When I was in high school, I was given a number of posters of tropical beaches to hang on the walls of my room.  They were standard tropical beach poster fare.  There was absolutely nothing realistic about any of the colors in the pictures save for the sand; the blues were so over-saturated, Smurfs appeared less vibrant in contrast.  I put them up for a day or two and took them down.  Looking at them, I knew they were fake.  It bothered me.

Before I headed down to the Cayman Islands for the first time, I remembered those posters and vowed not to do anything similar.  For the most part, I didn’t have that many issues with images feeling ‘fake’.  The only problems I ran into in this regard came when I was in shade and I was shooting the sky and the Caribbean Sea in bright sun.  Then, I ran into a few minor problems.  To counteract those situations, I began desaturating the images slightly.  I mention this because I’m pretty sure I’m the only photographer in the world who went to a tropical paradise, shot some heavenly images of the beach and the bluest of blue seas… and took color out of them before releasing them.

All of this is leading to one thing: this image is not faked in any way.  In reality, it’s much prettier and vibrant than this.  You just wouldn’t have believed it.