Schooner – Shaw Island
Schooner Shaw Island
“Schooner Shaw Island,” was the first picture I ever took inside of the San Juan Islands of Washington. In 1974, after quitting my job at a camera store in order to temporarily become a “sailing bum,” I sailed a small sailboat from Gig Harbor in south Puget Sound up North through the San Juan Islands, then back again. After sailing in pre-summer weather in June, flirting with capsizing conditions, enduring a thunderstorm, then approaching the Shaw Island ferry landing, I took this image with a telephoto lens. I have not been able to identify the ship but it appears to be a schooner.
The telephoto lens exaggerates cumulous clouds far behind the ship. Appearing to be night, this was midday. I used a blue filter and underexposed the exposure in order to achieve the appearance of night. The camera was a Nikon “Nikkormat FTn” 35mm, the telephoto a Nikor 200mm f4 fixed focal length with Kodachrome slide film. Taken hand-held from a sailboat.
