Category Archives: Photography

If you’ve been to St. Thomas you might easily have left with the impression that this U.S. Virgin Island’s whole raison d’être is shopping.  Whole streets are dedicated to the marketing of reasonably priced jewelry, gems, and even digital cameras.  Indeed, an outdoor mini mall forms a veritable gauntlet of shops the cruiser must traverse to get between their ship and the taxis that await them.

Liquor is a better buy elsewhere in the Caribbean, so don’t wait until this stop to replenish your bar.  Don’t get me wrong—you’ll still save over U.S. mainland prices, but you can do better elsewhere throughout the Caribbean if you compare prices carefully.  If on the other hand your wife is looking for tanzanite, or you’re thinking about forking over for that new Nikon P7000 or a Canon EOS 5D Mark II, you’ll find prices that easily rival the best internet deals out of New York City and elsewhere.  The P7000 could be had for $399, and a 5D (body only) was priced at $2299.

But cheap prices aren’t the only wonders this island has to offer. For eight bucks, take an open-air taxi across the mountainous center portion of the island to Magens Bay Beach, which was featured on National Geographic Magazine’s list of the world’s ten most beautiful beaches.  Have another four dollars ready for admission to the beach area.  The sand is a stark white; the waters a soft aqua running to intense blue.  Photography tip:  Check out my earlier blog on photographing snow.  Those same tips will come in handy here because of the intense, reflective white sand.

The taxi trip back will give you some really great overviews of the port, so preset your camera so as to boost your shutter speed for taking photographs on the fly from your moving taxi.

Back in port, check out the multimillion-dollar yachts and sailing ships. As the sun settles in the west and the sky reddens, watch for the cumulous clouds above to take on a pinkish hue.  Notice how those same clouds cast their reddened reflections onto the waters below.

This voyage is rapidly coming to a close. We dock in Fort Lauderdale tomorrow and fly back to El Paso the day after that.  I will attempt on Friday to get out my review of the Crown Grill, but failing that you can expect to see that blog entry not later than Saturday evening.

Meanwhile, enjoy the views that St. Thomas has to offer:

This was our second time on Antigua, but the first time that we toured almost the entire island.  I must say that Antigua is impressively beautiful and fun to photograph.  But before we get to that, let me tell you a little cruise secret for saving money:

It’s called Cruise Critic, and you can visit it at www.cruisecritic.com.  Cruise critic is a great site where you can log on and chat with people who will be on the same upcoming cruise as you, or who have taken similar cruises to the same destinations and know all the great deals for scheduling on your own a tour once you get into port.  Frequently, one or two energetic individuals will step up and take it upon themselves to put together just such a tour at a fraction of the cost that the cruise line will charge for the same service.  Indeed, our Antigua tour was one such example put together by a nice lady by the name of Anna Skipworth, who hails from Australia.

Anna took reservations from upwards of around forty of us weeks before we ever set foot on the Star Princess for this voyage.  For  a mere $47 per person, we had a tour that started at 9:30 A.M., lasted until after 3:00 P.M., and included not only lunch and refreshments but also entry fees to Nelson’s Dockyard and other attractions.  If you want to save yourself a small fortune in tour fees, Cruise Critic is a route I can highly recommend.  You’ll also find information about your ship, its specialty restaurants, things to do, and other onboard services.

As you can see from today’s blog photographs, we had a rather extensive travel itinerary that included many intriguing vistas of Antigua, including the aforementioned dockyards, beaches, yachts, flora and fauna.  Definitely carry spare, fully charged camera batteries and empty memory cards for an excursion such as this.  I wound up taking well over a hundred photographs, and that’s just the ones I kept.  I probably deleted at least half again as many.

Indeed, Antigua64 and Antigua65 are two shots I very nearly deleted because these two young ladies kept wandering into the frame.  I hate it when that happens.  Some people are just absolutely oblivious when it comes to a photographer trying to compose a scenic shot, thinking nothing of walking right into your carefully composed frame.  Alas, in the end, I was persuaded to keep these two shots because I found the cowboy boots made an interesting and subtly contrasting statement to the rather bulky and obscuring beach attire.  I guess Nancy Sinatra was right; those boots really are made for walking.

Eric Clapton fans should take locate among these photographs Antigua22 for a view of Mr. Clapton’s Antigua estate.  The small structure on the left houses the estate’s servants.  The large two-story structure on the right is the guest cottage.  The long single story structure between those two is the estate’s primary residence.

St. Thomas will be contained in the next blog entry. And look for a review of the Star Princess’ Crown Grill restaurant, which I found to be even more impressive than the Trattoria Sabatini.  Until then, here is Antigua: