A Special Sunrise on Hawaii’s Kona Coast

With several photographer friends, I recently attended a lecture by photographer John Paul Caponigro sponsored by the Palo Alto Camera Club. He spoke on the subjects of “Illuminating Creativity” and “Landscapes Within”. A 20 minute version of his creativity talk from 2010 is available as a TEDx video.

Caponigro’s purpose in his talk was to push us to explore our own creativity – to realize that we’ve got a lot more that we might not even realize. I’m not sure about that in my case (!) – but I tried to take some of what he taught to bear on this particular image.

It’s a morning sunrise shot from the Kona coast in Hawaii. Sunrise, of course, occurs in the east – and this image looks to the west – off the coastline of the Kona coast on the big island of Hawaii. There was a lovely bank of low clouds (not visible in the image) which were reflecting lovely sunrise colors down into the ocean waters – and that’s what I tried to capture as I processed this image.

Processing involved several steps – including an excursion into Lab color, selective use of Topaz Simplify, some luminosity painting – and other steps I’ve already forgotten!

This is one of those special images that brings me back – back to a very special early morning, walking along the coast in Hawaii and watching the light slowly shift and sparkle. Beautiful. A beautiful memory. For me, that’s what creativity is all about.