Aerial

Photo: West Maui Mountains

The mountains along the western edge of Maui between Kihei and Lahaina.

Back Story

Although I have quite a few aerial shots from the doors-off helicopter tour from the Maui Photo Festival, this one was actually taken from the plane before we even landed on Maui in the first place.

Normally, I only have my smartphone camera or a point and shoot within reach while we’re sitting on the plane, but not this trip. No, thanks to my new camera backpack, I was able to stow my camera gear right at my feet and have my trusty Canon 5D Mark II right at my fingertips.

And although there’s still having to shoot through those dirty airplane windows, and the fact that there’s no room for a zoom lens (had my 24-105mm here, shot at about 58mm according to EXIF), I still it came out pretty well.

Oh, One More Thing…

For my helicopter shoots, I make sure to have a circular polarizer so that I account for the sun reflecting of the water below. That was my mindset here, too, but I was getting some bizarre color reflections from the plane window. It’s probably verifiable with a quick Google search, but my guess is that the window was already polarized or something like that, which meant I lost about 60 seconds of shooting while I had to take of the polarizer on my lens.

Live and learn, I guess.

Photo: Cartoon Whale

Water streaks in the water off of Ka’anapali resembling a cartoon whale.

Back Story

This is another aerial shot taken during the Maui Photo Festival and Workshops in August.

We were just leaving the Ka’anapali resort area and I looked down and saw these jet skis and other watercraft making these lines in the water. I was focusing on getting in tight with the watercraft and keeping just a little bit of the shoreline in the frame, and at first I didn’t see anything special about the pattern they were making.

Later, when checking out the shots on the LCD during the drive back from the heliport, I noticed it looked like a cartoon whale, with the base station in the middle there as part of the eye. A whale spotting in August in Maui, who knew?

So what do you think, do you see a whale in this picture, or was the altitude and the wind from the doors being off getting to my head?

Photo: Kahakuloa Point

Flyby of the Kahakuloa Point along Maui’s west coast.

Back Story

This photo was taken during the doors-off helicopter excursion through the ’11 Maui Photo Festival and Workshops. This was my second doors-off flight with the workshops, and the second time I was able to shoot this part of the island from the sky above.

The first time was back in ’09, when I got this shot. Aside from having newer gear this time, I liked the different perspective I was able to capture as we approached the peak from the side rather than they bay itself.

We also had great weather while we were up in the air this trip, so that’s always a big plus. I’ll be sharing more shots from the flight this week as well.

– Kris

Photo: Aerial Incline

Rising up over a mountain ridge over the west side of Maui.

Back Story

The winning aerial shot during the 2011 Maui Photo Festival and Workshops. It was such a thrill going up and flying doors off again!

Before and After: Cana Island

While my main darkroom laptop is awaiting repairs, I felt another entry in the Before and After Series was in order. The image from this post is an aerial shot I took while doing a photo shoot over the Door County peninsula in Wisconsin last October.

After two incredible helicopter tours over Maui, this shot was from my first aerial shoot from a two-seater airplane. To say I learned a lot would be an understatement, and if you’d like to read more, checkout my Above Door County post.

Now, onto the photos!

The Before Image

Not the most technically sound image I’ve captured from the air, but given the conditions, I was happy with it. I really liked the composition, so I felt it was worth saving.

The After Image

Not too drastically different at this size, but there are more subtle things to discover when viewing them at the next size up – which you can do by clicking each photo to view on Flickr.

The first thing you’ll probably notice is that the color is different, which I took care of by altering the White Balance. My original intent of the entire flight was to capture the autumn colors from the air, but the first pass was just too yellowish/orange for my taste. I decided to tone it down.

The other main difference in the after shot is the additional detail I recovered using Topaz Detail. That’s another plug-in I’m still learning my way around, but I’ve been happy with my first few experiments.  In this case, I used the Micro Contrast Enhancement preset with a few minor tweaks around the detail levels.

When looking at the larger version of the image, you’ll see more definition in the lighthouse itself and the trees behind it. I tried to suppress the additional noise the best I could, but given the rewards I saw in the main subject of the photo, it was worth it.

Thoughts?

As always, let me know what you think about this latest entry in the series. Also, if you’ve played around with Topaz Detail or similar tools before, please share your experiences there as well.

Thanks,
– Kris