2012 Kawaii Kon - March 16, 17 & 18

I decided to attend the Kawaii Kon this year mostly because I had a great time shooting Jessica at the Malaekahana State Recreational Area a few weeks ago. It was such a enjoyable experience that it made me want to take more pictures of people...not my typical candid shots, but of people who don't mind it when photographers take pictures of them. And what better place than at a cosplay/anime/manga convention?


Vocaloid - Mitsune Miku



Mortal Kombat - Kitana



9 - Number 8



Sorry, I don't know who this cosplay character is supposed to be.



Marvel Comics Super Heroes - Gambit and Iron Man

Sorry, I don't know who these cosplay characters are.

End of the line.

I'll be posting more pictures as I process them and I'll talk about the challenges of shooting an event like this with all the different light conditions. I really need to learn how to use fill-flash better.

Laenani Park and Malaekahana State Recreational Area

The week leading up to this weekend was a stormy one...there was thunder and lightning, heavy rains, hail in some areas and it was said a tornado swept through parts of Lanikai and Enchanted Lake and it did quite a bit of damage. The weather forecast for the weekend wasn't promising, but I contacted Kenway anyway and asked if I could join him again if he went out to shoot the sunrise.

Kenway said he wanted to go to a small park in Kahaluu to shoot the sunrise...funny, I grew up on the Windward side and never even knew this park existed. It's called Laenani Park and it had a nice view of Kaneohe Bay.

I woke up Saturday morning and quickly looked outside...the ground was wet but it wasn't raining and I could actually see stars in the sky. Encouraged, I got my gear ready and headed towards Kahaluu to meet up with Kenway.

There were a lot of clouds in the sky that morning, but they seemed to be thinning out after we arrived at the park. It was a little voggy and we were hoping this would mean some nice colors would show up once the sun started to rise. The horizon started to show some colors and we started shooting. I didn't take too many photos and I wasn't able to get one of Kenway this time.

Kenway is one of the advisors for the Focus Photography club at BYU Hawaii and he asked me if I wanted to tag along with him to a photo meet. I didn't have other plans so I said I'd be happy to join him.

We left Laenani Park and made our way along the windward coast with Kenway pointing out places he likes to shot the sunrise from. We stopped at a place called Papa Ole's in Hau'ula for breakfast. They had the biggest loco moco I'd ever seen. Kenway had the "Everything Omelete" and boy it really did have everything! The thing was huge! After a quick breakfast we headed toward BYU Hawaii in Laie where we met up with some of the club members.

The club decided to head over to the Malaekahana State Recreational Area for the meet. I'd never been there before and was happy to go check it out. Once we got there we split up into a few smaller groups. I went with Kenway, Glenn Kau (the other advisor to the club) and Jessica, a student at BYU Hawaii.

Glenn caught me sniping him and Jessica.

    



The Masters, Kenway Kua and Glenn Kau.

   











The model: Jessica, a student at BYU Hawaii. Glenn Kau posed her for the rest of us.

Jessica was a real trooper...she was actually balancing

on a fallen tree trunk for this shot.

Jessica was a real joy to shoot.

Here are a few more pictures from the BYU Hawaii Focus Photo Club meet at Malaekahana Recreational Area.

A club member talking to the BYU Hawaii Photographer. The little girl is the
daughter of the photographer.

 


A budding young photographer...she had
better gear than I did.

 

 

A happy young photographer. She must have
gotten the shot she wanted.








 






Lanikai Sunrise and the Topaz Labs Plug-In Bundle

This was the 4th weekend that I've joined Kenway Kua for his sunrise photos and this time he wanted to go to Lanikai Beach in Kailua. I've never been there before and was eager to see where it was and what kind of scenery was available. It was drizzling by my place and I was hoping that the weather wouldn't get much worse as the morning progressed.

The sky was beginning to lighten when we got to Lanikai and we could see it was very overcast but at least it wasn't raining. As we made our way to the beach we noticed a few people were already there...some were walking their dogs, some were just sitting on the sand and there was also a photographer there waiting for the sunrise.

We set up our tripods and waited for the sun to rise, but the morning remained very overcast and grey. The sun did peek through the clouds a few times, but there wasn't much color available.

The Mokulua Twin Islets or "The Mokes". SOOC with crop and straighten.

There were a lot of people on the beach that morning, apparently it's a popular spot to catch the sunrise from. We even met another photographer who said he came here every weekend to shoot the sunrise. He was a Nikon shooter and had really nice gear with him. Maybe we'll see him there again in the future.

Many people were at Lanikai that morning.  SOOC with crop and straighten.

The clouds never went away but at least we didn't get rained on. I wasn't too happy with the pictures I took, but I couldn't complain...I was out shooting and enjoying Kenway's company. Plus this gave me a chance to be more adventureous with my post processing once I got home.

I recently purchased the Topaz Labs Plug-In Bundle and decided to play around with it to see what it could do for my pictures. The plug-ins are known for their ability to give your images more "pop" and I was eager to see what they would do for my dull pictures. I did initial adjustment in LR2 and then I tried some presets in Topaz Adjust 5 before doing final adjustments in CS3.




I was amazed at how much color Topaz Adjust 5 could pull out of my dull grey images. And I thought the tone mapped look was kinda interesting too. Topaz was definitely able to give my pictures more "pop", but this wasn't really my style. I did have fun experimenting and playing with the look of my images, but I think I'll probably tone down the effect the next time I use Topaz.

I had another fun morning with Kenway even if the sunrise wasn't what we were hoping for. There will always be other sunrises in our future.