an assortment of brightly-coloured algae reflect in the steam rolling off a large hot spring.

A very excited neighbor boy brought this to me one day and wanted to know if I wanted to shoot it. I went inside and got a good macro lens and started to set up next to a nearby boulder. The young man coaxed the mantis from the carrying stick onto the boulder and I began getting ready. To my surprise, it made a very nice pose, turned its head to face me, and just sat there patiently while I took readings and captured this shot.

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

huge canopy over Japanese garden creating a perfect balance of shade and sun for comfort.

this is an extreme closeup shot of a shiny new penny. it is so close, that you're only seeing 0.00001% of the entire coin, or an area about the size of a human hair. the greenish-gold striations are clean portions of the copper, and the bumpy-red patches are corrosion as the coin is just beginning it's process of turning old and brown. a piece of penny the area of this photo, would have a monetary value of one ten-millionth of a dollar (at a very small bank).

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.

hiking through Waimea canyon on Kauai