The studio kept a working blog for years - short dispatches written between sessions about whatever the island had just taught. A pod of spinner dolphins going ballistic off the local bay during a morning paddle. A hedge of backlit hibiscus so loud with color it forced a U-turn on the way to a portrait. A landscape photographer from Texas who hired a guide to the good scenic spots and got a keeper at Wailua Falls. The best of those lessons have been preserved and expanded into the evergreen field notes below.
The Field Notes
- How to Get Natural Kids' Smiles - The over-the-shoulder telephoto technique that turns camera-shy children into cover models without ever saying the word "smile." The single most requested piece of advice this studio ever gave.
- Look Slimmer in Photos - Twelve posing and lens choices that flatter every body: why telephoto beats wide-angle, where the camera should be, and what to do with arms, legs and chins.
- Rain on Kauai - Fifteen years of shoots, only two ever postponed. How the island's microclimates rescue rainy-day sessions, and the upwind-parking-lot trick for calling the weather before you cancel anything.
- Dramatic Lighting After Sunset - Why the show often starts when the sun is gone: afterglow, blue hour, and the case for keeping the camera out twenty minutes longer than everyone else.
Stories Worth Keeping
Some entries from the old blog were pure island life, and they deserve a mention even without their original photographs. There was the morning the photographer and his wife paddled out from their local bay into the middle of a leaping pod of spinner dolphins - "Wowee! What fun!" was the entire review. There was the condo owner in Princeville who commissioned a portrait of every set of guests who rented his place, as a gift; one reluctant husband, dragged into the session out of politeness, saw the finished frames and admitted he was "really into it" after all. That story became the studio's favorite proof of its motto: a great experience produces great photos.
New readers should start with the kids' smiles technique, then read the rain essay before trusting any Kauai forecast. For the full planning picture, the family photography guide and location library carry the rest of what the blog taught in passing.