Over Labor Day weekend, my husband took the kiddos camping with my son's Cub Scout pack, so I had a glorious 3 days and 2 nights to myself in my home. After sitting in silence (glorious silence!) in my house for about an hour, I got dressed and loaded up my gear to head out for a weekend of photography projects that I'd had on my radar for a while. I need some new images for my Offset catalogue (Offset is an elite professional stock agency for which I am a contributing artist).

On the North Shore of Oahu, after driving through the picturesque and historic Haleiwa town, down the two-lane road that hugs the shoreline, you'll come to Waimea Bay. The bay is a gorgeous expanse of water dotted by giant boulders left behind by Pele when she sculpted the island from lava and fire. In the winter, the waters here are turbulent, giant swells pounding the shores with a rumble that echoes through the mountains behind the bay; but in the summer, the waters are calm and smooth, and the large boulders are a favorite of locals and tourists alike, who climb them with the intent of diving into the cool ocean waters below.

I planned my trip to the bay around sunset, pulling into the parking lot as a procession of slightly-sunburned beach-goers headed in the opposite direction, pulling wagons of sand toys and tired children. Despite the late hour, there were still plenty of adventurous tourists and local teens scaling the rocks and lining up to leap from the edge of the jagged boulders into the gently-rolling waves below.

After capturing the action on the rocks, I moved down the shoreline to capture a few landscape images of the bay and the scenic coastline.

I happened to look back toward the boulders and noticed that the crowd had thinned, leaving just one woman standing on the top, looking so calm and quiet as she contemplated the beauty around her.

If you have the opportunity, I would highly recommend checking out Waimea Bay. Far past the hordes of tourists on Waikiki Beach, it is a place of amazing beauty and light-hearted fun. If you'd like to jump, be certain the conditions are safe to do so (you can always ask the lifeguards to be safe), but it is great fun and a rite of passage for many Hawaiian youth. And although winter wave patterns prohibit jumping (and often, even swimming in the bay), it is still a gorgeous location to capture a sunset from the comfort of a beach blanket, preferably with a glass of wine in hand.

Last week, I achieved a personal goal that I set for myself 3 years ago: I was accepted into the CM Pro group on Clickin Moms, a large women's photography forum. Although I fell in love with photography back in high school, spending hours pressing a shutter and developing in the darkroom, I didn't get serious about learning how to improve my skills until a few years ago. I joined Clickin Moms to take their online courses and learn the art of photography, and from the beginning, I was in awe of the amazingly talented CMPros who taught the courses and mentored the newbies, whose work was featured on the blogs, in the magazine, and in the forums. I made a commitment then that I would work hard to learn and produce that quality of work.

In the interim, I've taken multiple classes, read stacks of books, and put my work out to be criticized and critiqued in my quest for improvement. I am just a few days shy of completing my first 365-day project, and I have taken thousands of images, working to improve my use of lighting, composition, color and form.

A couple weeks ago, I submitted a curated portfolio of 150 images for consideration, with the hope I would be accepted into the CMPro program. Recently, I woke up to find an email welcoming me into the program. It's an honor to be welcomed into such a talented group--but more importantly, I set out to do this and I achieved my goal, despite homeschooling and motherhood, moves and personal difficulties. The end result is wonderful--but it's the process and the growth I've experienced over the past couple of years that I value most. I still have so much to learn and so many areas to grow in my quest, but I've reached a benchmark that once seemed so far off.

I owe a massive 'thank you' to my husband for his unwavering support--for not grimacing at my expensive hobby, the costly classes, and not balking at the weekends I would abandon him to walk the streets shooting. And a big thanks my lovely kiddos, who have (mostly happily) allowed me to stick a camera in their faces on a daily basis. I certainly couldn't have achieved this without them.

Now that I've been accepted to the ranks of CMPro, I'm looking forward to sharing my work with a larger audience and continuing to explore and experiment and play with my art in the company of some really, incredible and awesomely-talented women. Want to see for yourself? Click over to the CM Pro Daily Project page. You can see some of my shares there, and you can enjoy some really inspiring images from the rest of the Pros.