Lately I’ve been admiring the amazing work of Patrick Smith a great deal, trying to learn how to get more impact when photographing the ocean.  He has some unbelievable images of a blowhole in Kauai, so while in Maui I ventured north to check out the Nakalele Blowhole to see if it offered any opportunities.  I decided getting close enough to photograph it in a similar way was too risky while carrying my PhaseOne equipment, but a spot up the coast offered some interesting possibilities to shoot some surf action.

After studying his work, it seems his approach is counter intuitive to what I’ve always done.  Typically I try and time the crash of the wave so I can get the magnificent splash.  Even if I drag the shutter I don’t get the same effect.  It seems what he does quite often is wait till after the crash, and then captures all the intricate little rivulets of water running off of the rock.  That was my goal tonight. I spent about an hour in evening light, trying different lengths of exposures to see if I could get anything interesting.

It’s pretty challenging ... catching the right wave as well as getting the time right.  My instinct of several seconds proved to be too long ... just too much blurry water to get any real detail.  All in all I tried about 50 exposures.  This particular formation was actually behind the one I was most interested in, but it seemed to have more of the effect I was after.  A black and white conversion simplifies the image.

Can’t wait to get home and print this one up large.