Weddings and turtles in Barbados
We had a great deal to celebrate in 2016 in our family.
Many personal reasons that I’ll not go into but needless to say it deserved a celebration and as a family, we decided to head off on a fabulous holiday. I have been very fortunate to have been on some amazing family holidays when I was a child, one such memorable holiday was to Barbados when I was 15.
So almost 30 years later I was super excited to return with 3 generations of our family and share this amazing experience with them.
Whilst trawling the internet for self-contained villas near the sea we found this incredible property about 1 mile from the super exclusive Sandy Lane Resort. Not only did the villa have a pool but it also part of the Sandy Lane Resort that gave us access to Sandy Lane beach. We spent most of our time on the beach chilling out snorkelling, building sand castles, exploring the coast, admiring the impressive private houses along the beach and enjoying the odd cocktail laced with Mount Gay rum!
One of the incredible highlights for all of us was going to Sandy Lane beach just before sunset and meeting up with Devon who worked at the resort. During the day between performing his many duties looking after the beach (which was immaculate), he rounded up all the newly hatched turtles and placed them gently into a container in the shade. He would very kindly wait for us to arrive before sunset and share the amazing privilege of releasing the hawksbill turtles into the sea. He explained to us that they have a much better chance of surviving their first few hours in the sea at sunset.
Sandy Lane Wedding Photographer
I am a destination wedding photographer. I’ve been a Caribbean wedding photographer before shooting Janine & James’s wedding at Gran Bahia Principe Cayo Levantado in the Dominican Republic. So I was interested to see a Sandy Lane Resort wedding happening on the beach as we relaxed. My instinct was to jump up, grab my camera and run over there. But I know what it’s like having Uncle Bob getting in the way when I’m working, when shooting a wedding there is nothing worse than someone photo bombing all your shots. So I just observed this Barbados Wedding Photographer from afar. I thought how awesome it must be to be able to shot a wedding at the Sandy Lane Resort, no shortage of stunning seascapes and architecture. And the light is to die for! The wedding photographer was doing a splendid job, organising the groups, working fast but with purpose as it was so hot!
Best camera for destination Caribbean weddings
At the time of this holiday, I was shooting Nikon. My go-to camera body-lens setup was the Nikon D750 paired with the Nikon 24-70 f2.8 lens, an awesome combination for a destination wedding photographer. One of Nikon’s sharpest lenses and most versatile when you need to pack light. The D750 sensor is brilliant as well for coping with high contrasty situations like the Caribbean countries offer.
The underwater photography are stills pulled from several videos I recorded on my GoPro HERO 3+. The unit and comes complete with an underwater case so it’s ideal for snorkelling when the light is overhead and strong.
Having a camera that operates underwater is so good when shooting beach weddings as it allows you to shoot completely unique photos from the water.
Below are some of my favourite images from this holiday, a holiday we will treasure forever and these photos will help keep those memories alive for many many years to come.
I hope to return here as a Barbados wedding photographer, or better still, a Sandy Lane Resort wedding photographer some time soon.
