From imagination to image
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Despite being jet lagged Mike agreed to let me drag him out to Ke’e beach to try to catch the sunset. I’ve never been on a road that had that many one lane bridges but we made it, although it was just past sunset, no matter what it was worth it, the colors were stunning and the small piece of the Na’Pali coast you could see from the beach was as gorgeous as I had heard.
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A trio of Convict Tang’s (Convict Surgeonfish) working the rocks off Po’ipu beach. About a year and a half ago I bought a Ewa-Marine housing for my camera, I’d only used it once before and that time I almost broke my nose (don’t ask) with it. It was indispensible this trip, although it did take some getting used to. I used my Canon 50D in the housing with the 24-105L f/4 lens and the 580EX flash. The problem with the flash was that there was often lots of particulate matter in the water and the directly above the lens mounting of the flash reflected a lot of the light right back into the camera. On later days snorkeling I often left it turned off.
Tags: Canon 24-105L f/4, Canon 50D, Convict Tang, Ewa Marine U-BXP, Snorkeling
There were a few things I wanted to do when we were in Hawai’i that I didn’t get to do. I didn’t see any “fresh” lava – it would have required an 9-11 mile hike over lava if we wanted to get there from the park, or going in the evening and just watching it from about a mile or so away at the viewing spot near the ocean where it was coming to the surface. We also couldn’t hike the crater rim trail or even drive the crater rim road. The furthest you could get was the Jagger Museum, the rest being blocked off with concrete “Jersey” barriers due to the abnormally high levels of sulfur dioxide gas being produced by the new vent that opened in March 2008 in the Halema`uma`u Crater.
I think the top of the volcano is one of the greenest, wettest places I’ve been and when the sun broke out for a short while (even though it was still raining) we took the drive to the Jagger Museum to get another look at the crater as a consolation for not seeing much due to the rain. As luck would have it we spied the forming rainbow on our drive and it was in full glory at the museum, stretching over most of the crater.
We spent a morning and part of an afternoon at Kilauea Lighthouse which is also the Kilauea Point National Wildlife Refuge. The refuge is home to thousands of migrating and nesting birds among which are the endangered Nene – the Hawaiian state bird – Albatross, Frigate Birds, White and Red Tailed Tropic birds and this guy, the Red Footed Booby. The Red Footed Booby is the smallest of all Boobies but like the rest they winter at sea so they are only seen on shore during breeding season. As ungainly as they appear when trying to land they are spectacular divers arrowing into the sea in search of squid and small fish.
Taken with: Canon 100-400L f/4.5-5.6 lens and Canon 50D
I had the pleasure of leading a photowalk in downtown Providence today with a group of wonderful ladies from the Fem-Focus Photo club (their moto – “the f stops here”). It was a nice small group and our route took us from the Providence Performing Arts Center down around Kennedy Plaza and the park, up to Empire Street and lunch at the Trinity Brewhouse then back to our start. Admittedly it was the first photowalk I’ve done in Providence. I usually shoot in Boston and I’ve never spent much time walking around my “home” city, but it was great, so much character in the building and the streets and the people. It was a wonderful time and I am looking forward to a critique session sometime in Februrary. Thank you all for making me feel so welcome and for a great day.
We should have gotten an earlier start to go up to Waimea Canyon, but we were on vacation and I wasn’t going to treat it as a purely photo trip so we took things a bit easy. Of course that meant by the time we got up to the lookouts over Waimea Canyon the clouds had started to settle down into the canyon and the sun was begining to disappear. Still, it afford this image which is an HDR of 3 exposures blended and tonemapped in Photomatix and then finished in Photoshop with Nik plugins and the use of luminosity and saturation masks (the tutorials and masks by Tony Kuyper). And yes the greens were pretty much really this color – a very odd color green to my eyes.
Okay, I know you have to turn off all electronics 10 minutes from landing but I couldn’t resist taking a few shots through the windows of the plane as we came into Lihu’e. It was a great distraction from my motion sickness and general malaise. We had arrived in Honolulu the night before at 8:30 local time which was 2:30 by our body clock which meant we’d been up for 20 hours by the time we landed and nearly 22 by the time we fell asleep in the hotel near the airport. Of course with jet lag we slept about 6 hours and woke up to stare at the ceiling at 3:30 local time so by the time we caught our 11:00 am flight to Kaua’i we were pretty tired again, until we caught our first glance of the island. This pretty much jolted me out of my torpor and energized me for the rest of the day. Not a bad image considering it was through the scratched windows of the plane.
A few days ago I received an email notification from Natures Best Photography magazine that my image “Puffins for all Compass Points” had been picked for the daily image and review. I had forgotten that I had posted that image to their Flickr Group so I was quite surprised to be a winner. This was one of my two favorite Puffin images from our trip to Machais Seal Island, and only the second time I’ve ever won any contest, although to be honest I think I’ve only entered 3 contests total
Well back in lil’ Rhody and it’s another vacation that makes me say, really it’s not all that good to be home. Other than a baggage snafu that has me still waiting for one checked bag (who cares about the clothes it’s got my tripod and Ewa-Marine housing and my extra camera batteries) it was a hassle free trip flying and staying in Hawai’i. Hawai’i is everything I’ve heard and more, the weather is beautiful, the people are friendly, the water is incredible and the scenery is fantastic (not to mention the fantastic coffee in Kona). We are tan, we are tired, we are fighting jet lag and I’m dl’ing 113GB of images from my laptop to my desktop and Mike’s gone to sleep. I’ve got sunrises, sunsets, coastlines, birds and spinner dolphins breaching (not too many of those actually), geckos, palm tree’s and barren vista’s of lava, plumes of steam from where the volcano is venting by the sea, waterfalls and 1000′s of underwater images. We snorkeled every day we were in Kona, one day in Hilo and 2 days on Kaua’i. The Ewa Marine housing worked like a charm, it was a bit difficult to get used to and had one scary moment where I didn’t push the relief valve in far enough and got a dribble of seawater inside the housing (but none on the camera thank goodness) I leaned quickly and decided to use the 50D in it instead of the 5DMII just to be safe. We took a snorkel cruise to the Captain Cook Monument and were in awe of the live coral and the marine life we saw there, We swam with turtles off Kahalu’u beach( and another woman and I yelled at some lady who was reaching to hold onto a turtle (obviously she couldn’t read that the turtles are endangered species and you CAN”T TOUCH them). What does she get out of touching the turtle? The thrill I guess, it would have served her right if the thing was a snapper not a green sea turtle. It was the only time I felt at all irritated while I was there so that says something. We watched 100′s of athletes train for today’s Ironman World Championship in Kona, I’ve never seen so many incredibly fit people in one place out running and biking in the incredible heat and humidity on Ali’i drive and the neighboring roads. We never tried taro anything or Loco moco but had some incredible meals. The only thing we didn’t see that I really wanted to was “fresh” lava. There was no surface lava within a reasonable (2 mile) hiking distance or at least any that the rangers would tell me about; but they recommended the viewing site down at Kalapana for sunset and night viewing even though it is outside the park. We just couldn’t make it work with everything else we were doing so it gives us yet another reason to go back.
Since it’s going to take nearly all night to dl these images I’ll get some sleep, dream of warm tropical climates (and hope for my baggage to arrive) and wake up to the reality of laundry, food shopping and the impending doom of work. So I can earn my way to another awesome vacation somewhere else and wonder if I need yet another backup drive.