SO! - We are in Sturgeon Bay at the Tall Ship Festival with my super duper new 150-600mm lens that I'm still trying to learn how to get the best out of it. There actually is a learning curve to this behemoth. It's not one of those awesome white len's you see real photographers have. OH - no - those cost more then my car. This one costs less then my car. About what I would get from selling 4 large images.
Anyway - We scoped out some places to view the ships. Quarry Park where the ships were mustering about a 1 mile out was packed. So we went to Sunset Park in the shade of a Weeping Birch tree (oh yes, it seems there is such a thing) and waited.
There were tall specks on the horizon so I played with the tripod and the lens and really the best way is to use a monopod. Which I did. Left hand on top of the lens to steady, don't use the full 600mm but bring it in JUST a tad for a sharper image.
This first shot is the U.S. Niagara - a replica - it was big in The Battle of Lake Erie and was in this battle where "Don't Give Up the Ship" was coined. The War of 1812
On September 13 1813, 9 small ships including the Niagara defeated a British squadron of 6 British Navy ships. A very big deal in 1813 that led to regaining Detroit from the British. This was a huge lift to the Nations moral and helped the entire war effort.
And it's about 5 miles out. BAM - drops the mic! LOL
110 feet long 32 wide crew of 20 and 20 "volunteers".
The ship on the right is the Barque Picton Castle (179 x 23)
Typically "volunteers" and especially in the British Navy were people they just took off the street without their will. Kidnapped basically. The British Navy was almost always undermanned by 30%
In the British Navy a seaman was literally lower class then a prisoner and they could drown. typically 30% of a crew were killed on tour. In fact on slave ships the slaves had only a marginally worse mortality rate they the crew. Crews were in the 50% range.
But let me digress . . . . 400 years earlier the Chinese were sailing ships 400+ feet long and 150 wide with over 750 sailors. FOUR HUNDRED YEARS EARLIER! Then they went all "China First" and the entire world missed that part of sailing.
The Nao Santa Maria that "discovered America" was 62 feet long and 18 feet wide. There were MANY Santa Maria's.
SO - back at Sunset Park we 're just hanging out. There are people from all over the world and buses from other states and OH YEA - outside our hotel room, maybe 30 yards away is the beer/mixed drink tent. But they did not offer Busch Light "The Nectar of the Gods"
So we wait and wait and seriously - I have only really looked at maybe 10 of the 150ish shots and - boring. What can ya do when taking shots of slow moving ships that do nothing but glide by! LOL
Getting bored? OK - check this out
The show Black Sails - our Pirate heroes and another pirate ship have come in contact with a Spanish Man of War. Pirate ship = 20ish cannon, Man of War = 124. I do love this show LOL
https://youtu.be/hXoUa5j0FKs
OK - back to reality . . . . .
The first of first 3 ships are entering our area
FUN FACT - we all know voyages on tall ships were nightmares. Literally rotting maggot infested food, water gone bad and many times the shipowners of merchant ships carrying passengers would short food supplies to save money.
In 1729 the Katharine left Londonberry with a crew of 123, 6 months later it landed in western Ireland with 14 crew left. The Lothrop arrived in Philadelphia arrived with 90 survivors. On the trip 70 adults and 30 children starved to death. (yea - I've been doing a lot of reading)
DJ believes in her former life she must have been on one of those ships. I will never get her on a cruise.
OK - gotta wrap this version of tall ships up with one more image.
This is "Windy" (took a long time to come up with THAT name I bet) 148 foot 4 masted gaff topsail schooner. The deal with this ship is it is basically a state of the art tall ship. It has EVERYTHING, bow thrusters for docking, a 300 horse power engine and it cal literally parallel park if it had too.
Shot taken about 4 miles away
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| E Scows racing |
That is where I get my love for sails.
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Different subject
Before I forget - there was a comment a few days ago that maybe some of my programmer friends can answer - above my SAS/COBOL head
My coder is trying to persuade me to move to .net from PHP. I have always disliked the idea because of the costs. But he's trying none the less. I've been using Movable-type on several websites for about a year and am concerned about switching to another platform. I have heard fantastic things about blogengine.net. Is there a way I can import all my wordpress content into it? Any kind of help would be really appreciated!
Anyone anyone??
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Weather - WEIRD THING HAPPENING - yea - it's going to be awesome for a while as we have an Omega HIGH over us which will bring basically ZERO wind for 4 days. Bad sailing weather.
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Gotta love the Baltimore Sun response to the yellow turd in office
"We would tell the most dishonest man ever to occupy the Oval Office, the mocker of war heroes, the gleeful grabber of woman's private parts, the serial bankrupter if businesses, the useful idiot of Vladimir Putin and the guy who insists there are "good people" among the murderous neo-Nazies that he's still not fooling most Americans into believing he's even slightly competent ion his current post.
Better to have a few rats that to be one"
OH - BTW - Trump approval rating among blacks is 6%
Two jokes that never need retelling -
1. Wisconsin has two seasons yada yada yada
2. How do you know when Trump is lying - when he opens his mouth.
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See ya
https://mfranc.com/blog/migrating-from-wordpress-to-blog-engine-net/
ReplyDeleteThanks Clark
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