With the right weather conditions there’s nothing more visually stunning than flying over an interesting section of coastline. Luckily enough, Boston and the surrounding area has some great coastline from the North Shore down to the Cape. This picture was taken while flying around Cape Ann. More specifically it was taken while I was flying over Thatcher Island where the famous twin lighthouses are located. This yacht was sailing between Thatcher Island and the Gloucester coastline and was in the perfect position for me to get this shot. I was particularly concerned with getting the reflection of the yacht in the water which was possible because of the calm seas, position of the sun and some very thin cloud cover. At this point I was at about 1500ft and was shooting with my 70-200mm lens set at 190mm with the exposure set to -1EV (1 f stop). When shooting boats with white sails it is important to shoot at minus 1 stop so as to not blow out the sails themselves. This is due to the dynamic range of such a picture where the ocean is relatively dark and takes up most of the picture and the sail (in bright sun) is extremely bright. So the full exposure for this image was 1600th/second at f2.8 (-1EV) and ISO set to 200. For those not used to shooting from a plane the shutter speed may seem a little excessive but when compensating for the movement of the yacht, the movement of the plane and the vibrations always present in the plane anything less than 1000th/second does not guarantee a tack sharp image.
