Seattle Space Needle Ferry Window Reflection

Those that follow my Instagram feed know that I take the ferry a lot. For my other business which is stand up paddling instruction, I travel to Olympic Peninsula in Washington State regularly to teach SUP surfing and coastal paddling.  

Living in Seattle means I'll be taking the Kingston, Bainbridge or Bremerton ferries from Seattle to access the Olympic Peninsula. For me, the ferries are super photogenic as each are different. Some are older with a retro feel while others are more modern. And every time the weather is different, or I'm in a different head space thus it's never the same. Being that my drive to the coast with the ferry is 3hrs (more in summer with traffic), I always get out and walk around to stretch my legs. 

Some of the ferries have square exterior windows, others have the classic round port holes. In the pic below, I was on a more modern boat on either the Seattle to Bainbridge or Bremerton run. The window leads to the crew quarters room, so it's always a little funny shooting in the window, sometimes folks surprise me and peek out. 

Shooting reflections on the ferry is challenging as the background is always moving and the light and shadows changing as the boat moves along. And there's also camera shake and high winds. A gyro is required for videos, but good sound is out of the question.  

This image meant pre-planning the shot knowing the skyline could reflect in the window when the boat turned west. In between walking ferry goers, I was able to get a few shots off.  The light was blue-ish, so I made the blue more rich as going amber/warm didn't look good in post.  

I had to zoom in on my phone quite a bit to get the right framing thus cropping out unwanted background items. Then crop further in post to remove the reflected deck railing.  The final here is an Instagram image (see also at @robcaseyphoto).

On the return trip, I got an older ferry with a round porthole. I tried to line up the sunset and ferry's boat wake but I couldn't get the deck railing out of the window which took up nearly half the frame. And the light was so direct, I couldn't get myself out of the reflection as well.  Sometimes a selfie like that works but not in that case. 

Final shot / crop

Orignal shot