Thread: The skeletal remains of a once beautiful lady

My photographic quest today was to try and get close to the remains of the yacht Iverna, now a wreck on the shore of the Kingsbridge estuary. She was built in 1890 to the orders of a member of the jameson (of Irish whisky fame) family, 118 feet long over the bowsprit, 18 feet beam and carrying over 8000 square feet of sail. She raced the famous yachts of her day, in 1891 she won 23 prizes.


She now lies under the trees near Lincombe on the west side of the estuary. I have to wait for the tide to fall further, and even then it was a struggle to clamber over the rocks and wade through very soft mud.


Her iron frame lies stripped of its teak planking and fallen over on her starboard side.


Seaweed grows along her length and at high tide she often acts as a roosting site for both Redshank and Greenshank.


Her prow lies close under the trees.


She's slowly disintegrating with the passage of time.

Barrie

Barrie,

Find any doubloons?

Cheers, Jock

Had to Google for it. Is it this Iverna? http://lh3.ggpht.com/-Wd3LmVV_4aY/Tq...A/SFprqiiDs-I/

Originally Posted by wt21

Had to Google for it. Is it this Iverna? http://lh3.ggpht.com/-Wd3LmVV_4aY/Tq...A/SFprqiiDs-I/

Yes, that would be her in her racing days

Such an inglorious end, but it certainly makes a fascinating photographic study. I gather that the lighting conditions must have been difficult to shoot in.

Must have been beautiful in her day, and your photographs capture some of the remaining dignity. Nice.

Originally Posted by Luckypenguin

Such an inglorious end, but it certainly makes a fascinating photographic study. I gather that the lighting conditions must have been difficult to shoot in.

Nic, yes conditions were not easy, only weak, diffuse sun, but a rather pale sky with high cirrus cloud, coupled to a dark subject mainly in the shade of the trees. The dynamic range certainly exceeded the capacity of the GH2's sensor. I've had to work on boosting the shadows in Silver Efex Pro 2 and forgo anything in the sky, or even high value tones in the background. The subject would be better illuminated soon after dawn in the high summer months, although strong lighting would cast smaller deep shadows, so an early morning with pale overcast in say June might make things a lot easier.

Barrie

Purely by coincidence I was looking at this photographers web site The Lightweight Photographer | Improve your photography with lighter equipment and he has a post about a new photo editor Photo Ninja, so I've tried it out and done a first, quick, rough and ready edit, not really knowing what i was doing. I've ended up with this, it's probably not satisfactory in some respects but the editor shows a lot of promise in what it can pull out from shots taken of scenes with high dynamic range. I did a little work in SEP 2, getting a tiff into that application through AfterShot Pro, so a bit of a convoluted route, but I am going to experiment some more with Photo Ninja.



Barrie

She could carry some sail in her day!
Nice shots -- thanks for posting some old boat nostalgia.

Beautiful reportage. It's great spot and subject, worthy of continuous exploration in various light and seasons.