, and mom

Hilo Airport has a long, covered corridor where the gates are located that does not have any air conditioning. Instead, fresh outdoor air circulates through the area.

Note: All of these pictures were taken on March 8, 2008 at Hilo Airport in Hilo, which is the capital of the Big Island of Hawaii.

Photos: Hawaii, Punalu'u Tidal Pools

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Wielding her green plastic shovel, Lydia is ready to play in this tide pool after she finished observing a green sea turtle about twenty feet away in another tide pool that was trying to swim towards the shore.

Photographer: SiowFong

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"Look at my scoop of water."

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"Oops. . .I dropped my shovel."

Photographer: SiowFong

Note: These pictures were taken on March 7, 2008 at Punalu'u Black Sand Beach Park in the southern part of the Big Island.

Photos: Hawaii: Mama and Papa at Tidal Pools

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Lydia (in the foreground) and mom (in the background)

Lydia enjoyed using her green plastic shovel to play with the water in the tidal pool. The blue sandals that she is wearing that resemble Crocs, a gift from Sonia Cano over a year ago, have been the outdoor shoes that she has worn most often over that time period.

SiowFong did most of the videography of our time in Hawaii. Especially when SiowFong was alone with Lydia, SiowFong appreciated the convenience, portability, size, and versatility (it takes photos as well as video) of the camcorder. At the end of the trip, we had enough footage to fill two DVDs (over 2 hours), and Lydia has been eagerly viewing them since those were produced.

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Family photo: Mom, Lydia, and dad are sitting on the lava rock at Punalu'u Black Sand Beach Park

During our Hawaii trip, we prioritized taking family photos because we do not know when we will be returning to Hawaii and because of Hawaii's unique landscape (as compared to that found in the continental United States).

Photo notes: For this picture, we waited until the fast moving clouds on this partly cloudy afternoon day had temporarily blocked out the sun to take this picture so that our faces would be evenly, softly lit. If this picture had been taken with full sunshine, the harsh sunlight would have resulted in hotspots on our foreheads and cheeks and dark shadows beneath our eyes and noses.

Getting one or a few successful family pictures with children requires taking a series of pictures because young children move and change their expressions. SiowFong selected this one as the best among twenty family photos.

I also made sure that the tripod-mounted camera was level with the horizon; this is especially important with pictures taken that include bodies of water in those images.

The composition of the picture has three layers with the family in the foreground (the dominant feature), some sea in the midground, and just a sliver of sky in the background. Minimizing the sky, which is several times brighter than the land, also assists the camera's exposure meter to determine the correct exposure for the people in the picture. If a large portion of sky had been a part of the image, the people in the picture would be darker (underexposed).

Note: These pictures were taken on March 7, 2008 in the southern part of the Big Island at Punalu'u Black Sand Beach Park, "the most easily accessible black sand beach on the island. Backed by palm trees and a freshwater pond, the sand is a genuine black sand -- the kind created when a chunky a'a lava flow meets the ocean and shatters into small pieces on contact with the water. These small chunks are quickly pulverized by the ocean, forming a delicious black sand." (Source: Andrew Doughty. Hawaii: The Big Island Revealed. Wizard Publications: 2007. page 174.)

I am thankful that SiowFong does the majority of the travel planning whenever we take a trip. The Big Island has many beaches, but she read about this one, placed it on our schedule, and we had a delightful hour and a half here on this day.