Mo'omomi Beach Sunrise Shoot & Hula Shoot
Since everyone else had to get up early for our sunrise shoot, 5:30 departure time, I decided I would get up early too. I actually woke up to my alarm going off at 4:00 and did all my regular morning routine before leaving for our sunrise shoot. After a slightly later night for our night sky shooting, it was a bit of an early morning, even for me. But it was well worth getting up for.
We took a long drive in the early hours to Mo'omomi Beach. The roads we took were total dirt roads. This is another area that we had to have special permission to get to. During the workshop 2 weeks earlier, they got rain the night before they were going to go to Mo'omomi 
Beach and the roads were impassable. I'm so glad that we got to go. The waves were coming in rhythmically. The cloudy sky added more interest. This one beach had several different areas with totally different looks to take pictures. As I was climbing around on the top of some rocks, Rikki told me there was a cave right underneath. The view out of the cave was astounding. I got pictures from the cave, on the soft, sandy beach, over the cliff and over the rocks with the water splashing up on them.
Something that I have noticed on the island is the dirt. Driving to several of the locations we have gone this week, I've noticed that the dirt is usually some shade of red. There are some areas where it's a normal (to me) brown, but most places it's anywhere from light red to dark red to even bright red. These changes can happen within just a few miles. Of course, there's also the sands of the beaches. It's interesting to watch the ground because it's always changing.
Shortly after we got back to the Hui, breakfast was ready for us. Since we were all up early for the sunrise shoot, we didn't have porch sharing after breakfast or any classes. I think a few classmates went back to bed for a little while, but there were several of us who gathered around the table in the lodge or went back to our rooms and started editing pictures from the morning.
Later this afternoon through sunset, we're going to be taking hula pictures at One Ali'i Beach Park. Before we get to go take pictures of real hula dancers, we get to learn... and attempt... to hula ourselves. They brought in real hula teachers, Rae Young and Lynette Sheppard. After watching Lynette & Rae each do a hula dance and explaining some information about hula, they taught us all how to do a "simple" hula. Trying to remember all the hand movements with what words, moving your feet in small steps... it all sounds so easy, right? Well... maybe not quite so easy. :) It was fun though. Unfortunately, Jack was taking pictures of all of us the whole time..... luckily, none of those pictures have surfaced yet. :)
After our hula lesson, we had some open time with Jack to ask any questions we may have in photoshop, lightroom, etc. We went through a couple more things in photoshop including one of my questions about how to do an HDR image. He showed us how to do it manually so we have more control over it than using the 
HDR feature built into photoshop, which I just couldn't ever get to come out well. I didn't get a chance to really try the manual way, but it's something I plan on doing. I've taken several images that I can try it on throughout the week so far.
We only had about an hour with Jack before we had to leave for One Ali'i Beach Park. When we got there, 4 hula girls were there waiting for us. One Ali'i Beach Park is a beautiful grassy park with 
a few coconut trees right by the beach. It's a beautiful setting for these hula pictures. Three of the dancers did a couple hula dances for us in front of 4 trees right in front of the ocean. Beautiful pictures, both pulled back where you could see the trees or close up where you could just see the ocean behind them. They then moved to another location with more trees as a background and all four of them did a couple more dances. It was a little windy and, although I think it annoyed them a bit with their hair getting in their faces a lot, it made for some great pictures.
It was still a little while before sunset, so we started posing the girls for portrait style photos. They also went down on the beach while several of us went out in the rocky bottomed ocean (it was sandy at Kapuaiwa Grove just miles away when we were out in the water there) to get pictures with the trees and land as the backdrop and the water in the foreground. Getting the pictures was worth carefully walking around barefoot in the water on the rocks. While we were waiting for sunset, they continued to pose on the
edge of the water or wherever we would ask them to. They were such great sports, doing the same movements over and over and over, posing certain ways, whatever we wanted. As the sun started going down, we got several silhouette shots of them as well. Thank you ladies for your 2 hours of putting up with us and doing anything we asked! :)
We didn't have anything going on after dinner except editing pictures. I think a lot of people appreciated this since they were up early for the sunrise shoot and we were going to be up early again tomorrow for another sunrise shoot. I got to bed about 9:30, like most nights.
Continue on to Kanakakai Wharf and One Ali'i Beach Sunrise or go back to the Main Page.
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