Arcadia Theater
by James Howe on Jan.02, 2011, under Travel
(Nikon D700, 15mm fisheye, ISO 1000, Exposure 1/15 sec @ f/5.6)
One of the amazing thing about today’s cruise ships is the amount of stuff they can pack on to a ship. Our ship, the Freedom of the Seas, had a main theater, a screening room for films, an ice rink with seating for ice shows, etc. These ships are quite tall and yet the underwater draft of this ship is only 28 feet. I’m continually amazed these things don’t just tip over. Even more impressive is their stability. We didn’t have huge seas, but we had some 6-8 ft swells and some strong winds and the boat would only gently sway at most. It did bother some people, but for me at worst I sometimes felt like I was walking a little drunk when the ship would move one way or another.
This image shows the entrance to the Arcadia Theater. I really liked the color and deco design elements of this theater. Taking pictures on the ship was a challenge for me. There were so many bright surfaces and so many lights the final images just seemed to come out too busy. I tried a couple different attempts at processing this image and at some point I decided to try using Topaz Simplify just to eliminate some of the extraneous reflections and focus more on the color and design elements of the theater entrance. Other than using Topaz Simplify, the main work I did on the image was to crop in a bit tighter and adjust the color balance somewhat before applying the Simplify filter.
Thoughts?
Copyright © 2010-2011 James W. Howe – All rights reserved.
Goodbye to 2010
by James Howe on Dec.31, 2010, under Travel
(Nikon D700, 28-300mm at 300mm, ISO 200, Exposure 1/250 sec @ f/8.0)
As 2010 winds down, I hope it was a good one for all of you and that 2011 is even better. If 2010 was a bad year, here’s hoping that 2011 is much better!
I would like to thank you all for visiting my blog this year. I appreciate your comments and feedback, whether left here on the blog or through other means. I hope you come back often in the new year.
As to the picture, it was taken from the deck of my cruise ship on my recent trip to the Caribbean. Not much in the way of foreground to make the shot interesting, but I did like the way the sun was lighting the clouds. It almost looks as if there is a cloud holding the sun. This image is actually a closer crop from the original. I used my longest lens at 300mm, but the sun was still too small to my liking. I cropped in closer and slightly darkened the exposure to get some more color and a better feeling of sunset light.
Happy New Year!
Copyright © 2010 James W. Howe – All rights reserved.
‘Yes, you may drink on the street!’
by James Howe on Dec.30, 2010, under Travel
(Nikon D700, 28-300mm at 82mm, ISO 200, Exposure 1/60 sec @ f/5.6)
When we arrived at Phillipsburg, St. Maarten I saw a sign somewhere claming that the island was the happiest island on Earth. When I saw this sign, I understood why.
Copyright © 2010 James W. Howe – All rights reserved.
Beached?
by James Howe on Dec.29, 2010, under Travel
(Nikon D700, 28-300mm at 68mm, ISO 800, Exposure 1/2000 sec @ f/11)
As I mentioned yesterday, my family and I just returned from a seven day trip to the Caribbean aboard the cruise ship Freedom of the Seas. My son had been bugging us for years to take a cruise but I wasn’t sure that I would like it. Should have listened to my son earlier since we all had a great time. The trip wasn’t perfect, our first stop was cancelled due to rough seas, but the remainder of the trip was uneventful. This shot was taken just after we got off the ship in Phillipsburg, St. Maarten. Our ship was one of six other cruise ships which were in port that day. Modern cruise ships are huge and I was trying to capture a picture which gave some sense of their size. I think the inclusion of the fence line helps put some scale on these ships. The main reason I like this image, however, is the fact that it gives the impression (to me, at least) that the ships are beached on the sand. They aren’t of course. The sand you see in the foreground is part of work being done to expand the port. Currently six ships is the maximum the port can handle and they would like to be able to handle more. For an island that depends exclusively on tourism for its economy, I can see why they would want to be able to handle more ships.
If you compare the finished image to the raw image shown below, you can see that the main processing was converting the image from color to black and white. The day started somewhat overcast and very bright and colors were washed out. The sky looked rather bland as well. When I converted the image in Silver Efex Pro I bumped up the structure to bring out more detail in the sky and the sand in the foreground. I used PhotoTools to add a bit of toning and make some other minor adjustments.
Comments?
Copyright © 2010 James W. Howe – All rights reserved.
Island Humor
by James Howe on Dec.28, 2010, under Travel
(Nikon D700, 28-300mm at 210mm, ISO 200, Exposure 1/1000 sec @ f/5.6)
My family and I just returned from a 7 day cruise in the Caribbean. This was our first cruise and I wasn’t sure I was going to enjoy it, but for the most part I had a great time. One of the places we visited was the island of St. Maarten/St. Martin. The island is unique in that it is controlled by two different countries, the Dutch on the St. Maarten side and the French on the St. Martin side. For the most part, however, you don’t really notice a difference as you go around the island. The biggest difference is the use of French on signage on the French side and French is spoken on the the French side. English, however, is spoken everywhere. When the cruise ship docks, you can take a water taxi to get to the downtown area of Phillipsburg, which is on the Dutch side. When we got off the water taxi we were greeted with a group of shops selling items to eager tourists. We passed by this one shop which had this interesting collection of items for sale. I got a kick out of the juxtaposition of the ‘Fuck Off’ item with the ‘Welcome’ item.
Processing consisted of converting the color image to black and white using Silver Efex Pro.
Copyright © 2010 James W. Howe – All rights reserved.