Organising a yacht fashion shoot for Vogue Netherlands

The romance of sailing has inspired many photographers to use yachts as the set for their photo shoot, but what is it like on the other side of the lens? How do you accommodate the artists while sailing a fully rigged ship?

In the blog below, Darryl Hughes a regular correspondent during his voyage around Ireland, beautifully describes how he welcomed onboard a team from Vogue Netherlands for a two day shoot.

Vogue Netherlands wanted to organise a fashion shoot in SW Ireland and their location scout came across Maybird wintering at Crosshaven in Cork harbour back in February 2014.

I agreed that they could use her as long as they made a contribution to the Crosshaven RNLI station and the shoot took place in early June over 2 days.

The entire Vogue contingent consisted of 8 people – 3 models, photographer, photographer’s assistant, make-up/hair stylist, wardrobe assistant and overall fashion director together with 3 huge suitcases of clothes for the models plus extra camera gear, lenses, etc etc.

To sail Maybird we had a crew of 3 including myself. As you can imagine my major concern was the safety of all aboard as the majority were not sailors.

Preparing the Yacht and Both Crews

We met onboard the day before and worked out that Maybird’s aft cabin would do as the changing area for the models and the huge suitcases were manhandled down the companionway and through the galley.

The aft cabin was then transformed into a Vogue changing room/hairdresser’s salon.

The plethora of laptops, lenses and spare cameras plus the film backs – yes film not all that digital malarkey I’m pleased to say- were stowed in the saloon.

The saloon became the studio but we had access to all of Maybird’s chart table and instruments if required. Fortunately all of the chart-table electronics are duplicated in the doghouse which also has the 15" plotter screen.

Once the stowage was sorted we agreed that unless people were required on deck they stayed below.

Rigging a photo shoot with Vogue Netherlands

Lights, Camera, Sails, Wind, Sun, Ropes and Action!

Everybody wore life jackets and the only people that were allowed to take them off were the three models when the camera was rolling. Once the camera was silent the models donned their life jackets again.

We had a support RIB so that the cameraman could take pictures of Maybird sailing so, to an extent we had our own lifeboat with us but my job was to keep all 11 "crew" on board.

We were blessed with gentle sailing conditions for the first day-wind max F3. The director wanted all Maybird’s sails hoisted and so we agreed set courses to sail.

The crew set Maybird up – we chose courses that we could hold for as long a time as depth/traffic/hazards allowed and then the photographer got to work with the models.

We had an excellent rapport with the photographer who understood that the skipper has the final say and would stop shooting when we made the call "30 seconds to tack".

Each of our legs or boards had to be agreed with the photographer in terms of where the sun was, the effect of shadows, background etc.

One of the models was starting to experience the early stages of sea sickness as we approached the harbour entrance abeam of Roche’s Point lighthouse so we headed back inshore. Recovery was more or less instantaneous when back in flattish water.

Given the largely clement conditions we were out for some 7 hours on the first day.

Grey skies onboard the Maybird with Vogue Netherlands

The Weather Turns Moody

Day 2 was different. Wind was up to F5 gusting F6 and the sky overcast. The sea state was no longer smooth but more moderate to lumpy.

I agreed with the director that we would go out but we would not put up the mainsail – we would sail with jib, staysail and mizzen. I just wanted to keep things as simple as possible from a sail handling viewpoint.

The camerman wore his safety harness as well as his lifejacket as he was leaning over the bowsprit and over guardrails to take many of the shots that day so I made sure he was clipped on.

We agreed the models would not lean over the guardrails or do any poses that could lead to them falling off the boat. For this day we were only on the water for some 3 hours.

Interestingly the only pictures from Day 2 used were the black and white one below with the female model standing on the foredeck. The sky really was nasty. No photoshopping used there!

Main image from the Vouge Netherlands feature ‘Maiden Trip’ (Nov 2014)

Safe, Sound and Helping Another Crew

Despite Maybird’s complexity in terms of numbers of sails and ropes as she has a long keel, she will sail on her own and hold her course when the sails are balanced so it was easy for her three crew to set her up and then crouch down out of the cameras way whilst the models did their stuff.

Both the photographer and his assistant were sailors back in the Netherlands so that helped a great deal. The Maybird crew really kept an eagle eye on the Vogue crew in terms of safety-that was the challenge-not sailing the boat. We tacked rather than gybed and as I say when the wind did pick up we sailed without the main-one of the great things of the ketch rig.

We managed to stay out of trouble so our only dealings with the Crosshaven RNLI was to hand over a cheque to them.

The Crews from Vogue Netherlands and Maybird hand over the cheque to Crosshaven RNLI.

First Class sailing would like to thanks Vogue Netherlands for allowing us to use the wonderful images from the magazine in this blog. The full feature ‘Maiden Trip’ will appear in their November 2014 edition.

Posted by: First Class Sailing