March 7, 2014
Bridgetown, Barbados.
Ronnie Carrington is a photographer, videographer, film producer and poet in Barbados. He runs photo tours of the island, teaching how to make better photographs. On the tour bus he lectured on picture composition and the history of Barbados. Then he took us to places where we would have varied subjects, different textures, and changing light. Sometimes he pointed out pictures we could frame. Our first stop he had us playing with a row of royal palms running to an old plantation house. On this stop the light was the challenge. I didn’t particularly like any of my shots at this stop but Suzi liked one so I include it below.
At our next stop was a chattel house. Chattel houses were built by freed slaves; they could move them from plantation to plantation. That way they could own their own homes while they moved about. They have steep roofs and no eves as protection from hurricanes. Nowadays these houses have settled down with permanent foundations and breezeblock additions. The woman who owned the house we were photographing came out of her door wondering why a busload of tourists had stopped, surrounded her home, and started taking pictures. I found the house across the street more interesting and have included it in the pictures below.
Then he took us to the Scotland District of northeast Barbados. It is an area of a lot of erosion, high winds and rocks with different shapes and set us loose to find our own images giving us ideas of the kind of things to look at when composing s shot. One particular place was a condemned parish church in St. Andrews. It is cracked because its foundation is sliding into the sea, but its church yard still receives bodies. Services have to be held in a tent. At the end of the day we saw some beautiful places in Barbados, and I came back with some good photos. Here are 30 of them.
