1/4000 @ f/4: The roadsides of Jamaica

Finally back in the US after a great weekend trip to Jamaica. It was a great trip that I took with my photojournalism professor James Kenney and a group of hydrogeologists from Western. The Jamaican government needs help with finding the source of the water pollution and WKU’s Hoffman Environmental Research Institute was called in to aid. You can check out more about the Hoffman institute here

The Jamaican government recognizes the need for photojournalism and multimedia to help educate the local people on the water pollution situation and was excited to have Mr. Kenney and I along to document. Although the trip was very very short it was only a introductory trip for our group of six, the Jamaican’s hope to have us back for longer trip in the future.

Due to the nature of our trip, we were driven around much of the island only stopping for a few minutes at a time to visit the sites of the pollution. This lead to some initial frustration because of the tight schedule and little or no time to explore beyond our itinerary. I began shooting out the window every chance I got trying to capture some people in their everyday tasks. As it turns out, a lot of people are on the side of the road on the island. Locals seem to hang out there not really doing anything. Although we were driving almost 50mph I managed to time things right as we passed interesting people. The cool part of these roadside pictures is that the people were totally unaware that I was ever there.

Most of the trip I spent shooting video and audio while Mr. Kenney took stills. I was happy to shoot anything I could get my camera in front of and it was a great experience. There will of course be a multimedia piece coming in the following weeks. We came across some amazing things during our trip and it’s really hard for me to believe. We got up at 4:30am one morning hoping for pictures of an ocean sunrise. What we initially got was pouring monsoon like rain. We spend at least two hours huddled under a small pavilion to protect our equipment. We began to leave, disappointed as the rain settled before one of the coolest things I have ever experienced walked out of nowhere. An entire church congregation walked up to the beach as the priest lead members one by one into the ocean for baptism. In the pouring rain, church members sang from the beach while the baptisms occured. At one point I filmed the priest and a member about to be baptized walk right into a wave that knocked them over and they disappeared underwater. I hope you enjoy this short look at our trip, I will be posting more throughout the week as I get work done. Also, the iPhone photo of the day page has been updated. Check out an aerial shot of Cuba here.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 27th, 2009 at 3:50 pm. It is filed under Featured Work, Travel and tagged with wide. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.