A Little News

Shooting natural light in the documentary situation is great and ethical and all that but sometimes I shoot natural light just because there is no way to beat it or duplicate it. When you can combine something as cool as the Delta Queen riverboat with excellent natural light then you have a winner, maybe even one to hang on the wall. The Delta Queen is a historic boat and I had the chance to go on board last year and produce a Soundslides show from my visit for The Decatur Daily. You can go the the site and see the show at DecaturDaily.com and click on the extras tab. You then have to navigate to the show in the multimedia section. Sorry it is not easier. Be that as it may, the DQ is a very special boat in my life.

DeltaQueen1

This boat is really special to me because it is probably the earliest memory I have with my grandfather, Helon Waddell who was the lock master for many years at Wheeler Dam on the Tennessee River.  When I was a small boy he would call my mom and dad and let them know the Delta Queen was going to come through the locks and they would take my brother and I down to watch the boat lock through.  I was very cool then and seeing the boat today still produces wonder and awe in me and connects me to a time now long past.

I shot the boat for The Daily Thursday morning but the light was really not good.  Basically it was somewhat backlit by high morning sun and there was some haze in the atmosphere which eliminated any possibility of a decent scenic type shot.  I went ahead and turned the photos in and they were placed on the page.  I had already decided to take my kids back up to see the boat later in the evening after work because I wanted to give them a memory like I had from when I was a kid.  Plus, the Delta Queen will not be sailing the nation’s waterways much longer.  She lost a Congressional exemption last year that allowed her to carry passengers in spite of having a wooden hull.  She is also listed on the National Historic Registry and is just a beautiful boat.

I had already decided to take my children back up to see the boat before she left port so, after work, I grabbed my EOS 5D and the children and headed back to Rhodes Ferry. It was already right at sunset so there was little daylight to work with. I used this light to get a couple of photos of my children with the boat. As the daylight disappeared altogether, I tried some hand held shots in the dusk light. I used the human monopod technique to steady myself. My shutter speeds were something like 1/4 second and I was shooting at ISO 800 wide open. The only light was coming from the lamps in the park, the dusk sky and the riverboat itself.

I thought if I got something nice I would try and transmit it back to the paper after I got home. After we finished shooting the pictures, I did some chimping and decided that the photo of the riverboat at the top of this post would trump about anything I had shot earlier so I called our copydesk and they agreed to hold the page for me for about thirty minutes. I got home and zipped them a photo up and our readers had a nice, visual treat to wake up to and I think the photo did a nice job conveying the end of an era with the sunset metaphor going on.

Technically there was noting to these photos but aesthetically they are really special to me. They recall a bygone era and my grandfather and some great childhood memories of spending time down at the lock with him. Sometimes natural light is special and this was one of those times. There was not way I could have duplicated it in either quality or in quantity. The softness of the light and the muted blues in the photos are just beyond my technical ability to reproduce. So natural light is not all about ethics. Sometimes it is just about aesthetics.

DeltaQueen2

DeltaQueen3

Photos copyright Gary Cosby Jr.  The opinions expressed in this blog are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of my employer.