Tuesday, September 2, 2008
Back from Hawaii
My wife and I returned this past weekend from a week in Hawaii. All of my blog posts from last week were actually scheduled in advance. We spent 3 nights in Waikiki on Oahu and then flew to the island of Kauai. While this was a vacation and not a dedicated photography trip, I spent plenty of time taking pictures of course.
My total for the week was 2,583 pictures but that number is really meaningless because I was in a lot of rapid-fire mode situations. The first was a helicopter tour of Kauai (with no doors on the helicopter) during which I took 600 shots trying to get something, anything, sharp. I love shooting from a helicopter though my wife only managed 4 shots with her point-and-shoot because she insisted on holding on for dear life! (Actually, considering how she is very afraid of heights I'm just proud she went at all.) My stomach was fine during the flight but afterwards I was instantly very queasy thumbing through the pictures on the back of my camera and thinking that nothing whatsoever came out sharp and usable. Thankfully though, having just completed a pre-edit checking for sharpness I'm happy to say that I did get some great shots, though there are also tons of pictures in there I wish were usable but are simply not. Lightroom 2.0 has been invaluable to me as I compared duplicates side-by-side on my second monitor to judge which one was sharpest.
I also did several snorkeling "dives" with the Canon G9 in an underwater housing. My first few attempts were really horrible, but I made some progress and continued to refine my camera settings and technique. On our last full day of the trip we drop to Tunnels beach on the north coast of Kauai, and WOW was it great! The water was crystal clear with tons of fish. I still didn't get anywhere near the number of decent shots that I wanted, but I did manage to see a sea turtle and get at least 2 or 3 good pictures of it. I'll blog more about my snorkeling photography experiences soon.
We had a good time, and I'll be posting pictures from Hawaii during the coming weeks.
My total for the week was 2,583 pictures but that number is really meaningless because I was in a lot of rapid-fire mode situations. The first was a helicopter tour of Kauai (with no doors on the helicopter) during which I took 600 shots trying to get something, anything, sharp. I love shooting from a helicopter though my wife only managed 4 shots with her point-and-shoot because she insisted on holding on for dear life! (Actually, considering how she is very afraid of heights I'm just proud she went at all.) My stomach was fine during the flight but afterwards I was instantly very queasy thumbing through the pictures on the back of my camera and thinking that nothing whatsoever came out sharp and usable. Thankfully though, having just completed a pre-edit checking for sharpness I'm happy to say that I did get some great shots, though there are also tons of pictures in there I wish were usable but are simply not. Lightroom 2.0 has been invaluable to me as I compared duplicates side-by-side on my second monitor to judge which one was sharpest.
I also did several snorkeling "dives" with the Canon G9 in an underwater housing. My first few attempts were really horrible, but I made some progress and continued to refine my camera settings and technique. On our last full day of the trip we drop to Tunnels beach on the north coast of Kauai, and WOW was it great! The water was crystal clear with tons of fish. I still didn't get anywhere near the number of decent shots that I wanted, but I did manage to see a sea turtle and get at least 2 or 3 good pictures of it. I'll blog more about my snorkeling photography experiences soon.
We had a good time, and I'll be posting pictures from Hawaii during the coming weeks.
Sunset on Waikiki beach on Oauh, Hawaii.
Labels: Hawaii, Oahu, travel photography
posted by Terry Smith Images at
9:33 PM
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