Kalauao falls illumination - February 21, 2014

It’s been about 6 months since our last illumination hike. Back then, we did Waimano falls in the summer. It sparked our interest in long exposures using glow sticks. Today we decided to do it again, this time in Aiea.  

This week has been exhausting for me. I guess its that time of the year where most teachers hit the wall. Joining the hike today were most OAG members; E, The Judge, Sensei, Proo, DJ, and Ali. Because Proo and The Judge would come late, we decided to have two start times. 

We met each other at Aiea Bowl and E drove us to the water tank area on Aiea Heights Drive. From there we proceeded to the hairpin turn to start the Kalauao trail. E marked the trail with pink ribbon and glow sticks which we would remove when going out. This trail takes you straight to the ridge and the mango tree. It was getting dark really fast, but we took our time, even though that would mean setting up our equipment in the dark. 

As we descended into Kalauao valley, the flow seemed decent so we knew the waterfall would be flowing today. It took us about 35 minutes to get to the falls. There, we set up our equipment and started taking practice shots. The first couple photos turned out bad, but we kept on adjusting our settings and the lighting. It is very hard to take pictures in the dark because the auto focus doesn’t work at all. I tried the technique Merv told me about manual focus and hoped my pictures would come out sharp. 

E did the initial dropping of the glowsticks, but then I decided to run up to the top of the falls and drop the glowsticks. After my first failure, I finally figured out how to drop them over the falls to create colorful streaks. 

The Judge and Proo came a little over an hour later and it was game on. We did light writing and colorful streaks. I don’t know why, but this was super fun. We stayed at the falls until 10pm. My body was so sore, I’m not sure why, old age probably. 

Going back in the dark was peaceful. Before we got to the junction to head up towards the ridge, we smelled some unbelievable scented flowers. The smell was perfumeatic. The hill to get up on the ridge was relenting, a cardio blaster. We couldn’t wait to go to the PHM at Zippys to check out the pictures.

At Zippys we talked many stories, good fun spending time with the OAGs.