Hi all! Did you miss me? Come on... even a little bit? Well, even if you didn't, I'm going to pretend you did, cause it will make me feel much better about myself. If you didn't notice, I've been on vacation. I was gone for a week and returned a few days ago. It's great to be back (and if you believe that, I have a tiny island in the Caribbean to sell you). It actually sucks to be back. Vacations are awesome and this one was particularly great. My family and I took a week and went to the island of St. Maarten. St. Maarten is an island in the northeast Caribbean, approximately 300 km (190 mi) east of Puerto Rico. The 34 square mile island is divided roughly 60/40 between France (20 square miles) and the Kingdom of the Netherlands (13 square miles). The two parts are roughly equal in population. It is one of the smallest sea islands divided between two nations, a division dating to 1648. The southern Dutch part comprises Sint Maarten and is one of four constituent countries that form the Kingdom of the Netherlands. The northern French part comprises the Collectivité de Saint-Martin (Collectivity of St. Martin) and is an overseas collectivity of France. On January 1, 2009 the population of the entire island was 77,741 inhabitants, with 40,917 living on the Dutch side, and 36,824 on the French side. Collectively, the two territories are known as "St Maarten".
So what's important for you to know? Well, we went on vacation. We went to St. Maarten. It's in the Caribbean. There are Dutch and French people. It was awesome. I took a lot of pictures. It was awesome... and it was pretty awesome.
I took my canon 5D and three lenses. I took my 24-105, my 70-200 and my wide angle 16-35. I figured between the range of those three lenses, I'd be able to cover anything I needed while still keeping my bag relatively light. I also took all my filters and my tripod. I learned a few trips ago to never travel without a tripod. It makes traveling a little more difficult, but it's always worth it and I'm always glad I brought it. Oh and in case you're wondering, it's totally fine to travel with a tripod in your carry-on when flying. I attached mine to my bag and put it in the overhead compartment. No problems on the plane or while going through security. I took extra batteries and extra memory cards and I was glad I had both, cause I used them. Don't EVER go on vacation with one battery and one memory card. The battery will die, the card will get filled, the card will get corrupt... something. I don't know what will go wrong, but if you don't have extras, trust me... things will go wrong. If you think you won't take enough pics to fill a memory card, you're wrong. You're on vacation in a new place and you're going take way more pics that you think you will. For the $20 or $40 dollars it takes to get an additional large memory card, it's totally worth it just to be safe. You'll thank me after one trip. Maybe two trips, but probably one.
So, I ended up taking almost 1,000 photos. i filled two 16 GB cards and I used all the batteries I brought. I filled two cards with the 1,000 photos cause I shoot RAW and I also took some video. If you shoot JPEGs and no video, you should easily be able to fit 1,000 photos on a 16 GB card. BUT... bring a backup card!!! Just in case.
Well now I have all these photos that I want to share with you, but don't want to just throw them all out there, so I thought I would try and group them together. Today's post will focus on the people of St. Maarten, so I'm going to share some of my favorite photos I took of people on the island. Most vacations have pretty locations, great food and interesting people. I really like meeting and talking to the people in other countries and this trip was no exception. So take a look below at some of the captures I made of those people They were definitely one of the best parts of the trip.