Hawaii

Sand from Waimea Bay, free background

April 9, 2012 by Krishna Leave a Comment

Sand on Waimea Bay free background image 300x225

Close up photo of sand on Waimea Bay shore - useful as background image, textures, patterns, etc.

This is a photo of fine sand found on the Waimea Bay in Haleiwa, on the northern shoreline of O‘ahu Island in Hawaii, United States. The sand looks different from the beach sand elsewhere possibly because it also contains sand washed down from inland by the Waimea River near the mouth of which the bay is located.

Well, what is the fun in collecting photos of sand, whether of Waimea Bay, or elsewhere? It looks monotonous with its rather uniform composition, is it not? Possibly! But some people find in this picture great art, spirituality, visual presentation of abstract expressionist ideas as in the paintings of Mark Rothko, or more precisely, like the Suprematist works of the Russian artist Kazimir Malevich.

Well, if you are a person with knowledge of subjects like astronomy, astrophysics, etc., you will find even more meaning in the photo above, like the representation of the vast empty space (with some add-ons), landscape on Mars, or even the cloud cover over Jupiter.

If you still can’t get any such ideas, I think, you must come back to reality and think of putting it to some purpose like a background image, texture, etc. Why not give it a try? At least on a free website or blog where you can experiment it for the background, header image, texture, etc., especially if some sober and clean design is what you want to achieve! If you are a seasoned designer, you know what I mean. The size is: 3000 x 2250 pixels. Download and use it, it is free!

Filed Under: Free Designer's Stuff, Free Photos Tagged With: free designer's stuff, free patterns, Hawaii, Sand, United States, web designing

Indian blue peacock at Waikiki Zoo, Honolulu

April 12, 2011 by Krishna Leave a Comment

Indian blue peacock at Waikiki Zoo, Honolulu, Hawaii - Wallpaper size 1600x1200

This is an Indian blue peacock bred in captivity at the Waikiki Zoo, located in Queen Kapiolani Park in Honolulu, Hawaii, USA.

The Indian blue peafowl is a fairly large bird of the pheasant family ‘Phasianidae’ having 138 species in 38 genera, consisting of pheasants and partridges, including the jungle fowl (includes the domesticated chicken), francolins, monals, Old World quail, grouse, guinea fowls and turkeys.

The term peafowl refers to three species: Indian Peafowl (Pavo cristatus), Green Peafowl (Pavo muticus) that breeds from Burma east to Java, and the African Congo Peafowl (Afropavo congensis), which belongs to its own genus Afropavo (not Pavo).

The males and females of the first two, also called the Asian Peafowl, are generally called peacocks and peahens, and both of them almost look more or less similar. But the adult Congo Peafowl (Afropavo congensis) look quite different from the adult Asian Peafowl and similar to immature Asian Peafowl.

The Indian blue peafowl is native to the Indian subcontinent and they are naturally distributed throughout South Asia, and now bred in captivity in most zoological parks and botanical gardens throughout the world.

The male (peacock) Indian Peafowl has iridescent blue or blue-green colored plumage. The peacock’s tail (train) is not actually the tail feathers but they are very long upper tail coverts. Birds of both the Asian peafowl species have crests on their heads.

The plumage of the female Indian Peafowl (peahen) is not as attractive as the plumage of the male. The color of the Indian peahen’s plumage is a mosaic or mixture of brown, dull green and grey colors. It does not have the long upper tail coverts of the male.

In the case of the Green Peafowl (Pavo muticus), also known as the Javan Peafowl, peacocks and peahens are quite similar in appearance, and mostly it is quite difficult to distinguish the males from the females. Both males and females have tall pointed crests, they are heavy-winged and long-tailed.

Filed Under: Birds, Free Photos, Wallpapers Tagged With: Birds, free photos, Hawaii, Indian peacocks, peacocks, USA, wallpapers

USS Fitzgerald DDG-62 at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii

April 6, 2011 by Krishna Leave a Comment

U.S. Navy Arleigh Burke class destroyer USS Fitzgerald at Pearl Harbor Hawaii 300x225

Sailors man the rails aboard the guided missile destroyer USS Fitzgerald as it pulls into Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, for a four-day port visit - U.S. Navy photo by Lt. J.G. Bradley Lewis, set as wallpaper 1280x960

The United States Navy’s Arleigh Burke class destroyer USS Fitzgerald (DDG 62) is named after Lieutenant William Charles Fitzgerald, USN (1938-1967) in recognition of his extraordinary heroism in the Vietnam War that took his life. The warship was built by Bath Iron Works, Maine, on 9 February 1993 and it was commissioned 14 October 1995.

According to an announcement of April 2004, USS Fitzgerald became one of the fleet of 15 destroyers and 3 cruisers deployed to deter ballistic missile threats worldwide. The destroyer arrived in Yokosuka on 30 September 2004 to join the U.S. 7th Fleet based in Yokosuka, Japan.

In March 2011, USS Fitzgerald, along with the nuclear-powered super carrier USS Ronald Reagan, was deployed off northeastern Honshu for relief work, after the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami (the Great Eastern Japan Earthquake) caused by a 9.0-magnitude undersea earthquake off the coast of Japan. Possibly, the ship may have been exposed to radiation leaks resulting from the nuclear accidents at the Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant following the earthquake and tsunami.