A hula dancer posing against a palm tree at the Maui Photo Festival.

Back Story

This shot was taken during the ’11 Maui Photo Festival and their signature golden hour shoot: The Quintessential Hawaiian Photo Shoot — Hula on the Beach at Sunset, led by the very well known island photographer and artist, the Randy Jay Braun.

It was also the same sunset shoot back in ’09 that I first started to venture out of my comfort zone of landscape photography and make an attempt at shooting portraiture. Boy, how things have come full circle.

Now, this shoot has grown into perhaps the most popular session at the workshops, and the group shooting this year felt – at least to me – a lot larger than the one I shot with back in ’09. It seemed a little too crowded for my taste, so I met up with another photographer who was off shooting the unusually large waves hitting the shoreline nearby. Her name was Diane and she’s an accountant from Oahu attending the festival. I had a good time talking story while dodging the waves trying to get a nice curl shot of the water.

Anyway, I only shot the hula dancers for about 5 minutes, and I feel fortunate that I was able to get this image that I’m pretty proud of.

And although I chose a sepia-tone for this version of the image, I am rather fond of the colors of her dress and the lei she’s wearing. I did not have my Topaz plug-ins installed on my laptop at the time, but I wanted to throw a few different styles at this image once I got back home. Just a heads up that you may see one or more versions of this shot in the near future.