Island Style Hale

There is something about John Cruz's music that I've always loved. His song "Island Style" talks of Hawaii in terms of family, food, and friends with the obvious warmth and love of a local boy for his home. I'd seen images of John performing. He seemed different somehow, with long hair and a style that seemed almost as though he'd completely forgotten there was an audience.


Kyoko and I picked out "Island Style" as the soundtrack for our blog entry on the making of a shoot we had done with a wedding couple, fully dressed in wedding attire, tandem surfing. (View the blog entry here.) Kyoko called John's manager Leslie to ask if John might be interested in trading the use of his music for some photography, and that's how we ended up meeting an absolute gem of a man. John came to our house for a photo shoot, walked in, politely said hello, and walked right out again, straight to the beach, where he started fly fishing. He seemed to have forgotten all about the shoot. I sensed that he just needed to do that, to have some space. I liked that. It seemed honest.

Above: Tor gets down on the hale floor...see resulting image below.

I'd been working for over a week to complete a small hale in the naupaka bush fronting the beach at my house. My friend Daniel found some ironwood posts, and we used local or recycled woods where we could, lashing them together with manila hemp rope. We thatched the roof with palm fronds, on the morning of the shoot with John. I knew John was not a showboat, and asking him to pose for something contrived would be almost disrespectful. John turned out to have a wonderfully expressive face with great character, and all I had to do was to be ready with the camera. He played amazing music, with a warm, positive energy. It felt like a blessing for the new hale.

Visit John Cruz's website.

Pele's White Dog

There's a legend about Madam Pele, goddess of the volcano, and her white dog. It is said that the white dog appears in the lava fields right before an eruption. Some say that the dog is Pele herself warning the islanders of the approaching danger.

I was recently on the Big Island shooting lava at the Waikupanaha Ocean Entry site. It's an incredible place where the elements meet and where you can witness the creation of an island. My friend Brad Lewis, an accomplished volcano photographer, talks about the earth being a living being. The common saying "solid as a rock" doesn't really apply here.


After experiencing forces of nature of such awesome power, I was quietly hiking out of the area when I saw a white dog standing in a field of black lava. I took several photos, thinking of my friend Richard Drake, who had told me about the legend of the white dog. It wasn't until I looked at the photos on my computer that I noticed the interesting and strange expression on the dog's face. I'm the least superstitious person I know, but there was something about that dog...

Today is Thanksgiving, and I probably have Pele to thank for getting me back from the lava fields safely.

Radical Wedding, Dude!

We met Melissa and Taio through some friends on the North Shore. Melissa and Taio actually met out surfing at Sunset Beach, while Taio was working as a lifeguard, and Melissa had just moved to the Islands. We photographed their beautiful wedding at a private home at Velzyland, near Sunset Beach, which was a lot of fun. It wasn't until some time later that I came up with the idea of shooting a wedding couple in formal attire on a surfboard, and immediately thought of Melissa and Taio. They are both good surfers, they're naturals in the water, and they are so attractive that it's hard to take a bad photo of them.


Melissa loved the idea, but she was a little worried how her mother might react to trashing a new wedding dress that took a lot of time to find, and considerable work to customize by hand (not to mention the not-so-insignificant cost). To her credit, her mother told her to go for it. She said Melissa would never wear the dress again, but the photos would be a great keepsake for them. Taio didn't think twice about wearing his classy new three-piece suit in the salt water. He never liked suits anyway.


We had a blast with the shoot at Laniakea, in beautiful clear water with nice little waves. I rode a big stand up paddle board alongside the wedding couple. The timing was a bit hard, and there were several out-takes, what with hanging onto the camera, paddling, while shooting, and riding the board. I found that kneeling gave me a nice low angle, and was fairly stable. The deck pads on the paddle board are great for setting the camera down while paddling.

Most of the surfers in the water tried to ignore us (surfers are just too cool), but one surfer did say, "That's a first!"

Taio shot back with "We're looking for the preacher...you haven't seen him out here, have you?"


Check out the "making of" video below, which gives some idea of what it took to get these shots, as well as being pretty good comedy.

Music for video: "Island Style" by John Cruz
(used with permission)

Thanks to John Cruz for allowing the use of my favorite song, to Melissa and Taio for an incredible job, and to Melissa's Mom, for being so cool.

Click here to see more wedding images by Tor Johnson Photography.
Click here to see a previous wedding blog entry.

A New Twist on Surfboard Building

Local legend shaper Eric Arakawa is starting a new surfboard company called Arcomi (a modification of the Greek archomai, for "beginning"), in the Waialua Sugar Mill.


It's a different sort of board company in that it's based on the craftsmen involved. There are no "ghost shapers" here. Each person involved in the process has a name and a face.


With the current trends toward the "pop-out, made in China" and the "pro-board-stretched-to-your-size," Eric and his crew are going back to basics, back to a time when you knew your shaper and glasser, and they made you a genuine custom board for your style of surfing that made you really want to go out there and surf.


The idea is that these guys all work together to develop new ideas as a group. They are making some unusual designs, and doing some classic work like old school glassing and pin lines. I've been shooting quite a bit of material trying to document the creation of their project.


Eric is a very creative guy, and he came up with some interesting ideas for photographing the surfboard building process. I liked his idea of light coming out of a resin bucket so much that Eric and I ended up taping a Speedlite to the bottom of a paper bucket and shooting his glasser, Fermin Lagonell, pouring magenta-tinted resin onto a board.


Since the resin has a very short working time, we knew we'd ruin the glass job, so we used a reject board and just kept pouring resin onto it. I think we came up with something unusual, a new twist on the theme. Now if I can just get this resin off my camera gear....

Hitachi Corporate Reports

We were recently asked by a long time client of mine, Mr. Seyama of the film production company U International Corp, to shoot the "Hitachi Tree" in Moanalua Gardens. Hitachi Corporation is a large Japanese firm that is involved in everything from heavy equipment to electronics to nuclear power plants.

Hitachi has used this giant monkeypod tree in its advertisements since 1973, and it has become their corporate symbol, a bit like the Apple logo is for Macintosh computers. Japanese tourists flock to the park by the busload to see the expansive park and take their photos in front of the iconic Hitachi tree. The tree and the park are actually owned by Damon Estates, but Hitachi supports the upkeep of the park, and retains photographic rights to the tree.



Over the years, Hitachi has photographed the tree from every angle and in every light they could find, so the challenge for us was to find something they hadn't seen yet. They were designing covers for corporate sustainability and environmental reports, so the images had to have a "green" feel. I came up with some interesting techniques to light the tree in late evening with starlight, but that was nixed by the art director because it didn't really show the "green" image they were looking for.

In his infinite wisdom, Mr. Seyama noted that a photo shoot is always a learning process in which the client and the photographer gradually come to understand each other. In the end we did find some beautiful greens, and we are looking forward to seeing the images in print.

View Tor's past work for Hitachi Corporation at http://www.hitachinoki.net/download/wallpaper.html.

Below: Hitachi's 2009 Corporate Social Responsibility Report featuring Tor's photo.

Weddings

I focus more on journalistic and commercial photography than weddings, but I recently had a wonderful time shooting two very different weddings. It so happened that a friend who shoots high-end weddings, Stephanie Riedel, became ill halfway through an important wedding. Her clients were prominent black Philadelphians who wanted the best of everything, even to the extent of bringing their own pastor and some amazing choral singers from the mainland.

The bride was gorgeous, the light at sunset was soft and warm. The ceremony was long, and there was a downpour just at the end, which made the entire wedding party scatter for cover. I ran in front of the wedding couple and caught the action.

Later the groom and his best men sang half a dozen songs to the bride, before starting an incredible dance party. I enjoyed filling in for Stephanie and I shot some images that I was very happy with.The long, traditional and religious ceremony couldn't have been more different from my next wedding- a simple Hawaiian ceremony for our new friends Brian and Tracey from Sydney, Australia. Noted Hawaiian kahu Butch Kauihimalaihi Helemano led a traditional Hawaiian ceremony including weaving of coconut fibers (ka nui ka'ula) symbolizing the weaving of the bride and groom's lives into one, and the traditional exchanging of breath (ka honi Hawai'i), the Hawaiian form of a kiss that symbolizes the sharing of life itself. The wedding was at Laniakea, one of my favorite beaches.

Learn more about Butch Helemano's Hawaiian wedding ceremonies.

It's been a joy to share some of the happiest moments of people's lives with them, and to have a chance to make a creative interpretation through the lens. Rather than simply taking pictures of a wedding, I think it's important to find new lighting, new angles, and new compositions in order to learn and stay passionate. I guess the same goes for any type of photography.

View more wedding images at Tor's website

Stand Up Paddling

Stand up paddlers are often vilified for taking too many waves, and riding ridiculously oversized boards on them. But then again, surfers are always jealous of anything different out there in the lineup.

I met Liam Wilmott while working on a beach shoot for Hawaii Visitor's Bureau, when he and a friend came by and dropped off some stand up paddle boards for us to shoot without even being asked! Liam does PR for C4 Waterman, a local board company. We worked with Liam to create a a display that promotes the sport, which we recently installed at Honolulu International Airport.

Click here to see Tor's photos of Liam getting caught inside on an SUP on some large Hawaiian waves.

Sailing Around Oahu

(click any image to enlarge)

I recently sailed our Beneteau 473 'Kahea' around the island of Oahu with my father. We used a winter westerly Kona system to send us East from Ko Olina to Kaneohe, then when the trade winds returned, we sailed back West again, so that we went downwind both ways. I shot some interesting material on the trip.

Approaching Waikiki under sail in the evening made for nice images, shooting from an inflatable boat, with Kahea and Diamond Head/ Honolulu in the background. The Ala Wai Harbor was stunning in the moonlight later.


The next day there were canoe races among school groups, and frenetic activity all over the harbor. I accidentally managed to position my camera and inflatable squarely in the middle of the race course, and got some serious scoldings from the coaches.




We took the Kona winds on around the island to Kaneohe on a crystal clear day, and I took more images from the inflatable of Kahea off the interesting rock formations off Koko Head. We spent a real Kona blow at Kaneohe Yacht Club, and the clouds racing over the swaying palms on bay in late evening light made for dramatic images.