The Tropics: February, Week 4

It's the last week of February already!  I can't believe it.  So, here is one last picture from my cruise.  Port 4 was on Grand Cayman.  It was pretty spectacular.  I didn't take a lot of picture that I loved, but this one will suffice for this week.

"Beachfront Property"
Canon SX40 HS
f/4
1/1250
ISO100
1/25/13
George Town, Grand Cayman, BWI

I took this picture from the patio of the restaurant where I ate that afternoon.  The restaurant is named Rackam's, and I'm still drooling over the fish and chips that I ate there.  I would go back just to eat that again.  Anyhow, there is some lucky person that owns the house just out of frame on the right, and they have a pretty good view if you ask me.

Confession: This picture represents a first for me.  It's the first time that I had to remove unwanted elements using Photoshop.  I generally avoid doing that, but the beer ads just didn't do much for this picture.  For a first time, I don't think it looks too bad.

The Tropics: February, Week 3

The next stop on the cruise was Roatan, an island of the coast of Honduras.  It rained for about 95% of the day.  We were lucky enough to be on the ziplines during the only non-rainy minutes of the day.  After arriving back at Mahogany Bay, I whipped out the big camera and started taking pictures.  One thing I love about the tropics is the amazing variety of flowers that I obviously don't get to see at home.  So here's one of the shots I captured on that rainy day on Roatan.

"Raindrops on Ginger"
Canon SX40 HS
f/4
1/320
ISO400
1/24/2013
Mahogany Bay, Roatan, Honduras

Get it? Raindrops on ginger?  Like "Raindrops on roses"?  Yep, the flowers were definitely one of my favorite things about Roatan.  The rain, eh, I could do without, although it really did make for some cool pictures of the flowers.

I did a little research and found that this flower is Alpinia Zerumbet, more commonly known as the shell ginger.  I overheard a lady saying that it is a type of ginger, otherwise I never would have figured it out.  I think it's much prettier before it blooms, but that's just me.  What do you think?

Some thoughts about photography

So here's a thought that I want to share.  I'm not really using my blog now as a means to share my thoughts, but this one is particularly pertinent to my little adventure in photography.  I follow Pictureline on that one social media site that we all know about, and from time to time, they share guest posts from their regular website.  I don't read all of them, just the ones that catch my attention.  I saw one today that did.  You can read the whole article here, but here below is the part that struck me.

 I remembered a conversation I had with my grandmother. We were talking about her and my grandfather’s love for photography and how I was just starting to really get interested in it as well. We were walking on the beach one winter morning near her house in Door County, WI. It was a chilly morning, but the air was so still it didn’t feel very cold. While talking about nature and life, she told me that once she started taking pictures, she looked at everything she experienced in the world differently. She took time to notice the light and beauty of things more than she had before and that she really enjoyed that feeling.

I feel exactly the same as this guy's grandmother!  Since I've started really taking a lot of pictures, I notice the world around me a lot more.  I notice the clouds and lighting and landscapes and people and little details of things.  I notice angles of buildings and shadows cast by street lights and reflections of the sky in little puddles on the sidewalk.  I look for the character in the streets I'm driving on, thinking how I could attempt to capture it if I only had my camera on me.  I want to take my camera everywhere, just to capture the little things that strike me throughout the day.

I just now decided that my foray into photography can be likened to Mr. Darcy from Pride and Prejudice.  At the very end, he and Elizabeth are talking, and she asks him when he first started to love her.  This is what he says.

"I cannot fix on the hour, or the spot, or the look, or the words, which laid the foundation.  It is too long ago. I was in the middle before I knew that I HAD begun."

That's how I feel about photography.  I don't know when I started to love it or when it started to change the way I view the world around me.  I was in the middle before I realized that it was changing me.  That's all I really wanted to say, I guess.  I know that at least one person feels the same way, even if it's some random grandma in Wisconsin, and it's nice to know I'm not alone.

The Tropics: February, Week 2

This week's photos come to you from Costa Maya.  I've been there twice now, and it has poured rain both times.  I don't have the best impression of the place because of that, but that wasn't going to stop me from taking pictures!  In fact, the rain kinda helped keep random people out of my pics, which always makes me happy.  Everyone was ducking for cover from the rain while I was out snapping away to my heart's content.

Untitled

Canon SX40 HS

f/4.5

1/640

ISO200

1/23/13

Costa Maya, Mexico

This one is hands-down my favorite picture from Costa Maya.  I got a lot of really good ones, but I just love how this lady is just peeking out from between these bright pink columns.  I think she might have been a shop  owner looking out for customers.  As I mentioned, it was really rainy that day, otherwise, there would have been a lot more people milling about, and I never would have captured this shot.  I love how all of the colors in these ports were so vibrant!  It just makes the places seem so exotic and foreign to anything that I get to see here at home.  Here at home, you would never see this color of pink as anything other than an accent color.  Or the shoes of about half of the girls getting married these days (P.S. that's not original any more, hon).  But that is neither here nor there.  The point is that I love the bright colors adorning the exteriors of all of the shops in these ports.

"On Duty"

Canon SX40 HS

f/4.5

1/25

ISO100

1/23/13

Costa Maya, Mexico

And for good measure, here's a bonus picture.  I saw this soldier standing guard with his dog and just loved the look of them.  Not knowing how he would react to me taking pictures of him, I had to wait until he was turned away from me, although I liked the look of his profile or a straight-on shot better.  But I didn't want to be thrown into Mexican army prison or something horrible like that on vacation, so I had to settle for this.  I'm kinda surprised at how sharp this picture turned out, considering what a slow shutter speed I had.  Sometimes I amaze even myself.  Again, you can see here what bright paint they use to paint everything down there.  It makes even the rainiest of days seem a little less dreary.

The Tropics: February, Week 1

Yeah, so sorry about January week 4.  That's just not going to happen.  Sorry if you were looking forward to that.  To make it up to you (my supposed readers), I'm posting two photos today.  Lucky you.  As many of you know, I just got back from a cruise.  I've saved my favorite pics from the trip for posting on the blog this month.  I  didn't even post these ones on FB, so you, dear reader, are special, because not all of my FB friends are my blog friends.  My blog friends are an elite group, or so I like to think.  Now, without further ado, here are this week's pics, both from Cozumel, the first stop on the cruise.

"El Diablo Beach"
Canon SX40HS
f/8
1/800
ISO100
1/22/2013
Cozumel, Mexico

This beach was gorgeous!!  The sand was so soft, and the water was relatively warm.  I didn't get in and swim, although I did wade in a bit.  How could I swim with pictures like this to be taken?!  I added the Orton effect to this one (thanks for the tutorial, dad!), and I think it turned out quite nicely.  I felt like this picture really deserved the dreamy effect of Orton.  It was definitely a dream to be on Cozumel!

"Mayan Sunstone"
Canon SX40HS
f/7.1
1/500
ISO100
1/22/2013
Cozumel, Mexico

This picture is the back side of a replica of an artifact called the Tortuguero de Macuspana Tabasco.  I don't know the significance of this particular artifact, but I liked the colors and the general look of the thing.  It was in the middle of the road  between El Diablo restaurant and the beach seen above. In fact, I took these two pictures consecutively.  You'll notice in the upper right of the picture, the stone has the Mayan, Spanish, and English words for sun.  I loved how the sun was in just the right position for me to catch some rays and flares of the actual sun on this stone depicting the sun.  The parallelism just warms the artistic corner of my logical and orderly little heart.

Home: January, week 3

"Subzero Sunrise"
Canon PowerShot A4000
f/3.2
1/80
ISO100
1/3/13, 7:45 am
West Valley City

Here's another shot right outside my front door.  I was just leaving the house on my way to work, and the sunrise was so amazing that I had to stop and take a picture.  The temperature may or may not have actually been subzero (in Farenheit, anyway).  All I know is that it was really freaking cold.  I'm glad I captured it, though.  Totally worth freezing my fingers to get the shot.  I only wish that the picture actually did it justice.

I'm cold just thinking about that morning.  Lucky for me, I'm heading to the tropics tomorrow.  Of course I have one more week of the "Home" theme, but after that, I think you know what you can expect to see for the month of February.  Some pictures of slightly warmer climes.

Home: January, Week 2

(click on image for larger view)
"After the Storm"
Canon SX40 HS
f/6.3
1/500
ISO100
1/12/13
West Valley City, UT
This is a panorama of 3 pictures I took right outside my front door.  This storm dumped up to 24" of snow in parts of the valley.  This is the tail end of it making its way over the Wasatch mountains.  This photo represents home because this is the view I see right outside my front door every day.  Stay tuned for more variations of this same view.

I'll be on vacation for the next two weekends, so week 3's post will come early, and week 4's will come late.  just in case you care.