Kauai, Hawaii From My Viewfinder

**tlabranche** · 2012-09-12, 02:46 PM

I snapped over 1,200 shots on my Kauai trip last week. Here are a few of my favorites. You definitely need a good circular polarizer to get some clear shots of the turquoise waters.

Streams through the Wiamea Canyon

The Na'Pali coast. Those two beaches are only accessible by hiking 11 miles in the mountains, riding a boat charter (note there are no docks), or taking an aerial tour.

All of my surfing photos came from this spot. This was the patio of our condo. You can see the surfers out there. I walked down by the water a few times for a different vantage point.

This is the view from our condo when I turned to the left. There is a small beach by that house in the distance that was a baby beach. Evan hung out there a lot.

Life's a Beach - I spent a lot of time looking for beaches with NO PEOPLE. They just clutter a good scene up. Being Labor Day weekend, that was really hard to do.

Sadly, out of the eight nights I was there, I only had two days of decent sunsets. The rest of the days it was cloudy and/or raining.

Ben Stiller's house is the one on top of the hill

I forgot my neutral density filter back in Houston, so I had to use my polarizer and an aperture of F/22, ISO 100 to get a 1" second exposure to blur the water. Without the polarizer, my slowest shutter speed would have been 1/10. Still slow enough to blur water, but not as smooth.

I wish I had my 100-400 with me. This girl was pretty darn cute.

This sign warns you how many people died in Queens Bath. The next photo shows the death trap.

Folks use the small pool of water as a hangout. What they don't realize is that when the thunderstorms form, they get massive waves over those rocks. Then the people get sucked out to sea where they become another tick on that sign.

The busiest tourist beach on the entire island. I wasn't going to try and get it without people. I was only at the beach because it has a great spot for kids and my little man was enjoying it.

This beach is another death trap in the winter months. I was here in November 2011 and the waves were coming over the rock wall. The undertow in the winter will easily drown you if you dare to enter. However, in the summer, it is quite pleasant to swim here. Below are photos from the winter of last year and this past week for a comparison.

Winter 2011

I wanted a better photo of this lighthouse scene than the one I had from 2010 with a point and shoot. I didn't want to deal with all the other tourists, but I was worth it.

Jurassic Ranch is where the majority of all four Jurassic Park movies were filmed. This is the field where we first heard the phrase "Welcome to Jurassic Park."

Polihale State Park sits at the end of a five mile gravel road with massive potholes. It is not recommended that you take a car through; but rather, a SUV with four wheel drive. But the view is worth it if you stick it out on the road.

I loved this shot because of the clouds.

Driving towards the top of the Wiamea Canyon. I noticed this view out the corner of my eye. I illegally parked on the side of the road to catch it.

My little man having some fun with the sand.

A decent sunset