A boat tour is a great way to explore, especially when you are out on the water. Open water, scenic coasts, adventurous marine life, and dynamic scenes are perfect to shoot. Nonetheless, capturing stunning photos from a moving boat requires skill and practice; else your photo will be distorted. There are some easy-to-use techniques which can significantly help you capture good photos from the boat.
In this quick guide, we’ll help you configure the best camera settings and essential tips that you can try to capture high-quality pictures throughout your boating experience.
Properly Use the Available Lights
The lighting conditions keep changing when you are on the boat. The sun will sometimes crash high on the water surface, and its position impacts the exposure conditions of your photo. Avoid capturing your photos by pointing the camera towards the sun unless you intentionally want a silhouette or backlit effect. If the sun is behind you or slightly to one side, it is generally easier to expose correctly.
Many people also love capturing photos in the early morning and late afternoon because soft light during this time produces warmer colours and less harsh contrast. If the scene is extremely bright, configure your camera’s histogram or exposure preview to ensure highlights are not being completely blown out.
Control Reflections on Water
Water reflections sometimes enhance your photograph or even make it difficult to capture the scene perfectly. Glare from the surface may cause distracting bright patches and reduce contrast, especially around midday.
In such cases, changing the shooting angle can help you capture the photo at the perfect angle. You can also move the camera slightly to one side, as it helps to reduce reflections and reveal more detail in the water and surrounding landscape. Try using the boat’s shade, your body or a lens hood to prevent stray light from reaching the lens.
Reflections can be applied in a creative way as well. Reflections on calm water will allow obtaining nice images that resemble mirrors, especially when taking pictures of mountains, buildings, boats, and colourful skies.
Effective Application of Polarising Filter
A circular polarising filter can be particularly helpful for photography from boats. It can diminish reflections from the water surface and increase the colour saturation in the picture.
It works better when a camera is directed almost perpendicularly to the direction of the sunlight. Turn the filter and watch the changing reflections and sky through the viewfinder of the camera. However, a polarising filter is not always needed. The filter decreases the quantity of light, thus making it necessary to decrease shutter speed or increase ISO settings. Taking into account that you are taking the pictures from the boat, it is more important to ensure an appropriate shutter speed than polarisation. Use a filter when it helps to enhance your picture, rather than leaving it permanently locked in
one position.
Increase Your Shutter Speed
Another challenge that comes up when taking photos from a boat is movement. The boat will move due to the waves, engine vibrations, or wind even if you aim to take photos of something static. A low shutter speed, therefore, is likely to give blurry photos.
Use a fast shutter speed every time you can, especially when taking photos of animals, people, birds, or another boat. In general photography, a shutter speed around 1/500 second can provide a useful starting point, while faster subjects may require 1/1000 second or higher.
Try to Stabilise Your Camera on Boat
Hold your camera in a stable position and also refrain from resisting the boat’s motion entirely. One should be relaxed, keeping their posture comfortable, and let his body sway with the boat. The best technique in shooting photos on a small boat would be having both hands on the camera and holding the lens with your non-shooting hand.
It is also advisable to gently rest your elbow against your body. Image stabilisation is another option that one can consider. Nonetheless, image stabilisation cannot prevent the boat from bouncing over the waves. Therefore, it is advisable to use the image stabilisation feature together with a high shutter speed.
Don’t Use Tripod to Capture Photos
It is advised to avoid using a tripod in a small moving boat to capture photos. A tripod becomes cumbersome when on a small moving boat and can actually limit one’s flexibility when photographing rapidly changing scenes. Waves, engine vibrations, and sudden changes in direction can make the tripod unstable. It may also take up valuable space on a crowded deck and create a tripping hazard for you or other passengers.
Choose the Correct Lens for Your Subject
To capture perfect pictures on your boat tour, you should select the appropriate type of lens. Generally, photographers advise wide angle for such subjects as landscapes, shorelines, cityscapes, and groups of people. Telephoto or zoom lenses may become your most useful equipment when you decide to photograph wildlife. Using them, you will be able to photograph birds, dolphins, seals, or far-off boats without moving close to them.
A medium-range zoom lens of medium range may also become a great choice for you, especially if you prefer not to use more than one lens at once. Also, avoid changing lenses on an open boat deck, as this involves some risks of exposure of your camera to moisture and salt. If possible, choose the perfect lens for your camera before going out.
Shoot in RAW When Possible
If your camera supports RAW images, try shooting in RAW instead of shooting only in JPEG. RAW images contain much more data and allow for more options while processing. It will be especially useful when shooting difficult scenes such as light sky and dark foreground. Maybe it will be possible to improve the shadows and highlights of the photo while post-processing.
The RAW images take up more space on your memory card than the JPEG; therefore, take enough memory cards with you. It is also wise to have at least one extra memory card instead of taking just one card for the whole journey. When shooting important photos, don’t delete them right away from the camera just because of not satisfied with the quality of the shot on the small screen of your camera. After reviewing and processing the photos on your laptop, maybe you will realise that they can be used.
Go for Compositions Other than the Obvious Ones
Some of the most amazing photos captured from the boat do not have to be the classic postcard shots. Instead of sticking solely to capturing the main object or the sunset, look for unique compositions that surround you. Consider capturing:
- A wake stretching behind the boat
- Cloud reflections in calm waters
- Tourists enjoying the view
- Birds flying in close proximity to the boat
- Silhouettes against the setting sun
- Ropes, sails, railings or equipment on board the boat
- Another boat passing in the distance
- Coastline framed by the water
When, for instance, participating in sunset cruise experience, consider combining the colourful sky with a boat, tourists or the surrounding coastline. In the same way, wildlife tours offer many chances for practising tracking moving subjects and shooting at a fast shutter speed. Those who travel and want to find ideas for another photography adventure may need to explore SeaBookings experiences to gain inspiration for photographing golden-hour scenes from the water. Conditions can change within seconds on a boat, so be ready to photograph an interesting moment when it appears.
Backup Your Photos Daily
Photography from a boat presents some peculiar hazards in relation to your files. Moisture, sudden boat movements, accidental formatting of an SD card, frequent changes of memory cards or interruption of the file transfer may cause deletion or corruption of files. You can minimise the chances of losing your photos and videos by creating regular backups. If you have your laptop with you while travelling, transfer your RAW images, videos, and any other valuable files from your SD cards to your laptop. Additionally, try to keep a secondary copy of your files in another place of storage (on any storage device or cloud storage). Eject the card and storage device safely every time you transfer files. Do not remove SD cards from the card reader while writing files is in progress.
If, by any chance, you find your photos captured from the boat are deleted, try third-party free data recovery software like Stellar Data Recovery Free to get them back. This free recovery tool performs scanning of memory cards and restores deleted RAW images and videos in a few simple steps.
Concluyendo
Capturing photos from boat combines beautiful scenery with constantly changing conditions. These changes make the photography both rewarding and challenging. You can follow the above tips, like managing reflections, using a polarising filter carefully, maintaining a fast shutter speed, and protecting your camera from moisture and salt spray, to significantly improve your results.
Most importantly, stay observant and flexible. The best photograph may appear unexpectedly as the light changes, wildlife surfaces, or the boat reaches a particularly scenic location. And once the day’s photography is finished, make backup and offloading footage part of your routine so your memorable RAW images and videos remain safe long after the boat tour ends.
