Hooray and hello...last year I promised and now here we go :)

After one year of abstinence, I finally finished the fifth part of my "Natural Wonders"-sequel:

[elements] HAWAII


In September 2011 my girl and me spent one month on the four Hawaian islands Oahu, Maui, Kauai and the Big Island.
I don´t think, I have to say too much about Hawaii.
It´s a fantastic piece on earth with absolutely stunning landscapes, perfect hiking trails, wonderful rainforests and some of the most beautiful beaches in the world.

Lemme say, that we shot more than 57.000 (!) photos (incl. timelapses) and tons of videos.
We gathered more than 2 terabyte of data and it was a pain in the ass to sort all the stuff out.
(which is still in progress;)

We did see the Mauna Kea and Kilauea volcanoes, visited the Napali coast and walked the famous Kalalau trail, which is 11 miles long and which shall be one of the hardest hiking trails in the world.

Sometimes we even took the risks to see places, one usually don´t get to see, as we walked strictly forbidden trails like Oahus "Sacred Falls Trail".

We damaged so much of our equipment, so my 7D and some lenses as well as tripods and videoheads.
For example, I was flushed away while taking a 360 degree panorama of a cliff at the Koko Crater Head Park, when a huge wave came up, which I stupidly pretty underestimated :D
(you can see the 360 here:
360cities.net/image/east-shore-at-halona-point-koko-crater-oahu-hawaii#283.00,0.10,70.0 )

We crouched through mud on the ground, under trees and walked through bamboo forests to see nearly every worth-to-see waterfall, the perfect beach and hidden or ancient places.


[elements] HAWAII just gives a short overview of all the isles, showing the nicest places (of course not all;) with its four elements, earth, water, air and fire (OK, not really fire, but plenty of sun;).

Unfortunately we didn´t see lava on our lava tour, not even steams or whatever.
Anyway...I hope you enjoy this movie.

I spent quite a lot of time on the sounddesign, of which I´m really proud of.
Normally this movie has a 6 channel audio, which lets explode your speakers, but for Vimeo its just a stereo downmix.
If you wanna get the full blast, just drop me a mail and I´ll provide you with the AC3 file.
(mediaplayer classic is able to play both without muxing...so no stress;)


Technically this project was straight forward (once, I had a workflow *g* ).
As my tripod just weights 900 gr., most of the shots (especially Mauna Kea and Kilauea) were shaky because of the blasts of wind,so you can imagine what happened to my TL´s (After Effects did such a phenomenal job on stabilizing all the stuff).

The rest of the shots were mostly shot in guerilla style (too much hassle with the bad working MH055M8-Q5 PRO Photo-/Videohead, so I decided to forget it and to film the rest with just my hands, hoping that the stabilizing later on will work ;)



To cut a long story short: grab your popcorn, turn on your speakers and enjoy!
...and..if you like... don´t forget to put a "like" on it :)



Equipment used:


.Canon EOS 7D,
.Panasonic Lumix DMC FZ38,
.B+W MRC Polarizer, slim,
.Tokina AF 11-16mm f/2.8 AT-X Pro DX,
.Kenko Polarizer,
.Sigma 17-50mm, F2,8 EX DC OS HSM,
.Kenko Polarizer Digital Pro,
.Canon EF 70-200mm f/4 USM L IS,
.B+W MRC Polarizer, slim,
.Walimex Pro 8mm, f3,5, Fisheye,
.Bilora Photo Geotagger GT-01,
.Set of Macro Rings,
.Sirui 1204X Travel Tripod,
.Manfrotto MH055M8-Q5 PRO Photo-/Videohead,
.JJC-TM-A remote switch/timer,
.LowePro Shoulder Harness & Waistbelt,
.Zoom H2 Audiorecorder,
.LCD-VF Viewfinder,

Shot mostly at ISO 100, 30 fps, Technicolor Cinestyle picture style, edited in Canopus Edius, graded in Lightroom and stabilized in After Effects.


For my photogallery visit:
iedn.de/hawaii.htm

and here are the 360 degree panoramas:
iedn.de/360_hawaii.htm