Wednesday, February 28, 2018

Winter trek, Part II: Savannah in daylight

Subsequent Photo Potpourri posts from our stay in Savannah will focus on visits to three Savannah attractions -- the American Prohibition Museum and two fine arts institutions -- the Telfair Academy and Jepson Center for the Arts, two of three attractions that are part of the Telfair Museums. (The third one, the Owens-Thomas House, was closed for interior repair work when we were there). So almost all of the new outdoor photos I took during daylight hours while we were in Savannah occurred on Feb. 1, the last full day we were there.

On previous visits, we had stopped at two of the city's most renowned eateries for fried chicken and southern cooking, Mrs. Wilkes' Dining Room (cash only) and The Lady and Sons. This time around, we checked with several people to ask if we had missed any other "must try" friend chicken/southern cooking restaurants, and we received resounding endorsements from The Olde Pink House.

So on Feb. 1, with our time in Savannah expiring, we decided to make a visit there for lunch before strolling through the old historic district and, again, River Street. The exterior of The Olde Pink House is (thankfully) pink, as shown in the photo leading off the post. I'll delve into our meal there in depth in a later post, but I will say that my friend chicken was excellent. (Lee Ann wasn't in a chicken mood; she did the fried liver thing, one of her favorites).

To see a larger, sharper version of an image, simply click on the image. To view a full gallery of photos taken outdoors in Savannah during daylight hours on this trip, click on the link in this sentence.

Photo geek stuff: All photos here were shot with a Canon 6D and Tamron 28-300mm f/3.5-6.3 Di PZD VC lens equipped with a polarizing filter. All compositions were bracketed for three exposures, some of which were melded into one frame using Photomatix high-dynamic range (HDR) software. Most images in this post, however, were one of the single frames.

Above is the view of the Savannah River through a small opening near the start of the historic district at the top of the bluff. In this view, you can see a pedestrian bridge (foreground) to shops along the upper commercial strip and, across the river, portions of the convention center (left) and the Westin Hotel (right) on Hutchinson Island. In the two photos below, there is a tightly cropped section of the island (first below) and a full view of the convention center (second below).



Above: View of a boat on the river from one tiny opening in the bluff overlooking the riverwalk.

Above: The stone walks, roads and steps to the riverwalk are something worth stopping to appreciate.

Above: One of the trolleys making its way east down River Street. 

Above: I took this photo mostly for the benefit of my granddaughter Lizzy. Another reason: Lizzy's has a great deal on frozen margaritas -- $3 (until 4 p.m., I think). And it's a substantial serving. Even better, Savannah has an open carry law (for alcohol, I mean) as long as it's in a transparent container. 

Above: I photographed the Waving Girl (real name: Florence Martus) from all angles on my first visit last year, but I felt compelled to do it again this year. Her daily greeting of ships that passed through the port of Savannah for 44 years -- according to legend, she did so in hopes of being seen again by a sailor with whom she'd fallen in love -- is a remarkable story. 

Above: Taking a break in the cool of an afternoon breeze ... perhaps to people watch? 

The riverwalk has an extended tunnel at one point, although water from heavy rains still manages to get in and pool at various low points in the pavement. The shots above and below are some more reflection compositions. Photos two through four below focus on a lengthy glassed area of storefront in the tunnel ... and the window washer who was doing his job that afternoon.





Above: I liked this structure for the windows, balconies and flags above the first level. A closeup of those red outdoor tables are shown below.  




Above: The object here was to see how compact the compression of signage would turn out in this section of the walk. 

Above: This pub's invitingly bright entry caught my attention.  

Above: In addition to using this as an example of materials composited you'll find frequently on building facades along the riveralk, I liked the geometric pattern of the balconies here.

Above: I'd seen River Street before, so when I returned on this trip, I was looking for new perspectives. I guess you could call this a "looking upward" view. 

Above and below: At one point in the afternoon stroll, I became fascinated with the undulating path of the brick pavement, which sparked these compositions.  



Above: On Hutchinson Island, this gazebo piqued my interest. I walked around till I could position the Georgia Queen steamboat, docked across the river, right in the middle of the structure. This is an high-dynamic range (HDR) version of the composition, which I preferred only slightly. I'd have liked it better without the chromatic aberration, which I struggled to minimize in post-processing. But it was largely unavoidable: Even though I shot this with the sun out of the picture, piling on three exposures (which happens in HDR software) in a back-lighting composition is still bound to include some discoloring. 

Above: I processed this composition as both a single frame and an HDR image. There wasn't much difference after I boosted shadow details in the this single-frame version, which I ended up preferring a little better. 


Above: In my previous visits to Savannah, I hadn't noticed this street corner mirror opposite The Lady and Sons at Whitaker and Congress streets. So I found a workable perspective and took this shot. You can see the restaurant's sign in the middle of the mirror.

You're certain to come across street performers and musicians at several points along the riverwalk. The combo you see in the photo above and next two below were particularly good when we came upon them on an early afternoon swing along the walk. They were singing spirituals and classic blues. When I made a second swing later to hopefully catch some dynamic sunset color, I came upon the guy in the wheelchair by himself (third photo below) at a different location along the walk. I'm sure I saw him at the same spot when we visited in March 2017. The guitarist (fourth below) was playing on the plaza of an eating establishment, so I'm sure he was a hired musician. But the flutist (fifth below) was another freelancer, playing at yet another point.






Above: These homeless gentlemen were lounging in a covered area of a plaza along the riverwalk.

Above and below: During my stay in Savannah this time, I tried on several occasions to capture different compositions incorporating the City Hall dome. I presented a few in yesterday's post ... here are two more.


Next up: The American Prohibition Museum

Previous posts in this series: 




Tuesday, February 27, 2018

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