Maui

Reflections: Then and Now

I’m not normally a philosophical kinda guy, but I do like to take a step back every now and then and try to see things from a different perspective, or look at the larger picture of things.

So as I was making updates to my original Maui website and stumbling upon some of the first photos I even took back in ’06, I couldn’t help but stop and reflect on just how far my photography has come in these past few years.

Mind you, I don’t do this for a living or even anywhere near full-time yet, so the learning curve for me started out a little slow only because I wasn’t really shooting that often. But now that I’ve really stepped into my element, my life motto of “Never stop learning” has kicked into full gear and now I’m writing posts like this one you’re reading now.

Back Then

You hear professional photographers like Rick Sammon using catch phrases and giving advice like “don’t take pictures, make pictures” and “make great shots, not snapshots” all the time. Some may sound more cliche than others, but when I first started off back in ’06, I couldn’t even name any professional photographers or instructors, let alone recite their catch phrases. I was the blind being led by no one.

As green as I was back then, and knowing what I know now, it was obvious that I was merely taking snapshots.

To visualize, here’s a snapshot I took with a point-and-shoot camera of the Lahaina Banyan Tree in Maui back in ’06.

A true snapshot, by any definition of the term. And ignore the fact that a photo like this has 1,500+ views on Flickr (although it was uploaded 4 years ago) – that’s a topic for a later time.

I won’t even begin to go dive into the specifics as to what’s wrong with this shot. And that’s fitting, because there really wasn’t much being considered when I took it all those years ago. I just didn’t know any better (not an excuse, just a fact).

The Now

Skip ahead to the present day, after years of self-teaching, a few workshops, and lots of practice and experimenting. Skip ahead to when I’m now making images like this one from last month’s trip to Maui.

For the sake of comparison, it’s an image of the very same banyan tree I shot in the snapshot above from ’06. Only this time, quite a bit of thought went into the final image before I started shooting. All because of what I’ve learned.

For example, I scouted shots under this gigantic tree for about 10 minutes before I started shooting. For this particular image, I knew right away that I wanted a high dynamic range image, and being in the deep shade of the tree, I knew I had to bracket the shot with multiple exposures and combine in post.

Next, I started going through things like my ISO settings, white balance, depth of field, and shutter speeds. All these things I now not only knew about, but could quickly and easily adjust on my camera with no thought whatsoever.

The Perspective

Quite a big difference, eh?

I’m very proud of where I’ve been able to get to with my photography, even though I still realize I’m merely scratching the surface of where I want to go. But by looking back at where I started, I come to appreciate all that it’s taken to get me here, and a sense of accomplishment for sticking with the journey it has become.

Having this bit of perspective comes up more often than you might think. Take, for example, my first attempts at shooting portraits. It started off with quite a bit of frustration from the very beginning. Factor in the idea of using on-camera flash, then off-camera, and needing to learn an entirely new set of terms, settings, and best practices. It gets overwhelming rather quickly, and the first instinct becomes: “I just won’t shoot portraits”.

But then, I take a pause, remind myself that this is only the beginning and not something which will come overnight, and I take a deep breath. I stick with it, and then my ugly, throw away images early on in the learning cycle eventually start to become keepers. The more practice, the more trial, and the more error that comes with it. Just like another popular catch phrase I hear from time to time: “If you’re not making mistakes, you’re not trying hard enough.”

Coming to terms with knowing not every shot every time is going to be perfect, and that learning is a process that isn’t instant, some of that frustration and those overwhelming feelings begin to calm.

Having a Positive Attitude

That same perspective manifests itself in other situations, too.

Another example, for instance, is when I go look for inspiration and ideas on Flickr from other photographers. It usually starts out with…

I love this shot!

…and then it used to go straight to…

I’ll never be able to do that.

By seeing my progress over time, it now follows a different path. Starting with…

I want to learn that.

…which is quickly followed by…

I will do that

…and then finally,

I can do that.

And that’s where all this perspective begins to stimulate more accomplishments and build more confidence. Had I been as focused on learning and striving to improve back then as I am right now, it definitely wouldn’t have taken me as long to get to where I am today.

But like anything else, you can play the “what if” or “if only” games – they’re just a waste of time.

The Lesson

The takeaway from all of this, for me, is two-fold.

First, as I’ve spelled out above, it’s an internal motivator and keeps me grounded. It pushes me to step out of my comfort zone, push my boundaries further, and learn from (and to make) my mistakes.

Second, it’s become more of a teaching point for me to use, too. Whether I’m showing somebody something I did in a particular image, providing feedback to someone’s images or questions, or just talking with someone who’s currently going through the same angst and frustration that I remember having.

If I can try to teach someone the path that I have gone through to get here, then the quicker they can learn to work through the frustration, set proper expectations for themselves, and then get to that point faster where they’re reflecting on their early work with their latest accomplishments and seeing the ground they’ve covered themselves. Being able to help someone reach that level of confidence and overcome whatever adversity they may be facing, at the end of the day is pretty darn rewarding.

The End Game

And to that end, it ends up not being about whether my image is better than someone else’s image or has more views or “Likes” the another image. Instead, it grows into an introspective view of whether I’m happy with my own work, and where I want to improve, and then going out and working on those improvements.

The rewards then become internal to yourself and your personal accomplishments, and not the awards or flair that others send your way. And when you’re happy with the work you can consistently deliver, and you can apply that to the most special memories in your life or the lives of others, you smile and know it was all worth it.

Thoughts?

Thanks for following along on my little philosophical journey here today. If you had any thoughts, comments, or stories of your own to share, please feel free to leave them below.

– Kris

Photo: Starburst Crater

Haleakala Crater lit just after sunrise.

Back Story

This image was captured last month during the 3rd Annual Maui Photo Festival as part of their Haleakala Sunrise excursion. It is actually an HDR image created from 3 exposures and using Photomatix Pro. At first glance, it might not strike someone as the type of image people think of when they hear the term HDR. But here, I used multiple exposures to capture detail in the clouds as well as the crater below – which would have not been possible in a single exposure due to the range in highlights and shadows created by the intensity of the newly risen sun.

Here, I wanted to get as much detail as possible, so I shot at f/16. I could have framed the shot without the sun, but knowing that such a small aperture would give me a starburst effect (I was playing around with earlier in the trip) I waited to get enough separation between the clouds and the sun and placed it in the corner of the shot. Of course, it also gave me a bit of lens flare, but I didn’t mind.

Stick Around, It Ain’t Over

This was my 3rd Haleakala sunrise, and just like the previous two trips, right after sunrise, the summit and lookout points go from being shoulder-to-shoulder crowds right before the big moment, to a sparse group of folks right after. I don’t know what everyone’s hurry is, there’s still more to see (and shoot) than just the sunrise.

Better Next Time

I did want to fill in some of the foreground rocks, but my attempts with using a fill flash came up fairly lame. In hindsight, had I brought along my 32″ 5-in-1 reflector with me instead of leaving it in the hotel room that morning, it may have given me a better result than the flash. Something to try for next time.

One Last Note…

Hopefully this goes without saying, but never, ever stare at the sun through your camera’s viewfinder to get a shot like this, or any other sunrise or sunset image. You’re only asking for trouble.

For this and my other sunrise shots from the crater, I have a tripod setup and was using the Live View mode on my LCD to frame the image, switched back out of Live View (to activate autofocus again), and used the autofocus focal point selector to pick my focus point. Finally, I had a remote shutter release to fire off the brackted shots (remember, I was shooting for HDR).

Net result, I wasn’t staring at the sun through the viewfinder. Please don’t learn this the hard way.

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: Lahaina Banyan Tree

Two large trunks of the Lahaina Banyan Tree.

Back Story

First of all, this tree is huge. Check it out in Google Street View if you haven’t been there before. Believe it or not, that’s all one tree, as the branches of these banyan trees will actually bore their way back into the ground to form what looks like different trunks.

On our last free day in Maui before the Maui Photo Festival officially started, we spent some time in Lahaina for lunch and a little shopping. We took a break from the afternoon sun to enjoy the shade of this 150+ year old tree, and as we did, I took a stroll around looking for different shots to compose. Since this beauty of nature is typically too large to get in one frame (at least other than an aerial) I’ve seen a lot of people shoot underneath the tree itself.

That’s what I was going for here.

And because you’re in the shade, and there was various amounts of light peeking through the tree above, I went ahead and bracketed my shots at +/- 1EV stop and put this image together with HDR in Photomatix Pro.