Got a call from CJ…surfs up in Kauai and we need to go shoot that spot out at the end of the road past Hanalei. I quickly agreed and we headed off to Kauai. Along for the trip, our good friend, Bill McDowell..and excellent photographer and great travel partner.

The weather on Kauai…on and off rain. Pretty cloudy toward sunset, but that can be good or bad. So…off we went to hike out to the iconic spot where the surf hits the backwash along the Na PaliCoast.

I had forgotten that the hike out involved a major league rock scramble along a wet cliffside. Easy for CJ. Not so easy for Linda and I and our friend, Bill. But, we made it out and we were just blown away by the size of the surf that afternoon. It was epic. We all got good shots and some unreal color toward sunset. I am only posted a few of my shots with this blog but we will be adding more in the days ahead from CJ and Linda.

Next day, major league glare and tough shooting. We also shot a couple of sunrise locations and a rain storm crossing Hanalei Bay. Fun in Kauai.

I managed to get my leg cut up on the rocks. Linda managed to get her arm cut up from her luggage falling. CJ managed to get food poisoning. Bill managed to stay out of harms way…and got some great shots. Heck, we all got some great shots…and a few good enough for the gallery…which was the point of the whole mission.

We were blessed with good friends on Kauai who helped us find great locations and got us around relatively safely. Big thanks to Paul Grace and Jon Cornforth and all the other terrific photographers we saw along the way.

We will be back. Aloha.

In November of 2019, Don and Linda headed to China for a photo shoot. We had never been to China and we left there just plain amazed by just about everything we saw.

Our trip started from Oahu, traveling with a great local Oahu radio host, Rick Hamada, and a group of about 50 people principally from Oahu under the great assist of YMT Vacations. The trip took us through Korea to Beijing. After several days exploring Beijing and the Great Wall, we flew to where we would see the Terra Cotta Warriors, then on to a city of some 33 million people…where we would board a ship for a cruise up the Yangtze River to the worlds biggest dam, after checking out the pandas at a great reserve for them…and then through areas so beautiful that they are featured on Chinese currency. When the cruise was over, we flew to astonishing Shanghai for a few days of photography and sight seeing. We then flew back to Oahu, once again through the most beautiful airport I have ever seen in South Korea.

The bullet we rode was a bullet train from downtown Shanghai to the airport. It is a mag lift train that travels at speeds up to nearly 300 miles per hour. It was completely smooth, except for that one moment when the bullet train going the other way passes you just feet away…both trains going about 275 miles per hour…and the shock wave did cause me to kind of grip the seat for a second. Clean, fast and cheap…a great way to get to the airport.

The bullet we dodged was the Corona Virus. It showed up in December. We had left China just about a month earlier. Glad we missed that bullet.

My thoughts on China were these….it is on a scale that is just not imaginable. The cities we saw were gigantic and getting larger by the day. In one case, the city was growing by a million people a year. There was construction everywhere. We were there in the mild part of winter, so saw no air pollution. We did see what had been done to reduce air pollution and it was a big surprise. They have moved manufacturing out to places we did not visit…probably for a good reason. Net result, places like Beijing seemed extremely clean. There were well tended parks everywhere…and lots of new trees planted. Saw no graffiti…none. Saw no vandalism…zero. I felt safe even as I wandered streets alone taking photos at 3am. Shanghai is about the most modern looking city I have ever seen. Skyscrapers everywhere. Housing everywhere.

This is not a political blog, so I am not going to get into things like the lack of freedom, the lack of diversity, the strong handed control of the government nor the general lack of joy we noted in the people of China. However, I tried to put myself in their shoes and wondered how I would govern 1.5 BILLION people…keep them healthy, clothed, fed, employed and calm. I can assure you it would be difficult using the kind of government we have here in the USA. It is a tough situation. I am proud of all they have accomplished. Amazed at their progress. Intimidated by their capabilities. And would love to see more of beautiful China…but thankful I live where I live.

By the way…we kind of laughed at the fact we noticed a doctor and nurse next to a big machine that read the temperature of every human who walked underneath it at the airport…as they screened travelers for any kind of illness. We are laughing no longer…seems like a really good idea now.

I am attaching a few of our photos from the trip…more to come. Aloha.

Don and Linda returned to Australia for a photo trip in August of 2019. The trip was unique for them as they took along their 12 year old grandson, Nathan, and the trip ended back in Hawaii on their 50th wedding anniversary.

The trip started in Sydney, where a day trip up to the Blue Mountains caused us to both wonder why the dry mountain woods had not burned to the ground. It looked like a disaster waiting to happen. Everything was tinder dry and the winds were howling. Fortunately, it was late winter and there was a bit of moisture in the air, but it looked like trouble was right ahead. It was, the fires that happened in late 2019 were devastating. Glad we got to see the area before the fires.

The surf was huge at Bondi Beach, near Sydney…about 20 feet on the two days we shot there. I will post a shot or two from those days. Loved our time in Sydney and got some great shots.

Off next to Uluru…the Red Rock in the center of Australia. We also visited Mt Connor and the Kata Tejuta. Beautiful and remote.

Our favorite spot was Port Douglas and the Great Barrier Reef. I am posting one of Nate’s photos from one of our many snorkel trips on the reef. He swam over to me and asked if he could borrow my underwater camera. I gave it to him and he headed off with his feet looking like egg beaters…he was chasing something. A few minutes later he returned with a big smile on his face. He said he got a great shot of a turtle “You will probably want to sell it in the gallery” is how he described it. I told him we would see. Once we got back to the hotel room, I put the shot in the computer and edited it. Sure enough, it was a professional quality turtle shot…well done, Nate. I showed it to him and asked him what that was….pointing to something on the right side of the shot. I then blew it up a bit for him to see. His eyes got wide as he saw that it was a large black tip shark…he had not spotted it in front of the turtle. I mentioned that shark had swam right past me headed for him…the shark being about 50 percent larger than Nathan. However, that type shark is not known to be aggressive and there were plenty of them around…so I did not feel in danger nor did I think he was in danger. But, a great lesson for anyone in the ocean…have your head on a swivel and always look around to see what else might be in the water with you.

When we arrived back to Hawaii, we were me by CJ, his family, my family and assorted friends…and we all went out to dinner to celebrate Linda and my 50th wedding anniversary. A great end to a great trip.

We will be posting additional shots from this trip on the website. The one of the guy looking into the camera is a shot Nate took by mistake as he reached in the bag for the camera just after sunup on a day we had hiked around the entire base of the Uluru red rock…starting at about 3:30am on a cold day…the shot puts a smile on my face. I am also including one of his croc shots and his turtle shot…along with a Bondi Beach wave, a giant clam, an clown fish and a black tip shark photo…and the beautiful small water/mineral stream on Uluru. Nate did a great job with the camera for a beginner…heck, it just plain did a great job. And, he would want me to mention, he got to surf Banzi Pipeline and Backdoor on the return to Oahu…about head high surf, but pretty exciting to watch. Aloha.