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 🙂