It was gloriously sunny too. I arrived early and took several rolls of film through the day. In the early morning before the public arrived, the sailors all gathered for a short morning service in the open air before setting sail for the days races. The two ground level shots below show the crowds at the event, and my launch location on a grassy knoll about thirty feet above the harbour. One thing I have noticed many times is the thinning effect that the aerial perspective adds to anything that appears dense from our ground perspective.
Poppy fields can look a riot of colour from the ground, from the air they can appear very thin.
So it was with the Boat Festival, the packed crowds on the quayside seemed so different from the air. The aerial perspective is much better at bringing out pattern, shape and geometry on the larger scale. Most of the day the wind blew steadily from the west, allowing me launch safely from the little promontary to the west of the harbour. On my final shoot as the boats returned in to the little harbour I walked down from my vantage point on the promontary and down to mingle with the crowds on the quayside. This was made very easy by the lack of overhead power and telephone cables in the harbour area.