Tucked beneath the Braga Bridge spanning Mount Hope Bay and connecting the cities of Fall River and Sommerset, Massachusetts floats Battleship Cove. This is the largest collection of preserved US Naval Vessels in the world and includes five National Historic Landmarks: the Battleship USS Massachusetts, the Destroyer USS Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr., the Submarine USS Lionfish, and PT Boats 617 and 796. The centerpiece of the museum is the USS Massachusetts which was launched in Quincy, MA in 1941 and participated in Operation Torch, the invasion of North Africa. The majority of her tour in World War II, however, was in the Pacific where she fought in the Solomon Islands, participated in the assault on the Gilbert Islands, and in the Marshall Islands. Most notably, her 16-inch guns provided heavy artillery support in the battles for Iwo Jima and Okinawa. In an interesting piece of historical trivia, the Massachusetts fired the last American 16-inch projectile of the war in her bombardment of the steel works at Kamaishi. "Big Mamie" was deactivated in 1946.
Adjacent to the maritime museum is the Massachusetts Heritage Park and the picturesque boardwalk creates numerous photo opportunities both for the street photographer and for those interested in viewing the historic battleship from a distance. The three walkers in today's photo were very cooperative subjects. I wanted the scenery you see here as the background for the photo, but to make it work I really needed to include people. Otherwise, it would just be a sterile photo of the battleship, not unlike the other thousand or so taken every month. There weren't many people about, though, and I stood around for over a half hour waiting for someone to enter the scene. These three came out of the heritage center, but instead of coming down the steps to this boardwalk, they walked down the ramp behind me. As they approached, I smiled and said, "I was really hoping you were coming down the steps! This scene needs some life to make the photo work." The gentleman on the right said, "Oh, no problem!" The three of them walked to the corner of the boardwalk and then turned back to walk up towards me so I could take this photo. It was very unexpected but most appreciated!
Post processing started with a classic filter in Topaz B&W FX. I adjusted color sensitivity sliders, adaptive exposure, regions, boost black, boost white, contrast, and protect highlights. I then applied a photo pop filter in Topaz Adjust and adjusted adaptive exposure, contrast, and protect highlights. A levels adjustment was added in PSE.
Here's the high res version in Smugmug:
http://kannafoot.smugmug.com/Photo-Challenges/PAD2013/i-8fhZST6/0/XL/2013%2011%2016_0056%20copy-XL.jpg
