 Good morning and a lot. Welcome to Law Across the Sea. I am Mark Schloff, the host of Law Across the Sea. And the purpose of Law Across the Sea, this program is to bring lawyers who travel across the sea to and from Hawaii to talk about what they have found and what they have brought and take with them on their travels. Today our guest is Peter Esser. Peter is a lawyer in Hawaii who has an appellate practice and with whom I've done several cases. Peter has written over 250 appeals in Hawaii and has appeared before in Hawaii appellate courts numerous times. However, there's another facet of Peter's life experience that takes him across the sea and into exotic places where he uses photography to appeal to the senses. We're going to talk about both his legal practice and his application today. Welcome Peter. Good to see you. Good to be here. First of all, my first question is, what is an appellate lawyer? What does an appellate lawyer do? When someone is dissatisfied with a verdict, either in criminal court or family court or civil court, and they want the record reviewed by appellate courts, they come to an appellate lawyer, you file a notice and you write briefs. Most of the time appeals are decided on the brief, so what I spend most of my time doing is sitting in front of a word processor drafting briefs. Occasionally they'll set oral argument. I've appeared in front of the Hawaii Supreme Court about 150 times in oral argument. Also the Ninth Circuit. And it's a great job these days because of e-filing. You can pretty much do everything at home. And not only for you to file, but also access to the record. Not every lawyer is an appellate lawyer. I guess every lawyer could appeal their case, but they come to an appellate lawyer because appellate lawyer has some background experience in doing that, knows the system. That's correct. And most trial lawyers know that a big part of their practice is rules and procedure. You can't present your story. On appeal. On appeal. Well, and in trial court, you cannot litigate something unless you know the structure. That's what makes us professionals and experts. And of course one of the things I argue is that good trial lawyers should hire good appellate lawyers to take the appeal because it's a whole different kind of law. And I do almost every area, whereas most trial lawyers specialize like in family or criminal defense or whatever. And how long have you been doing appellate practice? Since 75, when I passed my first bar in California. And you like the appellate practice? Yeah, I mean I sort of ended up in it because I was uncomfortable with the stress of trial work and also I like the intellectual challenge of appellate work. You take issues that trial lawyers don't have time to spend so many hours on. And I usually put in 75 to 100 hours on a brief. Right. And that allows me to really get in depth and that's the part I like. And you have the ability, the luxury of time in a way. There are still deadlines, of course, in appellate practice, but you can put your mind into the topic a little bit more. That's correct. And as a lawyer, you know that deadlines are great because if you are not working on a brief and watching a movie or reading a book or going on a trip when you're supposed to be working, it's always much more fun. Yeah, well I want to talk about that really. And a different type of appeal. Yeah. I've known you for several years and I've seen many of your photographs and a lot of your galleries of photographs. How did you ever get into photography? The beautiful photos that you take are just outstanding. We're going to go through a few of them, only a few of them today. But how did you get into photography? There's basically two reasons to take photos. One is because I have a bad memory and I want to remember what I've seen. And also, when you take a photograph, it records things you may not have even seen when you were there. And lots of times I get home and study a photograph and see things that I didn't know about. That's like a classic movie I've seen. Yes, exactly. And the second big reason is the way it makes you look. Whenever I show up at a site like say the Parthenon in Athens or Salisbury Cathedral, I'm studying the light and looking at the angle and seeing artistically what it is so I can make it into a beautiful photograph. And it just makes me look. One of the things I frequently do is show up at a monument at the wrong time of day and get where the light's wrong where it's behind my subject. And so I literally leave and come back later in the day when the sun's right. Whenever I visit a monument of any kind, my eyes are where I need to be to get the light right. Because light is everything in photography. And have you been a photographer since you were a young child? Or is this something that you developed? Yes. I had a box camera, a brownie camera when I was like six or seven. How did you get into that? Well, you know, part of this comes from the kind of movies I liked. In the fifties there were epic movies. There was Ben Hur and there was King of Kings and that sort of thing. And I always loved the cinematic part of movies, the images, especially the widescreen images. And so the natural thing was to take photos. And of course most people take photos of people, especially relatives. They put the camera away unless it's Christmas or birthdays. And I pretty much only photograph people when I travel. And I do it with a long lens and I do it with an autofocus. And most of the time they don't know because adults get all weird when you take their photo. The only natural subjects of photography are little kids. And I photograph little kids all the time because they're wonderful subjects. But mostly what I do is photograph architecture and I have a fascination with ruins. So if a country doesn't have ruins I usually don't go there. And you had this interest in photography since you were a young child. And you tied it to movies and is it something that you must do? Is it part of your life now that you have to do these photography? Absolutely. And it has evolved over the decades because of the technology. And the biggest change happened to me ten years ago. And I finally abandoned medium format film work which was a big huge manual focus camera that took very slow studied photographs and went to digital cameras. And there's lots of great things about digital. And I know there are still film photographers reluctant to leave behind this sort of classic photography. But the wonderful thing is you get to develop your own pictures. And when you are, you can develop a film but it's very complex. And do you do that? No. All I did was take my photos in like everyone else to longs or wherever. And sometimes make enlargements and object and ask them to do specific things. It took forever and it was still being done by another artist, not me. And the first thing I discovered when I got into digital is how you could adjust contrast and color and light. And especially cropping and rotating. I have a tendency to take crooked photographs. I don't know it's because I'm just like out of focus. I don't know what it is but about 50% of my photos need to be rotated straightened up. And frequently you need to crop. One of the things you need to do is to get a camera that has a very high grain. Expensive but lots of megapixels. And what you get is you can reduce the image down to interesting things within and you won't lose the focus. And I've asked you to bring 20 of your favorite photos today. And I like to kind of go through them one at a time as best we can. I'd like you to take a look at them and explain what we're looking at. First we're going to talk about the one from Bali. This is actually from New Guinea and let me just briefly say how I decide where I'm going. Especially now because I've visited most of the major places in the world I wanted to go to. So I'm finding myself going back to a lot of them. The best vacation is to go back to some place familiar and then take a side trip to some place you haven't been. And this is a Danny hut in the Baylor Valley in New Guinea. In the western side of New Guinea that is part of Indonesia. Right in the middle of Indonesia is Bali. I've been to Bali a dozen times. It's one of my favorite places in the world. And I go there and stay at a hotel I've always stayed at before. And then I plan these side trips to new places. I don't photograph Bali much anymore. That's Bali because I've been there so many times and taken so many photos. That's the biggest, that's the besok temple up on the side of the volcano in Bali which I've been to many times. There's lots of towers. And that's probably around 1500 years old although of course they're rebuilding and taking care of it all the time. That is a very famous stupa in Kathmandu in Nepal which is Tibetan where huge numbers of Tibetans back in the 50s when they had to abandon Lhasa which I've also been to came and lived because of the Chinese. And that was severely damaged in the earthquake 18 months ago and it's been restored. And this photo here, who are those eyes? Who are the eyes of? That is an image of the Buddha and unique to the Kathmandu Valley. I don't even think they have those eyes in Tibet which is of course where all these people came from. It is a combination of Hindu and Buddhist art in Kathmandu. Kathmandu is an extraordinary place. Most of the city is 500 years old and hasn't changed. It's a medieval city in Asia. And what are those flags? Those are prayer flags which have Om Manipadmi whom which is the Sanskrit thing that says the jewel is in the lotus. I don't want to get too technical. There are actually streets up above Capulani Park where people have those flags. They're all around the world and what happens is when they wave in the wind they say Om Manipadmi whom which means the jewel is in the lotus. It's a Buddhist prayer. And just going back for a second to the Bali photo. The Bali photo, what temple is that? That's a Hindu temple. Bali is the only Hindu island left in Indonesia. Most of Indonesia is Muslim now. So that is a huge Hindu temple which I said goes back about 1500 years. This is an annual festival where people are making a pilgrimage to this temple. I just had a perfect time just serendipity. It's beautiful. Before our break let's take a look at the Easter Island. I've seen this before but these figures but this is a little different. This is the volcano, extinct volcano on the island. Easter Island is about the size of, say, Lanai, a very small island. This is where they were dug out of the ground and then they would bury these basalt chunks of stone in the ground and then work on them. This is an island that is one of the most remote islands in the world, like Hawaii. There's a long Chile flight from Tahiti to Santiago, Chile that stops here. I went there with a lawyer friend from here. My son was a Stanford student at San Diego doing foreign exchange and I stopped in Easter Island on the way. Absolutely incredible place and I have a whole gallery on the visit but those were all taken with an early camera and so the quality is not very good. I just love the image. It's great to me. We're going to come back and hopefully be able to get through the rest of the 20s in about a minute. Hello, this is Martin Despeng. I want to get you excited about my new show which is Humane Architecture for Hawaii and Beyond. We're going to broadcast on Tuesdays at 5 p.m. here on Think Tech Hawaii. Hello and Aloha. My name is Raya Salter and I'm the host of Power of Hawaii. Where Hawaii comes together to figure out how we're going to work towards a clean and renewable energy future. We have exciting conversations with all kinds of stakeholders, everyone who needs to come together to talk about renewable energy. Be they engineers, advocates, lawyers, utility executives, musicians or artists to see how we can come together to make a renewable future. Tuesdays at 1 p.m. Aloha. I'm Carl Campania. I hope you please visit us this summer. It's a wonderful summer. It's actually a cooler summer than we're used to. But I hope that you come back and visit us and watch our show Education Movers, Shakers and Reformers here on Think Tech Hawaii. It's at noon every Wednesday. See you then. We are back with Peter Esser and we are going through his photographs of the world and they cover just about every place that's exotic and different from Hawaii that we can imagine. We're going to just start back where we left off and we're in Turkey right now. Again, this was one of those places where I showed up at four in the afternoon and the light was on the back of the library, the famous library at Ephesus, which is on the coast of Turkey. And I came back, paid another admission fee the next morning at nine and the light was perfect, as you can see. That was reconstructed by a German archaeologist in the early 60s. It's one of the great images of any Roman ruin. It dates from about the time of Hadrian, maybe like 130. And of course those sculptures, some of which have survived, are myths. Those are Roman gods, so this is pre-Christian. Another couple hundred years before the Rome adopted Christianity. And considering everything that's going on in Turkey today, just to put this in context is amazing. It is and Turkey is an extraordinary place to go as a tourist because it's been a center of civilization for thousands and thousands of years. So there are ruins at almost every epic in history and also every religion. Okay, let's go to the next photo. Oh, this is a beautiful, this is a Buddha. Even I know this. There's actually a dispute as to whether or not this is Buddha or Ananda, one of his disciples. But it's certainly Buddhist. One of the most wonderful Buddha images in the world from Sri Lanka. The face is great. It's extraordinary. By the way, this appears in a wonderful movie with Elizabeth Taylor and Dana Andrews back in the mid-50s. This image is carved in granite. It's about, I would say, a thousand years old. It's in Palinirua, which is a city that was abandoned in about 1200 AD. And where was this? In Sri Lanka. It's one of what they call the ancient cities in Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka is one of the most extraordinary places in the world to visit for ruins and for beautiful scenery and just everything. I was there 24 years ago. I haven't been back. I'm planning to go back. Of all of the islands in Asia I have been to, Sri Lanka is probably my favorite. All right. Let's move to Japan. All right. This is a beautiful, beautiful castle like in Japan. Where is it? This is Himaji Castle, which is north of Osaka. There's also a castle in Osaka, but it's a cement. And this is an original wood one that is about 900 years old. It's one of the oldest surviving all-wood buildings in the world. Another one, by the way, is a Buto Inn, which is in Kyoto. And we have a copy out here in Kaniohe. I was lucky enough to be there during Konami. I think I'm pronouncing it right, which is the week each year when the cherry blossoms are in bloom. Strangely enough, this shot doesn't show any cherry blossoms. It is an absolutely magnificent castle. And there's a bullet train from Osaka to Himaji. So you get there really quickly from Kansai Airport. Okay. Let's take a look at the next one. Oh, wow. This is probably my favorite photograph ever. This is the Dalai Lama's Palace in Lhasa, which is very difficult to get to and is 12,000 feet high. The mountains you see in the background are probably 18,000. Like Cusco and Peru, you have to be very careful about altitude sickness. I was sucking oxygen out of a bag at the hotel in order to avoid a lot of side effects. There's a very large enlargement of this photo at the Supreme Court that has been there for about 12 years. Supreme Court of Hawaii. Yes. It was put up by the clerks there. And it is in the clerk's office when you walk in. It is probably my favorite photo I've ever taken. It was taken with a medium format film camera. And they had just repainted the palace. Now, Dalai Lama doesn't live in it anymore. He lived in it up until 1959 when he was forced out by the Chinese. He now lives in Northwest India in a hill station. All right. Let's take a look at the next photo. Oh, my gosh. That grass really makes the shot. This is Machu Picchu, which has the Hawaii connection because of Bingham. Hiram Bingham was an extraordinary archeologist. But he also is the grandson of the famous missionary that our streets named after here in Honolulu. It's an extraordinary place, but Peru as a country is an extraordinary place. Cusco is at least if not more fascinating than Machu Picchu. And even Lima is an extraordinary place. A lot of Hawaiians, people from Hawaii have been to Peru and all of them loved it. Okay. Let's take a look at our next shot. This is probably one of the best preserved Greek temples in the world and it's not in Greece. It's along the coast of Italy. South of Salerno, it's called Pastum. It is unlike the temples that are famous in Athens, it's limestone. It's not made out of, that's why it looks so beat up because the marble temples in Athens have been, behold, their shape better. Absolutely incredible day. Right in springtime, perfect blue sky. I took all of a couple of dozen photographs of Pastum. There's four major temples in about an hour and it's some of the most treasured photographs I've ever taken of Greek temples. Okay. Let's look at the next. Oh, okay. I've seen this in the movies. Yeah. Well, this was the Indiana Jones. I think it was the third movie, the one with Sean Connery. This is a temple that, well, when Obama went to Amman to visit with a king, he insisted on going south down to Petra, the city of Redstone, and he visited the treasury, which is the most famous landmark there. This is another monument that you have to hike to that Obama missed. He was there a week before I was down below. It's one of the seven wonders of the world. It's an incredible place. I can't say enough about Petra. All right. Let's take a look at our next. Oh, okay. This is probably the oldest tourist site in the world. There were Roman tourists going here 500 years before Christ. These three pyramids represent father, son, and grandson, and were the tallest buildings in the world until the 19th century. Okay. And it's an amazing place. One of my favorite architectural things from the Roman times are the aqueducts. In other words, not the religious buildings, but the secular buildings. This is a restored aqueduct in Seville, north of Madrid that dates from the time of Trajan, probably around 100 AD, and it goes right through the middle of town and carries water from a river about 12 miles away to the city of Seville. And it's still working. And it's still working. And that's the sole reason I went to Spain on this trip was to see this aqueduct. Let's take the next one. Oh, okay. I've been here. Talk about icons. This is one. I've been here, I can't remember. It's two or three times. This is at sunset. Taj Mahal. It is the Taj Mahal. And then the water, the water reflecting it is beautiful. Yeah, in Agra, believe it or not, in the late 19th century, this was so overgrown, you barely see it because the Brits basically ignored it until they decided it was an important monument. And they cleaned out the gardens and stopped taking marble away to use on contemporary buildings. And, of course, it's probably the most iconic tourist site in the world other than the pyramids. This is a tiny little monastery in Bhutan, which is northeast of India, which is elevation from, say, 7,000 to 14,000 feet high. This is about 10,000. It's a five-hour hike up the side of the cliff to get here. And you took the hike. And I took the hike. One of the great hikes they've ever taken. It's only two hours back down. This burned down a year before I was there, and they have rebuilt most of it here. They still have another couple of buildings to add on the left. It's called the Tiger's Nest, and it's a very famous Buddhist monastery. It's Tibetan, but it's in Bhutan. And Bhutan's an extraordinary place. This I love. Another one of my very famous, this is photographs. This is a picture of the north face gate to Tapram at Angkor Wat. Tapram's the overgrown ruin. Most of the ruins, including Angkor Wat, they've cleaned off the vegetation to preserve it and also so you can see it. Tapram, they've left behind all of the trees and the overgrowth. And it makes it very romantic and great setting for a lot of great movies. Every time I go, I've been here three times to Angkor. I hike out to that. It's about, I don't know, a couple of hundred yards away from the main temple. And no one else goes there, so it's a very peaceful, wonderful spot. Again, those are Buddhist images. This is Tikal in Central America in northern Guatemala. Dates from about 900, 800 AD is probably the most famous Mayan temple. Completely overgrown when it was rediscovered in the 1860s by, I think, an American archeologist. No, actually British, Maudsley, I think. Anyway, it's literally the national symbol of Guatemala now. It's on their flag. It's on their currency. And it's just an extraordinary building. You can't climb up anymore. Okay, now, okay, I think we got a couple more. Okay, this is the Royal Palace in Bangkok, which I visited over and over and over again because Bangkok's a great hub for seeing all sorts of places in Southeast Asia. This is one of those very unique days when Bangkok doesn't have Southeast Asian skies, which are muddy and gray and make for horrible photography. I looked out the window of my hotel and saw that sky and dashed over there to photograph it. This is the Shweta Ganpagoda in Burma, which I just visited in October after 22 years, after my first visit. This dates about 2,000 years back. It's Buddhist, and supposedly there are hairs of the Buddha underneath. It's still an active religious site where pilgrims come from all over Asia, especially from Burma, and do a pilgrimage around the base of it. Absolutely extraordinary site. The top half has about 22 tons of gold on it. And there's a diamond at the top that is 72 carats. Absolutely extraordinary. One of my favorite sites in Asia. I think we got one more. This is Laos' claim to fame. Again, a pagoda like that last shot. Very little gold, funky. Some people think it looks like a ballistic missile site. Again, this is on all of the national seal, the money, everything. This is a national symbol of Laos. I absolutely love Laos. And that's why this is important to me. Peter, we've had to rush through 20 photos, which I'm glad we did. I like them all. Now, if somebody wants to take a little bit more time to go through your photos, where would they go? I post them on a website called Smug Mug. You access my calories by typing in SR-47, which year I was born. Space, Smug Mug, SMUG, MUG. There's about 100 galleries in the travel section. And each of these individual photos came from galleries with 50 to 100 other photos of the same thing. Well, thank you. I think you've won this appeal. I appreciate your time, and I appreciate you going through these photos. I love the various religious photos are beautiful, taking it apart from the religion, just the architecture and the work that went into them. It becomes much more fascinating when you study the iconography, when you figure out what it means, because all of them have connections, just like when you go into a church. The cross means something, and the statue of Mary means something. It's the same thing in Hindu temples and in Buddhist pagodas. And if you study the iconography, even without studying the religious faith, you can enjoy a lot more. That's part of it.