This is the Unreal Hawaii photo exhibition at Manifest. The exhibition dates are from October 19 through November 17, 2012.

The title of the exhibition is “Bouldering in Hawaii.”

There are 21 photos in all.

I recently partnered with Justin Ridgely (owner of Volcanic Rock Gym) to produce this photo exhibition. The goal of the exhibition is to expose the sport of bouldering to some people that might not have heard of it before.

Most of the photos were shot specifically for this exhibition. Some were from my archives.

If you are around Downtown Honolulu sometime before November 17, drop by and have a look. Manifest is located at 32 North Hotel Street. During the day they have excellent coffee. If going for pau hana (happy hour), they have a tasty cocktail menu.

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This event took place in February 2012.

A group of Hawaii rock climbers gathered at the rock climbing gym to have fun trying to nail some crazy dynos.

A “dyno” is a rock climbing move where you fling your body from one spot on the wall to another.

Brad from Berad Studio came out to capture the event in slo-mo.

The idea is this. In some rock climbing routes, typically in bouldering, there are holds so far apart that the only way to get from one to the other is to jump. You crouch low, then pull up with your arms and push off with your feet to launch yourself at the far hold. If you catch it you are all good. If you don’t you fall. At the gym, we were able to stack pads on pads so that falling would be safe, fun and funny.

At the gym, several dynos were set up with different levels of difficulty and climbers could compete to see who could get the most done.

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The front door of Next Door in Chinatown. The event was held here.

I ended up on stage at one point to introduce a slideshow I put together. Justin had some space to fill before the films started and asked me I wanted to throw something together. It sounded like a great idea at the time, but I didn’t realize it would take me 8 hours to make an 11 minute slideshow.

Of all the films that showed, one of the most inspiring was the one about a nine year old climber named Ashima, called “Origins: Obe and Ashima.”

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The Reel Rock Tour showed in Hawaii last month on November 20th. It was presented by Volcanic Rock Gym and the event was held at Next Door (in Chinatown).

Every year a company called Reel Rock accepts entries into a competition for climbing and adventure short films. Judges select 6 to be part of the Reel Rock Film Tour and they are screened at events all over the world.

This was the second year that VRG brought the film tour to Hawaii. Last year it was much smaller (as the climbing community was much smaller) and held at the rock gym. But this year, Justin (the owner of VRG) decided to see if it was possible to make an event out of it. As it turns out, there’s a pretty good demand in Hawaii for adventure films and we had a full house.

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