[zybar]

My wife and I just celebrated our 10th wedding anniversary and we decided to go to the Jade Mountain resort on the island of St. Lucia.  Here are some pics from the trip.  Feel free to critique and tell me how I can get better in terms of taking the pictures and editing them in Lightroom or Photoshop.  Sorry in advance if I am posting too many pictures...

George


Our room at Jade Mountain


A couple resort pics








A rainbow and the Piton Mountains taken from our room within the first couple hours of arriving - must be a good omen


Caribbean Sea and Piton Mountains of St. Lucia from our room - sky has cleared up


Panoramic shot of the Caribbean Sea and Piton Mountains of St. Lucia



Some beach shots...










A few early morning shots from the top of the resort










A couple obligatory shots of the happy couple

[PeteG]

WOW, what a great looking place. Very nice pictures that will last you a lifetime.

[nature boy]

George,

Congratulations on your 10th wedding anniversary.  Looks like your getting the hang of that new Nikon, St. Lucia looks spectacular

NB

[Guy 13]

Hi George,
congratulations on your 10th wedding anniversary.
Nice pictures.
30 years ago my ex girl friend and I took a winter vacation to St-Lucia and I remember taking a bus tour to the piton, La Souffriere and around the whole island.
A really nice little island at the time.
We stayed at the St-Lucia hotel.
I am sure today they have much nicer hotels-resorts...
I kept good souvenirs of that trip.
Guy 13 

[zybar]

Thanks for the nice comments guys.

As nice as the pictures are, they only hint at how beautiful the resort and island are.

Of course, it certainly helped to have a week alone with my better half.   

George

[Guy 13]

Hi all.
I have also been to La Martinique and Barbados.
La Martinique being my second choice after St-Lucia.
Guy 13

[jqp]

Congrats on the anniversary - nice to go there when you are younger! That is quite the resort - I am ready to go!

[nathanm]

Wow, that's some scenery!  On the whole they are good, but what I notice technically are the greens which are a bit too "neon".  The balance between vibrance and garishness is a delicate one.  Sometimes with foliage I reduce the saturation very slightly and boost the luminance. Oh, and the panorama is a beauty, but the horizon isn't straight.

[bacobits1]

Congrats! Very Nice.
I NEED A VACATION.

D

[zybar]

Wow, that's some scenery!  On the whole they are good, but what I notice technically are the greens which are a bit too "neon".  The balance between vibrance and garishness is a delicate one.  Sometimes with foliage I reduce the saturation very slightly and boost the luminance. Oh, and the panorama is a beauty, but the horizon isn't straight.

Thanks Nathan.

I'll go back and try some different levels and see what I can come up with.

As for the horizon...not exactly sure how to fix that.  Any advice?

George

[bpape]

Off topic in this circle but congrats on the anniversary George. Looks like a gorgeous place.

Bryan

[nathanm]

To be annoying (but honest) there are many ways to straighten the horizon:

In Photoshop:
First turn on Guides and drag a guide in from the ruler or show the grid so you have a point of reference.
1. Select All…Command-T (Free Transform Tool) and rotate to taste (move cursor outside of box to see rotation cursor)
2. Crop Tool
3. Filter…Distort…Lens Correction (rotation) Use Scaling or edge extension to fill in gaps
4. Use Measure Tool to draw a line across the crooked horizon from one end to the other.  Then choose: Image…Rotate Canvas…Arbitrary.  The angle of correction will automatically be there.  Hit enter.  Will introduce gaps which you can rubber stamp out if necessary.

Lightroom:
1. Hit the "R" key. The crop tool here is even cooler than Photoshop. (sorry, don't have Photoshop CS5 yet-I think they may have changed it)  Nice thing here is that Lightroom automatically reduces the box so you don't get any gaps.

The key with shooting panoramas is to get your camera dead level on a tripod.  The more accurate it is here the less top and bottom you will lose when Photoshop stitches the frames together.  Even with the insane-o Content Aware Fill magic this is a good practice.

[jermmd]

Congrats on 10 years. That resort looks spectacular and the photos look really nice. I didn't notice the horizon until Nathan pointed it out but now I can't look at it without noticing it. I guess seeing obvious things like that is what separates the laymen from the expert.

On the topic of wedding anniversaries, I took care of a couple who will be having there 76th wedding anniversary this June.

It's been a long time since my wife and I have taken a vacation without the kids. I'm jealous.

Joe

[electricbear]

My wife and I went to St Lucia for our 10th as well. We stayed on one of the Sandal resorts. Loved the island, the people and the food. We hiked up one of the Pitons while we were there. Damn near killed me getting up there but the view was spectacular. Thanks for posting the photos, it brought memories flooding back.