Mountains and Waves on Kaua'i

A Great View

For our trip to Kaua’i for our 25th anniversary, we were looking forward to seeing beaches. Lots and lots of beaches. Because as you may know, we really like a good beach. But we were also interested in seeing the mountains, too. Because back at home in the Mississippi River Delta, we don’t have anything more than a few small hills, and definitely nothing that would qualify as a mountain.

So imagine our delight when we found this beach at Anahola. Here, there were mountains right in view of the beach. You could see all of it at once! This was perfect for us. We could enjoy the view of the mountains while we enjoyed the waves at the beach. Cool!

Despite the way it might look here, most of the time that we spent there was actually sunny. In fact, before we got in the water, we enjoyed a nice picnic lunch while sitting at a picnic table up on the shore. It was a great day!

Later on in the afternoon as it was getting close to time for us to leave, some clouds started moving in over the mountains. That was when I took this photo, and it looked a little ominous. But most of the ominous things were far away from where we were. Still, I liked the way that this turned out.

And by the way, the name Anahola literally means “deadly winds” which would appear appropriate with how the photo looks. And maybe I should just go on letting people think that because we enjoyed the lack of crowds that were there. Small to no crowds at the beach are right up our alley. 

Unplanned

One of the joys of this trip was the lack of planning that we put into it. We purposefully did not plan much at all for the trip. Each day, Laura would find a beach or two for us to visit. But it was usually just something along the lines of, “Let’s try this one…”

So imagine our delight when we would get to the beach that she had looked up and it would look like this one. That happened over and over again. Each day was something new, and it was always nice.

Who says that everything always has to be planned out to the smallest detail? Sometimes it is nice to just go and see what you can find. That might end up being even better than what you could have planned!

See more from this trip in the 2018 Kaua’i Trip section!

Bible Verse

Praise the Lord from the earth, all sea monsters and ocean depths, lightning and hail, snow and cloud, powerful wind that executes His command, mountains and all hills, fruit trees and all cedars. - Psalm 148:7-9

About the Photo

A good bit was already said above about the photo. But I should also add that this was taken with the 14-42mm zoom lens. I actually did not want something as wide as the fisheye lens for this view, believe it or not. I did try it, but it was just a little too wide to focus on the mountains and the beach.

I initially did try to make this photo more colorful by bringing out the green of the mountains and the blue of the sky and the water. But it ended up looking like when they try to colorize the old black and white movies, so I gave up on that. And when it was all finished, I actually liked this slightly more serious look better, anyway. I have plenty of photos of blue skies and green grass, but those will wait until later.

Photo: A single Raw exposure, processed in Photoshop. Read more about photography tips, photo software, camera gear, and more at Steve’s Photography Tips.
Camera: Olympus OM-D E-M10
Lens: Olympus 14-42mm IIR
Date: July 5, 2018
Location: Anahola, Hawaiʻi