Little Bang Theory

Rising Waters. November 1, 2012

Our recent storm has brought river levels up, and on a recent soirée I happened upon a pod of kayakers on the West Branch of the Deerfield river, up in Reasdboro, VT. Here are a few shots I took, zipping my car around, u-turns up the wazoo, scrambling up and down the river banks in the rain and hanging off the occasional bridge.

The river is small and technical, meaning that if you mess up you may well survive, but with cuts and bruises, a belly-full of water and a banged up boat:

It’s not that the amount of water won’t make you wish you’d gotten the line right:

…a “swim” here would be ugly.

But getting it right on a “technical” river of this size is a study in elegance:

…a flowing vignette in a too-often staccato life.

My favorite shot of the encounter is this panning shot of a kayaker threading the needle between a “strainer” and a hard place:

That’s 1/30th of a second at ISO 2000. Getting the forward deck sharp despite the tumult of motion was gratifying, and I love the energy of the shot, which brings back memories of being in a boat and dealing with the kinetics of the moment.

As much as I miss that, I’m even more excited to be working on capturing it from the outside.