Gone to See Hawaii. Big Island Photography Workshop with Thom Hogan. Day 4: Kona and Volcano National Park.
I woke up early, and walked to the harbor where I saw a group rowing a Hawaiian outrigger canoe with a cruise ship in the background. I liked the juxtaposition of historical and modern. We then checked out of the hotel and traveled to Volcano National Park. After checking into the lodge, we went for a photo-walk down a tropical rain forest trail. The lessons here included using a flash, how to manually focus a macro lens, how to adjust the focus for camera viewfinder, and always thinking about the composition.
Hawaiian Outrigger Canoe and Cruise Liner Early Morning on Kona Bay. Image taken with a Nikon D2xs and 12-24 mm f/4 lens (ISO 100, 24 mm, f/4, 1/250 sec). (David J Mathre)
Gone to See Hawaii. Big Island Photography Workshop with Thom Hogan. Day 3: Beach at Waipi’o Valley.
Waipi’o Valley is located along the Hamakua Coast on the northeastern coast of the Big Island of Hawaii. We hiked down to the beach, and Thom spent time with each of us working on technique and composition. One lesson was that images with wide-angle lenses should have close, middle, and distant subject. Also, having a human figure in the image helps the viewer get an idea of scale.
Gone to See Hawaii. Big Island Photography Workshop with Thom Hogan. Day 2: Morning Session.
We were brought out to a lava field and told at mid-morning and told to find something interesting to photograph. The lighting was very bright and harsh. My initial subject was a spider on its spider web. There were many problems including a slight breeze moving the web in and out of focus (I was using a macro lens with a very narrow field in focus) and the background being too bright and distracting for the image. Thom helped by holding a space blanket to provide some shadow for the background. Unfortunately, by this time the spider got tired of being the subject and left. After the spider web, I took an image of a lava bomb and a Hawaiian flower. As we were walking back to the van, I saw this post along the parking lot where the rope or chain had been removed. To me it looked like a horse head with a green eye. This was my best image from the morning session.
Gone to See Hawaii. Big Island Photography Workshop with Thom Hogan. Day 1: Kailua Kona.
It is hard to believe that the day before I was taking pictures of wildlife in Colorado. I read a note on the Thom Hogan site a month earlier that he had a late opening for this workshop so signed up as quick as I could. At that time I was working 2 weeks a month in Boulder, so it would be a bit easier to fly to Hawaii. I previously purchased his D200 and D2xs eBooks and wanted to learn more about the cameras and become a better photographer. For the first three nights we stayed at the Kona Seaside Hotel. The group of four students and Thom met in the lobby at 15:00 for our first lecture. We then walked down to the beach to photograph the beach, some tidal pools, and sunset. Part of this first shoot was for Thom to observe our photographic practices and skills so he could customize individual instruction for the rest of the workshop.
Sunset and Sailboat off Kona Beach. Image taken with a Nikon D2xs camera and 80-400 mm VR lens (ISO 100, 400 mm, f/5.6, 1/500 sec). (David J Mathre)Sunset of Kailua Harbor from Kona Beach. Image taken with a Nikon D2xs camera and 12-24 mm DX lens (ISO 100, 24 mm, f/9, 1/250 sec). (David J Mathre)Sunset of Kailua Harbor from Kona Beach, Big Island Hawaii. Day 1 of Thom Hogan’s 2007 Hawaii Photography Workshop. Image taken with a Nikon D2xs camera and 12-24 mm DX lens (ISO 100, 24 mm, f/9, HDR 9 images 1/800 to 1/20 sec). (David J Mathre)
I used different tools to process the last two images. I think I like the HDR version better because the sun is a disk and not blown out, although the sky/clouds are better in the first version.
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