Tag: Big Island

01-11-16 Big Island Morning

Do you visit the Photo A Day blog once and a while? Thanks is you do. (read more)

By Scott Shephard

First, if you subscribe to this blog via email, thanks. It turns out that I have been sending the daily posts to the wrong group so I think I am welcoming some of you back. I hope you stay. Of course, if un-cluttering your life is a 2016 resolution, you can easily unsubscribe to this blog. But how about attacking that bloated junk drawer in your kitchen first? Or your sock and underwear drawer? Or you car’s glove compartment.

Second, those who are my friends on Facebook will have seen this photo already. Sorry to repeat myself. 

But what about the photo? Well, it’s really 5 photos layered and processed as an HDR. And you’d never know it, but the sun was about 20 minutes from coming up. I shot this in twilight and needed a flashlight to see the camera settings! The longest exposure was 30 seconds and it looks almost like mid-day. There I go bending reality again. 🙂

I will also mention that the waves were crashing onto the rocks but the long exposure makes the water look relatively flat. The only evidence of the waves is the spray, which looks like low fog in this picture. More bent reality!

Finally, look closely and you will see two people in this photo sitting on the far shore by the palm trees. They are waiting for the sunrise, not for me to finish the 1 minute photo sequence. Because they are pretty sharply focused, they obviously sat very still for those 60 seconds.

Hawaiian sunrises will do that to you.

Canon 5DIII f/16.0 ISO200 40mm (5 shot HDR sequence)

01-07-16 Into the Woods

Dark and mysterious? That’s how I saw it. You may have seen something else. (read more)

By Scott Shephard

Not too far from the place I captured in yesterday’s photo, I found this location. And, like many things I see in Hawaii, it is amazingly photogenic. This road is called Pohoiki Road and runs for a few miles though trees that arch over and shade the road.

I am fascinated by this place and suspect that the locals who drive this road every day don’t even notice its mystery and beauty. That leaves me wondering what we in the Northern Plains see every day that a person born and raised on the Big Island would be impressed with? Miles of flatland, covered in wheat, corn and sunflowers? Frozen lakes that you can walk on? Thunder and lightning? Lingering twilight that seems to last for hours in midsummer? All of these and many more are bound to impress.

Canon 5DIII 2s f/16.0 ISO400 24mm

01-06-6 So Many Textures

Can you call yourself a photographer when you don’t take your camera out of the bag? (read more)

By Scott Shephard

The most important part of getting a decent photo is getting the camera out of the bag. For me, believe it or not, that hasn’t been a regular thing for the two weeks we’ve been on the Big Island in Hawaii.

And so this morning just before sunrise I told Deb I was going out to look for photos. She asked, “Where?” and I said, “I don’t know. Maybe the lava fields nearby.” But the lava fields didn’t call me. Instead, I ended up at a place called Isaac Hale Park. I got out of the car (without my camera) walked out onto the rocky shore and watched the surf roll in.

I was actually back in the car with the motor running when my inner photographer voice, which I had put on mute weeks ago, asked, “Really?! You’re too lazy to take a photo of this?” I ended up taking many more here but this is the first one I processed.

There’s a lot going on in this photo – maybe too much. But at least I took my camera out of the bag . . . 

Canon 5DIII f/16.0 ISO100 28mm (3 bracketed exposures combined in HDR Efex 2)

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