2026-01-20 South Pacific: February 5 – Mo'orea, French Polynesia and on to Tahiti

Today we took a tour of Mo’orea with a couple of professional photographers. The tour will take us around the island while we get professional tips on taking good photos. Some photos we took while driving around the island. Such photos, taken as we drive, are usually not great. We just take them for the memories. The island has great coastal aspects and beautiful mountains.

The first stop was a public beach, Plage de Tahiamanu, where they talked about directional lines, thirds and such and showed us some examples. Then we split up to take our own photos.

They also pointed out the fruit from a tree. It isn’t edible but has some medicinal properties (that we don’t remember).

Next stop was a small, black sand beach. The only one on the island.

Here they pointed out the bubbly aspects of the wave actions and how the bubbles add visual interest to pictures. So we dutifully took a few photos of the bubbles in the water…

and a few other photos in the area. We even got a few photos of sea birds in the water. Everything is lovely here.

Next stop was a pineapple plantation where they talked about using items in the foreground to give visual interest to landscape photos.

And we took other photos in the area as well.

Some of pineapples…

and some of flowers in the area.

We stopped at a large field with the island’s spectacular and iconic mountains in the background. Here they talked about lines of direction…

and the use of light to highlight features in the foreground. The clouds kept moving but sometimes the tree in the middle of this photo were highlighted even better than it is in this photo. But this one isn’t bad with the light on the tree in the foreground.

And we took a few more photos in the area.

Next, we drove up into the hills to the Belvedere…we met this colorful rooster.

And we had great views of the bays and mountains.

Then it was down the hill and a stop at Pao Pao Bay for some photos.

The water is quite clear, giving us reasonable photos of the fish in the water even though the angle wasn't very good. Top down isn't the best angle for getting fish photos.