The International Yacht Restoration School (IYRS) in Newport, RI is the premier wooden boat building school in the country, boasting a huge following and a long waiting list for student admission. They recently added Marine Systems and Composite programs to their school and required images to showcase these new programs. A contact from IYRS reached out to Jason Evans after seeing his work for the Olympics, knowing that he would be able to capture great behind-the-scenes imagery without disrupting the subjects and their tasks at hand. Jason felt drawn to the preparation and behind-the-scenes appeal and was excited to get started.
Scheduling was the toughest, as the shooting happened over five days spread out during the entire school year. Lighting was also difficult and I found myself trying to improvise within an institutional environment. The Boat Building School has great windows for using natural light and the Composite and Marine System schools were inside a fluorescent overhead building. Maintaining a consistent look in these mixed environments was key to the overall success of the project. Capturing something while it was happening with little chance for redo will always keep you on your toes as well.
Constant coordination with the president and other department members was key for making the shoots successful.
Fairly constant review of the schedule and getting a good understanding of what the tasks were and what the subjects would be doing. Lots of discussions surrounding the look and maintaining consistency between the three schools that IYRS runs also took place.
The client is thrilled with how things came out. They are being used throughout their web site, view books, publications and we are discussing future projects. We are discussing how to use the images moving forward in a coffee table book or other keepsake for IYRS board members and benefactors.
Because the shooting happened over a longer period of time than most shoots, it became even more important to have a well organized filing structure and retouching workflow to create consistency from the first image to the last, which was shot 8 months later. The retouching and editing happened throughout the process so that IYRS had the latest images to use on social media and other outlets immediately. It is something that I already knew, but seeing the artistic side of the boat building was a great experience. There are technical challenges and artistic aims, which make it much like photography.
To view more work, visit Jason’s website.