“The closer you live to the put-in, the later you put on,” says fulltime photographer Darin McQuoid.
He calls it “the inverse law of location relative to start time,” and has it to thank for this shot, which he snapped on a run of Fantasy Falls of the North Fork Mokelumne River in California last May.
An all-local crew of paddlers—Rok Sribar, Chris Zawacki and Scott Ligare—joined McQuoid on the three-day run, making them particularly vulnerable to the late start-time law but comfortable enough to cruise downstream quickly. Still, they landed at their first campsite after another group had already claimed a spot across the river.
“It worked out perfectly for the shot,” says McQuoid, since the site is nestled between two class V rapids, and he often walks the one just downstream. “Ferrying across is no joke,” he says, so he likely wouldn’t have geared up to cross and point the lens back at his own group after nightfall.
“It’s tough to motivate once you’re relaxing around a campfire.”
Since he didn’t have space to stuff a tripod into his Jackson Kayak Villain with the rest of his multi-day gear, McQuoid had to get creative to find a stable spot. Throwing a fleece on the ground, he molded a spot for the camera in the folds of the base layer’s fabric and pushed his shutter speed to its maximum length.
Shooting with a 1977 Nikon 28-45mm f/4.5 lens, he cranked the ISO to 800, “something you can only get clean results from on a full frame camera,” and hunkered on the ground, capturing this shot.
This article first appeared in the Early Summer 2014 issue of Rapid Magazine. Subscribe to Paddling Magazine’s print and digital editions, or browse the archives.
