Photographing rowing from a boat

Today, I was shooting the second day of the Canadian University Rowing Championship at the Elk Lake. Armando and I were the official photographers of the event, so we had a dedicated boat that took one of us close to the racing boats (the other was shooting from the dock). Together with me in the boat was another photographer named Kevin, who is a former rower himself, and not just any rower, but no less than a national team member and a gold medalist. He has been shooting rowing for a while and had a very specific idea about types of shots he wanted to get, but a bit concerned about falling out of our little catamaran. The previous day, I was sharing a boat with another photographer, a young lady from Netherlands, so I knew that the boat was perfectly capable of carrying two photographers. I was also happy to learn more ways of making a series of rowing photos less boring – after all, rowing motion is very repeatable, which does not give a lot of variety of poses (although facial expressions of the athletes vary quite a bit!).

Over the course of several races, we refined a strategy that allowed us to capture a variety of shots. As the race started, we would wait at the side of the course at the half-distance mark. As the boats rowed past us, followed by the boats carrying the officials, then, we would cross into the middle lane and follow the rowers. Kevin and I positioned ourselves on both sides of the boat driver, shooting, literally, over both his shoulders. We both had Canon EOS-1D X cameras. I used a 300mm f/2.8L IS USM lens with a 1.4X tele-extender and Kevin had a 600mm f/4L IS II USM. The key point, which took us couple of runs to figure out, was to drive the boat between  and just behind the two official’s boats, but in front of the point where their wakes intersected. This way, we avoided most severe wave vibrations. Another note is that men’s 8+ boats were fast enough to actually outrun our motorboat, which was kind of cool to watch.

As the rowers approached the finish line, we would ask the driver to kill the engine and drifted to take the shots of the athletes celebrating their victories. Then, we followed them to the dock and took some shots of the coaches greeting them after a cool-down lap.

Later, I shot some moments of celebration by the winners from the dock. Most notable was the throwing of the coxswain in the water by his grateful teammates.

It was long weekend, but an interesting experience of learning the dynamics of the rowing race and following it from the athlete’s perspective.