Shoots & Interviews:

The first time that I saw ice yachts was in Meredith, New Hampshire on Lake Winnipesaukee in the mid-90s. I was a staff photographer for a daily newspaper in the area, and I was going from assignment to another when I spotted two ice yachts cruising around near the docks. I had enough time before the next shoot to pull over and watch, then get out onto the ice for a few photos of them that I would use for feature photos in the paper. Their sleek lines and quiet maneuvering over the ice gave them a kind of majestic grace that translated well onto film. Not long after this, I found out that a big ice yachting race was going to take place on Lake Champlain near Burlington, Vermont, so I decided to make the trip and get some photos of them for a freelance client. The ice of Lake Chaplain was far more vast and open than the area of Winnipesaukee where I had shot ice yachts for the first time. I got some very good photos on this shoot as well, and one of them has been a long time overall favorite photo of mine. After this, I knew I wanted to shoot ice yachters again; but I wanted the next shoot to be more encompassing

For years I had wanted to do a story on ice yachting; but cancelled races, warm winters or obligations to work or other stories always seemed to put it on the back burner for another year. Finally, last year, I was able to get out and put together a story that was pretty close to what I had envisioned. I covered two ice yacht races, one on Sebago Lake in Maine, and the other on Watuppa Pond in Massachusetts. The event on Sebago proved to be the best for a couple of reasons, the most important being that there was snow on the ice. This was the first time that I had seen ice yachts sail on snow, so it presented a unique photographic opportunity for me. The snow seemed to give a lot of the photos an extra pop in the way of contrast. Later in the day, the snow would also provide some photos that were will beyond anything I had pictured in my mind’s eye while planning this shoot.

The wind died out near the end of the first race on Sebago, forcing the racers to return to the assembly area until it picked up again. I hung around there for awhile, using the down time to talk with some of the people that I had gotten photos of so that I could get their names and contact information for captions and interviews at a later date. This is where I met Dave Fortier, who was a very much a key source for this story. Fortier provided a wealth of information while being interviewed, and he steered me in the right direction concerning other ice yachters to talk with. Eventually it seemed like the racing might have reached a dead end, so I decided to head back to the launch area and call it a day. I didn’t get very far from the assembly area when I finally noticed something that I knew would provide a very unique extra dimension visually. The runners (skates) on the ice yachts left lines in the snow cover over the ice where they had passed through it. This created a grid-like pattern that I wanted to incorporate into some photos. I took a number of pictures with these patterns in the foreground and the boats in the assembly area in the background, before resuming my journey back to the launch area.

I hadn’t gotten much further on my journey back, when I felt the breeze start to return. As soon as the racers felt it, the assembly area emptied, and ice yachts were all over the ice. My first instinct was to walk back to the race area to get the pictures I wanted the most: those of the boats racing. I was beginning to feel like nature was jerking me around, because walking on slightly wet snow over glare ice makes for slow going unless you have spike bottom shoes, which I didn’t. It was also risky because I almost slipped a couple times, doing a mad funky chicken-like dance trying to stave off falling and breaking my camera gear. Just when I was about to turn around for the assembly area, I noticed that the boats were coming to me. It turns out, that with the tacks they were taking, I was close enough to one leg of the course to get the exact photos I had had hoped for after seeing the runner patterns. I now went from calling it a day to getting my best photo of the day.

What I felt was the best photo of the day was also my favorite photo from the overall story. I was shooting the ice yachts passing by, about a hundred yards away, with the runner patterns in the foreground of the photos. Occasionally, because of wind direction, turns and snow on the ice, racers would have to get off from their yachts and give them a running push up to get up to speed. While starting to track one of these boats, another one started to pass by, only much closer. I kept my lens on the distant ice yacht, and waited for the closer one to enter the camera’s field of view. As soon as the front of it came into the camera’s viewfinder, I let the motordrive fire for three or four shots on the eight frames per second setting. In that group of shots was one that showed most of the closest ice yacht in the center right foreground and the other yacht in the background, while still making good use of the runner patterns. I had also purposely underexposed these shots by at least a stop so that the racers would be somewhat silhouetted and the grid would show up better. After this, I was satisfied that I gotten a good variety of photos, and headed home. Later, I found out from the sail numbers that the two ice yachts in this photo belonged to people I had talked with earlier; David Fortier and Eben Whitcomb. Both of these ice yachters played prominent roles in the text portion of the story.

My next trip was to Watuppa Pond in Fall River, Massachusetts for the Massachusetts Ice Yacht Racing Championship, also called the "Beanpot." The ice at this race was glare, but no less slippery to walk on. Here I got some good photos of what goes on in the "pits" before heading out on the ice to get racing photos. I spent a little time at the upwind pylon, shooting the yachts as they rounded it before heading back up the course. This is one of the best places to be to catch the ice yachts up close and listen to them as their runners grab at the ice. Next, I talked with some of the racers for a while and got a few more shots before making to long slow walk back. During this walk, David Fortier asked Doug Sharp, who has a two-man version of the standard racing ice yacht, to give me a ride back. This was a totally unexpected bonus that provided a great aspect of what it is like to race in one of these nimble boats.

After getting on board, Sharp immediately tacked into a position that took advantage of the wind. We were quickly going along at a pretty good rate of speed; Sharp later told me that his GPS said we were doing around 37mph. While we were cruising along back toward the launch area, I took several photos, with a Nikon F5 and 17-35mm lens at its widest setting, of Sharp working the controls of his ice yacht. This was something I had considered trying to rig up on a boat and shooting with a remote, but doing it while on a ride-along was much better. The biggest challenge in getting these shots was trying to keep my own boot and lower leg out of the photo, while using one hand to shoot and the other to steady myself. An ice yacht is not very comfortable, but the speedy ride and sudden maneuvers make the ride priceless. James Thieler, as quoted in the text portion of the story, was right on when he described the exaggerated feeling of speed gained from moving fast while so close to the ice. In no time it seemed like we were back in the launch area and the ride was over. It took roughly five minutes to get back, whereas the walk would have been at least thirty minutes.

The final destination for photos was David Fortier’s home in Biddeford, Maine. I had been playing phone tag with him for about week before I finally got a chance to talk to him. I had planned upon doing a phone interview, but he suggested that I come right on over to Maine and see his shop. Since it was a little less than a two hour drive to his home, and I had no shoots scheduled that day; I did just that. Once there, David showed off his extensive shop for working on sail and ice boats, and the four ice yacht fuselages that he and another ice yachter were building. I also interviewed David while I was there, and during this interview he explained exactly how an ice race is conducted and showed me how ice yachts are built.

After this interview, I contacted Doug Sharp, Eben Whitcomb and James Thieler by phone and did interviews with them. They were very enthusiastic about their sport and more than willing to talk at length about their involvement in ice yachting. It was nice that it worked out so that all of these excellent interviews could be shown in photos with their ice yachts. Sometimes the people in the best photos aren’t interviewed or quoted, and the best interviews sometimes don’t get photographed.

Technical Things:

METERING: I use a handheld incident light meter for almost every shoot because it gives light readings based upon the actual light falling on the subject. When the meter in a camera is used, it is giving light reading based on light reflected off from the subject. No matter how accurate the meter in a camera is (Nikon F5s, used for this shoot, have a reflective light meter that considered to be one the best), if there are great differences in highlights and shadows, or even color, these meters can be thrown off. This is why I use an incident meter when possible. Shooting on the snow of Sebago made this kind of meter all the more important. Lots of white scenery can throw off a camera’s reflective meter: the incident shows exactly how much light is falling on that snow. I got my reading, and then purposely underexposed the scenes anywhere from half a stop, to insure that the snow’s highlights were under control, to two or three stops to get near silhouette type shots. I just don’t trust a camera’s meter for readings in these type scenes. In a later issue there will be a detailed story explaining why incident meters are so important to a photographer, and how they can be used.

FILM: I still use color negative film when working on stories that aren’t on deadline. The extra dynamic range of this film is especially useful when shooting scenes in bright light with lots of snow, like on Sebago Lake in Maine (See story: Film vs. Digital). It gives extra shadow detail while keeping the highlights under control. For this story, some of the negative things about shooting color negative film came into play. My usually reliable film processor must have been getting toward the end of his batch of chemistry, or the chemistry was too hot, because the film came back very grainy. It also had chemistry streaks on it much of it (from spent blix I believe), which forced me to do a lot of unwanted cropping in some cases and noise and grain reduction in other cases. Because some of these negatives were dense due to purposely underexposing, my film scanner created a lot of noise in the sky (film scanners don’t like dense negatives). In short, I had to do a lot more work than normal to get the photos to look good. There’s nothing worse than getting a good photo, and finding out that something you have little control over may have ruined it.

Gear:

For more on gear used, check out the pages for the individual photos. In short, the most used gear was as follows:
-Two Nikon F5 camera bodies
-One Nikon D100 camera body
-Nikon 17-35 f/2.8 AF-S wide angle zoom lens
-Nikon 80-200 f/2.8 AF-S telephoto zoom
-Sekonic L-308 Handheld Incident/Flash meter
-One old, but tough, Jeep Wrangler to get me there and back
-Gear I Wish I Had Brought! – Tie on spikes for my boots so that wouldn’t have to walk at a glacial pace on the ice and constantly worry that I was going to fall and break my gear.

Writing the Story:

The goals for writing this story were to cover most of the aspects of ice yachting that are important to the ice yachters, as well as those that would interesting to a reader who knows little or nothing of the sport. In the first person observations, I tried to mention the things that caught my eye or gave a flavor for what ice yachting is like. I relied upon direct quotes from those that I interviewed to make points in portions of the story that I couldn’t give direct observations on, like why people like to race, work on their boats or what weather they like. As I got about two thirds of the way through the story, I realized that it was going to be longer than I had anticipated. I certainly didn’t set out to write a long story, it just happened in the course of trying to hit upon the topics that I felt were necessary for a story that accurately covered ice yachting. Hopefully everyone gets through it without going through the ice.