Natural Photos on Board, Without the Pose

The photos you keep from a sailing trip are often not the posed ones. A few small habits, from walking the deck to choosing colors and shade, make pictures on board look the way the trip felt.

Most holiday photos on a boat look alike. Someone stands at the bow, faces the lens and holds a smile until the shutter goes. The pictures people keep coming back to are often different: a laugh in the middle of a sentence over breakfast, a hand resting on a warm rail, a figure walking aft as the anchor comes up. None of this takes special skill. It takes a few small habits, from the person in the frame and from the person taking the picture.

Keep moving

Stillness is where stiffness starts. Photographers who work with travelers suggest walking, because movement breaks a held pose and brings out real reactions. On a phinisi there is plenty of room to move: along the side deck, from the saloon to the bow, down the steps to the tender. Walk slowly, as if you are actually heading somewhere, and let the person photographing keep shooting as you pass. One frame will catch a step, a turn of the head, a hand reaching for the rail.

It also helps when nobody counts down. One guide to natural posing notes that people look most relaxed when they do not know exactly when the picture will be taken. Agree on this before you start: the photographer keeps going, and you keep doing what you were doing.

Looking at the lens is optional. A face turned toward the water, the next island or the person beside you still draws the viewer in.

Give your hands a job

Hands with nowhere to go can make a photo feel awkward. On board, the fix is to use the boat. Lean on the rail and watch the water. Sit on the cushions of the upper deck with a book. Hold a cup of coffee with both hands at the bow in the early morning. Pass a plate along the table. Photographers who guide holiday shoots recommend leaning for a similar reason: it gives the body somewhere to rest and eases stiffness.

Meals are especially good. People talk, reach, pour and laugh at the table. In his tips for National Geographic, photographer Robert Caputo suggests watching how people interact and thinking about what might express the essence of their relationship. A long lunch under the awning can give more honest pictures than an hour of posing at sunset.

Keep it simple and sensible: hold on when the boat is moving, watch your footing on wet wood, and leave the ropes and rigging to the crew.

Dress for water and wood

On a phinisi the background is often two colors: the blue and turquoise of the sea and sky, and the warm brown of the wooden deck. Choose clothes with both in mind.

Blue and orange are complementary colors, opposite each other on the color wheel, and a small amount of one stands out against the other. That is why orange and its warm neighbors, such as rust, terracotta or coral, read clearly against the sea. Even a small accent, a scarf or a hat, separates you from the background. A shirt in the same blue as the water does the opposite, and you fade into it. Against the deck the logic runs the other way: brown and tan can blend into the wood, while blues and lighter colors stand apart from it.

Guides to dressing for a photo shoot repeat the same basics: solid colors over fine checks and busy patterns, no logos or brand names on shirts, and care with solid black and solid white. Traveling as a group? Coordinate rather than match. Choose a couple of colors that sit well together and let each person wear them in their own way.

Find the shade

Midday sun comes from high overhead and is harsh. It casts hard shadows under the brow, nose and chin, and people facing it tend to squint. The answer is the shade the boat already carries: the awning over the dining area, the overhang of the upper deck, the side of the wheelhouse.

Shade gives softer, more even light on the face. Travel photographer Karthika Gupta suggests placing people at the very edge of the shade, where the light is even but still bright, and avoiding patchy shade, which leaves spots of sun scattered across a face. When there is no shade at all, turn the person so the sun is behind them. Backlighting, she notes, keeps people from squinting.

The short spells just after sunrise and before sunset bring a lower sun and softer light anywhere on deck. Save the photos you care about most for those times, and give the middle of the day to swimming, reading and lunch.

Let someone else watch

The most natural photos are often the ones you did not know were being taken. Caputo divides pictures of people into portraits and candids, and describes unobtrusive candids as fly-on-the-wall images of people going about their business. His advice: find a good spot, settle in, and wait for the scene to come together.

On a trip, that can mean one person in your group keeps half an eye out for moments, or you take turns. The photographer stays a little back, does not interrupt, and waits: for the swimmer climbing the ladder, the friend laughing at the bow, the child watching the crew drop anchor. Ask before you photograph crew or other guests. Caputo puts it plainly: "people are always more important than photographs."

If you are the one being photographed, your job is easy. Forget the camera is there. Read, talk, eat, swim. The pictures that come back will look like your trip, because they are.