Kauai through a plastic lens

A few photos taken around Kauai. I brought along my trusty Holga and snapped quite a few shots. 

This photo was literally taken while wandering around the island. It was taken on my first full day there. Jon and I just took off walking up the coast, and it ended up being quite a long hike. 

If you click on this photo to see it larger, you'll see that there's a local fishing right in the line up of palm trees. This was taken near sunset and just after eating dinner. 

This was taken on one of the stretches of road that we traveled on quite a bit. I couldn't get enough of the tree-line street, so I had to stop once and snap this. 

Hanakpi`ai Falls, on the NaPali Coast hike. This was as far as we made it on our hike that day. The white haze at the top of the photo is the waterfall's mist refracting light. As gorgeous as the day was, being right by the falls felt like standing in front of an open refrigerator. 

Queen's Bath. A beautiful and deadly place. On the hike in, there was a sign warning of the deaths that have taken place here. This photo was taken as the tide was going out. On that day we got to swim with a sea turtle. 

Queen's Bath as the tide was coming in. If you click on the image to see it bigger, you can tell that water is rolling off of the cliff at the right of the image. Within an hour, the cove (where people in the foreground are hanging out) was completely submerged and the water looked like it was boiling. 

This image as well as the photo below were taken on my last day in Hawaii.We did our best to squeeze every last bit of Hawaiian sunshine into our day before getting on a plane for 11 hours. 

So much snorkeling went on this day. 

Hawaiian Polaroids

In trying to decide which of my Polaroid cameras to take with me to Kauai, I kept coming back to The Reporter, and my Polaroid knock-off, a Berkey Keystone Everyflash. Both big black cameras-- the Keystone had already made some lovely images, but it is a huge brick of a thing. While The Reporter was up til then untested, it is much more compact and manageable. Ultimately, size and weight mattered when hiking. I have posted below the shots I took with my Polaroid camera, titled The Reporter. These photos remind me of the feel of each of these places more than the crisp images that Jon and I got on our digital cameras.

Waimea Canyon. The Grand Canyon of Kauai. It is indeed a grand place, home to mountain goats and soaring birds and trees and a wild wind.

We were in a place where the clouds rubbed up against the mountain's edge, where they bumped, jostled, and rough-housed until they finally fell over one another and rolled over the tree tops and over the edge of the mountains themselves. . .

Lawai International Center

How I loved this magical, quiet, spiritual place. Whispers of hopes, wishes, and prayers nestle among the ferns and shrines that line the hillside. I couldn't help but feel peace settling down into my bones as I walked the trails of the grounds. It felt as though this sleepy, quiet, powerful place woke something in me.

This is how I'll remember these sites-- in the magical, nostalgic, slightly blown-out sepia tones of my expired Polaroid film.