Darice de Cuba

These last weeks I have been trying out different photo print service. At the photo lab in town, at Pixum and postcards at MOO. The challenge is to get the colors right, currently only two photos I want to hang on the wall still need color correction. But most of them turned all right and I will be framing them to hang on the wall.

This experience made me realize I should shoot with film as much as with digital. I always shoot in RAW format with the Nikon D70. I have no idea why but I’m starting to like film more, I think because you can’t see right away how the photo will come out. And there is something about just pointing the camera and only worry about the composition. With the Nikon I use manual mode 90% of the times and it gets to technical.

I dusted off my Olympus Trip 35 and do my best to carry it around all the time to take mostly street photography. I have been reading interviews on PetaPixel and what keeps coming back is how difficult it is to just get out there with your camera and not let the people around you intimidate you and just shoot your photos.

Also it’s not the equipment that takes the photo but the person using the equipment. Taking photos is like reading a cosmo or maxim(she/he) magazine and after finish reading your self esteem lowers a few points.(This was proven in a research). So when you see your own photos result it’s hard not to compare them to others. After all we all are our own worse critics.

So after reading these interviews with various photographers I have decided to just stick to the Nikon D70 and not worry to upgrade to D90, costs too much anyway. And for film I will use the Olympus Trip 35 which is a manual camera and I recently got a Yashica T5 which is automatic and has a good lens. These three cameras will be my main equipment for now.

My next project now is trying out different film to see which one I like best. I already shot B&W with the Kodak T-MAX 400. And the photos came out all right. This is my best BW photo yet, shot with the Trip:

In any case back to prints, I framed a couple of them and handed them as gift. A few examples:

I like matte prints more then glossy, but the opinion is that glossy comes out sharper. I haven’t decided yet if I find that true. Since the MOO mini cards I haven’t used their service anymore, so I ordered a pack of 20 postcards. Besides the two photos with color issues, they are too yellow although it does give them a vintage look. But that was just me doing too much photoshopping on them, the rest came out good.

With the best one being this:

A preview of the the rest:

In any case bottom line is, when I’m taking photos I can forget about all daily life issues and just enjoy the moment. Especially moments like when I shot the Warawara bird last month in Aruba.

Since I’m on Aruba I haven’t taken many photos yet, just a few of the beach and the occasional food photo. But my intention is to go to the national park one of these days in the early morning to take photos of Aruba’s nature.

I have enough beach photos from my last vacation but I barely have any nature photos. So I hope I will manage to get lots of decent photo to fill my wall back home in Holland.

Last week I took my first nature one for this vacation, it’s a cactus flower that only opens at night past 9 p.m. I have to find the name of this one particular cactus for reference. I was told that after it has rained this cactus produces a flower “button” which then opens only once at night, then it closes again and dies.

A few years back I already took photos of Aruba’s only owl breed which is quite unique as you don’t see them often. Now I got these flowers on photo. There are still some animals I want to photograph but they are difficult to find.

I try to put myself in the mind set of someone who has never been on Aruba before and think what they would want to see besides the obvious popular spots like Eagle Beach or the Lighthouse. I’m thinking more on small details that most people won’t notice.

So check back to see if I succeed.