Winter trek, Part I: Savannah ... at night

Today begins the series of posts about my winter 2018 trek, a journey of 15 days and nights, starting in Savannah, Ga., before making three stops in Florida -- St. Augustine, the Keys and Ormond Beach.

The itinerary was a balance of "old" and new. Lee Ann and I had been to Savannah and the Keys before, truly enjoying both. In fact, this would be our third visit to Savannah. St. Augustine and Ormond Beach were added to give us something new.

You'd really have to like a travel destination to go back there three times in less than a year, and that's describes how I feel about Savannah. Each time I go there, I learn more about it and appreciate it even more. This time, I even began (and finished) reading the "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil," the book by John Berendt that Clint Eastwood made into a movie three years later.

Savannah has really benefited -- in terms of tourism interest and traffic -- from the book and film, whose primary story is about the May 1981 shooting death of a young hustler and male prostitute in the home of Jim Williams, a successful local antiques dealer whose house fronted Monterrey Square, one of 20-plus neighborhood parks designed in the old historic district during the city's early development.

Berendt was in Savannah in the mid-1980s until the early 1990s, and his book wasn't published until 1994. He had plenty of time to capture some of the community's quirky local characters. Drag queen Lady Chablis, who starred as herself in the Eastwood movie and died in 2016, was most prominent among them.

One thing Lee Ann and I hadn't done in our two previous visits was to ride the river ferry across to Hutchinson Island, where the Savannah Convention Center was located. It connects to the multi-story Westin Hotel. We had been on the island in December when a nighttime trolley tour took us to the Westin to see the city's annual gingerbread house display. But we hadn't crossed the river on the ferry.

On the Monday the 29th of January, the first full night there, Lee Ann and I did the ferry ride near sunset -- and caught some gorgeous sky colors. Both Lee Ann and I just had our iPhones with us. We also had a full moon to integrate into the images, and I spent a good amount of time doing that.
I think Lee Ann's orange-hued sky pictures turned out better than mine. She had her eye on that when the optimum colors crept in; when that happened, I had my back to the west while focusing on the moon shots over the Westin. I caught only the tail end of the orange sky highlights.

I went back to do the round-trip ferry ride (it's free) three nights later -- this time with my 6D -- hoping for another chance to capture gorgeous color. But it didn't work out that way, the clouds weren't around and ... my timing was off. I went out too early. I sat around and missed a couple of the ferry
pickups on the island waiting for it to get dark, but the sky, sun and clouds did not cooperate with the same spectacular show.

The photo leading off the post, taken from Hutchinson Island looking back at the city riverfront, is from the second night I did the ferry ride.

You can see my shots from the Savannah night shoots at the link in this sentence. Some of the "night" shots actually were taken just before sundown, so you'll see daylight in a few of them.

Photo geek stuff: The lead photo and first seven below were taken on Feb. 1 using my Canon 6D equipped with a Tamron 28-300mm f/3.5-6.3 Di PZD VC lens. I bracketed each composition for three exposures, although most of the images you see here are single frames. The remainder of the images were taken on Jan. 29.

Two views (above and below) of the riverwalk as the ferry returns from Hutchinson Island.  

Above and below: Shots of the bridge over the river. In the one below, you see the Westin on the right on Hutchinson Island. 

Opportunities to exploit patterns. Above, outside Joe's Crab Shack; below, as we approached the Mariott. The shot below was treated in HDR software to get some color in to a sky rendered white in all of the single frames.

Above: One of the first shots I took after returning to land. I processed this image through high-dynamic range (HDR) software to cull some color into the sky. The sky was white in all of the single frames.  

Above and below: On the ferry to Hutchinson Island on Jan. 29, I used my iPhone to get the moon into shots in various positions in relation to the Westin. In yet another frame, I had it sitting right on top of the horizontal line just right of the right cupula.

Above and below: Views of the riverwalk, on the trip back from Hutchinson Island, with City Hall, the Georgia Queen passenger steamer and the Hyatt-Regency Hotel. 

Above and below: My best shots of the color show on Jan. 29, both as our ferry came toward the island to pick us up. The colors changed dramatically in a very short period of time. 

Before embarking on the ferry ride on Jan. 29, I grabbed these shots along the riverwalk. The perspective of the above is 180 degrees different from the one I used in a post from my first visit to Savannah, in early March 2017. That shot had the river in the background.

Above and below: I shot this scene twice while I was in Savannah, and the above, using the iPhone, was the first. Because of the contrast in light (dark in the foreground, light in the background), I knew it would be a good candidate for HDR treatment. So when I came back two days later, with the 6D, I bracketed it for three exposures and treated it in HDR software during post-processing (below). HDR probably wasn't nearly as effective on the reshoot as it would have been if I'd used it the first night because. It was a bit earlier in the day the second time around, so the contrast wasn't nearly as dramatic.

I liked the dynamic contrast the iPhone gave me in the shots of the buildings along the riverwalk above and below. 

Above: I also did this shot twice -- trees framing the City Hall. This is the iPhone version. The 6D one wasn't a whole lot different. 

Above and below: The iPhone did well capturing these water reflection photos on the brick-paved River Street.

Next up: Savannah in daylight