Powerboat P1

This past weekend my town hosted a leg, the first leg of the 2008 calendar actually, of the Powerboat P1 World Championship. For those who don't know - and believe me up until last Friday most of the people here didn't have clue about it, and that includes me - the Powerboat P1 is supposed to be to off-shore racing what Formula 1 is to car racing. I won't get into details but their website has a lot of over the top descriptions of the whole thing for those interested.

Suffice to say people here went nuts, the harbour and the beaches were packed to watch the races and I dutifully took the opportunity for some shooting. It was fun although my results were overall disappointing, especially regarding the pictures of the actual races. Single boats make for boring images, my reach (300mm on a crop-body) wasn't quite enough to capture interesting details and being completely inexperienced with the sport didn't help. I did have the opportunity to practice panning, though, and I managed to get the hang of it, though it will take time to approach the kind of astounding pictures I've seen done with this technique. But it's not just a theoretical notion for me anymore, so... progress!

My favorite shot of the lot turned out to be the one posted here. I shot it from a slightly elevated position - I was on the external arm of the south pier - and had a CPL filter on my kit lens (the much maligned ef-s 18-55), which explains the very blue sky and overall saturated colors. This is almost straight from camera, minimal pp including the RAW conversion. I really like it. I've uploaded more favorites to the gallery.

Photographic woes aside, it was a lot fun, the atmosphere was fantastic and I really hope they'll be back next year, although I don't see how this event may ever be compatible with the sea-life sanctuary that's about to be established in our waters. Oh well, maybe we'll get a sailing competition instead.