One photo is of rows of post office boxes, the metal green with age, the numbers faded from the little glass windows by years of busy hands. Another shows jade-colored plates and coffee cups carefully left to dry on a rusted, rustic sink. These are images of Hawai'i you don't see much anymore, old plantation houses, small wooden storefronts, the colors of the paint on rough splintered wood so classic and familiar, the palette of a gentler time.

Even then, when she was a self-described "young kid" in her 20s, Sharon Britt had a sense that she was recording the last days of an era.

Britt came to Hawai'i from her home in Virginia Beach, following a group of surfers. It was 1975 and she was living in an old plantation house in Lahaina. Her parents mailed a care package, and in it was a 35mm camera. Though she was not a photographer before coming to Hawai'i, she became one with that camera in her hands and Hawai'i to photograph.

"I just shot film like it was water going through my camera. I was possessed with images," Britt says.

Now, more than 30 years later, she culled through all those slides to create "Pancakes and Hula," a collection of photographs of the dying plantation era, a visual ode to those simpler days.

The opening pages of the book show Lahaina's Front Street in the early 1970s as seen from the water. "That slide was covered with the fungus that lives on old slides in Hawai'i," Britt said. "It took a long time to clean it up. As I enlarged it and really looked closely at all the little houses that used to be there, I wanted to cry. People do not really think about it, but history just passes by every day."

As for the title, the Hanalei Lions Club has an annual Pancakes and Hula breakfast fund-raiser. One year, Britt got up early to get the shot of that sign.

"That sign is what I am always searching for, it sums up so much for me ... first we had the hula and then came the pancakes. It is just a crazy twist on what happened in Hawai'i's history and our current times today with no offense to the hula, pancakes or the Lions."

Another photograph in the book shows a restaurant window with the sign "sushi & pies." If not for that photo, it might never cross your mind that they make an odd pairing.

The book contains only photographs, no captions or explanations or locations — it is more art than travelogue or memento. Britt says she also felt a bit protective of some of the places she visited and didn't want to identify where some of the shots were taken. "They were the spiritual moments in my life and I am private about those times. Now saying all that, there is nothing I like better than sitting down with someone and telling them the locations and the stories of each photo."

Some of the photos in her vast collection have been shown over the years in various venues. A series of old Hawai'i doorways was on display at the San Francisco Airport several years ago, followed by a show at the Contemporary Museum annex in Honolulu. She was thrilled when the Hyatt Kauai displayed her photos of "old dilapidated things" for a number of years.

"Now and then, someone would track me down and say, 'That was my grandfather's house. I used to play there. Can I get a copy?' "

Sharon and Doug Britt own Ola's Hanalei, an art gallery they opened 25 years ago. This book of her photographs is in celebration of their shop's anniversary.

Pancakes and Hula is sold on Kaua'i at Kong Lung, Yellowfish, Vintage Aloha and Ola's Hanalei, and on Maui at Nuage Bleu. The book also can be ordered at www.olashanalei.com.

Lee Cataluna's column runs Tuesdays, Fridays and Sundays. Reach her at 535-8172 or lcataluna@honoluluadvertiser.com.