Last Saturday, I took myself off to photograph the Women's Eights Head of the River rowing race. 320 boats compete on the River Thames over 4 miles and 374 yards (6.8 km), otherwise more familiarly known as the boat race course (in reverse) from Chiswick to Putney. The boats start at 10-second intervals and race each other in procession downriver on the falling tide. It is a phenomenal spectacle.

Each boat is a racing eight, a slim long “shell" boat designed to slip through the water with minimal resistance, powered by eight women on the oars, with a cox in the stern steering (plus shouting instructions and cajoling the crew to ever greater efforts). The rowers are all women but some of the coxes are men — and as we’ll see below, having a male cox is not necessarily advantageous :). So, for this race, there were 320 crews of nine each, i.e. 2880 competitors, plus marshals in boats on the river as well. It is a big sporting event in terms of numbers of competitors, but is largely unknown among the public. It is one of the rare events where complete novices and Olympic champions can compete in the same race.

I'm not a sports photographer, and I've never photographed a race like this before. But I thought it would be a fascinating challenge, and would make me think a bit differently about ways to go about photographing an event.

I had no idea or be the most useful focal length lenses, so I took three that would fit into a small backpack: the Sony A1 with the 24-105 mm f/4, 70-200 mm f/4 plus the Nikon 500 mm F/5.6 PF lens and Monster LA-FE1. In the end, I used all three.

Looking at the map beforehand, Hammersmith Bridge crosses the river in the middle of the course, potentially giving high angles on the boats as they race under it. On the south side, there is a pleasant towpath with a good view of Hammersmith with its old buildings and moored houseboats behind. Hammersmith is also very easy for me to get to – straight down on the underground from St Pancras. The proper thing to do with events like this is to seriously go location scouting in advance: I'll admit to winging it with the location I chose, even though I'd made good use of Google Maps streetview in advance. The other reason for heading to the south side of the river was to put the sun behind me: fat chance, the day was completely overcast with thick grey clouds.

Arriving at Hammersmith underground, I made my way to the bridge. It is in a poor state and under repair. It has been closed to vehicle traffic for some considerable time and pedestrian traffic is limited to narrow footpaths along each edge. Such is the weak state of the bridge that several people in high-viz were stationed on the pedestrian walkways keeping people moving to avoid a buildup of spectators that might threaten its load-bearing. At least, that idea worked to start with, not so much as the race progressed.

As I walked across the bridge, about three-quarters of an hour before the 14:45 start, I could see large numbers of boats making their way upstream. Most of the competitors had embarked at Putney and rowed from there to the start line at Chiswick. There was such a queue that they had to move very slowly and keep out of each other's way.

On the south side of the bridge, I found a nice clear view of the river with the span of the bridge to my right and watched for a while as crews came through. I was looking upstream a bit when there was a clatter behind me as one of the lower-ranked crews managed to steer into Hammersmith bridge itself. The (male) cox was most apologetic to the crew – "Sorry about that everyone. I cocked that up!” One of the other spectators asked me if I'd caught that on camera – ruefully, I admitted I was looking the other way. Fortunately, no harm was done, and they carried on to the start.

I realised that position had a marshall's boat right in the field of view, and it would probably be there during the race. So, I walked a bit further along the towpath westwards and found a convenient slipway with various other spectators on there already. It had a great view of the river and, best of all, it was possible to get right down to the water's edge for photographing from a low angle.

Once the race started, the first crew to come through was number 1, Leander A. I've not seen who was in that crew, but I imagine they are internationals – they simply flew through, leaving crew 2 trailing a long way behind. The Leander B crew (race number 4) came through a little later, overtaking number 3 and apparently gaining on crew 2 ahead of them (opening picture above). And after that, a deluge of boats came through.

I started off with the 70-200 mm lens to photograph the race. After the first half-dozen or so crews had come through, I felt I was getting more or less identical pictures: to switch things up I changed to the 500 mm PF lens with the monster LA-FE1 adapter. I started photographing standing close to the top of the slipway looking across the top of the crews, so that I could see competitors when they were battling side-by-side, as one attempted to overtake another. Using 1/1600 second to freeze the action, I managed a few shots I quite liked.

I also tried dropping the shutter speed to 1/100 second to try to get some motion blur. This was always going to be a low-yield procedure: the boat is moving forward fast, but that is the least of the problems. The rowers are on sliding seats (just as you use with a rowing machine in the gym) so that, relative to the boat's motion, they slide backwards while pulling on the oar and then slide forwards at the end of the stroke for the next one. In other words, the rowers move continuously relative to the boat, so simply panning with the boat will mostly get blurred pictures of them. Nonetheless, I got some sharp pictures at 1/80-1/100, and they convey motion well enough especially at 1/80. But the yield was low enough that I'm not completely sure it was worth it.

More fun – and more challenging still – was to get the camera right down to water level. This gives pictures at the same level as the boat, with the athletes above the level of the camera. This is what I do a lot with wildlife photography. This meant following the action by looking down on the flipped-up rear screen and panning to take pictures. Another extremely low-yield procedure! Still, I got some pictures that made it worthwhile.

By the time the race had been going for an hour or so, I was getting quite cold, plus the light was really going. I swapped back to the 24-105 and made my way to Hammersmith Bridge. The bridge, by that point, had large numbers of spectators leaning over the side shouting encouragement at the crews as they came through, and I joined them. The high viz contingent seemed to have given up trying to get everyone moving, so I spent a bit of time photographing the crews as they came through. The light was almost gone by now: I dropped the shutter speed to 1/30 to attempt to get some movement in the pictures at about 24 mm focal length. I'm not sure that helped much, but I got some pictures I like anyhow.

Overall, I am in awe of all the athletes who took part. It's about a 20-minute race, flat-out high-intensity rowing all the time. Just try that on the rowing machine in the gym next time you're there. Crews had come from all over the UK plus some from Ireland and the continent as well, which is one more great post-pandemic sign of normality reasserting itself. All the crews have spent months preparing for this – many of them getting up before dawn several times a week to get out in their boats to train in icy and windy conditions. Huge respect.

Long story short – this was really fun to try. If I wasn't already booked for something else, I'd go back for the men's race later this month.