Naturally

What is it about plumerias? They are just the most beautiful flowers. I never seem to get tired of shooting them in all sorts of surroundings. Recently I've been floating them in water and experimenting with shooting them in a well lit area with lots of windows.



The green leaves here are the new banana leaves, which emerge furled perfectly into a tube. They unroll within a day, and I even notice that they change shape while shooting them. The lighting is a bit of a trick- it's a remote flash at the base of the leaf.

Night in Waikiki

I recently did a shoot for my close friend, surfboard shaper Matt Yerxa, in Waikiki, with one of his team riders, Japanese pro surfer Shuji Kasuya. This kind of shoot can be a lot of fun because there isn't a lot of pressure, and I am free to experiment with different camera settings and angles, without worrying about results all the time - just play around and see what happens. The first shots are Shuji in Waikiki. I was using a slow shutter speeds to blur the lights.


Zooming the lens with the shutter open made some interesting light trails, as did spinning the camera. The flash kept Shuji acceptably sharp. At one point a tourist trolley swept past just at the right time, making an interesting blur. There's a street performer all dressed in gold in the background of many of the shots - a free extra.



We also did some cool night shots with a camera mounted on our Mini Cooper. I got a new camera support called a Bogen Magic Arm ($200 at Lighthaus Camera) and clamped it to the surfboard racks. I triggered the camera from the passenger side with a wired remote, and had a hand held flash inside triggered by a Pocket Wizard radio trigger.


This was a lot of fun, even though Matt was a bit nervous about pulling in to the famous strip club "Femme Nu" with his boards and a camera rigged on top of the Mini. I think it turned out to be one of the best images because of all the neon. The bouncers didn't even seem to notice us, which was a good thing.

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.