kaua’i – 2013 1st entry – kaua’i 2013

To read this series in chronological order,
click on the category title – kaua’i – 13.

This is a preliminary entry to get the formatting set up and tested for this new category.
The image is of my cousin Rose’s hand holding a plumeria flower which we found on the ground as we walked the suburb south of the Princeville condo compound. I like the 4 pieces that make up this image. (left-to-right – the black, the fingers, the white and yellow blossom, the second black bracketing the flower, and finally the blur of white and skin-color.)

I head out Friday, April 12, leaving Pittsburgh at the crack-of-dawn and getting into Lihue 13 hours later. (The good part of this long, outbound trip is that I get to Kaua’i at 2:00 in the afternoon – traveling with the sun and getting added time whoa!)

farmers’ market – kilauea 2nd entry – kaua’i 2013

To read this series in chronological order, click on the category title – kaua’i – 13.

The flights to Kaua’i were all on-time as a matter of fact got into Phoenix half-hour early, but then had to wait for a gate assignment. (Sky Harbor is fast becoming the Kennedy Airport of the west.)

Coming west is always great, you gain time. I got here at 2:00 in the afternoon and had the rest of the day. (I was done by 7:30 and just went to bed and slept the next 10 hours.)

This morning we hit the farmers’ market in Kilauea. It has grown from last year – many more vendors. Naturally we walked out with so many fruits and vegetables that a woman from California who saw us carrying our stash to the condo, stopped us to take a pic. (The above pic is of our purchases – beets, limes, green-onions, papaya, eggfruit, carrots, kale and avocado.)

Been wanting to taste coconut-water for a while and this morning I went and bought a fresh coconut. It’s a relatively bland drink, but supposedly full of nutrients. (After you drink the water, you bring it back to the stall and the farmers splits and scoops out the coconut pulp. The white pulp was too soft for my taste.) Our discovery this year was eggfruit a fruit that reminds me most of persimmon, but a hard-boiled egg consistency.

beets and rainbows 3rd entry – kaua’i 2013

To read this series in chronological order, click on the category title – kaua’i – 13.

Let me begin with the beets. At the farmers’ market, Rose and Derrick bought a bunch of beets. Surprising, but I chalked it up to over-enthusiasm. When we got to making supper, Rose put the beets to boil, but had the green tops in a colander ready to fry. What, I had never heard of eating fried beet greens. They were delicious, as good as rapini. (I eat beets with Sarah and Welch, never knew Derrick grew up eating beets.)

It’s Sunday morning and it looks like the rain is on hiatus. Sitting around having coffee and up in the mountains I saw the left arc of a rainbow. Shot some pics, but not the best. (Am working on using Manual with the D700 and Aperture priority with the D800e. Am not always getting the exposure I want, but I’ll never figure it out if I don’t keep at it. So far my most difficult step is relying on the bar-graph that lets me know if I’m over-exposing or under-exposing. I need to learn how to associate the numbers with these rather than the bar-graph.)

The above image is from the lanai looking north. It’s the clouds above the 13th hole.

i saw the danger 4th entry – kaua’i 2013

and yet I passed along the enchanted way . . .

First, the image – it’s the seabirds at the wildlife refuge at the Kilauea Lighthouse Photoshopped into green hues.

Second, the fantasy – the enchanted way. (The title and first line are from Patrick Kavanagh’s poem On Raglan Road.) The island is surreal. One side is wild and inaccessible and the other side is Disneyland houses and gated communities. This morning we walked the Prince Golf Course and it was littered with young men playing in the fields of the One-Percent. The cart-paths were a magic carpet. And walking these undulating landscape you can pretend a new reality – everyone is young, everyone is rich, everyone is white and everyone is straight. The old ghosts have been banished, but the new gods have clay feet. Fuck!

the true gods of sound and stone and word and tint 5th entry – kaua’i 2013

I’m continuing to use pieces of Patrick Kavanagh’s poem On Raglan Road. The title is a line from the third verse.

This was our first day on the beach and in the sun.

The North Shore has been overcast and rainy the last three days so we headed south. (The northern part is one of the wettest areas on the island.) Forecasters promise a cloud free end-of-the-week. But the stone and rain gods that live in the mountains behind us may not agree. (The cloud cover is absent in the morning and at sunset. The image is from the lanai that wraps the condo and provides an outdoor space where we sit, eat breakfast, dinner and hope for blue skies. I took it early in the morning and it’s been tinted and pushed into purple)

The beach at Maha’ulepu is the southern most accessible point. (Last year this was where we saw the kite-surfers.) The road is red clay and full of holes and requires a slow, slow drive. But once there, you are free of the One-Percenters who have turned off their brains and turned on their appetites.

I use this trip to figure out what cameras and lenses to bring to Italy. So, I brought the D700 and D800e. I am enjoying the 38.3 megapixel images, but these two high-end cameras are better in slow and controlled environments. In Le Marche there will be enough situations – churches, museums, mirrors – where I’ll need the auto functions of the D90.

distesi al sole 6th entry – kaua’i 2013

The North Shore was ablaze today. (The image, shot from the lanai at the condo, is the sunset over Hanalei Bay.)

I spent the morning at the Princeville Botanical Gardens shooting the amazing flowers and native plants. I have all these images for a new gallery. It will be my first flowers gallery in several years. It was a great tour with information on local flora and fauna and a chocolate tasting lesson. The family that owns the land is beginning to grow cocoa and making their own chocolate. The lesson had us tasting various chocolates and trying to identify the surrounding plants, because they gave the cocoa bean an added flavor marker. My favorite was dark chocolate from E. Guittard a San Francisco based chocolatier.

In the afternoon, I joined the One-percenters at the pool – distesi al sole.

the queen’s bath 7th entry – kaua’i 2013

The trek down to The Queen’s Bath is difficult, but the views from the lava-rock cliffs are amazing. The trail-head is in one of the priciest sub-division on the island. Senator Barbara Boxer has a condo in the complex. The trail is steep but scenic following a stream that trips into a waterfall and then spills dramatically into one of the ocean lagoons. (Two years ago a local was showering under this waterfall. All I could think of was – left-over hippie.)

At the bottom, there are signs everywhere cautioning visitors that this is one of the most dangerous spots on the island and yet people still dive from the cliffs into the small lagoons-pools or dangle over the lava-shelves to better see the giant sea-turtles. What’s misleading is that the cliffs are relatively low giving a false sense of safety. Nowhere else on the island are the cliff-faces low or accessible.

The image is of a hollow crab-casing that some industrious sea-bird left behind after it feasted on the sweet white meat.

I’m using this trip to step away from the auto settings of the D90 and into the more controlled setting of aperture-priority. This has always been my default mode, but I want to become knowledgeable enough with it to anticipate what the image will look like.

painted wings and giant rings 8th entry – kaua’i 2013

make way for other toys. One grey night it happened . . .

We were determined to shoot the sunset and this morning on our way down to the Queen’s Bath we saw the perfect spot for our night shoot. All evening we kept vigil and at 6:30 we took off, (It was a two camera shoot.) and drove down to the fancy suburb. The first empty lot did not have a path to the golf course, to the cliff. We tried the next empty lot and there on the left was a path. As we walked down a woman with a glass of white wine looked down from her cantilevered deck and reminded us that we were on her property. She didn’t get cranky, she actually said it was OK for us to walk through. (Did I look upscale, part of the 1%, with my two fancy cameras slung over my shoulders?)

The shot is taken form the 7th Tee. That is what you see at the bottom of the image. Below us is Hanalei Bay and the sleeping dragon.

far away places with strange sounding names last entry – kaua’i 2013

far away over the sea are calling, calling . . .

The shot is from the ridge of Waimea Canyon. We went hiking and when the mists moved through the valley there was the Pacific and there was the sailboat. The entire hike was a hide-and-seek experience, one minute you saw nothing, at the next outlook the mist had moved enough to see the ocean. The trail straddled two canyons – on the left the drop led to blue water, on the right to lush green inland. This morning the mist played on the ocean side.

The south western part of the island – Waimea Town area – is large scale farming. You don’t see the black lava-rocks of the north or the hard red clay soil of the East Side. Instead the ground is covered by rich soft earth, buganvilla is everywhere and below the canyon mountains the plain runs flat to the sea. This haven is not a large area and a short drive north leads into desert.