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Final Port of Call



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A very quiet boat in a very quiet Irish harbor.

A very quiet boat in a very quiet Irish harbor.
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Awards

Fall Award 2020
Superb Composition
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Outstanding Creativity
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Top Choice
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Absolute Masterpiece
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Peer Award
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Magnificent Capture
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Behind The Lens

Location

I took this photo while on a vacation in the Dublin area of Ireland. My wife and I took a day trip to Howth, which is out on a peninsula. End of the train line, if memory serves. There is an old, but still active, harbor there. We had some time to roam around, so I just ambled off and walked around the water's edge where the boats were moored.

Time

Mid day. high clouds. Overcast. Pretty even light. Not much shadow.

Lighting

The day was 'bright' and pretty clear. There were no shadows that I could discern. High clouds, no strong sun.

Equipment

An old FujiPix. Stock lens, no tripod, no flash. Just effort to parse out something that I liked in the scene where I was present.

Inspiration

There was one sad, old, decrepit boat off by itself. It was almost like whatever this boat had was contagious, so all the other boats tied up some distance away. As you may guess, that lonely old boat was this one. It stood out from the others. While the others were actively used, this one looked to be abandoned and just rotting in place where it floated. I looked at that boat from all sorts of angles trying to find a subject that spoke to me. These ropes eventually caught my eye and turned out to be the most interesting angle, to my eye, at the time.

Editing

This was in my early days of minimal processing. While I have since become much more entangled with Photoshop, back in the day when I took this pic, the romance was just starting with PSD. So this lonely boat shot at the Howth harbor had nothing special done to it, other than being in the right place at the right time.

In my camera bag

Simple stuff. The best camera is the one you have with you. And the best place to have it is out and ready to use, and requiring no fancy, time consuming setup. I gave that old Fuji to one of my daughters and took up a long romance with a Nikon D90 which I still have a relationship with. My wife even tolerates it now.....

Feedback

There is the camp of 'technology' and there is the camp of 'artistry', for lack of a better word. After years of doing this, I've come to realize that good pictures don't come from good cameras, they come from a picture taker that likes what their eye sees AND THEN is lucky enough or is somehow able enough to get the angle, the light, and the 'feel' in the scene to capture where their eye sees that attracted them in the first place. One has to feel the space they are in. Interpret what they are moving through. Be present. It is indeed much like hunting. You can not be daydreaming, or you'll walk right by the 'shot' and not see it for what it is. My wife is a fast walker. She gets annoyed when we walk because I tend to lag behind and look at what we are walking through. It is much like hunting. Scanning near to far, left to right, roaming restless eye, trained to stop when it catches something unusual. It is work that technology in all its glory simply cannot reproduce, it is that fantastic synthesis between eye, brain, and mood that makes us human and produces pictures that turn out every once in awhile.

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