There is a well-known photograph by Peter Spurrier, who has died aged 77, that shows a rowing eight passing a half-timbered boathouse on its way to win the Head of the Charles regatta in Boston, Massachusetts. The picture, taken in 2009, perfectly captures the rhythm and grace of a crew at work during a snowstorm, and shows why Pete was regarded as the master of rowing photography.
The sport is challenging to film because the whole caboodle moves from A to B over long distances – from multilane, 2,000-metre courses at international regattas to more than four miles in the case of the Oxford-Cambridge Boat Race and head-of-the-river time trials. Thus there is usually only one chance of shooting a masterpiece.
