Sunday, November 4, 2012

Kauai 2012: Return to Waimea Canyon

During this year's visit to Kauai, we decided to take another field trip out to Waimea Canyon; my brother Greg hadn't yet been there, and I'm not one to turn down the chance to take shots like this:


We noticed this waterfall cutting through the rocks to one side of the road as we were driving up to the canyon—I loved the contrast between the water, the red dirt, the green foliage, and the blue sky:


Since I shared quite a few shots of the canyon last year, I thought I'd try something posting different this time along—I selected a few of the pictures I took this year and used Photoshop to stitch them together into a panoramic image (as always, just click any of the pictures to enlarge). I don't think it turned out too bad, if I do say so myself:


While we walked back to the car from the official vantage point area, I noticed these two wild chickens up on the hillside:


As you can see from the flying dirt, the hen was in the process of carving out a nest for herself:


Just as we got to the car, Greg and I noticed some folks walking up and down a footpath just off to the left of where we'd been. Although Mom and Dad opted to wait at the car and cool down a bit, Greg and I were feeling adventurous enough to go check it out. This second panorama, again stitched together from a series of photos, gives you a sense of the view that greeted us:


And a couple of close-ups, courtesy of the pics that served as the basis of the panorama:



It was a good thing our dad opted not to join us; he's a bit leery of heights as it is, and the dropoff, as you can see here, was fairly abrupt and unforgiving:


Good news! I found Elvis:


I tried to do something a little different with this shot, keeping the tree to my left in the foreground to add a bit of depth to the image:


A few shots from the second official vantage point (and by official, I mean there's a paved walkway and a railing between the viewer and the edge of the hillside):





Finally, a couple of images from one of the lookout points I stopped at last year:



All in all, it was another great trip to Waimea Canyon.