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.

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?

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

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!

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

Photo: An aerial image of Cana Island near Baileys Harbor in Door County, Wisconsin and the lighthouse that shares its name.

Preparing to be overloaded with hockey imagery soon, I thought I’d bring back a few older photos to add a little variety.  This image is from the aerial photo shoot I did back in October over the coastline of the Door County peninsula in northern Wisconsin. You can read the post behind the photo shoot there to relive some of the challenges I encountered with this particular aerial shoot, but I gave this image another go now that I’m trying out Topaz Detail from TopazLabs.

I’m still getting the hang of some of the options and when to use Topaz Detail instead of some of the presets in Topaz Adjust, so we’ll see how this works its way into my workflow in some scenarios.

Drop the Puck

Time to get ready. First of two hockey games at ice level starts on Sunday, following up with a rendezvous in almost the exact same seats the following Sunday.  Getting excited!

Let’s see how the Canon f/2.8 70-200mm lens I’m renting for these games steps up to the challenge that my existing lens have struggled with.  Here’s to hoping for the best.

– Kris

Photo: An aerial view of the peaceful D.T. Fleming Beach Park in West Maui, just passed Kapalua.

Like many beaches on Maui, I have fond memories of patrolling the sand from end to end looking for different views to capture. Yet, when I get to capture the entire crescent beach from above like this photo, it truly is a thrill.

How did I get this shot? I was hanging out of a helicopter without doors on it during the ’09 Maui Photo Festival, that’s how! Maybe I’ll see you there in August?

Another one of the shots I worked on in post this week. It was from the helicopter tour I took in September during the Maui Photo Festival, and given a once over in ACR and Topaz Adjust to bring out some color and details.

One of the many great shots I took during our helicopter flight as part of the Maui Photo Festival last September.

It was later in the flight, so by this point I had to switch over to shooting JPEG instead of RAW to preserve memory card space. I had spare cards with me, but seeing as it was my first time in a helicopter without doors and I was sharing the back bench with 3 other people, I wasn’t about to try fiddling with a card switch.

I mentioned it because I feel like I could have done more with this in Adobe Camera Raw had it not been just a JPEG file.  I did run it through ACR twice (a 2nd pass for the horizon and sky in the background), but having the RAW file without the in-camera compression of the JPEG version would have been better.

To make up for it, I decided to give it a spin through Topaz Adjust to try and kick it up a notch, and was generally pleased with the final results.

The New Account

This is the first photo coming from my new Flickr account as mentioned yesterday. While most of my daily photos will likely continue to come from my original account, I will be featuring images like this from time to time that have gone through a more thorough creative process and post production workflow.

I wish I had enough time to do this on a daily basis, but not quite there yet.

One last note, if you’re interested in knowing where on Maui this is overlooking, such as that curvy road up near the edge of the cliff, this guy is geotagged on Flickr. Just click the photo and look for Map on the right hand side somewhere down the page. Switch to Hybrid mode, too, for another interesting look.

- Kris

An aerial view of the popular Kapalua Bay area, one beach over from Napili Beach.