I don’t make a lot of these vertical, portrait-mode sunsets. I don’t know why! Whenever I do make one in this orientation, I’m often quite happy with it… and I say to myself, “I should do this more often!” But then I come back after a hardcore sunset session, and I realize 90% of my shots are in landscape mode.
I know that photographers generally are especially mindful of things and scenes around them, and I wonder if landscape photographers are especially mindful of clouds. I look at them like a Native American preparing for a reaping of the maize. I’ve really come to understand and respect a wide variety of cloud patterns, even though there are a few configurations and situations that evade me. I really enjoy being able to predict cloud patterns for the next several hours. I’m not always right, but it is a fun game to play with myself.
These humid, windy skies in Virgin Gorda made for a tumultuous tableau. Everything would change quite quickly, so it was harder to predict several hours away. But I did have a good feeling about this time in particular…I kept a few of the islands in the bottom of the frame so you could get a sense of perspective to see how huge the clouds actually were.
This turned out to be one of my favorite spots on Virgin Gorda. There is a long road that trails up and down the island. Along one side of the big mountain, there is a little spot where you can get this perspective. I went up there early to grab photos of the sunset, but I was greeted with the sight of a massive storm rolling in instead!
I had a great day out here with the kids after a long hike. I believe we were on one of the Disney cruises and we decided to do one of their little excursions here on Virgin Gorda. It’s one of the most unique swimming locations in the world because of these giant granite boulders… I wish I could go back in time and see a timelapse of how this whole formation came to be.
Guess what? We have a new Machine Elf playlist with a bunch of different videos on there! Come have a look…
Here’s another shot of one of my favorite places in the world to swim. It was also Princess Di’s favorite, so we have very similar tastes. I’m not sure what else Princess Di was into, but I would probably like it too… well, some of it.
You all know we partnered up with Peak Design again on the latest Kickstarter project (which is still the #1 current Kickstarter, by the way!) — well now we have a new “Deep Dive” video for the Tote. We kind of designed it for the Ladies in the House, but really anyone can use it! 🙂
How much do I love the Carribean? I want to go back there and spend more time… I took this on a very fun family trip to Virgin Gorda where every night saw amazing sunsets and every day started with incredible sunrises. Plus, I know my wife likes it better where it is warm rather than cold Queenstown! 🙂
A great house to rent is at Amateras! My whole family stayed there for over week, and it was absolutely unbelievable. You can see today’s Daily Photo is from there! 🙂 In fact, if you go to that website, I think they put a few of my photos up somewhere in the rotation.
This is one of the outside seating areas. I sat out here every evening and read while drinking tea. I finished an amazing book out here called “The End of Time” by Julian Barbour. It was kind of a mind-bending physics book… If you’re into reading about this sort of thing, I certainly recommend it! 🙂
After we landed the plane below, many adventures ensued! Here’s one of the early morning shoots that you might enjoy. 🙂 Part 1 and Part 2 together 🙂
Well we’ve been living in New Zealand for just more than one year — it’s been great! Here we are on the start of the adventure while we were waiting 2 months for our stuff to arrive on a boat. We got on this little plane in the Caribbean to hop from island to island to keep ourselves busy in the meantime. Ethan even got to fly this plane for a little while…right into that exciting storm overhead… he had a blast – mom was nervous! 🙂
I quite like this idea of renting houses for a bunch of people for vacation. Have you done this before? I wonder what the best site to use is… I kind of go through personal connections (or wonderful suggestions through the blog). Like, for example, this place here is called Toad Hall – a great recommendation from Justin Troupe, a friend now who met me through the blog. But I know a lot of people find places to stay through various websites… couchsurfing… homeaway… etc etc. Any good/bad experiences?
We had a great group of people down here for a fun company retreat. It was also a great night because all the girls went out to get dinner to make for everyone! The guys were kind of useless. This was both on purpose and because we were useless.
If you were to to Africa, what country would you suggest? What areas? I’m interested in your opinion… I may be planning something for 2014! 🙂
Curtis and I went around to the other side of Virgin Gorda one night to explore. While there, we found a very cool outcropping of rocks that held some still water inside. It turned out to be a place to get a nice clean reflection of a most unusual dusk set of clouds. How lucky we were! But some people say that luck is the residue of design…
