Removing the Present

I am back home in Flagstaff after visiting 15 countries over the last six weeks aboard the National Geographic Explorer. One photography challenge was capturing interesting images of historic features while excluding contemporary objects. One example was this replica of the type of sailing vessels used by the Hanseatic League during the Middle Ages. Unfortunately it was moored in the industrial part of the Lubeck, Germany harbor with cranes and other modern machinery near and behind it.

I made the image and then in Adobe Lightroom cropped out what I could and vignetted the corners to further hide unwanted features. You can also see that I changed it from color to sepia to give the image a vintage look. I may go back and do additional work on this image such as cloning out the building and crane that are still visible.

Baltic Sea

I am currently on the National Geographic Explorer sailing through the Baltic Sea with visits to many of the Hanseatic cities established during the Middle Ages. One of the main highlights occurs in Gdansk, when Nobel Peace Prize winner and former president of Poland, Lech Walesa comes on board to speak to our group.

My role on board is to help guests with their digital cameras so that they can take home better vacation images. It can be quite a challenge considering all the different models of cameras and varying photographic abilities. But it is fun.