Photo Cruise

The boat casts off and the city starts to turn. You line up a shot and the light shifts, the angle opens, the skyline moves in behind the subject. A container ship passes a hundred yards off and becomes part of the frame. The wind pulls your hair one way and the sail the other. You move around the deck to find the next frame.

We head north past the Ben Franklin Bridge. The graffiti wall at Graffiti Pier is twenty feet tall and covered in color. We swing back south and the skyline lights up behind you in gold. The water is moving, the boat is moving, the sun is moving, and every few seconds the shot you had a minute ago is a different shot entirely.

Later, reviewing the footage, you notice the lighting was right. The sail, the line of the boat, the edge of the river, the sun glancing off the towers. All of it in frame. The route wasn’t an accident. Philadelphia has one sailboat charter and the hand on the wheel spent a career behind a camera.