Turtle Vacation

Aloha!

We just put middle brother Mike on a plane again.  We had an awesome week and half with him in town.  We hung out in Hana, went dirt biking, surfing, hiking, and even did some diving… I’m sure that’s a shock.  It was so fun to have him around again, Dan and I were so excited to show him how the business continues to grow in the wake of us leaving Lahaina Divers.

Gwen’s mom was in town for a while too, which was great because Gwen really needed some mom time after last month.  Mom Parker took us all under her wing for a few weeks and made sure we were well fed and in great spirits, it was awesome.  Matter of fact, it’s been about two and half weeks since she left and we still have food to thaw out and eat that she left for us!  Linda if you are reading this, we had Lasagna last night and loved it!  When are you coming back to visit again?

In between Mike and Mom Parkers visit Dan’s friend Dana came to visit too.  So all together we had a full month of playing tourist again.  It was awesome, except now we are tired.  Poor Mango was so active that she was limping for a few days.  We had to put her on house arrest so that she would heal, apparently puppies shouldn’t run too much and they should take it easy.  We have a tendency to learn things the hard way.

The Photography business is going great for us.  We have had a lot of success with our new high definition aluminum prints; people really seem to love them.  In fact, there is a dentist office in Portland that is full of our best pieces!  We just received a new shipment of Aluminums and they look great, we tried some new images this time and were very happy with how they came out, “Mandarin” looks great.  We’ll display it the next few art fairs for anyone who is here on Maui.  We’ll be under the Banyan Tree the next two weekends and we’ll be the Four Seasons each Wednesday.

The addition of our newest collection has helped too.  Even though whale season is officially over, people really like our new whale shots.  We are sure that they will do very well next whale season.

The biggest surprise was the success of the first above water picture we’ve taken since “Mala Sunset,” back in 2007.  One day Dan and I were walking Mango to her favorite beach near our house, a place called Waikuli.  Mango loves it because there aren’t’ too many people so she can just be herself and be let off the leash and go swimming.  Anyway, when we got there we hurried into the water chasing Mango and swam around for a minute before we even realized that there was a huge female turtle sitting up on the beach a few yards from where we got in the water.

It was the first turtle that Dan or I have seen on the beach on Maui.  I am sure some of you have seen one before, but in over seven years, it was our first.  Dan was so excited he ran home to get the cameras.  We took a bunch of pictures during the day, but we left the beach hoping that she would stay resting on the beach until sunset.

We lucked out; she was still sitting there waiting for us when we came back that evening.  What made things perfect is the Maui sunset didn’t let us down and the angle was all perfect.  We took a bunch of different shots to capture the scene and used all of our resources to come up with “Turtle Vacation.”  We even used our cell phone video lights to light up the turtle in the foreground so that we could capture the details of the mother turtle without losing the bright sunset.

The picture is actually what you call and HDR shot, which stands for High Dynamic Range.  You see, our eyes can interpret a much larger range of colors and contrast than our cameras, so an HDR photo is actually more than one photo developed together to make one High Dynamic Range photo.  Basically the image comes out closer to what your eye would truly see if you were there with us when we captured the moment.  Take some time and check out “Turtle Vacation” if you have a chance.  It’s on our website under “Latest Works.”

We’ve got some new photo ideas as well and we’re excited to get going on them too.  We’ll keep you posted as our ideas turn into images, plus we’re going to start a newsletter so that you can keep up with us as well.

I guess that’s all for now, the emails are answered, the shipping is done, and Gwen is at work; I think it’s time to go hit the trails on the dirt bikes…

Talk soon,

C3