I’ve been taking photographs since I received my first camera at age 9 or 10. During a college course on photojournalism, I learned about exposures, ASA film “speed,” lighting, photo composition and how to develop and print black-and-white film.

Today I use an inexpensive Kodak digital camera that I won at a company charity golf outing. One beautiful advantage to digital photography is that I can quickly and easily delete any photographs that I don’t want to keep. On the downside, I struggle with proper lighting, because I rely on the small (and often insufficient) flash that is built into the camera.

But above-average subjects can trump average photographers, as these photos show. All were taken by me with the Kodak, during a recent family vacation to Maui, Hawaii.