A new Tobago gallery is now up at Digital Trinidad. You can see the gallery here.










A new Tobago gallery will be coming to Digital Trinidad photographed using an odd combination of 10+ megapixel Canon DSLR coupled to Olympus Zuiko lenses.








We are happy to announce that Trinidad Dreamscape celebrates its 250,000th unique visitor today, a little over 2 years after its start. We crossed our 2 millionth hit a week ago. The top 5 countries of origin of our visitors are, in descending order of magnitude, The United States of America, Italy, Canada, Trinidad and Tobago, and Great Britain. We would especially like to thank our visitors from the United States for their support, and for their emails. Since we started up we have received over 900 emails, all of which received our personal attention. Our most popular page turns out to be the "Waterfall" series, followed closely by our "Copying Ansel Adams" article, weirdly enough.








We have updated our views about using Apple's Aperture for film scans, and we vent some pent-up frustrations with Apple Computer Inc. Yes, that Apple. Read here.








A new black and white picture of the Rio Seco waterfall in the Mora forest has just been posted here. UPDATE - replaced the original picture with a sharpened version; sorry, we forgot to sharpen it originally. As a bonus, we've included a zoomed view on the same page. On a side note, the contact print of this picture looks unbelievable.










A Rio Seco waterfall picture is coming up shortly: that's the negative being washed off in a tray after fixing. It's a picture from a long past hike, and we have just unearthed the negative. Sadly, the colour picture has to wait until we have the time to develop it (don't hold your breath). This is probably the first (and the last) time the Rio Seco waterfall has been photographed using an 8x10 view camera.










We indicated some months ago that a slowdown in updates would occur, and that time has now arrived. New pictures may still come, but they will now likely be interspersed by months of inactivity on the website. Not that we wish to sound too pessimistic, but we hope you have enjoyed the journey thus far with us, and, well, we will see what the future has in store for the website. Additionally, we will no longer be in a position to answer emails promptly, so please bear this in mind if you wish to contact us. Best wishes to everyone.








We are pleased to bring you a new gallery of digital snapshots from Tobago. Pictures were taken using a humble 3 megapixel Minolta Dimage camera. You can find the new gallery at Digital Trinidad here.










Coming soon......








You know our mantra: 'Trinidad Dreamscape' does not enhance colour photographs with the use of digital post-processing techniques, or any other technique for that matter. Pictures you see here match our original slides. The same guarantee is, however, not true of our sister website, Digital Trinidad. All the pictures featured in 'Digital Trinidad' are processed in 'Photoshop' to some degree, some more than others. Although digital photographers argue that they have a creative license to manipulate photographs to 'Wow' audiences, or to facilitate their 'vision' we still have a nagging feeling that there is a fine line between creative license and dishonesty. 'Digital Trinidad' would therefore like to be up-front about its post-processing. More importantly, if you would like to see what any particular picture looks like straight from the camera, email 'Digital Trinidad', and we'll be happy to send a small jpeg of the original file to you.








We get lots of emails. 99% of our emails are from visitors and Trinidadians resident abroad, and they are wonderful. Such emails encourage us to keep on going. The other 1% of emails come from residents of Trinidad. Sadly, all of the abusive, and condescending mail that we get, as well as pranks, come from the latter group. Sometimes, however, admixed with the colourful language of an irate Trinidadian writer is a valid point. We received an email recently from a fellow Trinidadian who was absolutely beside himself that we had nothing good to say, and no pictures to show, of the Maracas Falls as described in the beginning of our Waterfalls page. He certainly let us have it: here's what he had to say:

"hahahahahahahaha........... ur all a big joke. wanna go lookin for waterfalls and cant even take a little hike..... piss off. and you cant even comprehend the majesty of maracas falls until you truly experience it (or you probably aren't any good at photo take outing) true photograhers would find beauty in anything.... the 2hr+ hike to the top, the thrill of settin up to abseil/ rapel the first drop (alot more gushing water i'll have you know) abseiling the second drop the sheer 220m,i'll show you true photography. bloo basin boo hoo........ thas for pussies, i'm sure you went along with those fools to smoke some herbs too. ha jokers."

In fairness to us, we do try our best. 'Trinidad Dreamscape' is not some big, funded government organisation, but instead consists, largely, of one individual taking pictures for the benefit of Trinidadians, Tobagonians, and visitors. We use old film cameras, and our main camera, packed, weighs 40 pounds which unfortunately precludes some of the places we can visit. We can't produce the volume of pictures that digital shooters churn out, as our film is very expensive, and we have to develop it all ourselves. Finally, sometimes a scene just cannot be captured with the old cameras we use; we don't have zooms, and super-wide-angle lenses etc. Again, we try our best within the constraints imposed on us by our equipment.

Foregoing caveats and rants aside, we concede that our friend has a point in that we indeed have no pictures of Maracas Falls. So, just for our friend, we present our introduction to the Maracas Waterfall, lower level.










'Trinidad Dreamscape' is one of a handful of users of large format cameras left in the world today. One group of users of these pioneering photographic devices decided to put together a book of images taken using these old cameras. There were many problems to overcome, not the least of which were many master photographers and printers who could not fathom the intricacies of converting their negatives into a printable computer format. The first edition of the book was rolled out to the dismay of many, including us: there were printing errors, colour-cast problems, fuzzy scans, burned-out highlights. We were adamant to try again, but others were too jaded by the whole process to give it another go. We are not certain if the second edition of the book will go to print. It is with this in mind that we are presenting the link to the first edition copy which is available for purchase, or can be downloaded for free (it's a 200MB pdf file). Despite its imperfections, the book still illustrates the charm of a medium fast being pushed aside by modern technologies. We are pleased to have two of our images included in the book. You can find the book, 'A Larger View - size does matter' here.








Trust us to never lose an opportunity to stick it to the digital crowd: we take a look at digital's problem with dynamic range during an eclipse of the moon here.








An amateur astronomer has been kind enough to allow 'Digital Trinidad' to use his series of exposures documenting the recent lunar eclipse as viewed from Trinidad. You can find the series here.








A lone man looks out to sea under a threatening sky here.








The long dormant 'Digital Trinidad' website rumbles to life with a few pictures from the marina at Chaguaramas. You can find them here.








On a roll today! We've finally developed the last bit of film from our visit to the Wild Fowl Trust. We have added 2 new pictures. They are the last 2 pictures at the bottom of the page here.








Take a look at the new 2008 Carnival Pictures over at the Mayaro Beach website!








Mark Lyndersay has a great new series on the making of Mas in Trinidad found on his website here.








Yes, it's a miracle: two more 8x10 transparencies posted. You can find them at the bottom of the Northeast Coast gallery, under 'Update - 2007' here.








We've finally started the task we hate: developing those 8x10 slides. The first one out of the chemicals has been scanned and uploaded. You can find it here. The second photograph can be found here.








The Wild Fowl Trust page has been updated with some new black and white pictures. You can find the updates here.










We never scanned this old photograph taken near Toco. It seems like we took this picture eons ago. Just like the changing patterns of clouds scudding across the sky, Trinidad changes. We have seven 8x10" transparencies patiently waiting (for about six months now) to be developed, and hopefully we will get a chance to do that soon. We hope that some of them will be good enough to post on the website. The picture above was taken at night using a 4x5 large format camera loaded with Kodak Ektachrome film.