Skyline and boating along the Charles River, Boston

HaveCameraWillTravel

Here are some photos I took to try and capture the flavor of the Charles River in Boston. MIT students are often seen taking sailing lessons here. Some people sailboard as well. Hope you like the pictures.

#1 View of the Lagoon, Hancock and Prudential Towers from the Longfellow Bridge


#2 Recreational boats gathering for the July 4th 2009 Celebration and Fireworks.


#3 Sailboats passing by Government Center. You can see the golden dome of the State House at left.

Richard

Very nice light. On my (uncalibrated) monitor, these look just a little too saturated, though I know that's a matter of personal taste. Still, I lived in Boston for a time and I don't remember the Charles River ever looking quite that blue...or blue at all, IIRC .

HaveCameraWillTravel

Saturated colors

Richard wrote: »

Very nice light. On my (uncalibrated) monitor, these look just a little too saturated, though I know that's a matter of personal taste. Still, I lived in Boston for a time and I don't remember the Charles River ever looking quite that blue...or blue at all, IIRC .

Hi, Richard.

Well, actually, my camera is set for zero saturation boost, and I only apply a little extra saturation in post-processing. Also, I do not play with the hue. The bulk of the saturation you see (especially of the water) is coming from my use of a polarizer, and I try to shoot 90 degrees to the sun to get the most effect out of it. It does a nice job of accenting the colors and contrast. I never shoot on a sunny day without my polarizer. (And here's a tip: to avoid a cyan cast when using a polarizer in daylight, set the white balance to "flash".)

And you are right, for much of my work, it is my personal taste to render somewhat larger than life saturation because that is how I see it.

I will admit, upon re-examination of picture #3, I did indeed overdo the saturation. I think I was going for the "postcard look". I'm going to reprocess it from my original camera download archive files, and omit the extra saturation, just leaving that amount generated by the polarizer. Thank you for bringing that to my attention!

My goal is to excel in photography and that is a long road, so all critique is welcome. It gives me the objective feedback I need to improve.

Thanks again,
Art

HaveCameraWillTravel

Richard wrote: »

Very nice light. On my (uncalibrated) monitor, these look just a little too saturated, though I know that's a matter of personal taste. Still, I lived in Boston for a time and I don't remember the Charles River ever looking quite that blue...or blue at all, IIRC .

I reprocessed the picture from a copy of the original exposure, and I think the result is a big improvement. I admit the color before was way over the top!:giggle This is what I did:

1) Applied better anti-vignetting (I was shooting wide open because it was late afternoon and hand-held).
2) Cropped out as much of the two edge sailboats as possible without spoiling the comp, then cloned the remaining small pieces out of the water. They were distracting.
3) Applied histogram correction to fix the contrast.
4) Slightly warmed up the white balance because the lighting looked too cool for late afternoon.
5) Applied a tad more saturation to liven the trees and building colors, and the water did get a little bluer, but nothing like that fake color before.

If you go back to my original (edited) post, you will see the corrected image. Thanks for catching that.

Art