Fiji Rain
Taveuni is “the garden island” of Fiji—the jewel of jewels, and sole home of one of the rarest flowers in the world, which I was able to find and photograph. I was trying to do some screenwriting and journaling on the porch the day of this picture. Big, beautiful thunderstorms cropped up in the afternoons. “The sound of wind in the palm fronds is indistinguishable from the sound of rain, which sneaks up often,” I wrote. “The wonderful thing is that you can see where you are. You know you are on the edge of one island a certain size, amongst other islands of certain sizes, because you can see them off across the water, which you know goes on and on for thousands of miles.” This photo is a nice reminder to me to “know where I am.” Life so easily reduces to a two-dimensional rate-race of monotony unless we look up and around, and “zoom out” from the minutia.
I set up a tripod and took an exposure-bracketed series of three photos to capture the detail of this storm over Viani Bay on Vanua Levu, opposite Taveuni. I loved the symmetry. Island hopping in a sailboat has been a longtime dream of mine, and this scene definitely fueled the vision.
Canon Powershot G10, f/8, 1/250 sec., ISO-80, 11mm focal length, 3-photo HDR B&W composite