A few times a year in Las Vegas, there is a Hawaiian themed festival called the Pure Aloha Festival. The latest being the 10th annual at the Silverton Casino. At the Festival, attendee’s can try different Hawaiian foods, play carnival games, enjoy a few different acts on stage, and ride carnival rides. This was my first year attending, so I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. The entry fee was $7 per person and any rides/food was extra, as to be expected with any event. From what I tried, food wasn’t too bad, though, there was a lot of traditional Hawaiian food I would have loved to see there. Overall I couldn’t complain too much. After a few hours there we’d seen everything there was to see, played all the carnival games we wanted and eaten everything we were there for. For $7 the Pure Aloha Festival was well worth the price of admission. If you get a chance to attend next year, go for it. It’s a good way to spend a day with the family.

Here’s a few photos I took around Maui, since I spend most of my time in Lahaina, most are from Kahana, Kapalua, and even above the island.

Down in front of Cheeseburger in Paradise in downtown Lahaina, there is a small beach you can walk out on. I’ve found that a lot of my favorite photos come from this spot as you’re able to easily get the boardwalk in your shots. Here are a few of my favorites.

I still love learning how to create HDR images, though I still have a lot to learn. I took some of my images from my trip to Maui and Oahu and turned them into HDR images. Here are the results.

Every time I go to Maui, the first place I want to is to Whaler’s Village in Ka’anapali. Even when I lived in Maui, I found myself spending a lot of my time in Ka’anapali either jumping off of black rock, swimming in the ocean, or just checking out the view. Here are a few shots I took of the different hotels and scenery around the area.

It’s hard not to stop and take a million pictures of the amazing ocean and beaches surrounding islands in Hawaii. With the 10-22mm wide angle lens I rented for the trip, I found myself taking every opportunity to get as much of the beach in my shots as possible.

As I was taking sunset shots in Maui, a young couple walked by holding hands and ended up in this shot.

Every once in a great while, as a beginner photographer you get a shot that you would never think would turn out as good as it does. This finally happened to me while visiting Maui. We were at the Maui Tropical Plantation when I started to notice quite a few lizards running around on the plant leaves, so I started snapping as many shots as I could. I happened to catch one hanging upside down on the branch of a leaf and at the right moment snapped one of my favorite photos so far. There was very little editing done to this photo besides and increase in sharpness and exposure. I liked the results so much; I sent it off to have it printed on a canvas.