The WaveWalker, my charterboat, was hired numerous times over the years for a photographers’ offshore dream assignment.
Teams of professional photographers chartered us to take them to oil seeps up the coast from Santa Barbara. I knew these spots well, and thrilled the photographers who shot well over 1,000 images apiece.
I was amazed by the equipment they brought onboard. They had high-end cameras, and huge lenses that looked better designed for filming the distant island shorelines than something on the surface of the sea just a foot or so from the lens.
My first task was to find the seeps. That was easy for me because I know this channel like the back of my hand.
We visited two seeps and could easily have visited more but we hit pay dirt at the two seeps and didn’t need more. Conditions were good, we had a bright day with little wind and moderate swells.
To facilitate getting the best visuals, I positioned the boat to enhance reflectivity from the oil sheen.
In areas with natural gas seeps, the oil sheen from bubbles is at its photographic best for only the first few seconds after a bubble bursts onto the surface of the sea.
Our photographers had a blast bending way over the side to put their big lenses within a foot of the water and rapid-shooting as the most colorful bubbles burst. Other challenging factors included fractal patterns, swirling and angles of reflectivity.
One last challenge was to keep from becoming seasick from banding over so far and looking through a lens as the boat moved. Frequent breaks to regain equilibrium became necessary.
Swells became an important part of the photography process. They lifted the sheens and coagulations at constantly varying angles, allowing the professionals to fire long bursts, knowing each image would be different.
Some images featured magnificent reflections, color spectrums, swirls, and miniature sun-sparkles. In most cases, images were of tiny areas (perhaps just inches across), but when shown on a computer screen or wall monitor, they appear to be almost infinite dimensions as though they spanned the universe.
I’m thinking this could be a required assignment for photography students, and a fun challenge for photo enthusiasts and professional outdoors photographers.
It is challenging and requires understanding a micro environment (images of areas just inches or less across) with a focus on how the image will display on a large medium such as a big screen.
One more thought — while natural oils seeps offer photographers a dream assignment, the boat crew member tasked with cleaning the hull after the trip has a nightmare job. One person’s blessing is another person’s curse, so tip the crew well because they will earn it.
