Great Whites

Aloha,

Thanks for checking in with us.

As promised, this blog will be about business (mostly.)

Gwen and I found out that kid # 2 is going to be another girl!!  Pretty exciting stuff.

OK, seriously - back to business...  Cesere Brothers Photography has had a great year.  People from all over the world continue to collect our work and a repeatedly add to their collections.  We're so thankful for all of you!  Plus, we get to see a lot of you who come back each year to visit which is always fun. 

This year we got to work with a few new productions companies, one of which was shooting commercials for Apple.  Anytime we can get put in the same category as Apple it feels like we're doing something right.  The bigger production we worked on with them hasn't been released yet and we don't really know when it will be - we're hoping it'll be a Superbowl commercial.  Just kidding, although it would be cool.  On another shoot with Apple we got to work for a day at the Carthaginian and shoot some underwater scenes for a quick video montage they were putting together for an iPad commercial.  Here's the link (don't forget to watch the video too):

Apple iPad Ad

http://www.apple.com/ipad/life-on-ipad/

We will keep you posted on when the next ad/commercial comes out from Apple.  We're pretty excited about the next one, it should be pretty cool.

This year we also got to be on the cover of the local Maui No Ka Oi magazine again, plus we got to shoot a bunch of pictures for the issues main article about snorkeling around Maui.  It's always fun to work with the nice people at Maui No Ka Oi.  Here is a link to some of that work:

Maui No Ka Oi Cover

http://www.mauimagazine.net/

Great White Sharks:

This year Dan and I decided to check Great White Sharks off our bucket list.  We planned a live aboard trip to Guadalupe Island off of Mexico to try out luck at swimming with these monsters.  We had a few extra days at the beginning of our trip so we decided to call up an old friend and do some diving off Catalina Island in California. 

If you haven't dove in California you are missing out!  The kelp forests are simply amazing.  If you get the chance we HIGHLY recommend calling up our friend Jerry Lewis, who owns the Magician Dive boat in San Pedro, and get out to Catalina and see some kelp!  Jerry and his crew/freinds are awesome at what they do and they make the trip so much fun.  We had some of the best charter food we've ever had.  Honestly, we thought Maui had high standards for tour operators - the Magician makes Maui look like a J.V. team.

Keep in mind that diving in California is a lot different that Maui.  In California there is no such thing as guided dives, the boat simply gets you to the reef and explains the dive sit and let's you go for it.  We love that but we also understand that it's not for everyone.  We also had the good fortune of meeting up with another good friend, Lori Sherrill, who helped show us the sites underwater.  Did I mention that Lori is a course director for PADI and works for Sports Chalet in Southern California, so she totally knew everything about the dives we did.  So I guess we were a bit spoiled on our Catalina trip, but it was very awesome and we will definitely be going back to visit Jerry and Lori again soon!

Here is the link to Jerry's boat - The Magician: http://magicianscuba.com/  It is totally worth the trip, plus the cost will blow you away (especially if you're used to Maui prices.)

So once we finished up in Catalina and got comfortable in the cold water again, we were off to Guadalupe to see the Great Whites.  Here is the video we made from the trip:



It was an awesome trip!  Getting to see Mikey and Great Whites all at the same time was the best.  We hope that Mike will come with us on our trips from now on.  It's really hard to explain how it makes you feel to see a Great White for the first time so you really need to go see for yourself.  

We went out with Islander Charters, which was pretty good.  The crew was great, especially the chef and on a live aboard trip the chef is pretty important.  The boat wasn't fancy at all, so if we go with the girls or kids next time we would probably choose a nicer boat but for three boys it was perfect. 

Our only real complaint was that the crew was really proud of their safety record and that ended up effecting our photography chances.   I know it sounds stupid to be upset for a good safety record, but common we're not picking daisies we're diving with Great Whites - it's supposed to be dangerous.  On the last day, which was the ride back to California, the crew was telling us how they had this great safety record and that they've never had a shark touch the cages.  They even told us that they saw us hanging out of the cages trying to get shots so they purposely moved the bait away from us to keep us safe.  Lame.  We were all disappointed after that conversation.  I think we all wanted to be in the cage when a shark tried to bite through it or at least got stuck in the window trying to get in to get us.  I guess we'll have to try again someday. 

All in all it was a Great experience and we got some pretty cool images.  Here is a link to our "Latest Works" section of our website so that you can see all of our new images:

Latest Works

Now we are getting ready for another Whale Season and another busy Art season.  We can't wait to get this next year going and see what it holds for us.  It seems like Cesere Brothers Photography keeps expanding and getting more fun at the same time.  We're excited to plan our next trip and go on our next adventure.

Thanks for following along and keeping in touch.  Let's plan a trip together again soon!

Aloha & Mahalo,

John

Quick Kids Update

Aloha to All!

Thank you so much for reading and staying in touch.  I'll begin with my usual apology for not writing more often - thank you guys for all the reminders to get on it!

The last post was in July of '12, so there has been a lot going on as you might imagine.

Parker Rose Cesere - October 8, 2012

Gwen gave birth to Parker Rose on October 8, 2012 who is a very healthy little girl.  Parker is now just over 1 year old, time flies...  Gwen has been an amazing mom which is something that is pretty special to watch.  I can remember when people would try to explain to us what it's like to have kids and how your life changes and that we wouldn't really understand until it happened - well I think we understand now.  It's the most difficult wonderful change in the world and we can't wait for the next one!  Speaking of the next one... Gwen is pregnant with # 2 already!!  April 4th is the due date for precious # 2 and we can't wait.  We're getting way to much rest/sleep now so why not add another diaper to change!  Just kidding, it's going to be awesome.

Some of you might have seen this, but we made a quick/funny video about Parker learning to crawl a few months ago, see what you think:

We're also lucky to have Grandma Cesere living out here on Maui with us, which has helped a ton.  Plus Dan has been an awesome Uncle.  We're just lucky to have such great family around.  Gwen's family visits often from the mainland too, which really helps Dan and I continue to travel for new pictures!

Jackson Paul Cesere - March 22, 2012

Speaking of great family - brother Mike and his wife Jamie had a baby boy on March 22, 2012.  He's such a cutie, we all were lucky enough to fly out to NY to meet him a while back.  We had a great whirlwind trip on the East Coast introducing Parker to the rest of our family and meeting little Jackson Paul Cesere.

It's amazing being a Dad.  It's pretty awesome to be an Uncle too, it is cool to see my bothers have kids and become great Dad's too.  (No pressure Dan - we'll see if he reads this post)

Jackson - "Jax"

I'll keep this post short and focused on the kids.  We have a million pictures and video's if you really want to see more all you have to do is ask.  :)

I'll update with some work related posts soon, we've been very busy there too.   We just wanted to share a bit about the kids quickly.

Aloha & Mahalo,

John & Dan

Two Dreams Come True!

Aloha,

I hope that you are doing well!  We're glad that you keep tuning in to read our blogs, emails and to watch our videos.  We are lucky to have such great friends and family.  We have had an exciting few months.  Let me try and share some of it with you.  

The first and most exciting news is that Gwen is seven months pregnant with a little girl!  Little baby Cesere is due October 21^st! We can’t wait!  It seems our baby girl already enjoys swimming too.  Each time Gwen jumps in the water the baby starts doing back flips and rolls around as if she is swimming along side us. 

Gwen

It's been almost 4 years of waiting and it is finally happening.  It's so hard to pick names, we've got a few ideas but we probably won't nail anything down until we see her little face.  We've already plastered her room with images of fish, octopus, jellyfish, turtles and whales as you might have imagined.

As if it wasn't hard enough to wait a few more months for the stork to show up, our cousin Amy just had her baby girl last week!  The good news is that we get to watch her and Jarett figure out how to be Mommy and Daddy first and we can take notes.  Little Celia Jean Fry is probably the cutest baby I have ever seen.  Gwen and I can't seem to put her down and even Dan softens up a ton around baby Celia.  She is the first Maui baby in our family so she will always have a special place in all of our hearts.

Celia Jean Fry - Born July 16th 2012

The next big news is that we went on a last minute photo trip to Tahiti!  We litterally put a trip together in two days because Gwen said "if you guys want to go somewhere, go now before the baby gets here and go while my Mom is here so I’m not home alone!”  So two days later we left for two weeks.

Tahiti - Tuamotu Islands

We searched all over the web for the best place to visit in late June early July and for some reason we kept coming back to Tahiti.  We really wanted to go someplace with shallow reefs, tons of fish, very clear water and small islands with palm trees near the water.  Our friends and our research led us to the lagoons in the Tuamotu Island Atolls which are North East of the main island of Tahiti. 

Rangiroa

Fakarava

Manihi

We decided to go to some of the remote islands outside Bora Bora and Morea. We ended up on three smaller islands called Manihi, Rangiroa and Fakarava.  I am pretty sure I can speak for Dan when I say they were some of the most beautiful places we have ever seen.

Manihi and Rangiroa were great.  Manihi had some of the nicest people we met on the whole trip.  Most of the people we encountered hardly spoke English and we speak zero French or Polynesian but that still didn't keep us all from hanging out and being instant friends.  We even got invited to play a soccer game with all the locals in the center of town on the first night.  Then each day as we rode bikes through town everyone would stop to say hello.  

We will never forget Rangiroa because of the dolphin encounters; we saw several large bottlenose dolphins on each dive.  Most of the time they would come right up close as if they wanted to be touched.  It was pretty cool.  Even though it was a bit out of season, we also saw a Great Hammerhead and it was huge (possibly 16-18 feet long), which was amazing.

 Generally the diving in the Tuamotu islands revolves around the strong currents that the tide changes bring.  Without going into crazy detail, each island basically has one area to dive with many little dive spots in that area.  The area is always the "pass," which is how the ocean moves in and out of the lagoon in each Atoll.  The Atolls have such large lagoons and such small passes that the current can really rip!  Any idea what kind of animal loves a ripping current?     SHARKS!!! 

To be honest, we had no idea that we chose some of the sharkiest waters in the world.  We truly went for the shallow waters, pretty reefs and amazing island scenery, but we were not upset when we stuck our heads in the water and saw sharks on every dive and every snorkel.  The Tuamotu islands are amazing!

 We had some amazing “pass” dives in Manihi and Rangiroa but Fakarava was easily our favorite stop.  Luckily we had planned to stay in Fakarava longer than the other two islands because it was the most remote and was supposed to have the prettiest corals and clearest water – it did not disappoint.

The morning of our first two dives in Fakarava we noticed a large amount of sharks and Marbled groupers.  

At first we thought it was just normal for the area because of what we had witnessed in our first week of diving.  However, each dive we started to notice the groupers were piling up by the hundreds.  On the second day, after getting swarmed by 30+ sharks and thousands of Marbled groupers we had to ask the dive guide what was going on...

 

It turns out that once a year at the first full moon of July that thousands and thousands of the Marbled groupers in the area come to this one spot in the pass to spawn for one hour!  We just happened to plan our week in Fakarava perfectly around this once a year event.  The other divers had planned for this trip for a year and came from all over the world.  Quite an impressive group of divers had assembled, a group that included famous underwater cinematographers, marine biologists and a few lucky photographers!

The night before the big dive felt like Christmas Eve waiting for Santa to come,  we could hardly sleep the night before the big dive!

We were up before  sun rise, so we took early morning sky photo's while we waited for the current to be moving in the right direction.  Then, we sat waiting on the edge of the boat holding our cameras and imagining what we were about to jump into.  

We dive a lot, and have seen a lot, but nothing to date prepared us for what we were about to see...  We back rolled into the water off the little boat and started to sink to about 100ft.  As we descended we noticed that so many of these Marbled groupers had come to the area that it was almost impossible to see the actual reef and sand.  They were piled on top of each other and created a 3 foot layer of grouper soup on the bottom.  They all stayed in tight groups and all at the same depth as the hundreds of sharks circled above.  It was like everyone had a pre-arranged layer that was like a safe zone, the groupers got the first 3 feet, the sharks got the next 10 feet, then the rest of the fish took up the upper layers followed by a surface layer of spinner dolphins.  It was so full of animals that it was hard for Dan and I to see each other when we were 10 feet apart!  Oh yeah, and the visibility was over 150ft when you actually had a clear line of sight.  Which you didn't.

We weren't sure what to do at first so we hovered in the shark layer and just watched for a minute.  A female grouper would swim a foot above the group with one male who seemed to be rubbing bellies with her.  Together they would spray out eggs and sperm all over the place, instantly two to 6 more males would shoot up and add their sperm to the collection.  The visibility would quickly drop and become murky all around the area and at the very same time when the water was murky and the groupers were preoccupied with spawning, sharks would come flying through the murk with mouth wide open hoping to grab a grouper or two.  The sharks didn't care who or what ended up in their mouth, so you had to keep your head on a swivel or get the heck out of that layer of the water.

For the first few minutes it was hard to shoot a picture or take some video because the scene overwhelmed us.  The few other divers that were with us decided to stay about 20 feet off the bottom and just watch the madness.  Dan and I decided to sink to the bottom and hang with the groupers so that we could get as close as possible to the action.  Eventually we found our place and we started shooting in the middle of feeding sharks and spawning groupers.  There was so much sperm, eggs, blood and guts in the water that it was hard to really get any images or video that is worth showing, but it was an amazing adrenalin rush.  You would hear the slight snapping sound of the groupers spawning inches from your head and then turn just in time to see shark teeth zip through the murk by your head.  Seconds later it would happen on the other side of your face, then on top of your head, then on your camera.  Groupers would swim through your legs, under your arms, between you and the camera and sharks would almost hit you every other second.

What made it really special is that it was all natural, no feeding, no cages and barely any humans at all.  By the end of the dive it the spawning was slowing and the groupers were beginning to leave and the madness was over.  The 3D guy was swimming just a few feet from us and we all looked at each other and smiled.  Apparently he had been coming to this spot for this one-hour a year for 10 years and this was one of the best he had seen!

I've already written way too much so I'll try and stop now, but WOW was that a cool experience.  I feel like I’m leaving so much out too.  Needless to say we are energized to start going on more trips.  We've got to wait until October and see what the new babies needs are, but you can bet we'll be planning another trip soon and you don't want to miss it!  We’re thinking Tiger Beach in the Bahamas…

Here's a quick video from the trip.  They don't let us post it here very large, so make sure to click on full screen or watch it on YouTube to see it larger. (Once you've hit play, those options show up on the bottom right of the video screen.)

We also have lots of new pictures to go through so we'll be posting them on our website under the "Latest Works" tab.  We'de love to hear your thoughts, so stay in touch.  

I've got some more to share about this trip, so I'll try and write again next week...  Here's a teaser:

Remember to Follow Your Dreams and always keep in touch!

Talk soon - John

p.s. - Please post comments or send emails, we love feedback and questions.  The easiest way to get in touch with us is on our new business Facebook Page.  It's called "Cesere Brothers Fine Art Photography."  Make sure to go "like" the page and talk to us through there or just leave a comment below.

Magazine Cover and TV Appearance

Aloha,

I think we had about 10 different people ask if we gave up on the blog in the past week, so I am pretty sure it's time to update!

Thanks to all you guys who keep reading and staying in touch with us.  It's been great to see so many of you continue to come back to Maui each year.  It's amazing how many people we have met in our time here and it's awesome to see how many remain friends and continue to check in with us!

Dan and I are having a blast with our business these days.  We just finished out 5 full year in business, and we're happy to say things are continuing to grow all the time.  We are so thankful to all of you who have stood by us all along this journey, especially all of our family.  It's going to be another exciting year, who knows where 2012 will take us.

It's whale season again, which means we get to swim with whales.  It's only about half way through, but it's been magical already.  I think we have some of our best whale images to date, check them out by clicking here Latest Works.  I'll include our favorite two below, one is a non whale shot that we took after a long day during a beautiful sunset...  (click on the titles to see them larger on our website)

Orange Dream

Baby In Flight

One of the biggest updates of late start with the Jan/Feb issue of the Maui Magazine also called the Maui No Ka Oi Magazine.  They contacted us a few months ago and asked if we could shoot some pictures for an article they were writing for the issue.  By the time we were finished the magazine had decided to make the article the feature and give it 10 pages in order to display all the images that they loved - Plus they gave us the cover!  Click on the links below for more info:

Maui Magazine

The title of the article is Liquid Assets, you can preview the issue and see most of the pictures.  Plus you can also grab a copy for $3 but you better hurry before it's gone - it's the Jan/Feb 2012 issue.

The other exciting news is that our little TV appearance on "Wild About Animals" continues to air and we meet people all the time who saw us on TV.  What is ever better is that our Uncle actually found that it went Viral!  So if you never got a chance to see the episode you can watch below:

If you're having trouble or want to see it larger, click here for the YouTube link.

I think almost everyone who sees the episode teases me for saying "poop in my wetsuit," but it was a lot of fun and hopefully it will help lead to some more TV appearances.

In other news, Dan and I got to dive with two guys we really look up to earlier this month.  We spent a day on the water with David Fleetham and Marty Snyderman looking for dolphins and diving a bit on Lanai.  If you have a second google those two names...  While not only very nice guys, they are two of the best Underwater Photographers in the world.  Needless to say, we had a great day and learned a lot from two great guys that just happen to be living legends in our field!  

Lets see, everything else is going great; Gwen is teaching preschool still and is more than half way finished with her Masters class in education and Mango is huge!  Another cousin of ours, Michelle, moved out the island and can be found as the manager at Maui Brew Company.  Plus our Mom has been here for over a year and still loves it, I don't think she'll ever leave.  Oh yeah, cousin Amy is pregnant!  Amy is our cousin who has lived here with us the whole time, she's also Michelle's sister.  (We have a huge family - Mom is one of 11...)

We're seriously trying to get traveling again.  We might even add a travel link on the website so that we can start recruiting you guys to come with us again.  It's been far to long since we've got on a new adventure.  We're thinking Galapagos, Bonaire, Bahamas and Guadeloupe just to name a few...

Lastly, we're excited to be playing hockey again.  Dan and I joined a roller hockey league on Maui and we play a few times a week.  (There isn't a lot of ice on Maui.)  It has been a ton of fun to meet new people and to get back to sport that we loved growing up.  We actually convinced Mike to come out to Oahu in April so that he could play in a tournament with us too, it's going to be just like old times.  In fact, I think our Dad is even going to fly out here and hang out with us for the tournament too.  It should be a lot of fun.

I'll try and write again soon!  Thanks for staying in touch and thanks for reading.  We couldn't be living our dreams without all of your support.

Mahalo!

John

The last six months...

Aloha!

Here we go again starting a blog with an apology for not writing more often?  I think I'll stop promising to write more often, maybe that will be like reverse psychology and help me out.  We'll see.

So today we're actually in the middle of a small rain storm.  The power has gone out twice and it's been windy for about two days.  After I finish this Dan and I have to go on the roof and fix a tarp that blew loose, it usually keeps the rain and sun off of some of our outside gear.  Anyways, it's the perfect day to sit inside and work on the computer!

We just finished submitting a press release to a bunch of news papers talking about our new Underwater, Underwater Photography Gallery experience at the Ritz Carlton here in Kapalua last weekend.  It was pretty cool.  We actually had some of our images printed on Aluminum sheets about five feet wide and then we  made special stands so that we could mount them underwater in the pool.  It was so much fun.

As far as we can tell, we're the first people to have a true underwater photo gallery underwater!  We did find one guy who set up a bunch of underwater sculptures underwater, but that's it.  So maybe we're the first for real, anyway it was a lot of fun.

Those pictures from above are also the first ones taken on one of our new Canon 5D MkII Subal housings, which is pretty exciting!  We're hoping to get out a lot more and add some new images to our collection.  As soon as we do we'll send an email out to everyone.

I think that we've mentioned this before, but we've gotten to work with Eddie Bauer a few times over the past few months on some photo shoots for different catalogs of theirs.  That has been a lot of fun, we got to learn a lot about shooting above the water with lights and models.  We got to learn from some pretty famous people that have years of experience and have shot some of the most famous people we have ever heard of, like Wayne Gretzky!

One of the photographers just recently called us up and invited us to work on the North Shore of Oahu to help out on a Men's Health Magazine shoot.  This time we even got to share some underwater experience with the master photographers because the piece was all about the North Shore lifeguards.  Those guys are pretty awesome too, amazing athletes.  In fact, one guy even played lacrosse in college and knew some of the guys Dan and I played with in school!  If you get the chance check the summer issues of Men's Health Magazine and look for the piece on the Lifeguards of the North Shore.

We also got to do another season of Whale Research with the Keiki Kohola Project, which is always a lot of fun.  This year we even helped and filled up the California State University Channel Islands art gallery, which led to us having some pieces in the local art community over there.  So I guess you could say that we're finally expanding to galleries off of Maui, with the help of the KKP group!

For the past few months we've been running into loads of our dive buddies from all over the world, which has been great.  About the only thing we miss from our time working with Lahaina Divers is having the opportunity to dive with all of the people we met over the years.  Which is beginning to make us think about doing some more dive trips.

So who wants to go on a dive trip?  We're even thinking about going somewhere in the Carribean as soon as this summer (August 8th-15th?).  Nothing crazy, maybe the Bahama's or Grand Cayman for some great diving and maybe some sharks.  Soon after that we're thinking about trips to the Socorro Islands off of Mexico and maybe Palau after that.  We think it's time for trips again, so if you're interested start sending emails and we'll start trying to nail something together!

Oh yeah, we also got to work on an awesome documentary with our friend Todd.  He had this great idea about Black Coral Diving, and with the help of his brothers he put together a great piece.  I'll write again with more details down the road when it officially get's released.  We got to help shoot and even do some recreations for the film which was a lot of fun.  Hopefully, we'll know more in a few months.

We'd also like to thank all of you who continue to have an interest in our work!  Without such loyal friends and collectors like you guys we wouldn't be able to continue to chase our ocean dreams.

Aloha!

John

C3 

Two in one day!

Good Morning,

It's another beautiful morning on Maui!  I just took Mango for a walk and enjoyed watching the Zip Line tours get ready for a day of business.  Our neighbor passed us on the trail as she was heading up to feed her horses on her four wheeler, it makes me want to grab Dan and go for a Dirt Bike ride today.  Especially since we just had a few days of rain on the hills so there would be a ton of mud, which makes riding a lot of fun.

So I just sat down to write a blog because I know it has been a while since we last wrote one.  When I logged in I noticed that we had written a blog a couple of weeks ago and never posted it, so I just posted it. But because it was written a few weeks ago, I have to update some info...

Our cousin Amy's wedding was Awesome!  It was great to see a bunch of our family fly out from the east coast.  Most of you probably don't know this but my mom has a sister who has three daughters that are the same age as the three of us.  It was pretty cool growing up along side them, we always had buddies to hang out with at family gatherings and beach days.  Although the girls tell us now that we were a bit rough when we were younger, forcing them to swim, fish and do boy stuff all the time.  Oh well...  It was a lot of fun to hang out with them and dance the night away after the wedding.  All the girls looked amazing, especially Amy,) and it was truly a night to remember.  (Jarett looked good too, in case he's reading this.)

A big surprise coming from wedding week was that our Mom decided to move back out here to Maui with us for a couple of months.  It is always pretty awesome to hang out with Mom and we are a pretty lucky family that we all get along well enough to live together as adults.  I should be pretty thankful that Gwen is so understanding when it comes to all of this too!  Luckily we had an extra bedroom in the house that would could turn into Mom's room.  So far she's painting and getting used to walking big Mango.  She's a really good painter, I'll have to take some pictures of her work and post them some time...

Here's the really awesome news:  we got a new TV for FREE!  A couple of friends of ours were moving to a new house and were tired of their old TV that wasn't HD.  So they gave it to us, it's a huge 60 incher!  Perfect for our house, Dan already set up Mario Kart and we've had movie night several times.  It's pretty awesome.  Even Mom and Gwen are impressed with the lifelike size of the football players on sunday.

We might be heading to Indo again on a job, which would be cool.  Although there was just a huge earthquake/tsunami and I think there was even a volcano eruption?  So that might slow those plans down. But Indonesia is huge, i think all the bad stuff is over 1000 miles from where we were heading, so we can still hope.  It would be a lot of fun to get back underwater over there, it's beautiful.  If we do go, I hope we'll have some new pictures to share from the trip.  It is mostly a video shoot, but I'm sure we'll find some time to take a few shots!

Dan is in the kitchen trying to grow an Avocado tree in a glass, i'll keep you posted...

Gwen and Mango say hello too.

I'll talk to you soon.

Mahalo!

Where does time go?

Aloha to all...

Seriously, where does the time go?  It's been a few months since we sat down to write, post a video clip or even chat on Facebook.  We're sitting here trying to think of what has been happening to keep us so busy?  Wow, we also just noticed that our first blog entry was September 23rd of last year!  Can you believe a whole year has gone bye?

Well it was summer, and summertime is always the busiest time of year here on Maui.  July and August is always a good time to catch up with old dive buddies and art collectors passing through.  We had a pretty successful summer season and we're happy to say we're still in business!

September isn't always as easy.  It's typically the slowest month for island visitors and it's truly the slowest month for art sales.  The good news is that the slower times gives us some more time to work on other projects and even to go out and shoot some more.  Plus we had a lot more friends visiting, which makes us wish we had a place to dive with old dive buddies.  Hawaiian Rafting seems like the company to deal with, so steer your diving in that direction and we can work together on diving in the future.

We got a visit from an old friend who works with a big company over in LA.  Last year we helped shoot some footage for some of his projects that can be seen around the world on the sides of skyscrapers!  No joke, one project has over 3 million LCD screens linked together on the outside of a few huge buildings.  It's amazing work.  Here is the link to a project in Macau, near Hong Kong, that had some underwater footage we helped with, see what you think:


City of Dreams - Macau from StandardVision on Vimeo.


We love working with these guys, it's just such amazing technology.  They have some new projects coming up that might involve some traveling and some cool new camera's.  We'll see what happens, but it's always very exciting.

We have a couple of our own new ventures on the horizon that we are excited about!  We met the owner of a company that sells artwork to high end hotels and he fell in love with our work and wanted us to become part of his team, so we did.  We're still putting the whole thing together, but it looks like it might be a promising venture down the road. You never know, you might see some of our work in hotels around the world someday.  We had to go through a million of our old photo's to find some that we were willing to share in an unlimited fashion.  So none of the photo's that you've seen before will be released, but a bunch of others that no one has seen.  We printed a few this last weekend to share under the Banyan Tree, simply because we wanted to see if people would like them.

The hardest part about our job is picking out new images to print?  You think that would be easy, but there have been so many times that we fall in love with a new shot and then we get it printed and no one likes it. Or we'll print one that we're not sure about, or maybe we don't even really like it that much, and everyone loves it?  We haven't been able to figure out why either scenario happens?  It's pretty strange.  Probably the best example is our best selling photo "Stuck in the Middle."  We spent probably a half hour trying to take a picture of a transparent shrimp that was so awesome, we thought..  All the while this little clown fish kept nipping at our fingers and bumping into the camera and out of simple annoyance we snapped a couple quick pictures...  It's strange how it all works out.

We've mentioned this before, but we're always trying to work on something for TV.  We shoot footage from time to time or sell some of our stock clips, but someday we'd like to do something more permanent.  Who knows if it will ever happen, it's a tough business to get into, but it seems we've made a bit more progress in the last month or so.  We'll obviously update when we can, we're pretty stoked about it.  We've learned the term "Tempered Optimism," that is how we've been advised to feel as we go through the process, haha...

There is also some talk of a gallery in California?  It's still pretty new and in the works, but that could be cool.  The Keiki Kohola Project, the team we do whale research with, is hoping to help get us into some local galleries to help us both raise money for future endeavors.  It's exciting because we have made lots of freinds in California, it would be cool to visit and do some diving over there.  We're hoping to do more traveling soon, hopefully you all can meet up with us when we swing through your neck of the woods.

We have a bunch of fun things coming up in the next two months too.  Our cousin Amy, who lives out here with us, is getting married in a week and half!  Another cousin, Coreen,  is coming out to stay with us for the wedding, which is going to be great.  She's a bit younger than us, so it will be fun to get to know her better during the next couple of weeks.

Then in November we have another wedding to go to on the Big Island.  That will be a blast too, especially if we can get some diving in while we're there or maybe even some trips to the lava flow?  But, as many of you probably already know, they don't call it the "Big Island" for nothing.  It will take us 4-5 hours to drive from one side to the other to see the lava, so we'll see.

Have we mentioned how big Mango is now?  She's gotta be full grown at about 85 lbs.  She loves the water more than anything now, we can't go anywhere without her trying to swim in anything water, puddles, sprinklers, drink bowls, streams, reservoirs, showers and obviously the ocean.  Gwen tried to take her to our roller hockey game the other night and she spent most of her time in the water with Mango.  I should mention that the roller hockey rink is right next to the water in Kihei, it's really amazing.  If any of our old friends from New England are reading this, you gotta see this rink.  It's on the beach!  t's very cool, we play at night under the lights on sundays.  We're still trying to get used to roller hockey versus ice hockey, but we're having a blast.  Mike is flying out for Amy's wedding and he's bringing roller blades so that he can come play with us, it's going to be a lot of fun.  The Maui Inline Hockey Association is pretty cool, anyone who lives here on Maui and plays hockey or wants to learn should really come by.  Or if you just want to watch and check out the rink at night, games are sunday nights from 7-9 and advanced pickup hockey is tuesday nights from 8-10.  It's really fun!

Oooh, we almost forgot.  We got to spend a day out on Hula Girl, which is a huge catamaran that can be private chartered.  It is probably the nicest boat on Maui, maybe in Hawaii.  It was an amazing way to spend a sunday on the ocean complete with a full kitchen and dive compressor.  Some day we should get a bunch of people together and take that boat to Molokai to do some hammer head diving, imagine sitting at a beautiful table with a gourmet lunch on your surface interval?  That would be cool.  Someday we'll have one that travels around the world and you can all come visit too!

Well, that's all for now.  Hopefully we'll be better at writing more often.  Thanks to all those who read and to all those who stay in touch.

We'll be sending out a new email to all of our friends, family, art collectors and dive buddies soon, so if you're not on our mailing list and you want to be sign up soon!

Aloha!

 Talk Soon...