We are living in a weird situation, staying at home behind our fences to protect ourselves from an invisible enemy. And what’s the thing we miss the most? Breathe, walk, run, explore, travel and… be on the sea of course!

Never as today before we would love to be on a boat and let it sail over the seas, reaching wonderful places, maybe far from our comfort zone. That’s why in this episode of my blog I decided to show you this picture taken by the British photographer Rick Tomlinson. In this period of physical inactivity, I spend a lot of time dreaming experiences that I absolutely want to do once in my life.

I was scrolling the Facebook homepage when this beautiful picture captured my attention. Fortunately Rick Tomlinson is getting out all his archive so some analogical pearls like this one can be shared. This is an expedition that all the sailing photographers with an adventurous soul want to tell by images. Daily light, cold colors, sinuous and uncommon shapes of landscape… and silence!

Could you image it? The picture portrays Skip Novak’s first ‘Pelagic’ yacht photographed by a large iceberg in Fournier Bay, Antarctica, and it was taken on Fuji Provia 100 ISO  slide film in 1992 with a Nikon F4 and 20mm lens with a graduated grey filter.

“We had noticed this beautiful iceberg with a sine wave like profile and set about trying to capture its size and shape using Pelagic to show its scale.  I was dropped off in a small inflatable dinghy while Skip took Pelagic in closer to the berg. The lines on the ice draw your eye to the boat. These lines are actually previous water lines and the iceberg has rotated as it melts and erodes. You don’t want to hang around to close to a berg like this as they can be very unstable and can brake or rotate at any time”, Rick Tomlinson said.

Keep on dreaming! Stay safe, stay at home and travel with the imagination! We will have time later to do what we want!

Rick Tomlinson Biography

At the Legends event in 2011 Volvo presented Rick Tomlinson with the Pioneer of Onboard Media award, but Rick Tomlinson started his career as a boat builder and sailor racing the Whitbread onboard Drum, The Card, Intrum Justitia and Team EF.  

His first pictures from Drum where published in Yachting World and Seahorse,(circulation 50,000) his final race on Team EF was an assignment for National Geographic (circulation 10 million).  Rick has twice been the Official Photographer for the Volvo Ocean Race and twice worked as a Team Photographer the most recent with Team SCA.  

Rick Tomlinson is part of the elite group of specialist yachting photographers covering the worlds major sailing events, from the Olympics to the Americas Cup, and undertaking assignments for magazines and the top boat yards.

Click to discover Rick Tomlinson official website.

The post Dreaming The Antarctica: An Emotional Photo By Rick Tomlinson appeared first on Sail Universe.

What I have always appreciated about Matias’ production is his ability to capture the typical movements of sailing and make them somehow different; being it because of a research on new perspectives, or the intention to show the funny side of a sport competition, his style is -in my opinion- fittingly expressed in this picture that I like to title “The Upside Down World” (It’s just for this blog!

The first time that I saw this picture I immediately thought about the movie “Pirates of the Caribbean”, when the tall ship Black Pearl needed to capsized to come back from the Dead Land; “Up is down and down is up”).

The comment of the photographer: “The picture was taken during the 2018 Optimist World’s Championship in Cyprus. Thailand won the Team Race Worlds against USA. After the end of the final race, the young sailors started to celebrate the winning jumping in the water. I was making some shots of their jumps and then I decided to jump into the water too with my waterproof case camera. The sailor in the photo is Panwa Boonnak THA 244”

To me, the simple idea of changing the point of view, by jumping into the water and taking pictures of the capsized boats with people inside is what made the difference. Sometimes we don’t need much to create something cool. It’s easy to capture a moment of joy after a win, big smiles, hugs between coaches and sailors, people jumping into the water… But Matias found a new way to show this feeling of happiness. 

Discover more about Matias Capizzano on his Official Website and Facebook Page.

The post BEST OF 2019. The Details Hunter/4 The Upside Down World appeared first on Sail Universe.

A long time ago, before the Suez Canal, the only way in and out was the Straits of Gibraltar,  the famous Pillars of Hercules, beyond which there was the unknown. And the Unknown was just the Ocean, a way to a new World. The sixth episode of this blog is a tale about my first experience (and hopefully not the last) as an onboard reporter over the turbulent waters of the North Atlantic Ocean.

The Ocean has been always a dream to me, a desire, coinciding with the mythological vision of going beyond the well known world, beyond the boundaries of the Mediterranean Sea, enclosed among its lands and therefore ideally comforting. Sailing on the ocean means pushing our limits.

I went to Lorient last September, in Brittany, where the Defì Azimut Regatta would take place. It is an Imoca 60 Class Regatta with an onboard reporter together with the two skippers. The format is two days of coastal races returning to the base at night and 48 hours offshore consecutively. 

Sailing onboard an Imoca 60 is already in itself a stunning experience. It is like being in a giant mixer, where the sense of balance is faltering and where we find ourselves at the mercy of the sea waves, sailing up to 30 knots of speed and constantly under buckets of water.

The living quarter is very small and It has to be shared not only with the double handed crew but also with sails, boxes of food, medicines, bottles of water and all the sailing gear. Every change of tack sailing upwind needs “matossage”, shifting the weight windward, and we can stay only in this half part of the boat. 

Onboard life is tough. The easiest things to do, like preparing a coffee, become exhausting. As the onboard reporter I can sleep whenever I feel like but the two skippers have to respect sleep schedules. Despite the difficulties, you adapt.

When there is a relatively quiet situation, you are bound to find yourself spending the time staring at the ocean as it flows under the hull of the boat and it’s like feeling our thoughts scrolling in our mind. It is a moment of reflection and self-discovery not so easy to find in the normal life. The landscape around helps to do it because it is quite bleak and comforting at the same time, so you might realize that you are alone but never completely. 

Many questions came up to my head in those moments. Would I be able to stay only with myself for three months consecutively like an ocean skipper that wants to do the Vendee Globe has to do? Could I stand living on this kind of boat for more than two days? I didn’t find a definitive answer but I understood that if I don’t try I will never know.  

The post The Ocean Is A State Of Mind appeared first on Sail Universe.

The task of the photograph is not only narrative but also and especially evoking deep feelings. 

I took this picture a month ago during one of the most beautiful Mediterranean regattas: the Rolex Giraglia. I was working for the great family of the Yacht Club Italiano and one of the themes to develop was a full reportage of life onboard during the offshore race (and this is the part of my job that I like the most!).

Of all the pictures taken, sunset and sunrise included, I chose this one because for me it’s the representation of the adrenaline that we had as a crew after the starting signal. 

The moment was magic: deep blue sea and sky, a lot of colourful sails all together toward the first mark and, outside the gulf of Saint Tropez, 30 knots were waiting for us. 

I was onboard a big and fast sailing boat, a Swan 70 named Flying Dragon. And yes, we flew up to the Giraglia’s Rock in Corsica, going downwind and reaching speeds of 20 knots. 

The sea experience is something actually intimate; when I look at this picture I can remember perfectly the sounds of the wind roaring and of the waves crashing on the hull. This scene means freedom to me, with my salty face and my messy hair, when the real life with its problems is pending because you are in another universe…

I really hope you can feel the same!

The post The Details Hunter/5 The Sound Of A Private Emotion appeared first on Sail Universe.

What I have always appreciated about Matias’ production is his ability to capture the typical movements of sailing and make them somehow different; being it because of a research on new perspectives, or the intention to show the funny side of a sport competition, his style is -in my opinion- fittingly expressed in this picture that I like to title “The Upside Down World” (It’s just for this blog! The first time that I saw this picture I immediately thought about the movie “Pirates of the Caribbean”, when the tall ship Black Pearl needed to capsized to come back from the Dead Land; “Up is down and down is up”).

The comment of the photographer: “The picture was taken during the 2018 Optimist World’s Championship in Cyprus. Thailand won the Team Race Worlds against USA. After the end of the final race, the young sailors started to celebrate the winning jumping in the water. I was making some shots of their jumps and then I decided to jump into the water too with my waterproof case camera. The sailor in the photo is Panwa Boonnak THA 244”

To me, the simple idea of changing the point of view, by jumping into the water and taking pictures of the capsized boats with people inside is what made the difference. Sometimes we don’t need much to create something cool. It’s easy to capture a moment of joy after a win, big smiles, hugs between coaches and sailors, people jumping into the water… But Matias found a new way to show this feeling of happiness. 

Discover more about Matias Capizzano on his Official Website and Facebook Page.

The post The Details Hunter/4 The Upside Down World According To Matias Capizzano appeared first on Sail Universe.

Who is Frank Hurley? Many of us might have heard about Sir Ernest Shackleton, the famous explorer that in 1914, on board the Endurance, set sail from London towardtheAntarctica with a crew of 27 men.

Among these men there was also Frank Hurley, the expedition’s photographer, whose work hassurvived until our time against all odds to provide us the visual proofs of an epic adventure. 

The aim of the expedition was to cross the Antarctic land from east to west on foot; but the Endurance got trapped through the ice of the Weddell Sea 80 miles from the Pole, and then dragged by the pack’s drift from north to west for 10 months until the crack caused by the ice’s pressure. From that pointfor the castaways a struggle to survive began, walking through the ice toward the sea and taking the dinghies with them.

The picture I propose to tell this story shows the James Caird, the lifeboat that some of the castaways launched from the Elephant Island to South Georgia trying to find rescues. All the Hurley’s production is not only the evidence of an incredible feat but it’s also a witness of devotion to his work.

Hurley was an adventure’s lover and the fact that he could manage difficult situations as previously describe shouldn’t overshadow his ability to create artistic images capable of reaching the essential. He was also a pioneer of the technology at the time and the equipment he had was composed by cameras supporting large-format plates and magnesium flash lights. Pretty heavy to carry on in this kind of trip. 

Just few people know that the Endurance’s crew decided to leave some food and survival gear to have space for Hurley’s equipment during the pack’s crossing on foot. They understood the witness’ importance of their unique experience.

The post The Details Hunter/3 Frank Hurley The Witness of a Grand Adventure appeared first on Sail Universe.

The author is Luigi Ghirri (1943 – 1992 – here his archive), an authority in the Italian conceptual photography whose works inspired a generation of photographers worldwide. 

The analysed picture is part of a collection of 41 images named “Atlante”  created in 1973. Ghirri carries out an imaginary voyage capturing the details of a common atlas: in his project, the geographical symbols then lose their illustrative purpose becoming a proper landscape. The direct experience of the journey is annulled and what remains is the reinterpretation.

With the big word “Ocean” in full close-up, this picture offers the sign/ symbol’s experience, which is the mediation between given representation (the sign) and our private imagination: six simple letters have the same meaning for everyone in geography (they are a code) but in our minds they suggest unique images and memories. 

When you then look at this picture, go beyond what it represents: It is a chance to bring out your mental images of your real sea experiences. 

The post The Details Hunter/2 Evocativeness of the Sign: an Exercise of Imagination appeared first on Sail Universe.

LIKE A SCI-FI MOVIE

As first image to be commented, I chose one of the French photographer Martin Keruzorè. It was taken onboard Vestas 11th Hours Racing during the Volvo Ocean Race 2017/2018. It is a high visual impact image, similar to a classic sunset picture, but with three big differences: the tough environment where the image was captured, the high technical level and the dominance of blue as the main color. 

In the author’s own words: “Midnight, Vestas 11th Hour Racing is crossing the Golf stream, heading to Newport, pushed by a big low pressure. Phil Harmer is trying to drive downwind in a big sea state. A few seconds after this shot, Phil was calling everybody on deck to take a second reef as the wind was increase over 45knts under the squall.”

“The boat finished 3rd in this leg. I have spent many nights on deck during this Volvo, trying to get this kind of picture. At night, you have to compose with the low light. For that, I had to find the good balance between the light (in this instance the moon behind the clouds) the sky, the weather and sea state. I wanted the boat perfectly in focus and pin-sharp and the waterfall totally blurred to create this effect, like a Science Fiction movie. It has been technically hard to get this one when you are sailing down the wave at 25knts onboard a shaker like the Volvo 65”.

As a sea and adventure lover, I could not start with any other picture than this: It is so evocative, not only in its subjects – ocean, night, squall – but also knowing the huge efforts the photographer went to in order to capture it. Being an OBR during the Volvo Ocean Race is one of the most dangerous and tough job in the world and this picture is not only a simple snapshot as many other images, It is mainly artistic because Martin wanted to create exactly that effect. 

Martin Keruzorè Biography

Martin grew up in brittany, around the ocean and the world of sailing photography. He has almost a decade’s experience as a director, photographer, cameraman and editor. Starting out early, Martin has logged thousands of miles in French races and has been involved in many projects around Europe, sailing onboard the Multi 50, shooting with the Figaro Class and the IMOCA class especially before the last Vendée Globe. He has just finished the Volvo Ocean Race 2017-18 as an Onboard reporter rotating between Dongfeng Race team, Team Brunel, Vestas 11th Hour Racing and Turn The Tide on Plastic.

Martin Keruzoré
29 years old
Living in Brittany – France
Portfolio: https://martinkeruzor.portfoliobox.net/
ompany: Air Vide et Eau productions
Vimeo: vimeo.com/airvideeteau

The post The Details Hunter / 1 – Like a Sci-Fi Movie appeared first on Sail Universe.