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Although I haven’t done much with my camera gear since the hobby went on hold a few months ago, it was still a pretty exciting week for me photography wise.

Two of my photos made it into Hawaii magazines this week, my Iao Stream photo and my Haleakala Sunrise image from the ‘09 Maui Photo Festival. Here’s the scoop on how it happened.

Iao Stream in Hawaii Magazine

I had originally submitted this photo to Hawaii Magazine for their Photo of the Week feature about a year ago. Thinking nothing of it since then, I was contacted by the magazine last month for a print-friendly version to run in their Your Hawai’i section of the July/August edition. I certainly couldn’t pass up on that opportunity.

Sunrise Silhouette in Maui No Ka ‘Oi Magazine

Already knowing about the photo printed in Hawaii Magazine, I was pleasantly surprised the following day when the July/August issue of Maui No Ka ‘Oi magazine arrived at our door. Featured in the magazine’s Talk Story section was a full page article on the upcoming Maui Photo Festival in August. Since this photo won the best portrait award in the inaugural event last year, I was invited to sign a photo release so it could be used by the event organizers for promotions and the like. And there you have it.

Time for another entry in my Facebook Photographers series. And like the previous entries, this one comes from the Hawaiian islands with a young and talented photographer, Makena Gadient.

(Photo Credit: Makena’s Flickr photostream)

I met Makena at the ‘09 Maui Photo Festival as one of the high school scholarship winners – all of which were pretty amazing for shooters their age.  Since the festival in September, I’ve been following along with her work on Twitter and the beginning of her 365 project on Flickr at the start of the year. It’s been great watching her experiment with a lot of different techniques and really starting to come into her own style this year.

Perhaps one of the things I envy the most about Makena (aside from living on Maui ) is that she’s coming into this hobby at such an ideal age. When you talk about teenagers getting into something with as much commitment and dedication to a craft that she is now, you can definitely tell that they have a bright future ahead of them and the sky is the limit with what they can, and will, accomplish.

Finding Makena’s Photos

In addition to posting the daily photos in her 365 project on her Facebook page, you can also find them and outtakes on her Flickr account.  It is certainly a lot easier to see the collective set on Flickr, and compare images from the beginning of the year to the recent weeks.

When you check out those photos on both sites, you’ll notice a reoccurring theme in both places – that is the support an encouragement of her friends and her family.  From acting as models to providing feedback and coming up with new ideas, there’s a lot of positive energy there that only fosters great things.

If you do have a Flickr or Facebook account, you’ll certainly want to follow along for the rest of this year and with where Makena’s work with photography may take her. If she follows her aspirations in photography in the future, I’m sure we’ll be hearing more from her.

Back to the Festival

Although I won’t be making the trip back to Maui for this year’s photography festival, I still will be following along with everyone.  In addition to Makena, I made so many connections last year that I still keep tabs on, and there will be more MPF alumni that will be featured in this series in the coming weeks and months.

Stay tuned.

– Kris

If you’re a regular Flickr user, I’m sure you’ve probably seen the “Most Interesting” page in your profile that shows what the service thinks are your most interesting images based on its own secret algorithms.

Well, if you haven’t, just click on Your Photostream from the home page, then Popular, and there you go.

In any case, seeing those images right there might be, well, interesting, but it might not be something everyone is going to do when browsing your photos.  Not like they would if, for example, they were in their own, automatically created photoset now, right?

Flickr Set Manager

Enter the Flickr Set Manager, which I found interestingly enough just browsing through someone else’s “Most Interesting” photoset.  You see, once you set this up, I like I have done here, it adds a nice little link explaining how it got there.  Pretty neat.

The process is pretty easy, and it all works using your Flickr account so you don’t to really do much of anything.  The website lets you setup what it calls Managed Sets, which is just a shorter way of saying “automagically generated photosets of your cool stuff.”  And it’s not just most interesting either.  The settings let you go random, choose least interesting (huh?), as well as recently posted or taken.  You can also filter by tags, dates, and even location if you’re a whiz at geotagging your pics like I do.

Try It Out

If you’re not already using this app and decide to give it a shot, post a link to your new photoset wonders so I can take a look.  If you’ve been using it for sometime already or using something similar, feel free to share as well.

Thanks,
– Kris

It’s been a few months since my last serious photo shoot at the end of February, but I got the call yesterday in the afternoon to come out and shoot for the Nighthawks Hockey club I used to play for and also coached.

I have a quite a long history with the team – which you can read about in this recent post over at my web development blog – and since I’m on the Board of Directors and was already going to the game anyway, it wasn’t that much effort to pack the gear and bring it with.

Up Closer

Seeing as this was just a JV hockey game in the hockey rink I practically grew up in, it was pretty easy for me to find my way over at the end of the home team bench and getting the most unobstructed view of the action I’ve had so far in any of the hockey shoots I’ve done. The majority of the photos were right from the bench area and not shot through the safety class along the boards.

Shooting with both my Canon 20D and my Rebel XSi at the same time allowed me to shoot telephoto for the far end of the ice and more wide angle for the action up front.  That, and having the extra room not being confined in single seat at the other arenas made this shoot very enjoyable. The low lighting was an issue as always, but I just left the ISO at 800 and ran with it.

Hack Job

When we last chatted, one of the primary reasons I’ve put things on hold was because I didn’t have time for processing in post. That was the case here as well which I spent a few hours on Sunday to process these photos.  Not something I had planned for my weekend, but that’s how it goes.

The saving grace was that the primary purpose of these photos was for the team’s Facebook page, so I knew going in that my post processing workflow wasn’t going to be the same as it is for my vacation and landscape shots. In fact, it was pretty much a hack job flying through about 40 of the best shots using Adobe Photoshop Elements on my Mac. For the intended purpose, it did the job.

More Photos

If you’d like to see the rest of the images, you can view the Nighthawks vs. New Trier photoset on my webnelly Flickr account. Not sure if I’ll take on any more games this spring season, but it would something I’d definitely want to pursue when the Fall season starts depending on where things are by then.

– Kris

Well, if you see my little bunny friend here, you know something’s up.

As hard for it is for me to say this out loud, but it has come to the point where this amazing hobby of mine has to go on the backburner for awhile.

There are numerous factors playing into this very difficult decision – some positive, others negative – but I’m choosing not to dig into those right now. At the end of the day, my current workload and other demands on my time have left me very little opportunity to shoot new images. And even when I do get to break open the camera bag, I’m left with even less time to work with them in post and share them with everyone here.

Missing Maui

The other big impact this has on my overall happiness is that I’ll have to pass on the Maui Photo Festival this year – which is very unfortunate since I’ve been looking forward to returning ever since we got on the plane to go home after the ‘09 event.

I wish everyone involved with the MPF this year and those either returning or attending for the first time this year all the best – I really want to be there with you, and look forward to seeing the great shots and hearing about the wonderful experiences you’ll be having once it has come and passed.

What Now?

I don’t want to say this is the end of everything, so if you are so inclined, please bear with me as I work out my priorities elsewhere.  While I won’t be posting new images very often for the foreseeable future, I will try to add new content from time to time.  Whether it’s links to other photographers on Facebook or interesting articles or topics I come across, I’m hoping to keep this little site going so that when the time comes that I’m able to recommit myself, I can get going again rather quickly.

Many Thanks

I would like to extend a collective Thank You to everyone I’ve interacted with online or in real life as it relates to photography.  The last year and a half of really taking this hobby seriously has brought me so much joy, and networking and meeting other photographers has been a major part of that.

In a way, that interaction with my photography peers may be something that I’ll miss the most.  That, and the trips to Maui.

Happy shooting everyone, and keep those great images coming.  I look forward to rejoining you all someday.

– Kris