The first official day of the workshop is just gathering up everybody. Luckily I got picked up midday and taken to the house that would serve as our base of operations in Princeville. Those of us who were there went to the grocery store, spent a fortune, and got settled in. This gave me a relaxing first day. Aaron seems to have a need to make sure we’re getting full value for the money we paid, leading to him over packing our shooting days a bit with typically three shoots a day. We got lots of locations, but at times it seemed a bit much. I could have done with a bit slower pace. Nevertheless, we had some very nice locations to shoot. We had four photographers and were again fortunate to be shooting with Anoush Anou and Merrique, two experienced and skilled models.
The first shooting day started out at Secret Pools, which was in the same basic area as Secret Beach where we shoot last year. After a mild hike down, we got to some rocky heights overlooking the ocean. I got some nice shots on the black rock against the sea. We also got the first of our many rain bursts of the week, but afterwards it yielded a beautiful rainbow that was bright enough to stand out in the photographs. As we got back for lunch a village patrol was about to boot Aaron’s car in front of our house. He smoothed it over, but that was a foreshadowing of our trouble with authorities on this trip.
After lunch we continued around the north side of Kauaʻi past Hanalei up into the forest next to what I think was Limahuli Stream. We did some shooting in the forest and Aaron set off some some smoke bombs. This caused us some trouble. Just as we were about to leave a lady cop had trekked up into the forest and found us. I don’t know what she thought we were doing, but she layed into us with an expletive filled rant that included f-bombs, ordering us to get out of there. She layed on us the line “not on my island” which stayed with us for the remainder of the trip. It also made most of us a bit skittish for the rest of the trip about skirting the rules, which seems to be a bit of Aaron’s modus operandi.
After getting chased away, we went over to Makua Beach/Tunnels Beach and watched the sunset, which was beautiful. Afterwards we went into Hanalei and had a nice dinner at a raman place, again having to dodge the rain for a bit.