In my first photo event of the year, and my first photo tour in a while, I returned to the Hawaiian islands visiting “the big island” of Hawaiʻi for the first time. This was a Femme Nue event, which they’ve categorized as Aventura to distinguish it from their single-location retreats that they’re now designating as Luxe. We began on the Kona (west) side but we stayed and did most of our touring and photography on the Hilo (east) side of the island. So my pre-/post- days had some beautiful sunsets while many of our photoshoots were aimed at the sunrises. Our group featured 4 models, 3 of whom I had shot with before: US model Vivian Cove, Canadian models Sienna Hayes and Ali Claire, and 1 who was new to me: UK model Nicole Rayner. There were 6 photographers all from the western US, of which I only knew one from previous events.
Prior to the tour I stayed in an Airbnb right on the ocean and basically across the street from our meetup restaurant on the west side of the island. I enjoyed some nice meals overlooking the ocean along with some beautiful Hawaiian sunsets. After our kickoff brunch we drove 2 hours to the other side of the island to a large house on the outskirts of Hilo, which served as our home base. Our shoot the first evening was at Mackenzie Point, a cliffside location overlooking the ocean. One of our cars was given the wrong coordinates so we lost 2 photographers and 1 model to another location. But they ended up shooting where they ended up so all was ok.
We got up pre-dawn the next morning and headed to Waiʻale Falls. We got some sunrise shots at the waterfall. We also got reported to the cops by a local, and while they were waiting for us as we left, they didn’t give us any trouble. After a mid-day break, we headed to a beautiful private property, Casa de las Palmas (art), that had beautiful flowers and tropical gardens.
The next morning we again got up pre-dawn and headed to another private property which was the site of an old mill and had a black sand beach. We were able to get some nice sunrise shots on the beach. Afterward, we again took a mid-day break, had lunch, and then headed to the Observatory Road Lava Fields for a late afternoon shoot. It was quite barren and rough terrain, but provided interesting backdrops for the models even though it was a difficult surface to lay on.
The next morning we got up early and headed to Kehena Beach, another black sand beach. It is supposed to be a nude beach, but it was also covered with fishermen when we got there at sunrise. Unfortunately, early in our shoot one of our models, Ali, got knocked off of a high perch on a lava rock by a large wave and she ended up severely cutting her leg. We decided to call off the remainder of the shoot. However, while Ali was getting treated as we were riding back the guys in my car decided to put together a humorous video that we were going to slip into the photo review planned for that evening. It included “bts” of me shooting some of the male photographers posing nude. When it was shown it caught all the others by surprise and caused quite a laugh.
The last morning we went to another lava field which was along the seaside. We took some nice sunrise shots and enjoyed our last morning of shooting. We then went back to our base, packed up, and headed back to Kona for our farewell lunch.
It was nice to be back and visit Hawaiʻi. I needed this trip to shake me out of my sedentary cabin fever from the winter. It was a nice brief trip.