The North Shore of Oahu has many beautiful beaches and some of them are among the favorite resting places of the Green Sea Turtle (Chelonia mydas). Most of these beaches are well known by tourists such as the Laniakea Beach, therefore it is very difficult to photograph turtles on any of these places. Fortunately, there are some „secret” beaches, which are usually not so crowded by people and the chance of taking decent photographs of basking turtles is much higher here. Last weekend I spent some time on one of them to photograph sea turtles and as I expected, there was a honu alone on the beach. Unfortunately, it became very cloudy as the time of the sunset was coming so I decided to wait for the twilight and photograph the turtle during the „blue hour” again. However, lastly, I was lucky as the sun was shining through the hole in the clouds on the horizon and lit the beach with magical warm light. Interestingly, the turtle lifted up its head and opened its eyes in every minute for a few seconds, so with the perfect timing I was able to use a relatively long exposure to record the moderate wash of the waves while the turtle’s head with its open eye remained sharp and the sun could produce a nice catchlight in its eye. While this little specular highlight is very desirable in the eye, the sun also caused some annoying reflections on the carapace of the turtle, so I used a polarizer to eliminate them and be able to show the beautiful pattern of the shell.

Gear: Canon EOS 7D, Canon 17-40mm F/4 L lens, Tiffen Polarizer, Manfrotto tripod