Bettys Hope Details Part 1

Sugar Mills, Bettys Hope, Antigua

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Bettys Hope Details Part 1

Bettys Hope, which we looked at in February last year, was the largest sugar plantation in Antigua (click here to learn more about life on a Caribbean Sugar Plantation).  It is somewhere I like to try to visit each time we are on the island.  My images from each visit, though, had begun to become somewhat similar and I was wondering if it was really worth returning to.

As luck would have it, inspiration was just around the corner.  On one of our island tours we stopped at a new restaurant.  While my wife checked out the menu I took a look around at the photographs around the walls.  They were all Black & White prints of detail shots of the windmills but were rather flat and a little uninspiring.  I decided to try and improve on what I had seen.

Each of the prints at the restaurant appeared to be from quite old negatives and lacked detail.  This was something I could easily improve on by using HDR techniques first before converting the images to Black & White.  As can be seen from the first image, by using a 5 bracket hdr set, I was able to bring out all of the detail inside the housing at the top of the windmill whilst maintaining the grain in the shingles on the outside and not bleach out the sky.

The second shot, also from a 5 bracket hdr set, is of the entrance in to the windmill where the grinding mechanism can still be seen.  We will take a look at this mechanism in the next post.

Sugar Mills, Bettys Hope, Antigua

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Summary

Article Name

Bettys Hope Details Part 1

Description

Bettys Hope was the largest sugar plantation in Antigua. These Black & White shots show some of the details of the preserved windmills.

Author

Mark Summerfield

Publisher Name

Mark Summerfield

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