‘Y ou doing any shooting this weekend ?’, funny I couldn’t answer. I’m always going shooting, I just don’t know where and often I’ll drive around scouting for todays or a future locations. I know that an overcast day like today gives you a softbox effect which gives you more time to find something. I am usually looking around water. In this area of upstate NY, there is a convergence of a lot of water ways, so I just keep my eyes open. If it is not water, then history, landscapes, cities, graveyards, trails…the journey is discovery and this area is feature rich.
I had no clue that these old tugs even existed before yesterday morning. When I saw them as I drove over the bridge and luckily it was an easy effort to get to them.
It is a fact that we all love tug boats. Something about them seems iconic, helpful, steadfast and undaunted by colossal tasks. They are the little guy who will take on the biggest job and do it well without complaint. So for your knowledge, the tug on the right is named the ‘Buffalo’ and dates from 1923. The tug on the left is named the “Chancellor’ and was built in 1938 in the Brookline, NY shipyards. Both tugs are in the stewardship of the Waterford Maritime Historical Society an organization who ‘continue to pursue the full restoration and preservation of these magnificent vessels’.
My Nikon lens was not any of the fancy new VR, AF-S, Nano glass. Nope. The glass for the day was the heavy old-school Mico_Nikkor 70-180mm f/4.5-5.6. This lens has excellent optics and there is no aperture change with focus. The only downsize is the small aperture and it is a bit slow on autofocus, oh and it is designed before the current standard 77m diameter, so you need to carry your 62mm filter stack. Thom Hogan has a great article on this lens.
I moved back and forth around the tugs. What was the subject, how could I get best get my shot with a bald, grey, kind of hot sky. For me, the second I saw the two noses of these boats, I knew that was the image to take. My framing was just off center and with a bit of angle. The background of grass, ground foliage and river rock trails was ugly and distracting both in colors and textures. I was not too sure how I was going to deal with that it post. In any event, after an hour of so taking other images of the these two old tugs, my travels were headed home.
In the digital darkroom, only one Image was needed and after finishing I was still bothered by the annoying background, even a slight depth of field blur did not help me. It was then that my mind thought of finishing it off with the black and white process that Vincent Versace teaches over at Kelby. However before that, I decided to try some other color conversions for myself. I finished the image in PS B&W and then next in NIK Silver Effect B&W. Now, let’s see how much better is VV B&W actions.
In my final comparison it was really amazing how VV’s CS5 actions duplicates B&W film better than the other conversions. The ‘Old-Tugs’ image seems timeless here, these tugs are from the late 1930′s and you get the sense that this was how they were tied up back in the day.
