Niklas Zennström’s 74′ Rán (GBR) has been confirmed as the overall winner of the Rolex Fastnet Race 2011 and as the winner of the Fastnet Challange Cup. Rán crossed the finish line in Plymouth on Tuesday at 12:53:44. This is the second consecutive Fastnet win for Rán having also won the last edition of the race in 2009. The last double winner of the Fastnet Race was Richard Nye’s Carina II some 54 years ago in 1955 and 1957. The photograph below was taken approximately 1 minute before Rán crossed the finish line between the lighthouse on the Western end of Plymouth Breakwater and the Queens Ground buoy which can be seen in the photo.
…24 Hours Later
To misuse the title of a popular song – What a difference a day makes! 24 little hours in this case didn’t bring the sun and showers but rather lots of race yachts to fill those empty berths. More than fifty yachts have completed the race in the 24 hour period that separates the photograph in yesterdays post and the one below which was taken this evening. A party atmosphere prevails around the yachts this evening as crews begin to relax and unwind from the exertions of the last few days.
Empty Berths
This years addition of the Rolex Fastnet Race saw some very fast sailing in the first couple of days resulting in both multi-hull and mono-hull course records being broken. However the race yachts still at sea are having a much slower time of it, struggling in light winds as a result of a high pressure weather system over the Celtic Sea and southern Cornwall. Many of the early finishers have now left Plymouth and moved on elsewhere. Wandering around Sutton Harbour this evening I was taken by the number of empty berths still waiting to be filled by returning competitors.
Travels with a Hipstamatic – Pt 1
At the start of the year I reached the point in my mobile phone contract where I was eligible for an upgrade. I used the opportunity to upgrade to an iPhone 4, something which I had been coveting for sometime. The primary attraction of the iPhone for me was the availability of a number of apps which I could see had the potential to make the day to day organization of a photographers’ life a little easier. I was also aware that photography with an iPhone was gaining a kind of cult status and was interested in discovering for myself what was technically possible. This personal journey of discovery continues however in the meantime I have rather developed a liking for the Hipstamatic app and a couple of the “films” available for it.
Below is one of my favourite recent images, it is of a World War II pillbox on Finnygook Beach in South East Cornwall. this was taken with the Hipstamatic app using the John S Lens and Kodot XGrizzled Film. I particularly like the colours produced by this film stock along with the edge effects which it creates. These lens and film effects are applied to the image during post processing of the image. My initial experiments indicate that this relatively heavy automatic post processing does not really leave any room for further processing in the likes of Photoshop with seriously degrading the image quality. After some experimentation with the app it is possible to get a good feel for what a given image will look like and creative control comes from the choice of lens and film stock for the scene to be photographed.
- World War II Pillbox on Finnygook Beach, SE Cornwall (Taken with iPhone 4, Hipstamatic app, John S Lens, Kodot XGrizzled Film).
Tehnical Details: The image was imported into Adobe Lightroom 3, resized for web use and Lightroom’s “sharpen for screen” preset applied at medium strength, the image was then exported in sRGB colour space with quality set at 100%. No further post processing was applied.
