Sunrise, waterplay, sunset, dinner, entertainment

Sunrise

I never saw the first sunrise while we were in Negril, but Darla got up early this morning to enjoy it. Unfortunately, she also discovered the bane of photography down there: lenses will fog up at the drop of a hat! Still her shots are pretty of the sun rising over the jungle forest.

Kelly and I snorkelled for quite a while, and discovered a little crab, another flounder and a pretty good size sting ray. He was about 18-24″ across, and was just where the shallows dropped off past the swimming buoy lines. Very cool to see!

What I discovered through all my trials with the Olympus and the underwater camera bag was that I need a different solution for shooting underwater! The bag was just plane uneven in front of the camera lens, and added a lot distortion if it wasn’t pulled tight. I suspect that a camera designed for underwater work — even something like a Canon A60 or A70 with its underwater case — would’ve been better. Live and learn!

Trouble in Paradise

Sunset was amazing! Today brought us our afternoon storms, but they stayed to the north of us, so we had the advantage of a big storm stretching from north to west, and the sunset just south of west. We had two terrific storm related events — a double rainbow and fantastic lightning.

Before we took our trip to Jamaica, I bought a device called a Lightning Trigger from an outfit in Colorado called Stepping Stone Products. I talked with the owner/creator about what the device would do, and had one shipped. I didn’t know if I would get the chance to use it, but figured I’d have it along for the ride. Boy, was that a good move!

I set up, facing north as the sun was setting, which was really lighting up the palms. I set up for shutter priority mode, and set the shutter at a quarter second. I thought there was something wrong with the device, as it started firing the shutter as soon as I plugged it in. What I figured out, though, was that the Lightning Trigger was firing off the lightning from the storm far out to the west off Bloody Bay.

I ended up finding two consecutive shots which I combined for the shot you see here. That lightning bolt lasted for over half a second, and allowed me to get a really, really great shot!

Now That’s a Fire!

What could match that? Well a little fire breathing. We were supposed to have a beach party at the resort, but the rain kept that all at the stage. We sat and watched the entertainment, which included a fire breather. We saw him last year, and it looks like he hasn’t incinerated himself yet! Once again, he was quite fun to watch, but hard to photograph. A lot of contrast between the fire and dark surrounding it.