photobyjohnbo

Cellpic Sunday – Arrival in Miami

Early morning arrival.

Miami, Florida.

I was up early on disembarkation day. We like to pack light and take our luggage off the ship, skipping the overnight pickup and the timed departure for picking up our stuff at the pier. It’s simply easier to walk off the ship with our luggage as soon as the ship clears customs and we “walk-offs” are allowed to leave.

We got ready for one more breakfast on the ship and I stepped out on the balcony. We were already docked when I awoke and around 6:30, I captured this image of the sunrise. It was still technically the blue hour as the sun hadn’t yet broken the horizon line and the long cruise ship causeway contained many ships getting ready to disgorge their passengers and accept a new cadre of guests.

About the photo: I captured the image with my Samsung S23U in pro mode, so I had a DNG file to work with. I’ve been using pro mode on this camera much more often as it is easier to extract the DNGs from the camera than in my previous Samsung. I loaded the file into Adobe Lightroom Classic to catalog it and use the geometric straightening tools. I also cropped the right edge. A cruise ship bow and our ship’s superstructure blocked my capture of the brightest area of the sky and those details didn’t add anything to the image.

From the basic adjustments, I sent it off to Luminar Neo for final processing. First on the agenda was noise reduction in the Noiseless app. Even at a high reduction setting, the left side still exhibits some noise artifacts, but Neo’s treatment removed most of the noise. An overhang from our ship blocked the upper right corner of the sky so an application of Luminar Neo’s Gen-Erase tool removed the obstruction. It did a nice job of recreating the sky in that area. A slight difference in shading could easily be attributed to that thin cloud layer just below the area I modified with one of Neo’s latest AI tools. Only a slight tweak of the Enhanced AI tool finished the image to my satisfaction and I was ready to share it here. Click on the image above to view it in 2K HD on my Flickr site if you want to pixel peep.

I encourage fellow bloggers to create their own Cellpic Sunday posts. I never have a specific topic for this feature, and the only rules are that the photo must be captured with a cell phone, iPad, or another mobile device… If you have an image from a drone or even a dashcam, that’s acceptable as well. The second rule is to link your challenge response to this post or leave a comment here with a link to your post in the comment. Oh, and, you don’t have to post it on a Sunday.

John Steiner

50 comments

    • Thanks, Jo. We used to put out the bags for unloading every night. When we decided to limit ourselves to airline size carry-ons, we found it so much easier to disembark and get on our way.

      Reply

  4. Fantastic shot, John 👏 The light-to-dark graduation across the image is perfect, made better by the silhouetted skyline in the lightest part of the shot 😃

    Reply

  13. It’s a very interesting feeling to arrive somewhere at that hour. There is the stillness of sleep when you arrive and slowly watch the place starting to wake up! My entry here:

    Seating

    Reply

  22. Lovely picture. I hadn’t heard of the blue hour before. It hasn’t heard of me, either. I think you should show the before and after pictures, John. The way it is, it seems like the picture has always looked perfect. It’s seamless. 🙂

    Reply

    • Thanks, Marsha! You are forecasting a post that I am already working on for a future challenge. Stay tuned.
      My blue hour photos tend to be from the evening hour rather than the morning.

      Reply

      • Interesting. I thought that the evening was the golden hour. I should take some more photography classes. Things like composition and processing are more interesting to me than how the camera works.

      • Golden hour is either morning or evening, Same for blue hour. I also enjoy processing and composition, and I let the camera do the automatic exposure unless I’m trying a “camera trick.”

Leave a comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.