A Seat With a View

I never thought of myself as a photographer. Sure, I take photos now and again when I’m away on vacation or during special occasions with my family or friends. I’m not living under a rock. I have a Facebook account and an Instagram account, but a quick perusal through them would reveal sparse photos of anything but my food dishes. Don’t get me wrong - there’s nothing wrong with social media. In fact, I think it’s great. I’ve been able to connect and keep up with old friends that way. I’ve also been able to meet and become acquainted with some great new people through FB and Instagram. I’m just not one to document my life through photographs.

I suspect one of the reasons might be the fact that, for much of my career, I’ve been surrounded by professional photographers - leaders in their field at the top of their game. Take a favorite of mine, Onne van der Wal, one of the best nautical photographers in the world. He was originally a professional sailor but switched to photography after his photos documenting one of his own voyages became super popular in the sailing community. I had the privilege of working with him at Motor Boating Magazine and was able to watch artistic brilliance at work. His photos are truly sublime. In the presence of such masters, my own efforts at photography pale in comparison.

Even though I was trained as an artist and worked as a fashion illustrator, I was never a trained photographer. The craft of choosing a subject, framing it with the right surroundings and the right lighting, and having the overall composition emotionally resonate with the viewer is a daunting task. In many ways, photography might be one of the most challenging of the visual arts, since the photographer works within the limits of what is in front of you. The image of that cute dog you dreamed up? Sure you can sketch it, paint it, or sculpt it. With photography, you can’t ask your viewers to plant an image of that same cute dog that wasn’t around in real life to photograph.

Still, that doesn’t mean I didn’t learn a thing or two from my camera-toting colleagues.

I distinctly remember a photo shoot I attended at Sanibel Island, Florida when I worked for Motor Boating Magazine. We were down there to get a variety of shots that we could use for the next cover, and my editor-in-chief at the time decided to send me as part of the team so that I could help direct the photo shoot. What that generally entailed was telling the tanned, blonde, bikini-wearing model on the boat to pose in different ways on various parts of the boat to maximize the “appeal” of the shot. It goes without saying, but I’ll say it anyway, the publishers were under no illusions as to the demographics of their subscribers and what they wanted to see.

While it was definitely normal, the art department wasn’t always involved directly in the photo shoot. Sometimes, we wouldn’t attend and just receive a bunch of photos after the shoot. We would cull through maybe a hundred shots to try to find the “right one” - if the “right one” existed at all. Otherwise, we would make do with the best of the lot.

But the publishers wanted the art department to be involved in this particular photo shoot. They were looking for an aerial shot, which would entail taking the photographs from a helicopter. By this time in my career, I had directed many cover shoots from a boat, but I had never done so from a helicopter. Heck, I had never even flown in a helicopter before, so I was excited by the idea. How hard could it be versus shooting from a boat? In the helicopter, you get a wider, birds-eye perspective, so it seemed like we would be able to get what we needed quickly and be done sooner.

We awoke just before dawn at our hotel. We needed to get an early start to the shoot. Generally, if you are going to rely on natural lighting, the best light is around dawn or dusk. At these times, the light is softer and creates a pleasing flow effect. In between, sunlight can be very harsh causing colors to have an unpleasant hue.

Even though I was naturally an early riser, I was still a little groggy from sleep. I had a late night at dinner with the photographer, where we discussed how the photo shoot would work. As you probably guessed, on photo shoots, the photographer is the one in charge. He explained that we were going to try for a series of action shots, where the boat would be making tight figure-eight turns, so we could capture a shot of the boat while it was listing to one side with a dramatic wake behind it.

We were up in the air in no time. The noise from the rotors and engine were much louder than I had anticipated, but we had headsets with which to communicate and from which I could give the model instructions. I had imagined that we would simply hover in one spot while the boat pulled its figure eights alongside as the photographer snapped away.

That’s not how it happened.

“Ok, guys, let’s get this show started,” the photographer said into the mic, addressing the captain on the boat and the helicopter pilot. All three had worked together on many assignments before and were familiar with the process.

The boat below accelerated and began to turn into its first figure eight. Without warning, we abruptly ascended high up in the air. We lurched forward as we began chasing the boat. A figure eight basically consists of a hard left turn immediately followed by a hard right turn, repeated ad nauseam. We had to swing from one side of the boat to the other rather violently in order to make sure we were in a position to get shots of the overhead rather than the underside of the boat as it listed from one side to the other during different sections of the figure eight. Since we also wanted to vary the height, we had to bob up and down repeatedly as well. I snapped to attention and was no longer groggy from sleep.

The sensation was very much like that of being on a roller coaster. Only you had the visual horror of seeing the ocean speeding towards you while you were rapidly descending (water crash, anyone?), and the mental fear of experiencing the ocean suddenly drop away just as quickly while ascending (don’t lie, you’d be a little afraid of heights here, too). All the while you are being pulled left, then right, then left again. I felt like I was in a high-intensity chase scene from a James Bond movie. My stomach churned. That cinnamon bun that was so delicious for breakfast seemed like a mistake now.

We were up in the air for maybe half an hour before we finished and headed back to the helipad to land. During our time in the air, I had somehow managed to give instructions to the model on the boat without giving up my breakfast. Now I could feel my heart pounding. The antiperspirant under my armpits had been working overtime. We were still alive. We had escaped possible death and a watery grave in the ocean.

I loved every minute and couldn’t wait to go back. In fact, I directed three more helicopter photo shoots while at Motor Boating Magazine.

So what did I learn? I certainly don’t take pictures of my dishes from a moving helicopter. If there is one lesson that stands out, it is that I think you have to have the mentality to be flexible in framing your shot. Don’t be afraid to move in or out on the subject matter. Don’t just stand in one spot and click away. Walk around it. Stand above it. Lie down on the ground. Experiment with the perspective.

Do you have any stories or tips related to your photography experience? Let me know what’s worked for you.