Image of the Week: Down The Tunnel

Even at idle speed, a catamaran heading toward you looks a little intimidating. There’s something about the tunnel between the sponsons that makes a go-fast cat appear almost predatory. It looks as though it could inhale you, which, in fact, it could.

The down-the-tunnel photo angle never gets old. Photo by Jay Nichols/Naples Image (click image to enlarge).

Shooting “down the tunnel” has been a staple of high-performance photographers such as Jay Nichols, who shot this photo, for years. Long before the GoPro digital camera era, which has taken the risk out of mounting expensive cameras in precarious places, Tom Newby of Powerboat magazine mounted one of his cameras on a long pole so he could shoot down the tunnel from his perch in a moving helicopter flying sideways—called “crabbing” in the fly boy world. Newby used a remote trigger to release the camera’s shutter and the resulting shot of a Nor-Tech 36-foot catamaran became a Powerboat classic.

Nichols didn’t have to mount a GoPro, much less risk life and limb and expensive gear, to capture this sunset down-the-tunnel shot during the recent Fort Myers Offshore Fun Run to Hawk’s Cay in the mid Florida Keys. But it’s still a beauty, and still an angle that never gets old.