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.

Kauai 2012: Lighthouse visit the first, part 1

I may or may not have gone a little nuts with the picture taking during my visits to the Kilauea Lighthouse this year, which may or may not have left me with a boatload of photos to go through. My first visit of our trip will likely take me three posts to cover


To start things off, photos of various Red-footed Boobies I saw over the course of the day. With this first one, I really liked how the bird looked against the blue water:

Caught this one with its mouth open:

How I managed to capture this one looking right at me, I'll never know:

I liked how this bird was backlit, making the wing bones more visible:

I know this is very similar to the photo I started with, albeit with the water in the background being a darker shade of blue, but I liked how it came out so much I couldn't resist including it:

Loved the combination of colors in this Albatross photo:

Just a touch of lens flare on this one, but I think the overall effect works quite well:

The lighthouse itself; trying to take a shot that doesn't have people in the foreground is nearly impossible, so I felt fortunate to snag one with a fairly minimal human presence:

What made this first trip to Kilauea particularly special to me was the presence of several female Great Frigatebirds flying around and over the lookout point. In the past, my photos of these birds have involved a fair amount of distance between me and them, and thus not a lot detail in the final product. On this day, though, they were flying lower than I'd ever seen before; between their lack of altitude and my new, slightly stronger zoom lens, I finally got some good closeups of this breed of bird:

It's not perfectly in focus, but it was my best photo of one of the Frigatebirds from this particular angle:

Last year, I was fortunate enough to capture an Albatross using its foot to scratch its head mid-flight. This year, lightning struck again, this time with a Frigatebird. I didn't get nearly as many clear shots as with the Albatross, so I selected just a pair of photos for posting. Although, really, this first one pretty much says it all—you can practically hear it thinking, "Oooooh yeah, that's the spot...":

And with this one I liked how well you could see its claw against its head:

In addition to the scratching, I also captured some mid-flight preening:

Not the best shot focus-wise, but I thought catching the curve of its wing mid-flap made this one post-worthy:

A couple of my clearer photos:

I only managed one decent shot of this bird as she turned herself around:

I definitely lucked out with this one; the similar body/wing positions combined with the right-hand bird being out of focus makes, at least to my eye, for a really interesting bit of symmetry:

Finally, another fortuitous bit of lens flare produced one of my favorite shots of the entire day:

Waimea Canyon

In addition to my first honu sighting, this year's trip also included my first visit to Waimea Canyon, located on the west side of Kauai. Since we stay on the north shore, you'd think this would be a fairly straightforward trip. However, the road that circles most of the island literally stops a few miles from where we stay, which means we had to drive to the east and south sides of the island to finally reach our destination. So what could have been, in theory, a 30-45 minute drive was closer to 90 minutes instead. Good thing we all enjoyed each other's company (and before I get any further, I have to give special thanks to my dad, who did all of the driving for both this excursion and anywhere else we went during our time on Kauai).

Once we finally got to the west side, the next step was driving up Mount Waiʻaleʻale. Partway along we stopped at one of the lookouts, both so I could take some pictures and so we could all stretch our legs for a few minutes. My camera doesn't have any sort of panoramic photo setting, but hopefully these pics will give a decent sense of the view we had:







However, even a vista like that doesn't really prepare you for seeing the canyon itself; Mark Twain dubbed Waimea Canyon "the Grand Canyon of the Pacific," and when you finally get there it's not hard to see why:





A closer look at some of the rock formations:





Further on up, the view from the top of the mountain wasn't too bad either:




A closer look at a waterfall nestled against the above mountainside:



A catamaran we spotted as we enjoyed the view:



Different lookout, same gorgeousness:





A couple of shots of an ultralight that went by overhead:





A few photos I took of the nearby hiking trail:





Looking back up the trail toward where I'd started from:



And a couple of shots of the surrounding terrain; I loved the contrast between the red dirt and... well, everything from the green vegetation to the blue sky:





When I noticed this view of the canyon on our way back down, I just had to ask Dad to turn around and go back so I could take a picture or two; this particular shot turned out to be one of my favorites from that day:





I thought the dead tree at the top of the ridge helped make for a striking visual:



And one last look at the canyon from a lookout point a little further down the mountain:





All in all, just a gorgeous place to visit, and most definitely worth the time it took to get there. I hope I get a chance to go again during future trips to Kauai.