Okay, well she didn’t really GIVE it to me, but I did manage to get a day to myself to drive/shoot the entire west and north coasts of the island. I left from Kihei and made my way all the way around the coast to Wailuku, braving the very narrow single-lane ‘highway’ that begins a ways past Kapalua.

One of the highlights of this drive was the view of Honalua Bay you see below. The colour of the water was absolutely amazing, and you can see why this is a great snorkeling destination (all of those little dots are snorkelers doing their thing).

I’m sure I’ve said this before, but Venice is by far one of the coolest cities I’ve ever had the pleasure of visiting. There are so many streets and alleys to explore, and you never know what you’ll find around the next bend. If you haven’t been, you should put Venice on your must see list.

Although I still love processing HDR photographs (and probably always will), lately I’ve been finding a lot of enjoyment in processing single exposures. There are many times when the limited dynamic range of a camera can make a scene more compelling than if the full range of light were exploited. If you’re an HDR enthusiast, experiment with two versions of an image: one tonemapped from a set of brackets and one single exposure from the set. See if all that dynamic range is really necessary to convey your photographic message. It’s easy to fall into the trap of shooting brackets and processing for HDR all the time…make sure you inspect your bracket sets before tonemapping to really see if you need to expand the dynamic range.

Don’t be afraid to try new (or old) things, it’s good for you, and you may just fall in love with this wonderful hobby all over again.

The details: 3 handheld exposure HDR tonemapped in Photomatix, Lightroom for color, contrast, Noiseware for noise control.