Fort Trumbull is a late 1700’s fort in Connecticut, built at the mouth of the western, i.e. New London side, of the Thames River and across from the eastern, Groton side. Re-vamped and cleaned up in 2000, the area has a somewhat jaded reputation as the entire neighborhood around the site was, with great acrimony, demolished at the same time to make way for a large scale development of the area, which, as of 2015, has not yet even started. As Wikipedia dryly notes, the area now “is considered by many to be a stark example of government overreach and inefficiency.”
These pictures were taken during one recent spectacular dawn on the day of an excursion into New York City. Those NYC photos will be coming out soon. (I hope!)
Before viewing the photographs, I would also like to invite you to visit the poetry blog, the Book of Pain. As always, special thanks to my dearest spouse Lyn, who does most of the hard part: the photos selection. Thank you for dropping by the Book of Bokeh.
In the photo below, the large building across the river in the middle of the picture is the General Dynamics Electric Boat dockyard, where all the US submarines have been built and where they are now, currently, repaired.
Below is a photo of the far older Fort Griswold, built atop a large hill in Groton. During the Revolutionary War it was seized and the area ravaged by a British force lead by the arch traitor to the American cause, Benedict Arnold. Fort Griswold is the point from which I took the panorama of New London that I recently posted in Panoramas.
All photographs and comments ©John Etheridge with all rights reserved; not to be used without the expressed written permission of the copyright owner.
the Book of Bokeh 
Beautiful pictures ! Did you use a filter ? I tried to take some pictures of the sunset today, but my contrast didn’t look that good. Yours on the other hand looks amazing !
All of the photos I took that morning were done in HDR. The problem with sunrises is that you either expose for the bright sky (and have the land all in shadow) or expose for the land (and have the sky blown out.) HDR solves that by merging these sorts of shots. In this case I was using a 5 photo spread, the first a ‘normal’ shot, then a 2- f/stop, followed by 4-, 2+, 4+ and put together using a software package called Photomatix. I’ve had almost as much success using a 3 shot spread (neutral, 2+, 2-) and putting them together using Photoshop. I think the latest Lightroom version (6.0) also does HDR but have not tried it.
The only problem with HDR is if something moves between shots, which can cause ‘ghosting.’ Notice the flag on the first shot, for example…although in this case I think it added to the quality of the image.
There are a lot of HDR tutorials on the web and it is a strategy that I HIGHLY recommend trying especially when there is a huge dynamic range of light. It’s a lot of fun too! 🙂
Oh I see ! Thanks for the explanation ! If I have time I’ll try to experiment a bit 🙂
Oh please do! It is well with it!
Beautiful pix! Thanks for sharing! 🙂
The photos are amazing as always John. The sky looks glorious and heavenly. 🙂
And you are kind and sweet as always, Norma! Thank you! But all the credit goes to Mother Nature…all I did was press the button. 🙂
the fotos are ethereal!
It was a lucky moment and I was a lucky guy. Half an hour later all you could see was clouds so I caught it at just the right time. 🙂
Wow, John!!! I LOVE the shots of the dawn you captured especially the pier with the long line of lights. What pleasure your post has given me today and for this, I really thank you!!! Love, Amy ❤
You are very welcome, and the pleasure your comment gave me has done the same for me! 🙂
Gorgeous dawn images, all of them!
Thank you, Tiny! It was actually very easy…Mother Nature did all the heavy lifting! 🙂
Great night photography!
Thank you! I was pretty lucky actually…half an hour later the cloud cover was total! 🙂