hawaii photos

I'd like to share some of my favorite photos from the trip.

Feel free to add your thoughts, comments, and/or crits.  I am an untrained 'chick with a camera' and some fantastic equipment that I don't know how to use yet.  I work mostly with a Nikon D50, a Sigma 72mm 28-200 lens, and (as of a day before the trip) a polarizer filter.  

Hawaii had lots of brightness, lots of haze, and lots of shadowing - three things I don't know how to overcome.  Take a peek at the best I could come up with!

North Shore

these little birds tickled my fancy.

I liked sitting under the coconut trees and looking up at all the textures and the contrast between the earthy greens/yellows and the wispy blues in the sky.

typical sunset shot.  I was desperately wishing for my tripod.

After clambering all over this outcropping for an hour or so, all my equipment was salty and foggy.  I almost like the haze, though.  The impurity makes it feel like a memory.

Playing with the new filter.

What struck me about this image once I uploaded it was how it looks like architecture.  That's a catamaran sail, by the way.

Showing off the sweet wide-angle lens here, not to mention the sweet scenery.  We snorkled in this cove.

Dear feds: we didn't see the signs because they were on the other end of the beach.  PS, this beach was by far the brightest environment I've ever tried to shoot.  Hotter than hot, visually burning up, even my eyesight was bleached out.

The water and the sand really looked like that.

This was taken before I really got the hang of the filter, but I still like it for some reason.

This outcropping was one of the coolest things we may ever experience in our lives.

Certainly one of the most evocative images I've ever taken...

What did you think?