In the Port of Ilwaco, WA.
Barbed wire waves, St. Elmo’s fire glowing electric in the rigging, the stain of neglect on her bow; run aground on reefs of time: there she sits, high and dry.
My son said, half-jokingly, that he’d like to live on her and fix her up. If only :-)
I suggest viewing this in original size.
Making the Photo:
We were visiting the Port on a Sunday morning, strolling down the unusually quiet quay with my wife, son and his girlfriend, when these day-glow orange floats across the street from the docks snuck into my peripheral vision. They were piled up against a fence next to a holding area filled with boats in various stages of repair or decay. I left the group and walked a bit closer, then spotted the Jeanie O and this composition just jumped into the viewfinder. I spot-metered on the boat’s window under the vertical topaz-colored mast and made this single shot.
Because the contrast ratios were high, I really wanted to shoot this as HDR, but opted not to try it hand-held. So I then walked a few hundred yards back to our car, got my tripod, returned to the scene and set up. Problem was, by the time I went to the car and back, the family had caught up with me and we’d started gabbing, and the “moment” was lost; guess I just broke my concentration. What I got was ok, but I knew I hadn’t duplicated this exact composition again (in the bright light of the location, the camera’s LCD screen was pretty much useless for critical viewing).
Back at the computer, after deciding to go with this, I processed the RAW file as a pseudo-HDR in Photomatix. The purpose was to “process the digital negative” to reduce the contrast, particularly to pull the highlights away from being blown. Next the shot was processed for sharpness and noise reduction. Great noise reduction software is a must when processing most pseudo-HDRs; the darker regions tend to get noisy really fast. Then I used Topaz Adjust for post-processing, and the first result was this:
This is a nice “straight” representation of the scene. But when I shot this, what got me about the composition was the sense that the ship was riding up, over the obstacles in front, like a ship rises over waves in the sea. Sitting there looking at the screen, the title phrase “The Wreck of the Jeanie O” sprang into mind… and the clear-cut desire to present this as a dramatic scene – reminiscent of a wreck at sea – swept over me, well, like a wave. So back into Topaz Adjust for post processing (to match my “post visualization”). The result was this:
I still have some difficulty with “expressive” photography. I was trained to accomplish, and strived to achieve photo realism; non-interpretive rendering. But just as I’ve learned to let the urge to shoot a subject take over (when the urge to shoot hits, I shoot) so I’m learning to let myself alter a photo to tell a tale. The key word is “let”. The urge to go with a bit of “ghost ship” on this was strong, and came straight out of the right brain; it wasn’t planned or considered; I didn’t stop and think about what to do; “maybe I should try this…” No, the right brain had the thought, knew what to do, and did it. I, the left brain, had to shut up and stay out of the way. After the processing, part of me wanted to start quibbling; “Oh, what about this? And What about that?” And the right brain had to say “Shush. It’s ok… just relax and enjoy it.”
Subject note:
A wreck the Jeanie O is, but she didn’t run aground on the rocks surrounding Cape Disappointment (I love the names Lewis and Clark gave to places on this coast. “Dismal Notch” may be my favorite…). She’d run aground on reefs of neglect, spurred on by the economics of making and keeping her sea worthy. But the world of “people who go down to the sea in ships” is not a consumer-driven use-it-and-throw-it-away culture. So it wouldn’t surprise me at all to learn that someone actually plans to restore the Jeanie O and take her home to the sea. If the hull is sound, the rest can be fixed.
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