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Ross '06 shoots cover for May Sail Magazine
April 18, 2007
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Amory Ross '06 took the picture that graces the cover of the May issue of Sail Magazine. |
Former Hobart sailor Amory Ross '06 is still enjoying success on the high seas. A four-year member of the HWS sailing team as an undergraduate, he helped the Colleges earn 14 ICSA Championship berths, including the 2005 Team Race and Coed Dinghy National Championships.
Since graduation—Ross was a double major in economics and public policy—he has turned his passion for sailing and photography into a business, Amory Ross Photography. The old saying goes, "Success breeds success," and Ross has continued to excel beyond college.
His October 2006 picture of a U.S. Sailing Team member at the U.S. Olympic Trials/Pan Am Games qualifier in Newport, R.I., was selected for the cover of the May issue of Sail Magazine (on newsstands now).
The challenge of shooting a cover is a skill, that Ross admits requires a little bit of luck as well.
"There’s quite a bit that goes into getting selected for the cover," Ross said. "Unfortunately it's not always the best picture, but the one that works best. I've come close many times with better pictures, but as I have come to learn, there is much more to it.
"The cover is always relevant to the major feature inside and has to be composed in such a way that the main subject is not covered by the magazine title and all other text that goes on the cover; it has to 'work.'"
Ross specializes in sailing photography and shoots between 150 to 300 pictures per day. He whittles that down to about 100 by the end of each day and edits 15-20 for submission to magazines. By the end of a regatta, Ross has about 350 images that meet his exacting standards.
"I used to take a lot more and I’d find myself deleting way too many, but now I take far fewer pictures which saves a lot of time. With a Canon 1Ds MKII (16.7 megapixels), high volumes [of pictures] can take a heavy toll on both computing power and editing time, so I’ve limited myself to taking good pictures that I know I wont be deleting later."