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.

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.

I love winter (as long as it snows) but sometimes you just need to get away for a bit. I’ll be taking a short break from my blogging activities but will return shortly. In the meantime, I figured I would post this shot that I took on a trip a couple of years ago to North Myrtle Beach, SC. This image has been sitting around waiting for me to decide to do something with it. I’ve always liked the repetition of the chairs and the warm color but I held back posting it anywhere. I just purchased the PhotoTune suite which includes Focal Point 2. I decided to try it out by slightly altering the field of focus. It’s not a big change, but I like the added blur. I also used PhotoTools to bring out just a bit more color and contrast.

I had recently posted some black & white images both to my blog as well as Flickr and I received a comment on one of them from one of my Flickr contacts, Gary Easter, an architectural photographer. He mentioned that I might be interested in seeing a portfolio of historical Texas churches that he had put together. I was, and when I view the portfolio I was inspired to take a look at some of my earlier work to see if I could improve on some of my conversions. One of the things that I really like about Gary’s black & white images is the deep blacks and high contrast in some of the images. As I revisited some of my earlier conversions I found a couple that I thought could be improved on.

My wife and I spent some time in New York for our anniversary last year. One of the areas we visited was the financial district, particularly the area around the World Trade Center area. This shot was taken in the winter garden portion of the World Financial Center. The day outside was sort of cool and somewhat rainy, but the winter garden was quite nice. When I looked up at the ceiling, I knew I had to get a shot of it.

The image above shows Two Lads Winery located on Old Mission Peninsula near Traverse City, Michigan. The tall glass area is the tasting room which has a wonderful view of the east arm of Grand Traverse Bay. The grounds around the building were rather plain and gave the image more of a snapshot look. Ideally I would have liked to take this shot just after sunset, but when you are on vacation you shoot what you can when you can.

One of the defining characteristics in Old San Juan, Puerto Rico are the narrow cobblestone streets which wind their way through the old city. The blue color is particularly striking, particularly in the right light. I took this shot on a recent family trip to Puerto Rico.

Every year for the last few years my family and I go skiing at Mont Tremblant, a ski resort an hour or so north of Montreal, Canada. One year we stayed in a nearby condo, but we found that we preferred to stay in one of the hotels in the pedestrian village which is located at the base of the slopes. This year I made reservations a little later than usual and the place where we had stayed in the past was booked. I looked through some of the other hotels in the village and decided to try Le Sommet des Neiges, which is a big hotel right at the base of the slopes. Great location, although it was a bit more expensive. I was very pleased with the location. You could come off the slopes, go through some automatic doors and be right in the ski locker area of the hotel. Very convenient. We were also fortunate to have a room which overlooked the slopes.

This shot shows Federal Hall in New York City. The site of Federal Hall, located on Wall Street, is where George Washington took the oath of office as the first President in 1789 and was also the site of the first Congress, Supreme Court and Executive Branch offices. The original building was torn down in 1812 and ultimately replaced with the current structure in 1842. The new structure served as the country’s first customs house. This picture was taken during a gray, snowy day, and my processing attempted to keep that feeling. The image was originally in color, but the color image and the final image aren’t really that much different in tonality. The other thing I did was to pump up the grain. If you look carefully, you can see streaks of snow in the image as well.

This is a picture of the Auburn Hotel in Auburn, Indiana. I recently had a day off of work and I decided to visit the Auburn/Cord/Duesenberg Museum in Auburn, Indiana. Auburn was the home to the Auburn Automobile Company which eventually was owned by the Cord Corporation. The Cord Corporation manufactured Auburn, Cord and Dusenberg automobiles.