Lense flare and vog

I was mucking around with some pictures I took the other day while at the summit. As usual, I'm running out of pictures to post, but after messing around with some HDR stuff one picture really showed how much vog the west side of the island sees. It wasn't obvious in any one individual picture but it was obvious in this:

We had a clear view of the ocean while the sun was still a few degrees above the horizon. That's why there's so much lense flare, I'm almost pointing directly at a very bright sun. The messing about with photomatix resulted in showing up the vog really well though. All that crud to the left isn't low cloud, it's noxious stuff spewed out by Kilauea and sent to the leeward side by the trade winds.

I apologise to those on the west side of the island for having to deal with a volcano on the eastern side, but there's little we can do about it!

A few minutes later, you wouldn't have any clue that the vog is a problem, it can't be seen anymore.

Click on the pictures if you want to see larger versions.