SIGHTINGS
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Latitude 38
• November, 2017
winter reading The Bermuda Privateer (William Westbrook, $22.95) — We don't feel comfortable — and by "we" in this case, we mean as a sailing magazine — reviewing books like this for two reasons: 1) It's not really about sailing; and 2) The Patrick O'Brian Master and Commander series has spoiled us for life for this genre. However, from a purely personal, nonsailor point of view, this reviewer found The Bermuda Privateer — set in the late 1700s — to be a rollicking enough tale of dashing captains, evil pirates, beautiful maidens and lots of swashbuckling. On the MAC-ometer (Master and Commander scale), we'd rate it a 7 out of 10.
LATITUDE / ANNIE
We were saddened to learn that Diane Beeston passed away in her adopted home of Astoria, Oregon, on June 17. She was 87. For the younger crowd out there, Diane was once the premier sailing photographer on the Bay. Nearly three decades have passed since those days, but her work is still relevant, still breathtakingly beautiful, and remains both benchmark and inspiration for the many on-the-water photographers who have come since — ourselves included. Diane was the real deal. Today, anybody with a GoPro and an Instagram account can call themselves a 'photographer'. Back then, it meant something quite different, especially for those who made a living at it. Photography required a continual and ever-evolving set of skills — not to mention talent — learned, literally, over a lifetime. Not only did you have to familiarize yourself with the heavy, often cantankerous cameras and lens combos of the day — which, incidentally, did not have 'automatic exposure', auto-focus lenses or automatic winders, and did not like to get wet — you had to know the right film to use, the right settings for the camera, the vagaries of lighting, and all the stuff that went on in the darkroom — developing, enlarging, dodging, burning… Then, if you were a sailing photographer, you also had to deal with tides, currents, winds and other weather variables while trying to compose shots of subjects that were constantly changing position — from the deck of a photoboat that was itself often bucking and rolling. And after all that, to be any good, you had to have 'The Eye' — the ability to consider not just what was happening Diane Beeston, as pictured on the now, or just your main subject — but back cover of 'Of Wind, Fog and Sail', to see what was going to happen, what background you wanted, the depth of published in 1972. field and whatever else it took to tell the story — then position yourself in just the right place at just the right time to capture it. Diane did this so well that her pictures weren't worth 1,000 words. They were worth 10,000 — and counting. Honestly, we hadn't communicated with Diane in years, which increased our sense of loss. So did learning details about her life — we never thought to ask before — after she was gone. Diane Sistaire Beeston was born on December 18, 1929, in Semarang, on the island of Java, in an area that was then still part of the Dutch East Indies. Her father was the son of a British diplomat and her mother is described as "an adventurous San Francisco woman." The family — her parents and an older brother — eventually moved back to the City, where she attended school and graduated with a degree in photography from UC Berkeley in 1950. Her first job was photographing eyes and eye surgery for Dr. Maury Smith, head of the Ophthalmology Department at UCSF — and a member of the San Francisco Yacht Club. One day he invited Diane to go sailing. Although not exactly smitten with sailing itself, she was hooked on the dynamics and beauty of it. Sometime in the early '60s, she quit her day job, bought the first of a series of powerboats, all named Golden Fleece, and turned her attention to photographing sailboats for the next 20-some years. In 1972, Diane published a book of her photos called Of Wind, Fog and Sail. We still consider it a mandatory book for any Bay sailor to have on their bookshelf. She was at the height of her skills in the '70s when the first issue of a little startup called Latitude 38 first appeared. It would not be
Above: 'Latitude 38's well-loved and tattered office copy of Beeston's 'Of Wind, Fog and Sail'. Right: 'Enchanta'. Below: 'Orion'.
DIANE BEESTON
MOULIN STUDIOS
eight bells: diane beeston