Christmas Has Come to Maui, Maui Family Christmas Portrait Photography, Maui Family Portrait Photography, Latter-day Saint Maui Family Portrait Photography.

Christmas truly has come to Maui!  Santa snuck in and decided to hang out here, rather than deliver all those toys this year.  No, that's our latest grandson, born in time for Christmas.  On Christmas Day, he will be exactly two weeks old.  We are blessed to have such a wonderful family.  We enjoy every minute of them, and are excited to share our lives with all the members that we can get!  The more the merrier!  Truly!!  Merry Christmas and  Joyous Noel to all of you.  As we say here in the islands, Mele Kalikimaka; and of course, Maka Hiki Hou!

Oh dear, Santa...once again you have to choose.  Naughty...

 or nice?

Christmas Has Come to Maui, Maui Family Christmas Portrait Photoraphy, Maui Family Portrait Photography, Latter-day Saint Maui Family Portrait Photography.

My friend Julie is the most creative person I know!! She has floored me with it from the moment we first met. She asked me to photograph their family this year and I was overjoyed to be out there on the beach with such a fun group of people! Merry Christmas Bowers Family!! You Rock...

Whadya say, Santa - naughty or nice?

Maui County High School Paddling Season Begins, Maui Sports Photography, Maui Event Photography, Kihei Canoe Club

My niece is part of the Molokai Paddling team. She has taken over a long-standing family tradition. She is following in the footsteps of her father and uncle. My husband paddled for the King of Tonga and traveled around the South Pacific in paddling competitions. He calls it canoeing, so I'm not sure what the most accurate term is.  Now Manukailopa has taken over and is manning his same position in the canoe and hopefully, winning races. They didn't win on this day; but hopefully, they will soon.

 

 

Babes in the Woodland, Maui Family Portrait Photography, Latter-day Saint Maui Family Portrait Photography, The 4th Marine Division Memorial Park, Giggle Hill and Kalakapua Playground

The Washer Family wanted images for a family calendar and images to celebrate the birth of their precious new daughter. I love families more than anything, and love family portraits. I think family calendars are the best idea. What better way to help family members stay in touch with each other than a family calendar that introduces the members of the family to each other far and wide. It's such a great idea.

Afternoon Walk

My last post talked about the walks my husband and I take on the beach outside where we live.  It is a gorgeous, generous beach that goes for miles and miles.  We often see tourists, and some who live here part-time I suppose, walking on South Kihei road, just beyond these green trees!  Why?  We can't understand it.  Breath in exhaust fumes and give yourself a 90% chance of becoming road kill or walk on this gorgeous beach!  Of course now I'm giving our secret away, so this place might begin to look like Grand Central Station!  My bad!  But anyway, my husband I can never understand why people would want to run and walk up a crowded street/highway, threatening their lives, when they can have this instead.   The beach is beautiful, and can be broken up into smaller walks, or taken for one big long, huge exercise session.

Keeping My Cool!!

I haven't blogged much this fall.  Shortly after I posted the flower pictures that you see in the previous post, my computer hard drive took a nose dive, taking my images with it.  Of course all my business stuff was safe and sound, but my personal images were not all safe and sound, and that broke my heart.  There is a good chance I will recover everything, but some of the images that are still lost are those flower images I posted.  My computer crashing taught me a lot of lessons that I was learning about external hard drives, keeping everything backed up in two places, and being very, very organized.  I was pretty organized, but I have learned that it is almost impossible for us photographers to have everything backed up at all times.  We have so many photos in different stages of the editing process at any given time.  I was just a few hours away from saving these images and the other ones from the fall and Christmas of 2012, when the computer crashed.  If it had given me just a few hours, I would have had everything backed up.  Isn't that awful, just a few hours.  Business images are always edited and out the door within seven days, but I was savoring those personal images, because they were taken at a very special time for our family.  Now I know to edit them, and then savor them from a safe place.  Yes, I learned that lesson.

Luckily when I reloaded all of the many memory cards that I have, almost all of my 2013 images that weren't edited, were on those memory cards.  That was fun for me, to know that I actually had so much of my work backed up in a second location.  It was good to know that my organization saved so much of it.

So now I am editing like crazy.  Not only do I want to get to my personal images edited, get them all tucked away safe and moved into photo books that the kids can enjoy, I have business images from several family photo sessions, a newborn session, two weddings, a funeral and yes that does sound like a movie title, to edit.  It's all great fun (except the part about my hard drive.)  I love photography.  It is my calling in life, to document the events, births, families, weddings of those that hire me to help them document their life's events.  I love faces.  I love people.  I love showing people themselves.  Yes, a photograph can really show yourself and your life to you, in so many ways.  I love that aspect of what I do.

The images that are included in this post are some of those retrieved from my memory cards.  If you step out our front door and travel a few yards down the road, you will find the back yard that my family and I love to play in.  My husband and I took up walking, among other forms of exercise that we are doing.  He is in excellent shape.  I am working to get back to that.  I've had five babies, so I take a bit longer to rebound back.  At least that is what I'm telling myself.   Anyway, these images were taken on one of our morning walks.  My favorite time to walk is when it is misting a soft rain outside, or on mornings like Thanksgiving morning, or Christmas morning.  It is so peaceful out there at those times.  Not many other people are around and you practically have the whole place to yourself.

Kula Farms Botanical Images, Upcountry Maui Photography, Botanical Photography, Maui in Autumn

Kula Farms puts on a great show every October. It's a photographer's dream, and it breaks up the scenery and gives us something new to look at. It's the closest we ever get to Autumn, and I love Autumn so much. I still miss it after 20 years. I mourn for it every year.

 

 



Kailee, Maui Maternity Portrait Photography, Maui Family Portrait Photography, Latter-day Saint Maui Family Portrait Photography.

Kailee is expecting her second daughter.  Isn't that wonderful?  We went out to Po'olenalena Beach, a hidden Maui treasure, to capture images for her to save.  We are both members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  Our beloved prophet, Thomas S. Monson, has encouraged us to take pictures regularly, so that is what we did.  We are cousins.  Can you see any family resemblance?  I hope so, because Kailee is beautiful, in every way.  My favorite part of what she wore that day was the CTR ring on her finger.

 

 

 

 

 

 



 

 

Auntie came along to help.  Don't they look so much alike!!