This past December, Sarah and I travelled to the
Dominican Republic for a vacation/wedding. As the point of the trip was for
both of us to relax in the sun and enjoy the benefits of an all inclusive
resort, we decided we wouldn’t haul a lot of camera gear with us. I am
always nervous to travel without as much gear as I can carry, so this was a
bit of reach for me. Off I went, armed only with a little point & shoot.
As it turns out, I am happier with the pictures from this trip than I was
with the pictures from my last ‘full gear’ trip. The subject matter was
more interesting, had much better (and consistent) light and I enjoyed
making images with a minimum of technical fuss. All in all, the experience
bears witness to a fundamental truth of photography – it isn’t the camera
that makes images, it’s you.
Technical Details: Not that many! The point and shoot I
currently use, a Canon S90, has full manual controls and RAW recording
capability, which I like, but you don’t always need those features. I
actually made two frames of this scene – one in auto output straight to
JPEG, and the other in manual output to RAW with ‘photoshopping’ after the
fact. The RAW image is better (a little) but you’ve gotta print that puppy
at 13x19 to see a significant difference.
This
image is available as a higher-resolution wallpaper
here.
