Last week, I went on an amazing vacation: a seven day cruise around the Caribbean. On board the gigantic and beautiful Mariner of the Seas, we visited Royal Caribbean’s private island in Haiti, Jamaica, Grand Cayman of the Cayman Islands, and Mexico. It was a fantastic chance to relax while being waited on hand and food, hang out with my great friends who I don’t see very often, and see some beautiful new places that I’ve never been before. And, of course, I used it as a great chance to practice some more photography. [So did my friend PJ. The joke was that we were the Official Photographers for the trip]
Over the course of the week, I took about 3800 pictures. I’d like to think that I learned a few things while doing it too; mostly about how I tend to take pictures and what I need to work on.
Just for fun, I’m going to talk about it here. If you want to follow along, some of my better pictures are available on Flickr.
Since I bought my cheap 50mm f/1.8, it’s basically stayed on my camera. My 70-200mm telephoto isn’t useful in hand-held situations and I’m not a huge fan of the kit lens (EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6) because of its sharpness issues. Also, I’ve read enough Really Good photogs saying that the 50mm is a great way to learn discipline and develop composition skills and such that I just use the 50mm all the time. And that was certainly true on this trip. With the exception of a few shots as we pulled out of Port Canaveral where I used PJ’s 70-300mm for a few shots, I rocked the 50mm the whole time.
I shoot on a Canon Digital Rebel XT (350D) and its sensor size yields a 1.6 crop factor on non-EF-S lenses. This makes the 50mm a slight telephoto lens on my camera. This caused almost all of the pictures I took of people to be close-up head shots. And, because I was often shooting indoors with the aperture wide open at 1.8, the backgrounds tend to be blurry. So while I took some good portraits of my friends last week (if I do say so myself), there’s very little evidence that any of them are on a cruise. The backgrounds tend to be blurry enough that they could’ve been taken anywhere (or in front of any cheesy backdrop at Sears). I think this was a huge disservice to my friends. Before I travel anywhere again, I’ll buy a wider lens. Fortunately, PJ wasn’t afraid to use the much wider kit lens and he picked up the slack in this area. He even told me I should switch lenses, but I was much too stubborn to listen. Sorry, PJ!
Another thing I noticed is that a lot of pictures were very impromptu and of the nature of “Hey, Eddie! Take a picture of me now!” When the person giving the order was in front of a bright window or sunny beach, I’d usually forget to compensate on the exposure. I ended up with a lot of great silhouettes of unrecognizable people. Oops. I’ll have to remember to put more conscious thought into every picture I take from now on before I snap the shot and not after.
I’m not very good at taking pictures of people in ball caps. I either need to figure that out or make people take off their hats. The shadows from the bills on the cap were usually bad enough to ruin the picture instead of complement it.
I discovered that my friend Josh is very easy to take a picture of. He tends to walk more slowly than everyone else so he ends up at the back of the group: so there’s no one standing between him and me. He’s the type of guy who’ll pose as long as you point a camera at him without getting too impatient. And he’s a good looking guy and very photogenic. Because of all this, he’s well over-represented in my Aperture project than everyone else.
I’ve discovered that it’s incredibly easy to take beautiful pictures where you’re in the Caribbean. Point your camera anywhere and snap and it’s going to be great. It may not be the picture you had in mind, but it’ll be great. Whether it’s sunsets or clouds or mountains or clear, blue ocean water…there’s nothing ugly out there (as long as you don’t point your camera at fat men in speedos). If you need to build your photographer’s ego, take a cruise to the Caribbean. You’ll come home with a memory card full of fantastic shots regardless of your talent level.
At the Mayan Ruins in Tulum, I think they planted the palm trees to purposefully provide neat, if somewhat clichéd, ways to frame pictures of the ruins. I wholeheartedly approve of this.
Indeed, almost every picture I took was a cliché. But, I think I’m getting better and better at the clichés. I hope that I’m starting to really master the basics and will one day soon be able to move on to more interesting and artistic picture-taking.
It was a wonderful trip and I wish I were there today (though I’d try to buy a wider
lens if I could).