Rodney Campbell's Blog

I’m very thankful that Janet Clark arranged for me to join their regular weekend sunrise group (affectionately called “dA Crazies”) for a shoot on the eastern coast of the island at Makapu’u

Makapu’u Dreamtime

Janet even drove down from the north east side of the island where she lives to come and pick me up from my hotel (at 4:20AM) before heading off to Makapu’u Beach on the eastern shores of Oahu for sunrise

The weather was looking a little iffy (we’re in paradise but today of all days it’s decided to rain) and on the drive there we drove through some very heavy patches of pouring rain…

However once we arrived most of the rain held off and we just had some patchy sprinkling every now and then. This in combination with the gusty winds that always seem to be here on Oahu 🙂 meant for lots of water droplets on the filters which unfortunately played havoc with many of my shots 🙁

Note: These photographs (especially the wider shots) look much better when larger – so click any of the images below to see larger versions in an inline overlay slideshow gallery viewer.

We met up in the carpark with a large group of keen photographers (probably about 25 of them) and chatted for a while before heading down to the rocks

I was really looking forward to shooting here (I’d seen it from way above at the lookout during the day a few days beforehand). It was very dark and extremely hard to see and when you go somewhere completely new (in the pitch black) – it’s very hard to imagine what the compositions are going to be like or prepare for the shots

I found this large pool of water just back from the edge of the waves and decided to use it for my foreground interest and was hoping for some reflections of the sky on the water

I shot towards where the sun would be rising in about 45 minutes time and included Makapu’u Point and the Makapu’u Point Lighthouse as well as the crescent moon high in the sky

It was so very dark I jacked the ISO a little (to 400) and opened the aperture (f/8) to let in more light and had to do some serious light painting of all the foreground rocks and the pool with my small zoomable LED torch to add something to the otherwise totally black foreground (these black volcanic rocks don’t help with that either :)). 154 seconds later with just the three stop Hitech Reverse Grad ND out front

Cracking Makapu’u

You can already see the abundance of fine water spray on the filters – it’s going to be one of those mornings…

Personally I prefer the vertical composition I took next (at the top of this post) which shows more of the pool and rocks below me

Just off the coast of Makapu’u beach is Mānana Island. It’s a 63-acre (25 ha) offshore tuff cone known as Rabbit Island because of its resemblance to a large rabbit’s head rising out of the sea and because it was once inhabited by introduced rabbits after a rancher released them there, the island is now a protected bird sanctuary

I moved over closer to where Janet was shooting and looked for some compositions looking out to sea over Rabbit Island

About half an hour till sunrise and I’m still light painting rocks 🙂

Rabbit Dreams

and then a bit over ten minutes to sunrise the sky lit up in a blaze of pre dawn colour – still lots of heavy dark rainclouds about dropping rain on us every now and then but the thinner upper cloud was putting on a good show

I found this nice composition perched up higher on a small pillar of rock looking down into a nice clear pool of water with some sweeps of black volcanic rock curving out in front of me. This place like much of Hawaii is like some pre-historic paradise (which I guess is why so many movies of that ilk are shot here). I dropped the ISO to 50 to force a longer exposure and still using the 3 stop reverse grad…

The Land that Time Forgot

Only a couple minutes till sunrise now and the rain clouds swept in briefly dumping some rain on us – we sheltered for a few minutes and got back out there :). Still using just the 3 stop Reverse GND

Makapu’u Dawning

It’s 15 minutes after sunrise and we’re still getting some interesting colour in the sky and some funky clouds – this nice sweeping arch to mirror my composition in the rocks in the sand. I’ve added the Heliopan Polariser to a 3 stop Lee Grad ND

Everything Leads to Rabbits

Twenty minutes after sunrise and it’s still interesting

Rabbit Wash

and by now the sun is well and truly up and the light on the mountains and cliffs behind us is spectacular. Time to turn around and try a composition that way before we head off. These excellent vibrant green leafy plants scattered amongst the bare rocks makes for an ideal foreground interest

I’ve dropped down to a 2 stop Lee Grad and still using the Heliopan CPL (probably dialled in a little too strongly in this case) – 30 minutes after sunrise

Blue and Green

Then it was off for a well earned breakfast

Once again thankyou to all dA Crazies for a wonderful morning out and especially to Janet who carted me around for the day 🙂