Photos of boatbuilding...

It is rare that I take shots of boats for artistic reasons, unless it is as part of a scene when I am out paddling. The vast majority of shots of boats that I take are to illustrate the building process. This entails perhaps 700 shots in tight spaces with poor photographic lighting.

My workshop has three fluorescents above the strong back and a long side window that is blocked from direct light by an outside wall. Quite ok for working in, but not great for shooting photos. My bubble-wrap tent diffuses the various light sources quite nicely though.

For arty shots, or shots like the following one, I use this...

It is possible to get great shots of the building process with the big camera, but it is just too much hassle if one is in the process of building, where the photography is definitely secondary. The big sensor is much more demanding of good technique... You need to shut down the aperture, up the ISO, stabilise the monster, and try not to get resin on it.

For building shots I use this...

The tiny sensor gives great depth of field, even with the aperture wide open, so focusing is rarely an issue.

I leave the White space on auto... exposure on (P)... ISO locked at 400... vibration reduction at maximum... the flash off... the lens mostly zoomed right out... and let the camera take it from there.

The flash is optimised for the focus point, so using the flash gives one well exposed area and the rest of the image is too dark or blown out. So the flash is out, unless I am shooting inside the hull, which can be quite useful if you want to get a good look at something, like how well you have sanded for a bit of keying, or did you do an ok job of that hard to reach fillet. Mostly I just make do with whatever available electric and natural light there is.

Upping the ISO on these small sensors gives poor results so I lock it in at 400.

This means it is crucial to keep the camera camera steady, as shutter speeds are going to be quite slow.

I don't have room for a tripod in the tent, so I keep a seven ft length of 2x1 inch plank handy. I stand one end against the floor and brace the camera against it at the appropriate height if I feel I need a bit of steadying. It is a very crude monopod.

If the light is really bad I use the time delay on the shutter. A triple tap gives me a two second delay. I depress the button, relax, and wait two seconds for the shutter to release. Buy doing this the act of depressing the shutter button does not move the camera at the crucial moment.

One soon discovers which angles are sexy on whatever boat one is working on at the time. Unless I am shooting a detail I try for as much of the boat in focus as possible. More often than not I shoot a semi profile from the front of the boat as this is always a pleasing angle and it gives me most room to step back in my tent...

For those who only shoot with cellphones... (Everyone else ignore this)... To obtain the maximum depth of field I focus, in the above scenario, at around the area of the front bulkhead, maybe a third of the way down the boat. I aim the focus point at this spot, depress the shutter button halfway to focus, recompose while holding the button thus, and then depress the button all the way. This locks the focus distance while re-composing... For maximum depth of field, locking your focus at the first third of the scene is a good rule of thumb. This method works with the time delay as well.

If am shooting details I concentrate on the detail in question and make it big and clear. The down side to this is that any errors in craftsmanship will be glaringly apparent.

Finally I open all the shots I have taken on my Mac in the preview app, and weed out about 90% of them. Then I duplicate the remainder and open the copies in Photoshop.

(I know I am going to be uploading a hundred pics or more to my Facebook gallery during a project, and if this becomes a real chore I will stop doing it, so I keep post-processing to a minimum).

In Photoshop I open the images, crop as necessary, and adjust the levels. Auto level, will often correct any colour casts from the fluorescents enough to be acceptable for the web, and mostly it manages the tonal values fine as well.

Then I re-size the image, to 72 dpi and usually the long edge to 960 pixels and add a touch of sharpening, then go to the save for web option and save the image as a JPEG (high ... 60%).

Each shot takes no more than perhaps a minute or two of messing around with.

If I was doing a book I'd have to go back to the originals and do a better job.

I am a messy worker, and I am old enough and wise enough to know by now that this is never going to change. The state of my workspace is always going to mess up my photos.

In the end though, my aim is to show the process as clearly as possible, just so builders who do not have a project on the go can live vicariously as I progress. I enjoy following other folk's projects, and I have picked up quite a few tricks of the trade by noticing details in their photos and videos that were brobably not intended. One can also glean something of a person's temperament from seing their workspaces and their method. With boat building, a fancy arty shot is of far less interest to me than an informative one.

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