Through My Lens: Capturing the Beauty and Extremes of Offshore Life
The journey that led me to the offshore world is quite an unusual one, I was a single parent of 3 children and self-employed as a cleaner to put myself through university. I graduated in 2014 with First-Class Honours BEng (Hons) Engineering Geology and Geotechnics, to this day I have no idea how I did it, but I am so glad that I did, it changed my life and that of my children.
Without going into too much detail, my career started in consultancy as a Geotechnical Engineer, this naturally led me to working on site and eventually into site management. A bizarre series of events slingshot me into orbit in the offshore world, initially in geotechnical roles and eventually to where I am now, an Offshore Client Representative. I learnt an incredible amount over those years, including the ability to think around corners, never to be overly optimistic, to expect the unexpected and that my love of my job grows with every campaign I complete.
Working offshore provides me with a unique environment for my photography. Very few people get to see the day-to-day lives we live at sea, the vessels, operations, the diverse crews, the amazing views and the most breath-taking sunrises and sunsets.
I can and do take photos of anything and everything and it becomes very normal for me to be spotted photographing old netting, bits of rope and people. But it’s the sunrises and sunsets that I’ll always love the most, the feeling of a new day unfolding as the sun emerges from the sea, or when it sets, kissing the ocean goodnight. I love capturing the sunlight as it dapples its way across the waves to touch the boat, the reflections, the lighting is incredible, and every vessel captures it in a unique way. It is impossibly beautiful and serene. There’s something magical and nostalgic about being at sea, it’s a sense of being out in the world, and I think my photography is my way of trying to give other people that same feeling, to immerse their imagination in the beauty of it all. However, it’s not always so peaceful, and at times it can be a truly extreme place to work.
The extreme conditions we work in create in us an extreme sense of humour. We do laugh a lot, there is a huge amount of camaraderie and the adage ‘you don’t have to be crazy to work here, but it helps’ doesn’t apply to us. You do, we are, it shows, and I love capturing those moments amongst my crew mates. The absolute abnormality that is our normality.
At sea we have four regular topics of conversation aside from food, these are (in no particular order) operations, previous offshore campaigns (story telling), crew change dates and the weather. We talk, eat, sleep, live and watch for environmental conditions 24 hours a day. Our whole offshore lives are dictated by mother nature’s capricious moods, be it wind, tide, swell, current or storms and it’s the number one cause of downtime. It’s billed as ‘waiting on weather’ or ‘weather downtime’ and has huge impacts on the success of a campaign. When we are forecast a storm, we will monitor it for days in advance in every conceivable format and we plan, replan, plan again and predict whether it’ll move left or right, hit sooner or later.
The same is as true offshore as it is onshore ‘red sky at night, sailors delight, red sky in the morning, sailors warning’ and mother nature doesn’t fail in performing her flaming flamenco and putting on incredibly vibrant warning displays before she completely loses her temper. Seafarers learn to read this environment. There’s a stillness before a storm that is incredibly eerie, the sea can be so flat and calm that it’s like a vast mirror stretching out to the horizon. When storms are forecast, our vessels tend to go either into port or take shelter at anchor, however, plans can and do go awry. I was once on an offshore campaign in the New York Bight undertaking a geotechnical ground investigation when we got caught in a storm, we were supposed to take shelter in Sandy Hook Bay, but it became apparent that we wouldn’t be able to due to the vessels flag state. This news came to us late and we had no choice but to stay at sea and weather it out, conditions came in much harder than forecast and weathered we got. At times like that, you really do feel the ocean’s sheer power and vastness and your absolute isolation and insignificance upon and to it. I think that was the only time I wasn’t sure if we would make it, I messaged my kids telling them how much I loved them without trying to alarm them. Apparently, I failed.
Luckily days like that don’t happen often (thankfully), but every seafarer has their stories, and we spend a lot of time comparing them. We while away many hours finding our commonalities in vessels, campaigns, life and offshore experiences, some funny, some scary, some bizarre and others outright tragic. We are locked together in our floating microverse and our only visitors are the occasional whales, dolphins, otters and seals. These are moments everyone enjoys and anyone who thinks seafarers don’t care about nature is wholly wrong. A whale sighting causes a real stir and will be talked about for days. It’s both endearing and fascinating seeing the way that sea life interacts with us and is curious about us. The ever curious (and very nosey) sea otters will watch us for days, returning to the vessel over and again, taking in all the different angles, whereas seals are really only interested in seeing if we can feed them, they’re like dogs at a dinner table, bobbing their big-eyed, sausage shaped faces up at us, watching what we’re doing and assessing us and our potential as a food source. Whales will glide majestically alongside with just an eye above the water, taking us in. Curious, every single one of them.
My life as a seafarer has been a fantastic life journey as much as a career. One which has provided me with an incredibly unique life. I’ve celebrated many birthdays, New Years and Christmases with my seafaring families, I’ve also missed the funerals, weddings and celebrations of my loved ones.
One thing I like to do now at the end of each campaign is give crew members photos I’ve taken of them in their working environment, I do this so they can show their loved ones where they work, what their life is when they’re away from home, sometimes for months at a time. I hope in some way it gives comfort to their kids, partners, parents… a workplace no longer imagined. It’s my way of thanking them for their time, their energy and their effort, because and we do rely so heavily on each other, we don’t have days off and can’t afford off days. It isn’t an easy job, but it truly is a beautiful way of life.
Sonia Carley.