Leg 2, Day 43 – Lights, Camera, Action…

Natalia Cohen By

Lights, cameras, action…

Memory is a funny thing. Some people have amazing memories (like Izzy) and others have terrible ones (like me!) I can be half way through watching a film and then suddenly realise that I’ve actually see it before and I struggle to access the facts and information I used to brief my clients about every 2 weeks when I was a tour leader years ago, yet I repeated it over and over again back then flawlessly.

What really astounds me though, is the way an era of your life can end and within days or weeks it can seem like such a distant memory, apart from the subtle way it may have changed or shaped you. For me, the best way to help recall these experiences we have, the people we meet and the eras that pass us by, is through a lens.

I fell in love with photography when I was in Egypt in 2000 and bought my first SLR camera when I headed to Nepal a year later on a tour leading contract.

There is something magical about capturing a moment and then having it forever frozen in time.

Photographs, like music, have that incredible power to transport you instantly back to a point in time and to inspire a range of emotion. For me, photography is a great passion, a memory aid and a huge part of my life.

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This being said, moving images or film goes that one step further, by allowing you to re-live a moment more fully and to experience the whole picture. The image, the sound, the surrounding atmosphere and, I suppose, the feelings of the people are more obvious. It is easier to envisage yourself in the places being portrayed and to empathise with the characters.

We do our best to paint the most honest and vivid picture we can about life out here on the almighty Pacific, through our words (blogs), but the plan is to allow you all to enter our world visually too by means of a documentary that we are having made about the journey.

‘Losing Sight of Shore’ will be created by the amazing Sarah Moshman, who is our wonderfully talented and inspirational documentary director/producer (there will be a blog to follow shortly all about her and her incredible work).

None of us is used to being in front of a camera and for me in particular I would always prefer to be behind one, so this is yet another example of all of us being outside our comfort zones.

Sarah is capturing all the footage on land and has therefore been with at the start in San Francisco, in Santa Barbara, Hawaii and will be at all subsequent stopovers, doing interviews, filming the first steps back on land and talking about the highs and the lows amongst other things.

It is the 4 of us on the boat, each leg, that are responsible for capturing all the footage of life on Doris and the journey and my job is to oversee that this is being done adequately and to collate and save it safely for Sarah. Every week I download all this footage to hard drives and these are what Sarah collects on land to sift through.

The equipment we have is:
-A Sony FDR-AX100 shooting in 4K -GoPro Hero Silver 4 shooting in 2.7K
-GoPro HERO HD Underwater Action Camera

We have a new GoPro selfie stick for this leg which is allowing us to get a birds eye view which I love, and I have put GoPro mounts in numerous positions on the boat in the hope of capturing different angles. We also have a head strap that we use occasionally.

We do a combination of video diary-ing, general footage of us rowing in varying sea states, inside the cabins, random events and filming of our surroundings eg sunsets, underwater activity and oars pulling through the water etc

Always yearning to freeze some of these moments, I still do take photographs and I know that these (as well as the documentary) will become my future memory jogging tool and allow me to be nostalgic and reminisce about a once in a lifetime adventure!

What would you find interesting to observe? What would make your experience of following our journey more complete? If there is anything in particular you think we should film, then we’d love to know about it. x

*photo attached to this blog is one of my favourites from this leg so far. Black and white shot of Lizanne in the mean and moody doldrums.

UPDATE:
The last 12 hours have been good ones. We’re managing to make good progress South again and only have about 200 nm to go until we hit the equator! Woooohhoooo! Exciting times. LV and I had Bernie the beautiful Blue-footed Booby join us for one of our night shifts and we were also visited again today by Marvin the Marlin.

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4 Comments

  1. So looking forward to seeing the documentary, it will be amazing. All power to your elbows xxxx

  2. Simon TY says:

    Latitude 2.97

    Feel we should be linking arms shouting 3, 2, 1 counting you down to the Equator. Godspeed and be safe

  3. Thank you for another fantastic blog. We are seeing forward everyday to the next blog. When I was little in South Africa there was a show on the radio where the DJ would play old songs. When the show started he would play his tune and say ‘memories are made of this’ and that is exactly what you do. You create a memory bank.
    I would like to see how you prepare your food. If you can capture a gobbledegook that will be fantastic.
    Well done you girls. The equator is getting ever so close now.Keep safe xxx

  4. JG says:

    I would like to see detail of life on board Doris and how she is set up. Where you sleep, washing hanging out, how the seats work, safety straps, the navigating screen, food store, water reserves, personal pockets, waste disposal. more detail on the charging system, the water purifier, cooker, survival equipment and so on. I have seen pictures of the interiors of some trans Pacific boat expeditions and was a amazed at the mess that some of the crews lived in. I cannot imagine that you girls are anything but organised, clean and tidy! The equator and the half way point are just on your doorstep. With you all the way. Keep safe.

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