If you should happen to find yourself in Maui and staying at the Grand Wailea Resort and decide to either renew your wedding vows or even get married, well, the hotel has just the facility you need.  This small church is in the hotel grounds and is available for weddings and vows and I would imagine it’s a pretty busy place.

The church is nicely lit up with stained glass windows providing color inside so I thought I’d grab a shot for the site.  The large number of lamps that light the way to the from the church and the abundance of tiki torches add to the evening ambiance.

While staying at the hotel I’ve seen quite a few weddings, some people have large receptions at the hotel and there are loads of people who opt for a beach wedding instead of the church (it’s probably pretty pricey – everything else is here), and almost every night there’s some bride and groom having their pictures taken on the beach.

Having your wedding pictures taken on a beach really sounds nice, and I’m sure for the wedding party it’s great.  But if you want to take a picture and you have nothing to do with the wedding good luck!  The local professionals hog all the good locations and prevent you from standing in the best place for a sunset picture – that is of course unless you want to photograph the bride of the day as well.

Talking of sunsets… I can’t get a good one, and I’ll tell you I’ve tried, several times.  The main problem is that the sun sets over Lanai which is an Hawaiian Island to the west of Maui.  To make matters worse Lanai has a large extinct volcano in the middle (don’t they all) and all around the peak are puffy white clouds.  So the sun actually sets behind the white clouds, and the sunset lasts around 60 seconds.  Even in it’s best moment, it’s not great.  I’ll keep trying though and I may get one before I leave.

Anyway, back to the church.  I took this shot just after the sun went down and with a long exposure got the sky to look almost light blue.  Fortunately nobody was in the way and I got the shot below first time.

Cater and Master Chief hit the beach this afternoon, but Carter made a huge mistake and fell asleep, so Master Chief buried him!

One of the fun (or dangerous) things about owning Photoshop, is that you can go a little mad!  You can definitely “over process” an image.  In fact many people (including Lisa) tell me I do that all the time, but I don’t care I like my images.  However tonight’s posting is a conscious choice to go over the top.

While driving back home from Mount Vernon I passed this really cool church.  I literally drove right past it, did a u-turn and went back for another look.  It’s all wood and I loved the steeple and the fancy windows.  So I decided to take a picture.  Unfortunately it  was positioned right by a main road and the road had power cables in the air that would have ruined the picture.  I tried lots of angles and found the one posted here the best.

When I got home to check out the picture there were a couple of issues.  Firstly there were loads of parking signs in the church car park (so I took them out with Photoshop), and secondly the sky looked REALLY boring.  It was almost white and gave the image a dull flat look.

I was playing with some filters and got this really cool purple sky and at that time Lisa was walking past.  Anyway she loved the sky and said I should post it like that (this is the person that says she doesn’t like it when my pictures are over processed and look fake).   I can honestly say the sky looked nothing like this, but, it would have been cool if it did.

Carter and Master Chief decided to read some technical books today but couldn’t agree on which one to start.

Today I went looking for something cool to shoot. It had just stopped snowing at home so I decided to drive to Fall City (about 10 miles away). I knew that there was a really cool red barn on the way and thought that would look great against the white fields and evergreen trees. Failing that there was always the Tolt river and and bridge there that would also look great covered with snow.. But ironically, no snow – anywhere! Feeling dejected I drove home through Carnation (where it has been snowing) and drove past this cool church. It seemed like an appropriate thing to photograph on a Sunday so I pulled over and go the shot.

These Halo guys apparently like to play board games!  Who knew?

Backgammon