Another remnant of the cold war has been rendered obsolete by modern technology. This civil defense siren sits atop the Moosup Valley Volunteer Fire Department in Foster, RI. The siren has been silent for almost 30 years, however. In my youth, the civil defense sirens would be tested twice daily, at noon and at 6:00 PM. Those sirens, however, fell silent when the entire network of alarms was replaced by the Emergency Broadcast System. In communities like this one, the sirens were also used to call volunteer fire and rescue personnel and the pattern emitted would direct them to the location of the fire or accident. That entire system has been replaced by radio and cell communications, however. Now, the sirens that still sit atop most of the older fire houses are merely ornamental.
I wanted an overcast day for this shot since I really wanted to show the siren against the backdrop of storm clouds. Given the Cold War legacy of the Civil Defense system, it seemed fitting, somehow. For post processing, I ran this first through Topaz Adjust and used a dramatic II HDR filter. That produced a great amount of detail in the building, trees, and the siren, but it did nothing for the clouds. For that, I used Redynamix. The combination produced a tremendous amount of noise, especially in the sky, so I followed it with Neat Image and maximized the noise reduction. The next layer was a duplicate of the Topaz Adjust layer desaturated, in soft light blend mode, and using a high pass filter at 6 pixels. I added a sepia photo filter, and then transformed the image to black and white with a gradient map. Brightness and Contrast were adjusted and the final layer is a second sepia filter.
Great moody b&w, and I love the history behind this. Hard to believe it used to be tested twice daily, how things have changed! Thanks for your lovely comments :)
@izzymathie Thanks, Izzy! As kids, we depended on those twice daily tests! We knew to go in for lunch when they sounded at noon, and we went in for dinner when they sounded at 6:00!
Great feel to this Ron, and impressive processing. Love your description also, about using the siren to get on home. Ah, thems were the days when our mothers never saw us!
@fritzbuff@new2this Thanks, Fritz and Ann. I'm fascinated by these cold war relics. We have a number of items across the state that will likely make an appearance at some point.
March 29th, 2012
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@tulipgirl Thanks, Alicia. Yes, that's how I remember those days as well! I went out to play at 8, and my folks didn't see me again until noon.