For some people Cowes Week is a full time job, and preparation for each year’s event starts when the previous event ends, but for me, and a lot of other part-timers, preparation for my job there starts just the day before.
For the last couple of years I’ve worked in ‘The Bunker’ at Cowes Week, where we handle and process all the photos that appear on the website and help to select good pictures for the press.
I like to think mine is a crucial role and that the website just wouldn’t be the same without the galleries, but the reality is that Cowes Week is a big operation and my job is just one small part.
That said, the Bunker, which is hidden out of sight behind the main Regatta Office, is where much of Cowes Week is controlled from, and certainly is the hub of anything remotely technical. So it’s a fascinating place to be for the week, it’s interesting to work alongside all the other people that make the week what it is, oh, and the lunches are too bad either!
In the same office are the teams that, at some level, handle the starts, finishes, results, race declarations, protests, event TV, website, mobile apps and just about anything else you can imagine.
A day in the life …
So my day at Cowes typically starts with the morning press briefing where we find out what specific events are scheduled that day and if there are any major new stories or celebrities expected. This is useful since later that day the journalists in the press office are certain to phone and request images for their articles.
Typically the mornings are quite quiet. The office is busy as other teams are busy at different times of the day, but for the photo desk nothing really starts until the photographer on the water drops off his memory cards around 12 o’clock.
We then start the process of selecting, tagging, processing and uploading the images to the website. Anyone who has done this at home knows that processing a single image for a website is a relatively trivial task, but we receive well over 1,000 photos each day. Each image also needs to be tagged with the boat or boats in the picture, and we also need to select a broad spectrum of images across all the classes that are racing over the week.
This selecting, tagging, processing and uploading continues until all the days images are done, which is often well into the evening.
We also produce a montage of the day’s best shots which is displayed on the many TV screens all around the town throughout the evening. I’m sure any readers who were at Cowes this year will have seen, and hopefully enjoyed(!), at least some of our efforts.
Of course there are many distractions, good and bad, and all part of the Cowes Week experience.
Just outside the office a bar with one of the live music stages, great when the day is done and you fancy a drink and the lively atmosphere. Less good though when it’s a lovely day and there’s a great band playing, but from inside the office (with no windows by the way) all you can hear is the bass line.
A highlight of Cowes each year is of course the Red Arrows display. The team who spend each day filming the starts and finishes for live event TV were on hand, on the roof of the Royal Yacht Squadron, to film this too.
Ben Harris, of BH Marine, was the director of Event TV for the week, and asked for volunteers to act as spotters to help the cameramen move from one shot to another as the planes sped by – which presented me with an opportunity for a spectacular vantage point to watch the display. Definitely a perk of the job!
Another unexpected perk was when royalty visited the office. We were engrossed, as ever, in going through the latest batch of images when HRH Princess Anne and her entourage came in to check up on us!
All in all an excellent week, it was as busy as I’ve ever seen the town and we’re all looking forward to doing it again next year.
