M/V Galveston Bay, 4-21-24

 Someone forgot to process this one last week.

An evening by the river

I took my camera down to the riverfront this evening. Too bad I didn't take a memory card, too. But I had my phone, so I got at least four images worth sharing here.

Good light for boat photography

 It's different having high water like this with green trees and warm weather. Here at 6:30 the light is good for photography.

Check out the roof

 Here's another view of the M/V Mike Sanders at Catlettsburg KY yesterday.

The river is up again. If he's heading northbound, he has four bridges (three highway, one railroad) in the next 20 miles. If he's southbound, he has three highway bridges in his first 10 to 15 miles. After that he has a highway bridge at the Greenup Locks and Dam and one railroad and two highway bridges in the Portsmouth OH area.

M/V Mike Sanders at Catlettsburg KY, 4/13/24

 

M/V Nashville plus 3

 The M/V Nashville came up to Catlettsburg KY yesterday evening. The river was running high, so I had to try to get a picture of it. Here it is passing the McGinnis boatyard at South Point, Ohio.

I believe the three boats are, from left, the John Vaughn, the Michael T. Somales and the Tom Frazier. The Tom Frazier was the one that had the problem at Portsmouth OH a few weeks ago.

M/V Porter J. Furlong, 4/4/24 ... with a tight fit

We got to see another former AEP boat pass through the area today, although this sighting was more of an accident. I was down at the river checking out how high the water had come up. At a previous stop I had seen a boat heading upriver. I didn't expect it to be passing my spot when I got to the boat ramp at the mouth of the Guyandotte River.

I was happy to see the Porter J. Furlong -- the former Mountain State of AEP. When it was owned by AEP, it was a frequent sight in these parts, pushing coal barges to and from AEP's plants in this area.

For this shot, I was tempted to get all artsy with it and see how far from reality I might want to take it. But when I looked at it, I thought, no, this is a nice shot of a beautiful boat. All I did to prepare it for this entry was to crop out some distracting elements and take the resolution down so it would load.

After I wrote that, I said to myself, let's take another view of this boat and get artsy. I tried by playing with noise levels and color saturation and all that, but when I got to this point, I couldn't do any more to it because I kind of liked it.

As I fiddled with this image, I zoomed in to see how parts of it looked. Then I saw these guys on the wheelhouse roof lowering the radar antennas. (Antennae for you language purists.)

The next shot in the sequence showed how tight things looked from the shore, what with the river being so high and the boat being so tall to begin with. Something happened between the shots and I accidentally turned off the autofocus, so that one came out pretty blurry zooned in. Becaise of that. I'm not doing anything with it for now.

But that's how an unplanned photo shoot came out.