About the Hawaiian Landscape Photos We Use On Our Placement Guides
One evening I was playing catch with a dear friend’s kid, Kobe, on the beach at the end of the Ellison Onizuka International Airport runway in Keahole. For scale modelers, Paradise: a beautiful Hawaiian beach, spending time with beloved Ohana (the Hawaiian word for the concept of family or community), baseball (paradise for this scale modeler, at least) and airliners lifting off the runway right over our heads.
Kobe is a gem: He reminds me of me—of us—when we were 9; I didn’t want to do anything but think about airplanes and play baseball, either. As an Alaska flight lifts off over our heads, Kobe asks, “Uncle John, you know what kind of plane that is?”
“That’s a 737” I tell him.
“No,” Kobe says, “Its’ a 737-800.” I know you are laughing along with me, because we were all that kid.
As the sun set, a C-17 Globemaster from Hickam’s 204 Airlift Squadron of the Hawaiian Air National Guard arrived for a session of touch-and-gos. Kona is far less busy than the airspace over Honolulu, so the 204 often visits to get their reps in. I grabbed my camera:
We designed our first instruction sheets against an empty white background. They looked a bit vanilla. A common design solution is to use a desaturated photo to add interest and depth to the background.
For me, watching C-17 crews training right overhead on a breezy Kona evening is the perfect image to express the Hawaiian Air Depot vibe. We used the picture I made that evening for all of our 2023 releases.
Our first 2024 release is an Essential Mask set for the amazing Miniart 1/48 P-47D-25 Thunderbolt. With a new year, a great new model, and our first anniversary we thought we might celebrate with a little update to our look:
Early morning on Kuakini Highway, Kailua Kona
Since moving to Kona in 2012 I’ve been making little Hawaiian Landscape pictures like the C-17s and Kuakini Highway. In 2024 we’ll feature different ones with each new release. While it isn’t really important what picture appears in the background of our sheets, why not include a little hauʻoli? That’s one of several Hawaiian words used to convey happiness and joy.
Since the Placement Guide pictures are cropped, desaturated, and mostly obscured by the instructions, we thought it would be fun to post the original images here. Above is the picture from Thunderbolt Essential Mask set. Here’s the picture for the guide from the Gabreski addendum:
Wrecked sailboat, Kona Bay
And here’s the picture accompanying our newest release, the Schilling addendum:
The Energy Lab, Keahole. This is another view from where we go planespotting. To the right is the end of the runway and to the left is the beach where we play catch. The road to the right is part of the run course for the Ironman World Championship.
As we release new products this year we’ll add a blog post with the background picture, along with more info about the product and the scenery. We hope you enjoy them!