I woke up early this morning in attempts to beat the crouds to Hanauma Bay, which is one of the best snorkeling spots in all of Hawaii. Even when arriving before 8:00 in the morning, there was still a large number of people because of the upcoming holidays.
Once down at the beach, I donned my mask and fins and made my way into the waters. Immediately the magnificant underwater wildlife came into view. Although the waters were extremely shallow, thousands of brighly colored fish swam amongst me as I snapped away with my waterproof camera. I spent about an hour in the water with the fish before the mobs of tourists started arriving, thus signaling my time to leave.
My next photo stop for the day was back at Ho'omaluhia Botanical Garden. Whilst I was there yesterday, I noticed that if I could fly my arial cameara up above the gardens, I could get a grand sweeping view of the Koʻolau mountain range. Unfortionately, just when I prepared to fly the drone yesterday it began raining so I had to abort. Luckily, there was a dark and dramatic sky today but this time without the rain. I launched the Phantom and took it up to about 1,000 feet. Once positioned, I remotely took some photos which I would stich together into a panorama at a later time. The photos turned out awesome.
My final stop of the day was Spitting Cave, a hidden viewpoint on the island of Oahu overlooking a massive sea cliff and providing stunning views of the sun setting over Diamond Head. I arrived 30 minutes prior to sunset to get everything in place and then spent the next hours taking long exposed images to capture the beautiful colors.
Overall, it was a very productive day that produced some amazing images.