Since I returned home last week, I have not had a lot of time to edit my new images, but this one is definitely worth sharing. I photographed this dramatic sunset while visiting the US National Park of American Samoa on Ofu Island last month. It took a lot of effort to travel this out-of-the-way tropical destination, which was part of the charm, but also explains why it is the least visited of the US National Parks. I stayed at the Vaoto Lodge where Jim, Ben, & Marge were delightful hosts. Other than the 2 researchers who were doing coral studies, I had the entire stretch of beach in the Park all to myself. I photographed a number of brilliant sunrise and sunsets, but this was the most spectacular. As much as I travel, it is still special when the clouds light up with intense color like this. I composed this image by framing the dramatic peaks in the distance with this eroded limestone shelf with waves washing over it in the foreground. I created this image with my Canon 5DmkII, Carl Zeiss 28mm f2 ZE lens, Singh-Ray LB Warming polarizer, and 3-stop Hard Graduated Neutral Density filter. This image is a single-exposure which required minimal processing using Aperture 3 and Photoshop CS5.
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The least visited of the US National Parks is Kobuk Valley. It’s more difficult to visit than American Samoa – cannot drive – and fairly far. See this list of National Parks ordered by visitation. I am sure visitation to Ofu itself has dropped now that there are no longer direct flights to Pago-Pago, but Ofu would account only for a fraction of visits to the Park.
Thanks for the information, QT! I just looked up some stats and you could almost claim a tie between the two. My guess is there are less people that visit the viewpoint at the south end of Ta’u than float the Kobuk River each year.
Curious notion of tie, with NPSA getting more than twice as many visitors as KOVA :-). Your guess is probably correct, since floating the Kobuk *is* the way to visit KOVA, and most visits to NPSA are probably into drivable areas of Tutuila.
QT-I looked up your stats, plus the National Park stats available online. I came up with the tie by comparing the 3164 visitors to Kobuk in 2010 (http://www.nature.nps.gov/stats/viewReport.cfm) against 3,006 that the Park has listed for 2010 (http://www.nps.gov/npsa/parkmgmt/statistics.htm). I know you like your data & facts, so hopefully, this is of interest to you. Thank you for your insight!
So glad to see an Ofu shot up! This is really great–the sunsets here are fantastic and you’ve captured this one wonderfully. It was really nice to meet you. I hope you post a few more pictures from American Samoa.
Erin-It was nice to meet you, too! I will be posting more of my American Samoa images in the next week. Thank you!