Hawaii Archives - Page 5 of 9 - Marco Garcia Photography

Walk all over me!

A few weeks ago, an email appeared in my inbox with the opening lines…

“Hello Marco,

I came across your website whilst I was looking for images of the sea.”

Ah…how much more romantic could that be? …looking for images of the sea. I started to hum an old Cure song and was whist away to years gone by where the sand and sea were more than a sunburn. Not that killing arabs would be much fun but it was the lyrics that took me back to my youth. All from a woman asking me if I had images of the sea.

Being my usual suspicious self, I came close to ignoring the email as I hate doing free stock research but her request was too specific. They were looking for shots of the ocean so they could use as a composite for a larger project they were working on.

Michelle from Printed Space Ltd, a company based in England, further explained they wanted blue water ocean shots as they were designing an ocean- theme print to be placed on a floor of a private home somewhere in Great Brittan. How intriguing. To hear the pitter-patter of a young lad on my silent image of the ocean. To see a dirty soccer jersey (ooops football kit) in one corner and a PS3 in the other, oh the dream.

Michelle and her design team had most of the other elements which make up the ocean but didn’t have, I would say, the sandwich to hold all the stuff inside. The comp they sent seems to show my ocean shot holding the sharks, reef, and snorkelers all together. Its a very impressive design and I’m excited to have contributed my work to the design. Now only to put my feet down on the actual floor plan…now that’s the challenge.

To be honest, I’d never would have thought to have a floor plan as such. I could only imagine stumbling home one evening only to find myself drowning in something other than my own sorrow. I clearly would never wake up or if I did, might I have the need to rename myself Jonah?

The image they liked was from my helicopter series over the Big island a few months ago.

My image was a complete outtake…but you never know when one’s outtake is someone else spot on image. No?

“Hey kid! Wipe your dirty feet!”

Aulani Magazine

A few weeks ago, I shot a great story on Paulette Kahakepuna, a Hawaiian lei maker who makes Lei Hulu, or feather leis, worn only by Hawaiian royalty. Using mostly natural feathers and materials, Kahakepuna wove amazing leis and tales of her work and seeing some pieces she’s made, its easy to understand why some would be considered priceless.

You can see the story and magazine here starting pm page 16. The link is to Oahu Publications on line magazine where you can page through the actual mag online. Alternatively, you can stay at the Aluani, if you have the bucks.

I must say, I was super impressed the photo editor was able to pick out the first image as a cover. It surprised me as I just didn’t expect it nor see it in my edit. Clearly a nice piece of photo editing.

A hot dawg

I shot Yukako holding a hot dog in like 2005 or six. It was during our first trip back to NYC after moving to HNL. I can’t remember where we were but its late night and I had a wave of nostalgia. I guess it was from the recent March issues of Bazaar and Elle mags I found downstairs the other night. I paged through them looking at photo credits and didn’t recognize any of the new names in the magazines. Photo big shots like Burbridge, Meier, and McDean were all replaced by unknown names. Probably young guys with photoshop skills and computer visions.

Digital has opened the world to anyone who has a camera and a computer. So many people are creating work all over the world which was once only done by by a select few in New York. The once iconic names of photography are being knocked over by the masses. What attracted me to photography was the elitism of a small clan of professionals who set the bar high and limited those who could enter their ranks. Maybe not so much attracted me but more frustrated me as I sat on the fringe once as an assistant…hoping for that break to assist the elites. No amount of trying helped as it seemed more a trivial game based on whims and so and so’s. New York was good for that. Maybe I just didn’t know it at the time.

Feels like anyone with a camera now is a professional. The barrier is lower and the work is, I dare to say, improving. Indeed, but hints of banality creep off the pages as photoshop filters and plug ins are taking over where skill with lighting, cameras, and film once danced harmonically.

Everyone now is a hot dog. But are they tasty?

Another Photo EtC

The APEC Summit has come and gone. To me, and to probably loads of other photographers, APEC was just Another Photo, EtC…

What a pain! 3AM call times so Secret Service could sweep you and your gear, the suspicious stares from foreign security guards, the endless traffic congestion due to heighten security and dignitaries’ motorcades, the endless waiting for someone to make an appearance. It just goes on and on.

Yet, I’ve gotten to photograph the three most powerful men in the world…Medvedev, Obama, and Hu Jintao. No to mention Hillary Clinton, just about every APEC nation’s leaders landing at the airport. I was no further than a very short stone’s throw from two of the most powerful men whose mere presence can shake the course of history. Do I exaggerate? Anyone who holds the US debt plus possibly the EU’s? No. I don’t exaggerate.

Yet, its all just Another Photo, EtC. Really. Images to catalog, to burn on a disc, and to file away. After its all over, all you have left is the lingering rush and adrenaline still pumping from the job.

The Associated Press was happy as I got a “Thanks for the good work” email from Tom Stathis…and that means a lot. I got to be a part of something important although I was just on the outside.

Here are a few of the selects from the APEC hell week.

Above you see Mr. Obama through the bullet proof glass of his pimped out Caddy. As he drove up to the tarmac and I spotted him in the rear seat, I couldn’t help to be struck by the fact that he’s the US President.

The toughest part of the week was being stuck on arrival duty and having to be cleared to enter Joint Base Pearl Harbor/Hickam at 4am on Friday and 3am on Saturday. Those days were tough yet I got to see the smiling Dimitry Medvedev exiting his crappy Russian state plane. The Sultan of Brunei had the BIG PIMPIN’ 747 ride that was just as big as Air Force One, or so it seems. Hu Jintao was rumored to hit Honolulu’s Chinatown but since I live a few blocks away, I would have probably been alerted to the super security that would have surrounded the Chinese presidents’ present, no? He, Medvedev and and Obama had full on security detail meaning they could shut down the city when they rolled. I saw no such action in Ctown the week they were here.

One rumor I read was the Russian delegation demanded the bars at the Modern Waikiki (hotel) remain open 24 hours a day. Stoli on the rocks at any time, no?

The Hu Jintao photo op was mired in constant “meiyou meiyou” and suspicious glares. The Chinese security forces around the President clearly were doing their job but seemed awfully unorganized and never believed anything the American handlers would tell them. Constant badgering, criticism, and attitude. Constant confrontation and getting into people’s faces. Not aggressive like Westerners but like Chinese…a mildly aggressive badgering. Bad haircuts and bad suits. At the end, we were hosed by the State Run media which got the better pictures and we got sidelined for cheaper and faster images. And when I say State Run, I refer to China, not our government media complex.

Speaking of bad suits, we had a run in with Russian security. As we were waiting in media line to enter Hickam for the arrivals on Friday, three guys in cheap suits got in line with us and tried to enter the base. They drove a black US sedan (which you knew stunk of Russian cigarettes and vodka and probably had a dissident tied and bloodied in the trunk) and got out of the car eyeing all of us suspiciously while sauntering over to the military police to get onto base. Medvedev was arriving and they had a job to do. They were young and didn’t look all the menacing but you knew if you screwed with them, you’d end up in the trunk with that dissident. I looked for bloody knuckles and blood smears on their jackets to no avail. The Cold War lives on.

Security was insane…but who can blame them. Imagine the fool who could get close enough to knock off a world leader. Their names would line the history books! I remember when I worked as an assistant and being left alone in a studio with Bill Gates for like 15 minutes. Boy did my mind drift to those c stands in the corner and how I could use it as a bat. We all know who assassinated Lincoln, Lennon, Kennedy, and Reagan, no?* Gates? Well, it didn’t happen. Your kid won’t learn about me in the history books and they’ll still have to deal with Windows crashing.

*Booth, Chapman, Oswald, Hinckley.

And for my last image, all I have to say is the 60’s live on. Most of those protesters, God bless ’em, who demonstrated in anti-APEC protests across town and in the country do have a point. Banks, politicians, media, etc…are in need for reform. I myself can’t help but to wonder how members of Congress are able to dance around insider trading laws, how millionaires like Michael Fat Boy Moore and P Diddy can hob nob with the protesters, and how the Democrats claim to support the peoples when they are the 1%. Obama didn’t fund raise at Disney’s Aluani with the homeless out living on the Waianae Coast. He charged $1000 per head and pix with the Commander in Chief were $5000. I wish AP paid me what those donors paid for a simple snap with Barack. I’d be big pimpin’ with da Sultan in no time.

Again, back to the pits…the harry hippies of yesteryear haven’t disappeared. Their indelible stain on society protrudes on our lovely siren holding a most important bed sheet while splashing around Waikiki’s warm waters. Yet might it be the marketing and the romance of the hippie culture which sells the image of revolution? No doubt the younger generations have copycatted the protest movements, clothing, music and chants of those stinking masses of yesteryear. The chants of “Hey Hey Ho Ho (add your chic cause here) has got to go!” are no different than those chanted by those who spit on my uniformed father when he returned from ‘Nam. The attraction of free love and free living along with being free of all society’s constraints is just too great. And to think those sandal wearing pot smokers went on to sell their wares in the capitalists markets. Now you can find hippie attire and culture all neatly packaged at Urban Outfitters or other such chain stores. And lets not skimp on the irony that its made by our comrades in China.

The scarfed, tent dwelling, cardboard waving sandalnista is no more than a carbon copy of old grainy film stock images of 60’s hippies. Except they use the the 1%ers Twitter, Facebook and web devices to carry on the message.

The message is correct to some degree but 1969 has come and gone. Vote them out I say. We elected the hope and change and got nothing. Vote them out. That vote weighs more than some scrawled message on an old cardboard box. But if we are not careful, we might not even have a vote. Then we’re gonna need to do something much more than occupying a city park and smoking dope.

I’m back on FIVE O!!!!

Yo! Danno! You looking at my photo?

So I’m Back. Well, I wasn’t exactly acting, but Hawaii Five O wanted me behind the camera this time. I guess my acting from before was so good, that no one could really replace the irreplaceable, no?

Me and “Jesse’s Girl!”

Production hired me to photograph the beautiful actress Tania Raymonde, who plays a suspect in a murder scene during HI Five O’s second season show, “Ma’ema’e.” Tania is famous for playing Alex Rousseau on ABC’s Lost. Since I never really watched Lost I can’t tell you more other than she was Benjamin Linus’s daughter.

My photographs of Tania would be used as EVIDENCE on the show.

Tania, who plays a college volleyball player, is suspected in the murder of her coach when racy photographs of her are found in her dead coach’s possessions. Melanie, as her character is named, takes erotic photos during an ad campaign and her coach is trying to sort out the problems. With a few twists and turns, Five O finds that Melanie wasn’t romantically involved with her coach; however, the coach was linked to…well…just watch the show.

My very difficult job was to photograph the very good looking Tania in a very unsubtle yet tactful (and tasteful) sexy way. As the photos would be on network television, the photos couldn’t be that provocative but the art directors needed to push the envelope until the photos bordered on the fetish. The art direction called for the actress to be in several different costumes including a skin tight volleyball uniform and a cut up halter top that would make any college boy sweat. The ripped, collegiate uniform, her sweaty body draped in a bath towel…bada bing!…all found as evidence. Talk about coaches behaving badly!

So as McGarrett and Danno case the casa where the coach lived, they find the racy photos and quickly point their suspicions towards Melanie. The photos are displayed all over the episode as the projected on their computer screens, snapped on their iPhones, etc. But as the episode pointed, out the coach wasn’t the photographer and the photos were a red herring.

Danno snapping pictures. I wonder if he saved them?

Daniel Dae Kim over looking all the evidence on the big screen.

As Tania walked onto the set (gray seamless, Elinchrom Octabank, Profoto 7a 2400ws pack) I had no doubt photographing her would be easy. It is never hard to photograph a good looking woman. Yet the actual posing and positioning proved to be fairly difficult. As I’ve said earlier, it became a struggle to find the right type of poses, lascivious enough to arouse the Five O viewers, yet tame enough for the network to give the green light. The art team, hair and make up, and the rest of the crew helped create the right balance and feeling. Tania looked more like a supermodel with her hair and makeup but she played well with the camera. We had a great rapport. During our lunch break, the crew and Tania all sat on the floor eating pasta and salad all the while talking about Hawaii and LA, acting and really nothing more.

I have to say I enjoyed seeing loads of my images being used all over network television Monday night. The images are not the proudest part of my career but whattya gonna do? Its a job but anytime I get a chance to practice my craft, its a great day. Especially when its all over the television, and when its a good looking girl.