Sails, sea and shutter-speeds: Life afloat with Essex photographer Den Phillips

“WHEN I was a teenager I quickly discovered that all the best-looking boys were always down by the waterfront, so gravitated towards the pub on the quay there. That’s where the action was,” chuckles Den Phillips.

It was a decision that shaped her life. She began to sail on barges, went to art college and took up a camera. Those passions of sailing and photography fused to launch a career she still enjoys today. It takes her from rural Essex to rather swish corners of the globe – such as the Caribbean and the south of France – where the weather is warm, the yachts invariably expensive and the company convivial.

Today, Den’s a recognised maritime photographer specialising in evocative images of classic and traditional boats, seascapes and the characters drawn to the water. She favours black and white, but also produces colour work for magazines and brochures. And as well as selling framed and unframed examples of her pictures, she’s established a range of calendars (including corporate versions) and greetings-cards.

Funnily enough, Den didn’t come from a committed nautical background – though growing up in Maldon, on the Blackwater, meant the water played a big part in the life of the town.

“My brother was the first to get involved. I think my dad was given a dinghy and so my brother started sailing that,” explains Den, just back from an invigorating run along the river wall on a crisp morning.

When she joined the nautical crowd, she began sailing on barges, then fishing-smacks and other types of boats.

She took to it like a duck to water. “The sailing is great, but the whole social side is fun and interesting as well. When you go to Antigua” – one of her regular destinations, for the annual classic yacht regatta – “you meet such a cross-section of fascinating people. Old people; young people. They’re usually adventurers. It brings everyone together.”

Den started at art college in 1974, and learned about photography.

“A boyfriend of mine was a shipwright, working on the barges, and had been an art teacher. I got interested in photography and he then taught me how to do the printing and things like that.”

From 1978, until a couple of years ago, home was Osea Island – in the Blackwater near Maldon.

It’s a remote and quirky place – owned in the past by Frederick Charrington (who turned his back on the family brewing dynasty to become a campaigner for temperance!), used by the Royal Navy towards the end of the First World War as a hush-hush base for motor-torpedo boats, and later owned by the University of Cambridge before changing hands again.

A friend of Den’s was working on a farm in the late 1970s. “I was at a point where I needed somewhere to live, and it was a beautiful place.” There was gardening to do, and the cleaning of houses that were occasionally let.

Osea, remote and shopless, “was fantastic, especially at the beginning. We had the run of the island and the big manor house was empty, and The Captain’s House (an historic home) was empty and it was supposed to be haunted.

“It was wild. It was great. We managed to get to the (mainland) pub every night, somehow – by boat or by road. The causeway was open for four hours, two hours either side of dead-low tide. Our lives were ruled by the tides, and we lost many a car and got stuck in the pub!

“It was great!”

She stayed on the island until a couple of years or so ago. Home is now a village near Maldon. “I’ve been living around the water, the Blackwater, all my life, really – apart from spells I’d spent living abroad, sailing and working abroad.”

In terms of photography, Den concentrated first on Thames barges – the former workhorses of the east coast, carrying cargoes to and fro – then added fishing-smacks and, later, classic yachts.

Her first calendar was produced in 1988.

“We’re on the 24th East Coast Calendar. I specialise only in classic and traditional boats; I don’t do any modern boats.”

When does the modern era start?

“Well, that’s tricky, because there’s always that conundrum when you look into the regattas and what criteria they come under; but I would say ’50s, really. Something like that.

“Then gradually I started doing the Antigua classics.” The annual classic yacht regatta there includes traditional craft from the Caribbean islands, ketches, sloops, schooners, yawls and tall ships.

There’s been a massive revival of interest in such classic and traditional craft over the years, she says.

So what’s the appeal of maritime photography?

“I’m not a very good painter, but I’m very interested from the artistic angle. To me, it’s a very artistic activity. I’m not interested in just going out and snapping the thing. Composition and the aesthetics of photography are what I love, and doing really good images and prints. It’s a way of expressing my art.

“I’m very fussy and want to produce as good an image as I possibly can. Composition is very important to me. Anyone can ‘take pictures’, can’t they – especially with a digital camera – but you’ve got to have the eye.

“I do know how a boat looks good when it’s sailing. If you see people who maybe don’t know about sailing but take good pictures, they can’t necessarily take good pictures of boats.

“When you go to St Tropez or somewhere like that – she said, sounding pretentious! – it’s true: people come out of the woodwork and take a few snaps and that’s it. You can see immediately who’s into it properly and who isn’t.”

Even though this is the digital age – and Den does work extensively with the modern medium – she still hand-prints some traditional photographs in the darkroom for her exhibitions.

“Most of my old stuff was taken on a Hasselblad [camera, from the legendary Swedish company] and hand-printed. You can tell the difference. It’s like the difference between antiques and repros.”

Of course, magazine work these days requires digital images. “I quite enjoy the digital thing. I take the photographs in colour but can convert them to black and white.”

Ah, good old monochrome. Why is it her favoured look?

“Anyone can take colour snaps, but to produce a good black-and-white . . .”

She cites some American photographers she particularly admires. “Their images are always stunning, striking and atmospheric – very contrasty black and white, which is my angle on it. My work is very contrasty, and hopefully dramatic.

“I think black and white suits the type of boats. You wouldn’t just have colour snaps of your boat on the wall; I just don’t think they’re as aesthetically pleasing as black and white – fine in magazines, but for an actual hang-it-on-the-wall framed image, I think black and white, you can’t beat it.

“It shows more tonal range and texture, and shadows and light.

“I went up in a helicopter a couple of years ago, photographing schooners, which have lots of sails. For aerial photography it’s fantastic, because the sails billow out. The shadows and light for those photographs was fantastic.”

So what does an effective maritime photographer need in order to succeed?

“You’ve got to have the eye, and not be afraid of moving in. You don’t have to get full portraits of boats all the time. You can move in and get interesting angles, and be daring about that.

“And to be able to sail, to do my kind of photography, is essential. You don’t want a barge with its sails hanging down, or a yacht just ‘going about’; you have to wait until they’ve got going a bit, they’ve got wind in their sails and they’re properly going. It takes a while.

“You need ‘life’. My favourite weather is a good, stiff breeze with blue sky and clouds, because then you get a lot of texture, movement and white water and waves.

“I’m always more pleased with the photographs that were more difficult to take – such as when it’s really dramatic and windy. It’s very difficult taking pictures of boats when it’s bloody windy and rough, and your cameras get soaked!

“People were always amazed when they saw me taking pictures with the Hasselblad, because it’s really more of a studio camera. And you look down into it, too, which is kind of odd – but after all these years I’ve got used to it.”

Nowadays, Den’s uses a Hasselblad and a Canon. And, yes, she’s had plenty of equipment soaked and dunked over the years. It’s an occupational hazard.

Her work is shown at regular exhibitions on the east coast.

“That’s how I started off: having the exhibitions was to launch the calendars, all those years ago. Over the years, the exhibitions have evolved into having lots of different artists exhibiting, on all the nautical themes. So we’ve got paintings, potters, driftwood art, carved birds and fish – all sorts of different things. And all local and handmade.”

Last year she and the other “Salty Dogs”, as they call themselves, displayed their work in Maldon for almost two months – ending on the last day of the year – and also exhibited in Aldeburgh for the final fortnight or so of 2011.

An ambition for 2012 is to secure a high-profile show in London. Den also hopes to have one in Cowes in June, at a private regatta.

She’s also got an exhibition to coincide with the Pendennis Cup in Cornwall in July. (The competition is organised by a shipyard every two years and pits superyachts against each other over four days of racing in Falmouth Bay.)

In terms of personal craft, Den and husband Dickie have a 46ft steel yawl (a two-masted vessel) called Lucy, which was built in 1965. She’s kept in Antigua, where the couple married a couple of years or so ago, though they’ve been together for 22.

Here on the east coast they’ve got what the photographer calls her workboat: a 20ft aluminium boat with an engine.

Regattas during the British summer . . . visits to the Caribbean to sidestep the dull final weeks of an East Anglian winter (last year Den spent three months in Antigua) . . . it’s all rather enviable. “I feel very lucky,” she admits.

She used to do more in the way of commercial photographic jobs, but the emphasis is now firmly on aesthetic pictures.

“I’ve done photos of consoles and things like that, but I’m just not good at it! It doesn’t really appeal to me.” Den recognises she’s an artist at core, follows her heart and eye, and – happily – finds there’s a living to be had from it.

n Web link: www.denphillipsphotos.co.uk