Kenji Croman's kickstarter project - interview
Kenji Croman is a professional surf photographer from Hawaii. He has launched a very interesting project on kickstarter. His plan is to travel to South America to photograph the waves in an artistic way and to share it with the world. We have conducted a short interview with him:
Which countries have you photographed the best wave photos? What other subjects do you shoot?
Some of the best places I photographed waves have been in Hawaii. I've also photographed waves in Thailand, and Cambodia but Cambodia didn't have too many big waves, haha.
What makes South America an attraction in your view as a Hawaiian? Which spots do you plan to go for the shoots after you have collected enough funds for your project from crowdfunding?
South America has so many beautiful untouched waves and that's why I decided to go there for this project. So many people focus on Bali, Indonesia, Tahiti which have amazing waves, but people forget about the other places like South America which have some epic waves too. By the way I'm not Hawaiian, I'm from Hawaii but my ethnicity is Japanese and German.
What is the most difficult aspects about shooting waves other than lighting? What is special about it?
Some of the difficulty of shooting waves is water spots. I can't tell you how many great shots I've ruined because of water spots on the dome. I've also ruined 3 cameras because I didn't tighten the water housing good enough and water leaked. Other things like the weather, the tide, the current also play a big factor too.
What kind of equipment do you use to achieve these great shots? Which are the media have you been featured and interviewed?
I use a Canon 50D with a Tokina fisheye and an SPL Water Housing. I've been featured on CNN's website, The Inertia, a couple local magazines in Hawaii, and I'm currently being interviewed by Digital Photographer for a 12 page spread coming out soon.
If you are asked to feature your three best shots, which are they and can you briefly tell us why?
I would say the sunrise in the barrel shot would be my favorite. Took me 6 months to photograph this shot. Basically the shot is a sunrise in the barrel of a wave. I would go every morning for months and months and not get the shot because of so many reason. Either water spots ruined the photo, it was too cloudy for the sun to show, the waves were too small, the waves were too disorganized, it was raining, etc... So long story short the day I got the shot I woke up so tired (4:30am) and I was saying to myself, "I give up, I'm too tired to do this everyday..." and I sat in the chair thinking...finally I said, 'screw it, lets keep trying.' and that day when I was in the water I saw this freak set come out of no where and it barreled perfect, I stuck my arm out and pulled the trigger. Got it! I was so happy, not because the shot was so amazing but because of the effort and months I put into getting that shot. The other two are probably: My rainbow shooting stars shot. This is when I captured an amazing rainbow when I was in the water, I used a slow shutter speed and flash and it caused the rain to look like shooting stars, you gotta see it. The final image would probably be a shot I took 2 weeks ago. I used my new technique of slow shutter speed with flash, this caused a cool combination of movement in the photo and balanced exposure. It's called "Waterfalls" because the left side of the wave looks like a waterfall.
Thanks for the interview, please speaking with you. Please let your viewers know about my kickstarter project which can be seen here http://kck.st/SVeldA
