With Pete Boden and Jeff Helmkamp shooting the post-Christmas goings-on—from the Fort Myers Offshore “Hangover Run” hosted by Deep Impact Custom Boats to the annual lynch-pin Joey Gratton Memorial New Year’s Day Fun Run—we had an embarrassment of photographic riches for the past seven days. Boden worked from a helicopter, while Helmkamp captured the action from several running boats. Both perspectives have their advantages.
Powerboats, especially these days when a 32-footer is on the “small” side, are large objects. Simply getting an entire boat in a single frame takes a helicopter (or a drone). I learned that from my Powerboat magazine days from the early 1990s through the mid-2000s. For beautiful running run shots when a boat is underway—particularly in the vertical format required for magazine—a helicopter perch is essential.
That’s why we continue to spend a lot of money for photo-helicopters. They are, like state-of-the-art digital cameras, essential tools of the trade.
But the water-level angle is equally valuable. As a rule, it brings readers closer to the action. Captured in pan, the same angle adds boat-speed within a given image. If that boat launches off a wave, the water-angles shows the distance between the bottom of its hull and the water below far better than any image captured from a helicopter ever could.
So thanks to Boden and Helmkamp, we had a bounty of both to publish.
What do I prefer as an editor? More often than not, water-level photography floats my boat more than the aerial stuff, though of course I still appreciate and need the latter to illustrate the stories we publish on Speedonthewater.com and Powerboatnation.com.
But as I said, we had both for the ongoing go-fast boating affairs in Southwest Florida. And why not? You deserve them.
So embarrassment of photographic riches be damned.