Hana Bay

Shot from Hana Bay, Maui, Hawaii.

Road to Hana

Seen on a concrete barrier wall on the road to Hana, Maui, Hawaii, USA.  

Different places

My friend Adam and I took our rented VW bus on a loop around the western part of Maui, and enjoyed the scenery.  We pulled off the road for me take this photo, and I asked him something along the lines of "If you were blindfolded and air dropped into here, where would you think you were?" and I was wondering if he'd say Costa Rica, which is a place he and I have both visited in our lives.  He said "Central America" and I was very happy that he was on the same page as me.  We also saw spots that reminded us of the Pacific Northwest (Washington and Oregon) and also parts that looked like Scotland.  And now it's time to go see what else we can find!  

Hippies

It's 3:51 PM Hawaii time, and I just started exploring Maui with my friend Adam from Virginia, who came to meet me and hang out.  We will be Leaving No Road Unturned on Maui and living in this VW van for the next week or so.  Luckily I figured out the turn signals and how to lock the sliding door...neither was easy!  This is going to get interesting.

Hawaii - Still in the USA

Sometimes Hawaii feels so much different than the other 48 states I've visited, that it's easy to forget that it's part of the USA.  But there are American businesses around, and sometimes, but not always, some USA pride. I shot this photo last week on "The Big Island".

Pillbox Trail

I did the Kaiwa Ridge Trail / Lanikai Pillboxes Hike on Oahu.  It kicked my butt.  It’s short but very steep! It’s called Pillboxes Hike because there are 2 concrete guard posts, called pillboxes, which are no longer used by the military, along the trail.  One of them is seen in the center of this photo.  

Back at it

After a few days without taking photos, I'm rejuvenated and back at it.  Right now I am checking out the hills above Honolulu, Hawaii on this slightly hazy but nice day.  In this photo, Diamond Head Volcano is prominently featured.  I am pretty sure that I remember Diamond Head being in the Hawaii episode of "The Brady Bunch" but my memories of that are fuzzy.  I was born in 1978, and I think my first memories of ever seeing Hawaii on tv or in photos was "The Brady Bunch".  Anyone else with me on that?

Honolulu, Hawaii

These are my new friends, Emma and Adolf. Emma has been following my photos for a while on Facebook, and when she saw that I was in Hawaii, she reached out to me and invited me to lunch with her and her husband. So, of course I took her up on it! Our Monday plan was good timing, as my feeling of burnout was real, and I still have not taken any landscape photos since Saturday.

I met them outside their place in Honolulu, and Adolf drove us to lunch in a beautiful setting, then he drove us to a few other locations, and I took some notes, so I can go back when I feel like taking photos again. It was a real pleasure, and they were very interesting and fun to speak with. They have lived in Honolulu for over 40 years!

Sunday I had had a nice conversation over some food with my new friend on the Big Island as well. I didn't take any pictures during that conversation, and I didn't have to. It wasn't about that.

Being able to make friends while traveling, mostly thanks to Facebook, has been so neat. When I first bought a nice camera and decided I wanted to be good at photography, this is not what I envisioned. It's way cooler than anything I envisioned. I've probably said something like this before...but if I never make lots of money off my photos, it doesn't matter. The experiences I've had make all the effort worth it.

Burn Out Train

I decided that I wanted to make a post about how burnout from taking so many photos was coming at me like a train that I was staring down, and that I wasn't going to dodge it. Of course I wanted a photo of myself to go along with it. In the process of getting this photo of myself, which took many tries, the train hit me. So my Hawaii photos might slow down for a few days. It's alright, I have plenty to do. I'm doing laundry now, then heading to the farmers' market, then cleaning up the house I'm staying at, then off to dinner with my contact here before flying back to Oahu tonight. Tomorrow I have lunch plans in Honolulu and some cell phone shopping to do. So, life. Sometimes I live it without taking photos.

The Ocean

Today is my 10th of 28 planned days in Hawaii. I haven't done a whole heck of a lot. Yesterday was the first day I didn't see the ocean at all, and, at risk of backlash from you all, I will say, I felt like I had seen enough of it for a while! I've quite enjoyed the ocean vistas, but I felt like it was getting old. I told a friend that and she had some choice words for me!

While at the house I'm staying at today, I could hear the waves crashing pretty hard, and somehow the ocean drew me back for another look. I took a short drive, and found this scene. It's amazing how each place where I've stopped to see the ocean seems to have its own unique characteristics. This is the 22nd photo I've posted from Hawaii that has the ocean in it, and I am confident that each has its own merits. I hope that you agree.

Mauna Kea - Big Island of Hawaii

My friends Don and Jen of Redstream Digital and I headed to the top of Mauna Kea, on the Big Island of Hawaii, to catch the sunset and do some night photography. It's a dormant volcano, a whopping 13,796 feet above sea level. Visitors are encouraged to hang out at a visitor center at 9200 feet before heading up to the top, to acclimate to the altitude change. A video at the visitor center, as best as I can recall, warned of possible nausea, light headedness, disorientation, and poor decision making. Once at the top, it did feel weird. I was walking to get a photo I wanted, and the point I was trying to get to seemed close, but I kept walking and didn't seem to be getting much closer. Disorientation? I guess. Anyway, I took some other photos that I will share, but for now, I'm sharing this pic of me, feeling weird, above the clouds, looking into the sun before it descended below the clouds.

Yellow hibiscus

Shot just a moment ago outside the house I am staying in, in Hawaiian Paradise Park. It's been raining all morning, and while that's making me lost motivation to go out and explore the island, it is very peaceful and pretty at the same time.  

The Big Island of Hawaii

It’s been raining all day on the Big Island of Hawaii, where I am staying alone in a house so kindly offered to me by a woman in California who follows me on Facebook. Just in my first day on this island, I noticed a relaxed attitude, and I sent a message to a friend I chat with a lot online and joked that I wasn’t chill enough for this place. There was some truth to the joke though. So I took the rainy morning as an opportunity to slow down, get some work done, and just not worry about much.

I tried to get into the spirit of the island by going shirtless around the house, as so many men here seem to do, even in public. Not bad! So I decided to sling my camera over my shoulder inside a little backpack, and walk down to the ocean, which isn’t far from here, still sans shirt, and check it out. I needed my exercise for the day anyway.

As I came through the trees to the lava field by the ocean, this tree in the lava instantly struck me, and I took this photo of it. I sat by the ocean for a while, without taking any pictures, then walked around more, snapped a few more pics, and headed out. And I had that feeling that I’ve mentioned before, that certainly doesn’t happen every day…where even though I had no idea until yesterday that this type of oceanside environment existed, and I made no specific plans to check it out ahead of time, it was exactly where I wanted to be.