Speedonthewater.com 2015 Image of the Year: ‘Driving Through The Smoke’ By Pete Boden
That our favorite Image of the Week from 2015 came out of the Super Boat International Offshore World Championships in Key West, Fla., in November isn’t surprising. Offshore racing has its issues, but producing photogenic action isn’t one of them. The SBI Worlds attract big fleets of beautiful raceboats to a colorful locale, so for professional photographers such as Pete Boden the opportunities for “great captures” are unlimited.
Just try to stop looking at this Pete Boden image of the Performance Boat Center Skater during the 2015 SBI Key West Worlds (click image to enlarge). We dare you. Photo courtesy/copyright Pete Boden/Shoot 2 Thrill Pix.
Boden actually published hundreds of images before sending us this gem of the Superboat-class Performance Boat Center Skater 388 catamaran framed in its own spray and the orange warning signal smoke dropped after H.P. Mafia, another Skater cat, rolled. The photographer returned to his home in Bradenton, Fla., with thousands of shots from Key West, and he had just four days to start sorting them before he headed out to shoot the Offshore Powerboat Association National/World Championships in Englewood Beach, Fla. So it took him a bit of time to find this one.
The moment we saw this photo, we knew that one of our last Images of the Week for 2015 also would be our hands-down choice for Image of the Year. Boden’s shot perfectly captures the raw and wild nature not just of Key West, but of offshore racing itself. But what we love most about this photo—and why it is our 2015 Image of the Year—is that you don’t have to be an offshore racing fan to be captivated by it. You just have to look at it.
And then you can’t stop.
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Image of the Week: Driving Through the Smoke
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