Industry by the Sea

Here’s a simple but illustrative snap, taken on July 21^st, 2017. This is the Cape Jervis ferry terminal, looking across Backstairs Passage to Kangaroo Island, showing one of the big Sealink boats that provide the regular back-and-forth traffic between mainland South Australia and it’s offshore suburbs. I remember the day being bright and very windy—no wonder I needed to straighten up the image with fine rotation to a considerable degree: I was likely being seriously buffeted. The ship and the vehicles make a textured, mechanical panorama for the foreground, while the clear sky and wide horizon to the island create a natural backdrop—the juxtaposition of the built environment and the wild, the human-made and the natural. Minor adjustments to colour, contrast and sharpness in Irfanview; Fuji FinePix S5600. Image by Mike.

 

A Giant Passing By

Here is an interesting photographic proposition—a twilight image from an unstable platform. Today, with speed-of-light ISO available, it’s not an issue, but back when this was taken, just over 14 years ago, on November 15^th, 2010, ISO was as limited at dpi, and you did your best. I was on the ferry Pride of the Tyne, on the return leg of a trip to Tynemouth Castle and Priory, crossing the wide river at dusk, and the ferry paused to allow a ship to go by on its way out of port, accompanied by the pilot boat. The ship was the Komet III, riding high as if devoid of cargo, and her towering seven-story superstructure seemed disproportionately tall—to this day I can only imagine how such a ship would roll in a heavy seaway! But as a photographer, I got to expose a whole sequence as the ship glided by in the soft evening colours, and this one is the most detailed close-up. Minimal adjustment was required—she was squared up by a little to get the verticals true, then contrast and colour were tweaked. A pleasing image—I’ve often thought the old Fuji chip handles low light conditions very nicely indeed. The same camera is still in action today! Fuji FinePix S5600. Image by Mike.

One Big Ship

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Photographing HMS Victory is not easy. Stand back far enough to see the whole vessel and you tend to get smaller buildings in the shot as well! This was my first glimpse of the historic Georgian warship as I walked through the public access museum area of Portsmouth Naval Dockyard, in the 'Gunwharf Quays' district, on a very grey day in December 2006. The sheer size of the ship is stunning, she towers into the sky and is well over 200 feet long, a triumph of timber engineering. Exposure times were long on this day as the chip dealt with low light levels and intermittent rain, and composition was always going to be a compromise between seeing the ship unobstructed but only in close-up, or longshots that were visually cluttered. Sharpness and colour were enhanced. Fuji FinePix S5600, automatic. Image by Mike.

Three-Master On Show

Only one original Georgian warship remains in the world, HMS Victory, safely drydocked at Portsmouth Naval Dockyard, but period vessels have been built for contemporary reasons. This is The Grand Turk, built for the 1990s TV series based on C. S. Forester's immortal Captain Hornblower novels, a fully-featured and entirely functional sailing vessel in the style of the Napoleonic period. The ship is kept in good condition and is a standing exhibit and tourist attraction moored at Whitby, Yorkshire, UK. Mock swordfights enhance the period flavour, and the vessel is open to the public all year round. I took this photograph in November 2007, one of a long series in many different lighting and weather conditions over two visits, but this is one of very few in which I was able to appreciably frame the whole ship. Like Victory, she is both large and in close proximity to buildings and other structures, so an unobscured vantage is difficult to find, except from the other side of the river. The framing was simple enough and the chip handled everything else, the challenge was composition. Sharpness and colour were enhanced for publication. Fuji FinePix S5600, automatic. Image by Mike.

Ships in the Glare

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It's always worth keeping your neck screwed round and your camera on the window when you're flying, you never know quite what you'll see. If you're in the cheap seats, you get a great view of the wing, and it does interesting things, like completely reconfiguring for approach, with spoilers up and truly impressive flaps down. The wing blocks your view forward so the scenery appears below you, and sometimes it can be amazing. I shot a long series of frames on approach to Singapore on my way home in November 2007, and captured several shots of the merchant fleet lying off the islands, mile after mile of ocean scattered with freighters and tankers, a truly spectacular sight. Add in the sun angle, glare from the sea, and the aerospace interest of the wing, and it makes for an image that would have been science fiction fifty years ago. I didn't bother squaring this one up as the tilt gives a feel for the motion of the aircraft. Sharpened and colour-enhanced only; Fuji FinePix S5600, automatic. Image by Mike.

Echoes of Battles Past

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History comes in many forms. This is the old British cruiser HMS Belfast, moored on the Thames and billed as "London's floating naval museum." She was commissioned in 1939, fought through the Second World War, served in Korea, was decomissioned in 1963 and, after a preservation campaign, was saved from the cutting torch and became a museum in 1971. Now seventy years old, she represents not just naval history or a symbol of national pride, but a tangible link with the past as surely as the Tower of London which stands opposite. Together they are overlooked by futuristic organic architecture, and passed by sleek 'Thames Clipper' tour boats, linking the past with the present and the promise of a future in which both will be remembered. This was one of a batch of images framing the ship from both sides of the river and in company with a variety of backgrounds, taken in the later afternoon light on a Sunday in November, 2007, and the camera did a fine job of extracting the mid-tones from the ship while preserving the luminosity of the evening sky. The image was subtly enhanced. Fuji FinePix S5600, automatic. Image by Mike.

Last of the "Wooden Walls"

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Now here is living history: the last surviving warship of Georgian times, HMS Victory, which though she has been preserved in drydock as a British national treasure also remains a commissioned vessel in the Royal Navy. The Captain and Executive Officer have reserved parking places next to the ship... This ship, Nelson's flagship at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805, typifies the 'wooden walls of England' that protected the country from invasion in the warlike 17th and 18th centuries, and is the technological ancestor of 1869's HMS Warrior, which lies a few hundred yards away at the Historic Portsmouth Naval Dockyard. I visited on a grey day in December, 2006, a day when rain was sweeping through in light, cold showers and the overcast made exposures difficult. Note that the sky is burned out to white to properly expose the ship. She was simply too big to frame the whole ship properly amongst the jumble of buildings surrounding the drydock, but I captured many excellent detail closeups. Sharpened, contrast- and colour-enhanced for publication. Fuji FinePix S5600, automatic. Image by Mike.

Perspective Compression

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Sometimes you see the most unexpected things, and it's good to have a camera handy. I had just arrived at my boarding house in Sunderland, near the seafront, having dragged my bags up from the St. Peters railway station, and what should I see on this cold, bright, windy afternoon, but a ship manoeuvring to enter Sunderland harbour via the twin breakwaters. It was a real gift for a spot of maximum telephoto action and the phenomenon of perspective compression. The foreground and background in focus simultaneously suggests the ship is much closer than it really is. Sharpened, contrast-tweaked and colour-enhanced. November, 2007. Fuji FinePix S5600, automatic. Image by Mike.

Industry, from Above

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A domestic air connection on a clear morning is a moving canvas for a photographer. I try to keep my lens to the window, and you see the most amazing things, some of which even photograph cleanly. You're working with the ever-changing lighting angle, the cleanliness of the window, and your own reflexive ability to frame and shoot moving targets in some meaningful way. This was a chilly morning in November, 2006, at the end of a tiring series of connections from Australia. The domestic had left London just after dawn and was not far from landing at Newcastle, maybe 30-something minutes later, when we passed over this river industrial complex, and I spotted this ship. It looks like a service and support vessel for the North Sea oil rigs, and makes a fascinating sight with its cranes and helicopter pad. See how low the sun angle is, the shadows of buildings and cranes crossing the hull. I'm not sure whereabouts this is, on the Humber, the Tees or the Tyne, I don't remember exactly how long it was prior to landing. The shot was taken at maximum optical zoom looking hard down as the aircraft banked, and was the best of three. The frame was sharpened and colour-balanced to compensate for the dulling effect of the aircraft window. Fuji FinePix S5600, automatic. Image by Mike.

Tall Ship And Towering Sky

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This photograph I find so reminiscent of the maritime artistic tradition of the 19th century that sometimes I have to blink and remind myself I took it. It was December 2006 and the S5600 and I were in Portsmouth for a day visit, specifically Portsmouth Historic Naval Dockyard, to see HMS Victory, the Mary Rose, and this one, HMS Warrior. In many ways she is in the best condition of any of them; for one thing, she's afloat! In 1869 Warrior was the fastest, most powerful battleship in the world, and her restoration (8 million pounds, if I remember correctly) has returned her to amazing condition. I took many photos that day, but this one, with the sun pretty much gone and a towering Atlantic sky coming up over the vessel's masts and rigging, while the low tide stranded many small craft on the mud, was so powerfully evocative of the art of Turner and his ilk, that it feels like a 19th century scene. Yet within half a mile were a modern aircraft carrier and a futuristic harbour control tower: past and present can coexist in the most amazing ways. The camera was supported for a steady image, and the frame was digitally enhanced only slightly, some sharpening, some gamma correction to bring out mid-tone areas, and tweaks of contrast and colour saturation. Fuji FinePix S5600, automatic exposure. Image by Mike.

The tall ship with the terrific menu

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You're driving down the beautiful road leading along the bank of the Patawalonga River, which flows out into the Gulf St. Vincent via the marina and "millionaire country" just to the north of Jetty Road, Glenelg ... and suddenly you see a tallship. A three-master, a square-rigger, parked on "the Pat" at Glenelg --? You pull over quickly and grab the camera, and you experience an "aha" moment. It's a replica of the HMS Buffalo, the ship which brought the colonists to South Australia in 1836. Treat yourself to lunch or dinner -- aboard, she's fantastic. As absolutely perfect replica of the original ship ... which is also a restaurant serving very good food at surprisingly good prices. The restuarant caters to the whole family, too, and (trust me on this!) their forte is the desserts. This is a scan of a shot I took back in the 1980s; I don't even recall when. I haven't been back to Glenelg is years now, since moving away. I always liked this picture, and since the print has started to fade with age, it was recently scanned in and enhanced. The camera was the Olympus OM-10, and I always shot on Kodak Gold in those days. Photo by Jade, about 1984.