I’m a big fan of the Big Island of Hawaii. It has everything I love in a destination: friendly people, gorgeous weather, great food and epic landscapes.

I brought my new Sigma 50mm f1.4 ART lens with me. I’d heard good things about this lens from online reviews, but I didn’t expect it to be as amazing as it actually is. This lens has incredible color reproduction and sharpness, all the way through its aperture range. It was a real pleasure to get familiar with this new piece of glass in such a stunning environment that gave me lots of opportunities to play with depth of field.

 

A lot of what I shot there will be released later, as those images and videos are part of larger projects that I’m working on with Laura Hollick. But, I do have a few images that I can show you right now!

 

 

Another piece of gear I had fun playing with in Hawaii was my new drone “Wilson.” Wilson is a DJI Phantom 2 Vision Plus. He had a bit of a rough start in life. When I first got him from Henry’s, he had some technical issues that I didn’t discover until I had him out for his first flight. Disappointingly, Henry’s wasn’t willing to offer any support at all, and the Canadian distributor told me that they’re not allowed to fix the drones they sell, so I had to deal directly with DJI in California. After a week or so of back and forth emails and phone calls, I got authorization to send Wilson in for repairs. I got him back about a month later, just in time for my trip. Wilson didn’t let me down. Due to my inexperience, I broke some propellers on the unforgiving lava rocks at first, but once I got the hang of making a clean takeoff, Wilson and I shot some truly epic scenes. Again, a lot of stuff will come out later when my projects with Laura go live, but here are a couple of sample photos and a video I shot of some kids doing crazy stuff.