Hello MPP Fans!

Jetted off the last week to Maui for some location work. We've got Big Island Hawaii, Oahu and Maui represented here along with local tour companies Discover Hawaii Tours, Blue Water Rafting, Pacific Whale Foundation and The Frogman.

The full image set can be found HERE

Some highlights are below:

On Maui, the Haleakala Crater is a prime spot for astrophotography. The crater in the foreground and peaks in the background provide a nice contrast line to a lateral view of the Milky Way, tinted orange by the breaking dawn at 5:30am in the morning.

January is the middle of Whale Season and this breaching male Humpback put on an impressive show for us on the Frogman whale watch tour.

One of the longest running and most popular tours on the island of Maui is the Bluewater Rafting company. Their specialty is touring the volcanic rock formations off of Maui's Southwest Kanaio coast. One of the highlights of this tour is the hollow lava tubes that form pressure caves and create these great action shots, complemented above by a mist rainbow.

I don't recommend this, but if you are brave enough to bring your DSLR on the usually very wet Bluewater rafting company you can get some incredible shots. The RIBs the company runs on is much smaller than the other company's catamarans and tour boats, giving you a much closer to the water perspective that allows shots like this whale fluke with a reflection on the surface of the ocean.

The Te Au Moana Luau held at the Marriott hotel and resort in Wailea features a Tonga fire-dancer, pictured above. Stopping down the aperture and extending the exposure to 1/5 sec gives these great colorful streaks of the fire. A full 8-10 images from this are found in the gallery linked above.

The active Kīlauea volcano (Big Island Hawaii), shown above, made for some impressive fireworks. This was the highlight of the Discover Hawaii Tours Maui to Big Island tour day.

This long-exposure shot caught a sea turtle sleeping on Ho'okipa Beach. The bright half-moon made for some good contrast in the waves and led to an artistic movement noise in the background.