Many Cliffs

Nā Pali means “many cliffs,” which is the whole description and it's accurate. Ridge after ridge of green-topped rock dropping into the Pacific, fluted like the folds of a curtain, miles of it with no road anywhere along it. Most people see the coast from a helicopter or from a boat sitting far enough offshore to fit the whole thing in one look. Our catamaran went in as far as it could, fifty or sixty yards off the rock, close enough that I had to tilt the camera up.

I set my focal length to 24mm and the cliffs still took the entire frame. A sliver of ocean along the bottom, a sliver of sky along the top, and stone filling everything in between. That's what the distance bought me. You can see the surface of the walls from there, banded in brown and orange and gray, cut top to bottom by channels where the rain runs off. Right in the middle, at the base, a cave opens onto a narrow strip of beach. It's small in the frame. It's also the only thing that tells you how big any of this is.

I wanted the photo to feel the way it felt from the deck, with the boat rocking and my head tipped back and the rock going up and up past the top of the viewfinder. The wide shots of Nā Pali show you the shape of the coast. This one shows you what it's made of, and what the water has been doing to it for the last five million years.