Charlotte Amalie, Saint Thomas USVI.

We are back from our trip to Africa and our transatlantic cruise. I look forward to catching up on everyone’s Cellpic Sunday contribution for October. I should get all caught up by next week.

On a Caribbean cruise in early 2023, we stopped at Charlotte Amalie, arriving before sunrise. It was at least our third trip to the island, and we decided to skip the excursions, enjoy a short walk at the pier, and spend the rest of the day relaxing on the ship.

Saint Thomas is a territory of the United States. Here’s a bit of history: In 1917, the United States purchased Saint Thomas, along with Saint John and Saint Croix, from Denmark for $25 million in gold. This strategic move aimed to secure control of the Caribbean Sea and protect the Panama Canal during World War I.

The US granted citizenship to residents of the Virgin Islands in 1927 and implemented territorial status in 1954. Since then, Saint Thomas has transitioned to a tourism-focused economy, becoming a popular Caribbean destination.

A note about Cellpic Sunday: It is close to the tenth anniversary of Cellpic Sunday. When I first started the theme for a regular Sunday post in June 2015, I envisioned a completely mobile experience. At that time, I wrote, “This morning, I thought I would try a new photo feature. I am calling it Cellpic Sunday. The rules are simple. The photo must have been taken by a mobile device and edited by that device (or another mobile device.) This image was captured in August 2014 from a cruise ship on our way to Alaska and points north.”

When I started the series, I mostly used the phone app Snapseed to edit my photos. However, with the advent of truly powerful mobile editing tools like Luminar Neo and Adobe Lightroom being available on mobile devices, I decided to drop the mobile editing requirement at some point. Instead, my focus changed to thinking of a cell phone as the camera we always have with us. I added trail cameras and other devices to the mix for more variety. That’s when drones and dashcams were added because it’s my rules, and I wanted to use them… >grin< But I digress.

About the photo: At around six in the morning, we entered the harbor at Charlotte Amalie. I stepped out on my balcony and captured the blue hour view just before sunrise. I used Luminar Neo’s Noiseless module to remove noise and Supersharp to remove the touch of motion blur created by the camera’s 1/8 second exposure. Those bright lights along the shore required me to lower the highlights quite a bit as they dominated the center of the image. I did not touch the color settings and left the sky precisely as the camera interpreted those blue hour colors.

When I imported the original image to my WordPress theme, I didn’t like all the white space around it, as it made the image more challenging to view. Since I always share my pictures on Flickr, I decided to do a screenscrape of the image from the Flickr post and include the black background to help isolate the image on my theme. I may want to consider changing themes to a darker background. Let me know in the comments what you think about surrounding the darker images with a black border or changing the theme altogether. In any case, the best way to view the image is to click on it. You can see it in 2K HD on my Flickr site.

I encourage fellow bloggers to create their own Cellpic Sunday posts. I never have a specific topic for this feature, and the only rules are that the photo must be captured with a cell phone, iPad, or another mobile device… If you have an image from a drone or even a dashcam, that’s also acceptable. The second rule is to link your challenge response to this post or leave a comment here with a link to your post in the comment. Oh, you don’t have to post it on a Sunday.

John Steiner