Tag Archives: black and white

BIG WINTER SURF HITS NORTH SHORE MAUI

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Big-winter-surf-north-shore-Maui-Hawaii

We had our first big winter surf of the year hit the north shores of the islands and here on Maui this week, which inspired me to pack up and get out shooting.  I headed first up to Honolua Bay and explored some possible compositions, while watching the many surfers position for the double-overhead waves that were consistently rolling in.  After checking out a few less-than-inspiring possibilities and feeling a bit crowded with the many spectators, I decided to head south a bit – away from the larger sets that were hitting the north shores.  I stopped at a nearby pullout, jumped the guard rail and headed down a steep slope to the lava rock shoreline and was immediately sparked with some possible compositions.  I stood and watched as a large set came in and definitely knew I could do some work here, so I headed back up the slope to the truck to retrieve my gear.  Over the course of the next hour and until the light had left me in darkness, I shot 32gb worth of images with a couple different compositions.  I kept my exposure times to around 1-4 seconds in order to maintain enough clarity in these 5-8 foot faces, but while adding enough motion to create a more intense dynamic.  With this type of imagery, you really have to shoot shoot shoot, which kinda goes against my style of waiting for the sweet moment and getting the shot in fewer frames.  With that said, you do what you gotta do to get the shot you’re feeling at the time, and in the end, I’m happy with a couple of captures from the night – enough so that I think they may have to be part of my portfolio-in-the-works titled Boundary.

The lesson here – work with your conditions and with your feelings.  It was very dynamic with these big waves crashing against the rocks and making huge splashes 25 feet into the air.  You could feel the impact and were covered by sea spray.  I could have made a 2-minute long exposure and created a more peaceful and meditative feeling image, but that wouldn’t have translated true to my feelings, and to the conditions presented to me.  So, next time you head out to make images, don’t think about it.  Quiet the mind.  Explore around until you find a place that you’re responding to, on an inner/feeling level, not on a mind/thinking level, and then get in touch with your feelings and with the conditions being presented to you.  Then, photograph accordingly.  With this approach, your images will become stronger and more feeling-based, and you will enjoy your time in nature much more than when you’re in-the-head.

HOUSE OF INFINITY

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HOUSE OF INFINITY  Maui, Hawaii 2012

The St. Joseph Church in Kaupo, Maui, Hawaii is the oldest church on Maui and was established in 1862.

This image essentially took me over two years to successfully complete and was seen in my mind’s eye long before I could show it to you here in a photograph. There is only a small window of time each year in which the Milky Way is in an optimal position above this old church. Kaupo is over 2 hours drive from my house in Lahaina and is located in the most rustic part of Maui where there isn’t even a proper road. The final challenge was with the painting-of-light that I used to illuminate the church. Using a small flashlight it was much too easy to give too little, too much, or not even-enough light which resulted in many failed attempts before capturing this powerful and ethereal scene.

PHOTOGRAPHING NEW YORK CITY – WITH AND WITHOUT A TRIPOD

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GRAND CENTRAL TERMINAL  New York City, New York 2012

Becca and I had a blast visiting NYC last week!  We roamed Manhattan and took in many of the sights, museums, games (NBA) and restaurants – and I even managed to find time to make some images!  Before the trip and during my online research regarding photographing NYC, I found many photographers talking about how strict NYC is regarding tripod use, and wanted to talk about that some here.

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NATURE – WHY IS IT IMPORTANT?

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Last week I received an email informing me that I was a finalist in an outdoor photography contest, and that they needed the high-resolution image file along with some other information.  Included in this, was the question: why is nature important?  Of course I know why nature is important to me, but I pondered the question further as I was driving up Haleakala to go backpacking overnight at Holua camp, inside the crater.  I was having this overnight getaway primarily for what nature offers me, peace and solitude.  As I made the couple hour drive to the trail head, I listened to Eckhart Tolle’s Stillness Speaks, and my thoughts went back to this question when Eckhart spoke about nature, as one of his topics.  Here are some of his thoughts, that resonated deeply with me:

NATURE

“We depend on nature for not only our physical survival, we also need nature to show us the way home, the way out of the prison of our own minds.  We got lost in doing, thinking, remembering, anticipating – lost in a maze of complexity and a world of problems.  We have forgotten what rocks, plants and animals still know.  We have forgotten how to be.  To be still.  To be ourselves.  To be where life is – here and now.

“Whenever you bring your attention to anything natural, anything that has come into existence without human intervention, you step out of the prison of conceptualized thinking and to some extent, participate in the state of connectedness with being in which everything natural still exists.  To bring your attention to a stone, a tree, or an animal does not mean to think about it, but simply to perceive it, to hold it in your awareness.  Something of its essence then transmits itself to you.  You can sense how still it is, and in doing so, the same stillness arises within you.  You sense how deeply it rests in being, completely at one with what it is, and where it is.  In realizing this, you too come to a place of rest deep within yourself.”

From Stillness Speaks by Eckhart Tolle

 

 

HENRI CARTIER-BRESSON: THE DECISIVE MOMENT

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Henri Cartier-Bresson (Aug. 22, 1908 – Aug. 3, 2004), was a master photojournalist and street photographer who whose work continues to have a strong influence on photographers today. His work is most commonly referred to as “The Decisive Moment”, the title of a book he published in 1948, containing a portfolio of 126 images from both the East and the West, and a lengthy preface where he states, “There is nothing in this world that does not have a decisive moment.”  

Cartier-Bresson spent over thirty years photographing for Life and countless other journals.  He traveled without bounds, capturing images from some of the most turbulent locations of the 20th century – the Spanish civil war, the liberation of Paris in 1944, the 1968 student rebellion in Paris, the fall of the Kuomintang in China to the communists, the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi, the Berlin Wall, and the deserts of Egypt.  Yet, some of his most famous photographs are of seemingly ordinary moments capturing daily life, the fleeting moments that are here and then gone.

Behind the Gare St. Lazare, 1932.

As far as I am concerned, taking photographs is a means of understanding which cannot be separated from other means of visual expression. It is a way of shouting, of freeing oneself, not of proving or asserting one’s own originality. It is a way of life. – Henri Cartier-Bresson

Cartier-Bresson exclusively used Leica 35mm rangefinder cameras and mostly one lens, the normal 50mm lens, to capture most of his iconic images.  He’d use black tape to make the silver body more conspicuous, and was strongly against the use of flash.  He composed his images in-camera and did not crop, making prints of the entire frame and insisting that they include a millimetre or so of the unexposed clear negative around the image, resulting in a black border.  He said: “I’ve never been interested in the process of photography, never, never. Right from the beginning. For me, photography with a small camera like the Leica is an instant drawing.”  Therefore, he never printed any of his own work, and chose instead to work with a printer to develop and produce his photographs.

Reality offers us such wealth that we must cut some of it out on the spot, simplify. The question is, do we always cut out what we should? While we’re working, we must be conscious of what we’re doing. Sometimes we have the feeling that we’ve taken a great photo, and yet we continue to unfold. We must avoid however, snapping away, shooting quickly and without thought, overloading ourselves with unnecessary images that clutter our memory and diminish the clarity of the whole. – Henri Cartier-Bresson

 

 

MAUI WINDMILLS

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Yesterday I woke up at 4:20 am and headed out to meet a friend for an early morning hike along Maui’s Pali Trail.  After nearly two decades of residing off and on on Maui, this was a trail I had never previously hiked – with the rumors of it being so dry, hot and exposed, it never held much appeal to me.  With the early start and an added sense of adventure, I was finally game.

Surprisingly awake, or delirious, we started our trek on the Maalaea side at 5 am in the pre-sunrise darkness.  The trail was rugged as we made our way up the 1600 feet of elevation gain.  Had it been mid-day, it would had been semi-awful, but with the early hour and the high winds, it was quite nice.

Near the high point of the hike, we made our way through the Kaheawa wind farm.  Since 2006, twenty windmills operated by First Wind have been generating nearly 10% of Maui’s electric power, enough energy to power about 11,000 Maui homes annually.  They are near completion of adding on 14 more wind turbines, enough to power an additional 7,700 Maui homes annually.

The image above are some of the new wind turbines and they continue up the slopes of the mountain.  In this case, a longer exposure and passing clouds help create the feeling of wind, and makes for a more dynamic image of some much appreciated clean energy.

TIME EXPOSED = 8 SECONDS

 

ANGKOR WAT AND TA PROHM

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Angkor in Cambodia, once a thriving city which flourished from approximately the 9th to 15th centuries, should be near the top of all travelers lists of places to see. I have visited  the temples of Angkor a couple of times.  A few days stay in Siem Reap while exploring these ancient ruins is usually sufficient enough time to get a feel for the place, though the photographer could easily spend many days or weeks here, finding dynamic compositions and waiting for optimal light.

Ta Prohm has been left in much of the same condition, with centuries of strangler figs and silk-cotton trees growing out of the ruins and reaching upward to the sky.  Ta Prohm is my favorite of the ancient ruins.  In fact, I proposed to my wife here, figuring I’d never find a more timeless destination than this.

If it looks familiar, Angelina Jolie’s Tomb Raider used the temple of Ta Prohm as a shooting location.

THE GATE

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THE GATE San Francisco, California

Watch the video below to see into the time exposed of the above picture, a new image of mine from San Francisco. This is what I love about long exposure photography! There is so much going on, but the scene becomes distilled over time. Birds, boats, fog horns, the sound of the ocean lapping up onto the shores – this all makes up the experience one gets while “out there” in the world, and it is my feeling that long exposure photography is better suited to capture and evoke this mood, or essence of life.

TIME EXPOSED = 60 SECONDS