I found myself with a free Sunday so I asked a friend if she wanted to get outside with me for a low key hike nearby. Maunawili Ditch trail is your basic walk through the woods and was just what I needed today. It was shaded and made for a great midday jaunt. It’s a multi-use trail, we found horses at the end, we encountered a mountain biker and other hikers. The hike starts at the same place as another hike I did recently. I didn’t take many pics on the trail, just enjoyed the company and movement. But here are a couple to give you an idea!
I’ve been wanting to knock out this hike but haven’t been procrastinating because on AllTrails it’s only a half mile loop… in fact when I proposed it to Jess I said maybe we can do a couple loops of it.
Well, turns out this is another sleeper hike and there’s a whole extension to it with a pretty great climb! There also isn’t a lot of parking, but we found a couple spots. This is the entrance, and some of the plants have identification plaque along the way.
After about 200 ft of climbing (you drive up a pretty big hill to get there) there’s a really great view and a bench to sit (this is looking out toward MCBH).
This is looking out toward Kailua and my beloved Mokes, plus Waimanalo to the right.
Then, the path continues up and up… like scrambling up… (this next section pictured had ropes to help) and you get pretty much the same views but also a view back toward the H3. It actually wasn’t that bad of a section, it was pretty grippy, but I wouldn’t do it after much rain and sat on my butt a couple spots to get down.
You can barely see the H3 coming around the bend. I’d like to revisit in the morning when the sun is on those mountains, but this shot with the rays is pretty neat. Needless to say, it took about an hour with stoppage to enjoy, and we didn’t even go all the way (we stopped at the top, but it looks like it goes down the other side and dead ends). I think it was 500ft elevation all things considered. Not bad for a Friday afternoon jaunt.
It’s been pretty quiet on the family photography end, both because I’ve been away and because I still don’t have a good enough self image about it to advertise (nor do I really know how to advertise). Anyway, a family posted that their photographer bailed on them, and they were having some personal family things happening that they really wanted to get these photographs done. So I replied to their post and volunteered!
She had already scoped out beaches in our area (it is not lost on me how amazing it is that we even have that option) and picked Waimanalo beach park. If you’ve been following along, I haven’t really posted much about Waimanalo (it’s where we saw sunflowers and it sits between us and the Makapu’u lighthouse). There are a lot of reasons, but mainly it’s because it’s mostly known as native Hawaiian territory. If you drive through that neighborhood you’ll see it is not at all built up, there are tons of local businesses, and there are a lot Hawaiian-esque things about it. There’s nothing inherently wrong with this, but some native Hawaiians still have a vendetta against Americans for taking over their land and aren’t incredibly friendly with “haole“. Along one stretch of the beach park is a homeless tent city. I’m painting a really bad picture of this place, in reality it’s not like I hear of incidents happening there often. It’s just somewhere I respect is their territory. All this to say, there are really nice ballfields there and the beach itself is expansive and quiet (which makes for easy photo editing). I pulled into the parking lot closest to the tent city and decided to move to the one closest to the ballfields.
I was apprehensive to have my huge nice camera strapped to me, but once I got out and walked around and saw people of all shapes and sizes my comfort eased a bit. I started walking around and scoping things out and before long the family showed up. Really, I think it comes down to the inherent extra caution growing up as a woman has lent me to think about.
The beach itself is nice, but it doesn’t have palm trees, and the mountains are quite the distance away, so I’m not sure it’s my preferred scenery. I think it’s definitely beneficial it was so quiet, WAY less post editing to clean things up!
The family was a lot of fun. One teen that was having a little attitude about playing along, but he did just enough to capture some gems.
The sun sets behind us, so the color started to show on the clouds, which also made for some nice background. Prior to that, the sky was so bright it was getting a bit washed out. I loved their matching outfits. The little girl wanted some pictures of her and her mom hula dancing with a haku lei, that was fun! We used a huge piece of driftwood as a bench. I’m glad I got out of my comfort zone and did these in Waimanalo. They turned out great. One of the kids had been stung by a Japanese man o war and so I ran into the same issue I had with the other family; the kids were very paranoid they’d step on one on the beach. It made casual walking a bit difficult. We tried a pose with the kids faces inside a heart made by the hands of the parents. I am pretty impressed with how it turned out!
There’s so much to think about with these photoshoots! Is everyone smiling? Looking at the camera? How’s the background, where are the mountains? Are they centered? Is everyone positioned evenly?
I think I most excel at capturing the spontaneous queues, like “Let’s dance” and “3,2,1 jump!” and Shaka pictures. The more structured, perfect ones are harder for me to nail. It’ll come with time!
Also, thankfully, this mom knows how to photo edit, so although I went and did my own thing and sent her a bunch of edits (she’s super busy and still mid-pcs so doesn’t have access to all her stuff), I know she can take the raw material and edit her own way. You can tell some of my horizons aren’t even and the brightness isn’t either… it’s definitely something I’m getting better at reviewing before sending (I’ve had more sessions since this one).
This was a good warm up to what was to come with this past weekend, when I did a bunch of mini photo shoots for a fundraiser for the last boat we were on’s FRG. Post to follow!
