Sailing Out

The Portuguese tall ship sails out of San Diego, California, after her week-long visit to "America's Finest City."

This ship is a training vessel for the Portuguese navy. It is on a current around-the-globe voyage and her next stop will be Hawaii. They pulled into San Diego last Monday and I was able to go aboard her and take some pics of her. They offered free tours to the public. It was parked next to the San Diego Maritime Museum.

For this shot, I headed out to Shelter Island, in Pt. Loma. My goal was to get the ship sailing out of the bay, with the skyline in the background. I wanted a part of the skyline, in which people who are familiar with San Diego, would recognize. One of these buildings is the One America Plaza building. It is the building off to the right which slants inward slightly and has a pointed top. If you look closely, you'll also see the Sante Fe train depot, with the "Sante Fe" sign visible.

There were a few challenges with the shot. To get this angle, one of the unknowns is the public boat traffic also in the bay. Finding a good angle on the ship, where the public boats add just enough, yet don't impair the vision too much of the vessel was one of them. The other challenge was the marine layer coming in right at this time and causing the sun to appear/disappear a few times.

The idea was to really showcase the splendor and size of the ship. I could have chosen a high vantage point to look down, but I wasn't sure if the ship would really "pop" out in that composition. Therefore, I chose a water-level shot instead. I wanted to also get the ship on an angle sort of coming at the viewer, which gives it a 3-D view of the ship. I also wanted it to soar high above the skyline, to really showcase it's size.

I used a 300mm lens on my Canon Mark III (1.3X crop), at f8, to take this shot. There will be more photos of this fabulous ship to come.