Here’s a new message from us, it has been a while so I figured we could write something again

I think I will start with Michelle and the baby as everything goes very well with them, we finally figured out a name for the baby, also thanks to my daughter Larissa, who was asked to make the final decision between a couple of names. Michelle can feel the baby kick quite a lot of times lately, but of course you’ll see that I am out of luck when I want to feel it, as the baby instantly stops when I put my hand on her belly.. Oh well, I’d like to think she doesn’t wants to hurt her daddy

We went out during last friday and saturday, mostly because of my birthday. Yep, I start to become an old ba***rd haha. Nah, it’s not that bad haha. Next to all the presents that I received from the Netherlands, I received a new digital slr camera from Michelle, including 2 zoomlenses, filters and some more stuff. It’s really a nice camera, which had to be tested, of course

Well, I can tell you that I have to learn a lot as it is no longer point-and-shoot, no, I can adjust all settings myself now, such as the whitebalance, lighting, arpeture, etc. etc. Of course you can adjust some settings on a normal digital camera, but not many people do this, but it is much more fun to do it with this camera haha.

Anyways, we went to the southcoast last friday, where some people were surfing. We went here mostly so I could see if I could zoom in some more with this camera (surfing usually happens on quite some distance from the coast). And I have to say it works pretty nice, here some pictures:

The first picture has been made smaller, mostly because it was shot in a big size. The second picture is the same as the first, but cropped and on, almost, normal size .

Above pictures are just to show how far you can zoom with this thing, the surfer in the picture was quite far from the coast. Below some more pictures, shot on the same spot:

Some photos are sadly a bit darker than I wanted them to be (also because of the clouds during the day), but oh well, we only just have this camera, we still have a lot to learn

Before we went to Waikiki for a dinner, we went to town when it started to become evening. I shot some more pictures there, mostly because I wanted to make a panorama picture and wanted to shoot some photos during the sunset. Here are a few of those pictures:

I know these are almost the same photos, but I wanted to show that the sky of Hawaï knows many colors, especially during sunset. There is only a few minutes during the above photos.Here are a few more photos:

And then we were sent away by the security.. we were there quite some time and they thought it was pretty suspicious that there were some people, shooting photos, from the roof of the parking garage. It was too bad, but oh we, we decided to go towards Waikiki for our dinner.

As for the panorama photo, here’s one (I made it smaller in size, the original was about 20 megabyte big):

It’s quite easy to make such a panorama photo, you just have to make sure that the camera is on a tripod, that you make enough photos to overlap everything (I believe there’s 34 photo’s in the above panorama), and that you use the right software. I use a free program, and I have to say it works like a charm. The program does everything for me, place the photo’s, align them, adjust the shades etc etc.

Right, we went to Waikiki after all this and we decided to drive through town afterwards, so we could find a certain building (I will place the photo of this building below). Just when we found this building, the police pulled me over (or I should say, I drove into a parkinglot and he then came on from behind). It turned out that I didn’t stop for a stopsign. He checked our papers and checked if I didn’t drank any alcohol (probably because we said that we had a dinner just before, and I have to say that it is not like the Netherlands where they use a breath analyzer, no, I had to follow a pen with my eyes while he aimed a flashlight on my eyes… I don’t know but I doubt this is a correct way to do it.. oh well, I didn’t drink anything so I didn’t had to worry). After a short lecture, he let me go without a ticket. I was pretty lucky with that. I have no idea why, but I think it might have been because of my birthday, that he had seen the birthdate on the driver license. According to Michelle it might also have been that it was because I didn’t cause any problems and just stayed nice, or because I was honest about my mistake… whatever it was, I like to stick with my birthday as for explanation

But oh well, the building we were looking for is the following:

Looks good, doesn’t it? (Yes, I know, I used a lens which made stars of the lights, I shouldn’t have done this but oh well haha.. it’s all in a learning process).

Can you believe this is just a mural, and not something like 3D?

This piece of art has been painted in 18 months (10 to 14 hours a day) by an artist named ‘John Pugh’. They wrote the following about it in the local paper:

“Pugh said the epic wave behind surfing pioneer Duke Kahanamoku is Queen Lili’uokalani herself, whose enduring legacy lives on through the children’s center named for her and in other ways. To get the wave just right, he hired a glass artist to make a model of a wave he could study throughout.

He said the children shown in the mural offer gifts that pay tribute to the queen. In a window to the right side is Prince Kuhio, who served in Congress and created the Hawaiian homes act to return more Hawaiians to the land.”

So, yeah, to prove that it is just a mural, here’s a photo from up close:

That this painting can really fool people shows from a part in the same article in the local paper, where they wrote about a crew of firemen who thought that the children in the mural were stuck and couldn’t come down any more. When they wanted to save them, they found out about their mistake haha.

Ok, tomorrow, or the day after, I will post a new message about last Saturday. We also went out on that day, and I made some photo’s in a botanical garden. But ok, that kind of depends on how busy I am (I am quite busy lately for some reason). And now to bed, it’s getting late..

Yesterday we went to the North Shore because they predicted that there would be big waves (25-30 feet on the highest point) and there was also a surf championship going on at the North Shore.

Once we arrived at the North Shore, it indeed seemed like there were pretty high waves in the ocean. The waves break down mostly before the coast and this is mostly because there is a coralreef around the island. It doesn’t take away the fact that there are still some nice waves crashing against shore but most of the waves break before the shore. Not everywhere though, but you will see that in a bit

Ok, first some pictures of the coast at Haleiwa:

The first picture doesn’t show the true nature of the waves which are actually nicely sized. It is also pretty hard to capture the right size with a normal digital camera, it is almost impossible to do it without telelenses like pro’s use. If you look closely to the second photo, you will be able to see a surfer standing on a board, the waves might look a bit bigger there. I think the waves were about 9 feet here.

After watching for a while we drove on to Waimea Bay. You can usually see a lot of people swimming and jumping into the water from a rock over there but not today, the water was a ‘little’ bit to wild for it. First I will show you a photo of that rock where people usually jump from so you have some sort of a reference point:

When you look closely at that photo, then you can see some people on that rock (it would be the best to click on it to give it a bigger size and even then they will be small stripes). It is just to show how big the rock is, I think he is about 30 feet above waterlevel.

So ok, then here the pictures of yesterday:

It might look like we were pretty close to the water, but this isn’t exactly true. I think we were about 30 feet away from the waterline (and still we got wet feet from the water that rolled up on the coast). We couldn’t get much closer either, ok, we could if we wanted but there were signs everywhere saying it would be dangerous and such and we also heard a lot of warnings over the speakers, especially for people with little children. Ok, here some more photo’s:

Like said, the waves break mostly before the coast but as you could see on the pictures above, it isn’t always like that, they come pretty close in Waimea. Walking to the waterline over the beachsand was also a nice experience, the beach is a bit tilted at the end so you cannot see the waterline and sometimes it looks like the waves are really close and break up just in front of your eyes.

The other side of the bay was a bit less spectacular if you ask me. There were also some surfers in the water. I think it looked less spectaculair because the waves broke down a bit before the coast and not as close at the other ones.

After this we drove on and we noticed that it was a bit busier at the ‘Pipeline’ with the visitors. There were a few surfers active (which are there probably daily but oh well) because of the nice waves:

The pictures were all taken with as much zoom as possible but unfortunately we were unable to bring the surfers more close to the camera. It is not that weird either that there were some people who had camera’s and lenses of about 2 feet long, you really need those haha.

We went to Sunset Beach after this where we saw a bit of a surfchampionship. Unfortunately we did not take any photo’s here since it was really too far from shore, it was already hard to see with normal eyes and you should actually just bring binoculars (I forgot mine) to see what is really going on. Because of this, there was not much fun for us and we didn’t stay too long.

And since it was around 1.45 PM, we decided to head back south because we had to pick up Stain in town since she had a surgery the day before. I will in a new post about her, for now I will show you the pictures that Michelle took during our trip back to town: