I have to admit, I can be a bit contrary. Just as the weather is turning and making us think about being “inside” more, I start thinking more about being outside. But being outside, inside a sailboat, that is. One of the places that makes me feel most at home in the world.

These scenes are from Biscayne Bay near Miami in Florida a few years ago. As we start talking about getting ready to go south, I decided to scan through these old images and the great memories came flooding back.

Lately, I’ve been spending time getting familiar with my new Topaz bundle, which contains more presets than I will ever know what to do with. I’m thinking about the simplicity of life on a sailboat and what it feels like to be inside a small vessel on big open water under big open sky.  The feeling of all the dramatic contrasts really lends itself to black and white.

I haven’t been all that pleased with my black and white conversions in the past, but I am pleased with Topaz. It provides so many great options and allows you you to tweak to your heart’s content, to get exactly the look you want.

Topaz also came to the rescue in dealing with the noise in the images, which were made with my previous camera, which was a lot more noisy than my new one. So I also ran Topaz Denoise, which is absolutely wonderful for getting rid of that pesky noise.

I’m really just scratching the surface with Topaz so if you have any favorites or tips for using it, I’d love to hear about them.