How to get good photographs of boats sailing on the water

How to get good photographs of boats sailing on the water

Frustrated with not having any decent photographs of my Welsford navigator ‘Arwen’, I signed up for a beginner’s digital photography course. In this, the second blog post, I share some further tips for taking good photographs of boats whilst at sea and try to work out how to get a perfect ‘under sail’ shot of my own boat! Blog post one was last week - access it in the menu on the right hand side of this blog post or here 

https://arwensmeanderings.blogspot.com/2019/05/getting-great-photographs-of-boats.html

So following on from last blog post:

1.       Think about camera settings before your trip

Some pre-thought about camera settings is very important. If you want the best possible quality photographs for inclusion in a magazine or to enlarge as prints of 8” x 10” or above, then shoot and save images in RAW format but expect lots of post editing in a photo editing software program afterwards. If you want photos for a personal album, a blog or an ‘Instagram’ post, JPEG’s are perfectly fine and take up less room on your memory card. My DSLR and compact camera can shoot both simultaneously.

Select the maximum image quality or megapixel resolution menu settings on your camera to enable large photo printing and allow any potential magazine art editors better photo editing options. Resist the temptation to digitally auto enhance any images you take for magazines. Let editors do it as they know what they are looking for and what will best fit their page layouts.

Good pictures can be obtained with your camera on auto setting as it selects the optimal exposure, shutter, aperture and ISO speeds. However, I like to exert greater control over exposure and focus in an effort to really boost image quality and detail, and so I have been familiarising myself with manual, shutter and aperture modes on my camera dial. It is not within the scope of this article to give detailed advice about camera settings but getting off ‘auto’ is fun and there are plenty of YouTube tutorials explaining how to adjust shutter and ISO speed, aperture and exposure compensation.

To capture images of boats sailing, set ISO speed between 100 – 400. ISO is how sensitive the camera is to light. For example, on bright sunny days choose a low ISO around 100 because you have plenty of available light. On an overcast day, you might set it to 400. Don’t go higher though as this will lead to a ‘grainy’ picture and that is something you want to avoid.

Shutter speeds above 1/250 second or above seem favoured initial settings amongst some experienced photographers I know. To freeze frame that bow wave so you get every single water droplet frozen will require shutter speeds of 1/2000+. Use aperture priority mode and turn up ISO speed or use shutter priority mode, select the speed you want and let the camera automatically set appropriate aperture and ISO.

If you want that ‘looking along the length of the boat’ shot to be in focus from foreground to background then you need a big depth of field so select aperture priority mode on the control dial and set depth of field between f16 - F22. The bigger the f/number, the bigger the depth of field. The camera will automatically set shutter speed and ISO appropriate for the day’s conditions. If I wanted just the boat’s foreground in focus but the background blurred, I need a small depth of field apertures of f8 or below.  A good general shooting setting for reasonable depth of detail across your image is f8 - f16.

Keep lens auto focus and image stabilisation switched on. If you want to keep the moving boat permanently in focus switch your camera auto focus mode from ‘One shot’ (or AF-S) to ‘Servo’ (or AF-C) and this will allow you to half press your shutter button to continually focus on the approaching boat until you are ready to take the shot.

I set white balance to auto when saving RAW images as I can alter them in most post editing software programs and if truth be known, trying to remember to manually set up my camera for the correct white balance every time I take a shot is beyond my limited brain capacity. My friend, saves in JPEG’s, and chooses a white balance option mode from his camera menu, suited to the conditions on the day - bright sunlight or cloudy skies.  Remember out on the water, the sky, water, sails and hull may be over bright so familiarise yourself with how to alter your exposure compensation if using a DSLR. When your camera’s light meter reads ‘0’, then exposure is correct. +1 means the image is over exposed (too bright) by one stop. Conversely, -1 on the meter tells you that your image is under exposed (too dark) by one stop.

If you have worn polarising sunglasses at the seaside, you know that glare disappears, and in clear water, you can see the sandy bottom, the seaweed and scuttling crabs with startling clarity. The polarising filter on your lens achieves the same thing, reducing glare and intensifying the blues and greens in the scene. Be aware that the filter will often reduce the light entering the lens and so if shooting in aperture priority mode, your camera will slow shutter speed slightly to compensate for this. To ensure you get that ‘freeze the water’ shot remember to raise your ISO a little higher.

Oh, and one more thing, turn off any date, time or GPS location stamps that might imprint on the final image. An irritating way to spoil a perfect shot!

2.       When ‘shooting’ day arrives……..

On photographic shoot day, armed with correctly set equipment and shot lists, we will ensure our boats are tidy and clean and looking their best. So many of the photos my friend took of my boat last year were rejected because I’d forgotten to take in fenders on the starboard side or allowed strands of reefing line and snotter control halyards to dangle across my face. Worst was my display of poor seamanship skills, through a sail with a huge clew to throat crease. So, no baggy sails, no loose lines, no cluttered cockpits and no dragging fenders – just a tidy, clean, boat displaying a good turn of speed, full sails and water flowing serenely along its hull.

My planned ‘shots’ list will guide my shoot but I won’t stick rigidly to it. I will develop situational awareness from the start by sitting back a while before shooting and taking a look around the sail area, looking for those unusual shooting angles as the boat sails around me.  I will try to anticipate what boat and helms-person might do on different reaches and tacks and also look for those unscripted interactions between my friend and his boat which show his sheer joy in sailing his own boat. Some images of him intently engaged in ‘action’ such as raising a sail, commencing a tack or furling a jib will capture ‘movement’ that conveys the sense of a boat being ‘under way’.

3.       A well composed photograph

A well composed photo, through its positioning of key elements and lighting tells the viewer a story about the scene, drawing his or her eye to the centre of attention, namely the boat.  It is tricky to get right but switching on the nine rectangles ‘rule of third’s’ grid in my rear screen and viewfinder helps enormously. It is an easy way of creating that balanced and visually interesting picture. The grid breaks up the image into thirds vertically and horizontally with imaginary grid lines. Horizons placed close to either the top or lower horizontal line, masts aligned on one of the two vertical lines and objects of interest located on one of the four intersection points between vertical and horizontal lines, make for visually more interesting pictures. 

Before pressing the shutter, assess whether you have balanced the amount of water, boat and sky in the image and try to include lots of ‘air space’ around the boat for later post edit cropping. ‘Tight cropping’ on the boat will lead to distortion of hull shape. Check you haven’t cut off part of the bowsprit or hidden the helm behind the boom. Getting all of the mast in shot is notoriously difficult so aim to get just enough in the image so that a viewer can work out what the sail rig is. Wonky horizons distract a viewer, drawing their gaze away from your fabulous boat, so check it is straight.

4.       Think ‘safety’

And lastly, a plea about safety. Even in an anchored boat, it’s one hand for yourself and one hand for the boat. Keep your camera on a short neck strap so if need be, you can quickly let it go to use two hands for safety. Try to shoot from a seated position so there is less chance of slipping or being a MOB casualty and wear appropriate grippy footwear – deck shoes or yacht boots.  With suitable clothing and sunscreen for the day easy to hand, always wear your life jacket or PFD as well.

Now armed with all this new planning and basic photography skill, my next planned photo shoot of each other’s boats, later this year, should go more smoothly and have a far greater success rate than last year’s effort. Well that’s the theory anyway! 

If you found this blog article useful, you can access the part one from the right hand side menu. if you are interested in creating sailing videos for YouTube then this first article also lists at the end my three blog posts about creating good sailing videos. 

If you have any tips for improving our chances of getting some good photographs of our boats under sail, then please share them in the comments box below. 

Similar blog posts about creating sailing videos can be found as a list of web addresses in the first article on photographing boats 

 Many thanks for stopping by.