Last month, I had the great experience of traveling on a bulk freighter from Chicago to Quebec City. We sailed through four of the five great lakes and went through about 20 locks. The ship is 730 feet long and just fits into the 740 foot locks.
As you can imagine, it gave me many chances to photograph at night, as we transited most of the locks at night. I did many daytime shots too, of workers and the ship operations, but for this blog I will share some of the more interesting night images from this unique perspective. I shot all digital capture for this trip.
There is also a new header on my blog, of a pre-dawn image from the ship’s bridge. It is a combination of two exposures, one 4 minutes for the exterior and a 30 second exposure for the interior (which was also very dark). It is not done with HDR, but merged together by masking.
Here is a photo of the ship itself, for reference. I shot this when I got off the ship at one of the locks and hitched a ride to the next lock (about a half mile away) stopping to take a few snaps.
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Here the ship’s hatch covers are open during loading in Chicago.
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A deckhand checking the ballast. This is a 20 second exposure at ISO 800, almost totally dark. He sure was steady! I like the reflection off the pipe along the deck.
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I have the camera (on a tripod) hanging over the railing for this one minute exposure, with ISO 200. It is virtually dark, but the dense overcast gives off a nice glow. Note the nice smooth tones of the water and waves. I had to shoot 5 versions of this to get one sharp enough because of the vibration and motion of the ship.
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The bright tungsten (incandescent) bulbs of the stern of the ship actually turns the bright red smoke stack orange to yellow with over exposure. The intense blue sky is from the full moon night. Being out on the Great Lakes during a full moon was a real treat.
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This image is all available light and is a one minute exposure at ISO 400 with full moonlight and incandescent lamps reflecting off the bright red stack (from the previous image). The red glow was barely discernible to the naked eye, but the sensor saw it!
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This image shows the glow of the full moon on the Lake. To the naked eye, you could not see the horizon line, due to the marine haze. It made it difficult to shoot with a straight horizon, and I had to “chimp” to make sure it was straight.
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This is a one minute exposure of the full moon rising off the starboard deck. The exposure was tricky on this shot because the moon was fading in and out of the clouds. The speed of the ship added to the movement of the clouds. This is the best of 8 versions of this shot.
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I will be lecturing in New York City this next week, so this blog will stay up until I return. Next week I will show more from this series with examples of movement and mixed lighting.
Nice work Tom. Thanks for sending me the link.
Tom,
Beautiful images. I’m amazed how sharp they are given the motion of the ship. Must have been fun.
Dan
Tom, Great photos – Congrats! It looks like you had a wonderful trip with opportunity for some extraordinary shots. I particularly liked the red/orange smokestack composition, as well as the image of reflected light on the bridge. I’m always amazed at the sensitivity of the digital sensors – such vibrant colors are evident in the final image of a scene which is mostly dark to the eye. Good luck with the NY lecture. I’m looking forward to the next blog posting, already. Cheers!
Hello Tom, great photographs. I just stumbled on this page by chance. I served as a Third Mate on this ship last year and I am a photography enthusiast. Since sailing is my career much of the subject matter I’ve found to be interesting involves the industrial landscape.
I was also a cadet on this ship in 2010 and must have departed only a month or two before your journey. I am envious of some of the great shots you managed to coax out of this boat.