Photowalk 57: The Familiar

It's still cold here in Gosport, UK, and the today the sky's were blue, so I headed out mid-morning for some exercise with my camera bag on my back.

When I say exercise I really mean a slow stroll, I wouldn't want to over-exert myself now, would I?

Behind Bars

This shot was taken on the same concrete slipway where I shot the "sleeping dragon" photograph a couple of weeks ago. Just a quick snap this time, and looking at it now it would have been better if I had been kneeling down, or set up my tripod, hiding it's legs behind my own, so it could have looked like i was trapped. Next time.

I used Photoshop Elements to increase the contrast using a duplicate layer in Overlay Blend Mode, stripped out the colour with a hue / sat. adjustment layer, then played with the levels.

Old Lady

Better viewed big.

I've been trying to get a good shot of this old merchant ship for months. It's quite a way out into the harbour, so it's a test for the resolving power on my little Fujifilm S5700 anyway, but from my normal vantage point I can never get a decent capture.

What I spotted today was that because the tide was out I could go along the beach at get a better angle. I under-exposed to bring out the detail, because the Sun was shinning directly on the hull, and it came out quite nice.

I played with the levels in Elements, and used a bit of sharpening (duplicate layer, high-pass filter - 1 pixel, overlay blend mode), then added a 16x9 crop for that widescreen look. It's not great, but my best effort to date with this subject.

Lost

This one was photographed on Fort Brockhurst's frozen moat. Again I had to underexpose, because the camera would have tried to compensate for the dark ice and blown out all the detail in the football. I had trouble focusing on the ball, and it's a bit soft, but the composition is OK.

In Photoshop Elements I adjusted the levels slightly, then desaturated the background a bit too. I used the clone-stamp to remove some debris from the ice, and that was about it.

Speed Limit Limited

I seem to have a thing for shadows at the moment!

Thanks for looking at my photographs, please leave comments below, or feel free to click on the images, which will take you to Flickr so you can leave messages there too.

Cheers, Rob.