bahamas Archives - Just Enough Focus

November 8, 2017

Houses in Nassau

I was on a tour boat when I snapped this row of houses in Nassau. It was my first time to the Bahamas and it pretty much lived up to expectations. At least as far as what I saw on the tour, which included some amazing waterfront homes.

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Our tour took us to a beach where we sat under umbrellas and watched the waves. I know that sounds great, and it was, but I’m from Florida and I get that at home. Since then I decided to visit places unlike where I live.

Nonetheless, what I saw is still quite nice. We took a last minute weekend cruise and this was the destination. The Bahamas are very close to Florida yet a different country all together. In that respect it’s something fun to explore without needing an airline ticket.

beach photo gallery

After the tour we walked around town and took a taxi to a famous fish house for some proper Caribbean food. And that is something we don’t get much of at home.

May 11, 2017May 11, 2017

The New Lens

I took this with the new lens that I purchased from Sony. It’s a 85mm and I shot it wide open at f1.8. I’ve been missing this focal length since switching from Nikon several years ago. I could have purchased one earlier but for one reason or another never got around to it. I’m glad I waited because from what I can tell this new version performs identical to lenses three times it’s price. The first time I used it was on a trip to the Bahamas. As we were walking through the shops and alleyways I took a few shots to see what it could do.

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Yesterday I wrote about how street photograph allows us to study a scene later. As for myself, I miss a lot of little details when I’m in the scene. I think we all do that, its natural. If three people walk into a place, each will see something different, like the three blind men and an elephant story. Maybe it’s wired into our DNA that we scan for predators which prevents us from seeing everything clearly.

This is where photography can play a role. It gives us a second chance to go back and see what was really going on. When I compare a photo to what I thought was going on it’s usually different to one degree or another.

Each type of lens allows us to record the same scene from a different perspective. Stand in one spot and aim the camera using a telephoto lens. Then aim it at the same spot with a wide-angle lens. Each capture will create a very different image.

more travel photography

Since each focal length creates a different perspective, choosing one allow us to go back later and see what we missed from that perspective. And of course there are infinite possibilities.

I think I’ve analyzed the hell out of that for now, but hey, that’s just how my brain works sometimes. Maybe I could just sum up the whole subject by saying that I’m digging the world at 85mm.

April 26, 2017

Harbour Master Tower

Last week we stopped in the Bahamas on a weekend cruise from Miami. The harbor master tower is the first thing you see at dock. I think it was built before the ships got so big. I took this from a lower deck but you could look down on it from the upper decks and our ship was one of the smaller in port that day.

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This continues on a theme of minimalism. Actually I’ve been on this theme for a while but I don’t always publish the images. I do little studies, with lampposts, trees and buildings, shooting up to simplify the composition. Simplification is the gateway to minimalism; it also accentuates unique qualities of a thing or place.

This image creates an illusion of height, yet the building is no more than a few stories high and there are rooftops just below the frame. But because of how this is composed we imagine it much higher. Minimalism evokes imagination, which in-turn transcends realism.

Since I’m always on the lookout for these I’ll likely put together a book at some point. I get ideas from looking at works of other photographers. One whom I follow on Instagram is Sebastian Weiss. Check him out at the link here https://www.instagram.com/le_blanc/

architecture photography in the gallery

This kind of view is way of looking at the world that is focused on the isolation of something unique. I think we see beauty when we notice uniqueness. It’s all around and all we need to do is narrow our view until we recognize it; at least that my current theory.

April 21, 2017April 21, 2017

Super-yachts of the Bahamas

I took this shortly after sunrise as our cruise ship entered port in Nassau. As yachts go this is pretty big, I’m not sure if this is a government craft or just one of the many super-yachts of the Bahamas.

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It got me thinking about why people own these. Personally, I don’t think I would want one. I’ve been on rough seas on a big cruise ship and I certainly would not want to go through that on a small boat. The sea does not care how fancy a yacht is, it will be tossed around like a toy.

I had the same thought when we passed other big yachts near the Atlantis Resort and Casino. Maybe the people that have these only sail in fair weather and remain close to home. That I could understand. They are awesome to look at but I think they are no match for the wrath of the sea.

My hat is off to fishermen who work the seas for their livelihood like the guys on The Deadliest Catch. Watching that freaks me out a little. How they manage through storms is beyond me.

sea images from the gallery

I think this attitude of mine comes from a fear of falling into the ocean and drowning. It might stem from an incident when I was an infant and almost drowned. Although I don’t remember it, I was apparently face down and sinking in a lake.

Anyway, I have nothing against these high-end boats. If I did have one I’d be having fair-weather parties on it all the time. However at the first sign of a storm you’d find me firmly on land. In the meantime I’ll just stick to cruise ships and buy crab legs from a store. I’m not really in the market for one of these anytime soon.

April 19, 2017April 19, 2017

Urban Scene at Sea

When I visit big cities I like to take pictures of buildings. Repeating patterns are like puzzles for our brains because we automatically look for slight differences. Maybe that’s related to an evolutionary survival trait like looking for predators in the tall grasses of the African savanna. However this is neither Africa nor a big city. This is an urban scene at sea, aka a cruise ship docked in the Bahamas.

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Urban Scene at Sea – An RCCL Cruise Ship

This is Royal Caribbean’s Harmony of the Seas. If I’m not mistaken it’s the largest cruise ship in the world right now.

I was on a small ferry traversing the port as we passed this behemoth docked at the terminal. It is about twenty stories high and as long as an air strip. This is just one small section of one side. These mega ships are more akin to cities than boats.

This last weekend I was on cruise ship several times smaller than this, and even that was still quite big. Big enough to have several pools, a rock climbing wall, a casino, clubs, bars and restaurants. So take all that and multiply it by three or four.

urban scenes in the gallery

A few years back I was on the Aurora of the Seas, which at the time was the world’s largest. To be honest, it took me a week to figure out where everything was. It’s a little like visiting Disney World, it takes a while to get your bearings. Since that time we’ve cruised on much smaller ships, like the one this last weekend. And even then there were places on the ship I never saw.

If they make these ships any bigger they might just become indistinguishable from big cities.

April 18, 2017April 19, 2017

Morning Sun Over Co Co Cay

This is the morning sun over Co Co Cay in the Bahamas. Over the weekend I found myself on a cruise ship. Living in close proximity to ports it’s easy to drive to a cruise terminal for a weekend excursion. In this case we left Miami and were scheduled for two stops, here and Nassau. However the wind and swells were too strong to safely disembark so the captain decided to sail on. That didn’t stop me from taking a few pictures as we passed by and continued out to sea.

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Every so often its good to get away and decompress. That’s a funny word but it describes what we do to ourselves in everyday life. We take on challenges of life and we tend to layer them one on top of the other. Soon we are squeezed under the normal weight of life. By getting away the layers are temporarily lifted and we decompress, if even just for a day.

I spent a lot of time looking at and taking pictures of the sea. That’s not necessarily interesting from a photography perspective but for me it was a study in the on-going theme of sea and sky. There were clouds and in the morning and evening and it was fun to see how they could interplay with the sun.

Other sunrise shots

Of course I took plenty of other images that are not so abstract, but this one is special because for me it represents a few days of doing nothing. Now back to normal life.