Landscape, nature and underwater photographs, tutorials and workshops.
You know, iPhoneography is cool. It’s a lot of fun and you can do some pretty amazing things. Having followed digital photography from the beginning, I have to admit I’m hooked.
But nothing beats taking my DSLR out, putting it on a tripod, setting it up with an ND grad to get shots like this. I’m still a big camera guy at heart.
Aloha Sunday. Hope you have a great week.
Peter Liu by Dave Bryson
I’d totally forgotten about this shoot from a month ago until Dave Bryson, a vacationing photographer whom I’d met on the beach that day, sent this photo of me. I’ve been busy and never got around to actually looking at these shots after downloading them.
This was one of those busy sunsets where the light changed drastically every few minutes and didn’t quit changing until the sky went completely black.
Depending on where the sky was painting itself, Dave and I were moving around and changing compositions constantly.
It’s shoots like this that remind me of why I became a photographer in the first place.
Sunset Waves at Makena Cove, Maui, Hawaii
Twitter and Flickr friend Andy Beal asked me to participate in the launch of a new site he was putting together called Photogler, where photographers could share how they captured and produced some of their best work. I think it’s a fabulous idea!
I enjoy teaching what I know about photography and holding workshops, so I was happy to contribute, and honored to be asked. Every successful photographer had a series of mentors along the way, and it’s great to be able to give back once in a while.
Congrats on a great idea and a wonderful new site, Andy!
I don’t often shoot in the middle of the day because the light is usually too harsh. If I meter for the highlights, the shadows go black, and if I meter for the shadows, the highlights blow out. I looked out the window yesterday though, and saw some nice colors down toward Makena, along with some great cloud cover mixed with the blue skies, and decided it might be a good day to do some HDR work.
HDR stands for High Dynamic Range, which is a process that involves taking several shots with different settings, exposing for everything from the highlights to the shadows, and using software to blend them all together. Adobe Photoshop has a Merge to HDR feature under File > Automate, but I prefer using Photomatix, as it gives me better control over the tone mapping of the final image.
I used a polarizer for the water and a 3-stop soft ND grad to accentuate the sky even further. I’ll go into more detail about how I actually produced the images in another post. For now, enjoy them and tell me what you think.
Makena, Maui, Hawai'i. HDR, 5 exposures, 2 stops each; tone mapped in Photomatix 3.0, finished in Lightroom 2.5.
Makena, Maui, Hawai'i. HDR, 4 exposures, 2 stops each; tone mapped in Photomatix 3.0, finished in Lightroom 2.5.
Makena, Maui, Hawai'i. HDR, 5 exposures, 2 stops each; tone mapped in Photomatix 3.0, finished in Lightroom 2.5.
Makena, Maui, Hawai'i. HDR, 6 exposures, 2 stops each; tone mapped in Photomatix 3.0, finished in Lightroom 2.5.
Makena Cove Sunset, Maui, Hawaii.
Most of the sunsets I shoot fizzle out pretty quickly after the sun disappears below the horizon. Very few have just lingered and turned the clouds different shades of red and orange after the sun was long gone.
I’ve only seen two in my life that seemed to go on forever. One was in Fiji several years ago, and the other was last night, at Makena Cove.
I didn’t think it was going to end. The colors kept deepening as the light faded, enabling me to make longer and longer exposures to catch the ethereal, wispy feel of the waves crashing over the lava rocks.
These shots were taken about 5 minutes apart. Notice how the light changes.
The colors deepening as the light fades, Makena Cove, Maui, Hawaii.
Very long exposure as the colors intensify even more, Makena Cove Sunset, Maui, Hawaii.
There were two weddings going on simultaneously at the cove, so this shoot was a little nerve-wracking with people running back and forth in front of my lens. I was there with Meliezza Walker, who kept moving around, trying to get a better (clear) angle. I decided to just camp out in one spot and hope for the best.
It was magic.
Last week, I went on a photowalk with a new friend and fellow photographer Meliezza Walker, who is on vacation in Maui with her family. We decided to do another one before she left, but this one turned out to be more of a sunset portrait shoot.
As photographers, we don’t often get to be on the business end of the lens and it can be an unsettling experience. It’s well worth doing every so often, because we can get so wrapped up in shooting session after session, that we forget what it’s like for our clients.
For me, it’s always fun having another photographer in front of the camera (or vice versa), because we both know the craft and can exchange ideas and thoughts about our individual styles while we shoot. Doing this kind of thing once in a while can make you a better photographer.
When was the last time you were in front of the lens instead of behind it?
It’s been a while since I’ve been out shooting a sunset. Strange, I know, since I live in Maui, where there’s an expectation of spectacular sunsets every day. (Oh, the pressure!!)
The truth is this is like anywhere else… you don’t always have one that works, at least through a lens.
The problem I have most of the time is that the clouds are either sparse and so moisture laden they go dark almost right away, or they just occlude the sun completely. The perfect cloud karma doesn’t happen too often here.
Won’t keep me from getting out there and trying though. It’s hard to get enough of this.
Aloha…
I really thought yesterday’s sunset would fizzle, but there was just enough of a break below the cloud layer to make it work. Molokini framed through the tree.
Aloha…
The sunset this evening at Makena Landing. We haven’t had one in a while. I wasn’t going to miss this one.
Aloha…
Winner of the 2009 Monterey Bay Aquarium World Oceans Day Photo Contest
The first camera I ever brought underwater was a 3MP Olympus C-3040Z in 2002, … [Read More...]
