The weatherman did finally deliver as promised. A last minute meeting prevented a lunch-time trip to my planned location, but I knew I could count on some die-hard fishermen out on the East Bay Bike Path where it crosses the Barrington River for a rainy day photo op. I wasn’t disappointed. In fact, there were far more fishermen out here today than I expected. After taking this shot, I asked if they were fishing for tautaug, since this tasty black fish tends to hang out along the pilings under bridges like this in the salt water rivers along Narragansett Bay. It turns out, though, that stripers are running, and they’ve been pulling legal sized striped bass (i.e. 34 inches or larger) out of the river when the tide’s right. That explains the large number of fishermen braving the elements today.
What drew me to this shot was the reflection of the fishermen on the wet bike path. I debated editing out the power lines – I really hate power lines in my photos – but then I noticed all the fishing line hanging from the wires. Suddenly the power lines became an interesting element in the story, so I left them in. The final decision was to go black and white with the shot. The color version hid the gloomy nature of the weather, and the power lines were too distinctive in that mode, so I opted for the black and white look.
Processing, besides the b&w conversion, focused on contrast. The jackets worn by the fisherman blended into the background all too well and it required a bit of adjustment to bring them out a bit. I started with a brilliant cold filter in Topaz Adjust. From there I did the b&w conversion using a gradient map in color blend mode. I applied a levels adjustment followed by a brightness and contrast adjustment. The final layer was a sepia photo filter, but I didn’t care for the full effect and ended up adjusting the opacity of the filter down to 70%.
