James Newman
Member
I got lucky Saturday morning. I took a ride down to the Galveston Cruise Terminal intending to get a few shots of some ships for a little contest I participate in. Unfortunately when I arrived there were no ships in the berths. Bummed out, I drove on down Seawall Blvd on Galveston Island to see if I could shoot something else. The sun began to rise out over the gulf and I stopped to try some sunrise shots. After about a half hour of shooting the same thing way too many times, the sun was completely up so I decided to go on home. In doing so I had to drive back by the cruise terminals. The channel runs right along beside the road and lo and behold I saw the stack of a cruise ship billowing smoke and heading into port. I whipped into a lot next to the terminal and grabbed my gear and ran. I got there just before the ship reached me and was able to fire off a number of shots. It was really cool watching as the ship stopped and then turned a complete 180 and then slipped sideways up to the dock. I have trouble sometimes navigating my little 21' bay boat and I watched this thing move ever so gracefully right where it needed to be. I took a few more shots and then went home. I was using the only lens I have that is wide enough to capture the entire ship from that location. It's the 18-55mm kit lens that came with my D40. I was shooting with this lens on the D200 in manual focus so I was worried it might not be sharp. The auto focus quit working on this cheap little kit lens. Anyway, it turned out ok, at least to me, and once again a day that I thought was going to be a complete waste turned out to be wonderful.
