Aloha, Hawaii

After an incredibly beautiful season in Hawaii, I’ve decided to move myself and my business back to the mainland to be closer to family. While it was a difficult decision to come to, I am excited for the changes ahead and look forward to capturing weddings and creating portraits in new (and some old!) locations.

To everyone that I’ve had the pleasure of working with on Maui and Oahu — mahalo nui loa! I enjoyed meeting each of you and working together to create beautiful portraits… if you’re ever in my area on the mainland, I’d love to work with you again!

My final destination is still ‘under construction’ but I am accepting wedding bookings for the 2016 season in the Ft. Wayne, IN, Asheville, NC, and Charleston, SC areas and in the next few months will have availability for portrait sessions in each of those locations. Please feel free to contact me for dates and more information… and if you know any brides-to-be in any of those areas who are looking for a photographer, please send them my way!

The Wedding ~ Mary and Alfredo

I’d been looking forward to capturing this special day ever since meeting the stunning bride, Mary, at the Honolulu Bridal Expo last July. A few weeks later, I met up with her and her (then) fiancé, Alfredo, and enjoyed hearing their Love Story and discussing their plans and dreams for the big day, 12-13-14… probably one of the biggest wedding days of the year!

Mary is an American from the mountains of North Carolina, and Alfredo is an Italian from Sicily. The two met and fell in love while Mary was stationed in Italy, and when it was time for her home base to change, he followed her to the beautiful island of Oahu. They are both extremely passionate about travel, embracing every day with enthusiasm, soccer… and each other.
We met up during a dramatically stormy weekend last October to capture their engagement portraits, and as I watched the beautiful spirit of their relationship and love unfold over that blustery sunrise session on the beach, it was crystal clear that they are a perfect match. 

December 13, 2014 dawned bright and beautiful, with a brilliant blue sky casting light over the turquoise ocean and a light breeze keeping the midday ceremony from feeling too hot–a somewhat odd thing to have to be concerned about in the middle of winter, but Hawaiian winters are (heaps) friendlier than the winters in most parts of the world. 
As the events of the day unfolded, it was beautiful to watch the two families, who had traveled so far from various parts of the world to be there, support and cheer on the couple as they stepped into this new season of life together. 
Every aspect of the day was perfect, and the beauty of Oahu made it, of course, a dream wedding. The couple made it uniquely theirs by incorporating little details of their story and shared interests (such as soccer at the reception, which was a huge hit with all the nieces and nephews.)
Mary and Alfredo, I wish you many years of love and happiness! Never stop having fun together 🙂

Thank you for choosing Hanalani Photography to capture your Hawaii wedding memories! It was an honor.

Wailea Beach – Maui Family Portraits

As a Maui family portrait photographer, I get to meet a lot of families who are vacationing in the Hawaiian Islands. It’s a wonderfully fun job, because vacationing families are (typically!) happy families!

Maui makes an excellent vacation destination, and my job as a Maui photographer is made simple by a couple marvelous factors: 1) there is almost always somewhere on the island with perfect, sunny (and warm!) weather conditions — year round, 2) there are unique and stunning portrait locations everywhere — every sunlit valley, sandy beach, staggering cliff, and cloud-enshrined jungle are full of opportunities. 

The small resort area of Wailea, just south of Kihei, is one of my favorite locations for portraits because it is beautiful, and also because south Maui is known for its consistently perfect weather. It rarely rains here, so even if it is raining in other parts of the island, I can typically count on Kihei or Wailea being sunny and bright!

I love the beaches along this stretch of coast because of their epic views of West Maui, as can be seen above… this rugged landscape makes a dramatic backdrop for portraits!

These Maui family portraits were taken at the beach fronting the Grand Wailea. Two of my other favorite beaches in this area of South Maui are Big Beach (Makena State Park) and Kamaole Beach Park III (Kam 3.) This beautiful family chose to spend the week of Christmas in Maui and, like so many other snowbirds on Maui right now, were excited to trade their cold climate for the perpetually sunny skies and warm temps of south Maui!

Thank you for choosing Hanalani Photography to be your Maui family portrait photographer… I hope to see  you again next year!

Maui Family Portraits ~ Kapalua Beach

Big families are awesome, and I love working with them because they remind me of my own! With twenty-seven members, this was my largest family portrait shoot of the year and so much fun! It was a beautiful, breezy day on Maui’s leeward coast — it’s hard to believe Christmas is just a couple of days away. (If you’re planning your vacations for 2015, Maui is a great place to spend Christmas, as this family is doing!)

This Maui family portrait session took place at Kapalua Beach, a beautiful stretch of coast north of Ka’anapali.
Thank you for choosing Hanalani Photography as your Maui portrait photographer!

Happy Anniversary, Jason and Anna!

I love capturing couples in Love, and to work with couples celebrating anniversaries is one of my favorites. “Falling in love” is a great thing… and “remaining in love” even better! Definitely worth celebrating. 

Jason and Anna were married last Fall at the Makena Beach and Golf Resort in beautiful south Maui, and chose to return on their 1-year anniversary to celebrate at the same location. We met for a sunset Maui portrait shoot at Big Beach, my favorite beach on this side of the island. It is picturesque, peaceful, pristine, and offers a great view of sunset. This sweet couple came prepared with lots of fun props — a bottle of champagne, scrabble pieces, a wedding album… we had fun! 

Thanks for choosing Hanalani Photography to be your Maui portrait photographer! Wishing you many more years of happiness and Love.

Ortiz Family

Island hopping is awesome for so many reasons… two of the top ones being A) each Hawaiian island is so uniquely beautiful and different and B) the fact that at the end of the day, Maui is the island I get to come home to. 

A few days ago, I made my monthly hop over to Oahu for a few shoots that started with an exploration of the stunning Shangri La (Doris Duke’s home) and ended with capturing this lovely family on a beach in Waikiki. When I think of Waikiki, there are a lot of words that come to mind… but “rain” and “fog” are not among them. However, the weather on this particular evening was anything but normal, and we headed down to the beach from their hotel in a rain shower under an ominous sky that didn’t look like it had any intention of cheering up. 

When I lived in Charleston, having to worry about a session getting “rained out” was a regular occurrence. But in Hawaii , it is something that rarely crosses my mind as it is sunny almost all of the time and the rain showers are usually brief (at least in the areas I typically shoot in). The clouds on this evening were stubborn, though, and spit rain through most of the session while a dramatic fog hung over the Honolulu skyline. This awesome family was on the second leg of a vacation that had started with a week in New Zealand (that’s an awesome vacation) and the kids were stoked to be on the beach…even if the sun was refusing to shine. I love seeing families having fun and making positive memories together, which is one of the reasons that I love family portrait sessions so much. Although I know that the opposite exists, all of the families I’ve been blessed to work with are simply wonderful and this family was no exception. They radiated love and kindness, from the oldest member to the youngest. 

One of the difficulties with Waikiki portrait sessions are the massive crowds on the beach, particularly on a holiday (this happened to be Veteran’s Day), so there was a positive side to the rain in that it cleared out the beaches a bit. It also gave us this brilliant sky backdrop.

Just as we were finishing up, the rain cleared and the sun burst from behind the clouds as it neared the horizon giving us this. Stunning, magical, vibrant, unreal, brilliant… those are a few of the words that do come to mind when I think of the Waikiki beachscape, and I’m grateful we were able to get a glimpse… even if it tarried a bit in showing its face. The bottom line is that Hawaii is stunningly, brilliantly, magically beautiful, even in the middle of a rainstorm.

Thank you for choosing Hanalani Photography to be your Oahu family portrait photographer! I’ll hope to see you back in the Islands again someday 🙂 

Mary and Alfredo: Engaged!

I met Mary at the Hawaii Bridal Expo in Honolulu last July, and met her fiancé, Alfredo, a few weeks later when we sat down over coffee to discuss their upcoming wedding on what will probably be the biggest wedding date of the year, 12-13-14. I was excited as soon as Mary told me her date at the expo, because I still had the date open at that point so was looking for my 12-13-14 couple. I’m so glad that it is Mary and Alfredo and look forward to capturing the big event in a couple months! It’s hard to believe that it will be a mid-December wedding in heat and sunshine as this will be my first winter living in a yearlong summer… I love it! With perfect beach weather year round, Hawaii is the ideal place to get married. And if you happen to already live here? Extremely convenient.

We met at Waimanalo Beach Park bright and early for a sunrise session, pre-storm session, and the results are beautiful. Congratulations, Mary and Alfredo!

Maui Wedding and Portrait Photographer – Hanalani Photography – Inspired. Elegant. Tropical.

Ryan and Ashley: Engaged!

After connecting at the Hawaii Bridal Expo in Honolulu this past July, it was a pleasure to finally meet this beautiful couple last weekend! Their engagement portrait session almost didn’t happen due to the foreboding weather, but they opted to go for it and we drove up to North Shore’s Polo Beach to try to escape the rain that was pounding the south part of the island. The rain caught up with us at the tail end of the session, leaving plenty of time with beautiful, soft, hurricane-style light! look forward to capturing their wedding next June 🙂  Maui Wedding and Portrait Photographer – Hanalani Photography – Inspired. Elegant. Tropical.

Oahu; a Bird’s Eye View

I love being a photographer because I get to see so much of my island “homes” that I wouldn’t otherwise, and the past few months have held heaps of awesome “work” adventures… zip lining over rainforest, shooting almost every beach on Oahu (and most of the surf breaks), horseback riding through “Jurassic Park,” sunset dinner cruises, and too many more to list. Basically, participation in nearly every tourist activity offered on the island (including four luaus in the space of six days. Yes, that happened.)

But my favorite job of this type was the recent helicopter tour that I shot over the island of Oahu. It created the perfect “finale” to my time on this beautiful island!

 

Mahalo, Oahu!

Beauty in the Midst of Chaos

 

It’s been a hectic first two weeks on Maui, with getting everything here, changing a business name, starting shoots, hunting down out-of-the-way tax and government offices, and making flights back to Oahu for days packed with back-to-back shoots, and an especially hectic past few days as I’m preparing to make another trip to Oahu and have had to shuffle an already impossible schedule around due to the impending tropical storm (Ana). But there has been lots of beauty in the midst of the chaos, and I had to take a moment before heading to the airport to post one of my favorite sunsets from my time on Maui thus far. So incredibly grateful. To have this life, even during the challenging slivers of time, is so much more than I could have ever hoped for.