On my way back to the studio, after a routine walk with the camera, I stopped to rest a moment halfway up a steep hill. It was early autumn and the leaves had begun their colour cycle. Like most of us, sometimes I forget to look up to see what's directly above. In my moment of fatigue (too much gear), I arched my back to stretch and WOW! I was standing right under a perfect shot. A lower branch spread across my view with bright red leaves and a little higher up was a maple that turned yellow and just past that, a couple different greens from the oaks. Topped off with patches of deep blue sky, it was truly a colourful moment.

I was set up for this whitewater section of rapids and took several shots, freezing the splashes of water at different moments in time. It was an extremely wet area from all the mist, and the lens had to be wiped down between each shot. Then I continued my hike up stream, shooting along the way. At the base of the falls, it was time to change film. For an unknown reason, my camera indicated that I had rewound the film completely, but a good portion was actually still vulnerable. When I opened up the back, boy was I surprised to have just exposed my work to daylight. Having no idea which part I had just ruined, I retraced my steps and began re-shooting each scene with a different camera back in hopes to not repeat the malfunction. While in wooded areas, since many scenes are shaded by neighboring trees, I commonly will first hike unencumbered with gear to calculate the ideal time of day for that particular scene. Thankfully, my window of light for this area was long enough to obtain a second set of exposures.

eastern Utah just after sunset

sunrise in KaPa'a

There are many woodsy areas within biking distance of the studio and they make wonderful places to explore and capture images. This particular one is nearly all pine trees and has a wonderful air about it. The ground is very soft with years of accumulated pine needles and while the sun is high, light dances through the trees and makes for very interesting patterns for as far as the eye can see. I chose to capture this as a wider shot to enhance the field of view so the viewer becomes more immersed and can almost smell the pine air.

some picture-perfect stalks of Imperial Fritillaria (lutea maxima) just waiting for someone like me to come by and capture them on film.

Sunset over ocean at Wailea, Maui

clearly appearing like something out of a Hollywood special-effects laboratory, this unreal-looking skin is actually quite common and is perhaps devouring something right outside your back door... it is a super-closeup of a June Bug's thorax (shoulder blade equivalent). the June Bugs in our area are an uninteresting plain brown, but as we explored it's outer surface, we noticed a very small metallic-looking shiny spot. far too small to see with the naked eye, we zoomed in on this spot and discovered it to be made up of many 'skin' cells of reds, oranges, and yellows each measuring around 1/3000 of an inch across. the green jellybean-like objects are actually pits in the bug's shell and have a hair growing out of each one (similar to a human pore). these deep bowel-shaped pits (about 1/400 of an inch long) were lined with more metallic-type cells that reflected our lighting back in various greens.