Hana Bay

It takes few hours driving along the Road to Hana sprinkled with waterfalls to reach Hana and it's beautifully remote bay in the middle of the rain forest. This scene presented itself at sunset from the window: I only had to quickly grab camera and tripod and rush to the beach at the back of the hotel to capture it. The color of the ocean water right under the thick stormy clouds was captivating, strong winds blowing and the sun setting on the left. The drama of the storm, the beauty of the scene and the black lava that once flew into the ocean were closely intertwined for an image I still strongly remember.

This image is constructed to convey a dramatic effect to the viewer. I stitched two horizontal frames to capture both the beach on the left where the sun is setting and the lava on the right where the waves are breaking; I composed the image to give roughly equal size on the frame to the two semi circles: one smaller in front the camera that provides a leading line to a slightly larger one encompassing the Bay. The two horizontal halves of the sky have complementary dominant colors to, again, increase drama. As often, a shutter speed around 1s beautifully renders smooth waves to convey a sense of chaotic motion without being overbearing. Finally I set the aperture at f/11 to capture enough sharpness across the image, without hitting too much diffraction.

Hana Bay is available in Limited Edition Fine Art prints on Etsy.

SONY SLT-A99II, f/11 @ 20mm, 1s, ISO 50

Halekala, the House built by the Sun

Sony A900, 50mm, f/11, 1/20s

On the peak of the Haleakala mountain in Maui, the Space Observation Centre is today borrowing the House built by the Sun, according to the Hawaiian tradition, and enjoying every day a spectacular sunset above the clouds. Two islands on the right in the middle of the ocean are also quietly taking part in the show. Again according to the legend, Māui's grandmother helped his grandson capture the sun and force it to slow its journey across the sky in order to lengthen the day. The day was very long indeed for us while climbing, by car of course, the twenty five miles of a very windy, winding and scenic road that took up to the 3000m on the top of the volcano. The Space Observation Centre is unique for its position that gives some of the clearest viewing conditions in the world. Sadly the Centre wasn't open to the public: don't think we didn't try.

We waited the for the sun to set completely to avoid flares, reduce the dynamic range of the scene, and to maximize the contrast in the beautiful cloudscape. To achieve the vast panoramic vista that we had in mind and include both the building on the left and the islands on the right, but still have plenty of details on the Observation Centre and the impressive clouds, we shot five images with a 50mm lens using a sturdy tripod and panning left to right, that we later stitched together in Photoshop to achieve the final panorama. The mountain at the bottom left and the clouds at the upper right form roughly two trapezoids that frame the scene in the middle to focus the attention on the clouds and the ocean beneath us. The final size of the image is more than 50mpx.