tradewinds — Blog — Nicky Highlander Photography

I've been away for a bit, I know. Life has a way of twisting and turning sometimes. But whenever you want to get back to something, you have to force yourself sometimes to “grab the bull by the proverbial horns” and do it. After a hard week at work, my workmates told me about an open day at a local military base as part of the annual outreach from the Tradewinds military exercise. Named after the most prominent winds blowing across our region, Tradewinds is a United States Southern Command-sponsored, and Caribbean-focused operation held annually. I sometimes heard the American Black Hawk helicopters as they passed over my area on evenings. While the public is not invited to participate in the training events, they are allowed to visit the closed base for one day. I figured I would take this opportunity to visit since it has been ages since I last visited Paragon.

So, I grabbed my camera and two lenses and made my way to the base, after a quick pitstop to deal with a faulty tire. Don't worry, all is fine. There is nothing like living a stone's throw away from a handy tire repair shop. Saturday morning drives are always relaxing…I can drive at my own pace without worrying about getting to the office on time. So, it was a quick trip with a cool soundtrack of 80s soft rock (my favourite, if I'm honest). I arrived just a few minutes later than the start time of 10:00 A.M., and I was directed to the Policy Training School to use the "park and ride" system in place. I quickly realised that the sun would not be our friend that day and it was turning out to be a scorcher.

My favourite things about Open Day are quite a few. First, I got to meet up with a few photographers from my club and some friends I hadn't seen in a while, totally unplanned but it was fun nonetheless. Shout out to Glyne, Bradley, Yvette, Sherlock, and Charles for keeping the day interesting. Second, I made lemonade with the lemons I brought. What do I mean? Well, I only had my 50 mm f2.8 and my 85 mm f2.8 prime lenses, which are great for crowd shots, but I was not in the mood for the crowds. I managed however to have a chat with one of the young men who is visiting the island for the first time. His name is Specialist Lucas and shout out to him for being a good sport when I asked him for a quick portrait. We had a wonderful chat about the Black Hawk helicopter, his career in the military so far, and his post-military plans. A very cool dude and if he ever comes across this blog, I wish him well in training and hope he gets a chance to return here as a tourist.

Specialist Lucas: Yes, I asked him politely for his photo and he kindly obliged.

The goal was not about getting "bangers" as Peter McKinnon would call his bucket list shots. I would not say my pictures were perfect. My lens choices were not the best for the day and some of the restrictions on where I could stand, exacerbated the issue. That is just a fact, not an excuse. I’ll know better next year. Today was about beginning to "see" again and getting outside. The first tool in any photographer's kit is his/her creative eye. And sometimes, one needs to retrain that eye after a dry spell. If I have one lesson from this for my photographer readers, from beginner to professional, it would be this: You can just shoot for fun, not everything has to be serious and you can turn a fail into a win if you learn from it.