We got up early enough for breakfast;
then grabbed a shuttle ride to Honolulu airport, for the hop to Līhu‘e,
one of the main towns on Kaua‘i. The tour company was a good distance
away, so we needed to take a cab to get there.
Kauai Photo
Tours is a small outfit, and very friendly, and I thought they
had an excellent business plan. They have guides
who are photographers
themselves, and who know the good-looking places that under the
right circumstances will make for high-quality
photography. (But they
don’t tell you which way to point your camera.) Our guide was named
Matt, and he clearly was both an experienced
photographer and a
knowledgeable guide to the most spectacular places
on the island.
So we started on the trails, and went from
one likely photographic subject to another. Mark may
remember the names of the places we went to, but until he reminds me,
I’m going to have to plead ignorance. The first picture in the block
above and to the right is my first of the day; as usual, Mark and I
are behind already. And of course I had to take a snap of ferns.
In the block to the left, the three beach pictures were taken at around
the same time, about noon; this was when I took the picture on the
main travel page. It’s
clear from the top picture (big image,
small) that I was using my wonderful
fish-eye lens—because of the apparent bending of the
actually-straight palm trunks and the shore line. For the middle
picture there (big image,
small) and the bottom one
(big image,
small), I was just standing in different
spots. I really like the sky in the lower two of those.
The upper-right picture in that block was taken rather later, around
12:40, when we had moved to a high point from which we could see out
over the little reef (big image,
small), and the one below that about
a half-hour later (big image,
small). The single picture to the
right was taken shortly after, as we followed the stream,
approximately,
as it flowed to the shore.
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iPhone Movie made
at the lowest falls
on the stream
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When we were at the shore, just below
the falls in the movie to the left, I took an inordinate number of shots
of the surf breaking on the volcanic rocks, and I’ve put four
of these at the right. I learn from Mark’s page that the stream
we went down along is part of the grounds of the Princeville
Country Club. Writing now, a month later, and without the benefit
of any notes from the day (because I wrote up practically
nothing in my journal for 2 March), I can’t say how we got from there
to the next picture, which I took about an hour and a quarter later.
It shows Rick, one of our companions, probably
getting ready to take
a picture—he was definitely serious about photography.
From then on there were three more stops:
at another beach, at a place where there was a nice overlook to an
agricultural valley, and an overlook to the ocean. For some reason
I took no shots at the last of these, but there were some excellent photographic
opportunities at the beach. Rick’s wife, whose name I’m not sure I
ever caught (I’ve been thinking of her as The Woman in Pink and White)
turned out to be the compositional fulcrum of several of my pictures.
On the sand (big image,
small) or on the rocks
(big image,
small), she draws the eye to herself
and the whole picture centers itself around her. I wish the third picture
were of higher quality, though. I pulled that snap quickly when my camera
had the fish-eye lens mounted, and to get the image you see, I had to
blow up a tiny part of the whole frame. Too bad I wasn’t using a higher-quality
lens then.
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From the pictures I took at the spot overlooking the cloudy and rainy valley,
I chose just one, which you see as a panorama below, and which you can also
see slightly larger.
After the tour, we got a ride into Līhu‘e, where
we had a dinner reservation at the restaurant
Duke’s, and it was a very
satisfying meal that we had. From there, a shuttle ride to
LIH airport, a short flight to HNL, and we were to our hotel around ten.
