The SS United States in her glory years. The ship has been out of service since 1969.
I recently visited the SS United States, one of the last remaining ocean liners from the generation that followed Titanic and other famous ships of the 20th century. Numerous celebrities and US Presidents set sail on the United States in its relatively short career, as did the Mona Lisa for special exhibitions in Washington and New York. The ship is 990 feet long (easily surpassing Titanic) and held the record for the fastest crossing of the Atlantic by a passenger vessel. Sadly it has been deteriorating in Philadelphia for decades, and a series of more recent legal setbacks have forced the ship from its berth toward an undetermined fate. The situation continues to develop, but it is quite possible the next time I photograph this ship it will be underwater as an artificial reef… **
** UPDATE: As of October 2024, the SS United States will transfer into custody of Okaloosa County, Florida where it is expected to become the world’s largest artificial reef.
The SS United States is challenging to photograph in its Philadelphia home. While its gargantuan stature is visible from a distance, the ship is in a restricted area behind a tight chainlink fence with openings too narrow for anything but a cell phone lens. Various utility vehicles and stacked palettes obstruct the view from ground level and overall compositions are few. (A bit later we’ll examine the shot from ground level, through the chainlink fence). Over the years the conservancy managing the ship has provided very limited opportunities to visit the ship, often at prohibitive cost.
The original drone shot. The cleanest and most effective way to shoot this subject was with a low-flying drone. A common misconception is that drone photos require high aerial viewpoints, but the drone is capable of so much more than this! The scale of the ship is difficult to comprehend. Look at the size of the railing on the main deck and you can imagine the size of a person for scale.
Given these obstacles, I planned a drone shot for sunset (to ensure the west-facing subject would not be backlit), hoping to capture the ship in good light with a dramatic sky. Notably, the airspace surrounding the ship is within what’s known as “Philadelphia Class B”, i.e. controlled airspace in the vicinity of Philadelphia International Airport (PHL). Drones are permitted but only with FAA pre-clearance. I put off this shoot for years — there was always something else to do and I rarely found myself passing through Philadelphia with an opportunity. But with the deadline looming for the ship to be removed from its home, I made the trip on a rainy August afternoon, hoping for a last glimpse this historical wonder.
A common misconception about drone photography is that it is the same as aerial photography. While it’s true that a drone can achieve many of the same views as a low-flying airplane or helicopter, drones are more versatile and have the ability to capture unique perspectives. In the case of the SS United States, the shot I wanted was not necessarily at great elevation — I simply wanted something unobstructed and higher than ground level. The resulting image showcases the impressive bow and bridge, but the stacks and rear part of the ship appear small and distant. This is one of the downsides to shooting a relatively wide angle (the drone shoots at 24mm): objects close to the camera appear exaggerated and larger, dwarfing more distant elements. This is why you should avoid taking close portraits with a wide angle lens to avoid the unflattering rendering of facial features.
This is a telephoto drone shot, using the DJI Mavic 3 7x telephoto lens, equivalent to 162mm. High compression gives the ship a stout appearance.
After the primary shot, for an alternate perspective I flew higher and farther away to capture additional images. The DJI Mavic 3 actually has two cameras: a primary Hasselblad camera at 24mm, and a second telephoto camera that shoots roughly 162mm, or 7x magnification. Shooting far away at the higher focal length gives the ship a compressed, stocky appearance. Both focal lengths available on the drone present the ship in different ways. The sweet spot, in my opinion, is somewhere between the wide and the telephoto lenses.
The ship photographed through the chainlink fence. Using multiple exposures and post-processing techniques, most of the fence is neutralized in this image, but some artifacts are still evident (notice some dark blotches in the foreground). Compare the before and after images.
For a final shot, I visited on foot and used my primary camera. The challenge here is that obstructing chainlink fence that I mentioned earlier. But all is not lost if your only option is to shoot through a fence. There are some mitigating techniques you can employ to reduce the impact of the fence on your final image:
Telephoto is your friend. A higher focal length is less impacted by distractions close to the lens, in this case, the chainlink fence. The image above was shot at 70mm, at the upper end of my Canon RF 24-70mm F/2.8L lens. I would have preferred an even higher focal length, but I did not have my 70-200mm lens with me at the time.
Take multiple exposures of each shot, especially if shooting hand-held. This means for each shot, take 3-4 images rapidly and try to move as little as possible between shots. Later on, in Photoshop, you can use a feature to filter out some of the fence while retaining the subject. The image above was created by feeding four images into the Statistics engine of Photoshop. (Statistics looks at what is constant within a set of images versus what is different. In this example, the ship is constant, but the fence is slightly different in each exposure due to tiny hand-held movements. Photoshop averages out the differences which reduces (but does not completely eliminate) the appearance of the fence.)
Just for fun, I asked AI to render a vintage postcard of the SS United States. Not bad at all!
