Despite its status as the smallest state in the US, Rhode Island has over 400 miles of coastline thanks in no small part to the passage of the Wisconsinan ice sheet at the end of the last glacial age. With that much waterfront, it's no wonder that fishing plays such a large role in the Rhode Island economy. Today's photo highlight's the most valuable single-species resource in Little Rhody's fishing industry: the American Lobster. This tasty crustacean is a delicacy in the US, although it is threatened by overfishing and the destruction of its coastal habitat. Interestingly enough, in colonial times the lobster was so abundant they could be caught by hand right along the shore. Being scavengers, lobster was considered a low quality food fit only for servants, and Rhode Island law actually limited the number of days per week servants could be forced to eat it. Commercial lobstering started in the mid-1800s in New England, and the demand for the crustacean has been on the rise ever since.
This shot is very close to being SOOC. For those that wonder why I do not post SOOC (or "Straight Out Of the Camera",) I shoot in RAW mode, not allowing the camera to do the conversion to JPEG. What this means is that none of the processing normally done by the camera is incorporated in my base image. The sharpening, color balance, white balance, and overall color tones normally done by the camera's internal software are not done for RAW images which means all of that processing must be done after the fact in a photo editor. In truth, there's no such thing as an unprocessed digital photo, but posting "SOOC" means that the photographer relied on the camera's internal software to do the processing instead of handling it manually after the fact. Given the sophistication of today's cameras, that's typically not a bad option at all!
That said, this shot is pretty close to SOOC. I added a warm tone filter in Topaz Adjust, and then tweaked the levels just a hair. No other filters were added nor was any additional sharpening performed.
