The Helmsman

Nothing arty or amazing today as I am having an interesting time working on the files from Friday night's trip to Dublin. In order to combat any possible interest from muggers and the like we travelled light. The rules stipulated one camera and one lens only, no tripods, gorrilapods or other steadying devices of any sort and this made for some interesting solutions particularly after dark. Anyway I brought my number two DSLR, not wishing to risk the loss of my good one. Ended up shooting at top ISO, a speed I had never used on my Samsung before. I have lots of noise but shot RAW files only, so I am labouring away in Photoshop working on these.
Dashed out this morning to shoot a blip and finished up in Arklow where I bagged this guy. The town, having a long maritime tradition, going right back to the Vikings who actually began the first settlement here, has known its fair share of tragedies at sea. To commemmorate the brave sailors who have been lost over the years and the even braver lifeboat men who have given their lives in many rescues and rescue attempts, the community laid out a commemmorative park about 5 years ago. This is one of the statues in the park, representing all those brave souls.
For those who are interested, I have tried to play down some of the distractions in the background by running the "find edges" filter and then converting to b/w. It worked too since the railings and other stuff distracted more in the original than in this final result.