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Perfect practice makes perfect


This is a sunset shot with my Canon PowerShot s500 camera, a tiny, smaller than a pack of cigarettes camera. I was down at NELHA to get some sunset shots. Actually I thought I was going to shoot some solar eclipse images but I had misread a Star-Bulletin story about the partial solar eclipse, the eclipse is tomorrow near sunset.


Not to let an opportunity go to waste I decided to practice on the shots I’d shoot tomorrow during the actual partial eclipse. I got out my real camera gear that I own, the newspaper’s cameras are not up to snuff for these kind of photos. Here a Hawaiian Airlines jet comes in for a landing at Kona International Airport. I got a photo over a decade ago of a Hawaiian Airlines jet screaming over me during taking-off silhouetted by a partial solar eclipse. I had to do a ton of running around to get that photo (literally, had to get into position on the ground while the plane was taking-off to get it framed properly with the sun) and it came out great, but it was a bitch to print due to the sun being so bright and the plane being and sky around being so dark.

So it’s a good thing I had today to practice, I can note the position of the sun and exposures for tomorrow. It would be much easier for me to shoot a photo of the partial eclipse and a tree, building or tower, something that isn’t moving but where’s the challenge in that? A music teacher once told me, “Practice does not make perfect. Perfect practice makes perfect.” Of course I pretty much nailed this practice shot, what are the chances that I can do the same tomorrow? I’m guessing pretty slim.


The sun kept getting lower in the sky, impossible to get planes with the sun. So I cranked the lens up to 600mm and shot a few photos of folks jogging and walking on the road as the sun kept sinking. A good practice shot for the upcomming Ironman Triathlon, last year it was much to cloudy to get a shot like this.


I had put my telephoto back in the car when I saw the sun’s glow and start to enter a cloud, I hurried and pulled the equipment back out and got off a few more shots, I was sure that was the last I’d see of the sun since it was disappearing behind a cloud.


I put all the gear back in the car then noticed that the sun reappeared beneath the cloud bank, so I hurried up again to get a few more shots.


Sinking fast the sun was gone for good below the horizon.

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