Here’s another look a the stricken fishing boat Point Reyes run aground at Inverness. I’ve posted several versions of various shots of this boat over the years – it’s a favorite subject and brings back so many memories of great times shooting there. (See Related Posts below for more examples!)
This image is from May 2012 and was shot with my Canon 5D Mark II using the 70-200 mm f/2.8 IS lens at 200 mm (f/8 at 1/160). I’ve used this image to experiment a bit with cinematic effects – beginning with a 16:9 crop, a bit of Topaz Simplify to remove some of the grassy details, and then – in Lightroom 5 – an orange/teal split toning effect to adjust the colors to be more in the style of movies of today. A final fairly aggressive vignette completes the effect.
It’s a different effect, for sure – more artistic than realistic – but I like the way it turned out!
For more on this cinematic “Hollywood” look, see some of these resources:
I was looking through my collection of older images tonight – a valuable exercise – and came across and image that I shot in May 2007 using my first digital SLR camera – a Canon 30D. I really liked the composition (after all, I took the shot!) but there was a big post right in the middle of the image that basically destroyed the shot. In the latest versions of Photoshop, Adobe has added several “content-aware” tools that help edit out these kinds of problems. Using this image, I set to work to remove the post – and just generally clean up the image.
Once I had removed the post and a few phone poles on the distant shore, I wanted to simplify the grasses in the foreground and the water in Tomales Bay – while preserving the lovely detail on the fishing boat. Using a combination of the Topaz Simplify 3 plugin and Nik’s Silver Efex Pro 2, I was able to get to an image that I enjoyed a lot more. I hope you do too (click on the image to see the larger size)!
On Saturday, I took a drive up to Point Reyes – motivated by the Open Studios held this weekend. There were a few photographers having open studios – including my friend – and black and white photographer – Marty Knapp. Before heading to the open studios, however, I stopped by a few of my favorite sites in Inverness and at Pierce Point Ranch out on Point Reyes.
First stop was the FV Point Reyes, a popular site just behind the Inverness Grocery Store. Many photographers have shot this forlorn fishing boat over the last few years. I made a quick stop here – spending at most 10 minutes – shooting hand-held with my Canon 5D Mark II with the Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8L lens – and my iPhone 4S.
I first captured the usual iconic shots of the boat – from about a half dozen angles as I walked around the bow. As I was about to leave, I noticed how lovely the light was on the cabin of the boat itself – and that motivated me to go in closer and to “fill the frame”, not worrying about capturing the whole boat itself.
This image turns out of be one of what I consider the best of my recent photos – with the beautiful light, the great detail of the boat’s “grunge”, the bokeh and moodiness in the sky behind, etc. I titled it “Derelict”. A great example of one of the basics of great photography: “fill the frame”! The major point about filling the frame is that our minds will deal with the missing elements – it’s certainly easy to see that this is a fishing boat – and, given it’s tilt, that something’s amiss!
Here’s another image – one that was more heavily post-processed including a texture overlay – of the FV Point Reyes that I posted last summer.
PS: If you’re in the US, hope you’re having a great Memorial Day weekend! We had one of our grilled tri-tip dinners last night that was wonderful – a bit more more on that later once I update the menu on my Scott’s Kitchen web site.
PPS: Here’s a straight out of the camera shot of the FV Point Reyes – taken with my iPhone 4S. Sort of sets the scene for the closeup shot above!
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