A couple months ago, I ’sold’ my Canon G9 to my dad, and upgraded to the Canon G11, mostly because I was interested in the better ISO performance as well as the swivel-screen, something I haven’t been able to play with since I borrowed my mom’s old point-and-shoot five years ago.  I’d already hiked the 5DMKII up Diamond Head twice in the last few weeks, so this time I just took the G11 to see what I could do with it.  Accompanied by Kaeo and Gabe, here’s what we came up with. (And yes, all shots have been post-processed.)

Overall, I feel the G11 is a great alternative for taking photos when you don’t want to haul your DSLR around!  It might not have the tonal-range or sensor size of my 5DMKII, but it’s definitely capable of taking nice, fun photographs.

Prints of these and more from this set are available here!

I worked with Michael Carino to cover Jessica and Tim’s wedding at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel on December 30th, 2009. Here are some of my shots from the wedding:

Chelsea and Nick have been together for five years, and are still very much in love. I spent an afternoon with them to test my ‘new’ vintage TLR camera and rangefinder cameras, but took a few digital images too, just in case the film didn’t work out.

I seem to be having luck with the rainbows lately!  I took this during Daeja’s shoot for the Guava Shop, an amazing boutique in Haleiwa, Hawaii.

We start off the second half of project emocute with the most ridiculous emo image of the shoot:

Seriously, I couldn’t help myself when their balloons got tangled!

I love the dreamy look of this next image, and the slight smile she has:

We took a break from standing on rocks to get a few photos with the rising moon:

And then Reid joined Erin on the rocks.

All in all, it was an amazingly fun random shoot!

I’ll have prints of some of these images for sale soon in my brand new Etsy shop, so stay tuned!

I confess, I love cute, whimsical things. I love heart balloons, tutus, hoods, converse shoes, umbrellas, rainboots…and hence project emocute was born. Here’s some images from our first shoot, starring friends Erin and Reid, up at the Makapu’u lookout area.

To start, Erin danced around with our pink translucent heart balloon (same kind used for the SUGARHIGH/LOVESTONED shoot!)

Erin was awesome!  She had a lot of great movement, and kept trying new things! The balloon didn’t always cooperate, but we made it work.

Then, Reid joined in to be Erin’s fake boyfriend for the rest of the shoot. They’ve been good friends since they were little kids, so it was funny watching them pretend to be couple-y!

Then, to our surprise, some paragliders started flying around us, and we got some great shots with them!

I’ll post the second half of the shoot later! The first half was more the ‘cute’ part of emocute, so be ready for some serious emo-ness later! ♥

The other week I had the pleasure of officially meeting the entire group of bloggers/social media experts known as Grilled Cornbread. Thanks to my BFF Kaeo Kepani, I also got to do a shoot for them that was featured on the cover of the Honolulu Advertiser’s Metromix today!

And if that’s not exciting enough, Metromix also just went into physical publication as well, and so you can see it in the TGIF section of today’s Advertiser! Of course I ran up to Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf, just to grab myself a copy:

So, click through their photos on Metromix, and on their own website, and any of the blue sky background photos are mine!  And yes, that was a real rainbow.  It almost rained out our first part of the shoot, but the weather pulled through in the end and we got some amazing photos.

Good times!

This Monday, despite on and off stormy weather, I assisted Daeja with a shoot for the Guava Shop, the most awesome boutique store ever, located in Haleiwa.  We also had the lovely Calli Wagner as our model.  Here are some of the photos I shot with my Instax:

I am looking forward to more beautiful stormy days of winter in Hawaii!

As inspiration/research for my NaNoWriMo endeavors, I’ve been going through a lot of my old photos from my Europe study abroad in 2006.  Here are a few that I decided to re-process, and most of them have never been posted, aside from my old study abroad blog, which is no longer in existence.

“Burano” – The island near Venice, famous for its brightly-painted houses.

“Remember Venice” – Gondolas on the Grand Canal.

“Meet Me At Como” – A cafe on the shores of Lake Como.

“Switzerland” – Somewhere near Interlaken.

The best part of these photographs is that while the first picture, “Burano”, was taken with my old Canon Digital Rebel/kit lens, the last three were taken with my old Canon Powershot SD400…and that last shot in Switzerland was out of a moving bus window!  It’s looking back on photos like these, when I was still very new to the art of photography and had the most basic of equipment, that remind me I can be more than my equipment.  There have been many times where I have taken a photo, and people’s only comment is “Wow, you are  so lucky you have such a nice camera!”, without any credit given to me as the eye behind the lens.  A few of my photographer peers have had similar experiences, so I know I’m not alone in noticing this.

In other news, there’s apparently a Wildlife Photography Contest going on over at deviantART, and it’s the first photography contest in ages that has interested me.  Luckily, zoo photography is allowed, so maybe I’ll be able to figure something out before December 15th.  Of course, it’d be much more impressive to go back to Maui’s rainforest looking for honeycreepers, but if I do that I’ll be wanting to rent a super-telephoto from Hawaii Photo Rental, and didn’t I just say I want to be more than my equipment?  Plus, I’m a very small girl, and hiking one of those monster lenses into a rainforest is rather daunting.  Where’s my entourage when I need one?

I also might be posting more fashion-related entries as time goes on and my interest in fashion grows.  Check out this shot of Sarah Jessica Parker from Elle:

I’m in love with the styling here! (Matte jersey crepe top with cage shoulder, $295, leather vest, $1,190, both, Alexander Wang, at Barneys New York. Cotton tank top, Michael Stars, $38. Stretch briefs, Chanel, $900. Leather boots, Bess, $385.)

Finally, I wanted to promote my dear friend and travel partner,  Cameron, and her new blog, Eyes on Etsy!

As a huge Etsy fan, like myself, Cameron puts together awesome themed collections made up of the best handmade and vintage items she finds!  In her own words:

Etsy is a magical, bountiful land of online creativity and commerce, specializing in handmade and vintage goods. I discovered it one day while wandering along (virtually), and fell head-over-heels in love. Now, just like any realistic love interest, Etsy is not 100% awesome 100% of the time. However, with a little patience, you can find some true gems… and I have.

So, seeing as I spend at least some part of every day browsing Etsy – and seeing as my list of Favorite items is approaching 300 – I thought I’d share my finds with the world. Maybe you can afford to actually purchase something…

Happy browsing,
Cameron

So there you have it! You can follow her on Twitter too, for all the great finds she doesn’t post on her blog!

There, I’ve been a good blogger now.  May I have a cookie?