Polihale

Standing on the longest beach in hawaii (the total stretch is actually 15 miles!), the end of the west side is called Polihale. Which translates to House of Po (a title for another piece I have here). Po is the Hawaiian afterworld and spirits would make their journey to the cliffs and jump off into their next world. A powerful place by myth and equally as so by it's scale and beauty. These cliffs rise ~1000ft up out of the ocean and start the storied Na Pali coast.

To photograph it I wanted to use my method from "Paradise Moon" [link] and Equilibrium [link] The trick however was the water. I wanted to show the ocean lapping up but for anyone that has stitched such images before knows it can be very difficult. I tried to time each shot so that the water was at its highest point on the run up. 10 vertical shots. CS5's content-aware fill definitely helps with the fixing of shots like this. Other than that this was a very minimally edited photo...the awesome sunset light did the rest! I have another very similar take under even more dramatic light that I will post soon.