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 2: Wildlife at Puʻuhonua o Hōnaunau National Historic Park.
We spent the afternoon through sunset at Puʻuhonua o Hōnaunau National Historic Park. There were some Hawaiian Green sea turtles resting on the beach at Keoneele Cove. When I was supposed to be working on a composition of one of the temples, I found this bright green gecko with blue eyes that kept posing for my macro lens.
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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