Portraits with Salty Western in Waimea

Ethan likes to say that I (Stef) am unable to have “just a normal vacation”. While Ethan is always on the hunt for our next life adventure together, I’m always searching our next photo opportunity. (In my own defence: we typically travel with our gear anyways and there’s just something so inspiring about shooting in a new location that makes me feel excited) I’m happy to say that this time the tables turned and it was actually Ethan who pitched shooting with Taira, which to our joyous surprise she was on board for!

Taira runs a beautiful leather goods company called Salty Western— “Salty Western was created by islander Taira Barron Cran. She grew up on the North Shore of Oahu and surfed before she could walk. Everyday revolved around the ocean, though her love for horses and the country life grew just as strong. Eventually, she moved to a 35,000 acre cattle ranch on the Big Island of Hawai’i. In her new little cowboy house, she started to use her creativity through leather. Experimenting with it, she began wetting it, dying it, cutting it up, and carving it. She drew inspiration in from her versatile lifestyle; from coming out of the Pacific ocean with dripping salty hair, to sitting by a fire with dirty cowboy boots, sipping whiskey after a long cattle drive. Much like living through an old western movie, though this one is surrounded by Hawaiian salt in the air. This was how Salty Western was born.”

We spent an evening with Taira at her ranch (after first going to the wrong ranch lol) where we photographed her working on, and with, some her of products. Waimea is also known as Hawaiian cowboy county, full of rolling green pastures, and home to lots of cowboy and cattle ranches so this was truly the perfect backdrop to shoot with Taira considering her brand ethos. What is it about watching other artists work that is so beautiful and interesting? Because that’s how photographing Taira felt. We walked around the ranch, said hi to a horse (!!), and later watched the sunset after we parted ways. It was such an honour to do this and we’re so thankful for Taira’s invitation to visit, we look forward to returning one day!

Click the photos below to enlarge and browse through

Hawai'i Landscapes- Mauna Kea

Mauna Kea was such an otherworldly experience I think it deserves its own dedicated blog post. For those who don’t know, Mauna Kea is an inactive volcano on the Big Island of Hawai’i, and from land to summit it is 13,800ft. above sea level! Unfortunately half of the volcano is in the Pacific Ocean so Mount Everest is still considered the tallest mountain in the world (29,032ft. base to summit), otherwise if we are including the part of the volcano in the ocean to summit, Mauna Kea is technically 33,481ft. tall.

In planning our trip to Hawai’i the number 1 thing on our to-do list was to go up the volcano. There are some things that you need to plan ahead if you are making the trek yourself (otherwise there are plenty of tour companies that can bring you up, and will prep you accordingly):

  1. Having a 4WD vehicle is mandatory, you will be turned away if you do not have one. If renting a car, double check your agreement— most of the road up to the summit is unpaved and on rough terrain so lots of rentals do not allow you to take their cars up. For this reason we rented a truck on Turo and double checked with our renter ahead of time.

  2. Along with this you must have a full tank of gas— you will use lots of gas going up and down, and the nearest station is 50km away.

  3. You must stop at the visitors centre (9,2000ft) for at least 30 minutes to acclimate to the altitude change.

  4. Be weary of altitude sickness; it only gets worse the longer you continue, and can only get better by descending.

  5. You can only stay on the summit for about 30 minutes after sunset before a ranger escorts everyone down. Again, the road is unpaved, rough, and unlit. You can, however, continue stargazing near the visitors centre for as long as you’d like.

  6. Despite it being about 30C around the island, bring a jacket, pants, and layers for the summit! It was about 4C when we were there, and was getting cooler as the sun set.

We took a couple of side quests on this journey, the first being a quick hike up Pu’u Huluhulu quite literally right across the street from Mauna Kea’s access road. Just over 1km loop with 150m elevation gain, this short trip gives you beautiful view of the surrounding area from what felt like high up at the time lol. Another quest was nearly to summit; a 2km out and back ‘walk’ to Lake Waiau. Don’t let the 2km fool you though, this unmarked, unpaved, but very clear and easy to follow, trail is 13,000ft. above sea level and is much, much, harder than it sounds because of how thin the air is.

Much like trying to describe Hawai’i and it’s landscapes in general, I feel as though as most words will not do this justice. It really is a ‘you had to be there’ kind of thing. This was truly a once in a lifetime experience that we are so privileged to have both experienced, in addition to having these beautiful photos to commemorate it.

Landscapes below are available as prints— send us an email for more info! Click the photos below to enlarge and browse through.

Hawai'i Landscapes

Winter is always a time for us to refresh and reset but admittedly winter in Toronto is fairly drab so we always like to take some time off as a way to feel renewed. In years past we go all in on winter; take a long drive up north, bury ourselves in snow, and have some wine by the fire every night for a week straight. This year we wanted to change things up though. After working (and missing) most of summer, this winter we wanted to head somewhere warm. We have been talking about Hawai’i for a while— Ethan loved a trip to Maui he took years ago— so this year we finally said, let’s skip winter for a couple of weeks!

After some research we opted to go to the Island of Hawai’i, also known as Big Island, as in the largest— but interestingly youngest— of the Hawaiian Islands. There were a few key things that we wanted to do on this trip: Summit Mauna Kea, Papakōlea (Green Sand) Beach, and to hit up some black sand beaches. We’re happy to report that we did cover all of these things, and more!

We decided to stay on the less touristy side of the island near Hilo (we stayed in Pāhoa), instead of Kona, as it was closer to the attractions we wanted to go to. Unfortunately, Hilo in February is the more temperamental time of year with rolling rain, cloudy days, bigger waves, and cooler temperatures but in the end it worked out really well for us. Our first week was our ‘adventure week’ where we covered Mauna Kea, Papakōlea, Volcano National Park, Waimea, Waipio Valley, even taking a shelter dog on a field trip for the day from the Hawaiian Humane Society! We also lucked out having the beautiful Kehana Black Sand beach a short drive away from our AirBnB, which we absolutely made sure to visit every. single. day. Our last week was filled with nothing but sunshine and warm weather so it turned into our beach days where we started and finished our books, lounged around, and took in every last drop of sunshine before returning home to winter.

I don’t think I have enough words to describe how beautiful this trip was. Even Ethan said that he enjoyed it more than Maui (for different reasons!) Having so many landscapes— from the ocean, to tropical rainforests, incredible volcano-scapes (mountain like landscapes, but you know… with a volcano). Going from the water front to 2000+ft above sea level just driving across the highway; one moment you’re swimming, the next you’re quite literally driving through a cloud. In trying to capture this trip in one word, majestic, incredible, surreal, are all adjectives that fall short. Just know that we will be back, I simply cannot imagine a life where we don’t return.

Landscapes below are available as prints— send us an email for more info! Click the photos below to enlarge and browse through.

Ethan's Winter Vacation in Maui

A COUPLE OF WINTERS AGO MY GOOD FRIEND AL SUGGESTED WE GET AWAY AND GO SOMEWHERE WARM WHERE WE COULD RIDE OUR BIKES, EXPLORE, AND RELAX…

Of course this sounded great to me and once we found cheap flights, it was decided-  we were going to Maui. We packed relatively light as we planned on travelling by bike most of the time, and we didn't want to load them up too much. After we landed, we built our bikes in the airport and rode off to our hostel where we were both so dead tired but so happy to be riding around in shorts and a t-shirt in the middle of January!

Al's girlfriend, Justine, joined us less then a week in at which point we rented a car and we decided to take a drive across the island to a campsite at the base of the volcano Haleakala. The sites on this coastline were beautiful; there was such intense contrast between the black volcanic rock and the lush greenery all around it, it was unlike anything I’ve ever seen before!

After that we stayed in Kihei in a metal shack compound (yes, you read that right). We spent our time in Kihei by driving up the Haleakala and our rental car was not too happy about climbing 10,000ft (literally- the coolant was boiling by the top). Once up there we went for a short 45 minute hike but even that was exhausting because of the elevation and how thin the air was.

On another day we drove back to the base of the mountain and we decided to cut out the first 3,000ft of climbing (the section is mostly country roads and leads from the ocean to the actual base of the mountain at a very slow incline) so we started biking up at 7,000ft over the course of 4.5 hours getting to the top. The distance was only 35km but the elevation was killer. I can honestly say that at the time, this was the most challenging thing I have ever done in my life, but the feeling of making it to the top was certainly worth the struggle.

The descent back down was equally worth it, as we got to coast 35km back down to the car and we even got to pass through the cloud line which left us coated in a fine mist- check this out!

After that ride we had an incredible sleep in our trusty rental car before we returned it the next morning and set off to the nice tourist town of Lahaina. Camping in Hawaii on public land isn't as easy as we had hoped so we ended up stashing our stuff on an abandoned construction site which would be our home for the next few days.  During our time in Lahaina we were mostly just beach bums and by this leg of the trip we felt we deserved to be.

See more photos from the trip below, all shot on an Olympus XA2 35mm camera with Kodak Portra 400