Natchez on the Mississippi – New Orleans, Louisiana

Less than ten minutes after I shot yesterday’s metal pier, I was lucky enough to catch the steamboat Natchez, coming back to port. I distinctly remember this photo because, it was the last image I took on my PEN-F, before I completely filled the SD card. Of course with film, you are very aware of your frame count. But with room for over a thousand photos, I admit that I usually don’t bother keeping track with my digitals.

I shot this photo and was planning a few more compositions with a larger boat, closer in, until the unexpected out of memory message. I quickly switched to my other Olympus, the OM-D E-M5 Mark II, but I didn’t create my originally intended framing. No problem. I ended up cropping slightly on the original PEN-F photo, to make the boat a little larger. I rarely re-crop my photos, but the 20MP gives me some extra resolution, if needed.

What looks like a historic steamboat is actually Natchez number nine, built-in 1975. Still, the company website boasts that it’s the “last authentic Steamboat on the Mighty Mississippi River”. It looks good to me, especially in black and white. You can see more of the New Orleans waterfront that I talked about yesterday, including the currently unused World Trade Center tower. I’m hoping that in a future visit, I’ll see a more lively waterfront.