Dragon*Con 2009 photos
Here’s my first batch of photos from Dragon*Con 2009. A lot of my family keep asking me what is Dragon*Con, so here is the short version. It is a very large pop-culture convention that focuses on sci-fi, fantasy, comics, etc. The only larger event I can think of is the San Diego Comic-Con. Dragon*Con is spread out over four host hotels in Atlanta over the Labor Day weekend. These hotels usually run out of rooms and con-goers fill up another half dozen overflow hotels.
The programming tracks touch upon practically every corner of geekdom (comics, sci-fi, fantasy, robotics, anime, gaming (online, board, RPGs, etc.), podcasting, science, skepticism, you-name-it). The celebrity panels attract the big names of fandom. This year had William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy as their headline guests, in addition to dozens of other A-list names in the genre.
I’ve uploaded over a hundred photos to my Flickr photo sets below. I’ll add more when I have more time for longer editing sessions.
Dragon*Con 2009 Costume photo set
Dragon*Con 2009 Podcasting Track photo set
Jodo Mission of Hawaii Bon Dance
Palm Pre pics
So I couldn’t sleep the other night and I someone added a comment to one of my Flickr pics and I didn’t have any sheep to count so I figured it would be a great time to sort through all 150 or so pics on my phone and e-mail them one by one to Flickr.
All in all, the camera on the Pre is quite good for a point and shoot and has been very convenient to whip out at a moment’s notice. I ain’t giving up the D90 for this though.
First Friday – August 2009
Some pics from my photowalk through Chinatown yesterday.
Fashion for Life @ 39 Hotel
I stumbled across a fashion show benefiting the Life Foundation this weekend. Their cause is to stop AIDS and the spread of HIV in Hawaii. I snapped more than a few photos of these lovely models. Here’s the Fashion for Life photo set on Flickr.
Worldwide Photo Walk 2009 – Honolulu, HI
I went on a little Worldwide Photo Walk on Saturday through downtown Honolulu and Chinatown. There was a good turnout for our group, about 40 – 50 people walked with me. We ended up at Fort St. Mall and about a dozen of use went for pizza at JJ Dolans.
Manoa Geeks – July 2009
Got there way late this time. Only caught one an a half presentations. Shawn‘s latest project aims to scrape a Myspace page and recompose it into a genuinely usable website. Myspace is more than due for a widespread cleanup, so anything that helps in a good thing in my book. Ironically, the biggest issue was about the ethics of scraping data from someone’s page and republishing it elsewhere. I don’t see why this would be a problem in his application. The page’s owner has a legitimate right to backup their data, even if it is done from outside their publishing system. Google cache is more of a gray area than this app.
HDR and HD timelapse video of Ala Moana fireworks
My favorite pic of the night. I found three frames from the timelapse below that fit just perfectly together to make an HDR photo. The exposure settings of each of the frames are the same but the rocket explosion cast a wide range of illumination over the three exposures. Wide enough to piece together an HDR in Photomatix.
Photobug details of the time lapse: Shot with my Nikon D90 w/ a Nikkor 14-24 mm f/2.8G. ISO 200, f/4, 2 seconds per frame. Scaled the frames down to 1526×1080 and stitched together with Adobe Premiere elements at around 6 frames per second. The flash player below scales down the video to fit in the browser window. I highly recommend downloading the video and watching it in full screen 1080i.
4th of July fireworks at Ala Moana
Music: “Summertime” by Brother Love
brotherloverocks.com