Our first port was Falmouth Jamaica. From the ship, it looked fantastic, but what we saw was all built specifically for the cruise ships.
We took an excursion to “Good Hope Estate.” This was a 18th century sugar cane plantation. Seldom are cruise excursions worth their cost, but this was one that really was. This plantation was built up on the top of a mountain, and the views were stunning.
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There was a small pond on the plantation, and when we walked around it, I saw this water lily.
We took a cruise on The Navigator of the Seas the week after New Years. The first two days were at sea, and these are a couple of the images of the ship that I captured.
This first one is The Elissa in Galveston Harbor from the deck of the cruise ship.
The next one is a huge sculpture in the center of the hip that is several stories tall.
This is the 11the deck of the ship facing forward.
We went on a cruise after New Years. Before the cruise, I took a day to go out in Galveston. My original intent was to visit some places looking for birds, but that didn’t work well, as there were few birds around. I drove down to the harbor knowing there were always pelicans at the marina. When I got there, I saw The Elissa had her sails up. It appeared that there was some function on board. The Carnival Triumph was also there, and the two of them juxtaposed made for an interesting study.
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Afterwards, I went back to looking for birds. but that didn’t last too long. As I was driving down Harborside, I noticed a marina I had never seen before by UTMB. It is apparently a place where the commercial fishing boats dock, and normally, they are out fishing, but on this day they were all docked.
In the previous post, I displayed two pictures of the rear of the Water Works. These are from the front.
I was taken by the combination of cement work and wood at the entrance.
When we moved to Waco, The Water Works was a really cool restaurant. Originally, as the name might imply, the building housed pumps and machinery to provide water to central Waco. The restaurant was good but did not last very long. It closed and reopened several times, but it has not been functional in many years. These are pics of things in the back of the building.
Kim’s is another landmark that I could never get good pictures of because of cars. For a while, it was run down, and the pics would have been cool, but there were always cars blocking it. Then they closed it, and started to tear it down before I could get pics. Now it is restored and looking like new.
Another place I have had trouble photographing is George’s. It seems every time I go there, the parking lot is full. Also, many angles are impacted by power lines. So, Christmas Day was the time to try and finally get a usable picture.
Next to The Health Camp is The Elite Cafe – about as iconic as Waco gets. Again, here are two versions of one image and another one.
And the impressionist version.
There are some Waco Landmarks that I wanted to get pictures of, but I have always had problems because of cars parked in front and around them. Christmas Day was the perfect time to deal with that because there would be no cars to block my shots. The first of those places was The Health Camp. Here are to versions of it.
And an impressionist version.
I said one of my goals was to get a good picture of a New Orleans Trolley Car. Here it is.
I am really happy with the way it came out. While on the train coming home, I was watching a video and there was a small commercial for Topaz Impressions software plugin. It transforms images to make them look like impressionist paintings. It turns out there are two similar packages, and I downloaded both and played with them. Here is what I got.
It creates an interesting image, but it is almost insulting to real impressionist artists. To actually create impressionist art takes a great deal of skill and work. So, I am somewhat torn about this/