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Friday Slide Show: Princeton
21 February 2014
We call it Princeton but the official name is Princeton-by-the-Sea. You may know it as the town of the Mavericks surf competition. But more than likely, you've never heard of it. It's tiny, with fewer than 200 inhabitants, off the Cabrillo Highway.
Over the years (and years and years), we've made the trip to Princeton as a pleasant escape from city life. We've been photographing the various ship repair facilities and small shops since the 1970s. And when we're done, we have a bite to eat at one of the restaurants.
HIGHLIGHTS
Our current favorite is Mezza Luna, not just for the excellent food but the (informal) entertainment. We keep meaning to try the Half Moon Bay Brewing Co., too, with its welcoming fire pit. We have managed to order at Barbara's Fishtrap, where you can eat your basket of fish on the beach or nearby pier. The seagulls will thank you.
But that's after we've wandered through the oval town of streets named after universities. You can get through Harvard in a few minutes, go to West Point, stroll through Berkeley and never leave Princeton. Just half an hour there and you feel smarter.
As our slide show demonstrates, there are all sorts of architectural oddities posing for your camera. And a few old ships, sailboats, rusting hulls and other beached beauties, too. Keep an eye out for sculptural artifacts like the metal crow as big as a human. And take a minute to enjoy a few of the unusual stores, including a motel room featuring Elegant Cheese Cakes.
Don't miss the mailboxes, though. Alongside the more conventional models are some one-of-a-kind handmade models. We show a lineup featuring an outboard motor but there are others just as fun.
Small aircraft buzz by overhead, landing at the Half Moon Bay Airport. We published our shot of one yesterday along with the news that we shot these with a Nikon D300 and an 18-200mm Nikkor.
SHOOTING NOTES
We shot in Aperture Priority mode never varying from our f8 aperture (well, it was the weekend, after all). Not great light for the sky, which vacillated from overcast gray to unconvincing blue.
We shot Raw but converted the NEF files to DNG on import. Which, by the way, is one way (with the free DNG Converter from Adobe) you can continue to live with old software running on an ancient operating system when you buy a new camera whose Raw format is not (nor ever will be) supported by your setup.
We processed the plane in Adobe Camera Raw in Photoshop but the slide show was done in Lightroom 5, where we spent all of our time in the Develop module.
We found ourselves starting with the Lens Corrections panel, enabling profile corrections and removing chromatic aberration almost by habit. But we also used the Upright tool on a few of the images (like the Star barn). Lots of cropping and straightening followed before we worked on the exposure.
We slid the sliders back and forth, optimizing each control before settling on the final rendering. It may sound like it was a lot of work but it went quickly and was a lot of fun, actually.
Start your weekend early by enjoying a peek at one of our favorite escapes on the coast!
