A couple of weeks ago, I presented a mini-series of fisheye-distorted tree canopies shot from below. The same concept is used here, shot on the grounds at the Royal Hawaiian, but the tree is on a grander scale. I asked Chat GPT how old the tree might be, and it responded with about 100 years. Since the Royal Hawaiian was built in 1927, it could’ve been planted when the hotel opened.

The Monkeypod Tree is a native of Central and South America and grows very fast. It was introduced to Hawaii in 1847, so this tree couldn’t be over 175 years old (I shot this picture in 2022).

I like the touches of pink architecture along its periphery, which definitely identifies the photograph’s location. Despite using a camera with a 51MP sensor, cropping out the circular vignetting reduced the image to about 35MP—still a respectable resolution for printing large. I’ve considered doing this as a metal print, though I have yet to execute this plan. It’s hard to appreciate the details of this photograph from these puny web posts. However, the image looks glorious on a 5K Apple Studio Display.

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