SONNY, an 85 year old race horse.

TomY

TomY

Alden Forum Moderator
Jun 22, 2004
2,768
Alden 38' Challenger yawl Rockport Harbor
1935 Sparkman and Stephens design: 53'6" x 12'6" designed for one purpose, racing.

If I were a horse (glad I'm not), I wouldn't want to be a race horse, or a yacht designed solely to race.

This is the week before classic yacht races heat up in New England starting in Penobscot Bay a week from today.

This is the week the horses are primped and lavishly cared for. They get extra varnish, winches and blocks serviced, sails tended to. Extra oats. They live the life.
SONNY bow 2.jpg

But once the starting guns go off they get the spurs driven in. It doesn't matter if it's new carbon fiber build or an 85 year old wooden boat, they're driven to the brink of death for that cup.

I've seen the carnage - snapped spruce spars, even stems ripped out - from merciless stresses on rigs.

Enjoy this week, SONNY.
SONNY far.jpg
 
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rgranger

rgranger

.
Jan 19, 2010
12,546
Hobie 16 & Rhodes 22 Skeeter Charleston
Gorgeous! Thanks (again) for the lovely eye candy.
 
rgranger

rgranger

.
Jan 19, 2010
12,546
Hobie 16 & Rhodes 22 Skeeter Charleston
Technique question. Your photos always seem to have a "brightness" to them. How do you do that? Are you using a flash in the day time? Tweak the exposure time just a little?
 
TomY

TomY

Alden Forum Moderator
Jun 22, 2004
2,768
Alden 38' Challenger yawl Rockport Harbor
rgranger said:
Technique question. Your photos always seem to have a "brightness" to them. How do you do that? Are you using a flash in the day time? Tweak the exposure time just a little?
Click to expand
I saw SONNY at noon time. The best time for a boat shot down in our harbor is late afternoon. I took this shot at 3:30 pm, about the earliest I think the light starts to become interesting. Better would have been a couple hours later but I wasn't there. Still, I was fighting too much light above and off the water.

The second shot is better (I think) because I moved across the harbor, used a zoom, and left the sky out. The light range overall, is more even(like it will be a few hours later when the sun is low).

I usually shoot in an Auto setting if the light is good(more manual in low light). You don't need to stretch a well lit exposure, the camera will choose a fast shutter speed and an average F-stop. I nearly always disable the flash on my cameras. I've never had much luck with flash lighting.

Because I shoot in RAW format, I have to process the images. It's similar to processing your film (but much easier and pleasant to do in Adobe Lightroom).

Without post processing, a RAW color image almost looks black and white. You can raise the light in shadowed areas and lower it in highlight areas, adjust color levels, etc.

If you shoot in Jpeg (as with most cameras), the camera processes your images automatically. It averages the light levels, white levels, color levels, etc, instanly. Usually that's just right.

RAW just gives you more data (at the cost of more storage required) in each pixel to process and hence, more creative control. But RAW is no magic wand, a poorly exposed image can rarely be made into a good one.
 
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