[Leica] Re: Boat pictures

[lrzeitlin at optonline.net (Lawrence Zeitlin)]

On Sep 12, 2006, at 2:21 PM, Richard wrote:

> Yeah, you don't get much choice of camera position or lighting when
> you're in a sailboat, especially when you're in a race.  It's pretty
> much catch as catch can though for these shots I think I lucked out.
> I like the shot you chose, too, but I'm not sure it qualifies as a
> boat portrait because of the other boat.
>
> Thanks for commenting.

If you are not in the race, the best spots for shooting sailboat race  
pictures are at the start and at the end of the downwind leg. At the  
start you get masses of sailboats, all struggling to keep out of each  
other's way. It's hard to get a picture of an individual boat but the  
forest of masts and sails makes for an interesting horizontal  
composition. At the end of the downwind leg, all the colorful  
spinnakers are flying. This is the spot where trouble happens as the  
racers prepare to douse their sails. It's like sitting near the turn  
of an automobile race. Morris Rosenfeld and his sons, who dominated  
the field of boat photography, from the 1880s to the 1990s, favored  
pictures taken from the leeward fore quarter from low on the water.  
It gave the boats a very dramatic look. Rosenfeld used a modified  
Graflex camera and buzzed around the fleet in a 24' motorboat. His  
sons drove while he took the pictures from the stern. When he died,  
his family gave the collection of boat photographs to the Mystic  
Seaport museum. It is the largest such collection in the world and is  
a real education for anyone who messes around in boats. Incidentally,  
Morris Rosenfeld suffered terribly from seasickness.

When she was much younger, my wife made a respectable living by  
painting boat "portraits" for local yacht owners in the Tri State  
area. I would take an ordinary picture of the boat from the angle the  
owner thought looked best and my wife would paint a magnificent  
portrait of the boat braving the storm. Some boat owners treat their  
boats better than their wife and children. I know they spend more  
money on their boats. Sort of like Leica photographers with their  
cameras.

Larry Z