freezing time

I have been away for the last week which is why this blog has been quiet. I was back in the UK for a conference, at the University where I came from – the University of Hertfordshire, just 20 miles north of London – and I also spent some time with my folks. I took some images of the village they are from and I will be posting those up soon.

One way I keep in touch with happenings at my old University is through their monthly email to staff on events associated with the University. One thing that caught my eye with the latest missive, photography related of course, is that a member of staff from the School of Electronic, Communication and Electrical Engineering had designed and developed high-speed flash trigger equipment. He then worked with a local company, called Blue Shift, to produce some nice imagery (which I think is usually destined for the walls of corporate offices).

I’ve always been fascinated by high-speed photography, freezing time in essence, and this work I thought was really nice. I am not sure what is innovative about this flash equipment, but I thought that the results were quite beautiful. Look at the Fleeting Glimpses gallery to see what I mean.

a log, a photo opportunity

I went down to the Bayfront here in Hilo yesterday, just looking for an opportunity to take a few pictures. The canoe clubs were out paddling and it was raining on and off. The light was grey, but I didn’t mind – in fact, it’s what I wanted. The dim light would mean that I could use longer exposures and my aim was to try and capture an image which would depict both still-life and motion.

Walking along the bay, I came across this log which was being buffeted by the waves. I set up my tripod in the wet sand and started trying to create the effect I was looking for. Here are some of the better ones.

rainbow over hilo

I received a beautiful reminder of why we love living on these islands. I went to the bayfront on Monday morning (I took the day off) with the aim of experimenting with HDR photography. Driving up to Coconut Island it started raining and I thought “oh no, rain again”. It seemed such a nice morning as well. 

But I decided that given that this is Hilo, the rain would pass soon. So I parked the car, chose my spot, set up my camera on the tripod, sat under an umbrella and started taking some test shots. And then what developed in front of my eyes, made my day. As the rain cloud made its way over the bay and towards the town the sun started to poke its head from around the clouds that were still laying over to the east. And as it did so, it created this beautiful rainbow you see in the image above.

As they say in Hawaii – “No rain, no rainbows”!