After a rather long while I was able to take some of my free time again last Sunday and spend it on an afternoon of photography. Together with Jimmy, a friend who I got to know not too long ago, I went out and strolled through Paramaribo armed with some of my Canon gear, namely two 40D bodies and the 16-35mm f2.8L II and 70-200mm f2.8 L IS lenses. Jimmy owns a Nikon D200 body, which looked very nice. The D200 feels a lot more comfortable in my hands, and I can only imagine this is also the case with the latest D300 and D3 bodies from Nikon.

Here are some of the first pictures I took during the photowalk:

Birds flying very low on the shore of the Suriname river. Both Jimmy and I had never seen this type of bird before so we went in for close-ups.

The above picture is a close-up of one of the birds. It was taken with the 70-200mm lens with the 40D body in AI Servo mode. With only 9 autofocus points on the 40D it wasn’t very easy to keep tracking the birds. The Nikon D300 has 51 focus points which is A LOT more than the 40D. Canon has a lot of work to do in this area.

Here’s a wide angle shot of a few boats on the river. The weather that day was really nice as you can see from the blue sky. And below is a close-up taken with the 70-200mm lens.

We went to a different spot later on and there we came across Joey. He’s the guy in black in the picture below looking very sad, almost like he’s about to cry. As Jimmy and I walked up to him, he immediately started to complain about the lack of strong winds and not being able to surf the way he wants to.

In the picture below Jimmy was trying to get a macro shot of Joey’s legs. Just kidding. :D Jimmy was focusing on something else, but it almost looks like he’s taking a picture of Joey’s legs. Not saying that he didn’t photograph Joey’s legs though.

After a while Joey decided to try surfing again, hoping for some strong winds. He still looked quite disappointed though. He stood up and dragged his surfing board and sail into the water. I captured a rather dramatic shot of the moment below. :P

Not long after that Joey was surfing away.

As he went further away from us, I captured the shot below.

Nearby, a couple was sitting in the shade of a palm tree, enjoying the view.

Below is a shot of Joey as he was approaching us again after a while.

From the shot below you can tell that it’s not very easy to lift up the sail after it falls on the water.

Meanwhile Jimmy and I had the privilege of meeting “Arturo” (real name Ertugrul Kilic), a photographer from Turkey. You can see him standing below with his Nikon D2Xs.

Arturo busy taking some shots of a surfer.

Jimmy and Arturo sitting together in the shade watching the surfers.

Later on Jimmy and I went to another spot where I took the pictures below.

Then we arrived at some location with a couple of hills as you can see on the picture below. I immediately thought of climbing on top of one and have Jimmy take a picture of me.

I took the picture below from the top of one of those hills while Jimmy was also taking a picture of me standing on top.

You can see me standing on the hill in the next picture which was taken by Jimmy.

As I was trying to come down from the hill, I was leaning on the side of the hill with my left hand, when all of a sudden I felt being bitten in my hand. When I looked, I saw a number of big red ants on my hand in full attack mode. In the next picture, you can see me blowing on my hand trying to get the ants off of it, with little result. As I was being attacked and furiously trying to get the ants off of my hand while not dropping my camera, Jimmy ran closer and yelled “If you just come tumbling down right now I might be able to get some really spectacular shots!” Later that night my hand was swollen and I could count at least 8 very small wounds the ants left behind. 

The next few shots were taken not too far from the hills.

I really liked the dirty industrial look of the scene above.

In the picture above you can see one of the entrances to the presidential palace in Paramaribo. It was already late in the afternoon when this picture was taken as you can see from the long shadows.

The white dot in the picture above between the palm trees is the moon. Below are a couple of shots of palm trees. It was very late in the afternoon and I loved the gold/orange highlights in the trees from the sunset.

This guy appears to be missing something.

As Jimmy and I walked through the city, I took some pictures of the old monumental buildings. You can again see the gold/orange light from the sunset against the buildings.

Below are some pictures of the sunset over the Suriname river with the J.A. Wijdenbosch bridge in the background and a very beautiful sky.

I love the pictures of the buildings below. You can see the sunset in the distance, and the gold/orange light hitting the buildings from the side. The perspective from the 16-35mm lens is interesting as well.

Finally, as it became very dark, Jimmy and I drove around town for a good spot to do some long exposure photography. The last two pictures below are two quick attempts at using long exposures at night. We didn’t spend much time doing this but the next time I’ll try to look for some interesting locations for this.

The whole photowalk lasted about 4 hours, and at the end I had about 600 pictures. Some of those pictures will make it into my online photo gallery in the next few days. I’m already looking forward to the next photowalk, which may take place as soon as the coming weekend. :)