Behind Waikiki is the Ala Wai canal, which is in fact the only reason Waikiki exists. The canal was created to collect the rainwater draining off the mountains behind Honolulu. Before it was created in 1922, the area that is now one of the world’s most famous tourist spots, Waikiki, was a swamp.

This shot was taken in the soft light of sunset. It would have been even nicer a few moments earlier, but finding a parking space along Ala Wai is not easy. In the end we found a spot several blocks away from where I wanted to take the photo, and the light changes really fast during Hawaiian sunsets. If I ever end up living on Oa’hu for any length of time I’ll have to try to get the shot I really wanted.

Driving out to the east side of Honolulu, on the climb up to the Hanauma Bay entrance, there is a viewing area out over Hawaii Kai. The day we drove that way it was showering intermittently, and at the time we got to the viewing area there was a full arc rainbow over the town below – and lots of people in the viewing area taking pictures of it.

Apart from the rainbows printed on the Hawaiian license plates, I think that this was the only one I have seen out there in all three visits to the islands.

It is a cold, rainy day here in Alameda, so I thought I take some time to pull out a few good shots from my last trip to Hawaii. This is the first set from that, all taken up on the north shore on a day when the surf wasn’t big enough for the surfing competition to run, but plenty big enough for some nice photos. These are two of my favourites from the collection I took on our day at the north shore.

Finally, one shot that I’ve cropped down to a panoramic form. Impossible to do the image stitching trick on something as fast as waves, but with a nice high resolution image to start from, cropping works well enough:

A one day trip to Reno (Nevada) for Boxing day did not generate many opportunities for photos. Perhaps next time we go up there (perhaps New Year’s day) I will get more shots, especially given the large snow storms that they have experienced this week. If not, it will need to wait for our Tahoe trip later in January.

Meanwhile, here’s a shot of the Eldorado casino’s neon, towering above one of the main doorways into the place. I did also get some shots of the famous (?) Reno “biggest little city” sign, but none that I really like – standing in the middle of a busy street at night trying to get shots of a lit up sign was not something I was willing to do, so the best shot I have is from the right hand side (taken from the railway crossing sign since I was using that for stability).

Some photos of Hawaiian flowers taken with my new camera (the Canon EOS 20D that I mentioned was my favourite back in November). These were all taken in JPEG mode (I have not experimented with the raw mode yet), and in various places. The yellow hibiscus was taken in the Dole plantation; the red one in the Kapiolani Park (where the marathon finished), just beside the bandstand.

The orchid shots were actually taken inside the Hyatt Regency Waikiki hotel, sitting by the waterfall area in the center of the small shopping mall they have. These two were taken in the morning – we were sitting there having breakfast from the Kimo Coffee Bean Company cafe that is right beside the waterfall. The waterfall provides a nice backdrop for these macro mode shots.

As always, click the photo for a larger version in a popup window.