Punta Cana: Travel Story Part 1: Caribbean Buccaneers
Our latest adventures for travel took us to the Dominican Republic – Punta Cana, which you can read the full travel story review in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch Home & Away section (June 28th/29th weekend) or STLToday. What I like to do here on my website is to showcase a few of the photos and tell a little backstory that you don’t get in the Post. Let’s start with our pirate adventure…cause pirates are cool. Caribbean Buccaneers is the adventure, and one I really love and recommend to ANYONE going to the Dominican. Part II will cover more of our stay in Punta Cana and will be posted in a few days. As always, be sure to follow me @LuxePhotoSTL
Above: Ah, a beautiful pirate indeed, and one that was handing out drinks (alcohol and kid friendly) to everyone as you made your way through the very entertaining “obstacle course” of pirates on your way to sail off in the pirate ship. I believe this shipmate is used to getting her pictures done as every shot I had of her, she hit every pose perfectly!
Above: The cool thing is once you arrive, you are routed through this “obstacle course” of pirates that perform for each family. It’s really neat and ensures that everyone gets into the festive mood and doesn’t miss out. Lots of audience participation and the cast is FANTASTIC with the kids. These are proper actors, ahem, pirates and they take great care in making sure to offer a unique experience. As I went through the pictures, I noticed facial expressions, from the actors but more importantly the parents watching their kids have a good time. And don’t worry, not all the interaction and humor is for kids. There’s plenty of it to go around for all! That last picture is my brother-in-law interacting with my favorite pirate of the evening! That face!
Above: What I think was my best shot of the excursion but didn’t make the cut for the paper. This is a sideshow that went on prior to boarding the boat. As this poor audience member was being pulled on stage for a knife throwing trick, I just so happened to be in the right area to grab this shot. With the few seconds I had I’m trying to dial in the settings and focus in on his face which was hard to do with everyone moving. I sure hope he ended up ok!
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Above: The two shots here I consider big, stage setting shots. I was torn between which one I liked better. Initially, it was the one with the cast coming toward the camera but I do LOVE the one as the pirates are looking up and off into the distance with all of the guests on each side. On the bottom shot, check out the pirate on the right. Every chance they get, they interact with everyone but never lose position in character. You can tell these guys put in a lot of work and are the best of the best in performance.
Above: Setting up the story. As this was going down, I knew it would make a great shot and I got up and into the “stage” – probably a little more than I should have. Sometimes I forget where I’m at and I just get lost in shooting. I also made friends with the staff photographer, Yasser Torres and as the action was going on around us, we’d compare shots and notes and chat a bit. What a job he has!
Above: Love this menacing shot! With no flash capabilities on this excursion, I’m shooting my 5DMKII at an ISO of like 5000 I believe. Crazy. The cool thing though is I’m still getting the great ambient colored lighting and saving the atmosphere of what we saw in the show. My success rate on usable pics during the action sequences in low lighting was pretty low though. Maybe 5%. But those turned out pretty good, don’t you think?
Above: Speaking of action sequences…there are so many cool ones. Choreographed to perfection. Fast paced. Lots of practice I’m guessing. These were hard to capture without the ability to freeze the action using a flash but the high ISO helped. I love facial expressions. Thought this one was awesome.
So there is a little snippet of what went on behind the scenes taking some of the pictures. Please take the time to hit the links above to find out more about the show, read the official travel story and definitely check it out if you go to Punta Cana. If you have any questions, feel free to hit me up on twitter @LuxePhotoSTL or send me an email. Finally, here’s a little quick and fun video of our night there that we posted online for the travel story.