Just Do It

This didn't take long...

"Tis The Season...

It's a Charlie Brown Ad Agency Christmas!

And a special thanks to Leslie Burns-Dell'Acqua at the Burns Auto Parts Blog.

Opening This Friday Night

Tomorrow (Friday) night, The Paia Contemporary Gallery will feature an exhibit opening showcasing the works of Mary Mitsuda from Oahu, Pascal Pierme from Santa Fe', and Wayam Karja from Indonesia. The opening is from 6-9pm. RSVP is requested. Email them at: lauren@PaiaContemporaryGallery.com or call 808.579.8444 to let them know you plan to attend.

The Quality Of Rain

"Rain showers my spirit, and waters my soul" - Emily Logan Decens

Waking up this morning to skies heavy & steely grey, the scent of rain was in the air. Before the first cup of coffee was downed, the rain had begun, steady... increasing and relentless through the mid-afternoon. Earlier in the day there was even the rumble of thunder and an occasional flash lighting up the dark sky.

Winter in the tropics brings rain & strong winds from the southwest. On the upper slopes of the Big Island volcanoes and even on Haleakala here on Maui, there can be infrequent dustings of snow. So far this year, there has been no snow and the rains have been late in arriving. Today's wetting is a welcome relief to island farmers & gardeners. Summer and Fall have been unusually dry, the island looks brown and parched so the steady, all-day rainfall is sure to put some green into things just in time to get things looking at their best for the onslaught of holiday visitors.

Bad news... the usual minor leakage here at the studio which occurs with every wet Kona storm. Nothing is damaged, thankfully, as this is a perennial occurrence and everything is stored well out of water's reach.

The photos above are from the files... the water drops on grass image was published as a cover image in Spirit of Aloha, the magazine formerly published by the now-defunct Aloha Airlines to illustrate a story & photo essay titled "The Quality of Rain". That cover won the 2002 Excellence in Journalism Award from the Hawaii Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists. The image below it was taken from a Waikiki hotel balcony during an especially violent lightning storm.

Art Sale: Found Objekts

The triptych pictured above came to be as a result of an encounter & meeting with Japanese artist Miki, now living & working in Paris. The subjects of each of the three photographs are common kitchen utensils found in some form in most homes... a bottle opener, a cheese grater and garlic press. These items, however, Miki found in "rag piles" on the streets of Paris. As she told me, in some areas of Paris, when someone vacates an apartment or flat, either by death or relocation, and they leave personal items behind... the building superintendents will often place the left-behind objects along the sidewalks for people to rummage through. 

Each item was photographed individually with a 4x5 view camera using Polaroid Type55 positive/negative film (unfortunately now nearly extinct), matted and framed for an art show fundraiser for The Maui Food Bank.The theme of the show was food related and the goal to raise money to help feed the needy. Over the years, I have made several series' of these photographs, all as traditional silver-gelatin prints toned sepia. I recently received a request from a sister for a set of these prints to grace the almost barren walls of her (relatively) new home. With little time to get back into the darkroom to make traditional silver prints, I experimented this morning with scanning the original negatives and compositing them as they were displayed in the original framed triptych. 

I am rather pleased with the results and have decided to attempt an experiment... selling the prints of this triptych thru this blog. Each series is printed on Hahnemuhle 17"x22" Photo Rag Satin paper using Epson Archival Inks. There is a numbered edition of 20 prints. This edition of unframed prints I offer at $75.00 each + postage. Silver Gelatin Prints are also available.

 You can order by sending me an email: 

photoho@hawaiiantel.net

A Quick Trip Into The Valley...

Today I enjoyed the company &  rousing conversation of Jupiter Images contributor, Robie Price over a nice lunch. Topics of discussion included sailing the coastal waters of the State of Maine, the state of the stock photography business (SuperStock Agency the latest to announce a bankruptcy filing), the business of photography in Hawaii vs. the mainland, the fact that neither of us quite understand the current trend of "snapshot" editorial and fine art photography that is all the rage... at least in the photo blogosphere, finding a decent Apple computer repair guy/gal and a myriad of other topics best left off the blog.

After lunch, I took a drive into historic Iao Valley State Park just a couple of miles up the road from my studio. The rock formation pictured above is known as the "Iao Needle" and is listed in all the Maui guidebooks as a must stop. The air was cool and fresh as I walked down the path towards the streams edge. That it was late in the afternoon and the thick clouds had already begun rolling over the mountains allowed for long, slow exposures which turned the flowing water into misty swirls.

Catching Up...

OK... we're through the first major holiday of the season with two more to go in the coming weeks.  Around my house, the annual gobbler (organic & free-range, of course) was plucked, stuffed, roasted to golden perfection and quickly dispatched by a handful of hungry guests. In between hourly bastings, I managed to read a fabulous article by west coast photographer Doug Menuez posted at the Editorial Photographers website. The article is titled "On Chaos, Fear, Survival & Luck: Longevity Is The Answer". You can find it here. It's well worth the read.

In other news, Nikon has been slow to catch up with the competition in releasing a larger, full-frame sensor to it's Pro D-DSLR arsenal. It now appears that that's about to change. Over the long weekend, Nikon Europe announced the pending release of it's newest offering-to-be, the D3X.

Boasting a 35.9x24mm., 24.5 mexapixel sensor, a built-in optical low-pass filter (fear moire no more),  a new 51-point autofocus system with the same auto-focus tracking ability as the D3 and will write to dual CF slots at a mind-numbing 35mb./sec. Some of the reports I have read indicate that .tiff files created from Camera Raw/NEF files will be in the 75mb. range, plenty big enough to finally meet the requirements of major stock agencies and for making large prints without interpolation. Unfortunately, there are no firm reports of a price for this little beauty (rumours have it at around $5.5K) ... or a release date. You can find out more by clicking here.