A few hours in Kailua Kona

As mentioned in the last post, I’ve been editing stuff. Specifically, my last novel. Yes, I have it in mind sending it out into the wild and see if it can hook an agent. I’m not holding my breath, but one can’t suffer crushing disappointment unless one tries. 

A quick comment forestalling words of encouragement . . . I mean the above as a good thing. Failure is a feature of life, and specifically, a feature of success. Yeah, I know; it sounds stupid. But, think about this . . . if you’re not willing to at first fail — and fail often — you’ll never succeed. I guarantee every gold medal winner in the Olympics has tried — and failed — many times before achieving a level of proficiency worthy of the gold.  

Here ends my pep talk.

So, a few hours in Kailua Kona . . . is a lie! That’s right; my title is a lie. This post and the next one in this series span about ninety minutes of February 6th. Those ninety minutes require two posts because . . . well, because I snapped a bunch of photos and a number of videos. For instance, this photo . . . 

. . . is one of ten photos that make up this animation:

The thing is, the waves and surf merit their own post, and so that’s how I’m splitting up the photos. 

Here, I’ll give you another taste of what’s to come . . . 

The second post will also feature more photos — and a couple of videos — of this turtle:

As usual, you can click on the photos and a larger version will open in a new tab or window. HOWEVER . . . no SmugMug gallery until I post the second part. At that time, I’ll dump all of the photos into a gallery for them who want to see better versions than what WordPress offers up. 

This post has forty-eight photographs but many will only be in the gallery at the end of the post. That’s because some are similar to each other and wading through two or three versions of the same photo might bore readers. Why so many similar photos? Because I used three different cameras. It made me feel like a pro, it did. 

Let’s get to the root of the post . . .  

See what I did there? Those are roots and . . . you know what? Nevermind. 

These were the roots of a tree next to where I parked the car. 

From the car, I made my way to a rusty truck that I see every day on the way back from the gym. I had previously captured, but I now approached it with three cameras! You could practically see it tremble in awe of my photographic prowess!

But, before I got to it, a flowering hedge caught my camera . . . er . . . eye. 

Right; the rusty truck . . . 

This truck has been there a few years . . . it was parked there sometime in 2010 or 2011. How do I know that? Because I went to Google Earth and used the feature that lets you go back through their previous snapshots of the area. The truck was not there at the beginning of 2010 but was there in 2011 and thereafter. 

You might ask why the county, town, state, would allow it to remain there . . . to which I’ll give you my standard response: it’s Hawaiʻi.

Here’s a better view of the side . . . 

I’ll probably take at least another shot at photographing it, but for now, I’m pleased with these results. Not sure if most people will pick up on which photos are from which camera, but I have no complaints from any of them. 

For the record, I’m referring to the Samsung Note 8, the Nikon P900, and the Nikon D7000 with the 70-200mm f/2.8 lens. 

Here are a few details. One might contemplate the history behind the graffiti, but it’s no use . . . there ain’t no way to tell what any of them reference. 

If you are a heavy truck aficionado, you probably already know this truck or, at least, the company that produced them. For everyone else . . . 

Yep; this is a Euclid Heavy Dump Truck. You can read about the company HERE. You can see other photos of similar trucks HERE.

One of the reasons for photographing this particular truck is the opportunity to get decent textures of rust and interesting details of the machine. 

Let me now take a left turn . . . 

Some of my readers might be familiar with LordBeariofBow. He is the British Socialist Royalist living in Australia and occasionally making feeble attempts to annoy me by leaving obtuse and obscure comments he fancies as passing for cleverness.  

I first abbreviated his moniker as LBoB and subsequently settled on ElBob as a better acronym. Well, wouldn’t you know it, I now can also offer him a logo . . . 

I admit I have no idea how to interpret the graphic . . . it looks a bit lewd, although if I stare at it long enough, it morphs into an emoji of a smiley face wearing a hat and wielding nunchakus. ElBob’s writing — or what passes for writing on that part of the globe — is mostly composed of smilies and emojis. Just between you and me, I’m betting he’s using them in lieu of his forgotten vocabulary. Whatever the reason, this might appeal to him.

That is unmistakenly spelling out ElBob and quite cleverly integrating the “L” into the “B”. 

That graphic is on the bumper of the truck, and visible in the front view of the disabled derelict. There’s more writing on the bumper, but I made no effort to decipher it.

I plan to send ElBob a copy of the logo in case he wants to use it.

Back to the task at hand . . . getting neat photos of rust and stuff. 

That’s a photo of the same area but taken with different cameras. I applied the same processing, but because they were already pre-processed by the cameras, I got different “looks”.

I think these next photos turned out pretty good.

Most of these photos will show up again when I play with converting them to B&W.

Here’s another texture . . . 

There’s something about rusted metal that’s magnetic . . . get it? Metal, magnetic . . . nevermind. 

Anyway, rusted metal falls high up on the photogenic scale. You know, if there were a photogenic scale and if rusted metal were on it. Regardless, whenever I see any, my first impulse is to photograph it. Here’s the bumper again, this time shot with the D7000.

These having been shot in RAW, I was better able to remove the warm cast of the late afternoon sun. These are closer to the actual color of the bumper. 

Although, not even RAW processing can quite damp the brilliance of the sun on yellow paint.

From the truck, I walked to one of the shoreline access areas and shot a few waves (also in the next post about February 6th — likely in the next seven days).

On the way back, I snapped a few more photos of the rusted relic.

And, that’s it for this post. Here’s the gallery of the above photos (plus a few more) randomly arranged.

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

<><><><><><><><o><><><><><><><><><o><><><><><><><>

Note: if you are not reading this blog post at DisperserTracks.com, know that it has been copied without permission, and likely is being used by someone with nefarious intention, like attracting you to a malware-infested website.  Could be they also torture small mammals.

<><><><><><><><o><><><><><><><><><o><><><><><><><>

Please, if you are considering bestowing me recognition beyond commenting below, refrain from doing so.  I will decline blogger-to-blogger awards.   I appreciate the intent behind it, but I prefer a comment thanking me for turning you away from a life of crime, religion, or making you a better person in some other way.  That would mean something to me.

If you wish to know more, please read below.

About awards: Blogger Awards
About “likes”:   Of “Likes”, Subscriptions, and Stuff

Note: to those who may click on “like”, or rate the post; if you do not hear from me, know that I am sincerely appreciative, and I thank you for noticing what I do.

. . .  my FP ward  . . . chieken shit.

Finally, if you interpret anything on this blog as me asking or wanting pity, sympathy, or complaining about my life, or asking for help and advice, know you’re  likely missing my subtle mix of irony, sarcasm, and humor.