e-510 14mm 1/125 f/8 iso 100

Saturday I ended up on Sidney Island, one of the smaller Gulf Islands, on what turned out to be the nicest day of the year so far. I was a bit too bold though and shrugged off the sunscreen for much of the day, the result being I came home with more colour (and a slight burn) than I got in almost two weeks in Hawaii.

e-510 14mm 1/125 f/7.1 iso 100

Hawaii? Hawaii, my time split between the islands of Maui and Oahu. In the comments, Shy Me wins, correctly identifying my May 2nd picture as the trails of Haleakala, Maui’s wonderful, utterly enormous and astounding volcano. The reason I’ve been so secretive about my destination is that, well I’ve been there now officially more than a few times, and Hawaii is a very special place to me so I wanted to show you a bit of my Hawaii – much and maybe most of which is well off the beaten path. Besides that, it’s been fun for me to read your comment guesses, and even when Jordan and davin both inadvertently gave away my destination (both already knew where I had been off to) I still managed to keep some of you wondering.

e-510 38mm 1/125 f/6.3 iso 100

Even - and especially - if you’ve never been to Hawaii, it’s still pretty easy to conjure up a mental picture from what you might remember of magnum P.I. or the Brady Bunch or Baywatch or any number of other versions of Hawaii that live in the collective consciousness. And yes, that Hawaii does exist and it’s not hard to find, although even those cliché places are a hundred times nicer when you’re actually there. But there’s an awful lot more to those islands, the most remote island chain on earth, islands full of exotic jungles, alpine meadows, desert climes, ranch country, exotic birds and flowers, abandoned cars, black sand beaches...I could go on and on. My Hawaii is both these places, and in sharing the first bunch of photos with all of you with my destination still in camera (pun not especially intended, but there it is) it was my hope to show just what an diverse and exotic place Hawaii is without turning your “Hawaii, how nice” filter on.

e-510 14mm 1/320 f/10 iso 800

today's pictures, some cliché and some not: top picture, kaena point, the most remote part of coastal oahu. second, waikiki beach, maybe the most famous beach in the world, only spent long enough there to have lunch at duke's, a great restaurant and bar right on the beach, took this photo seated at our table. third, a hawaiian airlines boeing 717 waiting to taxi at kahului airport, maui. in the background there's haleakala, from there and from a few other places on the island it looks almost tame and it's hard to imagine that it rises two miles above sea level. fourth and final, the pool of the hotel next to the hotel i stayed at in kihei, maui, in the distance is Kaho'olawe, the mysterious "dead island." I love kihei, late one night in the ebbing tropical heat I lay on my back all alone on the beach by the hotel and just watched the stars dance in the sky. I think that brief time in space may well prove to be one of the most wonderful and memorable moments of my entire life.

although i knew this would happen, it was worth the risk: yeah, like every other time i've been there, here i sit at home more than a month later and my heart still aches for that distant place, for real, it hurts like a lost lover or dearly departed close friend. at least i know it, all of it, is still there and will be waiting for me, it seems forever away but really it's just a six hour flight. I plan to go more often in the future.

now that the secret is out i find myself with a bit more liberty to post the pictures which may have given things away before now, and write a little about the Hawaiian islands and share with you some of the reasons I love this place so. so yes, more hawaii to come, although not too much more, i'm sure some of you are getting pretty tired of idyllic tropical scenes, and to that end, fear not, i'm out there with a camera or two several days a week trying to make fresh of that which seems so common to me. thanks for your patience, and thank you even more for your comments and emails, more than anything those are the things that keep me going on. Mahalo*!

*mahalo, “thank-you”, is what you say there, and in saying it you’re not being a poseur any more than you would be dropping a “merci” in Montreal even though you’re obviously not from there. All the same, it takes some getting used to, but really it’s just getting used to the island lifestyle; all of Hawaii is incredibly laid back, and I’m pretty sure maui rates as the most casual place on earth. Nobody’s much worried about anything there, especially not some haole (pronounced something like "HOW-lee") co-opting the second most courteous word of the Hawaiian language.