In brief, these posts serve to introduce new readers — and reintroduce regular readers — to photos from the early days of this blog and, occasionally, to photos from days before this blog came into existence.

Two Galleries this week for a total of 71 photos.

There are two blog posts associated with the photos — HERE, and HERE — and the photo galleries are HERE and HERE.

Most photos were taken with the P900, A few with the D7000, and there might be a few here snapped with the Note II. Sometimes, you can’t tell them apart.

We begin with a small gallery in tribute to Paniolos. When people think of Hawaiʻi, they’re probably not thinking Cowboys, or more accurately, Paniolos. And yet, the influence of the culture is present on all the islands. 

There’s interesting reading to be had about Paniolos competing in the 1908 Chayenne Rodeo on the mainland, and winning.

There are hints of the culture pretty much everywhere but especially in Waimea.

That booth decorates the parking lot of one of the shopping plazas in Waimea. Many visitors, once here, become aware of the culture. In Waimea, Parker Ranch, one of the oldest and largest working cattle ranches in the US, embodies that culture for both visitors and locals.

Why a boot?

It was erected in 2008 on the 100-years anniversary of  . . . well, I’ll let the inscription say it:

“This commemorative boot is symbolic of the 1908 victory of four Waimea paniolo who reigned as World Champion steer ropes in the Cheyenne Frontier Days Rodeo in Wyoming.”

You can read a bit more in THIS article.

It’s not the only nod to the contribution and legendary abilities of Paniolos. The statue below celebrates Ikua Purdy, world champion. 

Say! That photo is the perfect opportunity to try out a couple of features of Luminar Neo that I’ve yet to put to the test. I’m referring to the automatic powerline removal tool, and the automatic dust spots removal tool. Obviously, that photo has a lot of powerlines, but it also has two obvious dust spots in the upper left corner and in the middle of the photo above the cow’s rump.

I normally catch dust spots before publishing photos, so I’m at a loss to explain what they are doing there . . . but, I fired up Luminar Neo, and using two mouse clicks, here’s the result . . . 

Okay, so . . . it obliterated the dust spots, and it did a pretty good job of removing the lines (it missed a few, but those would be nothing for me to clean up. I’ve not modified the export from Neo, and I can see a few faint traces of where they replaced the wires, but I’m impressed.

This would take me a goodly few minutes to mask the wires and blend the repairs, but the program did it in literally a few seconds.

Unfortunately, this photo is from the time when I used pin lines for borders, and Neo wiped those out as well, at least in the areas it recognized as the sky. Overall, not bad.

Anyway, here’s the dedication plaque of the statue . . .

Readers might have noticed all the symbols girding the base. The monument sports the names of a lot of Hawaiʻian ranches . . . I don’t know if those are the brands of all of Hawaiʻi’s ranches, but this PDF lists many resources if you are at all interested in the history. HERE is an abbreviated history, or you can look up the following names for more information.

There are more photos — showing all the symbols — in the gallery.

. . . of course, even back then, I was prone o playing with the processing tools . . .

I mentioned in the post just how often various portions of the Big Island reminded me of Colorado and Wyoming, and here you can see a landscape shot . . . with cows grazing.

The other post is about Hawaiʻian culture. Actually, I was looking for material I could use for one of Leanne Cole’s Monochrome Madness themed prompts, and thought I should be able to find something.

By the way, even though there are 47 photos in the gallery, many of them are the same photos presented with different treatments.

Koa wood and the navigation chart motif looked like a good candidate, but it lost something in monochrome . . . the color.

One of the surfing shots I shared a few weeks ago also looked like a good candidate . . .

But, it just so happened I had taken some photos with the then relatively new P900, and decided the series offered decent candidates.

The gallery has color versions . . . like this one.

Which I then converted to monochrome . . .

I don’t remember what I used, but the gallery has a lot of versions.

Anyway, many duplicate photos, but they might be of interest to some.

Anyway, here are the slideshows for the two galleries..

Note: the transition is set to 2sec, but — if you move the cursor anywhere within the photo — you’ll see a pause button on the lower left, and, once paused, you can use the left and right arrows on both sides of the photo to navigate the slideshow. If you click anywhere in the photo instead of the pause button, you’ll exit the slideshow and find yourself in SmugMug. You can still scroll through the photos or interact in other ways.

Slideshow of Paniolo — (25 photos)

Slideshow of Culture in Black and White — (47 photos)

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

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