Techniques, Tips, Trips, and Musings about my Work

Cruise ships prepare to leave the harbor in Old San Juan, Puerto Rico. Shot with a Nikon D300, Nikkor 12-24mm lens at 18mm, f8 at 30 seconds.

As the wind chill here in West Virginia hits the single digits I am once again transported to some warmer climate; any warmer climate will do. So for todays post I have featured a shot of cruise ships preparing to leave the port in Old San Juan, Puerto Rico. The light from each ship was simply amazing and to see four ships in port was a real sight. To get the shot I had to overcome a few technical difficulties. Number one was the loss of my tripod at the airport. This image, shot at midnight from the small balcony of my hotel room, required a long exposure and a stable set up. So I had to improvise. I pushed a chest out to the open window and propped the camera up with books and small pillows. Getting a proper exposure was another issue. I took several test shots to get the composition and exposure to my satisfaction. I wanted to capture the low clouds along the horizon to aid in a visual transition from the ships to the  night sky. I used mirror lock up to help eliminate any camera shake in my tenuous camera set up. One of the things that makes the photo so dramatic are the multiple light sources from the ships and the road along the shore. It is not possible to balance these out so I set the camera to AWB to start and then adjusted the color temperature to taste. I also shot at a fairly low ISO of 400 to keep as much noise down as possible. The image was processed in Nikon NX 2 and Photoshop. To help bring out details in the image, including the clouds, I used a contrast mask and some simple curve adjustments.