Maui

  • Humpback Whales
    Jan
    2022
    19
    2022 / Jan / 19

    Mother and Baby Humpback Whales

    A beautiful adventure.

    I was waiting for the moment to photograph and video Humpback whales through the eyes of a drone. I kept a close eye to the ocean along the Big Island but didn’t have much luck scouting any whales. It wasn’t until I had an opportunity to visit with my parents on Maui that I saw an abundance of spouts and splashes peppering the ocean. A very exciting moment for me. What I didn’t expect was how difficult it was to find the whales from the air.

    Along the cliffs on the west side of Maui we stood looking for some whales close by. We were extremely lucky to find a couple whales within 400 yards from us. Now all I needed to do was get to them.

    From 400 feet in the air, you would think finding a 50-foot, 30-ton mammal would be easy to find, but it’s definitely not. Thinking you out far enough is a huge challenge. Often times I was way too close and had to go out way further, however, once I determined I wasn’t far enough the whales had either swam away or drifted. By the time I was 500 yards away I couldn’t find the drone in the sky to determine if I was nearby, so I had to fly back until I spotted it and adjusted and began the search.

    My heart raced the moment I finally spotted the whales and then I had a huge smile on my face when I noticed what I was looking at was a mother and her baby. It was so peaceful watching the baby coming up for air, swimming around, and twirling before diving back down to mamma. Super amazing moment that I felt very privileged to be watching.

    After this first trip we made several attempts to capture more amazing moments and with patience we were lucky to find another mother and her baby close to the first location. These photographs are a collection of the two successful flights.

    Photographs were taken with a DJI Mavic 2 Pro drone and Smart Controller.

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    Humpback Whales
    Mother and baby humpback whales in the blue Maui ocean
    Humpback whales
    Mother and baby humpback whales swimming side by side.
    Humpback Whales
    Mother and baby humpback whales
    Humpback Whales
    Mother and baby humpback whales together in the beautiful blue Maui waters
    Humpback Whales
    A humpback whale tail seen before the final decent.
    Humpback Whales breathe a rainbow in the mist with their spout
    A mother Humpback whale and her baby breathe a rainbow with mist as they take their breaths

    View more aerial images I took on trips to other islands like in my Aerial Views from Princeville to Haena post.

  • Storm clouds over the Pacific ocean between Maui and the Big Island
    Jul
    2018
    28
    2018 / Jul / 28

    Clouds

    Rain clouds over the Pacific ocean between Maui and the Big Island of Hawaii.

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    On a Mokulele flight from Hawaii to Maui, the view of the stormy clouds were amazing. A lightning storm was moving across the islands creating some amazing cloud formations. I sat on the rear bench seat of the small airplane and photographed these clouds through the rear window. This image is 3 stitched images to create the panorama.

    © Christopher Johnson

  • Beautiful sunset from Kaanapali on the island of Maui
    Feb
    2018
    26
    2018 / Feb / 26

    Ka’anapali Sunset

    A beautiful sunset from the Ka’anapali beach on the island of Maui

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    The winter months in Hawaii are the busiest as people that live in cold climates seek an escape to warm beautiful tropical weather. With the increase in people finding wide open unobstructed landscape photo opportunities decrease.

    I went out to photograph this sunset off of the sandy beach of Ka’anapali. Instead of getting a wide angle shot close to the water I decided on capturing a fresh perspective. I have always loved the look of the trees that lined the beach along with the broad leaved vines that grow along the ground, so this time I setup back away from the ocean. After composing and setting up for the shot I started to realize the traffic of all the people coming out to enjoy the sunset. Some people stopped to take a quick picture while others rested on the trees within my field of view. The last interruption came as a family posed to take a family photo on the tree with the sunset to their backs. Luckily I had a few open opportunities to get the shots I needed to work with. The rest of the time was spent enjoying the sunset and the way people reacted once they saw me crouched on the ground taking their photo.

    © Christopher Johnson

  • Kiave tree along Kiholo Bay spans in front of a starry sky
    Jan
    2018
    01
    2018 / Jan / 01

    Kiholo Bay at Night

    Kiave tree in a moonlit night along the Kiholo Bay coastline

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    We were camping next to this awesome Kiave Tree on the beach of Kiholo Bay. During the day there wasn’t a lot to photograph because the clear skies didn’t give much interest to the sky and the bold shadows weren’t very attractive. At night the skies were full of stars and the full moon and camp fire provided a lot of interest. It took a while to come up with a composition that I liked. Since the viewfinder was dark, I had to take an exposure and wait for it to load before I could review it, then adjust to what worked. It ended up being a fun creative exercise.

    © Christopher Johnson

  • Sunset of a fallen tree along the Honoapiilani Hwy, Maui
    Nov
    2016
    27
    2016 / Nov / 27

    Kailiili Sunset

    Fallen tree along the Maui coastline

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    This is the second time that I visited this location along the Kaliliili coastline of Maui. The long stretch of coastline that runs along the ocean side highway on the way to Lahaina there is a small section of old fallen Kiawe trees that stretch out into the ocean. The black sand of the beach slightly covers the lower branches and they reach out into the air making it look like they are independent of the fallen tree.

    I originally setup further away from the tree to get more of the tree into the photograph, however, the tree flattened out the flow of the scene. Instead I began to work on several different perspectives as well as different trees close by, but I wasn’t feeling that creative spark. As a last minute composition I decided to move extremely close to the tree I started with in order to express the organic detail as it moved into the ocean. At this point the sunset was at a close and I was graced with an orange glow of light along the trunk of the tree.

    After capturing this shot I continued to shoot the ocean with long exposures and experiment with other compositions, but this was the favorite.
    © Christopher Johnson

    Purchase a print by visiting my RedBubble page.

  • Bamboo forest in the Haleakala National Park on Maui
    Nov
    2016
    27
    2016 / Nov / 27

    Leading Lines

    Photograph of the tall bamboo forest on Maui

     

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    The stalks of tall bamboo lean up toward the beautiful canopy of the Bamboo forest on the island of Maui. A hike that I did on the previous visit to Maui and was determined to go back. The drive to Hana isn’t for the faint of heart. It takes an entire day to drive, even if you didn’t stop. This time we went the back way, the ‘Do Not Go This Way In A Rental Vehicle’ way, but it was fine. Way faster if you just go to the Haleakala National Park where the 7 Sacred Pools are. The only crazy part was towards the end when navigating around the steep cliffs on a single lane road. The guard rails had been rusted apart from the insane surf. I was just hoping no one was coming the other direction. I am pretty sure we would have just looked at each other until someone reluctantly decided to reverse to a nearest pull out. Luckily no one came.

    The hike was the same as I remembered. The only difference was that we couldn’t walk all the way to waterfall due to the heavy rains we had this Summer. I love the bamboo. There is nothing like it. The hike is fairly long and uneventful and you almost want to turn back, thinking it won’t change. Then you cross a bridge and enter into the first part of the forest and your breath is taken from you. All you want to do from that point is venture deeper into it and engross your entire self into the forest. When the wind blows there is a quiet and soothing knocking from the hollow stalks that almost stops you in your tracks. Although the wind isn’t what I wanted for photographing the bamboo because of movement, I thoroughly enjoyed and welcomed it.

    The remaining trip back to Lahaina was fun. We ended up going back on the ‘Road To Hana’, which took forever, but was beautiful. It was amazing to see the damage from the Hurricane Darby that I heard so much about on the news. Funny that months later I was having dinner with a mother and daughter that lived in Hana. The mother told me a story of how she came to a van full of tourists that nearly went over the cliff on one of the windy turns. The van had been pinned by a tree and was luckily not going anywhere. While waiting for the tow truck the mother asked the tourists if they wanted their pictures taken while in the van, which they excitedly said ‘yes’. After the picture they all left the van to discover how close they were to falling over the cliff. The funny thing was the tourist driving had a “I Survived The Road To Hana” shirt on.

    © Christopher Johnson

    Purchase a print by visiting my RedBubble page.

  • A waterfall along the road to Hana in Maui
    Feb
    2014
    24
    2014 / Feb / 24

    Tranquility

    Waken Falls Waterfall along the road to Hana.

    On a recent trip to Maui, we set out for Hana on a nice day trip. I really didn’t know what to expect since I had never been there, and I was pleasantly surprised. Every turn there was such amazing beauty. From the inland gulches to the wide open vistas, I was in awe.

    Just as we were driving over one of the many one lane bridges I noticed a brilliant waterfall tucked around the bend of a hillside. I had to photograph this waterfall. We had to park about 300 yards up the road and hike back down to the bridge and then scale a very slippery hillside under the bridge in order to get to the falls. Because of the recent rainfall everything was wet and had a nice sheen of moss covering. It took everything to not slip down the hillside. The risk was definitely it once we came around and faced the three waterfalls. Simply breathtaking.

    I shot the front of the falls first, but found that I really wasn’t capturing the location very well. I just loved how the moss and ferns were canvasing the rock face. The only way to capture that was along the side of the falls. Here in this shot I feel as if I’ve got the personality of the scene. The ferns and vines along the rocks with a backdrop of the falls in the background as they run into the dark green water.

    © Christopher Johnson

  • Feb
    2011
    27
    2011 / Feb / 27

    String of Clouds