It’s whale season again on Maui! We enjoy watching them from our lanai at morning tea time! Now in addition to carrying our breakfast items, we carry out the binoculars, and sometimes the camera on its tripod. We like to see the mothers and calves nursing close to shore because often play time follows with the baby practicing breaching and tail slaps. Through the binoculars, we can watch the whales on the horizon including competition pod activity. The other morning we saw an incredible three whale simultaneous breach straight off our driveway on the horizon.

Neil has continued to explore the cool features of our new camera (Sony Cybershot HX9V) including the HD video features. He shot several segments and has edited a three and a half minute video of whale activity viewed from our lanai. [Clicking on the link will open a window in youtube. You can click on the gear looking icon in lower right of the play screen to choose HD 1080p (high definition) if you have fast bandwidth downloading and then  expand to full screen.]

We took an excursion on a whale watch boat the end of February in hopes of getting up close viewing. Sometimes it feels like it is really a whale search excursion because even though there are lots of whales around the Hawaiian Islands in the winter months, they aren’t active at the surface in the area we’re cruising. An unusual highlight on our trip was having a Booby bird land on the railing and hang out with us for nearly 10 minutes. It wasn’t in the least concerned by all the people getting close and photographing it. The species appears to be a female or subadult Red Footed Booby.

Another camera feature Neil has been experimenting with is the high dynamic range settings, some are automatic in the camera and some require manual processing. For manual processing, it saves three shots when you take one photo: one under exposed, one normal light, and one over exposed. Then the three can be merged in Photoshop which brings out the colors in what would normally look too dark or too light in a standard photograph. This photo of the West Maui Mountains with the windmills is a high dynamic range to bring out the clouds above and the shoreline below. That one was an extra challenge because the boat was moving and the water was rippling and the camera was unsteady, so combining the three shots seems to have given it more visual depth than usual.