19 September 2006

Beautiful photos of BBS

I saw these photos posted on Sailing Anarchy and was amazed. Most yachting shots are pictures of boats...some are great pictures of boats, but this guy captures sailing and what it's like to sail in the big breezes of SF Bay.

When I inquired about the photos, the photographer told me his motto is "Everyone knows what a boat looks like! What they don't know is how much work it is to sail them sometimes!" Very true. He also asked me to say this next to each photo: Photo courtesy of Sean Downey / www.insideyachting.com. I'll go one better and give you a link to his Big Boat Series Gallery.

Here's what I mean when I say great photos:

Photo courtesy of Sean Downey / www.insideyachting.com

and:

Photo courtesy of Sean Downey / www.insideyachting.com

It's immediately obvious that these guys are better sailors than I am. And it's just as immediately obvious that Sean Downey is a better photographer than I am. Need proof? Here's my shot of the Big Boat Series:
IMG_8896
Photo courtesy of light winds and my cute little Digital Elph.

4 comments:

Tillerman said...

Well, at least you kept out of their way. In that first photo it looks like the blokes on the leadmine are about to run over the photographer, which is presumably why the bloke holding on with the white-knuckle two-handed grip and wearing that cute little visor is looking scared and shouting something, and why the bloke standing up in the red Michelin-man outfit is making some kind of rude gesture right at the cameraman. I guess if you laid down with a camera in the middle of a NASCAR track you might get some good shots too.

EVK4 said...

That's what you'd think from the photo but we're talking about the magic of telephoto lenses. The angry guy on the bow showed up in the Sailing Anarchy forums and was shocked to see a closeup of himself. He was pointing out boats on the line and had no idea there was a photo boat out there. The sense of being in the action is what's so great about the shot even if it's a complete illusion.

Anonymous said...

tillerman,

Lens compression is a wierd thing. I shot the photo you were referring to at a focal length of 400mm and our photo boat was probably about 60-70ft off of the pin end of the line, while the boat in the photo was another 60ft from the pin.

Lens compression is also the reason some boats look like their right on top of each other when in actuality most of the time they have some distance between them.

As a sailor myself, I make it a point never to impede a boat on the course.

Sean

Captain John said...

That second shot beautifully captures the essence of the phrase which differentiates the primates on the Big Boats in the Series. I was too small to be a deck ‘ape’ so I had to settle for ‘foredeck monkey’.