Today was one of those days when none of the photo plans worked. What you see before you is a hastily taken "safety shot" during the most uncooperative lunch outing. It was a very nice day, weatherwise, so I decided to head to Colt State Park in Bristol at lunch. While crossing the Barrington Bridge, though, I spotted a woman kayaking. I know that she normally kayaks out to Colt, so I ducked down Water Street in Warren and stopped at the Town Wharf. My plan was to photograph her paddling past the empty mariner at the Town Wharf. For some reason, though, she cut her route short and I saw her looping around and island and heading back towards Barrington. By then it was too late to continue towards Colt, so I decided to try for her along the river. Just in case, I grabbed a very fast shot of the image you see in front of you.
Suffice it to say, I never saw her again. She wasn't visible from any of the road crossings across the river. I pulled into the boat ramp section along Route 114 where she normally puts in. Sure enough, her truck was there, but she was nowhere in site. I did take several photos from that location. The White Church was lost in haze, so that didn't work. A Victorian era house across the way was my next shot, but power lines ruined that photo. I did get a nice photo of a juvenile red-tailed hawk in flight, but that's hardly a Photo-a-Day candidate. After all that, I had to settle for my safety shot.
So what is this shot, you may ask? Well, it's a trash barrel at the Town Wharf in Warren. They decorated the barrel holder with an anchor and chain from a large yacht, and it's that decoration that I decided to make the centerpiece of today's photo. That also explains the "recycled and reused" caption. Fortunately, it does make a somewhat interesting b&w.
Post processing started with a classic filter in Topaz B&W FX. I adjusted the color sensitivity sliders followed by adaptive exposure, regions, contrast, details, boost black, boost white, and protect highlights. A levels, brightness, and contrast adjustment was added in PSE and it was topped off with a sepia photo filter.
Here's the high res version in Smugmug:
http://kannafoot.smugmug.com/Photo-Challenges/PAD2013/i-9497vkK/0/XL/2013%2003%2011_0022%20copy-XL.jpg
