Ahu Akivi: Easter Island

I knew that I had to shoot on Rapa Nui -Easter Island- as part of my story on the first colonization of the Pacific islands -Beyond the Blue Horizon- (interview about the story here).
One of the great challenges of being a photographer now is to go to iconic places and think up something new.
Heading out there for National Geographic Magazine is pretty intimidating. Rapa Nui is so well known, so photographed, what would I do that was new? In fact when one of my friends learned that I was headed there they asked "is there a picture that hasn't been taken?"

When I first said I would go there for the magazine I really didn't know if there was a new picture to be made. Or more specifically a new picture that they would publish. So I did what I often do, I put it off and left Rapa Nui for the end. Beyond the Blue Horizon took a LONG TIME to shoot, almost a year. In that time I was privileged to sail with the Polynesian Voyaging Society and after watching their navigation by waves and stars I knew the picture I wanted to make on Easter Island.

There are a set of statues in the center of the island that represent the original explorers. I knew that the picture to make would be of those statues against the stars that the explorers would have used to navigate to and from the island. This picture ties a well known place in the Pacific to the ancient explorers and their ancient map, the night sky.

How did I make the picture? I put a Canon 5d on an Orion telescope mount. The mount tracks the earth's rotation so the stars stay relatively still. It is a 6 minute exposure and somewhere in that 6 minutes I fired a strobe to light the statues. The camera is moving for the entire exposure so you can see some ghosting around the edge of the statues.

It should have been relatively simple to shoot, except I ended up visiting Easter Island during the wettest time in anyone's memory. The evening I made this picture I took 2 frames before the clouds closed in.

A print of this image is part of a show opening at Zeitgeist Gallery in Nashville on Saturday May 3.

There is a great article in the Nashville Tennessean by Jonathan Marx about the exhibit here.
-Stephen Alvarez

to set this image as your desktops background check out the "Wall Paper/Desktop Pictures" link on the right.

Comments

[Merari Teruel]

I am completely facinated by this picture!

[Tim Gray]

Wonderful photo!