This past week I was in Barbados. Here is a quick self portrait from the balcony of our condo in St. Lawrence Gap.
- Barbados – HDR Self Portrait
We had a bit of rain on and off – which is unusual for Barbados – but makes for cool clouds.
For this shot, I put my trusty old Nikon D200 on a tripod with a 10-24mm wide angle lens. I thought that the clouds and ocean would look the most interesting in HDR (High Dynamic Range) – so I shot a seven image HDR sequence with a one-stop separation between images. I metered a neutral image and then set the camera to manual everything – manual white balance, manual shutter, manual aperture etc. I focused the lens and then set that to manual focus too (so that the lens wouldn’t re-focus between images). The D200 is set to high speed continuous capture – to take the seven images as quickly as possible, while I stayed as still as possible. To trigger the D200, I used a Pearstone Shutterboss Wireless Trigger, which is in my right hand.
In post, the seven images were merged to an HDR image using Photomatix. I also applied a Topaz Adjust filter to pop the details a bit – and some selective dodging and burning in Photoshop.
Oh and just a bit of liquefy to bring in my gut (even though I was sucking it in as much as possible…) and to sharpen my chin a bit.
I don’t love the palm tree coming out of my chin – but I had about a minute to setup and execute this shot (while getting things together to go out the door) and I was just guessing where I was going to be in the frame – so its not bad composition for a personal image.
Now for something completely different…
Here is my favourite surfing video from the trip!
Surfer extraordinaire Arih ripping it up at Dover Beach.
I shot this video with my super-fun-time Canon G9 in its waterproof housing. Its only 640x480p – but its still pretty awesome to be able to capture video in the water. Thanks to Barry’s Surf School for teaching three first-time Canucks how to get up on a board (OK – technically my second time – but I did get up first try 🙂
Here’s instructor Dave showing us how its done!
Kind of interesting backstory of how we ended up a Barry’s that highlighted for me just how handy a smartphone has become – especially while travelling (the fact that you can have a phone and internet pretty much anywhere is cool enough).
Speaking to a few local Bajans at a bar the night before, they recommended we check out Barry’s Surf School. I looked up Barry’s on my phone and sent them an email at 3:00am. Barry’s wife Christine called back at 8:00am the next day. I looked up a map on my phone’s GPS to make sure we knew where we were going – and we were surfing my 9:30am. Awesome.
Not pretty – but I did get up!
Cheers,
John-Paul Danko
blurMEDIA
Editorial Photographer – Barbados Surf Photography
Hamilton, Ontario
905 818 5711
