Sail Angles . . .
By
John Terence Turner
Stock Asylum Columnist
April 15, 2006
©
2006 John Terence Turner
Sailing, like many subjects, gets photographed a lot. In such cases,
you’ve got to think about doing something different or your results
will look like everyone else's and, thus, attract little attention.
Here are some highly-unusual treatments of sailing that illustrate this
point.
 To get this image, the author climbed out on the bowsprit, the pole at the front of the boat, and waited for the splash. ( © John Terence Turner ). |
These four photographs offer different views of sailing. They don’t exhaust the possibilities; they just show some of the many good solutions available when a photographer approaches a subject from different angles (front toward the back, above looking down and alongside) and when the photographer keeps an open mind about one-time events.
The first shot is from a magazine shoot I did long ago. It is now on-line with Getty because I went back and got a release from the crewman in the foreground and from the sailboat’s owner.
In the Northwest there is a world-famous sailboat race named The Swiftsure Classic. The race starts and ends in the harbor of Victoria, British Columbia. The mid-point of the race is in the Pacific Ocean where the fleet rounds the former location of the Swiftsure lightship, near entrance to the Straight of Juan de Fuca. The lightship is no longer there, having been replaced by a modern electronic buoy, but the name endures.
This picture was made after we had rounded the lightship around midnight, and were headed back to the finish line. I was aboard the Adios, a classic, 63-foot yawl designed by the famed firm of Sparkman & Stevens. We were among the leaders and making good speed heading east, back to Victoria. We were sailing close-hauled into a westerly wind, plowing into the swells and bouncing like a bronco. Occasionally the bow smacked into a swell at just the right angle, resulting in a towering plume of water.
Ted McCaffray, one of the crew, went forward to deal with some chafing of the genoa jib (a triangular sail) against the rail stanchions (posts). I went with him and continued forward onto the bowsprit (a pole attached to the ship's bow), wrapped my legs around it and waited for good wave action. I had a motor-driven Nikon with a 24mm lens. I didn’t feel that I was endangering the camera with salt water, since the splashes like the one in the picture were aft of where I was sitting. Riding the bucking bowsprit while looking aft through the lens was exciting and when I saw a good splash, I shot.
 Racing on a calm day failed to provide drama, so Turner created some excitement by attaching his camera to the mainmast and firing it remotely from below. ( © John Terence Turner ). |
Instead of looking back along the hull of a sailboat with a crewman up close, the second shot is down toward the deck of the Taurua, a boat in the annual Antique Schooner race at Port Townsend, Washington. Because it was a relatively placid day, I decided that a view from above would be one of the most interesting approaches.
I asked the skipper to have me hoisted to the top of the mainmast on a bosun’s chair. Once there, I clamped the Nikon F5 into place with a 20mm lens, which I focused on the deck. Attached to the camera was a receiver for my Flash Wizard. I took the transmitter into the main cabin where I perched on the stairway so I could view the on-deck activity. When the crew was active and dispersed about the deck, I got out of the shot in the cabin and fired the camera.
Planning your approach to shoots is important, but it is always important to keep your mind open to unforeseen opportunities. As we limped along at minimal speed in the Antique Schooner race, Page Read, Taurua’s skipper saw a chance to make an adjustment that might yield another tenth of a knot so he leaped onto the main boom and began hauling on a halyard. Luckily, I was on the other side of the mainsail so I saw his silhouette on the sail and shot it. It remains one of my favorite sailing shots
 Sometimes a dramatic shot just happens, as occurred here. Photographers need to be open to events that can result in a unique image. ( © John Terence Turner ). |
A final approach is shooting from a chase-boat. This image was made on assignment for Patagonia for a sailing gear ad (before they got out of the sailing business). My models were Kris and Ann Henderson who had just competed in the national 49er Championships in San Francisco Bay. We met at the Columbia Gorge, between Oregon and Washington. The Gorge was a good location because of strong winds that are funneled and accelerated through the Gorge. It is a mecca for wind surfers.
The 49er is an aquatic rocket, a true space-age contrivance with no purpose beyond racing. Constructed of high-strength fiberglass and with a carbon-fiber mast, the whole thing weighs only 260 lbs. Because of the great sail-area-to-weight ratio, the crew must sail it from hiked-out positions in order to use their weight to balance the forces generated by the large sails.
Because the Patagonia product was designed to keep small-boat sailors dry, I wanted lots of water all over everything. Accordingly, I asked the models to occasionally dip their butts into the river (something they would ordinarily avoid, because it slows their speed) in order to generate more flying water.
 Shooting from a chase boat offers yet another angle from which to make an unusual sailing image. ( © John Terence Turner ). |
Everything about the 49er is speed, so I decided to shoot slow shutter speeds as much as possible to get lots of blurs. Keep in mind, I’m standing against the high gunwale of a fast powerboat, the waves bouncing me around like a pinball. Sometimes I was unable to keep the camera still—a requirement for good pan shots.
In this picture, you can see that I did have some success, I got knocked off my feet with some regularity, but I’d get back up, grab the railing and blast off some frames. I was shooting with two Nikon F5s, one with an 80-200 AF zoom and one with a 35-70 AF zoom. I got good images with both lenses, but with the lighter short lens, I was able to use slower shutter speeds and, with it, I shot three times as many frames as with the 80-200. This frame, shot at 1/30th of a second, was made with the shorter lens.
So all of this adds up to one thing: there is no single right way. Think about your options. Frequently, options aren’t just a matter of choice; they are dictated by the circumstances. In the Adios shot, there was strong wind and a quartering sea so there occurred that dramatic wave. In the second shot, there was light wind so the big drama, as with Adios, just wasn’t going to happen.
The third image resulted from simply being open to an opportunity when it occurred. In the picture of the 49er, being on board was not an option because it is small, light and my presence would have wrecked its sail-worthiness. Since I wanted to emphasize speed, operating from a chase boat was the answer because I could shoot from very close with slow shutter speeds.
It means that your most important piece of equipment is your brain. Use it!
(John Terence Turner has been shooting stock photography for 20 years. His work can be seen at Getty Images, Alamy and, of course, The Stock Asylum, where his column appears twice a month. He lives and works in Seattle, WA.)
Turner's web site can be found at: http://www.johnterenceturner.com.
For more of his images: click here.
For all of Turner's columns: click here.
