Some of you may remember when I photographed Heather and Drew’s wedding last year on the North Shore. Here are a few pictures from our recent maternity / family shoot last month. It is fun as a photographer to watch as families grow. I am excited to do their newborn pictures in about 5 weeks. The underwater maternity photographs were taken at Sharks Cove and we shot the other family pictures at Keiki Beach. I really have fun shooting in the ocean, and love using water and light to create some cool images.
So there are talkers and there are doers and families of Halau Nalu are definitely doers. In just a matter of a few days, they organized a bake sale for Haiti that brought in over $500 in just a little over a hour. Even after they had sold out of the very delicious baked good, people still came by and donated money. What a great opportunity to teach our children that they are not just US Citizens but World citizens as they were the ones that worked the bake sale and delivered the money to the Red Cross. I happened to have my camera in the car and thought it would be a good opportunity to document this with a few photographs. Enjoy.
There are a few ways to donate to the Red Cross, you can go to their site here, or text “HAITI” to 90999 to donate $10. You’ll get a text back to confirm the donation. Millions has been collected for Haiti via text messages. Brilliant.
I have shaped about 20 surfboards over the years but this is my first alaia. As I was working on it I tried to involve my two kids as much as possible. They both did a lot of sanding and we even went to the Bishop Museum to research the design. I took the board to surf club today, this clip is of two of the boys from Halau Nalu riding it, I think they did an amazing job for their first time.
So most of you that check my blog regularly know that I am much better at photography than writing. So I decided to ask Katie Speed one of the girls below to be a guest blogger and talk about our shoot at Melaekahana Beach Park. Make sure to check out her etsy site, she is an amazing artist and full of style. Enjoy.
First a bit about myself, my name is Katie Speed, I was born and raised in Las Vegas but now live in Hawaii. I have my own little family consisting a husband and a baby girl. I graduated from BYU with a BFA in fine arts where i did lots of oil painting.
I’m the one in the pictures with the brown top with flowers by the neck. I’ve been spending a lot of time working on my Etsy shop lately. It’s called Pretty Swell (http://www.etsy.com/shop/PrettySwell) where i sell fabric flower garlands and other fabric flower items.
A few years ago the 5 girls in these pictures all met in Hawaii and became friends quickly. True friendships are a rare thing… how about 5 TRUE friendships at once! We do lots of things together and one of them is surfing. Life got going and before we new it we were all pregnant and one of our dear friends was moving away. We all regreted not taking the time to get some pictures of us all surfing together. Earlier this week, as a birthday present, our dear friend Shira returned to Hawaii to visit us! Having always wanted pictures of us surfing together we decided to book a water session with Mark to try and capture what it’s like to surf with 5 of your closest friends (a really good time!) The shoot was a good time we set up some of the shots but mostly we were just goofing off and having a great surf session. It was a great way to sort of document this time of our lives and our strong friendships.
Today I shot the 20th annual Moanikeala Hula Festival for the Polynesian Cultural Center. While shooting I was blown away by how much feeling and emotion was put into each performance. There were about 11 different Hula Halaus, some from as far away as Japan. Dance has alway been one of my favorite types photography, it really keeps you on your toes anticipating the next move and when to release the shutter. Here are a few shots out of a 1000+ that I took today. You can read more about the festival here written by Caryn Kunz a Ko’olauloa journalist for the Honolulu Advertiser. Enjoy.
Katie and Andrew were married at Fanger Estates located just a few minuets from my studio here in Hau’ula Hawaii. This is the first wedding I have photographed at Fanger Estates, it is a new wedding venue. The house on the property is amazing and was built by my good friend and client Dave Evans, owner of Evans Construction. I had a great time with Katie and Andrew and their families, some of which came from as far as Australia to be there. Congratulations!
To see all of Katie & Andrew’s wedding pictures click here.
I have just started using vimeo to post some of my wedding slideshows. Here is a smaller version of the slide show I sent to Katie & Andrew. Enjoy!
Some of you may remember when I shoot Pat and Carrie’s post Wedding party on the point in Laie. I guess there were a few other people with cameras. Carrie’s sister in-law sent me this pictures of me shooting them. And below that is the picture I was taking. I would have to say I feel much more comfortable being on the back side of the camera than in front. To see the older post of Pat and Carries’s Cake & Skate wedding pics, click here.
Wow it has been a long time since I have had a chance to sit down and blog. This last month has been crazy and I will be posing a lot of my recent work in this next few week plus a photo tip or two. But first I wanted to get these wedding pictures of Melissa and Matt up. I had a great time shooting with them, we went all over the North Shore of Oahu, and scored a beautiful sunset.
This last weekend I took the family to the Rell Sunn Menehune contest at Makaha on the west side of Oahu. We had an incredible time and saw some amazing surfers. The contest was for kids from 4 to 12, it was crazy to see these kids charge waves that were at lest twice their height. I really love being a surf/ water photographer, during the contest I was able to be in the water with the kids and shoot them up close, I also got a few shots from the beach with my telephoto lens. A big congratulations to Jordan, she got 5th place in her age division, that is a huge accomplishment for how big the waves were that she had to surf. She is in the seventh picture down.
Here are the last few families from Saturday shoot. One of my favorite things about shooting families is seeing the love and connections and then capturing it. I feel very lucky to have a job were I get to spend time with such amazing people.
Here are the next set of family photos from the Holiday special, as the day went on the sun started to come out. I love the third pictures of the boys with their arms around each other. It reminds me of the saying “all the arms we need”.
Here are a few of the first families from out photo shoot at Ke Iki beach on Saturday. I had a great time with each family even with the bit of rain we had. I would love to hear feed from each family, so please leave a comment or shoot me an e-mail.
