I spent my Good Friday night coloring Easter eggs with my son Alaka'i and my oldest niece Kaliko.  Little Alohilani was asleep so she missed out on the coloring fun, but she's more into mess making than creating...  Needless to say, the eldest two were rather pleased that they could create and color without a huge mess or wild Alohi dipping her hands in the dye and touching their faces like she did last year.

It was a fun, laid back and mellow night in our little home.  My mom was gracious enough to set all the decorating fun up for the kids so I could take legit photos which is a wonderful change for me since all I've been using to shoot lately is my iPhone.  I missed the weight and feel of a sturdy DSLR in my hands.


The kids had a blast. They drew, colored and let all their creative juices flow.  It's more fun for me actually, that the littlest niece was asleep because I could just snap photos and watch the two big littles just work and think and create eggs that are uniquely their own.

I think it's safe to say both Alaka'i and Kaliko had a great time coloring their Easter eggs!  Their favorite part was coloring on the eggs before dipping them ever so gently in the dye and seeing what their drawing turned into after the dye had made it magically appear.

Oh and Kaliko and her glitter... that girl loves glitter with a passion!!  Glitter does make everything better after all!!  So post-coloring and pre-clean up, Kaliko enlisted my help in getting some of her eggs glittered up and beautified.  Gotta love her!


Did you do any pre-Easter activities with your littles or loved ones? I was thinking of baking with Alaka'i although I don't know if that will actually end up happening as the hectic-ness of life will most likely take over later today.

Happy egg dying, sparkle sprinkling, Easter decorating to all of you!  Legit Easter post coming Sunday.  Have a blessed weekend!

Aloha,

As a photographer, part time as I may be (lately), I'm constantly chasing the light whether it's trying to find the best photo ops for sunset or capturing the starry night sky- the light can either make or break your photo.  Shooting at night is especially challenging because depending on what you are shooting, you either need a ton of light or no outside light at all.

Lately I've been kind of in love with photographing the starry night sky and although I've photographed the stars before once, I wasn't all that happy with the results so I did some studying and decided to challenge myself.  After researching, I learned that it's best to capture the stars during the New Moon phase because the moon is a mere sliver which means the sky is dark and the stars shine brighter.  Next step is to find a place with as little light pollution as possible.  Hence, Mokulēʻia on O'ahu's North Shore.  If you go right to the point where the highway ends, you can walk down to the rocky beach and photograph the stars quite successfully.  If you're lucky, you can catch The Milky Way...


That's where I was this particular night taking this particular shot.  I was going to hike to Ka'ena point but I had my son with me and it was a little late and I wasn't exactly digging the idea of walking back down the mountain and to our car in the pitch black dark with my eleven year old son.  No thanks.  So we went to the end of the highway and walked down to the beach and sat there in the sand and shot photos.  Anywhere deserted with little to no street lights or house lights is ideal.  We were in a nearly pitch black area but there was a lighthouse at the point and some random fishermen.  

Those little balls of light in the foreground are from the fishermen and the lighthouse yet the stars still shined.  How amazingly beautiful is this sight?  Believe it or not, looking at it in person is even more amazing.  There are so many stars the naked eye can see that the camera sensor does not capture.  



After dinner, we drove out and decided to chance it and walked and took the camera gear out and snapped some photos.  Alaka'i mostly played while I shot but it was nice to sit there and talk about stars and constellations with my boy as we felt the gritty sand between our toes and listened to the waves crashing into the shore.  As I snapped and watched the clouds creeping towards us from the east, Alaka'i was giving me some fun facts he learned about the Milky Way.  I think that these photos are mostly of the tail end of the way.  I have some other photos from a shoot on a different night from another beach that I'll be sharing soon.  Those came out amazing and I'm excited to share them.

You know, most of my life went by without me even knowing that we could see the Milky Way or so many stars with our naked eye and without a telescope.  I don't know how or why I never saw the Milky Way before 2012 other than in a book, but I feel so thankful that I was able to spend some time gazing at God's wonderful creation with my son.

For the photography lovers: the best settings (for me with my Canon 5d MK 3) was 30 sec shutter, f/2.8 ISO 1000 using my 16-35mm II lens.  Also a warning, the best areas to photograph and view stars are dark with little to no outside light.  Dangerous people could be hanging out there so do some scouting, some research and go with a group of people...just to be safe.

To check out more photos like these and to see a sneak preview of my Milky Way captures from Yokohama Bay on a different day, check out my gallery here:  What Jean Likes Photography.

Take a few moments to enjoy the beauty in the world that God created.

Aloha Hoapili translates as Hello Close Friend. So, without further ado let me introduce you to this week's featured friend ...

Toi at Life of Toi.

Toi blogs about life, love and all things mama.

Want a little taste of her blog? Check out these posts to find out what you've been missing:

Like a Real Mother

Like a Blur

Like a Vision Board

Share this hop on YOUR blog! get the InLinkz code

If you didn't catch my post on why I switched to fluoride free toothpaste, you may be wondering why I've got issues with fluoride whether it's in water or toothpaste... I explain my opinions and positions there so go check that out if you're wondering.  I'm just thankful that water fluoridation hasn't happened in Hawai'i...yet....

In my research, I found the following video An Inconvenient Tooth which discusses, in detail, the dangers of fluoride in water, toothpaste, anything and why it's perceived as safe by the general public when it is very harmful to your health. It's a long video and one without any important graphics that you really need to watch so I kind of just played it in the background while I worked. The information is truly invaluable.  Very scary.  So glad I no longer use products that contain fluoride.
One of my favorite blogs Chris Beat Cancer did a fabulous write up on fluoride and why it's dangerous.  I'm going to post some excerpts from his write up below.  To check out his full post, go to his website: Chris Beat Cancer.

Fluoride: How A Toxic Poison Ended Up In Our Water Supply

In 1945 local water treatment facilities began to add sodium fluoride to our water supply.

The first thing you should know is that the sodium fluoride they put in our water is not a pharmaceutical grade additive.

Sodium Fluoride is an industrial waste byproduct from aluminum manufacturing.

As aluminum production increased in the first half of the twentieth century, it became necessary to find somewhere to put the fluoride.  Manufacturers could no longer get away with dumping it into rivers or landfills, because it was poisoning crops and making livestock sick. Francis Frary, chief scientist for ALCOA,  had an idea.  He commissioned Gerald Cox at the Mellon Institute, to conduct research regarding the benefits of adding fluoride to the water supply.  The Mellon Institute was frequently hired by big business to produce research that supported their industries, and for several decades they produced research showing that asbestos was safe and did not cause cancer.  Hmmm.

They also produced reports assuring everyone that fluoride was not toxic and would be beneficial to add to our drinking water for healthy teeth.

Another proponent of the safety of fluoride at that time was scientist Harold Hodge, who was later revealed to to have been part of the the Human Radiation Experiment; injecting test subjects with plutonium and uranium in 1945-46.  This was documented by pulitzer prize winning reporter Eileen Welsonne in The Plutonium Files. 
Hodge was also chief toxicologist of The Manhattan Project and fluoride was a key component in the production of the atom bomb.  His studies were conducted with a bias toward proving fluoride safe, which would protect the government and industry from lawsuits.

The “research science” done to support water fluoridation was underwritten by these massive companies:

Aluminum Company of America (ALCOA)
Aluminum Company of Canada
American Petroleum Institute
DupontKaiser Aluminum
Reynolds Steel
US Steel
National Institute of Dental Research

Convincing the general public that we need to add fluoride to our water supply was one of the most sophisticated cons of all time.  It created a multi-billion dollar industry and enabled manufacturers to sell this worthless toxic byproduct of aluminum to local municipalities for a profit.

PR master Edward Bernays also known as “The Father of Spin“ created the PR campaign to sell fluoride to the nation as an additive “recommended by your doctor and dentist for healthy teeth”.  He was a pioneer of modern propaganda and used the theories of mass psychology and persuasion to suit the needs of corporate and political organizations.

Bernays even created marketing campaigns for tobacco companies using the doctor and dentist endorsement, like the one on the right.

He even wrote a book called Propaganda and another one called Public Relations. For you trivia buffs, he was also Sigmund Freud’s nephew.

In 1950 the public health service endorsed water fluoridation and almost immediately there was a national movement against it led by Dr. George Walbott, who was also the first physician to warn against fatal allergic reactions to penicillin, and that smoking causes emphysema.

Walbott discovered that low dose fluoride was causing allergic reactions in some of his patients who displayed a variety of symptoms such as headaches, back pain, gastric problems, muscle fatigue, etc.

He conducted a series of double blind tests further proving his fluoride allergy theory and published several papers about it.

Walbott was criticized and marginalized for his research and for speaking out against fluoride, tobacco, and penicillin in the interest of the public health.  Which is why you’ve never heard of him.

The main fluoride chemical added to water today is hydrofluorosilicic acid an industrial by-product from the phosphate fertilizer industry.

Fluoride given to rats has been proven to cause bone cancer, liver cancer, and a host of other physical ailments.

Dr. William Marcus, Senior Science Advisor to the EPA Office of Water, was fired because of his outspoken opposition to water fluoridation in the early 1990′s.  He even claimed that they rigged their test results to show that fluoride did not cause cancer when in fact it did.

Researcher Dr. Phyllis Mullenix was asked to study fluoride and was surprised to find and prove that fluoride is a neurotoxin and causes effects like hyper activity, memory problems, and IQ problems similar to ADD/ADHD in laboratory rats.  After submitting her findings, she was promptly fired from the Forsyth Dental Research Center.  She went from being a leading neurotoxicologist at a Harvard affiliated research institute to being an industry pariah.  This assignment and her findings ruined her career as a grant-funded research scientist.

Not only does fluoride in water not help your teeth, too much of it causes permanent damage in young children’s teeth between 3 months and 8 years old.  This is called dental fluorosis. Fluoride also accumulates in the bones eventually causing a bone disease calledskeletal fluorosis in adults.

Welcome to Opposite Land where right is wrong, and up is down:

It is illegal to dump fluoride into our lakes and rivers, but somehow it is ok to put in our drinking water and toothpaste.

Cities with fluoridated water have higher cavity rates and higher cancer death rates when compared to cities with unfluoridated water. As of 2010, 66% of US water supplies are currently fluoridated, but the good new is that since 1999 over 60 U.S. communities have rejected fluoridation.

Hidden sources of fluoride:  Most commercial crops are watered with fluoridated water.  These crops absorb the fluoride.  Fruit juices from concentrate are reconstituted with fluoridated water, and bottled water, even if it’s filtered, usually has fluoride in it.

Fluoride is still defended today for two reasons:  the massive profit produced by selling it to local municipalities, and the massive liability and lawsuits that would follow an admission that it is in fact toxic and harmful.

The Fluoride Deceptionis a book based on ten years of research by BBC reporterChristopher Bryson on the history and dangers of water fluoridation, and is some of the source material for this post.  His research is so in-depth and well documented, it is virtually irrefutable.

There is also a ton of information and independent research from all over the world atwww.FluorideAlert.org

Despite all the evidence, proponents of water fluoridation are still calling scientific research that shows fluoride to be toxic “conspiracy theories”, but the world is waking up and the proof is in the pudding:

Proof #1  98% of Western Europe has now rejected Water Fluoridation…
and their children’s teeth are just as healthy as children’s teeth in the US.

To read the rest of Chris' post click here.