the Elissa Revisted

Before I move on from Galveston, I have some more images from our day sail on the Elissa. I made several attempts to capture close-ups of the hands of the crew but most were rejects except the top image. Part of the problem was the light, part was staying out of their way while they worked which made angle and composition of their hands difficult. I do think the image shows the strength and the ruggedness of this man's hand. For the second image, it was pretty impressive to watch the crew scramble up the rope ladders to tie up the sails at the end of the trip, but I can't say that feeling exactly comes across in this shot...you'll have to just take my word on that! Maybe a wider angle would have been better so the viewer could see the height these climbers rose to, but there was a lot of clutter below them and I chose not to include all that.

Camera info: Nikon D200 with 24- 70 2.8 lens, top image f8 at 1/250th, bottom imagef5.6 at 1/800th, ISO 100, cloudy whitebalance

Post processing: Top image: softlight background layer at 50% opacity, levels for brightness, Popsickle for details in the arm but masked off elsewhere. Bottom image: softlight layer at 50% opacity, curves for contrast, Luminizer for midtone brightness, the Edge for sharpening, Popsickle in softlight mode for details