Wallpaper from Hawaii Coast

I like to have my own pictures as wallpaper on my computer, but getting a good picture that is bright, colorful and interesting but with the right color tone and composition so that my program icons are clearly visible and legible is a challenge. Of the pictures I've used for wallpaper, I have discovered that blue works very well. These pictures as well as the one below of the St. Louis Arch are great as wallpaper.

About noon we were driving from our cabin in Volcanoes National Park on the Big Island of Hawaii to the north coast. It would have been shorter to go through Hilo, but we wanted to drive along the Kona coast which meant taking the very indirect route along highway 11 to the far southwest end of the island. The extra hour and a half was well worth the drive as we saw parts of Hawaii culture we would have missed otherwise. Just south of the town of Punaluu we pulled over and I took several quick snaps. I was pleasantly surprised how good they turned out. If you look closely at the first photo you can see several cows in the pasture. I was amazed at how many ranches there are on the Big Island.

Bat in the Daytime

A couple of years ago after I had just bought our first Sony camera, we stayed in a cabin in southern Indiana for a week. The cabin was on the side of a hill going down to the Ohio River so the deck on the back was about thirty feet off the ground, a great height for catching pictures of birds. Several hours before sunset this bat came zipping by several times and I caught several shots of him. Unfortunately I didn't get his face.

Observatory on Mauna Kea

We were later than we intended reaching the top of the 13,796-foot summit of the world's tallest mountain (from base to summit it is over 33,000 feet, the first 20,000 feet are under water). The view far surpassed our expectations. When we arrived the summit was lined with observatories owned by universities and various nations, and photographers. The first surprise was the gusty wind. I had read that the summit is covered with snow much of the year, but we could see the summit from the plane as we flew into Hilo and there was no snow. But the temperature was frigid. Nonetheless, Mauna Kea is an astronomer's paradise--the only place in the world where you can see 100% of the northern hemisphere sky and 90% of the southern hemisphere sky (according to the guide at the base camp about 3000 feet below). We arrived just in time for me to get several pictures before the sun slipped below the clouds. Then I turned and got this wonderful reflection off the observatory at the very top of the summit. But the most amazing views were after sunset. The sky lit up like fireflies--stars above us and below us since we are actually looking down from the summit to the horizon. It almost felt like we were floating in space.

Gateway to the West

My family and I stopped and took a ride to the top of the Gateway Arch on our way back from Kansas City a few years ago. The Arch is part of the National Park System's Jefferson National Expansion Memorial and has been the icon of the St. Louis skyline since 1965. Most people have a hard time getting a good picture of the 630-foot high arch. I recommend standing fifteen feet away from one of the bases and taking the shot upward. I have one of me and the kids from this same perspective. Of course, I was almost laying flat on the ground when I took the picture because it is almost straight up. I took the shot at 18mm in order to get the widest possible angle. Click on the picture for the original size.

I like to explore black & white as well. Here is the same picture in monochrome: