Category Archives: Barbados

Those who follow my photography blog will know that my preferred technique for taking portraits is to use my 70-300mm lens towards the long end of the zoom range. It only works as long as the subject is effectively frozen by the available shutter speed, but for a static subject that can be as low as about 1/20s, relying on a combined steady head and image stabilisation technology to keep things sharp.

This technique works for pretty girls, character-full old men, and, as this shows, for those who might not take direction even if you wanted to provide it!

So if you see an interesting face, but it’s some way off, hold the camera steady and go for it. The results may be better than you expected.

As followers of my photography will know, one of my pet subjects is indoor entertainment, photographed by available light. I like capturing memories of enjoyable events, I love the colours of interesting stage lighting, and I like the challenge of trying to capture some of the dynamic nature of a music or dance event in a static image.

By its very nature, this means working handheld in low light levels, typically with long lenses, which in turn means a genuine need for high ISO settings. Even if I can hand-hold my favourite 300mm lens at a shutter speed of 1/25s (which I can, just about, on a good day, thanks to Canon’s excellent image stabilisation technology), 1/25s of a second is just too slow to freeze moving performers. I have several pictures with nicely sharp backgrounds and blurry main subjects to prove this.

With my earlier DSLRs, ISO 800 was about the fastest speed which would deliver a usable image, and that in turn meant speeds of around 1/25s with my preferred lenses. By comparison, my newer Canons should theoretically be usable up to around ISO 3200, giving me a reasonable 1/100s shutter speed, but up until now I’ve always found the resulting images to be just too noisy.

However, I’ve finally found a combination of sharpening and noise reduction techniques which works, and I can do it entirely in Bibble, my RAW processor. The magic mix uses a Wavelet sharpening algorithm, three separate noise reduction algorithms (Wavelet denoise, Noise Ninja and “Pixie”, a hot pixel remover), and a black point adjustment to make shadow areas truly black.

This picture of the Fab 5 is from last year’s Barbados Reggae Festival, and was taken at a range of about 30m. What do you think?

I’ve been playing around with the previous image a bit more, and I’ve come up with this version – taken from a single original RAW file, but processed twice as a sort of “pseudo HDR” to knock back the highlights and open up the shadows slightly.

It conveys a completely different mood to the other version. I’m torn between them: the first conveys a slightly ethereal feel, but I suspect will look too dark on some monitors and prints. The second is a much more straightforward “happy garden” shot, really bringing out the colours, but losing some of the fascinating complexity of the tree’s shadows.

What do you think?

Although I love tropical gardens, photographing them can be a challenge: there’s often so much greenery that isolating a subject becomes a real challenge, and since most are closed during the “golden hours”, you can be battling quite harsh light and very high dynamic range. My previous visits to the Andromeda Botanic Gardens on Barbados have always suffered from this – I’ve come away failing to do justice to the beauty in front of me.

This year, however, luck was with me. We came round a bend to be met by this amazing sight – a Malay Apple tree (Syzygium malaccense), coming to the end of a dramatic blossoming, with the discarded blossoms forming a wide pink carpet.

This shot is pretty much as it came out of the camera, just a slight tweak to vibrance and curves – no HDR trickery needed on this occasion. I have done an HDR treatment which lightens up the shadows a bit, but I’m not sure it’s an improvement. I might post that as well and see what people think.

Score 1 to the Andromeda Gardens!