General George Washington crossed the Delaware River into New Jersey from near this point on Christmas Eve in 1776. The landing took place near the white house you see across the river. The boats you see in the photograph are replicas of the those used by Washington and his men that night in their crossing of the Delaware River.

It took until about 3 am for 2400 men and artillery to cross from near this point, but not a single man, horse, or gun was lost in the crossing. Washington and his men then marched 9 miles to Trenton where they surprised the Hessian forces there and won the Battle of Trenton. This was one of the major turning points in the American Revolution. So you can say that these boats literally helped turn the tide of the war.

These boats are called Durham boats and in the 1700's they were used mainly to transport iron from the Durham Iron Works (located several miles upstream) to Trenton and Philadelphia.

These replicas you see in the photograph have been removed from the building they are housed in through the year and are being "acclimatized" to the elements in preparation for the re-enactment of Washington crossing the Delaware that takes place annually on Christmas Day.

The photo was cropped from the original. Debris and branches have been cloned out. Contrast masking and unsharp mask were used.

As you can probably see, I applied a blue gradient lightly to the sky.



I then selected the plants--just with the selection box tool--and used the green channel in curves to bring in more green and darkened it.



I then selected the river between the boats and the trees with the selection tool again and darkened it slightly.



I lightened the entire image, selected the boats level and lightened it just a little.



I also added a 5 pixel border.



This was a fun image to work with! Your skillful use of different levels in the image (boats, river, trees, sky) proved to be a real advantage!

This is a copy of the photo with no contrast masking or unsharp mask applied. Since I merged all layers on the one I first posted, I had to recrop the original on my hard drive and re-clone out all the debris.



For anyone assisting me in removing the halo effect when applying contrast masking, please bear in mind that I do not have the full blown version of Photoshop. I have Photoshop Elements 2.



Thank you!