Maui 2011

Lightchase Photography Tour Feb 2011

I took my 18th Lightchase Photography tour. My second trip to Hawaii. One thing that made it really nice was that I was sharing the trip with the same 3 people I spent my first trip with. Although this trip was going to have quite a few more people than our last one, I knew most of the other photographers on the trip. It was a little touchy in the beginning, wondering if everyone would get out of the airports and over to Hawaii. My airport was closed a couple of days before due to winter storms and was not up to full speed yet. Mark's flight ended up being the most remarkable. Approximately 95% of the flights out of Chicago were being cancelled....but luckily his was able to get out...so everyone made it to Maui the correct day!

Our first morning, we shot at Ho'okipa Beach with a little bit of color and wave action. The dog in the picture below, was standing on the rocks, waiting while his owner was out surfing.

After shooting on the beach, we moved up to the overlook and caught a few crashing waves.



We spent the next day shooting and then ended up on the Wahikuli Wayside Park for sunset.


We went to Haleakala Crater for sunrise. One of our sunsets was at the Ho'okipa Beach overlook.





As with every trip to Maui, we took a drive up the road to Hana. There is a beach there that is good for sunrise. It was raining that morning so we didn't have to be up quite as early as we would have need to be for sunrise. We drove up and just took a few shots of the crashing waves. Near the place we stopped to shoot at, there was a banana bread stand...unfortunately it was closed...so I joined a few of the others in our group and tried Mango Bread instead.

We spent another evening shoot at Wahikuli Wayside Park. The snset didn't start off looking like it was going to be the best, however, as the evening progressed, it turned out to be a beautiful evening. It's always fun to see how much the color of the light and the cloudes change as the sun drops down.





We started our trip and ended it on Maui. We returned to Ho'okipa Beach again, but the clouds kept most of the color out.

One of our last nights we shot sunset on an unnamed lava beach. It's a nice hike down the hill to the beach. I walked around the lava and over to an area I saw a few waves crashing on. Mark ended up in the same area. For the first time, Mark actually asked me to move back from where I was. He said the waves were crashing hard enough that it would knock me over if I got hit. Since he is usually the last one to ask me to move out of the line of fire, I moved back as he requested. Unfortunately, the clouds prevented a really nice sunset, but the waves were crashing.



It wasn't too long into shooting when I realized that Mark was right. I would have got hit pretty hard by the wave if I had stayed where I was to shoot. The next day, we went to Iao State Park. We ended our trip with a sunset shoot at Ho'okipa Beach. One of the main attractions on Maui.....Whales