Those of you that follow my blog regularly will recall that about two months ago I mentioned I would be headed to American Samoa for 3 weeks to help a friend with his coral bleaching project on Tutuila. Well, I’m here! I’ve been baking in the sun for about a week now, and am currently taking a 4 day vacation on the remote island of Ofu. Ofu is a small island about 50 miles from Tutuila, and there is no reliable means of transport. I was lucky to catch the cargo ship, which sailed overnight and arrived on this little paradise on Friday morning. Except for two other tourists (which is incredibly rare) and my friendly hosts at Vaoto Lodge, I have the two mile stretch of pristine beach all to myself. It is indescribably beautiful and relaxing here – unfortunately I knew as soon as I set foot on the sand that it would be impossible to share the experience through any photograph. But, I will do my best!

I’ll leave you with an image from my first day here, taken with the underwater housing many of you helped me purchase by way of my print sale announcement. It’s been working wonderfully, and it’s giving me a whole new world to explore! Speaking of which, I better go jump in the lagoon again, the fish are calling me.

Ofu, American Samoa

"Swimming in Paradise" ~ Ofu, American Samoa
The Tech: Canon 5D2, Canon 16-35mm mkII, Aquatech housing and dome port, handheld
Exposure: iso 200, f/18, 1/250th
Notes: I took some inspiration from my friend Mike Anderson for this image, of course, it's hard to avoid when the entire beach looks like this!

Many more images and stories to come in the future!

4 Comments to “Greetings from Paradise : Ofu, American Samoa!”

  1. Sam Waldron says:

    Hi Floris – absolutely love your work – beautiful stuff, and obviously a lot of creative and ‘beyond the norm’ landscape work. Always great to see how transparent you are about technique as well.

    Was this possibly inspired by Michael Anderson’s Islands in the Stream? 🙂

    Keep up the awesome work mate!

  2. Thanks Sam – yes, definitely took some inspiration from Mike on this trip (he also gave me a lot of advice on actually getting here!).

  3. David T says:

    Floris this is so sweet! I find these type of images so interesting. it’s pretty amazing how clear the the water is. looks like paradise! beautiful image. can’t wait to see more images from your travels.

    David

  4. Joe Boyle says:

    Very cool image! I like a lot of the images on your site. This one too I thought was very cool: http://www.artinnaturephotogra.....n-islands/

    Keep up the good work!

    Joe