"Under the Kukui" - New Composition by D. Bodhi Smith

Here is my newest composition entitled, "Under the Kukui"...This is another new image from my recent trip to the Hawaiian island of Maui. There are so many beautiful waterfalls on the island, that it could take years to capture them all with a lens in a way that did them justice. I hope I did that for these falls.

The waterfall pictured here is one of the more famous and better known called "Twin Falls" located a few miles east of Paia alongside the road to Hana via a short hike of about 1.5 miles. The falls are on private property, but the owners run a fruit stand and permit people to access the falls if they stay on the trail and "behave" themselves.

When I woke up in Kihei, I went outside and saw that there were no clouds, but this is not a problem for a photographer on Maui because there are several micro-climates on the island. Kihei is on the Southwest corner of Maui and is easily of the driest places on the island with a climate similar to what I am used to here in my native San Diego. But the opposite side of the island, the Northeast, has rainforests and it actually rained on that part of the island every single day we were there.

So I decided to drive at sunbreak to Twin Falls and try my luck. And it worked, except I got a little more weather than I had bargained for. It started raining about 1/2 an hour into the drive just outside of Paia, which is about 10 miles from the falls. By the time I got to the trailhead, it was really raining. So I put on all my wet gear and headed off down the muddy trail to see what I could capture.

After a very easy gradual uphill hike of about 1.5 miles is where the trail ends into the stream that has the falls upstream. It had rained pretty hard for the past couple of days here, so the water level was pretty high and very cloudy. I used my tripod as a probe to check the depth of the water and thankfully it never got deeper than my shoulders. (But I imagine that many people would probably turn around and not got the rest of the hike to the falls because of this small pitfall).

I made my was across the stream to the opposite bank and then made my way through the forest to the falls. At first glance, they are quite breathtaking and eternal in their fall. I walked all the way around and under them to scout out the best angle for me to shoot. The spot I chose (the vantage in this image) was right underneath a Kukui tree--which gives the image its title. There were fallen nuts all around, so I guess I fit right in ;) Btw, I love kukui nut necklaces, and I own close to 20 different ones, many of which I brought back from Hawaii on this trip. Simply put, I believe that they bring me luck, so I frequently wear them.

Because of the rainfall over the past couple days here, there was much debris of broken tree limbs in the pool beneath the falls that I has to clean out before I could shoot. Some of the limbs were pretty damn big, so it took me about half an hour to "tidy" up my scene. I figured that all the tourists who would end up shoot here later in the day would never know how cluttered it was, so I guess i did a nameless and thankless job that other benefited from.

I really had to fight with the rain for every exposure i took, especially the longest ones with keeping my filters dry and unfogged. Man, was the rain coming down...but even though I was soaked to the bone, I was really never cold, which is a cool thing about being in the rain on a tropical island I guess.

With the downpour from the heavens and the earliness of the morning, I had the place to myself for almost two hours, which was very tranquil and special considering that this location gets pretty packed with tourists every day. I had plenty of time to capture the images I wanted. So when the first group arrived, a party of 4 who showed up to swim under the falls and film themselves with a GoPro, I was done and ready to head out.

Of course, right then as I was leaving, the skies opened up and the rain stopped. Go figure.

On the hike back, which always seems longer than the hike in, I walked by hundreds of people headed up to the falls. It was like a dam of people broke open and they were all flooding to Twin Falls. Crazy amounts of people, of whom half must have asked me "Is this the right way?" and "How much farther are the falls?" To which I gave the same response, "Yes, you are almost there" no matter how far away I was getting from the falls. In a world where everything is relative, they were all almost there, no matter how far down the trail they were in reality.

Camera Settings: ISO-50, 24mm at f/22 for 610 seconds using one Lee Proglass 3.0ND Filter (10 stops) and one inverted Lee.75ND Grad to stop down the brighter pool of water 2.5 stops. I chose a f-stop of f/22 and an ISO of 50 so that I could get a longer exposure without having to put another filter on the holder and have to fight with an additional filter getting wet. Btw, to qualm my obsession with numbers, this image was exposed for 10mins, 10 seconds and captured from 10am until 10:10am...

I hope this image and message find you well.

Mahalo and Maluhia,

D."Bodhi"

New Release, "Panther at Play"

This is my new release entitled "Panther at Play"... pictured here are the beautiful Panther Falls in southern Washington's Gifford Pinchot National Forest.

This area is really super super wet much of the year as practically a true rain forest, so everything is extremely green and soft looking. Panther Falls are very powerful and have numerous cascades coming down about 100 foot cliff into a ravine below. There's a nice view from the top of the falls via a wooden observation deck. getting down to the deck is very easy once you find the trailhead, which is basically an unmarked trail from the road. The entrance to the trail is marked by spray painting on the pavement "PF -->" in blue...you gotta look really closely just to find it.

For me however, the vantage point from the deck doesn't really show the power of these majestic falls, so I wanted to make my way down the cliff to the base of the falls. Looking down, you could tell human traffic had been below in the canyon by the falls as the moss next to the stream was trampled a bit. So there had to be a way down somewhere, somehow. Of course, I found out that there's no easy or safe way down, at least not from the observation deck. I scouted the area and managed to find a treacherous little natural staircase winding down the cliff's face for about 20 feet to a more manageable slope that had a rough trail others have used. These super narrow little natural rock steps were very wet and mossy, but there were pretty good hand holds and foot holds using trees, roots, and rocks down this small portion of the cliff located south and above the observation deck. I muscled up some courage and told my self I could do this climb if I take my time. So when I did climb down, I made sure to maintain three points of contact at all times as I slowly make my way down with handholds and footholds that were slick but stable. This was a path that has been obviously used before, but probably not when its real wet like when I went down on this day.

With this being a short weekend flight to Portland, my dog and my muse, was unable to join me on this trip (and his presence was truly missed). This is one of those cases where if the Dude (my pup) had been with me, he would have moderated me as I would not have gone down this way because he would not have been able to follow me safely. I guess in this way, he sort of looks out for me...as I always look out for his safety, and in doing so, being safer comes back to me. Part of the way down this small cliff, I even had to throw down to the trail below my tripod and my waders that I was caring...I had them attached to my camera backpack and they were snagging things making the climb a bit more dangerous than it already was. By tossing them down, I was able to better balance out my pack and make myself a little bit more agile in the tight spaces.

So, I did make it down safely, however this was probably not the smartest and safest way with me being alone. Had something happen to me, who knows how long I would have been there before someone would have found me for this is a very remote area. Once I was down, I did manage to find a better way out that climbed up to the road about 2 tenths of a mile south of the "trailhead." Not exactly calming and safe, but definitely a much better way in and out...still quite steep and very sketchy, but much smarter and safer than scaling down a 20 foot cliff in the wilderness in the wet and so forth. I will visit these falls again in the future, and this will be the route I will choose, especially when the Dude is with me.

At the base of the falls, there was tons and tons of mist being thrown off from the falls. Extreme wetness in the air. So there was no way I would be able to do a long exposure here in the ravine at the base of these falls. I did some tests, and it seemed like no longer than about 10 seconds was possible with all the missed hitting my lens. So I opted for about a 3 second exposure, which is the time for the composition that you see here. I had to clean my lens after every shutter release, it was that wet out. This image is actually a composite of two images stitched together using Adobe Photoshop PhotoMerge since the area is impossible from the bottom to shoot with just one frame. So I had to shoot two frames and put it together and make a 1:2 ratio image which is what you see here.

This spot had rampant beautiful mossy greens everywhere, dotted with some fall color...and there was low light filtering in from Sun which was about an hour from setting. This made for real nice soft colors and allowed me to hold a three second exposure at f/22 using no filters whatsoever.

Camera Settings: ISO-100, 30mm at f/22 for 3 seconds taken at 5pm on Saturday 10-18-2014

peace,
D."Bodhi" Smith