Honokohau Sea Turtle Sunset 1

Honokohau Sea Turtle Sunset 1

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My favorite location to photograph sea turtles is at the Kaloko Honokohau National Historic Park on the Big Island of Hawaii. After a long day boating with my friends, I photographed this small sea turtle resting on the lava shoreline north of the small boat harbor at sunset. I was lucky that the sky lit up like this, because the vog and clouds often block the magic light at the end of the day in Kona. My friend and fellow photographer Stuart Westmorland was using a flash next to me, which fortunately added a bit of fill light to the otherwise backlit turtle. I normally dislike flash, but in this case the fill-light is perfectly balanced with the ambient light. I might have to buy myself a flash. I created this image with my Canon 5DmkII, Carl Zeiss 35mm f2 ZE lens, and 3-stop Reverse Graduated Neutral Density filter. This image is a single-exposure which required a minimal amount of processing using Aperture 3 and Photoshop CS5.

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Green Sea Turtle 9

Green Sea Turtle 9

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Back in February, I noticed this little pelagic turtle floating in the deep blue many miles off shore of the Big Island. The seas were calm and there weren’t any bigger critters around, so I decided to jump in and take this little guys picture. It was not very big and had probably not seen land for a long time, so it immediately took an interest in the boat and anyone who jumped in the water. This turtle even climbed on top of my camera housing while I was swimming next to it! All the fun ended when an enormous Galapagos shark that was bigger than myself came rocketing out of the deep to check me out. I did not see it until it was upon me. Fortunately, it just came at me and turned very abruptly at the last second. My boat captain heard me screaming and quickly came over to pick me up. I did not get back in the water that afternoon, but I did the next day and the rest of the trip. Sorry, I did not get any images of the shark! Please visit more of my Sea Turtle Photography.

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