04-03-13 A Good Wind

As the last snow melts and as the temperatures warm into the 50s, is hard not to start thinking of summer. And for me summer equals sailing. And so today I went looking for something that evokes warmer weather. In two more months, maybe I'll be on my boat on amazing Lake Oahe. . .

08-10-12 Quiet Anchorage

07-09-12 Dream Boat

This is the 41' sailboat we chartered in June in the British Virgin Islands. It had a few more creature comforts than my 25' boat, including hot & cold running water, refrigeration and three small, private bedrooms. But I still like my boat better. :-)

Under Way

We are back from a little more than a week in the British Virgin Islands and so I guess this is my first, official post from the trip. We met our youngest son Jon and his friend Eli in Road Town, Tortola, and, having chartered a 41' Beneteau monohull sailboat for a week, we took off for the islands.I didn't take that many photos on the trip, primarily because my point of view was mainly limited to the sailboat. If you ask me, one water-with-an-island-in-the-background shot looks pretty much like every other water-with-an-island-in-the-background shot. Also, since the boat was often moving in pretty good swells and wind, I didn't like taking my camera outside the confines of the cockpit.So, anyway, here's a shot I took lying on my back on the bow of the boat looking straight up. I shot this with my 16-35mm wide angle lens but and even wider angle would have been nice.Canon 5DII 1/320s f/9.0 ISO100 16mm

Slowly Going Nowhere

Somebody once said that a good definition of sailing was "slowly going nowhere at great expense." These boats were photographed leaving Gig Harbor in Washington state on a nearly windless day and they were certainly moving at a deliberate pace.Though it was a generally gray (a typical western Washington) day, the boats in this Saturday regatta were still photogenic.

03-23-09 The Perfect Place

I often find that some photos become favorites more for sentimental reasons than for aesthetic considerations. This photo is perhaps the best example I have of that. Pictured is the Mission Creek area near the Little Bend of the Missouri River. I have spent the night in my sailboat, Ariel, which is named after a sea spirit in Shakespeare's play The Tempest. I have walked up on to a bluff and am looking northeast over a glass-smooth body of water.

Is this a great photo? No. Is is one of my favorites? Yes. But only because it helps me remember what it's like to be in (for me) the perfect place: warm, quiet and utterly peaceful.

Incidentally, I use this photo to illustrate the rule of thirds and the principle that the eye is typically drawn to the brightest part of the picture, which is my sailboat.

No photo info: this is a scan of a film image (so 20th century!)

02-24-09 Gig Harbor, Washington

By Scott Shephard

This photo is really two photos that I layered in Photoshop. One photo is exposed for the sky and the other is exposed for the water. If I had taken only one photo, I would have been able to get either the interesting clouds, which are fairly bright, or I would have gotten the sky reflected in the water, which is the darkest part of this scene. I often layer photos but normally I use a tripod. Because I had no tripod, I had to try hard to get exactly the same thing in both frames. I was close but not perfect. The hard part was aligning the masts in the sailboats.

Canon 5D, 24-105 4.0, variable exposures, iso 400