Just another day at the beach
I am sure that when Sian and I tell people that we live and work in Barbados, they think that we just chill out on crazy beaches all day.
But, unfortunately, like most people – the job gets in the way of the dream. We work ridiculous hours. I am currently in St Lucia meeting with our team here, organinsing new systems and structures to help the company prosper, and poor Sian and James are stuck in the lab in Barbados printing, making books, fixing albums and generally keeping the Colorbox machine running…whilst I sit in the hotel lobby punching this out.
It is 8:30pm, and I doubt they will get out until 10. I feel guilt like you would not believe..the lab is a very lonely place when you have been there for over 12 hours, and there is nothing I can do this end to help. 🙁
And this is the problem we have with stupid ‘work’ – it gets in the way of all our fun. So it is always a pleasure when we do get the fleeting opportunity to visit the beach. We knew that this week was coming (I miss Sian terribly when I’m away-even if only for four days, which is ridiculous but that’s the way it is) so on Sunday we made a really concerted effort to get to a beach – and what a beach it was!
I was out filming a wedding down at the Almond Beach Club a few days back, and the couple had decided to opt for some off property photography. Bill, my senior photographer and oracle on anything Barbados, suggested a little bay up the road. So we jumped into the car and took the couple to Gibb’s beach…it is amazing.
Needless to say, after seeing the place, I thought it would be more than appropriate to take Sian and James there – amaze them with my local knowledge and astound them with the incredible sand scape I had stumbled upon on my travels. The charade lasted but a few moments as we drove down and James asked “So we going to that place Bil took you to the other day then?”
My plan foiled, and being exposed as the charlatan that I am, I grumbled that yes, we were going to “where Bill showed me”, and we stopped in the gas station (sorry – I have got all American having been here so long) garage, got some beers, and headed down to paradise.
And what a lovely day it was…we swam in the crystal clear water, watched the world go by…and then I went back to hide under the umbrella from the sun whilst James and Sian giggled like school girls. It was magic.
I am trying to keep the technical stuff to a minimum on the blogs now, as I have been literally inundated with two mails saying that my technical guff is wasted on them, but I would like you all to know that all of these shots have been done through two grad filters.
A grad filter is essentially a piece of plastic that you put in front of your lens, which graduates from very dark, to completely see through – allowing you to underexpose, or “make darker” an area of your frame. Essentially, this means that you can get a lot more detail in areas that would otherwise be blown out – or overexposed, because you are physically making them darker with the filter in front of the lens. If you look at the umbrella shot above, for example, you will notice that there is a big white splodge between the boat and the umbrella. My grad filter was covering the left hand of the frame. The graduation clearly stops a few centimeters before the umbrella – and that’s why there is that huge white ‘hot spot’ there. I will do a much more technical ‘how to’ on grad filters in the future, I am sure…but for now I think that should cover it. As always…any questions, you know where to get me 🙂
So anyway, after a time of being eaten alive by sand flies – without doubt the most evil and horrific of the Almighty’s creations, I headed back into the water with the now delirious-with-mirth-Sian and James as the sun started to set.
We decided we should head back before the sand flies came out in force – very much like the zombies in any good B-Movie, sand flies tend to come out when the sun has disappeared, and they eat your ankles, arms, face and anything else they can get their tiny jaws on very efficiently indeed. We were in magic hour – bathed in the beautiful golden glow that only the setting sun can produce, and I got this corking portrait of Sian:
I can’t tell you how hard it was to decide between colour and black and white on this one…but eventually I decided for the BnW, beause the glow was SO golden, that it looked as if I had photo shopped it to buggery…I think it is a beautiful shot of my wife.
And as we walked away from what is renowned to be no other than Michael Flatley’s beach house (renowned in as much that Bill told me it was…and he knows everything about Barbados, so that’s enough for me) we were treated to some wonderful colours as the sun began to dip behind the horizon:
And that was that…another day at the beach; far from the stresses of the lab, the team and the bloody iMacs. It was simply wonderful…
Thanks for reading guys
Ferg x
Lovely xxx
Brilliant Ferg.I almost feel as though I know Barbados!
Incidentally,I enjoy the pithy commentary almost as much as your beautiful photography.