I took this photo when we were in Wilmington, North Carolina for a civil war weekend and had a dinner cruise aboard the Henrietta III on the Cape Fear River as part of the trip.  The whole weekend was great!  We cruised past the decommissioned USS North Carolina, a World War II Battleship as the sun was setting.  I really wanted to capture the light as it appeared at that moment reflecting off the water and onto the hull of the ship and then back onto the water.  Such a beautiful golden color, it was almost glowing!  The sky was also a very pretty pinkish purple coloration with not a cloud to be seen.  It was a glorious moment in a day filled with other such moments!  I didn’t have my tripod with me and even if I did I could not have used it on this boat as there were just to many people walking about on narrow outside walkways and I could feel the slight shivers and shimmy of the boat thru my feet as it cut thru the water.  I don’t think a tripod would have done much good and I am happy with the photo I ended up with as seen here.

I intentionally shot the ship a bit on the underexposed side to make sure that I captured all of the detail I could. What you say?!?  Underexpose a shot on purpose???  That’s just crazy talk!  ;^)        I use Adobe Lightroom  to process most of my photos and it does an exceptional job of pulling out the details when making the adjustments.  I also use Adobe Photoshop but to a much lesser extent.  I have soooo much to learn about the powers of Photoshop and I only know how to use a few of the features but I am learning!  I can say that I really am liking Lightroom 4 more than Photoshop though.  I am also learning the details of Lightroom and the powers that it has as well!  It amazes me to think how much easier that the computer adjustments/processing as compared to the old darkrooms that I was familar with when learning how to shoot.  So much has changed!  No noxious fumes or chemicals to work with either!  That part is nice but I do miss the intensity of the darkroom.  The absolute darkness….the smells of the chemicals….the quietness and the anticipation of questioning whether or not I am going to get the result I wanted.  Ahhh….good times.  Good times.