Thursday, July 4, 2013

Bolivar Ferry Before Sunrise

Knowing that we would be spending much of the day on the ferry gave me more opportunity to look at the ferry differently. There are three general groups of people that you will encounter.

The Bolivar ferry is simply an extension of the Texas highway system. Therefore many, if not most, of the people on the ferry are using it in the same way that any section of highway would be used—to travel to and from work, to travel to and from recreational pursuit. To simply get from point A to point B. There will be motorcycles, personal automobiles along with all types of commercial vehicles. Most of the people will simply be using the ferry without a great deal of concern or thought about being on a sailing vessel rather than ground based highway.

Another person you will find is the crew. This is something that, for the most part, I have ignored on most of my trips on the ferry. Since the crew is a very important part of the story of the ferry, I spent much more time concentrating on them during the trips Monday.

And, of course, the recreational user. These are the people that jump on the ferry simply for the experience of using a floating highway. Many will drive on so that they can check out the Bolivar Peninsula before grabbing the return ferry back to Galveston; some will park in the convenient lot and walk aboard the ferry. For these people, the ferry ride is a mini cruise. They stand at the rail and watch for dolphins; they walk up the long flight of stairs to the passenger deck; they pull out their cameras; stand on the front and get sprayed when water breaks over the bow; stand on the back and toss bits of bread to the gulls; they converse with the other passengers—they sometimes hog the best place for the shot that I wish to take. These are generally the people that I have in the past related to because they are the group that includes me. I have always found the cruisers, their vehicles and their activities an interesting part of riding the Bolivar ferry.

I will only be able to post a very small number of the photos taken Monday. I filled four 4gb cards and toward the end had to change to JPG because I was in danger of not having enough storage left to last the day. I switched to the Olympus for the beach and downtown shots for the same reason.

The photos in this thread were taken on the first crossing to Bolivar, from the time when we boarded the ferry on the Galveston side and the first trip across Bolivar Roads. The sun rose just as the ferry was beginning the return trip to Galveston. All of these photographs were taken before sunrise hand held at 6400 ISO. With the vibration from the engines using a tripod would be worthless if not detrimental. They are noisy, but I am very pleased with many of the photographs. 












3 comments:

  1. Jan, thank you. It was a great day of photography. I'm having a lot of those lately. LOL Gary

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  2. Yes, you are. And I'm glad. I always enjoy seeing what you are shooting.

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