While on the Isle of Man last week, I noticed a couple of tall ships in the harbour. I hoped to get the chance of seeing (and photographing) these magnificent vessels under full sail. The only time I saw this was on Thursday lunchtime while walking along Douglas sea front. Unfortunately, by this time, they were about a mile or so out. The distance, combined with haze made them difficult to make out with the naked eye. Ever the optimist, I walked to the shoreline to get as close as possible and rattled off a few shots. The results were disappointing. Viewed on the camera’s LCD screen, the ships were little more than fuzzy dots on a fuzzy horizon.
Although disappointed, I left the images on the CF disk, deciding to see what they looked like when viewed on a 17 inch monitor. The results were still not too good, frankly. That said, there was rather more detail than I had at first realised. Given that the hazy blue colour was somewhat monochrome, I decided to de-saturate the image to grey scale. Better, but sepia toning it gave it a little something extra. I may not have the image I originally wanted, but this one is more than I thought I’d got. It is all the better for having recovered a half decent image from gash.
Here, then, is the final effort:
