Monday, December 15, 2014

The Maderia Beach Boat Parade, 2014

We looked down on the gathering boats, all moving like a electrified swarm of ants, as they jockeyed for position. The Christmas Maderia Beach boat parade was starting at John's Pass and we wanted to enjoy the merrily lit boats, (if you are in the area you really should view one of the Christmas boat parades).
The boats were all wired and we mean really wired with some pretty neat themes. One even towed a large rubber ducky and its captain seemed determined to be the first in line. Finally the boats arranged themselves in order and motored in line to the east before turning into one of the many canals and disappearing from our view.
We were watching the parade from a new friends condo balcony, (thanks Mike), and I steadied our new camera against the railing. We had finally saved up and bought a new cannon camera and telephoto lenses for our Christmas present, and hopefully we will be smart enough to figure out how to use it.
The night imaging setting takes four images, one after another and then merges them together, during this time you really don't want any motion and of course the boats were moving in a parade. Nothing ventured nothing gained and so holding the camera against the railing I took multiple images hoping for some good ones.
It wasn't the first boat parade we have tried to capture but before the images always contained squiggly lines as the motion and darkness was too much for our old cameras to handle. After uploading the images we then used Picasso to crop the images, (the last image is original and has not been manipulated), before adjusting the images and readying them for our blog. Merry Christmas and  of course clear skies

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