Ship-Photo

About the website: I originally began a maritime photos site called ‘Ship Images’ back in 2004 - inspired by excellent sites such as Edward Brian-Davis' Shipphotos.co.uk and Maik Ebel’s Ship-photos.de, which were set up in the late 1990s - featuring my own ship photos taken in the UK and abroad. This was killed off in January 2009 as the host I was then using, Lycos, decided that they were not going to offer hosting any more and pulled the plug. As it was a scratch-built website, using Dreamweaver, I couldn’t be bothered to track down another host and re-upload everything.
However, things being what they are it wasn’t too long before I began afresh with a new site. Originally hosted on Webs.com it was a little thing dedicated to the passenger ships you can see on the Solent. Webs.com, though, only offer very limited space and their templates are also limited so in late September 2010, I moved it to WordPress who offer better templates and much more disk space for free and then to dedicated web hosting, which gives much more flexibility. Initially the new website was called ‘Solent Ships’ but, although the majority of photos are taken around the Solent area, this was a bit limiting so I have renamed it ‘Ship-Photo’, and the domain names are ship-photo.com and ship-photo.co.uk.

At present this site contains a number of newer photos (2010/11) and a lot of older stuff, including scanned prints, but I intend to replace some of the older photos with newer material as I get it, plus uploading some reprocessed digital images and rescanned older photos. All photos taken in 2005 and later are from a digital SLR and this produces results far superior than those from a scanner. The photos taken in late 2004 to early 2005 were from a Minolta DiMage Z2 compact bridge camera which was ok, as long as you used it in good light and didn't want much resolution; anything more than that and the results weren't particularly good.

You will not find any photos of small fishing vessels, whalers or private craft on here. Why? Well, I’ve no interest in these craft and I hate the practice of whaling, so I don’t take photos of these vessels - not that whalers are commonplace around UK or European waters, fortunately. However, plenty of other ship-related sites feature these vessels so I am sure you’ll find what you’re looking for elsewhere if that’s what you’re after.
You are welcome to contact me by clicking here.

About me: I live on the Isle of Wight in southern England, having lived here most of my life, except for a few years elsewhere at various times. My interest in ships and photography dates back to my childhood, although photography came first followed, later, by ships. I really wanted to get into wildlife photography, as I was a very keen birder as a kid, but I didn’t have the equipment and, besides, in the days of film it was too wasteful and expensive to just keep getting bad, blurry shots of birds’ tails and wings vanishing out of the frame. So, as I liked ships as well as birds, they were the next best thing and as I lived near the sea, they became another part of my love of photography. Instead of blurry tails vanishing out of the shot I could take blurry pictures of ships instead, although you’d have to be a really bad photographer to get just the back end of a ship vanishing out of the frame! My early attempts at photography as a teenager in the 1980s were questionable to say the least, not helped by the fact that all I had at the time was a 110 camera which produced dismal results in all but the best light, and only when you were close to your subject. The photography improved a lot when, at 17, I got my first job and could afford a 35mm SLR and a couple of zoom lenses.
I joined the World Ship Society in 1985 and the Thames Ship Society in 1999, these afford great opportunities to meet like-minded people and the TSS, in particular, runs trips to ports - from day cruises to longer trips to the Continent and further afield - for ship enthusiasts, photographers and even the more casual traveller who enjoys being on, or near, the sea.
The photo, above, is of me at Amsterdam with Vision of the Seas in the background. Photo © Patricia Dempsey

How did I become interested in ships? As a child I was fascinated by travel and the romance of faraway places, which is where ships came in…planes and trains also evoke faraway places but they didn’t capture my attention like ships have done and that is, I’m sure, entirely down to the fact I lived near to a couple of large seaports and not near any major railway stations or airports; I suppose that if I’d lived close to Heathrow Airport I’d probably have become interested in planes. To me, ships – even ferries and tatty small coasters – represented escape and the romance of travel, although I was only able to answer the call of foreign shores when I was 16 and able to travel on my own to the Channel Islands (sort of foreign!) on the ferry from Portsmouth (my mum had already caved in and let me go over to Southampton on my own the year before). That was the first of many travels over the years although, admittedly, most of these have been on airliners rather than ships!

Also various relatives had worked at sea, most notably on Cunard’s first two Queen liners, plus Aquitania and the second Mauretania, and their tales also captured the imagination as did, less romantically, news footage of ships in action in the Falklands (Las Malvinas) conflict of 1982.
Living within a short distance of the Isle of Wight’s Solent shoreline hasn’t hurt either, as there was always – and still is – plenty of action to keep ship-spotters interested. My interest has waxed and waned over the years but, even in the quiet times, the Solent shipping scene has always been there in the background.
My favourite ships are merchant ships from the 1980s onward, particularly freighters and passenger ships of all types, although I have a particular preference for passenger ships, container ships and bulk carriers, especially the ones with cranes on. I don’t have any time for people who say ‘…but these aren’t proper ships, not like the ships of 50, 60, 70 years ago…’ – well, that’s the way it is and like it or not, modern ships are still ships.

Other interests I have include astronomy, wildlife, wildlife photography, travel, reading and watching films. I also follow various sports teams.

Photo gear:

Photographers are usually pretty interested in what others are using so, for anyone who's interested, here's what I have used in the past and what I am using now.

Up to 2004 (the scanned prints on this site) I used Nikon F3, FE2, FM2 and F60 35mm SLRs with various Nikon zoom lenses.

In 2004 I made the switch from film to digital, first with a Minolta DiMage Z2 superzoom compact, which produced fairly hit-and-miss results, then with Nikon D70 and D80 DSLRs. In 2008 I switched to Canon, because they had the sort of lens I wanted at a price I could afford while Nikon didn't, and I now use the following equipment:

Canon 7D 18 megapixel DSLR
Canon 40D 10 megapixel DSLR
Canon EF-S 18-135mm IS zoom
Canon EF 70-200mm f4 L zoom
Canon EF 400mm f/5.6 L telephoto lens (I mostly use this for wildlife shots but it can come in useful for distant ships, especially small ones, if there is no haze)
Canon EF 1.4x extender, which I use on the 70-200mm
Filters: UV filters to protect the lenses from scratches and spray and to cut down haze.

Various 16GB, 8Gb, 4Gb and 2Gb Compact Flash cards

All photos are taken in RAW format and then processed using Canon Digital Photo Professional, Adobe Photoshop Elements and Neat Image. RAW format is uncompressed and enables far more flexibility in processing and more control over the final result as no in-camera processing is applied unlike in JPEG format, resulting in superior photos. It’s best to get things right in-camera to begin with, but if you don’t then RAW can help you out of an under-exposed hole, or to correct that all-too-common wonky horizon - but no amount of tweaking, whether in RAW or not, will salvage a digital disaster; if it’s blurry, it’ll stay blurry.

Other essential bits and pieces:
LowePro CompuTrekker AW photo-rucksack
Monopod – Manfrotto Modo 679
Tripod – Slik AMT Pro 330DX
Leica 8x42BN binoculars