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Photo: A panoramic view of Honolua Bay in West Maui near Kapalua.

One of the bigger panos that I’ve managed to shoot well enough to work. This view was a combination of 12 vertical images I captured on a golden hour excursion during the ‘09 Maui Photo Festival.

Since I was facing generally northwest with trees and mountains between me and the 7am sunshine, the light wasn’t the greatest. Still, I liked the detail in most of the final image and decided it post it here on the blog.

Click on the photo to view on Flickr and see a larger version with more detail.

Save Honolua

One last note about the area of Maui that this photo was taken. Its natural beauty is currently being threatened by commercial and private development, and one of the groups aiming to stop those threats is the Save Honolua Coalition. If you wouldn’t mind, take a moment to read the story behind their cause and follow their regular updates on the Save Honolua Coalition page on Facebook.

Mahalo,
– Kris

Photo: A different look at my Big Dipper image thanks to a cropping suggestion from Andy Beal.

What can I say, there may not be such a think as a “finished” image. After a great tip from Andy in yesterday’s Before and After post, I went back into the darkroom and spun this image out of Photoshop.  Many thanks to Andy for not only identifying the potential for a new look for the original image, but also for taking the time to leave a comment.

Moving Heaven and Earth

Okay, maybe just heaven.

My first attempt at this cropped version was a little off.  If you check the original image, you’ll notice that the right-most star in the Big Dipper constellation was actually captured to the right of the two chairs in the foreground. Now look at this image again.

Bet you wouldn’t have noticed it if I didn’t point it out, eh?

It was pretty easy to do, actually, by just duplicating the layer, moving it to the left and adding a gradient mask to blend it in.

Why Stop There?

I’m leaving this image as-is for now, since I like the simplicity of the scene and they well recognized Big Dipper – which was the reason I shot the scene in the first place.

At some point, I could take it a step further, and instead of the Big Dipper, I could swap it out for this image of the Milky Way I shot on Maui last September. The possibilities – like the universe in this case – truly are endless.

– Kris

The previous two editions in my Before and After series have featured the use of the Topaz Adjust plug-in for Photoshop.  Sometimes that extra creative step isn’t needed, and the following images demonstrate.  Many times it’s just a few minor tweaks in Adobe Camera Raw that will do the trick.

The Before Image

Most people will recognize that as the Big Dipper constellation, which I captured here over the waters of Sturgeon Bay in Sept. ‘08. It’s a neat little shot, but I wasn’t happy with the orange tint. Also, I had took a few liberties when I cropped this image initially, so I thought there might be something worth bringing back into it on the redux.

The After Image

I took a few different approaches to redoing this image. What I ultimately ended up with was processing the RAW image twice – known as mutli-RAW processing – to preserve some of the darkness in the sky while adjusting some of the foreground elements.

By processing the elements of the scene independently on separately layers and applying the changes using a gradient mask, I essentially keep the best of both worlds and have an image more to my liking with relatively little extra effort.

Thoughts?

For one, I definitely like the detail on the right with it’s color more in check and not gushing orange hues.  However, each time I look at that after image, I still think to myself, “is the foreground too bright?”. Since I save checkpoints at each step in my workflow, it wouldn’t be that difficult to go back and just darken the chairs on the pier just a tad.

Well, what do you think?

Photo: The outreached arm of the Sharks netminder falls short of another Hawks goal.

With hockey probably being the fastest sport that isn’t measured in horsepower, it’s glimpses like this which break the game down into frozen moments that make we want to shoot the sport more often.

Not to mention get back out there myself.

- Kris

This week’s edition of my weekly Facebook Photographers series brings us back to the island of Maui once again with the very talented Peter Liu.

I’ve been following Peter and his work on Twitter (@peterliu47) for sometime now, and got the chance to meet him in person last September at the huge #MauiTweetup we had. In fact, Peter is the unofficial #MauiTweetup photographer, and it’s always good to see photos of everyone during those events. Even though I can’t be there for all the fun, seeing everyone smiling and having a good time fills me up with Aloha.

Peter’s Work

Peter’s been at this a long time, and you can easily tell by the quality of his work and his wealth of knowledge on just about all aspects of photography. His specialties include landscapes, nature, and amazing underwater photography that makes me want to take my camera gear underwater and explore. Although, I guess I should learn how to swim first.

Not only is Peter an award winning photographer, he’s a big techie and social media fan, too. Using his way with the web, he also shares many tutorials online to help others learn to shoot and process images the way he does. He’s even looking at hosting an open-invitation photowalk during August right around the time I’ll be there for the ‘10 Maui Photo Festival. It will be pretty neat to be able to shoot along side Peter and learn from a true master of this craft.

The Photos

As always, pictures speak louder than words, so here are a few links to find more of Peter’s work.

• Peter Liu Photography on Facebook
• Peter’s photography site and portfolio
• Images for sale at ImageKind
• Photos on Twitpic from recent #MauiTweetups

Drop A Note

As always, if you have a Facebook page you think I should feature here, leave a comment on the discussion topic posted over at my own photography Facebook page.

– Kris