06 December 2009
Holy Cowes, that's quick!
09/12/09 15:04 Filed in: Cowes
Week
In a desperate attempt to escape the non-stop rain storm that we call summer up here in the Lakes, I headed down to the sunniest spot in Britain for a week - the Isle of Wight - in early August, to shoot the most famous sailing event on the calender, Cowes Week. The attraction of this world class sailing-fest had been nagging at me for some years and then out of the blue, my publisher (sic) asked me if I would care to pick a great British sporting event to photograph as part of a new series of books on - well - great British sporting events. Without hesitation I picked...The Isle of Man TT. No, they said, we don’t think so. OK, then how about Cowes Week? YES - great idea, go for it. And so it was that I trundled onto the Southampton ferry with my camping trailer and camera bag on a warm Sunday evening feeling just very slightly deja-vue’ish because I was in fact born in Southampton but left at a very early age (1 year old i believe). It had been a long time. Anyway - the point of this ramble is not about my childhood but to write about how I am totally and utterly converted to awesome spectacle of Class 1 IRC Maxi’s and IMOCA racing yachts tearing up the Solent at unbelievable speeds. And even faster and every bit as spectacular are Extreme 40’s...the F1 racing bullets of the sailing world. Full carbon fiber catamaran hulls with huge state of the art rigs and a crew of 4 including a token celebrity, jousting around the racing marks not 200 meters of the beach, and for the most part planing on a single hull looking like they about to fall over - which they do sometimes; it’s quite a spectacle. And it makes great pictures. Colourful, fast and furious, full of beautifully graceful shapes and lines glinting and sparkling in the afternoon sun - what more could a sports photographer want? If there any would-be sailing photographers out there who haven’t been to Cowes Week yet, I urge you, book your place for next years event right now, you wont regret it. The book, by the way, will be on the shelves in early 2010 and I’ll be back on the IOW next year to do it all again. And maybe the TT too.