Concentration

Taking with passion (click to enlarge)
Olympus E-M1 Mark II, 40-150mm f/2.8 lens @ 150mm; 1/1600th sec. @ f/5.6; ISO 200
Original cropped from 5184 pixels to 1600 pixels wide (cropped 70% of the image out
due to their distance from shore), then enlarged the file in Photoshop to 2732 pixels wide.

The other day I was out wandering and looking for interesting things to photograph when I spotted a number of young men and women leaving a small inlet to sail on the 4 mile wide James River.  The wind was onshore which caused the sailors to have to tack to sail out into the river.  When tacking these very lightweight sloops, I noticed that the sailors had to very quickly move from one side of the craft to the other otherwise the gunwale would dip into the water (from my vantage point some looked as though they were actually briefly going below the water surface) causing a potential capsize.  I photographed a few of these tacking maneuvers trying to capture the "English" (as billiards players would call it), finesse and body language exhibited by the sailors to try to stop the boat from overturning.  It appeared to me that if you weren't quick, you capsized.

Click on the image above to get a good look at the two sailors and the positioning of their bodies.  It is easy to see how serious they were and how much they were concentrating.

I had the 40-150mm f/2.8 lens on my Olympus E-M1 Mark II.  The sailboats were quickly sailing away from me and I had no time to return to my car to get a longer lens so I made the images with the intent of severely cropping a final image.  Severe cropping (if necessary) does well  with the quality of the Olympus sensors and lenses.  This was cropped down by 70% (1600 pixels), then the file was upsized in Photoshop to 2732 pixels wide.  It held up pretty well.

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Thanks for looking. Enjoy! 

Dennis A. Mook 

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