Miscellaneous Samsung Note 8 Photos

This might end up being one of them there lengthy post. There are a lot of photos, so it might load slow. I suggest getting a cup of coffee and perhaps making a bathroom run while everything loads.  Just letting people know.

BUT . . . you can just go to the bottom and just look at the gallery of photos. I mean, you’ll miss all manner of demented . . . I mean . . . stable genius writing,  but it’s your dime; do whatever you want. 

So, the last post covered the use of the Note 8 in documenting my visit to the Place of Refuge. I also have a visit to a botanical garden that will be documented on a dedicated post. However, as Melisa would readily confirm, I’m likely to be walking along and see something that captures my attention and before she even realizes it, I’m stopped, phone in hand, taking photos. 

Well, this post honors those miscellaneous photos, the ones not tied together by a theme or cohesive narrative. 

It could be something like the mural on the side of the local KTA (a grocery supermarket). 

I really wanted to shoot the photos in such a way that I could stitch them into a panorama, but cars were parked in front of the murals and I had to shoot them at an angle, deskew them, and then crop the individual panels. Once you do that, it’s difficult to stitch stuff together because the sizes and zooms are no longer consistent. So, here are the rest of the the photos and you’ll just have to imagine them strung out side-by-side. 

“What does that say?” you might ask.

Well, the words spell out:

a i kauaʻi a ke ao lewa i luna a ka pua nānā i ka o Wailua

Now, my Hawaiʻian is as good as my Swahili . . . so, not very good. There are translators, but I don’t trust them much because this is what I get from them:

and when the sun rose up and rose in Wailua

and when the sky rose up and the blossom rose to the west

and the moon and the sky rose up and the blossoms shot at Wailua

Like most languages, there are likely nuances in the meaning depending on how the words are used together. I figure I can make up my own:

and the sun rose pointing the way to Wailua

I might ask someone next time I’m there, but my experience with Hawaiʻian is that often the locals are not entirely sure what it means. For all I know, they too make it up as they go. 

There was another panel, but I’m not sure how it fits in with the previous ones . . . 

I mean, there are skulls all over the place!

I mentioned before that the Note 8 does a credible job capturing sunsets. I’m pleasantly surprised in a way that I wasn’t with the P900 which has a tough time rendering accurate sunset colors. 

The above are leftovers from November. The first photos in December were at the Magic Sands beach and I strung those together to make a panorama. 

Side Note: I know many people are not all that happy with the subscription model Adobe instituted for Photoshop. Well, I have some good news for you; I’ve been playing with a program called Affinity Photo.

While I use Photoshop, I don’t do fancy stuff with it. Affinity Photo appears to be a credible alternative to Photoshop at a very reasonable price ($50). One of the things that I do in Photoshop is stitch together panoramas and the one below was stitched together using Affinity photo.

If you want to examine the original, click HERE (8 MB). The program did as good a job as Photoshop and a tad faster, as well. I need to check if I can call up Topaz from within the program (I don’t think so) but from what I’ve seen so far, it meets my needs. It does require getting used to its menu structure and way of doing things, but it has a lot of tutorials online. 

If you want to compare the two full-size panoramas — Photoshop’s and Affitity’s — the SmugMug Gallery (HERE) has them both. 

Anyway, to continue . . . I had occasion to spend a bit of time at the Kona Old Airport park and finally took a photo of this sculpture:

I’ve seen a similar sculpure somewhere else but for the life of me, I can’t remember where. I’m reasonably certain it was in Michigan, so it might have been Meijer’s Gardens in Grand Rapids. Or, not. 

Of course, while at the park, I’m always on the lookout for photo opportunities . . . 

One might think I mostly use the Note 8 for flowers and scenery.

A few people might recognize what that is . . . it’s the lid of my HotShot after it has been used and has cooled down. I don’t recommend many products, but I’ve owned HotShots since back in the . . . well, a long time. I don’t recall any of them ever malfunctioning, and two were in constant use at our office for many, many years. 

“Why take this shot?” you ask. Well, Bob, if you have to ask, photography is not for you. 

Here’s a couple of variations of that shot, but to give a general answer, it’s because I thought the water droplets pattern was interesting. 

Truthfully, I’m always on the lookout for stuff to shoot; patterns, colors, or even both.  

Those are on the wall of The Kona Canoe Club Restaurant. They have probably the best hamburger I’ve had so far here on the island. It comes with cheese, bacon, and an egg on top . . . enough said. I didn’t know it was going to be that good or I would have snapped a photo.

But, once we found out the restaurant was owned by the Kona Inn, we ordered a slice of Kona Inn Mud Pie. 

It was a big piece . . . and here’s a photo I took to give it a sense of scale.

You’re probably thinking “Ha! I now have his finger prints and I can frame him for some nefarious act in my stead!” Well, good luck with that; I smeared the fingerpads so Bourne wannabes can’t make use of my fingerprints. 

I kid, of course . . . I actually substituted the prints from my toes in there. 

Anyway, between Melisa and me, we almost managed to finish it all.

Again, I kid . . . that last piece did not last long after I snapped this photo and I also licked the plate clean. Apparently, the people we were with told my wife they are busy for the next 15 to 20 years otherwise they would love to have lunch with us again. 

So this is how it works . . . I’m walking around and I see something . . . 

. . . and I shoot it. 

Then, I see something else . . . 

. . . and I shoot it. But, there’s something else next to that first thing . . . 

. . . and it gets shot as well. 

But, what do I do when I’m sitting at my desk? 

Well, I pick up the phone and snap a photo I think I can later use. Also, if I’m at a coffee shop . . . 

. . . and there’s something with a pattern and colors, I shoot it. By the way, do you notice the price at the bottom of that one cup? $15 for a cup.

You can go to a garage sale or Goodwill and pick a cup up for 50¢ and they’ll throw another one in for free. 

Where was I . . . oh, yeah, the coffee shop . . . 

. . . and something else catches my eye. That might show up on next’s year Christmas greeting, who knows. By the way, I added a bit of a glow to the shot. 

Let’s say I head out to get the mail. I might see something like this on the stairs and think it’ll make a decent photo.

These seeds are currently all over the place (the individual ones — that is a string of them from a pod that opens up). 

I might also see this . . . 

. . . and think I might use it somewhere or other. 

Or, let’s say we just had Portuguese Sausage . . . well, that’s another opportunity right there . . . 

Now, I seldom take only one shot. In the case of the sausage, I took a number of shots . . . and Google Photos combined them into an animation and asked me if I wanted to save it. Heck, yeah!

That’s a crying monster (I was holding the plate at an angle to avoid casting a shadow onto the plate)! Who wouldn’t want to save that?!

I mentioned patterns, and that’s what I usually look for . . . 

A partly cloudy day with a light drizzle adds just the right structure to these leaves. They will probably be rendered into B&W at some future time.

Another side note: I’m getting better at utilizing my phone camera to save information. Lists, labels, instructions, and anything that might be useful later on. For instance, I was at the Optometrist checking to make sure that my Posterior Vitreous Detachment did not result in any complications like a torn retina. I now have something on the phone that I can quickly show people when I accidentally bump into them and claim impaired vision.

Back to patterns . . . I’d been seeing this pattern a lot . . . 

You see, I had a sore throat and so I washed my hands a lot (more than usual) and that is the soapy residue in the sink as the bubbles begin to break down and become almost transparent and thus resulting in the above skeletal sculpture. 

Here’s the neat part . . . do you see the spot on the left? It’s a gnat that got trapped in the bubbles. 

This is what fresh bubbles look like . . . 

I found that if I use the flash, I get better bubble photos . . . 

I also found that if you pour cream into a cup of coffee from the side, you don’t have to stir it for it to mix. 

“Junk,” most people are now thinking. “We’re wasting our time looking at junk!”

Well, let me help you get a bug up your posterior . . . 

. . . so that I can drive you nuts . . . 

As you can see, I’m liable to find all sorts of stuff interesting. 

By the way, look at this next photo . . . 

Do you see the spot in the upper right quadrant just to the right of center? I wasn’t sure what that was . . . 

It’s a bird, flying, caught when the wings are folded at the end of their beat. 

The only reason that’s interesting is to point out the resolution of the camera. Pretty darn good, I’d say (click on the photo for the larger version) 

Now, there are occasions when I snap a photo and then play with it in Pixlr. For instance, this photo . . . 

. . . becomes this photo . . . 

This is a very useful thing to have for when one is bored. Of course, being a stable genius, I’m often bored. By the way, in case it’s not clear, I don’t mean stable as in horse barn. Just saying it in case people wonder. 

I mentioned sunsets, and late December gave us some great ones. I only snapped photos of one, on the 27th. I’ll add a few photos here but there are more in the gallery below. 

It so happens that Google enhanced one of the photos, but I think they pushed it a bit much . . . 

In case it’s not obvious, many of the photos I take are from around the condo (we’re basically homebodies, so that stands to reason). 

For instance . . . a double yolk . . . 

More drop patterns on the HotShot . . . 

More bubbles in the sink . . . 

Melisa’s current quilting project (not yet finished) . . . 

A newly bloomed flower in the garden . . . 

A few closeups of the mural on the swimming pool wall . . . 

. . . and even a crab made out of leaves and a few twigs . . .  

I suppose it could also be a bracelet but it reminded me more of a crab. By the way, it sits on the trunk of a palm tree that was cut down before we moved here (the crab is on the right) . . . 

As you can see, there’s practically nothing that will not catch my attention and be in turn digitally captured. 

To prove the point . . . 

I received a large brown envelope and that’s the shape the tear-away strip took when I opened it.  

Why wouldn’t I take a photo of it? It practically begs the question.

Here’s a video you can play while perusing the gallery. The original artist — Gotye — of the following song took all the various YouTube covers of his song and created a video collage using clips from each. 

Here’s the gallery (minus the full-size photos) . . . 

That’s it. This post has ended . . . except for the stuff below.

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