Falmouth Tall Ships Regatta 2014
Dar Mlodziezy in Full Sail
Sunday, 31st August, was the fourth and final day of the Regatta and we had the Parade of Ships as a prelude to the start of the Falmouth to Greenwich Tall Ships Race. Six of us were lucky to spend several hours on the water in a small speedboat witnessing this amazing event. Apart from the 46 ships taking part it was estimated there were about 1500 small boats on the water. It made for a great spectacle and was nice to see everyone having such a great time. About 100,000 people watched from the land
The Dar Mlodziezy
This Polish, 3 masted sail training ship, the Dar Mlodzeizy (means The Gift of Youths) was the largest ship in the Regatta; 204 feet high masts and 32,000 square feet of sail, fully rigged.
From a photographic point of view I found it a challenge. Nearly all my photography involves using a tripod, and usually slow shutter speeds. This obviously was not going to work here! I used two lenses, a 14-24mm wide angle lens (heavy) and a 50mm prime lens (light), neither of which have the now popular “image stabilisation” feature. I am going to have to work on my shooting technique; the 50mm lens images were nice and sharp but the images from the wide angle lens could have been sharper which I presume was the result of camera shake. I use a Nikon D800 which is not very forgiving when it comes to getting sharp images from hand held use. I did find the camera and wide angle lens a bit heavy and the speedboat did give a very bumpy ride, even so, as I was using shutter speeds of around 1/1000 sec I was surprised the images were not as sharp as they could have been.
As you can see from the first two photos, one has a yellow bias and the other a blue bias. If you have got this far reading my blurb I’d be interested to hear which you prefer, the blue or yellow treatment? I have about 300 photos from the day, some nice ones of the smaller craft, but it is the big ships everyone wants to see. The photos are not simple record shots. I have processed each shot individually in Lightroom and Photoshop making various changes particularly to the white balance and colur balance. The photos would not work as a panel but individually I like them.
Dar Mlodziezy before the sails went up.
Heads were always getting in the way!
It seemed everyone wanted to be at the front.
The Atyla, a classic Spanish Schonner
Pirates!!
westpenwithandbeyond 